A Murderous Procession

  “You’re to use your wits, woman; you’ve got plenty of them. It’s going to be a hazardous enough journey with all the treasure I’m sending to William as dowry ... God’s entrails, but this wedding is ruining me.” Henry winced in pain; he hated expending money. “However, politically, the one thing I cannot afford is that Excalibur should fall into the wrong hands on the way.”

  “But if you’re disguising it ...”

  The king turned to look across the sun-drenched sweep of the plain to the sudden rise of ground on which stood the towers that imprisoned his wife. “The world is changing, mistress,” he said, and his voice was bleak. “The numbers of those I can trust are dwindling. Spies and ill-wishers gather to bring me down, some of them in my own household.” His energy came back. “I hope that the only ones who will know what the cross contains are you, Saint Albans, of course, Mansur, Captain Bolt, and the crucifer himself. Five of you. But we can’t rely on that.”

  “My lord, I still don’t see ...”

  “Well, I do,” he said. “You have a nose, mistress; it can smell a rat in the privy better than any I know. Should there be anyone in Joanna’s train, anyone, with an untoward interest in what the crucifer is carrying, I want him sniffed out and reported to Bolt so that my good captain can string him up by his balls and find out who he’s working for.”

  Adelia glanced sideways at him, curious and a little alarmed. This was Byzantine reasoning; the revolt of his wife and son was making him overly suspicious if the only one he could put his trust in was her disadvantaged self.

  However, she might as well capitalize on obsession. “I shall keep a keen lookout, my lord, and who will suspect me if I am accompanied by my daughter ... ?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “I’m keeping that child as an assurance ...”

  “A hostage,” she shouted at him.

  “... an assurance that you’ll come back. She stays. You go. Do you understand?”

  Le roi le veult. She floundered in helplessness, never resenting anyone so much; no wonder Eleanor and Young Henry had rebelled. He wasn’t her king, either; she was a Sicilian subject.

  Perhaps he realized it, for he began wheedling. “Rowley has arranged for her to stay with Eleanor while you’re away, so think how the child will prosper; Eleanor has a way with girls.” He pointed to a small figure that had rambled off. “Is that her? Introduce me.”

  Allie had found a dewpond and was kneeling in it, studying something on one of the rushes while the dog Eustace cavorted in its water.

  “That’s a pretty butterfly, isn’t it?” Henry said. If Eleanor was good with girls, he was awkward.

  Without looking up, Allie hushed him. “Not a butterfly. It’s a damselfly, a common blue,” she said, “eating a leafhopper.”

  Oh dear. Retrieving her dripping child, Adelia thought defiantly: Well, how many little girls can identify insects?

  And heard Emma’s reply: How many would want to?

  IT WAS SAID that the giants who’d built Stonehenge had also raised the great circular earthwork on which Sarum stood. If so, they had commanded the River Avon in a panorama that spread for miles in every direction and which no enemy could approach without being seen.

  To climb the opening that led steeply upward between high, stepped banks was not only to leave a world of grass for that of stone but to pass from one sort of air to another. Where, below, the women’s veils had drooped, up here, on the bridge waiting for the portcullis to be raised, they fluttered in a strong breeze. It was always windy at Sarum.

  Though the cathedral rose higher than the castle, only the gargoyles on its roof and soldiers patrolling the ramparts had the advantage of a view; at ground level the surrounding walls blocked in the little city as if they held it captive.

  Certainly the cathedral’s monks felt that they, like Queen Eleanor, were imprisoned. As the portcullis went up for the king, a number of them tried to rush under it to gain the bridge outside. They were held back, none too gently, by sentries.

  A richly dressed, rock-faced official bowed to the king. “Welcome, my lord.”

  “All well, Amesbury?”

  “All well, my lord.” The castellan looked venomously toward the monks. “Except for them. They keep trying to get out.”

  “Why shouldn’t they?”

  Amesburywas taken aback. “Because ... my lord, because they are against us, you. The cathedral favors the queen; they could be taking secret messages to her supporters, engineering her escape, anything.”

  Henry strolled over to the most vociferous of the monks. “Where do you want to go?”

  “The river.” The man waved a fishing rod. “It is Friday, we need fresh fish, the dear queen needs it. All that monster there allows us is dried herring.”

  “Off you go, then.”

  The monk stared for a moment, unbelieving, and then, with his companions, bolted for the bridge. Amesbury hissed with disapproval.

  Engineering the queen’s escape would be a considerable feat, Adelia thought as she and the others followed Henry Plantagenet across a moat, under the shadow of portcullises, and through guarded gates until they reached the castle bailey and the heart of this tiny city Like all town centers, it contained a busy market but, again, Adelia felt suffocation; only the wind was free, managing to swoop over the palisade to rattle the calico covers of the stalls and send the Plantagenet pennant on the roof beating against its pole as if it hated it.

  Eleanor met them on the steps to the keep. “My lord.”

  “My lady”

  King and queen gave each other the kiss of peace with apparent affection.

  “Maudit.” Eleanor snapped her fingers at Amesbury “Refreshment for my guests.”

  “Amesbury, madam,” the castellan pleaded. “I tell you, my name is Robert of Amesbury.”

  “Really?” Eleanor looked interested. “I wonder why I keep thinking it’s Maudit.”

  Adelia felt Mansur touch her arm. “Maudit?”

  “It means accursed,” she muttered back.

  “Ah.”

  The queen and the Bishop of Saint Albans were long acquainted, but her greeting to him was coldly formal—he was the king’s man and always had been.

  She was kinder toward Mansur: “My lord, I have instructed my daughter’s doctor to welcome your opinion. I have held a high regard for Arab medicine ever since I went on crusade with my former husband.”

  The former husband had been the King of France—Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, didn’t marry just anybody. Ostensibly, the dissolution of that marriage had been because she’d given Louis two daughters, not an heir, but Adelia privately thought that Eleanor had been too much of a handful for that pious and indecisive French monarch.

  The queen waited until Adelia translated and Mansur had bowed, then turned to Adelia herself with warmth. “I recollect you very well from our time in Oxfordshire, Mistress Amelia. Together, we overcame demons, did we not? It is a comfort to me that you will be in attendance on my child for her journey. And this is to be my little ward whilst you are gone, is it?”

  Allie, who’d been carefully instructed, behaved well and curtseyed as she should, though her mother could have wished her less wet and muddy.

  Careful not to touchher, Eleanor smiled at the child before addressing the king. “Henry, our dress allowance will have to be raised.”

  The queen looked better than on the last occasion Adelia had seen her when, disguised as a boy, she’d been trying to escape her husband’s soldiers; then male attire had accentuated her fifty-one years as opposed to Henry’s forty Despite having given birth to a total of ten children, she was once more elegant, slim, and poised. There was no complaint that she, consort to two kings, who’d ruled the great duchy of Aquitaine in her own right and traveled to the Holy Land with an entourage of Amazons, was facing a lifetime’s incarceration; she might have been welcoming them to one of her own palaces.

  Adelia knew her to be an impulsive, erratic woman with none of
her husband’s intellectual power—but what pride was here, and what stoicism.

  The chilled white wine brought to the keep’s second-floor apartment was excellent, as were the accompanying little biscuits. A harper sat in one corner, singing a love song.

  It was a fine room, to which Eleanor had contributed touches of color with Persian carpets, cushions, and Flemish tapestries, but candles had to counter the shade provided by the outside walls that kept the sun from its windows.

  A pretty cage for an exotic bird, Adelia thought, but still a cage.

  Her heart bled for her own nestling now to be confined in it—and for Gyltha, a woman who had lived her life under sweeping and untrammeled horizons as an eel-seller in Cambridgeshire’s fenland. In fact, if Gyltha had not agreed to stay here with the child, Adelia would have bolted with both of them but, when consulted, Gyltha had said: “Little’un’s too young to be lollopin’ round foreign parts, bor, and I’m too old. Reckon as the queen’ll have to put up with the two of us.”

  Immensely comforted, Adelia had kissed her. “She’ll be lucky to have you.”

  And, indeed, as it turned out, Eleanor’s staff had been so reduced that she welcomed Allie’s nurse as an addition to it.

  There was a sharp contrast between the two girls about to change places; Princess Joanna was a small facsimile of Eleanor in both dress and looks but without the lightning-bolt energy of either of her parents. Her little face was immobile. She kept close to a large, comfortable-looking woman in plain traveling dress, presumably her nurse.

  There was a difference, too, in their leave-taking. Queen and princess kissed each other good-bye without emotion. Eleanor blessed her. “May your marriage be a happy one, my dear child, and may God and his sainted martyr Thomas à Becket have you in their keeping.”

  This was a shaft at the king and Eleanor drove it home with a happy smile at her husband. “Saint Thomas is our daughter’s especial saint. She prays to him every night, do you not, my child?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  Adelia and Allie’s parting had to be equally short—the king wanted to reach Southampton next day. Adelia was nearly undone by her daughter’s stricken face; she’d tried to prepare the child during the journey to Sarum, but it was obvious that the reality had only now sunk in. Kneeling down so that they were on a level, she said: “Allie, I love you more than anything in the world. I wouldn’t be leaving you unless I had to. The queen has much to teach you but always remember that you are already splendid in my eyes.”

  Oddly enough, it was Amesbury, with unexpected kindness, who saved them both from breaking down. Adelia had seen Rowley talking to him.

  Lapsing into a Wiltshire accent, the castellan bent down toward Allie as she fought to keep her lips from quivering. “Do ee know what I got in the palace mews, my beauty?”

  Allie shook her head.

  “Kestrel. Fine young brancher and looking for a young lady as’ll train un to the fist.”

  Allie held her breath. “I could do that, I help our austringer at home. I helped him mend a peregrine’s tail feather with an imping needle.”

  “Did ee now? You’re the one, then.” The castellan/jailer looked at Adelia. “I’ve got a young un, six he is, a keen falconer. She could come out to fly the bird with him and me across the plain.”

  Unable to speak her gratitude, Adelia grasped the man’s hand.

  Nevertheless, it was terrible to turn around as she rode away and see that small figure with Gyltha at her side, waving from the ramparts. Mansur didn’t look back at all, but his silence suggested another parting that had been equally hard.

  Rowley tried to engage her in encouraging conversation, but she wouldn’t speak to him.

  S CARRY IS ALREADY at Southampton; he can move fast when he wants to, can Scarry. He’s wearing clerical dress today and is sitting in a back-street tavern near the Church of Saint Michael where, since it is a watering hole popular with the town’s clerics and their visitors, he passes unnoticed.

  In any case, he looks unremarkable because he’s put on his bland face, the one he wears when he is involved in an act of betrayal. (Scarry has learned that to have no allegiance to kings or countries, or anyone but Wolf, can be profitable.)

  Another man, not unlike him in dress, approaches the settle and table he has chosen in a dark corner of the tavern, says: “Good evening, master. Have you come far? May I join you?” His Latin has an accent from a country warmer than England. He calls for ale, a flagon for himself and one for Scarry, sits down, and taps his fingers on the table in a complicated rhythm.

  Scarry taps back.

  “We understand that Excalibur is on the move,” the man says, like someone commenting on the weather. “The king is sending it to Sicily with his daughter.”

  Scarry inclines his head as if agreeing that it has indeed been a fine day.

  “We want to ... intercept it.”

  There is a pause while a tapster slams two tankards on their table, slopping them both, wishes them health, and waits.

  “And this for you, my man,” the agent says. “God bless you.” A copper coin is passed over, neither of too much value nor too little.

  “The treasure chests will be heavily guarded,” Scarry says when the tapster goes.

  “It won’t be in the chests. At least, we don’t think so. Too open to attack on the way. No, it’s to be carried separately. Find out by whom, and there’ll be a hundred gold pieces for you, twenty-five now and the rest on delivery.”

  With a slight thump, a purse slides down the man’s sleeve and onto the table where it is instantly covered by his hand. Scarry puts out his own in an apparent pat of approbation and the switch is made.

  “You understand? The sword is simply to disappear. It will not reappear until such time as its new owner is ready to unsheathe it. You will be contacted.”

  Scarry nods amiably. His companion is one of Duke Richard’s agents; therefore, Scarry knows who, among the many people desirous of Excalibur, the new owner is to be. He doesn’t care much. What are earthly kings and dukes to him? Mere purveyors of money. He has his own king.

  He isn’t even surprised that he is uniquely fitted to carry out the instruction; he is becoming used to his God’s bounty in making easy arrangement for him.

  For, two years ago, when, in his agony at Wolf’s death, he was tracking the woman Aguilar, did he not see her coming down the Glastonbury Tor, reputed home of Arthur of Britain, with a man he now knows was the King of England?

  Coiled in the long, warm grass, like an adder, he’d watched them.

  The other man finishes his ale, stands, says loudly that he’s happy to have made Scarry’s acquaintance, and leaves.

  Scarry doesn’t watch him go. He is smiling, remembering ...

  Chatting like old friends, they’d been that day, Adelia Aguilar and Henry Plantagenet.

  And King Henry, who’d gone up the hill unarmed, had come down it with a sword in his hand ...

  Three

  HENRY II WAS SAVING money; only Joanna’s immediate court and servants would be sailing the Channel with her; the horses, grooms, cooks, laundresses, even some of the knights, soldiers, and others that were to form her marriage cavalcade overland were awaiting her in Normandy, the duchy Henry had inherited from William the Conqueror. It was cheaper than ferrying all of them over from England, though some of the treasure chests containing part of the dowry raised from the English would accompany her on the crossing.

  He had, however, ordered Southampton Castle to lay on a farewell banquet for his daughter before she and the company caught the outbound tide. Even this, though, was less opulent than it might be—not so much because Henry had stinted, but because the castle servants and cooks knew, as did everyone else, that the king regarded time spent on eating course after course of food as time wasted.

  Nevertheless, such dishes as were served at the great table in the castle’s hall that evening were simple by most banqueting standards but of fine quality So wa
s the wine. From a gallery came the notes of viol and rebec as they accompanied a pure countertenor in song.

  Halfway through, Henry Plantagenet stood up to raise his glass to Joanna.

  “My lords, my ladies, gentlemen, may I commend to you this dutiful and excellent princess of England, Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Aquitaine, Gascony, and Nantes who shall honor us and the Kingdom of Sicily by combining in her body these two great empires. May God be with her.”

  Everybody rose. There was a shout: “To Joanna.”

  The dutiful and excellent princess smiled her thanks.

  The guests prepared to sit down again, ready to tuck into the spiced beef with oysters and battered egg dumplings that had arrived on the board.

  But their king hadn’t finished with them; he was still on his feet; they must remain on theirs. “As you know, our most beloved Bishop of Winchester will be leading the journey to Sicily ...”

  He bowed to a small, round, richly dressed man who was breathing hard from what appeared to be agitation, but stopped shifting long enough to bow back.

  “... and our well-beloved Bishop of Saint Albans with him.”

  Rowley bowed.

  “Most of you in this company are well and happily acquainted with each other,” Henry went on, “however, we have guests whom you have not yet encountered. I recommend to your friendship the Lord Mansur, who is highly versed in Arab medicine and will be assisting our good Doctor Arnulf in everything connected with my daughter’s health.”

  Henry had eyes that flared when he was particularly intent. They flared now as they looked from the impassive face of the Arab to that of Eleanor’s Dr. Arnulf, who wasn’t taking this well.

  But it was Father Guy, one of the Bishop of Winchester’s two chaplains, who stood up, quivering with outrage and courage. “If I do not mistake me, my lord, the man is a Saracen, a Saracen. Would you give your daughter’s well-being to one whose race is even now trampling the Holy Places?”

  There was a general intake of breath, but Henry looked toward Mansur. “Lady Adelia, be so good as to ask my lord doctor if he has ever trampled a Holy Place.”