Review of Grave Goods (Mistress of the Art of Death) (Hardcover)

[ The Mistress of the Art of Death series recounts the adventures in medieval England of Adelia Vesuvia Rachel Aguilar, a rare woman trained as a medical doctor in the famous schools of Salerno. Under the summons of King Henry II, in Book I, Adelia arrives in England to solve a mystery concerning the murders of many children. Though disgusted by him at first, she meets and falls in love with Sir Rowley Picot, but chooses to undergo an unofficial relationship with him in order to maintain her independence. In Book II (The Serpent's Tale), the King's favorite concubine Rosamund is found dead, and Adelia is summoned to solve the mystery. Adelia has settled into a home in the fens with Glytha--and Rowley's child, whom she is determined to raise without him. (After Adelia had spurned married life with him, Rowley had taken the King's offer to become Bishop Rowley.) Book III in this historical fiction saga (with its own quirky dose of forensics) puts Adelia in the midst of the uncovering of truth in legend. ]



The story begins in the year 1154 A.D., when a cathedral-destroying earthquake strikes Glastonbury, England, creating a fissure in the earth--where the alleged remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's bodies would be found. Twenty years later, King Henry II fights to gain his lands in Wales--against a people who don't recognize him as King, believing that King Arthur (who lived in the 6th century) is still alive. Henry thus summons Adelia away from her otherwise normal life to investigate the truth of Arthur's bones--and, he hopes, to prove to the Welsch that their so-called King had long ago died.

Adelia is traveling with Lady Emma Wolvercote (the abbey choirgirl in Book II, raped by the late Lord Wolvercote), when the King's men arrive to take her off course. Arriving in Glastonbury, she and her manservant Mansur (officially, the "doctor," to save Adelia from ignorant accusations of witchcraft), are greeted by the abbot, whom, with suspicious openness, allows them to inspect the remains of the alleged bones that are believed to be Arthur and Guinevere's. As expected, there would be those resistant to the discovery of the truth behind the bones, and our heroes thus narrowly escape death several times from attempts to put them off.

Although once a woman baffled and embarassed by how others could sacrifice their life for the love of a man, Adelia--on the brinks of death by aphyxiation with Rowley in a sealed tunnel--finds that she would be ready to do that for Rowley. Our heroine and her beloved survive, of course, but the incident would set about a course of confessions and revelations that would explain both Arthur's bones and the relations between several unlikely parties in this small town.

Ripe with both historical and forensics details, the novel entertains and educates without detracting much from the story. Most memorable is a touching conversation in a rose-garden in summer between Adelia and Emma on love and circumstances, wherein Adelia, in her pedantic nature, goes off a tangent discussing historical contraceptions, notably venerable pessaries soaked in vinegar. Another interesting fact revealed in the story is that preserves or Worcestershire sauce are the best means to clean historic swords preserved in muck--this was used to reveal that a rusted sword that had saved Adelia's life was, in fact, Excaliber. But, though the story is lovely at times, it is a work of fiction. Although Henry II was reportedly its owner at one point during his reign, no one now knows where Excaliber is; the author admits in the endnote that the dates of certain events are shifted to render them in accords with other events. Nevertheless, who's to say things didn't happen as they did? Even the study of history in academia is prone to changes, as new findings challenge existing notions.

Interestingly, unlike its predecessors, Book III ends in suspense--as one of the villains Adelia narrowly escapes in the woods looks on at her passing in menace... I await Book IV!



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