And that’s how it will be, Adelia thought, no recognition in public, brief moments, impermanence. Still, Allie and I will be happy to opt for that.
Captain Bolt was stamping with impatience. “The king, mistress…”
Adelia took the long basket from Mansur. Mentally, she apologized to the bones on the Tor: You see, Henry is your inheritor after all; look at the justice he has brought to your island.
At the palace, the majordomo led the captain, Adelia, Mansur, and Millie up a beautiful staircase to a long, heavily windowed gallery containing an equally long line of people. Benches had been set for them.
“Petitioners,” Captain Bolt said disgustedly. “How long we going to have to wait? The king wanted to see this lady urgent.”
“The lord king is with the papal legate, mistress,” the majordomo said. “When he’s finished… Oh my God, will you stop that bloody pig shitting on the floor?”
It was a nice floor, tiled with ceramic coats of arms. It was a nice pig, if unstable as to its digestion. The large countrywoman holding it on a lead nodded amiably, lifted it onto her lap, and wiped its bottom with her sleeve.
“Does she have to be here?” the majordomo begged a royal clerk who stood at the door of the receiving room with a scroll in his hand and a writing desk hanging from his neck. Adelia had seen him before; she tried to remember his name.
“All petitioners, the king said,” the clerk told him. “She’s a petitioner. Maybe the pig is.”
“I’ll go and petition a bloody bucket and cloth, then,” the majordomo said bitterly.
Most of the gallery’s occupants, a motley lot, were anxious, their mouths moving as they rehearsed what they would say to the king. Only the countrywoman, with a sangfroid to shame nobility, seemed at ease.
Adelia and Millie took a seat next to her. The open windows of the receiving room where the king was in discussion allowed its occupants’ exchanges to drift along the outside sunny air and through the open windows of the gallery, though only Henry’s voice could be heard clearly. It rasped on the ear at the best of times-and this, obviously, was not a good time.
“I won’t have it, Monseigneur. I’m not going to take out their tongues nor cut off their balls, nor any other part of their anatomy. And I’m certainly not going to execute them.”
The legate’s reply was lower and more controlled. Adelia caught the word “heretics.”
“Heretics? Because they oppose the sale of indulgences? I don’t like the sale of indulgences. I was taught sins were paid for in hell, not by a handful of cash to the nearest priest. Does that make me a heretic?”
Another murmur.
Adelia could see the clerk at the door was becoming nervous-Robert, that was his name, Master Robert.
“You do it, then.” The king’s voice again. “Let the Church punish ’em… oh, I forgot, you can’t do it, can you? The Church can’t shed blood, but it’s happy to see heretics skinned alive by a civil court. Not your criminal clerks, though, oh, no, you won’t do that. I’ve got a case in Nottingham, six-year-old boy assaulted by a priest. Try the accused in your court, I told the bishop, and if you find him guilty, which you will, hand him over to mine-we’ll see he doesn’t bugger anybody ever again. But oh, no, he’s a priest; can’t touch a priest, that’s purely a Church matter-so the bastard’s free to do it again.”
Don’t mention Becket, thought Adelia, wincing. Don’t give them cause to best you again.
Winning the argument with his king might have cost Archbishop Becket his life, but it had gained him sainthood-and the continuing inviolability of the clergy from civil prosecution.
The door to the receiving room was opening. A fat, angry man in the robes and scarlet hat of a cardinal emerged from behind it. Adelia caught a whiff of scent and sweat as he lumbered past. The Plantagenet stood in the doorway, balefully watching him go.
“Um,” Master Robert said unhappily.
“What,” his king shouted at him.
“Well, we’re on rather thin ice here, my lord. The monseigneur does represent the Pope. And the Pope-”
“Can put England under interdict if I won’t punish its heretics, thank you, Robert, I know. How many of these bloody heretics are there?”
“Three, my lord.”
Henry sighed. “All right, then. Tell the executioner to brand an H on their foreheads and let ’ em go. See if that satisfies His Holiness. The iron’s not to penetrate too deep, mind.”
“Yes, my lord.” Master Robert made a note. “I fear you will have to attend the branding; the cardinal will then at least be able to report to the Pope that you sanctioned the punishment by your presence.”
The king spat. “He’ll be lucky he doesn’t have to report that I shoved the iron up his arse… Oh, very well, tell me when the executioner’s ready. Now then, who’s next?” He caught sight of the pig. “What’s that doing here?”
“I believe Mistress Hackthorn has a petition, my lord.”
“No, I ain’t.” The countrywoman raised her bulk off the bench, still holding the pig. “I come for to say thank you, I have. This here porker’s a present for you, King Henry, dear soul.”
“Is it?” Henry went up to her, intrigued. “What for?”
“My lad Triffin, master. Lord Kegworth, him as owns Gurney Manor, he said as our tenement was his. He said as my Triffin weren’t a freeman of it and took it away from un. The which was a lie, us holding that land since the time of King Harold…”
Henry looked toward Master Robert.
“Ah, yes, my lord,” the clerk said, searching his notes. “A plea by a Master Hackthorn of Westbury that he was unjustly dispossessed of his land by Lord Kegworth. He purchased a writ of Novel Dissiesin, and the matter was put two days ago to a jury of his peers, who had knowledge of the case before the justices…”
“Was it?” asked Henry, suddenly delighted. He looked at Mistress Hackthorn. “How much did the writ cost you?”
“Two shilling, master. The which ’twas worth it for them… what’s that they do call theyselves? A jury?”
“Twelve good men and true,” Henry said, nodding.
“An’ so they was, master. We’d a been homeless else. Saw the right of it, they did, an’ give the land back to us. For which we do be grateful and hope as you’ll accept this porker for our thanks, master, our sow havin’ farrowed nicely this spring so’s we got this un to spare.”
“God, I love the English,” Henry said. “Madam, I am honored.”
The pig was handed over and the king carried it into the receiving room, shouting “Next” over his shoulder.
“That’s you, mistress,” Master Robert told Adelia.
Captain Bolt bowed and went on his way, duty done.
Followed by Millie and Mansur, Adelia went in and leaned the basket against the wall next to the door. The clerk followed her, shutting the door behind them and hurrying to close the windows.
It was a lovely room, very large and sunlit, with a molded ceiling that took Adelia’s breath away. Tables, chairs, and chests were carved and polished so that they seemed to writhe with a life of their own, a jeweled astrolabe, bronzes… The bishop of Wells did himself well.
Henry had put his mark on it. Scrolls and parchments with hanging seals littered every surface. His favorite hawk sat on a perch, below which were its droppings; two muddy gazehounds lay stretched out before the enormous marble fireplace.
The king was richly dressed for once, but Adelia, knowing him, guessed he’d been out hunting at dawn.
He put the pig down. The two gazehounds raised their heads to look at it and then, at a word from their master, closed their eyes again.
There was a splatter as the pig made its contribution to the bishop’s Persian rug. The smell of manure overpowered the scented potpourri in the bishop’s rose bowls.
Henry patted it fondly. “My sentiments exactly,” he told it.
“Mistress Adelia,” his clerk prompted him.
“I know who it is,” the king said nastily. There was the briefest of salaams to Mansur and an even briefer nod at Millie before he clicked his stubby fingers and Master Robert put the scroll that was Adelia’s report into them. “I saw the bishop of Saint Albans this morning, mistress-he’s looking very spry. Been giving him his oats, have you?”
Adelia compressed her lips; there would be worse to come. She’d lost the king money-the most heinous sin to be perpetrated against a man who needed to employ armies-but, Lord, he was offensive. This is the last time I work for him, she promised herself, the very last time.
He waved the scroll at her. “I’ve a good mind to make you eat this. What I wanted when I sent you to Glastonbury was Arthur and Guinevere. What have I got? Two sodomites.”
“You asked for the truth, my lord,” Adelia told him. “You have it. What you do with it is your affair. They can be resurrected as Arthur and Guinevere, I suppose.” Henry wasn’t the only one who could be rude.
It made him crosser. “Not by me, mistress, not by me. I also have a regard for the truth. If I hadn’t, you could have stayed in the bloody fens where you belong. If they were sodomites, they’ll have to remain sodomites.”
He was right, of course; she shouldn’t misjudge him, but it was as if the mutual respect he and she had established over these last five years had vanished. The blue eyes looking at her through their almost invisible ginger lashes might have been regarding a stranger.
“Yes, my lord. I’m sorry, my lord.”
“You should be.” He thought a bit. “Mind you, when I’m dead I wager the abbey’ll resurrect them as Arthur and queen.”
He glanced back at the letter. “What’s all this about Abbot Sigward and quicksand?”
“Suicide, my lord. Out of remorse for the murder of his son-it’s all there. However, the bishop of Saint Albans has informed the monks that it was an accident.”
“A pity. I liked Sigward; he was on my side. God knows who they’ll want to elect now. You realize this is going to cost me? Where’s the money coming from to rebuild that blasted abbey now, eh?”
“I’m sorry, my lord.”
The king went on reading. “ ‘I would wish that Godwyn, landlord of the Pilgrim, might suffer no more grief than he already has…’ God’s knees, woman, he was accomplice to his wife’s attempted murders… You’ll be asking that Cain be let off for killing Abel next.”
“Even so, my lord, the man was instrumental in saving the life of Emma, Lady Wolvercote, and her child…”
“Ah, yes, the rich young widow.” The king’s face, looking at her sideways, became that of a predator. “I’ve had some pleasing offers for her.”
Alarmed, Adelia said, “My lord, you promised me you would not sell her in marriage. She wishes to wed her champion, I beg you to allow-”
“That was before I got a sodomite instead of King Arthur.” He tapped the scroll. “We’ll see. In view of this, I may have to husband my resources. Now then, about the dowager Wolvercote… ‘You, who prize justice above all things’… yes, yes… ‘right this great wrong… What do you want me to do about the woman? Throw her out of her manor?”
“It would be only just, my lord. She sent her own daughter-in-law and the others to their death…” Adelia heard her voice become shrill and tried to lower it. “Only the mercy of God and her champion’s good right arm saved Emma and her child…”
“Can you prove it?”
Why did he keep interrupting? Prove it? Adelia tried to think.
Wolf got a message from there saying as there’d be a rich lady and party a-leavin’ of Wolvercote… Will’s words. The assassin who’d received the message was dead. The person who’d taken it
