The Serpent’s Tale

TWELVE

When, early next morning, Adelia opened the shutters on Saint Stephen’s Day, it was to find that something had happened to the view from the guesthouse. Yes, of course, a new path was leading down to the bank-they’d cut rough steps in it-but it was more than that; the sense of isolation was gone, and expectation had taken its place.

It was difficult to see why; dawn was blessing the deserted countryside with its usual ephemeral touch of apricot. The snow was as solid as it had been and contained no human footprints as far as the eye stretched.

Yet the white forest across the river was, somehow, less rigid…

“They’re here.”

Mansur joined her at the window. “I see nothing.”

“I thought I saw something in those trees.”

They stood looking. Adelia’s excitement trickled away; the expectation was in her, not in the view.

“Wolves, most like,” said Gyltha, who was skulking at the rear of the room, avoiding the light. “I heard them last night, horrid close they was.”

“Was that when you were vomiting into the chamber pot?” Adelia asked interestedly.

Gyltha ignored her. “Right up to the walls, they were. I reckon they found young Talbot’s horse as was left in the woods.”

Adelia hadn’t heard them-it had been bears that prowled her sleep. But Gyltha was probably right; it would be wolves among the trees-less frightening than those inside the walls.

Yet the leap of hope that Rowley was alive and had brought the king and his men to them had been so volcanic that she couldn’t relinquish it altogether. “There could be an army hiding out there,” she said. “It wouldn’t attack without knowing the strength of the force inside the abbey-the sisters might get hurt. He’d wait, Henry would wait.”

“What for?” Mansur asked.

“Yes what for?” Gyltha was being determinedly talkative to show that she wasn’t suffering. “He wouldn’t need an army to take this place-me and little Allie could storm it by ourselves. And how’d the king get here? No, old Wolf knows he’s safe til the snow melts. He ain’t even posted lookouts.”

“He has now,” Mansur said.

Adelia leaned out. Gyltha joined her. Immediately below, a man in Wolvercote scarlet and black was patrolling the walkway running along the hopelessly inadequate castellations of the convent wall, his morning shadow falling rhythmically on the merlons as he passed and disappearing at each crenel. He had a pike in one hand and a rattle in the other.

“What’s he guarding us from?” Gyltha asked. “Magpies? There ain’t no army out there. Nobody don’t fight in winter.”

“Henry does,” Adelia said. She was hearing Rowley’s voice, vibrating from the near-incredulous pleasure with which he’d spoken of his king’s exploits, recounting the tale of the young Plantagenet when, fighting for his mother’s right to the throne of England against his uncle Stephen, he’d crossed the Channel with a small army in a bitter Christmas gale, catching his enemies hibernating-and beating them.

Until now, Wolvercote had been relying on an English winter to keep his enemy as powerless to move as he was. But whether it was because the umbilical path through the snow now connected the convent to the outside world, or whether there was something in the air today, Saint Stephen’s day, he had set a guard…

“He’s afraid.” Adelia’s own voice vibrated. “He thinks Henry’s coming. And he could, Mansur, the king could-his men could skate upriver and get here.” She had another thought: “I suppose Wolvercote could even skate his men down to Oxford and join the other rebels. Why hasn’t he?”

“The man Schwyz thought of it. He is the better tactician,” Mansur said. “He asked Fitchet if it could be done. But further down, the Thames is deeper and has more tributaries, its ice does not hold and cannot be risked. Nobody can go or come that way.” Mansur spread his hands in apology to Adelia for disappointing her. “Local knowledge. No one moves until the snow melts.”

“And close them bloody shutters,” Gyltha said. “You want this baby to freeze?” Suddenly gentle, she added, “Nobody in the outside world don’t know we’re here, my duck.”

“The woman is right,” Mansur said.

They’ve lost hope, she thought. They’ve given Rowley up for dead at last. Godstow festered like an unsuspected bubo in the world’s white flesh, waiting to spread its poison. Only the birds overhead could know that it flew the pennant of a rebel queen-and birds weren’t likely to tell anybody.

But today, against all evidence, hope told Adelia that there was something beyond these shutters. At least there were steps leading to the river, and the river, however treacherous, led to the outside world. It was sunny, and there was an indefinable feeling in the air.

She’d been afraid too long, besieged too long, threatened too long, shut in dark rooms during daylight like a hostage-they all had.

Hearing talk and laughter, she gave the shutters a push that threw them back against the wall and leaned out again.

Farther along, the convent gates were opening and a crowd of chattering men and women were assembling outside them. In their center was a slim, elegant figure dressed in furs with a sheen that glowed in the sun.

“The queen’s going skating,” Adelia said. She turned round. “And so are we. All of us. Allie, too.”

Everybody did. It was, after all, Saint Stephen’s Day, which, by tradition, belonged to the servants, whom, since they could not go home to their villages, had to enjoy it in situ. Tonight it would be their privilege to have their own private feast on last night’s leftovers.

Almost every worker in the abbey tumbled out onto the ice, some without skates but all carrying the traditional clay box that they rattled invitingly under the noses of the guests.

Having made her contribution, Adelia turned to delighting her daughter by attaching her belt to the cradle and skimming the child in it over the ice as she skated. Others on skates similarly obliged those who had none, so that the wide sweep of the Thames became a whirl of sledges and trays, of puffed jokes and pink cheeks, through which a smiling queen sailed, swanlike, with her courtiers gaggling after her.

The nuns joined them after Lauds, the younger ones shrieking happily and vying with Sister Havis, who, while making it seem stately, outraced them all.

A brazier was placed on the ice near the bank and a chair carried to it so that Mother Edyve could sit by its warmth in company with the walking wounded that Sister Jennet had brought from the infirmary. Ward, whose attempts to scrabble along behind Adelia kept ending with his legs splaying into a quadrant, gave up the battle and settled down to sulk on the piece of carpet under the abbess’s chair.

Adelia saw her patient and skated over to him, dragging the cradle behind her. “Are you progressing well?”

Poyns’s young face was abeam. “Right nicely, mistress, I thank ee. And the abbess is giving me a job, assistant gatekeeper to Master Fitchet. Don’t need two arms in gatekeepin’.”

Adelia smiled back at him. What a nice abbey this was.

“And thank Master Man…Manum…thank the doctor for me; God and the saints bless him.”

“I will.”

Tables appeared bearing some remnants of the Christmas feast.

Sitting on somebody’s homemade sledge on the far bank where Ward joined them, Adelia and Gyltha masticated Allie’s dinner for her and ate their own, ignoring the child’s persistent “Bor, bor,” asking to be taken onto the ice again.

“She means ‘more,’” Adelia said proudly. “That’s her first word.”

“Them’s her first orders,” Gyltha said. “Who’s a little tyrant, then?” She abandoned her lamb chop to Ward, picked up the belt, and skated off with the cradle, throwing up a spray of ice behind her.

Adelia and her dog sat on. From here she had a panorama of the convent walls. There were now two of Wolvercote’s men patrolling, both of them keeping their eyes on the trees behind her. A figure stood at one of the windows in the men’s guesthouse-she thought it was Master Warin.

No sign of the abbot, thanks be to God; he’d become dreadful to her, as, with her rejection, she must have become dreadful to him-and would be punished for it.

The bridge had been closed; she could tell that because some Wolvercote villagers were crowding the far side of it, wistfully watching the merrymakers on ice. Others were digging their own path down to the river.

Behind her, in the forest that she’d hoped would be hiding Henry Plantagenet and his army, she could hear the shouts of the younger convent men as, careless of wolves, they scoured the undergrowth in the hunt for a wren, their noise indicating that they were not encountering anything larger.

She looked back to see their figures running through the trees, faces blackened with soot, as tradition demanded they should be. Why it was necessary to catch a wren at all on Saint Stephen’s Day she did not understand; she could never fathom English customs. Pagan, most of them.

She returned to watching the scene on the ice.

Wolvercote was talking to Eleanor at the food table. Where was Emma?

Adelia wondered what it was that had stirred the man into setting a watch now, when he had neglected any precaution for so long. Perhaps he’d sensed the same alertness in the air that so invigorated herself-or had just glimpsed another opportunity to assert his control. Either way, he was a fool as well as a brute; what point was there in guarding the abbey and, apparently, readying it in case of siege when nearly all its occupants were capering outside its walls, any one of whom could carry news of his presence in it to his enemy?

She was glad of it-the liberation. If it hadn’t meant leaving her nearest and dearest behind, she’d have been tempted to skate off and find Henry for herself.

But Schywz had just come out of the abbey gates and was viewing the indisciplined joyousness below him like a man who could organize things better. And, damn him, he was going to organize them better. Descending the steps, approaching Wolvercote, berating…

Within minutes he’d stationed his mercenaries at each end of the river’s bend. Nobody would get away now. He was actually scolding Eleanor, pointing her toward the convent gate… She was shaking her head, having too much fun, skating away from him.

They’d have to go in soon; the sun was getting low, withdrawing brightness and such warmth as it had bestowed. At last, Eleanor’s clear diction was heard thanking Mother Edyve for the entertainment. “So refreshing…” People were beginning to climb the steps of the track.

“Mistress,” said a crisp voice behind Adelia. It was Father Paton.

Rowley’s little secretary looked incongruous on skates, but he balanced on them neatly, his mittened, inky hands crossed on his chest as if protecting himself from the unworthy. “I have it,” he said.

She stared at him. “You…found it? I can’t believe…it was such a long shot.” She had to pull herself together. “And is it the same?”

“Yes,” he said, “I regret to say that the similarity with the one you gave me is undeniable.”

“It would stand up in a court of law?”

“Yes. There are peculiarities common to each that even the illiterate would recognize. I have it here, I have them both…” He began unbuckling the large scrip hanging from his belt.

Adelia stopped him. “No, no, I don’t want them. You keep them, and my affidavit. Keep them very safe until the time comes…and in the name of Jesus, tell nobody you have them.”

Father Paton pursed his lips. “I have written my own account of this affair, explaining to whomsoever it may concern that I have done what I have done because I believe it to be the will of my master, the late Bishop of Saint Albans…”

There was a swirl of ice as the bishop’s messenger encircled them and came to a sliding stop.

Jacques’s face was ruddy with exercise; he looked almost handsome, though his bishop would not have approved of the elaborate, hand-twirling, very Aquitanian bow he gave Adelia. “It’s done, mistress. With good fortune, they’re meeting in the church at Vespers. You and this gentleman should take your positions early.”

“What nonsense is this?” Father Paton disapproved of Jacques only slightly less than he did of Adelia.

“Jacques has been delivering two invitations that I’ve written, Father,” she told him. “We are going to eavesdrop; we are going to prove who contrived the death of Talbot of Kidlington.”

“I will have nothing to do with all your supposed killings. You expect me to eavesdrop? Preposterous, I refuse.”

“What supposed killings?” Jacques asked, puzzled.

“We shall be there,” Adelia told the priest. She cut off his protests. “Yes, you shall. We need an independent witness. God in Heaven, Father, a young man was put to death.”

A rough figure with an even rougher voice had come up to them. “Get inside, you lot, and quick about it.” Cross had his arms held wide to scoop the three of them toward the steps.

Glad to go, Father Paton skated off.

“Can he help us with Bertha’s death?” Jacques asked.

“I’m not telling you again,” Cross said. “The chief says inside, so get bloody inside.”

Jacques obeyed. Adelia lingered.

“Come on, now, missis. ’S getting chilly.” The mercenary took her arm, not unkindly. “See, you’re shaking.”

“I don’t want to go in,” she said. The convent walls would imprison her and the killer together again; she was being dragged back into a cage that held a monster with blood on its fangs.

“You ain’t staying here all night.” As he pulled her over the ice, Cross shouted over his shoulder at the wren hunters in the trees. “Time to go in, lads.”

When they reached the steps, he had to haul Adelia up them like an executioner assisting a prisoner to the gallows.

Behind them, a crowd of men emerged from the trees of the far bank, shouting in triumph over a small cage twisted from withies in which fluttered a frightened wren. They were hooded, covered in snow, their black faces rendering them unrecognizable.

And if, whooping and capering with the rest, there was one more figure going in through the convent gates than had left them, nobody noticed it.

The convent carpenter had laid boards across the end rafters of the church’s Saint Mary side chapel in order to facilitate the removal and replacement of struts that showed signs of rotting, creating a temporary and partial little loft in which the two people now hiding in it could listen but not see. Adelia and Father Paton were, quite literally, eavesdroppers.

It had taken considerable urging to get the priest to accompany her into the rafters. He’d protested at the subterfuge, the risk, the indignity.

Adelia hadn’t liked it, either. This wasn’t her way of doing things, it was arbitrary, unscientific. Worse, the fear she felt at being once more in the abbey sapped her energy, leaving her with a deadening feeling of futility.

But coming in through the chapel’s door, a draft had wavered the candles burning on the Virgin’s altar, one of them lit by Emma for Talbot of Kidlington, and so she had bullied, shamed, and cajoled. “We have a duty to the dead, Father.” It was the bedrock of her faith, as fundamental to her as the Athanasian Creed to Western liturgy, and perhaps the priest had recognized its virtue, for he had stopped arguing and climbed the ladder Jacques set for them.

Now Vespers had chimed, the faint chanting from the cloisters had stopped. The church was empty-ever since the mercenaries had proved troublesome, the nuns had transferred the vigil for their dead to their own chapel.

Somewhere a dog barked. Fitchet’s mongrel, probably-a bristled terror at whose every approach Ward, not renowned for his courage, lay down and rolled over.

They were too far back in the loft to see anything below. Only a glow from the altar candles in the church proper reached them so that they could, at least, make out the wagon roof above them. It gave Adelia the impression that she and the priest were lying on the thwarts of an upended boat. Uncomfortably.

Fierce little beads that were the eyes of the bats hanging from the lathes overhead glared down at her.

A scamper nearby caused Father Paton to squeak. “I abhor rats.”

“Be quiet,” she told him.

“This is foolishness.”

Perhaps it was, but they couldn’t alter it now-Jacques had taken the ladder away, replacing it in the bell tower next door from whence it had come, perching himself in the shadows at the tower’s top.

A latch clicked. The unoiled hinges of the chapel’s side door protested with a screech. Somebody hissed at the noise. The door closed. Silence.

Warin. It would be the lawyer; Wolvercote wouldn’t creep as this one crept.

Adelia felt a curious despair. It was one thing to theorize about a man’s guilt, another to have it confirmed. Somewhere below her stood a creature who’d betrayed the only relative he had, a boy in his care, a boy who’d trusted him and had been sent to his death.

A rasp of hinges again, this time accompanied by the stamp of boots. There was a vibration of energy.

“Did you send me this?” Wolvercote’s voice. Furious. If Master Warin protested, the listeners did not hear him because Wolvercote continued without pause. “Yes you did, you whoreson, you puling pot of pus, you stinking spittle, you’ll not tax me for more, you crapulous bit of crud…”

The tirade, its wonderful alliteration unsuspected from such a source, was accompanied by slaps, presumably across Master Warin’s face, that resounded against the walls like whip cracks-each one making Father Paton jump so that Adelia, lying beside him in the rafters, flinched in unison.

The lawyer was keeping his head, though it had to be buzzing. “Look, look, my lord. In the name of Christ, look.” The onslaught stopped.

He’s showing his letter.

Apart from giving the time and place of the suggested meeting, the message she’d written to each man had been short: We are discovered.

There was a long pause while Wolvercote-not a reading man-deciphered the note sent to Warin. The lawyer said quietly, “It’s a trap. Somebody’s here.”

There were hurried, soft footfalls as Warin searched, the opening of cupboards-a thump of hassocks falling to the floor as they were dislodged. “Somebody’s here.”

“Who’s here? What trap?” Wolvercote was staying where he was, shouting after Warin as the little man went into the body of the church to search that, too. “Didn’t you send me this?”

“What’s up there?” Master Warin had come back. “We should look up there.”

He’s looking upward. The impression that the man’s eyes could see through the boards tensed Adelia’s muscles. Father Paton didn’t move.

“Nobody’s up there. How could anybody get up there? What trap?”

“My lord, somebody knows.” Master Warin had calmed himself a little. “My lord, you shouldn’t have hanged the knaves. It looked badly. I’d promised them money to leave the country.”

So you supplied the killers.

“Of course I hanged the dogs.” Wolvercote was still shouting. “Who knew if they would keep their mouths shut. God curse you, Warin, if this is a ploy for more payment…”

“It is not, my lord, though Sweet Mary knows it was a great service I rendered you…”

“Yes.” Wolvercote’s tone had become quieter, more considering. “I am beginning to wonder why.”

“I told you, my lord. I would not have you wronged by one of my own family; when I heard what the boy intended…”

“And no benefit to you? Then why in hell did you come here? What brought you galloping to the abbey to see if he was dead?”

They were moving off into the nave of the church, their voices trailing into unintelligible exchanges of animosity and complaint.

After a long time, they came back, only footsteps giving an indication of their return. The door scraped open. Boots stamped through it as loudly as they had come.

Father Paton shifted, but Adelia clamped his arm. Wait. They won’t want to be seen together. Wolvercote has left first.

Silence again. A quiet little man, the lawyer.

Now he was going. She waited until she heard the fall of the latch, then wriggled forward to peer over the boards.

The chapel was empty.

“Respectable men, a baron of the realm, ogres, ogres.” Father Paton’s horror was tinged with excitement. “The sheriff shall be told, I must write it down, yes, write it down. I am witness to conspiracy and murder. The sheriff will need a full affidavit. I am an important deponent, yes, I would not have believed…a baron of the realm.”

He could hardly wait for Jacques to bring the ladder. Even as he descended it, he was questioning the messenger on what had been said in the church.

For a moment, Adelia lay where she was, immobile. It didn’t matter what else had been said; two murderers condemned themselves out of their own mouths, as careless of the life they had conspired to take as of a piece of grass.

Oh, Emma.

She thought of the bolt buried in the young man’s chest, stopping that most wonderful organ, the heart, from beating, the indifference of the bowman who’d loosed it into the infinite complexity of vein and muscle, as indifferent as the cousin who had ordered it to be loosed, as the lord who’d paid him to do it.

Emma, Emma.

Father Paton scuttled back to the warming room-he wanted to write out his deposition right away.

There was a bright, cold moon, no necessity for a lantern. As Jacques escorted her home, he told her what he’d managed to hear in the church. Mostly it had been repetition of the exchanges in the chapel. “By the time they left,” he said, “they were deciding it was a trick played on them. Lord Wolvercote did, anyway, he suspects his mercenaries. Lawyer Warin was still atremble, I’ll wager he leaves the country if he can.”

They said good-bye at the foot of the guesthouse steps.

Unbelievably tired, Adelia dragged herself up, taking the last rise gingerly as she always did, now with the memory of an event that hadn’t happened but in which, constantly, she watched a cradle tumble over the edge.

She stopped. The door was slightly open, and it was dark inside. Even if her little household had gone to sleep, a taper was always left burning for her-and the door was never left open.

She was reassured by Ward coming to greet her, the energetic wag of his tail releasing more odor than usual. She went in.

The door was shut behind her. An arm encircled her chest, a hand clamped itself across her mouth. “Quietly now,” somebody whispered. “Guess who.”

She didn’t need to guess. Frantically, she wriggled around in the imprisoning arms until she faced the man, the only man.

“You bastard,” she said.

“True, to an extent,” he said, picking her up. He chucked her onto the nearest bed and planted himself on top of her. “Ma and pa married eventually, I remember exactly, I was there.”

There wasn’t time to laugh-though, with his mouth clamped onto hers, she did.

Not dead-deliciously living, the smell of him so right, he was rightness, everything was right now that he was here. He moved her to the very soul and very, very much to her innards, which turned liquid at his touch. She’d been parched for too long.

Their bodies pumping like huge wings took them higher and higher on a flight into cataclysmic air and then folded into the long, pulsing drop to a truckle bed in a dark, cold room.

When the earth stopped rocking and settled, she wriggled from underneath him and sat up.

“I knew you were nearby,” she said. “Somehow, I knew.”

He grunted.

She was energized, as if he had been a marvelous infusion bringing her body back to life.

She wondered if there would be another baby, and the thought made her happy.

Her lover had relapsed into postcoital inertia. She jabbed a finger into his back. “Where’s Allie? Where are Gyltha and Mansur?”

“I sent them to the kitchens, the servants are having a revel.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

So that she could look at him, she got up and stumbled for the table, felt around, pinched some tinder out of its box, struck a flint, and lit a taper at its flame.

He was thin, oh, bless him, but beautiful. In trousers-now down around his hocks-like a peasant, his face smeared with what looked like tree bark.

“A wren hunter,” she said, delighted. “You came in with the wren hunters. Has Henry come?”

“Had to get in somehow. Thank God it’s Saint Stephen’s Day, or I’d have had to climb the bloody wall.”

“How did you know we’d be at Godstow?”

“With the river freezing? Where else would you be?”

He wasn’t responding properly. “We could be dead,” she pointed out. “We nearly were.”

He sat up. “I was in the trees,” he said, “watched you skating. Very graceful, a little shaky on the turns, perhaps…By the saints, that’s a bonny baby, isn’t she?”

Our baby, Adelia thought. She’s our bonny baby.

She punched his shoulder, not altogether playfully. “Damn you, Rowley. I suffered, I thought you were dead.”

“I knew that bit of the Thames,” he said, “that’s why I got off, belongs to Henry, part of Woodstock forest; there’s a river keeper close by-I’d baptized his child for him. I made for his cottage, wasn’t easy but I got there.” He sat up, suddenly. “Now then…what’s to do here?”

“Rowley, I suffered.”

“No need. The keeper took me to Oxford-we used snow shoes. Bloody place was teeming with rebels, every bastard that had fought for Stephen and suffered for it was in arms and flying Eleanor’s standard or Young Henry’s. We had to bypass the town and make for Wallingford instead. Always a royal stronghold, Wallingford. The FitzCounts held it for the empress during the war. I knew the king’d go there first.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Jesus save me, but it was hard going.”

“Serve you right,” she said. “Did you find the king? Is he here?”

“More that he found me, really. I was laid up at Wallingford with a rheum in the chest, I damn near died. What I needed was a doctor.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t attend,” she said tartly.

“Yes, well, at least I could keep an eye on the river from there. And sure enough, he came, and a fleet of boats with him.” Rowley shook his head in wonder. “He was in Touraine, putting down Young Henry’s rebellion, when he heard about Rosamund. God punish that boy, now he’s joined with Louis of France against his own father. Louis, I ask you.” Rowley’s fists went to the sides of his head in disbelief. “We all knew he was an idiot, but who’d have dreamed the treacherous little whelp would go to his father’s greatest enemy for aid?”

He leaned forward. “And Eleanor had urged him to do it. Do you know that? Our spies told us. Urged their son against his father.”

“I don’t care,” she told him. “I don’t care what they do. What is happening now?”

But she couldn’t shift him. He was still with Henry Plantagenet, who had captured two Touranian castles from the Young King’s supporters before making tracks for England with a small army in the heaviest winter in years.

“How he did it I don’t know. But here he comes, up the Thames, trailing boats full of men behind him. Did I tell you he was rowing? The barge crew weren’t going fast enough for the bugger, and there he was, pulling at an oar like a pirate and swearing the sky black.”

“Where is he now?”

“On his way.” There was a pause. “He wants to see you.”

“Does he?”

“Sent me to fetch you. Wants to know if it was Eleanor that did for Rosamund. I said you’d be able to tell him yea or nay.”

“Great God,” she said. “Is that why you’ve come?”

“I’d have come anyway. I was worried about leaving you…but I should’ve known you were safe enough.” He cocked his head, sucking his teeth as if in admiration at her capacity for survival. “God kept you in His hand. I asked Him to.”

“‘Safe enough’?” It was a screech. “You left me to die in an open boat.” He had to hush her. She went on more quietly. “‘Safe enough’? We’ve been cooped up with killers, your daughter, all of us. There’s been murder done here, betrayal…weeks, weeks I’ve been afraid…for Allie, for all of us…weeks.” She scrubbed the tears off her cheeks with her fists.

“Ten days, it was,” he said gently. “I left you ten days ago.” He was on his feet, pulling up his trousers, adjusting his shirt. “Get dressed and we’ll go.”

“Go where?”

“To Henry. I said he wants to see you.”

“Without Allie? Without Gyltha and Mansur?”

“We can hardly take them with us; I’ve found a path through the snow, but it’ll be rough traveling, even on horses, and I only brought two.”

“No.”

“Yes.” It was a sigh. “I was afraid of this. I told the king. ‘She won’t come without the child,’ I said.” He made it sound like a whim.

She’d had enough. “Will you tell me? Where is Henry?”

“Oxford, at least that’s where he was heading.”

“Why isn’t he here?”

“Look,” he said, reasonably, “Godstow’s a side issue. The important thing is Oxford. Henry’s sending young Geoffrey Fitzroy up here with a small force, it shouldn’t need more-Mansur says Wolvercote and Schwyz have few men. Henry’s not arriving in person…” She saw the flash of a grin. “I don’t think our goodking trusts himself to meet Eleanor face-to-face; he might run her through. Anyway, it’s somewhat embarrassing to arrest one’s own wife.”

“When? When will this Geoffrey come?”

“Tomorrow. That’s if I can get back to guide him and tell him the placements here-make sure he doesn’t kill the wrong people.”

He will do it, she thought. He will track back through this dreadful countryside, disgruntled because I won’t leave our daughter behind but assured that she and I will be safe enough. He is all maleness and bravery, like his damn king, and we understand each other not at all.

Well, she thought, he is what he is, and I love him.

But a chill was growing; there was new strangeness; she’d thought it was the old Rowley back-and for a while, gloriously, it had been, but there was constraint. He talked with the remembered insouciance yet didn’t look at her. He’d put out a hand to wipe the tears from her face, then withdrawn it.

She said, because she was impelled to, “Do you love me?”

“Too much, God help me,” he said. “Too much for my soul. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Done what?”

“Almighty God forgive me. I promised, I swore an oath that if He kept you safe, I would abstain from you, I would not lead you to sin again. It was touching you that did it. I want you too much. Feeling you was…too much.”

“What am I? Something to be given up for Lent?”

“In a way.” His voice had become measured, a bishop’s. “My dear, every Sunday I have to preach against fornication in one church or another, hearing my own exhortation mingling with God’s whisper, ‘You are a hypocrite, you lust for her, you are damned and she is damned.’”

“Much to be said for hypocrisy,” she said dully. She began dragging on her clothes.

“You must see. I can’t have you punished for my sin. I left you to God. I made a bargain with Him. ‘While she is safe, Lord, I am Your servant in all things.’ I swore the oath in the king’s presence, to seal it.” He sighed. “And now look what I’ve gone and done.”

She said, “I don’t care if it is sin.”

“I do,” he said heavily. “I’d have married you, but no, you would keep your independence. So Henry had his bishop. But a bishop, don’t you see? A keeper of other people’s souls. His own, yours…”

Now he looked at her. “Adelia, it matters. I thought it would not, but it does. Beyond the panoply and the choirs-you wouldn’t believe the singing that goes on-there is a still, small voice…nagging. Say you understand.”

She didn’t. In a world of hatred and killing, she did not understand a God who regarded love as a sin. Nor a man who obeyed that deity.

He was raising his hand as if about to make the sign of the cross over her. She hit it. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “Don’t you dare bless me.”

“All right.” He began struggling into his clothes. “Listen to me, though. When Geoffrey attacks, before he attacks, you’re to go to the cloister-he’ll keep the fighting away from there. Take Allie and the others. I’ve told Walt to make sure you get there… ‘She’s important to the king,’ I said.”

She didn’t listen. She’d never been able to compete with Henry Plantagenet; for sure she wouldn’t be able to outrival God. It was winter, after all. To an extent, for her now, it always would be.

Like a fishhook in the mind, something dragged her attention away from despair. She said, “You told Walt?”

“Mansur fetched him here while I was waiting… Where have you been, by the way?”

“You told Walt,” she said.

“And Oswald-they didn’t know where Jacques was, nor Paton, but I told them to spread the word, I want all my men ready-they’ll need to get to the gates and open them to Geoffrey…”

“Dear Christ,” she said.

Ward was snarling softly.

She almost tripped as she made for the door so that she slammed against it. She slid the bolt across, then put her ear to the wood and listened. They wouldn’t have long, only the grace of God had allowed the two of them this long. “How were you going to get out?”

“Cross the gatekeeper’s palm with silver. What is it?”

“Shssh.”

The sound of boots running through the slush of the alley. “They’re coming for you. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Window,” he said. He crossed the floor and jerked the shutters open so that moonlight lit the chamber.

Window, yes.

They dragged blankets off the bed and knotted them together. As they slung them out of the window, the assault on the door began. “Open. Open up.” Ward hurled himself at it, barking.

Rowley tied the blanket rope round the mullion and heaved back on it to test it. “After you, mistress.”

She was always to remember the polite quirk of his hand as at an invitation to dance. “I can’t,” she said. “They won’t hurt me. It’s you.”

He glanced down and then back at her. “I have to go. I’ve got to guide them in.”

“I know.” The door was being assaulted; it wasn’t a strong door, it would give any minute. “Do it, then,” she hissed.

He grinned, took a falchion from his belt, and gave it to her. “See you tomorrow.”

As he reached the parapet, she tried to undo the knot around the mullion and then, because it was too tight, began sawing at it with the blade, glancing out every other second. She saw him make for the nearest crenel and jump, cloak flying. It was deep snow, a soft enough landing for him. But could he get to the steps?

He had. As, behind her, the door splintered and a dreadful yelp came out of Ward’s throat, she saw her man skidding across the ice like a boy.

She was thrown to one side. Schwyz roared, “There he is. Opposite bank. Loso. Johannes.”

Two men leaped for the door. Another took Schwyz’s place at the window, frantically winding a crossbow, his foot in its stirrup. He aimed, loosed. “Ach, scheiss.” He looked at Schwyz. “Nein.”

Adelia closed her eyes, then opened them. There was another step on the outside landing.

A giant figure bowed its head to get through the door and looked calmly around. “Perhaps it would be better if we relieved Mistress Adelia of her dagger.”

She wouldn’t have used it on a human being in any case. She handed it over, hilt first, to the Abbot of Eynsham, who had written the letters for Rosamund to copy and send to the queen, and then had her killed.

He thanked her, and she went down on her knees to attend to Ward, where he had crawled under one of the beds. As she felt the kicked and broken rib, he looked at her with self-pitying eyes. She patted him. “You’ll live,” she said. “Good dog. Stay here.”

Politely, the abbot held her cloak for her while she put it on, then her hands were tied behind her back and a gag put in her mouth.

They took her to the gatekeeper’s lodge.

There was nobody else about; the abbey had gone to bed. Even if she’d been able to shout for help, nobody at this end of the convent would have heard her-or come to her rescue if they had. Master and Mistress Bloat were not on her side. Lawyer Warin most definitely was not. There was no sign of Wolvercote’s men, but they wouldn’t have helped her, either.

The great gates were open, but all activity was centered in the lodge chamber that led off the porch, where Schwyz’s men hurried to and fro.

They pushed Adelia inside. Fitchet was dead on the floor, his throat cut. Father Paton lay alongside him, coughing out some of his teeth.

She slid to kneel beside the priest. Beneath the bruises, his face showed indignation. “Kep’ hi’n me,” he said. “Too le’ers.” He tried harder. “Took the letters.”

Men were fastening hoods and cloaks, collecting weapons into bundles, emptying Fitchet’s food cupboard, and rounding up some frightened hens into a crate.

“Did our worthy gatekeeper possess such a thing as wine?” The abbot asked. “No? Tut, tut, how I loathe ale.” He sat on a stool, watching the bustle, fingering the huge cross on his chest.

The two mercenaries who had chased after Rowley came in, panting. “He had horses.”

“Siech. That ends it, then. We go.” Schwyz took hold of the pinion round Adelia’s hands and jerked her to her feet with an upward pull that nearly displaced her shoulders. He dragged her over to the abbot. “We don’t need her, let me kill the whore.”

“Schwyz, my dear, good Schwyz.” Eynsham shook his great head. “It seems to have escaped your notice that at this moment, Mistress Adelia is the most valuable object in the convent, the king’s desire for her company being such that he sends a bishop to collect her-whether for her sexual prowess or such information as she may possess is yet to be determined. She is our trump card, my dear, the Atalantean golden apple that we may have to throw behind us to delay pursuit…” He reflected. “We might even appease the king by handing her back to him, should he catch up with us…yes…that is a possibility.”

Schwyz had no time for this. “Do we take her or not?”

“We do.”

“And the priest?”

“Well, there I fear we must be less forgiving. Master Paton’s possession of the letters is unfortunate. He has evidence I would not wish king or queen to hear, even supposing he could voice it, which-”

“Christ’s eyes, do I finish him?”

“You do.”

“Nnnnnn.” Adelia threw herself forward. Schwyz pulled her back.

“I know, I know.” The abbot nodded. “These things are upsetting, but I have no wish to lose the queen’s esteem, and I fear Father Paton could disabuse her of it. Did you provide him with my text on which dear Rosamund based her letters? Of course you did. What an enterprising little soul you are.”

He was talking. He’d condemned the priest to death and he was talking, amused.

“Since I stand in high regard with our blessed Eleanor, it would be-what is the word?-inconvenient if she knew I was the goad that pricked her into further rebellion. In view of my desertion, she might tell Henry. As it is, she will be informed of a murderous intruder to the abbey, d’ye see, and that we, the good Schwyz and myself, are in brave pursuit to stop him before he reaches the king’s lines. In fact, of course, we are leaving the lady to her inevitable fate; the snow has proved too much for us, the amiable Lord Wolvercote too little… As Master Schwyz says of that gentleman in his rough way-he couldn’t fight a sack of shit.”

Schwyz had let go of her and was walking toward Father Paton.

Adelia closed her eyes. God, I beg you.

A whimper from Father Paton, a hot smell. A hush, as if even this company was awed by the passage of a soul to its maker.

Then somebody said something, somebody else laughed. Men began carrying bundles and crates out to the porch and down to the river.

The abbot’s finger went under Adelia’s chin and tilted her head.

“You interest me, madam, you always have. How does a foreign slut like yourself command the attention not only of a bishop but a king? And you, forgive me, without an apparent grace to bless yourself with.”

Keeping her eyes closed, she jerked away from him, but he grasped her face and angled it back and forth. “Do you satisfy them both? At the same time? Are you a mistress of threesomes? Do you excel at lit à trois? Cock below and behind? Arsehole and pudendum muliebre? What my father in his elegant way used to call a bum-and-belly?”

There would be a lot of this before the end, she thought.

She looked straight into his eyes.

Great God, he’s a virgin.

How she knew it in that extremity…but she knew it.

The face above hers diminished into an agonized, pleading vulnerability-Don’t know me, don’t know me-before it resumed the trompe l’oeil that was the Abbot of Eynsham.

Schwyz had been shouting at them both; now he came and hauled Adelia upright. “She better be no trouble,” he said. “We got enough to carry.”

“I am sure she won’t be.” The abbot smiled on Adelia. “We could send to the kitchen for the baby if you prefer and take it with us, though whether it would survive the journey…”

She shook her head.

Eynsham, still smiling, gestured toward the door. “After you, mistress.”

She went through it and down the ice steps like a lamb.