With a spike through their Welsh brains, the heads couldn’t nod, though they revolved slightly so that their blank eyes shifted, as if dividing their attention between the bottom of the ravine, where English soldiers were digging burial pits, and a limping mailed figure who was dragging a woman up the steep slope toward the tents.
As she was pulled level with the poles, the woman broke into a wail of Welsh lamentation, peering at each head and calling out what, presumably, were their names.
The mailed man paused, puffing-she was a big lady to haul. “Look,” he said, “they were killed in battle. Battle. Understand? My lads got a bit carried away with their bodies, that’s all. The king doesn’t behead prisoners, at least not often-he’s a good king. Good.”
But the woman was ignorant of English, no matter how loudly it was emphasized. “Duw, Duw,” she cried, lifting her arms to the sky. The man had to get behind her and push before she’d go farther.
The opening of the bigger tent was lit from inside, outlining the figure of Henry II, who stood at its entrance, also mailed, also shouting-this time at a line of bound men being made to kneel in front of him-while a man-at-arms undid the king’s hauberk at the back and carefully peeled it off.
“There was no point to this, you stupid bastards. No point.” To the interpreter at his side, the king said, “Tell ’ em that. Tell them I’ve made peace with their lord Deheubarth, or however the bugger pronounces it. They won’t have to pay any more taxes with me as their king than they pay him already.” He paused. “Well, not much more.” He pressed a cloth against his left arm to stop the bleeding. “Now look what they’ve done. Tell them I’ve had to mount an expensive campaign to put down their bloody rebellion, I’ve lost good men, they’ve lost good men, I won’t be able to use my shield arm for bloody days, and they’ll be taxed for it until their brains squeak-that’s if they’ve got any and if I don’t gouge them out. Tell ’ em that. Tell them Arthur is dead.”
At the sound of the name, the kneeling prisoners raised their heads as one man and a shout of “Bywyd hir Arthur” rippled along the line.
“Arthur live forever,” translated the interpreter, helpfully.
Henry Plantagenet exhaled with violence. “I know what it means.” He extended his wounded arm. “The bastard who did this was shouting it. They all shout it. Tell them Arthur is dead. I’m as proud of him as the next man, but he lived about seven hundred years ago and… There you are, Bishop, and who in hell is this?”
The lady from the hill had arrived in the tent with her companion.
Rowley, bishop of Saint Albans, lifted off his helmet, then the coif beneath, and rubbed his nose where the nasal had chafed it. “I believe she’s from the village down the valley, my lord. She was wandering among the dead-looking for her son, I think.”
“It seems she’s found him,” Henry said-the woman had cried out and thrown herself at one of the prisoners, toppling him over in her joy. “Yes, that’s his mother, all right…” For now the woman had taken to slapping the prisoner around his head with some force. “You usually like ’em slimmer and younger.”
Saint Albans ignored the slur. “My lord, one of our men down there, he speaks a bit of Welsh, he seems to think she’s got something valid to tell us and wants to ransom her son with it.”
“What in hell can she possibly… oh, all right. Fulk, take the others away, all except that one and the lady. And send up that pill-pissing butcher who calls himself a doctor.”
Fulk signaled to two of his men, who began kicking the prisoners to their feet. “Do you want me to hang them, my lord?”
“No, Fulk, I don’t,” Henry told him wearily. “I want to enlist them. I want them to teach my bloody archers a thing or two, and they can’t do that with their necks stretched.”
As the prisoners were taken away, the king turned to Rowley and gestured to an unusually long bow propped in a corner. “How do they do it? I tried and I could hardly bend that damn thing, but those wizened little bastards pull it back as easily as a pump handle.”
“It’s a skill we’ve got to learn, no doubt about that,” Rowley said. He set about taking off his chausses.
“And the penetration… one flight just missed me and hit a tree. I pulled it out later. Nine inches in, it was. I swear, nine inches into solid oak. If it hadn’t been for the wind…”
“That’s what saved me; the wind swerved mine and took off most of its force.” The bishop looked morosely at the calf of his leg. “Still went in, though, and, damnation, it’s taken a couple of links in with it.”
“That’ll need cauterizing, then,” the king said, cheering up. “And now, Owain, my boy, what are those two yammering about?”
The interpreter, an elderly border Welshman with the gift of making himself near invisible, had been attending to the conversation of mother and son in the tent entrance, most of it pursued by the woman. “Interesting, my lord. Urging him to tell you about Arthur, so she is. Something about Glastonbury and a vision…”
“Arthur?” The king, who’d collapsed onto a stool, sat up.
“What I can make of it, my lord-the son’s not a soldier by rights-he was with the holy men at Glastonbury a time ago, and she wants him to tell you something that happened, a vision, a burial, I can’t make it out at all…”
“ Glastonbury? He can speak English?”
“So it would seem, my lord, but he’s reluctant…”
Henry turned to a crouching page. “Fetch a block. And fetch Fulk back. Tell him to bring an ax.”
Apart from the sobbing pleas of the mother to her son, the tent fell quiet. Every now and then the wind from outside sent the burning logs of the brazier into a flare so that the shadows of the men who sat round it sharpened and then faded again.
The entry of the doctor and his assistant added the smell of drying blood-their hands and apron were covered in it-to that of bruised grass, sweat, and steel.
“How’s De Boeuf?” the king asked.
“I have hopes of him, my lord. Thirty stitches but, yes, I have hopes.”
“And Sir Gerard?”
The doctor shook his head. “I’m afraid not, my lord.”
“Shit,” the king said. When the doctor took his arm to examine it, he jerked it away. “Attend to my lord bishop first. His leg’ll need cauterizing.”
“So will that arm, my lord. The cut’s gone deep.” The doctor picked up the brazier’s poker and stuck it into the glowing ash.
Accompanied by the page, who was weighed down with an ax, Fulk came in, cradling three feet of tree trunk like a baby. He set it down, relieved the page of the ax, and, at a nod from his king, dragged the prisoner to the block, shook him so that he folded to his knees in front of it, and showed him the ax. The blade gleamed in the firelight.
“Take the woman out,” Henry said. “No, first get this fellow’s name.”
“Rhys,” the interpreter said.
“Now then, Rhys…” He had to wait until the page, with some difficulty, hauled the screaming Welshwoman out of the tent. “Tell me about Arthur.”
The prisoner’s eyes kept blinking in terror. He was a tall, lanky man, probably in his thirties, with unfortunate teeth and straggling fair hair. His voice, however, was captivating, and, isolated from his comrades, with the yells of his mother audible outside the tent and the ax’s blade practically touching his nose, he used it to answer questions.
No, no, he hadn’t fought with the rebels, not actually fought. They’d taken him along to put their prowess to song. Very content he was, personally, with King Henry Plantagenet to reign, and there was a fine name for a eulogy that he’d be happy to provide anytime.
Yes, yes, he’d spent a year as an oblate in England, in Glastonbury. His uncle Caradoc ap Griffudd had been a monk there, see, but he, Rhys ap Griffudd ap Owein ap Gwilym…
Fulk hit him.
… had decided his vocation lay in the bardic world, and he’d wandered away back to Wales to learn the harp. A fine bard he’d become as it turned out, oh, yes, his “Marwnat Pwyll”-well, “Death Song for Pwyll” it was in English-was considered the finest composition since Taliesin had…
Fulk hit him again.
“Oh, well then, the vision. It was of Arthur in his coffin being buried and lamented. My uncle Caradoc saw it. Just after the earthquake it was, see, and terrible that was, the ground heaving like a ship…”
Slapping him was useless; the man wasn’t being obstructive, he was physically incapable of keeping to the point. It was a matter of waiting it out.
Eventually, wearily, the king said, “So your uncle saw a vision of Arthur’s burial. In the monks’ graveyard at Glastonbury, between the two pyramids.”
“Yes, yes, very old those pyramids, very exotic…”
“Take him away, Fulk. Better keep him separate from the rest; they’re not going to be happy with him.” Henry turned to his bishop. “What’s your opinion, Rowley?”
The bishop of Saint Albans ’s attention was being dominated by the tweezers that were picking shreds of chain mail from his leg.
He tried to consider the matter. “There are true visions, I don’t say there aren’t, but a dying old man…”
“Worth telling Glastonbury about it, though?” While his friend havered, the king said, “I need Arthur dead, my son. If there’s something down in that fissure, I want it dug up and shown to every bloody Celt from here to Brittany. No more revolts because a warrior from the Dark Ages is going to lead them to freedom. I want Arthur’s bones, and I want them on display.”
“If they’re there, Henry, If they’re there, they’d require some sort of verification.”
The poker end in the brazier had become a molten white, and the doctor was lifting it out.
Henry II showed his vicious little teeth in a grin as he held out his arm; he was going to get some reward from the situation. “And you know who can provide that verification-saints’ bollocks.” The smell of scorched flesh pervaded the tent.
“Not her, my lord,” the bishop pleaded, watching the poker approach his leg. “She’s-goddamn-she’s-oof-earned the right to be left in peace. So have I.”
“She’s my investigator of the dead, Rowley. That’s what I pay her for.”
“You don’t pay her, my lord.”
“Are you sure?” The king puzzled over it, then: “If she gives me a dead Arthur, my son, she can name her price.”
TWO
MY DEAR CHILD, you must leave now,” Prior Geoffrey said. “Please understand. If you and Mansur are summoned to the consistory court, I cannot save you. I doubt if even the bishop could. The summoner will be here today. He’ll have men to take you both by force.”
“This baby was drowned alive,” Adelia said. “Dear God, somebody threw her into the river alive-there’s weed in the bronchus. Look.” She held out a tiny tube that had been slit by her dissecting knife. “Three infants in three years found floating, and Lord knows how many others that haven’t been discovered.”
The prior of Cambridge ’s great canonry looked around for help, avoiding the poor little mess lying on the tarpaulined table. At one time, he’d have been outraged by it and used his power to have this woman put away as an offense against heaven-even now he shook to think how he would explain his connivance when he came to stand before God’s throne. But he’d learned many things since Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, qualified doctor from the School of Medicine in Salerno -the only place in Christendom that suffered, and trained, women students-had come into his life. And saved it.
The fiction they had all maintained-that Mansur, her Arab attendant, was actually the doctor, and she merely his assistant and translator-would not save her; for one thing, it was wearing thin, and for another, her association with a Saracen, and therefore a heretic, would hoist her on the same gallows.
The prior wondered what his own association with this extraordinary and dangerous woman was doing to his own reputation, particularly in God’s eyes. In the Almighty’s presence he would have to seek forgiveness and give explanation for himself, and for her. He would ask the Lord why it was so wrong that a female should heal rather than a man. Are women not natural nurturers? Did not
