Free Unholy Innocence by Stephen Wheeler Page B

abbey I made a quick detour to my cell in order to drop off Jocelin’s history of the life of Saint Robert. Despite his enthusiasm for the subject this sounded like a hagiography and, exemplary though the life of a twelve-year-old boy-saint doubtless was, I needed a different kind of inspiration to solve this murder. Besides, the murder was already eighteen hours old and I had seen enough dead bodies in my time to know that putrefaction begins much sooner in warm weather. As every student of medicine knows, this is because of a build-up of black bile occurring in the body after death which is hastened by warmth.  However, I could not but reflect that if this boy truly was a saint then we should know soon enough for by Samson’s lights his sins would be washed away upon achieving beatification and his remains should therefore be no more corrupted than those of Saint Edmund. Or maybe Edmund’s degree of sainthood was of a higher order than that of a mere miller’s boy. It was an interesting hagiological point which I might take up with Samson at some later time.
    For now, though, I couldn’t spend hours picking my way through Jocelin’s neat but indecipherable script. That delight would have to wait for later. I just hoped I didn’t forget I had it. It would be a tragedy if it got mislaid. Armed only with a wax tablet and stylus for making notes we set off into the town to find the murdered boy. Jocelin had with him a heavy-looking hessian bag slung over one shoulder and filled with….Heaven alone knew what it was filled with; manuscript paper for yet another book, I shouldn’t wonder.
    ‘Where exactly is the body?’ I said, looking at the houses we were passing. It was a highly select neighbourhood, not one I’d normally associate with street violence.
    Without slowing his pace Jocelin opened his notebook. ‘We are looking for the house of Isaac ben Moy.’
    I groaned. ‘That’s a Hebrew name. I thought there weren’t any Jews in Bury any more. I thought Samson got rid of them all.’
    ‘He did,’ replied Jocelin. ‘Well, n-nearly all. It appears Isaac ben Moy has a brother-in-law. Benedict of Norwich. You’ve perhaps heard the name?’
    Indeed I had. Benedict of Norwich was one of the richest money-lenders in that city - indeed, one of the wealthiest in England. He had made loans to the dowager Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, no less, as well as to the abbey. Joseph had sometimes hinted that one or two of the wealthier Jews of Bury had been exempted from the general exclusion in 1190. It now appeared that this relative of Benedict’s had been one of them. I don’t know why I was surprised. Where money is concerned even the most stringent rules can be broken. Samson may have blamed the Jews for getting the abbey’s finances in a mess in the past but without their loans few large projects - Samson’s west towers of the abbey among them - could be carried out.
    Joseph had long ago told me the history of the Jews in England. Until a hundred years ago there had been none at all. It was the Conqueror who brought them over from Normandy in order to finance his extravagant building programme of castles and cathedrals. This was because the Church banned usury – the practise of charging interest on loans. The Jewish faith also banned usury but they somehow managed to circumvent the prohibition. However, useful though the Jews were to the Crown they could never become citizens since that required the taking of a Christian oath which no Jew could do. So instead they were privileged ‘guests’ of the King - a nebulous status that placed them under his personal protection and exempted them from the normal taxes, tolls and fines that everybody else had to pay – one cause of resentment by their tax-paying Christian neighbours. However, this royal ‘protection’ was a double-edged sword since by owning the man the King also owned his property and, crucially, all his assets when he died. I had no doubt that that was