The Serpent's Tale

  When Mansur strode into the royal chamber, one of the courtiers muttered audibly, “And now we entertain heathens.” And as Adelia followed behind with Ward ambling at her heels, “Oh, Lord, look at that cap. And the dog, my dear.”

  Eleanor, however, was all kindness. She came sweeping forward, offering her hand to be kissed. “My Lord Mansur, how pleased we are to see you.” To Adelia: “My dear child, we have been remiss. We have been kept busy with matters of state, of course, but even so I fear we have neglected one with whom I fought against the devil’s spawn.”

  The long upper room had been the abbess’s, but now it was definitely Eleanor’s. For surely Mother Edyve had not scented it with the richness of the heathen East nor filled it with artifacts so colorful—shawls, cushions, a gloriously autumnal triptych—that they eliminated the naïve, biblical pastels on her walls. Mother Edyve had never knelt at a prie-dieu made from gold, nor would her bedposts have roared with carved lions, nor had gossamer, floating like cobwebs, descended from the bed’s tester over her pillow, nor male courtiers like adoring statuary, nor a beautiful minstrel to fill the abbatial air with a love song.

  Yet, Adelia thought, still astonished by the bed— how had they got the thing on the boat?—the effect was not sexual. Sensual certainly, but this was not the room of a houri, it was merely ... Eleanor.

  It had certainly drawn Jacques into its spell. Lounging in a corner, he bowed to her, beaming and waggling his fingers. So here he was, and—to judge from the joy exuding from him, his even higher boots, and a new style of hair that hid his wide ears—in Aquitanian fashion paradise.

  The queen was plying Mansur with dried dates and almond-paste sweetmeats. “We who have been to Outremer know better than to offer you wine, my lord, but”—a click of elegant royal fingers toward a page—“our cook magicks a tolerable sherbet.”

  Mansur kept his face stolidly blank.

  “Oh, dear,” Eleanor said. “Does the doctor not understand me?”

  “I fear not, lady,” Adelia said. “I translate for him.” Mansur was fairly fluent in Norman French, which was being spoken here, but the pretense that he was restricted to Arabic had served the two of them well, and probably would again; it was surprising what he learned when among those who believed him not to understand. And if Bertha’s killer was somewhere among this company ...

  What could be wanted of him? He was being treated with honor for someone whose race the queen had gone on Crusade to defeat.

  Ah, Eleanor was asking her to pass on praise to Mansur for his medical skill in saving the life of “one of dear Schwyz’s mercenaries”; Sister Jennet had sung so highly of him.

  That was it, then. A good physician was always worth having. Christian disdain for Arab and Jew did not extend to their doctors, whose cures among their own people—partly brought about, Adelia believed, by their religions’ strict dietary laws—gave them a high reputation.

  So she herself was here merely as an interpreter.

  But no, apparently she was a witness to Eleanor’s courage; history was being changed.

  Propelling her around by a hand on her shoulder, the queen told the story of what had happened in the upper room of Wormhold Tower, where, in the presence of a rotting corpse, a sword-wielding demon had appeared.

  Eleanor, it seemed, had held up a calm hand to it. “Thou art a Plantagenet fiend, for that race is descended from demons. In the name of Our Savior, go back to thy master.”

  And lo, the fiend had dropped its sword and slunk back whence it had come.

  What did I do? Adelia wondered.

  “... and this little person here, my own Mistress Athalia, then picked up the sword the fiend had dropped, though it was still very hot and stank of sulphur, and threw it out of the casement.”

  Glad I could help. Adelia speculated on whether the queen believed her own nonsense and decided she didn’t. Perhaps Dakers’s attack had shocked and embarrassed her so that she must now present it to her advantage. Or perhaps she was playing games. She was bored; all these people were bored.

  Having oohed and aahed throughout the recital, the courtiers applauded—except Montignard, who, with a dirty look at Adelia, burst out with, “But it was I who ministered to you afterwards, lady, did I not?” though the list of the things he had done was overlaid by a slow hand clap from the Abbot of Eynsham leaning against one of the bedposts.

  Eleanor turned on him, sharp. “Our neglect is actually yours, my lord. We charged you to look after our brave Mistress Amelia, did we not?”

  The abbot surveyed Adelia from the tips of her snow-rimed boots to the unattractive cap with its earflaps on her head and down again until his eyes met hers. “Lady, I thought I had,” he said.

  The queen was still talking. Shocked, Adelia didn’t hear her. The man wished her harm, had tried to procure it. At the same time, she felt his regard, like that of a swordsman saluting another. In a way she had not yet fathomed, she, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, known only in this place as the Bishop of Saint Albans’s fancy and a useful picker up of demonic swords, mattered to Lord Abbot of Eynsham. He’d just told her so.

  The queen’s hands were spread out in a question, and she was smiling. The courtiers were laughing. One of them said, “The poor thing’s overwhelmed.”

  Adelia blinked. “I beg your pardon, lady.”

  “I said, dear, that you must join us here; we cannot have our little helpmeet living in whatever hole the abbey provides. You shall move in with my waiting women, I am sure they have room, and you shall take part in our sport. You must be so bored out there.”

  You are, Adelia thought again. Eleanor probably did secretly feel she had a debt for having her life saved, but even more, she needed a new pet to play with. Ennui was everywhere, in the screech of female bickering coming from the next room where the waiting women waited, in the pettish laughter directed at herself, the sense that they had run out of butts for their wit and required another.

  This, after all, was a company and queen that left one castle once it had begun to stink and moved on to the next, hunting, entertaining, and being entertained, kept clean and fed by an army of cooks, fullers, laundresses, and servants, many of whom had been left behind on the trail to war that Eleanor had taken, and even more subsequently lost to the snow. Without these resources, they festered.

  One of the courtiers was ostentatiously holding his nose over Ward, though the young man’s own person, let alone his linen, was hardly more delectable.

  Move in with them all? Lord, help me. She wasn’t going to accept an invitation to step into an overcrowded hell, even when extended by a queen.

  On the other hand, if one of these was Bertha’s killer, how better to sniff him out than by asking questions and, hopefully, receiving answers? Move in with them? No, but if, by day, she could have access to the royal chambers ...

  Adelia bowed. “Lady, you are all goodness. As long as my baby would not disturb your nights ...”

  “A child?” The queen was intrigued. “Why didn’t they tell me? A little boy?”

  “A girl,” Adelia told her. “She is teething and therefore wakeful ...”

  There was a light scream from Montignard. “Teething?”

  “A synonym for screaming, so I do understand,” Eynsham said.

  “Our two lords do not like babies,” Eleanor confided to Adelia.

  “I do, sweet lady.” This was the abbot again. “So I do. Lightly broiled with parsley, I find them right toothsome.”

  Adelia pressed on. “Also, I must assist my master, Dr. Mansur here, when he is called to the infirmary at night as he so often is. I keep his potions.”

  “A synonym for stinks and rattling pots,” the abbot said.

  Montignard was clasping his hands beseechingly. “Lady, you’ll not have a wink of rest. If that bell tolling the hours and the sisters singing them were not enough, we’ll have the screech of babies and Lord knows what devilry ... you’ll be exhausted.”

  Bless him, A
delia thought.

  Eleanor smiled. “Such a hedonist you are, my swain.” She reflected, “I do need my sleep, yet I am reluctant not to reward the girl.”

  “Oh, let her come and go,” Eynsham said wearily, “though not in them clothes.”

  “Of course, of course. We shall dress her.”

  It was a new thing, it would pass the time.

  It was also Adelia’s passport—though she had to pay for it. She was carried through to the women’s room, its door not quite closed, so that male heads poking round it added a chorus of comment to the humiliation of being stripped to her chemise while swathes of material were held against her skin and capless head to be pronounced too this, too that, not mauve, my dear, not with that complexion—so corpselike. Where had she found such fine white linen for her chemise? Was she Saxon that she was so fair? No, no, Saxons had blue eyes, probably a Wend.

  She wasn’t even asked whether she wanted a new gown. She didn’t; she dressed to disappear. Adelia was an observer. The only impact she ever wished to make was on her patients, and then not as a woman. Well ... she’d wished to make an impact on Rowley, but she’d done that without any clothes on at all ...

  The poor seamstresses among the queen’s ladies weren’t consulted, either, though the necessary needlework to transform whatever material was decided on into a bliaut for her—very tight at the top, very full in the skirt, sleeves narrow to the elbow, then widening almost to the ground—would be onerous, especially as Eleanor was demanding that it should have filigree embroidery at the neck and armholes, and be finished for the Christmas feast.

  Adelia wondered at seamstresses being taken to war and at anyone who required a military transport to contain presses full of dazzlingly colored brocades, silks, linens, and samite.

  In the end, Eleanor decided on velvet of a dark, dark blue that had, as she said, “the bloom of the Aquitanian grape.”

  When the queen did something, she did it wholeheartedly: a flimsy veil—she herself demonstrated how it should be attached to the barbette—a thin, gold circlet, a tapestried belt, embroidered slippers, a cope and hood of wool fine enough to draw through a ring, all these things were Adelia’s.

  “Only your due, my dear,” Eleanor said, patting her head. “It was a very nasty demon.” She turned to Eynsham. “We’re safe from it now, aren’t we, Abbot? You said you’d disposed of it, did you not?”

  Dakers. What had they done to Dakers? “Couldn’t have it wandering around loose to attack my heart’s lady again, could I?” The abbot was jovial. “I found un hiding among the convent books and, doubting it could read, would have hanged it there and then. But there was an outcry from the good sisters so, pendent opera interrupta, I had it put in the convent lockup instead. We’ll take it with us when we go and hang it then”—he winked—“if it ain’t frozen to death in the meantime.”

  There was appreciative laughter in which Eleanor joined, though she protested, “No, no, my lord, the female is possessed, we cannot execute the insane.”

  “Possessed by the evil of her mistress. Better dead, lady, better dead. Like Rosamund.”

  It was a long night. Nobody could retire until the queen gave her permission, and Eleanor was inexhaustible. There were games, board games, fox and geese, Alquerque, dice. Everybody was required to sing, even Adelia, who had no voice to speak of and was laughed at for it.

  When it was Mansur’s turn, Eleanor was enraptured and curious. “Beautiful, beautiful. Is that not a castrato?”

  Adelia, sitting on a stool at the queen’s feet, admitted it was.

  “How interesting. I have heard them in Outremer but never in England. They can pleasure a woman, I believe, but must remain childless. Is that true?”

  “I don’t know, lady.” It was, but Adelia wasn’t prepared to discuss it in this company.

  The room became hot. More games, more singing.

  Adelia began to nod, jerked awake each time by a draft from the door as people came and went.

  Jacques was gone—no, there he was, bringing more food from the kitchen. Montignard was gone, and Mansur, no, they had come back from wherever they’d been. The abbot was gone, reappearing with string to satisfy Eleanor’s sudden desire to play cat’s cradle. There he was again, this time with Mansur, a table between them, their heads bent over a chessboard. A courtier entered, clutching snow to cool the wine ... another young man, the one who’d thrown snowballs at the nuns, was singing to a lute ...

  Adelia forced herself to her feet. Crossing to the chess table, she surveyed the board. “You’re losing,” she said in Arabic.

  Mansur didn’t look up. “He is the better player, Allah curse him.”

  “Say something more.”

  He grunted. “What do you want me to say? I am tired of these people. When do we go?”

  Adelia addressed Eynsham. “My lord Mansur instructs me to ask you, my lord, what you can tell him about the death of the woman, Rosamund Clifford.”

  The abbot raised his head to look at her and, again, there was that piercing connection. “Does he? Does he indeed? And why should my lord Mansur want to inquire of it?”

  “He is a doctor; he has an interest in poison.” Eleanor had heard Rosamund’s name. She called across the room, “What is that? What are you saying?” Immediately, the abbot was another man, bucolic, convivial. “The good doctor do want to know about bitch Rosamund’s death. Wasn’t I with you when we heard of it, my sweeting? Didn’t they tell us as we was landing, having crossed from Normandy? Didn’t I fall to my knees and give thanks to the Great Revenger of all sin?”

  Eleanor held out her hands to him. “You did, Abbot, you did.”

  “But you knew Rosamund before that,” Adelia said. “You said so when we were at Wormhold.”

  “Did I know Rosamund? Oh, I knew her. Could I allow vileness unchecked in my own county? My old daddy would have been ashamed. How many days did I spend in that Jezebel’s lair, a Daniel exhorting her to fornicate no more?” He was playing to the queen, but his eyes never left Adelia’s.

  More songs, more games, until even Eleanor was tired. “To bed, good people. Go to bed.”

  As he escorted Adelia home, Mansur was broody, chafed by his defeat at chess, of which he was himself a skilled exponent. “He is a fine player, that priest. I do not like him.”

  “He had a hand in Rosamund’s death,” Adelia said, “I know it; he was taunting me with it.”

  “He was not there.”

  True, Eynsham had been across the Channel when Rosamund died. But there was something ...

  “Who was the fat one with the pox?” Mansur asked. “He took me outside to show me. He wants a salve.”

  “Montignard? Montignard has the pox? Serve him right.” Adelia was irritable with fatigue. It was nearly dawn. A Matins antiphon from the direction of the chapel accompanied them as they trudged.

  Mansur raised the lantern to light her up the guesthouse steps. “Has the woman left the door unbarred for you?”

  “I expect so.”

  “She should not. It is not safe.”

  “Then I’ll have to wake her, won’t I?” Adelia said, going up. “And her name’s Gyltha. Why don’t you ever say it?” Damn it, she thought, they’re as good as married.

  She stumbled over something large that rested on the top step, nearly sending it over the edge and down to the alley. “Oh, dear God. Mansur. Mansur.”

  Together, they carried the cradle into the room; the child in it was still asleep and wrapped in her blankets. She seemed to have taken no harm from being left in the cold.

  The candle had gone out. Gyltha sat unmoving in the chair on which she had been waiting for Adelia to come back. For an appalling moment, Adelia thought she’d been murdered—the woman’s hand was dangling over the place where the cradle always lay.

  A snore reassured her.

  The three of them sat in a huddled group around the cradle, watching Allie sleep, as if afraid she would evaporate.

  “Some
one come in here and stole her? Put her on the step?” Gyltha couldn’t get over it.

  “Yes,” Adelia told her. One inch farther on the step, just one inch ... In her mind she kept seeing the cradle turn in midair as it fell into the alley some twenty feet below.

  “Someone come in here? And I never heard un? Put her out on the step?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Where’s the sense in it?”

  “I don’t know.” But she did.

  Mansur voiced it: “He is warning you.”

  “I know.”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “I know.”

  “What questions?” Gyltha, in her panic, wasn’t keeping up. “Who don’t want you asking questions?”

  “I don’t know.” If she had, she would have groveled to him, squirmed at his feet in supplication. You’ve won. You’re cleverer than I am. Go free, I won’t interfere. But leave me Allie.

  ELEVEN

  T he instinct was to hide with Allie in the metaphorical long grass, like a hare and leveret in their form.

  When the queen sent Jacques to inquire for her, Adelia sent back that she was ill and could not come.

  The killer conversed with her in her head.

  How submissive are you now?

  Submissive, my lord. Totally submissive. I shall do nothing to displease you, just don’t hurt Allie.

  She knew him now, not who he was but what he was. Even as he’d plucked Allie’s cradle from under the sleeping Gyltha’s hand and put it on the steps, he’d revealed himself.

  Such a simple expedient to reduce his opponent to impotence. If she didn’t fear him so much, she could admire it—the audacity, the economy, the imagination of it.

  And it had told her for which killings he had been responsible.

  There had been two lots of murder, she knew that now, neither one having anything to do with the other; only the fact that she’d witnessed the corpses of both within a short time had given them a seeming relationship.

  Talbot of Kidlington’s death was the most straightforward, because it had been for the oldest of reasons: gain.