The Serpent’s Tale

EIGHT

If her heart sank at the prospect of feeding and housing the forty or so exhausted, bedraggled, frostbitten men, women, and dogs shambling through her gates, Mother Edyve gave no sign of it, though it must have sunk further when she saw that they included the Queen of England and the Abbot of Eynsham, neither of them friends to Godstow, to say nothing of a troop of mercenary soldiers.

It didn’t occur to her that she was welcoming a force of occupation.

She ordered hot possets for her guests. She surrendered her house to Queen Eleanor and her maids, lodged the abbot and Montignard in the men’s guesthouse with their and the queen’s male servants, and quartered Schwyz on the gatekeeper. She put the queen’s dogs and hawks in her own kennels and mews, distributing the other mercenaries as widely as she could, billeting one on the smith, another in the bakery, and the rest among individual-and aged-retainers and pensioners in the houses that formed a small village within the convent walls.

“So’s they’m split up and not one of ’em where there’s girls,” Gyltha said approvingly. “She’s a wily one, that Ma Edyve.”

It was Gyltha who had carried the report of the events at Wormhold to the abbess. Adelia was too tired and, anyway, hadn’t been able to face telling her of Rowley’s death.

“She don’t believe it,” Gyltha said on her return. “No more don’t I. Now, then, let’s be seeing to you two.”

Mansur hated fuss and kept declaring that he was well, but he had been exposed to the open cold while poling the barge as Adelia, Jacques, and Walt had not, and she and Gyltha were worried about him.

“Look what you done to your hands, you great gawk,” Gyltha said-her disquiet always took the form of anger. Mansur’s palms were bleeding where his mittens, and then his skin, had worn through against the wood of the pole.

Adelia was concerned more for his fingers, which were white and shiny where they emerged from the wrecked mittens. “Frostbite.”

“They cause me no pain,” Mansur said stolidly.

“They will in a minute,” Adelia promised.

Gyltha ran to Mansur’s lodging to get him a dry gown and cloak, and brought back with her a bucket of hot water from the kitchen and would have plunged her lover’s hands into it, but Adelia stopped her. “Wait til it cools a little.”

She also prevented Gyltha from hooking the brazier nearer to him. The condition of frostbite had interested her foster father after he’d seen the effects of it during their holidays in the Alps-he had actually braved a winter there to study it-and his conclusion had been that the warming must be gradual.

Young Allie, always deprived of burning herself on the brazier-it was kept within a guard-turned her attention to trying to pull the bucket over her head. Adelia would have enjoyed watching the resulting tussle between Gyltha and that remarkable child if her own toes hadn’t ached agonizingly with the return of blood to frozen muscle and bone.

She estimated the worth of dosing herself and Mansur with willow-bark decoction for the pain and then rejected it; each of them was a stoic, and the fact that her toes and his fingers were turning red without blistering indicated that the affliction was mild-better to keep the drug for those in whom it might be worse.

She crawled onto the bed to suffer in comfort. Ward leaped on after her, and she had neither the energy nor will to turn him off. The dog had shared his body heat with her on the boat-what were a few fleas if she shared hers with him?

“What did you do with Dakers?” she asked.

“Oh, her.” Gyltha had not taken to the walking skeleton that Adelia had dragged, unaware that she was dragging it, through the convent gates, but had seen, because Adelia was dragging it, that there was a necessity to keep it alive. “I give her to Sister Havis, and she give her to Sister Jennet in the infirmary. She’s all right, ugly thing.”

“Well done.” Adelia closed her eyes.

“Don’t you want to know who’s turned up here since you been away?”

“No.”

When she woke up, it was afternoon. Mansur had gone back to the men’s guesthouse to rest. Gyltha was sitting beside the bed, knitting-a skill she’d picked up from one of her Scandinavian customers during her eel-selling days.

Adelia’s eyes rested on the chubby little figure of Allie as it hitched itself around the floor on its bottom, chasing the dog and grimacing to show the one tiny tooth that had manifested itself in her lower gum since her mother had last seen her. “I swear I’ll never leave you again,” she told her.

Gyltha snorted. “I keep telling you, ’twas only thirty hours.”

But Adelia knew the separation had been longer than that. “It was nearly permanent,” she’d said, and added painfully, “For Rowley, it has been.”

Gyltha wouldn’t countenance it. “He’ll be back, large as life and twice as natural. Take more than a bit of old snow to finish off that lad.” To Gyltha, the Right Reverend Lord Bishop of Saint Albans would always be “that lad.”

“He can stay away for me,” Adelia said. She clung on to her grievance against him like a raft to keep her from being subsumed in grief. “He didn’t care, Gyltha, not for his life, not Allie’s, not mine.”

“Except to make the sun come up.”

“A’course he didn’t, he’s out to stop a war as’ll take more lives than yours. God’s work that is, and the Lord’ll watch over un according.”

Adelia clung to that, too, but she had been deeply frightened. “I don’t care, if it’s God’s work, let Him do it. We are leaving. As soon as the snow clears, we’re all slipping away back to the fens.”

“Oh, ar?” Gyltha said.

“It’s not ‘oh, ar.’ I mean it.” In the fens, her life had been acceptable, regulated, useful. She’d been ripped away from it, subjected to, and then abandoned in, physical and mental turmoil by the man at whose request she had become embroiled in it in the first place. Almost worse than anything, he had revived in her an emotion that she’d thought to be dead, that was better dead.

“Except to make the sun come up.”

Damn him, don’t think of it.

Gaining anger, she said, “It’s all high politics, anyway. That’s what Rosamund’s killing was, as far as I can see-an assassination to do with queens and kings and political advantage. It’s outside my scope. Was it the mushrooms? Yes, it probably was. Do I know who sent them? No, I don’t, and there’s an end to it. I’m a doctor, I won’t be drawn into their wars. God’s rib, Gyltha, Eleanor abducted me, abducted me-I nearly ended up joining her damned army.”

“Shouldn’t have saved her life, then, should you?”

“What was I to do? Dakers was coming at her with a knife.”

“You sure you don’t want to know who else’s turned up?”

“No. I only want to know whether anybody’s likely to stop us going.”

But it appeared that in the physical collapse affecting all the travelers, even Eleanor, on their arrival at the convent, nobody had spared a thought for the woman who had saved the queen’s life-or, for that matter, the woman who had nearly taken it. The priority had been a place to get warm and to sleep.

Perhaps, Adelia thought, the queen had forgotten Dakers and herself altogether and, when the roads were open again, would proceed to Oxford without attending to either. By which time Adelia would be beyond reach, taking Gyltha, Mansur, and Allie with her and leaving Dame Dakers to her own hideous devices-she no longer cared what they were.

Gyltha went to fetch their supper from the kitchen.

Adelia leaned down from the bed, picked up her daughter, pressing her nose against the warm satin of the child’s cheek, and propped her up against her own knees so that they faced each other.

“We’re going home, aren’t we, mistress? Yes, we are. We won’t get involved in their old wars, will we? No, we won’t. We’ll go far off, we’ll go back to Salerno, we don’t care what that nasty old King Henry says, do we? We’ll find the money from somewhere. It’s no good making faces…” For Allie was extending her lower lip and showing her new tooth in an expression reminiscent of the camel in Salerno’s menagerie. “You’ll like Salerno, it’s warm. We’ll take Mansur and Gyltha and Ulf, yes, we will. You miss Ulf, don’t you? So do I.”

On an investigation like this-had she been going to proceed with it-Gyltha’s grandson would have been her eyes and ears, able to go about unremarked as only an eleven-year-old urchin could, his plain, very plain, features giving the lie to his extreme intelligence.

Nevertheless, Adelia thanked her God that Ulf, at least, was out of harm’s way. She found herself wondering, though, what the boy would have said about the situation…

Allie started wriggling, wanting to continue with her persecution of Ward, so Adelia set her down absently, listening to a harsh little voice in her head that asked questions like an insistent crow.

Two murders, ain’t there? Rosamund’s and the fella on the bridge? You think they’re connected?

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter,” she answered out loud.

It was goin’ to depend on who turned up, weren’t it? Somebody was, to see why there hadn’t been no fuss about the dead un on the bridge? Whoever done it wanted him dead, din’t they? An’ wanted a hullabaloo about it, din’t they?

“Such was my assumption. But there hasn’t been time, the snow would have delayed them.”

Somebody’s come.

“I don’t care. I’m going home, I’m frightened.”

Leavin’ the poor bugger in the icehouse, is that it? Very godly, I’m sure.

“Oh, shut up.”

Adelia liked order; in a sense, it was what her profession was about-and you could say this for the dead, they didn’t make unexpected moves or threaten you with a knife. To be out of control and at the whim of others, especially the malignantly inclined, as she had been at Wormhold and on the river, had discomposed her very being.

The convent enfolded her; the long, low, plain room spoke soothingly of proportion. It was dark outside now, and the glow of the brazier gave a shadow to each of the beams in the ceiling, making a pleasingly uniform pattern of dark and not-so-dark stripes against white plaster. Even muffled by the wool that Gyltha had stuffed in the cracks of the shutters to keep out the cold, the distant sound of the nuns singing Vespers was a reassurance of a thousand years of disciplined routine.

And all of it an illusion, because a corpse lay in its icehouse and, seven miles away, a dead woman sat at a writing table, both of them waiting…for what?

Resolution.

Adelia pleaded with them: I can’t give it to you, I’m frightened, I want to go home.

But jagged, almost forgotten images kept nudging at her mind: snowy footprints on a bridge, a letter crumpled in a saddlebag, other letters, copied letters, Bertha’s piglike nose snuffling at a scent…

Gyltha returned carrying a large pot of mutton and vegetables in broth, some spoons, a loaf tucked under one arm, and a leather bottle of ale under the other. She poured some of the broth into Allie’s bowl and began mashing it to a pulp, putting the pieces of meat into her mouth and chewing them with her big, strong teeth until they, too, were pulp, then returning them to the bowl. “Turnip and barley,” she said. “I’ll say this much for the sisters, they do a fair supper. And good, warm milk from the cow with little un’s porridge this morning.”

Reluctantly, because to mention one of the convent’s problems was somehow to solidify it, Adelia asked, “Is Bertha still in the cowshed?”

“Won’t come out, poor soul. That old Dakers still want to scrag her?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

Feeding Allie, who was making spirited attempts to feed herself, took concentration that allowed no thought for anything else.

When they’d wiped food off her hair as well as off their own, the child was put down to sleep and the two women ate their supper in silence, their feet stretched out to the brazier, passing the ale bottle back and forth between them.

Warm, the pain beginning to lessen, Adelia thought that such security as there was in her world rested at this moment in the gaunt old woman on the stool opposite hers. A day didn’t go by without a reminder of the gratitude she owed to Prior Geoffrey for their introduction, nor a strike of fear that Gyltha might leave her, nor, for that matter, puzzlement at why she stayed.

Adelia said, “Do you mind being here, Gyltha?”

“Ain’t got no choice, girl. We’m snowed up. Been snowing again, if you’d notice. Path down to the river’s gone and blocked itself again.”

“I mean, galloping across country to get here, away from home, murder…everything. You never complain.”

Gyltha picked a strand of mutton from her teeth, considered it, and popped it back into her mouth. “Somewhere to see, I suppose,” she said.

Perhaps that was it. Women generally had to stay where they were put, which in Gyltha’s case had been Cambridgeshire fenland, a place that Adelia found endlessly exotic but that was undoubtedly very flat. Why should not Gyltha’s heart drum to adventure in foreign places like any crusader’s? Or long to see God’s peace retained in her country as much as Rowley did? Or require, despite the risk, to see God’s justice done on those who killed?

Adelia shook her head at her. “What would I do without you?”

Gyltha poured the remnants of the broth from Adelia’s bowl into hers and put it down on the floor for Ward. “For a start, you wouldn’t have no time to find out who done in that poor lad, nor who it was done for Rosamund,” she said.

“Oh,” Adelia said, sighing. “Very well, tell me.”

“Tell ee what?” But Gyltha was smirking a satisfied smirk.

“You know very well. Who’s arrived? Who’s been asking questions about the boy in the icehouse? Somebody wanted him found and, sure as taxes, that somebody is going to question why he hasn’t been. Who is it?”

It was more than one. As if blown ahead of the snow that had now encased them, four people had arrived at Godstow during Adelia’s absence.

“Master and Mistress Bloat of Abingdon, they’re ma and pa to that young Emma as you took to. Come to see her married.”

“What are they like?”

“Big.” Gyltha spread her arms as if to encompass tree trunks. “Big bellies, big words, big voices-he has, anyhow, bellows like a bull as how he ships more wine from foreign parts than anybody else, sells more’n anybody else-for a nicer price than anybody else, I wouldn’t be surprised. Hog on a high horse, he is.”

By which Adelia gathered that Master Bloat reveled in a position he’d not been born to. “And his wife?”

In answer, Gyltha arranged her mouth into a ferocious simper, picked up the ale bottle, and ostentatiously prinked her little finger as she pretended to drink from it. She hadn’t taken to the Bloats.

“Unlikely murderers, though,” Adelia said. “Who else?”

“Their son-in-law-as-will-be.”

Another person with a valid reason for coming to Godstow.

“Aaaah.” So the beautiful, gallant writer of poetry had come to take his bride. How nice for that wild, charming girl, how nice that love would lighten the winter darkness for a while at least. “How did he get here?”

Gyltha shrugged. “Arrived from Oxford afore the blizzard set in, like the others. Seems he’s lord of the manor over the bridge, though he don’t spend much time there. Run-down old ruin, Polly says it is.” Gyltha had made friends in the kitchen. “His pa as took Stephen’s side in the war had a castle further upriver during the war, the which King Henry made un pull it down.”

“Is he as handsome as Emma thinks he is?”

But Adelia saw that here was another that hadn’t been taken to-this time, in depth. “Handsome is as handsome does,” Gyltha said. “Older’n I expected, and a proper lord, too, from his way of ordering people about. Been married before, but her died. The Bloats is lickin’ his boots for the favor of him making their girl a noblewoman.” Gyltha leaned forward slightly. “And him kindly accepting two hundred marks in gold as comes with her for a dowry.”

“Two hundred marks?” An immense sum.

“So Polly says. In gold.” Gyltha nodded. “Ain’t short of a shilling or two, our Master Bloat.”

“He can’t be. Still, if he’s prepared to purchase his daughter’s happiness…” She paused. “Is she happy?”

Gyltha shrugged. “Ain’t seen her. She’s kept to the cloisters. I’da thought she’d come rushing to see this Lord Wolvercote…”

“Wolvercote?”

“That’s his lordship’s name. Suits him, an’ all; he do look proper wolfish.”

“Gyltha…Wolvercote, that’s the man…he’s the one who’s raised an army for the queen. He’s supposed to be at Oxford, waiting for Eleanor to join him.”

“Well, he ain’t, he’s here.”

“Is he now? But…” Adelia was determined to follow the gleam of romance where it led. “He’s not a likely murderer, either. It speaks well for him if he’s prepared to delay a war because he can’t wait to marry young Emma.”

“He’s delayin’ it,” Gyltha pointed out, “for young Emma plus two hundred marks. In gold.” She leaned forward, pointing with her knitting needle. “You know the first thing he do when he got back to the village? Finds a couple of rogues robbin’ his manor and hangs ’em quicker’n buttered lightning.”

“The two on the bridge? I wondered about them.”

“Sister Havis ain’t happy. She made a right to-do about it, according to Polly. See, it’s the abbey’s bridge, and the sisters don’t like it being decorated with corpses. ‘You take ’em down now,’ she told his lordship. But he says as it’s his bridge, so he won’t. And he ain’t.”

“Oh, dear.” So much for romance. “Well, who’s the fourth arrival?”

“Lawyer. Name of Warin. Now he has been asking questions. Very worried about his young cousin, seemingly, as was last seen riding upriver.”

“Warin, Warin. He wrote the letter the boy carried.” It was as if an ice barrier was melting and allowing everything to flood back into her memory. Your affct cousin, Wlm Warin, gentleman-at-law, who hereby sends: two silvr marks as an earnest of your inheritance, the rest to be Claimed when we do meet.

Letters, always letters. A letter in the dead man’s saddlebag. A letter on Rosamund’s table. Did they connect the two murders? Not necessarily. People wrote letters when they could write at all. On the other hand…

“When did Master Warin arrive seeking his cousin?”

“Late last night, afore the blizzard. And he’s a weeper. Crying fit to bust for worry as his cousin might’ve got caught in the snow, or been waylaid for his purse. Wanted to cross the bridge and ask at the village, but the snow started blowing, so he couldn’t.”

Adelia worked it out. “He was quick off the mark to know the boy was missing, then. Talbot of Kidlington-it must be him in the icehouse-was only killed the night before.”

“Is that a clue?” The gleam in Gyltha’s eye was predatory.

“I don’t know. Probably not. Oh, dear God, what now?”

The church bell across the way had begun to toll, shivering the ewer in its bowl, sending vibrations through the bed. Allie’s mouth opened to yell, and Adelia scrambled to get to her and cover her ears. “What is it? What is it?” This was no call to worship.

Gyltha had her ear to the shutters, trying to listen to shouts in the alley below. “Everybody to the church.”

“Is it fire?”

“Dunno. Summoning bell, more like.” Gyltha ran to the line of pegs where their cloaks hung. Adelia began wrapping Allie in her furs.

Outside, groups of people hurried from both ends of the alley and joined the congestion in the noisy church porch, where those pausing to let others go in chattered in alarm, asking one another questions and receiving no answers. They took noise in with them…and quieted.

Though it was crowded, the church was silent and mostly dark, all light concentrated on the chancel, where men sat in the choir stalls, men, some of them in mail. The bishop’s throne had been placed in front of the altar for Queen Eleanor to sit in; she wore her crown, but the enormous chair dwarfed her.

Beside her stood a knight, helmeted, his cloak flung back to show the scarlet-and-black blazon of a wolf’s head on the chest of his tabard. A gauntleted hand rested on his sword’s hilt. He was so still he might have been a painted sculpture, but his was the figure that drew the eye.

The trickle of sound that came in with newcomers dried up. Godstow’s entire population was here now, all those who could walk, at least. Adelia, fearing that the child in her arms might be crushed, looked round for space and was helped up onto a tomb by people already standing on it. Gyltha and Ward joined her.

The bell stopped tolling; it had been mere background to what was developing and only became noticeable now by its cessation.

The knight nodded, and a liveried man behind the choir stalls turned and opened the vestry door, which was the entrance used by the religious.

Mother Edyve came in, leaning on her cane, followed by the nuns of Godstow. She paused as she reached the chancel and regarded the men who occupied the places reserved for her and the sisters. The Abbot of Eynsham sat there, so did Schwyz, Montignard, others. None of them moved.

There was a hiss of appalled breath from the congregation, but Mother Edyve merely cocked her head and limped past them, a finger raised to beckon at her flock as she went down the steps to stand with the congregation.

Adelia peered round the nave, looking for Mansur. She couldn’t see him; instead, she found herself looking at mailed men with drawn swords standing at intervals along the walls, as if the ancient stones had sprung rivets of steel and iron.

Warders.

She turned back. The knight in the chancel had begun speaking.

“You all know me. I am the Lord of Wolvercote, and from this moment I claim this precinct of Godstow in the name of our Lord Savior and my gracious liege lady, Queen Eleanor of England, to be held against the queen’s enemies until such time as her cause prevails throughout this land.”

It was a surprisingly high, weak voice from such a tall man, but in that silence it didn’t need strength.

There was a murmur of disbelief. Behind Adelia, somebody said, “What do he mean?”

Somebody else muttered, “Gor bugger, is he tellin’ us we’re at war?”

There was a shout from the nave: “What enemies is that, then? We ain’t got no enemies, we’m all snowed up.” It sounded to Adelia like the voice of the miller who had questioned Bishop Rowley. There was a general, nervous snigger.

Immediately, two of the men-at-arms against the southern wall barged forward, hitting people aside with the flat of their swords until they reached the interrupter. Seizing his arms, they pulled him through the crowd to the main doors.

It was the miller. Adelia got a glimpse of a round face, its mouth open in shock. The men dragging him wore the wolf’s head blazon. A boy ran after them. “Pa. Leave my pa alone.” She couldn’t see what happened after that, but the doors slammed shut and silence descended again.

“There will be no disobedience,” said the high voice. “This abbey is now under military rule, and you people are subject to martial law. A curfew will be imposed…”

Adelia struggled with disbelief. The most shocking thing about what was happening was its stupidity. Wolvercote was alienating the very people he needed as friends while the snow lasted. Needlessly. As the miller said, there was no enemy. The last she’d heard, the nearest military force was at nearby Oxford-and that was Wolvercote’s own.

Oh, God, a stupid man-the most dangerous animal of them all.

In the choir stalls, Montignard was smiling at the queen. Most of the others were watching the crowd in the nave, but the Abbot of Eynsham was examining his fingernails while the scowl on Schwyz’s face was that of a man forced to watch a monkey wearing his clothes.

He wouldn’t have done this, Adelia thought. He’s a professional. I wouldn’t have done it, and I don’t know anything about warfare.

“…the holy women will keep to their cloister, rationing will be introduced while the snow lasts, and one meal a day shall be eaten communally-gentles in the refectory, villeins in the barn. Apart from church services, there shall be no other gatherings. Any group of more than five people is forbidden.”

“That’s done for his bloody meals, then,” Gyltha breathed.

Adelia grinned. Here was stupidity in extremis; the kitchen staff alone numbered twenty; if they couldn’t congregate, there would be no cooking.

Whatever that man is up to, she thought, this is not the way to do it.

Then she thought, But he doesn’t know any other. This is a man for whom frightened people are obedient people.

And we are frightened. She could feel it, collective memory like a chill lancing through body heat in the church. An old helplessness. The Horsemen were with them, introduced into their peace by a stupid, stupid swine.

For what?

Adelia looked to where Schwyz and Abbot Eynsham sat, radiating discomposure. If this is the queen’s war, they are all on the same side. Is Wolvercote establishing himself over his allies before he can be challenged? Grabbing authority now? Not the Abbot of Eynsham, not Schwyz, nor any other to win the glory, if glory was to be won. Wolvercote had arrived to find the queen of England at hand and must establish himself as her savior before anyone else could. If she succeeded under his generalship, Wolvercote might even be the true regent of England.

I’m watching a man throw dice.

He’d come to the end of his orders. He was turning, kneeling to Eleanor, his sword proffered, hilt first, for her to touch. “Always your servant, lady. To you and God in majesty, I swear my fealty.”

And Eleanor was touching the hilt. Standing up. Skirting him to get to the chancel steps. Raising her small fist. Looking beautiful.

“I, Eleanor, Queen of England, Duchess of Aquitaine, do swear that you are my people and that I shall love and serve you as I love and serve my gracious Lord, Jesus Christ.”

If she expected applause, she didn’t get any. But she smiled; she was sure of her charm. “My good and faithful vassal, Lord Wolvercote, is a man of war, yet he is also a man of love, as shall be witnessed by his marriage to one of your own within a day or two, a celebration to which everyone here shall be invited.”

That didn’t get any applause, either, but from somewhere deep within the congregation, somebody farted. Loudly.

The men-at-arms turned their heads this way and that, looking for the culprit, but, though a shiver swept through the crowd, every face remained stolid.

How I love the English, Adelia thought.

The Abbot of Eynsham was on his feet, retrieving the situation by administering a blessing. At the “go in peace,” the doors opened and they were allowed to file out between a phalanx of armed men who directed them to go home without talking.

Back in their room, Gyltha tore off her cloak. “Are they all gone daft, or is it me?”

“They have.” She put Allie onto the bed; the child had been bored by the proceedings and had fallen asleep.

“What’s to be gained by it?”

“Infighting,” Adelia said. “He’s making sure he’s queen’s champion before she can get another. Did you see Schwyz’s face? Oh, poor Emma.”

“‘Queen’s champion’?” scoffed Gyltha. “If Godstow wasn’t for Henry Plantagenet before, it bloody is now-that’s what the queen’s champion’s gone and done.”

There was a knock on the door.

It was the mercenary, Cross, truculent as ever. He addressed Gyltha but pointed his chin at Adelia. “She’s got to come along of me.”

“And who are you? Here, you’re one of them.” Angrily, Gyltha pushed the man out onto the steps. “She ain’t going anywhere with you, you pirate, and you can tell that bloody Wolvercote I told you so.”

The mercenary staggered under the assault as he held it off. “I ain’t Wolvercote’s, I’m Schwyz’s.” He appealed to Adelia. “Tell her.”

Gyltha kept pushing. “You’re a bastard Fleming, whoever you be. Get away.”

“Sister Jennet sent me.” It was another appeal to Adelia; Sister Jennet was Godstow’s infirmarian. “The doctor wants you for summat. Urgent.”

Gyltha ceased her assault. “What doctor?”

“The darky. Thought he was a bargee, but turns out he’s a doctor.”

“A patient,” Adelia said, relieved. Here was something she could deal with. She bent down to kiss Allie and went to get her bag. “Who is it? What’s the trouble?”

Cross said, “It’s Poyns, ain’t it?” as if she should know. “His arm’s bad.”

“In what way bad?”

“Gone sort of green.”

“Hmmm.” Adelia added her bundle of knives to the bag’s equipment.

Even as they left, accompanied by Ward, Gyltha was giving the mercenary little shoves. “An’ you bring her back as good as she goes, you scavengin’ bugger, or it’s me you’ll answer to. And what about your bloody curfew?”

“Ain’t my curfew,” Cross shouted back. “’S Wolvercote’s.”

It was in operation already. Ward gave a grunt in reply to the bark of a fox somewhere out in the fields, but apart from that, the abbey was quiet. As they skirted the church and turned up by the barn, a sentry stepped out of the doorway of the little, round pepper pot of a building that served as the convent’s lockup.

The flambeau above the doorway shone on his helmet. He had a pike in his hand. “Who goes there?”

“Infirmary, mate,” Cross told him. “This here’s a nurse. Pal of mine’s poorly.”

“Give the password.”

“What bloody password? I’m a queen’s soldier, same as you.”

“In the name of Lord Wolvercote, give us the password, see, or I’ll run you through.”

“Listen here, friend…” Avoiding the pike, Cross shambled up to the sentry, apparently to explain, and hit him on the jaw.

He was a short man, Cross, but the taller sentry went down as if poleaxed.

Cross didn’t even look at him. He gestured to Adelia. “Come on, will you?”

Before obeying, she stooped to make sure the sentry was breathing. He was, and beginning to groan.

Oh, well, it had been a password of sorts.

“I’m coming.”

Sister Jennet was imperiling her immortal soul by bringing in on one of her cases a man she thought to be a heathen doctor. Nor was she doing it any good, either, by acquiescing to the presence of his “assistant,” a woman whose relationship with the bishop had caused speculation among the sisterhood.

Yet that same bishop during his visit had spoken of the skill and scope of Arab medicine in general and of this practitioner in particular, and if she was religious, Sister Jennet was also a doctor manqué; it was against every instinct of her nature to watch one of her patients die from a condition about which she could do nothing but a Saracen could.

The tug and counter-tug of the battle within her was apparent in the anger with which she greeted Adelia. “You took your time, mistress. And leave this dog outside. It’s bad enough that I have to countenance mercenaries in the ward.” The infirmaress glared at Cross, who cowered.

Adelia had seen infirmaries where Ward’s presence would have improved the smell. But not here. She looked around her; the long ward was as clean as any she’d encountered. Fresh straw on its boards, the scent of burning herbs from the braziers, white sheets, every patient’s head cropped close against lice, and the ordered bustle of the attendant nuns suggesting that here was efficient care for the sick.

She shut Ward outside. “Perhaps you would tell me what I can do.”

Sister Jennet was taken aback; Adelia’s manner and plainness of dress were unexpected in a bishop’s moll. Somewhat mollified, the infirmaress explained what she required of Dr. Mansur. “…but we are both imprisoned in the damned Tower of Babel.”

“I see,” Adelia said. “You can’t understand him.” Mansur probably understood quite well but could not move without her.

“Nor he me. It is why I sent for you. You speak his tongue, I understand.” She paused. “Is he as skilled as Bishop Rowley declared him to be?” At the mention of the name, her eyes flickered to Adelia’s face and away.

“You will not be disappointed,” Adelia promised her.

“Well, anything is better than the village barber. Don’t stand there. Come along.” She glared again at the mercenary. “You, too, I suppose.”

The patient was at the far end of the ward. They’d put woven screens of withies round the bed, but the smell coming from beyond confirmed the reason for Sister Jennet’s need of unchristian help.

He was a young man, his terror at his surroundings enhanced by the tall, white-robed, dark-faced figure looming over him. “It don’t hurt,” he kept saying. “It don’t hurt.”

Mansur spoke in Arabic. “Where have you been?”

Adelia replied in the same tongue. “Summoned to church. We’re under military rule.”

“Who are we fighting?”

“God knows. Snowmen. What have we got here?”

Mansur leaned forward and gently lifted a covering of lint from the boy’s left arm.

“No time to waste, I think.”

There wasn’t. The mangled lower arm was black and discharging stinking, yellow pus.

“How did it happen?” Adelia demanded in English-and added, as she so often had to, “The doctor wants to know.”

Cross spoke up. “Caught it under a cartwheel on the march to the tower, clumsy young bugger. Put some ointment on it, can’t you?”

“Can you leave him his elbow?” Mansur asked.

“No.” The telltale signs of necrosis were already racing upward beyond the joint.

“We’ll be lucky if we can save his life.”

“Why did the little woman not do it herself earlier?”

“She can’t. She’s not allowed to shed blood.”

The Church’s proscription against surgery was absolute. Sister Jennet could not disobey it.

Mansur’s hawklike nose wrinkled. “They would leave him to die?”

“They were going to send for the Wolvercote barber.” The horror of it overcame her. “A barber, dear God.”

“A barber who sheds blood? He need not shave me, Imshallah.”

Even had he been called in, the barber would have had to do his work in the kitchen to avoid offending God’s nose with bloodshed in the area of the sacred cloister. Now, so would Adelia. This added tussle of medicine versus her religion caused such turbulence in Sister Jennet that she made arrangements for the operation in a rap of furious orders, and watched Mansur carry her patient out of the ward as if she hated them both. “And you,” she shouted at the despised Cross, “you crawl back to your kennel. They don’t want you.”

“We do,” Adelia told her. “He…er, he knows the password.”

However, the procession of doctor, patient, doctor’s assistant, her dog, mercenary, and two nuns bearing clean linen and palliasse went unchallenged as it emerged via the door from the infirmary chapel and turned left toward the kitchen.

Adelia let the others go in first and caught Cross by the front of his jerkin before he could enter. She was going to need him; the patient would be less frightened if Cross, his friend, were present. She didn’t like Cross much-well, he didn’t like her-but she thought she could trust him to keep silent. “Listen to me, that boy’s arm has to come off, and I…”

“What you mean ‘come off’?”

She kept it simple. “There’s poison spreading up your friend’s arm. If it gets to his heart, he will die.”

“Ain’t the darky going to say magic words over it or summat?”

“No, he’s going to amputate, cut it off. Or rather, I am going to do it for him but…”

“Can’t. You’re a woman.”

Adelia shook him; there wasn’t time for this. “Have you seen the state of the doctor’s hands? They’re in bandages. You will hear him talk and see me work but…”

“He’s going to tell you what to do, is that it?” Cross was slightly reassured. “Here, though, what’s my lad going to do without his bloody arm?”

“What’s he going to do without his bloody life?” Adelia shook the man again. “The point is…you must swear never to tell anybody, anybody, what you see tonight. Do you understand?”

Cross’s unlovely, troubled face cleared. “Is magic, ain’t it? The darky’s going to do sorcery, that’s why the nuns ain’t allowed to see.”

“Who’s your patron saint?”

“Saint Acacias, a’course. He always done well by me.”

“Swear on him that you will not tell.”

Cross swore.

The kitchen was deserted for the night. The nuns prepared its enormous chopping block with the palliasse and clean sheets for the patient to lie on, then bowed and left.

Young Poyns’s eyes were goggling in his head and his breathing was fast; he was feverish and very frightened. “It don’t hurt. It don’t hurt at all.”

Adelia smiled at him. “No, it wouldn’t. And it won’t, you’re going to go to sleep.” She got the opium bottle and a clean cloth out of her bag. Mansur was already lowering her net of knives into the bubbling pot of water hanging from a jack over the fire; hot steel cut better than cold.

The light in the kitchen, however, was insufficient. “You,” she said to Cross. “Two candles. One in each hand. Hold them where I tell you, but don’t let them drip.”

Cross was watching Mansur raise the knives from the pot and take them out of the net with his bandaged hands. “You sure he knows what he’s doing?”

“Candles,” Adelia hissed at him. “Help or get out.”

He helped; at least, he held the candles, but as she put the opium-soaked cloth over the patient’s face, he tried to intervene. “You’re smotherin’ him, you bitch.” Mansur held him back.

She had a few seconds; the boy must not breathe the opium too long. “This arm has to come off. You know that really, don’t you? He may die anyway, but he can’t live if I don’t operate right away.”

“He’s telling you what to do, though?” Cross had begun to be overawed by Mansur, who, with his strength, his robe, and kaffiyeh, was impressive. “He’s a sorcerer, ain’t he? That’s why he talks funny.”

“You’ll have to appear to be instructing me,” Adelia said in Arabic.

Mansur began gabbling in Arabic.

She had to work fast, thanking God that opium grew plentifully in the Cambridgeshire fens and she had brought a good supply but measuring its benignity against its danger.

The world shrank to a tabletop.

Since he had to keep talking, Mansur chose as his theme Kit b’Alf Layla wa-Layla, also known as The Book of a Thousand Nights. So an Oxfordshire convent kitchen rang with the high-pitched voice of a castrato recounting in Arabic the stories that the Persian Scheherazade had concocted for her sultan husband three hundred years earlier in order to delay her execution. He’d told them to Adelia as a child and she had loved them. Now she heard them no more than she heard the pop and crackle of the fire.

Had Rowley, saved from the cold waters, entered the kitchen, Adelia wouldn’t have looked up, nor recognized him if she had. The mention of her child’s name would have brought the response “Who?” There was only the patient-not even him, really, just his arm. Fold back the flaps of skin.

“Suturae.”

Mansur slapped a threaded needle into her outstretched hand and began mopping blood.

Arteries, veins.

Saw the bone or cleave it? How the patient might manage his life with only a shoulder stump was not her concern; her thinking could only advance at the speed of the operation.

A heavy object thumped into the kitchen waste pail.

More stitches. Ointment, lint, bandage.

At last she wiped her forearm across her forehead. Slowly, her vision expanded to take in the beams and pots and a roaring fire.

Somebody was bothering her. “What’s he say? Will he be all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“That was wunnerrful, though, weren’t it?” Cross was shaking Mansur warmly by the hand. “Tell him he’s a marvel.”

“You’re a marvel,” Adelia said in Arabic.

“I know.”

“How are your hands, my dear?” she asked. “Can you carry him back to the infirmary?”

“I can.”

“Then wrap him up warm and be quick before the soporific wears off. Careful of his shoulder. Tell Sister Jennet he’s likely to vomit when he comes round. I’ll be along in a minute.”

“He’ll live now, won’t he? Going to be all right, the lad, ain’t he?”

She turned on the botherer. She was always bad-tempered at this point; it had been a race and, like a runner, she needed time to recover and-Cross, was it?-wasn’t giving her any.

“The doctor doesn’t know,” she said-to hell with the bedside manner; it wasn’t as if this man had been nice to her on the boat. “Your friend has youth on his side, but his injury was poisoned for too long and”-she leaned in to the attack-“should have been treated before this. Now go away and leave me alone.”

She watched him slouch off after the laden Mansur, then sat herself by the fire, making lists in her head. There was plenty of willow bark, thanks be; the patient would need it for the pain. If he lived.

The stink of decomposition coming from the kitchen pail was a worry to her; after all, this was the kitchen that served their food. A rat appeared from behind a cupboard, its whiskers twitching in the direction of the pail. Adelia reached for the woodpile and threw a log at it.

What to do with severed limbs? In Salerno, she’d had other people to dispose of them. She’d always suspected they mixed them with the pigs’ swill; it was one of the reasons she had been wary of eating pork.

Wrapping herself in her cloak and carrying the bucket, she went out into the alley to find some place of disposal. It was shockingly cold after the kitchen’s heat, and very dark.

Farther down the alley someone began screaming. Went on screaming.

“I can’t,” Adelia said out loud. “I just can’t.” But she began blundering toward the sound, hoping somebody else would get there first and deal with whatever it was.

A lantern came bobbing out of the darkness with the sound of running. “Who’s that?” It was the messenger, Jacques. “Oh, it’s you, mistress.”

“Yes. What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

They trotted toward it, being joined as they went by other lanterns that gave glimpses of alarmed faces and slippered feet.

Past the laundry, past the smithy, past the stables-all of it déjà vu, and horrible because Adelia now knew where the screams were coming from.

The cowshed doors were open, with people clustering around outside them, some trying to comfort a hysterical milkmaid, though most were transfixed and gaping, holding their lanterns high so that light shone on the dangling figure of Bertha.

A strap round her neck hung her from a hook in a beam. Her bare toes pointed downward toward a milking stool where it lay on its side among the straw.

The nuns lamented over the dead girl. What, they asked, could have possessed her to commit suicide, that so very grievous sin? Had she not known that God was the owner of her life and, consequently, that she had committed an unlawful act against God’s own dominion, forbidden by Scripture and Church?

No, Adelia thought angrily, Bertha hadn’t known that; nobody would have taught her.

Guilt, the sisters said. Hers was the hand that had given poisoned mushrooms to Rosamund; remorse had overcome her.

But they were good and charitable women, and though Bertha would have to be interred in unconsecrated ground outside their convent walls, they took the body to their own chapel to keep a vigil over it in the meantime. They chanted prayers for the dead as they went. The crowd from the cowshed followed them.

Bertha had never had so much attention. Death in such a small community, after all, was always an event; felo-de-se was unheard of and worthy of much attention.

As she followed the procession through the dark alleys, Adelia stayed angry, thinking how wrong it was that a creature who had been denied so much in her short life must now be denied even a Christian burial.

Jacques, walking beside her, shook his head. “Terrible thing this is, mistress. To hang herself, poor soul. Felt herself responsible for Lady Rosamund’s death, I reckon.”

“She didn’t, though, Jacques. You were there. ‘Not my fault, not my fault.’ She said it over and over.” It was one thing Bertha had been clear about.

“Well, then, she was mortal afraid of Dame Dakers. Couldn’t face her, I reckon.”

Yes, she had been afraid of Dakers. That would be the verdict. Either Bertha had suffered intolerable remorse for the death of her mistress or she had been so terrified of what Dakers would do to her that she had preferred to take her own life.

“It’s wrong,” Adelia said.

“A sin,” Jacques agreed. “God have mercy on her soul all the same.”

But it was wrong, everything was wrong. The scene of Bertha hanging from the hook had been wrong.

They were approaching the chapel. Such laypeople as had been accompanying the body stopped. This was the nuns’ territory; they must stay outside. Even if she could have gone on, Adelia couldn’t bear it anymore, not Jacques and his gloomy chatter, not the accompanying, expostulating men and women, not the nuns’ chanting. “Where’s the guesthouse from here?”

Jacques showed her the way back. “A good night’s sleep, mistress. That’s what you need.”

“Yes.” But it wasn’t fatigue, though she was very tired, it was the wrongness of everything. It hammered at her mind like something wanting to come in.

The messenger lighted her up the steps and then went off, muttering and shaking his head.

Gyltha had heard the screaming even from their room and had called out the window to find its cause. “Bad business,” she said. “They’re saying sorrow made her do it, poor mite.”

“Or perhaps she was frightened that Dame Dakers would turn her into a mouse and give her to the cat, yes, I know.”

Gyltha looked up from her knitting, alerted. “Oh, ar? What’s this?”

“It’s wrong.” Adelia fondled Ward’s ears, then pushed the dog away.

Gyltha’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing more on the subject. “How’s the Fleming?”

“I don’t think he’ll survive.” Adelia wandered to their communal bed and soothed back her sleeping daughter’s hair.

“Serve un right.” Gyltha didn’t hold with mercenaries, whose extensive use during the Stephen and Matilda war had made them universally loathed. Whether they came from Flanders or not-and most of them did-the name “Fleming” had become a euphemism for rape, pillage, and cruelty. “One thing about the king,” she said, “he got rid of all they bastards, and now Eleanor’s bringing ’em back.”

“Hmmm.”

Gyltha raised her eyebrows. She’d prepared a hot posset-the room smelled deliciously of hot milk and rum. She handed a beaker to Adelia. “You know what time it is?” She pointed to the hour marks on the candle by the bed. “Time you was in bed. Nearly morning. They’ll be singing Matins soon.”

“It’s all wrong, Gyltha.”

Gyltha sighed; she knew the signs. “It’ll keep til morning.”

“No, it won’t.” Adelia roused herself and refastened her cloak. “A measure, I need a measure. Have we any string?”

There was cord that they used to bind their traveling packs. “And I want that back,” Gyltha said. “Good cord that is. Where you going?”

“I left the medicine bag in the kitchen. I’d better go and get it.”

“You stay there,” Gyltha told her sharply. “You ain’t going nowhere without that old Arab goes, too.”

But Adelia had gone, taking the cord and a lantern with her. Not to the kitchen. She made her way to the nuns’ chapel. It was dawn.

They had laid Bertha’s body on a catafalque in the little nave. The sheet they’d covered it with dragged all the vague light from the high windows to its own oblong whiteness, condemning the rest of the space to a misty dust.

Adelia strode up the nave, the shushing of her feet in the rushes disturbing the quiet so that the nun on her knees at the foot of the catafalque turned to see who it was.

Adelia paid her no attention. She put the lantern on the floor while she turned back the sheet.

Bertha’s face had a bluish tint; the tip of her tongue was just visible where it stuck out of the side of her mouth. This, with her tiny nose, gave her a look of impudence, like some fairy child.

The nun-she was one Adelia didn’t know-hissed her concern as Adelia picked up the lantern and, with the other hand, pulled back Bertha’s lids to expose the eyes.

There were flecks of blood in their whites. Only to be expected.

Getting onto her knees, Adelia held the lantern as close as she could to the neck. There were lines from the edges of the strap that the girl had hung by, but there were other marks-gouges that traveled down the throat.

And running horizontally around the skin of the neck beneath the strap bruises was a line of tiny circular indentations.

The nun was on her feet, trying to flap Adelia away from the body. “What are you doing? You are disturbing the dead.”

Adelia ignored her, didn’t even hear her. She recovered Bertha’s face with the sheet and turned it back at the other end, lifting the girl’s skirts to expose the lower body.

The nun ran from the chapel.

The vagina showed no sign of tearing or, as far as it was possible to see, any trace of semen.

Adelia replaced the sheet.

Damn. There was a way of knowing. Her old tutor, Gordinus, had shown her by opening the necks of prisoners who’d been hanged and comparing their hyoid bones with bones of those who’d been garroted-a form of execution peculiar to a district of Pavia, which had inherited it from the Romans. “See, my dear? The bone is rarely broken in garroting, whereas it is, almost invariably, in hanging. Thus, if we are suspicious in a case of strangulation, we may distinguish whether it was self-inflicted or the result of an attack by another. Also, in the case of hanged suicides, there is seldom bleeding into the neck muscles, whereas if we find it in a corpse supposed to have hanged itself, we have cause to be suspicious that we are looking at a case of murder.”

A dissection…if she could just do a dissection…oh, well, she’d have to rely on measurements…

“And what is this?” The deep voice rang through the chapel, dispelling its quiet, seeming to disturb the dust motes and bring in a sharper light.

The nun was gabbling. “Do you see her, my lord? This woman…”

“I see her.” He turned on Adelia, who had run the cord from the top of Bertha’s head to her bare toes. “Are you mad? Why do you dishonor the dead, mistress? Even one such as this?”

“Hmmm.” Having made a knot in it, Adelia wound the cord around her hand and began vaguely wandering toward the door.

Splendid in breadth and height and color, the abbot blocked her way. “I asked, mistress, why you interfere with the poor soul lying there?” The West Country accent had gone, replaced by schooled vowels.

Adelia moved past him. The strap, she thought, perhaps it’s still in the cowshed. And my chain.

The abbot watched her go and then, with a sweep of his arms, sent the nun back to her vigil.

Outside, despite a suicide, the presence of a queen, occupation by her mercenaries, and the terrible cold, the wheel of the abbey’s day was being sent spinning. Slipping on dirty, nobbling ice, Godstow’s people hurried past her to reawaken damped-down fires and start their work.

Jacques caught up with Adelia as she passed the stables. “I waited, mistress. What’s to be done with this?” He was carrying a bucket and swung it in front of her so that she had to stop. It contained an arm; Adelia stared at it for a moment before remembering that, in what seemed like another epoch, she had performed an amputation.

“I don’t know. Bury it somewhere, I suppose.” She pressed on.

“Bury it,” Jacques said, looking after her. “And the ground like bloody iron.”

The cowshed in daylight. Warm, despite the open doors. Sun shining onto its bespattered floor, quiet except for a rhythmic swish from one of the stalls, where a young woman was milking. The stool she sat on was the one that had been kicked over underneath Bertha’s hanging body.

Her name, she said, was Peg, and it was she who, entering the shed early to begin the morning’s milking, had discovered Bertha. The sight had sent her into screams, and she’d had to run back home for a drop of her mother’s soothing cordial before she could face returning to the scene and start work.

“’Tis why I’m so late today. These poor beasts’ve been lowing for me to come and relieve ’em but ’twas the shock, d’ye see. Opened the doors and there she was. Never get over it, I won’t. This old shed, ’twill never be the same again, not to me it won’t.”

Adelia knew how she felt; the comforting smell of animal flatulence and straw, the innocent homeliness of the place had been invaded. An ancient beam from which a body had hung was now a gibbet. She wouldn’t get over it, either. Bertha had died here, and of all the deaths, Bertha’s cried out the loudest.

“Can I help ye, mistress?” Peg wanted to know, carrying on milking.

“I’m looking for a necklet, a cross and chain. I gave it to Bertha. She isn’t wearing it now, and I’d like to put it in her grave with her.”

Peg’s cap went askew as she shook her head without it losing contact with the cow’s ribs. “Never seen un.”

In her mind’s eye, Adelia resurrected the scene of an hour or so ago. A man-she thought it was Fitchet the gatekeeper-had run forward, righted the stool that lay below Bertha’s feet, stood on it, and lifted the body so that the strap it hung by came free of the beam’s hook.

What, then? That’s right, that’s right, other men had helped him lay the body down. Somebody had undone the strap and tossed it away. The people clustering around, hopelessly trying to revive the dead girl, had hindered Adelia from seeing whether her cross and chain was on Bertha’s neck. If it had been, the strap had covered it and pressed it tightly against the girl’s skin as she hanged, forcing its links into her flesh and causing those indentations.

But if she hadn’t been wearing it…

Adelia began looking around.

In a cobwebby corner, she found the strap. It was a belt, an old one. A worn rivet showed where the owner had been wont to fasten it, but at the far end of the leather, another rivet had been badly contorted where it had been slipped over the hook on the beam and taken the weight of Bertha’s body.

“Where did she get a belt from, I wonder?” Adelia asked herself out loud, putting it over her shoulder.

“Dunno, she never had no belt,” Peg said.

That’s right. She hadn’t. Adelia walked slowly to the far end of the cowshed, kicking up wisps of hay as she went to see if they hid anything.

Behind her came the swish of milk as it went into the pail and Peg’s reflective voice: “Poor thing, I can’t think what come to her. ’Course, she were a bit of a looby, but even so…”

“Did she say anything to you?”

“Said a lot, always muttering away up the other end there, enough to give you goose bumps, but I paid her no mind.”

Adelia reached the stall that Bertha had occupied. It was dark here. She balanced the lantern on top of a partition and went down on her knees to start sifting the straw, feeling through it to the hard-packed earth underneath.

She heard Peg address her cow, “You’re done then, madam,” and the friendly slap on its rump as the milkmaid left it to go on to the next, and the sound of footfalls as some new person entered the shed, and Peg’s voice again: “And a good morning to you, Master Jacques.”

“Good morning to you, Mistress Peg.”

There was flirtation in both voices that brought a lightness to the day. Jacques, Adelia thought, despite his sticking-out ears and breathy overeagerness, had made a conquest.

He came hurrying up the aisle and paused to watch Adelia as she scrabbled. “I buried it, mistress.”

“What? Oh, good.”

“Can I help whatever it is you’re doing, mistress?” He was becoming used to her eccentricities.

“No.”

Because she’d found it. Her fingers had encountered the harsh thread of metal, little and broken-the cross was held by the fastening, but farther along, the links had snapped.

God help us all. This, then, was where it had happened. In this dark stall, Bertha had torn at her own neck in an attempt to dislodge the necklet with which strong hands were strangling her.

Oh, the poor child.

Adelia again saw Bertha crawling toward her, sniffing, telling her what the old woman in the forest, who had given her the mushrooms for Rosamund, had smelled like.

“Purty. Like you.”

The memory was unbearable. The short, sad little life ending in violence…Why? Who?

“Mistress?” Jacques was becoming troubled by her stillness.

Adelia picked herself up. Gripping the necklet, she walked with the messenger down to where Peg was pouring her full pail of foaming milk into a bigger bucket, her backside giving a provocative wiggle at Jacques’s approach.

The milking stool. She knew now that Bertha had been murdered, but there was just one more proof…

As Peg went to collect the stool to take it to the next cow, Adelia was ahead of her. “May I have this for a moment?”

Peg and Jacques stared as she took the stool and placed it directly under the hook in the beam. She unwound the length of cord from her hand and pushed it toward Jacques. “Measure me.”

“Measure you, mistress?”

“Yes.” She was becoming irritable. “From my crown to my feet.”

Shrugging, he held one end of the cord to the top of Adelia’s head and let it drop. He stooped and pinched the place where it touched the ground. “There. You’re not very tall, mistress.”

She tried to smile at him-his own lack of height bothered him; without his raised boots, he wouldn’t be much higher than she was. Looking at the cord where he held it, she saw that it extended a little way from the knot she had made when she’d measured the corpse on the catafalque. She was nearly two inches taller than Bertha had been.

Now to see.

Peg said, “She got excited yesterday, round about evening milkin’, now I come to think on it.”

“Who did? Bertha?”

“Said she’d got summat to tell the lady with the cross and went rushin’ out. That’s what she’d call a nun, I suppose, on account of she didn’t know better.”

No, Adelia thought, it was me. I was the lady with the cross. “Where did she go?”

“Can’t have been far,” Peg said, “for she were soon back and takin’ on like she’d seen the devil stinkin’ of sulphur. Summat about acres.”

“Dakers?” Jacques asked.

“Could’ve been.”

“Must’ve seen Dame Dakers,” Jacques said. “She was mortal afraid of that woman.”

Adelia asked, “She didn’t say what it was she wanted to tell the nun?”

“Kept mutterin’ something about wasn’t her, ’twas him.”

Adelia steadied herself against a stall’s stanchion, grasping it hard. “Could it have been: ‘It wasn’t a her, it was a him’?”

“Could’ve been.”

“Hmmm.” She wanted to think about it, but the cows farther up the line were lowing with discomfort, and Peg was becoming restive at the annexation of her milking stool.

Adelia slipped the belt into its buckle and put it round her neck, pulling it close. Stepping up on the stool, she tried extending the free piece of the belt to the hook, managing only to make the end of the leather touch it, leaving a gap between hook and rivet. She stood on tiptoe; rivet and hook still didn’t meet-and she was taller than Bertha had been.

“It’s too short,” she said. “The belt’s too short.”

That was what had bothered her. The sight of the dangling body had been too shocking to take in at the time, but her mind had registered it-Bertha’s feet could not have reached the stool to kick it away.

She began choking, struggling to get the buckle undone before unseen arms could lift her up and attach the belt to the hook; she couldn’t breathe.

Jacques’s hands fumbled at her neck and she fought them, as Bertha had fought those of her killer. “All right, mistress,” he said. “Steady. Steady now.” When he’d got the belt off, he held her arm and stroked her back as if soothing a frightened cat. “Steady now. Steady.”

Peg was watching them as if at the capering insane. Jacques nodded at her, indicating the stool, and with relief she took it up and went back to her cows.

Adelia stood where she was, listening as Peg’s capable, cold-chapped hands squeezed and relaxed on the cow’s teats, sending milk into the pail with the regularity of a soft drumbeat.

“It wasn’t a her, it was a him.”

Jacques’s eyes questioned her; he, at least, had understood what she’d been about.

“Well,” Adelia said, “at least now Bertha can be buried in consecrated ground.”

“Not suicide?’

“No. She was murdered.”

She saw again how his young face could age.

“Dakers,” he said.