legend must mean that in the swirling mists of Britain’s darkest time, one man had ensured that the essence of what it was to be British, its very matter, stayed alive through his courage-and that she had been privileged to look on what remained of him.
A greater misery was for the disenchantment and blighted hope of those to whom Arthur’s magic was their life’s blood.
She gritted her teeth. Magic was ephemeral-you couldn’t and shouldn’t depend on it.
So now that she had dispelled it, what was she left with? Something uncomfortable…
From beside her, Mansur said, “They tried to kill us, Adelia.”
She looked at him. His eyes were still closed in exhaustion. “Kill us?”
“The earth did not come down on its own. The mound has stood for many weeks; why should it tip now?”
Dear Father Almighty.
In the relief of being rescued, her joy that Mansur had survived, and seeing Rowley again, she had not questioned that it had been an accident. Now, mentally, she went back into the pit, looking up, experiencing again the terror of that cascading earth.
It had stopped at one point; there had been a pause in the fall. And then it had started again-yes, as if somebody had been dissatisfled with the original push that tumbled the mound on top of them. Whoever it was had then begun shoveling or kicking the residue into the hole to fill it up completely.
Who could hate us that much?
Only Rowley’s appearance on the scene had stopped a murder that, if it had been successful, would have remained undiscovered. She and Mansur could have been blotted out. People would have seen merely that the mound had overtipped.
There was no time to absorb the shock. She was on her feet and running to the abbot’s kitchen.
The bishop of Saint Albans and Abbot Sigward were in conclave at the table; she didn’t notice anybody else.
“Who was there?” she demanded of Rowley. “Somebody tried to bury us. Who was it?”
“Eh?”
“When you rode up. Somebody was at the top of the pit.” She danced from foot to foot in agitation. “They pushed the mound over so that it would bury Mansur and me.”
“I didn’t see anybody.”
“You must have. Somebody was there, Rowley. They kept on… The earth came and came…”
“I swear to you, mistress.” He looked around. “Walt? Did you see anybody by the pit when we came up?”
“I didn’t, my lord.”
“Gervase?”
The young man with the hawk shook his head. “Nobody, my lord.”
Rowley got up from his stool, suddenly full of compassion for her. “It was dreadful for you, my child… For God’s sake, one of you, give this lady some brandy, a restorative. I should not have left her alone…”
“I’m not mad, Rowley,” she said.
“Of course you’re not, but it was too much for you. It was an accident, mistress, a fearful accident.”
They tried to get her to sit down, to drink something, to rest-and their faces all had the same look, not just concern but pity for a woman so unnerved that she had lost her wits.
“Damn you,” she shouted at them. “There was a pause, and then it started again.”
For heaven’s sake, why couldn’t she put into words what she had so clearly seen, tell them what it meant? There must have been somebody…
She stopped short. But there had been another pause. While she’d been struggling to free Mansur’s face, there had been no descent of earth-because whoever it was had seen or heard the approach of Rowley and had run away.
Eventually it was decided that Mansur must be questioned, men being less hysterical than women in the face of adversity.
With irritating gentleness, still offering her various remedies, they escorted her across to the church and rounded its far wall.
Mansur wasn’t there.
Adelia stared at the empty patch of grass on which he’d been lying.
Shouting, they wandered in search of him.
“He’s gone back to the inn,” Rowley said.
They took her to the Pilgrim. He wasn’t there. There were long explanations to the landlord and his wife, and to Gyltha, during which time Adelia watched Gyltha’s face go gray.
Out again. Some to go calling up the empty village street, others to search the abbey grounds more diligently.
Walt forestalled Adelia from going down into the pit again by using the rope to go down himself, but it was obvious-even to Adelia, frantically peering down from the edge-that its earth had swallowed no one since she and Mansur had been lifted out of it.
The bishop of Saint Albans missed whatever appointment it was that he had in Wells in order to ride up into the hills with his men, calling, always calling, so that the sky resounded with the Arab’s name. Until it got too dark to see anything-except the fact that Mansur had disappeared.
Like Emma.
“I’LL BE BACK in the morning,” Rowley said. “As soon as it’s light.”
She nodded. She was holding Gyltha close to her.
“Confusion,” Rowley said. “He was confused after the accident, and who could blame him? He’s just wandered off, but he can’t have gone far. And it’s a warm night, he’ll take no harm. Not Mansur.”
She nodded again.
Desperately, he said, “I have to go back, you do see that?”
She saw that. The diocese of Wells expected it; he was one of the most important men in England, and a busy one, God’s representative for thousands of square miles. What the diocese of Wells did not expect was that he should spend the night at an inn with a woman.
“I promise you, mistress,” Rowley said, trying to smile. “This time the earth has not swallowed him up.”
Hadn’t she told him about Emma, whom the earth had swallowed up? She couldn’t remember whether she had or not; fear seemed to be rendering her dumb. “Emma,” she mumbled.
“I’ll attend to it. God bless you, then, mistress. I shall see you in the morning.”
Hilda’s concern for her guests, though no doubt meant kindly, was bothersome. Adelia and Gyltha were offered everything that the landlady thought might raise their spirits, from Godwyn’s calf’s- foot jelly to her own specific against melancholy, a thick herbal concoction that they drank to satisfy her before escaping to Adelia’s bedroom. Gyltha, to keep herself busy, insisted on washing Adelia’s hair and finding fresh clothes for her. Then she sat down and, holding on to Adelia’s hand, rocked back and forth in anxiety.
“Silly old bugger, where’s he got to? Can’t hardly find his own arse in the dark, so why’s he go wandering off? What’s happening to us, ’Delia? First Emma, now him. Where’s he gone? Who’s got him? Why didn’t he stay close, silly old bugger?”
The lament went on and on until Hilda’s specific took hold and Gyltha was persuaded to lie down on the bed where she fell into a whimpering doze.
Watching her, Adelia thought how ironic it was that Gyltha was the one person who would have believed that somebody had sent the mound of earth crashing into the grave deliberately, and yet was the one person who must not be told. That a murderer was abroad… no, she mustn’t be made aware of that, not until Mansur was found. If he ever was.
It was stiflingly hot. Disengaging her hand from the sleeping woman’s, Adelia went to the window to breathe.
Twenty years ago, she thought. Twenty years ago a crime had been committed. Twenty years ago it had been necessary to bury the bodies of a man and a woman so that they should never be found. And now, when they had been found, it was vital to whoever had buried them that the skeletons should not be identified and the crime brought home.
The Year of Our Lord 1154. The day after Saint Stephen’s Day, when, by tradition, servants were allowed to leave their employer and return to their family for a while.
Was that significant? Possibly. People not usually free to travel would have been on the loose. Also, heads of households, for once, had been left to look after themselves-without servants to watch them.
But the greatest suspicion must fall on the abbey itself, the only place where it was known that a convenient hole had opened up and was ready to receive bodies.
Who had been in situ on that day? Nearly a hundred monks, all but four of them now scattered around England and France, broadcasting the plight that had befallen Glastonbury.
No, Abbot Sigward must be excluded-he’d still been holding sway as a great landlord on his island, perhaps mourning the son who’d fallen on crusade.
For a moment, Adelia thought of the shining goodness that had propelled Sigward from the position of a novitiate to that of abbot over the heads of monks who had served their abbey much longer.
Of the three who remained, all had shown hostility toward her and Mansur in their investigation. Had it been caused by more than just a desire to claim the bodies as Arthur’s and Guinevere’s?
Was one of them a murderer? All three?
No, wrong again. If one of them had crept out of terce to the graveyard, the abbot would have noticed it and said so. Wouldn’t he?
But somewhere out there was a killer who’d known what she and Mansur were about, and tried to put an end to it. He’d failed that time, but had Mansur succumbed to him now?
And Emma? Had Emma disappeared into the same web, to be eaten by the same spider?
Tired, tortured by worry, her head resounding with unanswered questions, her back aching from her efforts in the pit, Adelia laid herself down next to the twitching, muttering Gyltha. And dozed. And dreamed…
Inevitably, she was belowground, in a warren where stoats dressed in golden regalia were shouting huzzahs at King Arthur as he and his troops rode on horses up the tunnel toward its exit. In passing, he looked kindly down at her, as he always did. “Another dragon to fight,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
“I must search for Mansur and Emma,” she told him.
“Stupid, stupid you are,” he said.
Guinevere, still dressed in white feathers, her back to Adelia, stood at the mouth of the tunnel to wish farewell and good fortune to her lord.
As the cavalcade passed her, one of Arthur’s knights drew his sword and cut her in half. The blood from the severed waist filled the tunnel, catching Adelia in its torrent and carrying her, struggling, deeper into the earth.
When she woke up, it took a moment before she found out that the dampness making her clothes stick to her was not Guinevere’s blood but her own sweat.
The light of a big moon coming through the window like pale roadway was the only cold thing in the room. She got up to look out again. The street below was deserted; she leaned forward so that she could see the marketplace. It was as empty as ever.
Where is he? Almighty Father, keep him safe.
Somebody coughed. It was a human cough.
