The Serpent’s Tale

animal would not be stretched very far.

“Antrappi.” Bertha was becoming less frightened and more confidential, poking forward now to show a thin upper neck and body under head and hair colored the same as the straw that framed them. Her gaze became fixed on Adelia’s neck.

“‘And catch I in a trap,’” Jacques said.

Adelia was getting the hang of Bertha’s speech. Also, she had become angry, as she always did at the suggestion of magic, appalled that this girl should be terrorized by black superstition. “Sit up,” she said.

The porcine little eyes blinked and Bertha sat up instantly, spilling straw. She was used to being bullied.

“Now,” Adelia said, more quietly, “nobody blames you for what happened, but you must tell me how it came about.”

Bertha leaned forward and poked at Adelia’s necklet. “What be that purty thing?”

“It’s a cross. Haven’t you seen one before?”

“Lady Ros do have similar, purtier nor that. What be for? Magic?” This was awful. Had nobody taught the girl Christianity?

Adelia said, “As soon as I can, I shall buy you one of your own and explain it to you. Now, though, you must explain things to me. Will you do that?”

Bertha nodded, her eyes still on the silver cross.

So it began. It took infinite labor on Adelia’s part and wearisome, evasive repetition on Bertha’s, pursuing the theme that it wasn’t her fault, before any relevant information could be teased from her. The girl was so ignorant, so credulous, that Adelia’s opinion of Rosamund became very low-no servant should be so deprived of education. Fair Rosamund, she thought. Not much fairness in the neglect of this sad little thing.

It was difficult to estimate her age; Bertha herself didn’t know it. Between sixteen and twenty, Adelia guessed, half-starved and as unaware of how the world wagged as any mole in its run.

Jacques, unnoticed, had slid a milking stool against her hocks, allowing her to sit so that she and Bertha were on a level. He remained standing directly behind her in shadow, saying not a word.

Ever since she’d heard of Rosamund’s death, Adelia had believed that what she would eventually uncover was the tale of a sad accident.

It wasn’t. As Bertha gained confidence and Adelia understanding, the story that emerged showed that Bertha had been the accomplice, albeit unwittingly, to deliberate murder.

On the fatal day, she said, she’d gone into the forest surrounding Wormhold Tower to gather kindling, not mushrooms, pulling a sledge behind her to pile it with such dead branches as could be reached with a crook.

Lowest of all Rosamund’s servants, it had already been a bad morning for her. Dame Dakers had walloped her for dropping a pot and told her that Lady Rosamund was sick of her and intended to send her away, which, Bertha being without family to turn to, would have meant having to tramp the countryside begging for food.

“Her’s a dragon,” Bertha whispered, looking round and up in case Dame Dakers had flown in, flapping her wings, to perch on one of the cowshed’s beams. “Us calls her Dragon Dakers.”

Miserably, Bertha had gathered so much fuel-afraid of Dragon Dakers’s wrath if she didn’t-that, having tied the bundled wood to the sledge, she found it impossible to pull, at which point she had sat down on the ground and bawled her distress to the trees.

“And then her come up.”

“Who came?”

“Her did. Old woman.”

“Had you ever seen her before?”

“’Course not.” Bertha regarded the question as an insult. “Her didn’t come from our parts. Second cook to Queen Eleanor, she was. The queen. Traveled everywhere with un.”

“That’s what she told you? She worked for Queen Eleanor?”

“Her did.”

“What did this old woman look like?”

“Like a old woman.”

Adelia took a breath and tried again. “How old? Describe her. Well-dressed? In rags? What sort of face? What sort of voice?”

But Bertha, lacking both observation and vocabulary, was unable to answer these questions. “Her was ugly, but her was kind,” she said. It was the only description she could give, kindness being so rare in Bertha’s life that it was remarkable.

“In what way was she kind?”

“Her gave I them mushrooms, didn’t her? Magic, they was. Said they’d make Lady Ros look on I with”-Bertha’s unfortunate nose had wrinkled in an effort to recall the word used-“favor.”

“She said your mistress would be pleased with you?”

“Her did.”

It took time, but eventually something of the conversation that had taken place in the forest between Bertha and the old woman was reconstructed.

“That’s what I do for my lady, Queen Eleanor,” the old woman had said. “I do give her a feast of these here mushrooms, and her do look on me with favor.”

Bertha had inquired eagerly whether they also worked on less-exalted mistresses.

“Oh, yes, even better.”

“Like, if your mistress were going to send you off, she wouldn’t?”

“Send you off? Promote you more like.”

Then the old woman had added, “Tell you what I’ll do, Bertha, my duckling, I like your face, so I’ll let you have my mushrooms to cook for your lady. Fond of mushrooms, is she?”

“Dotes on ’em.”

“There you are, then. You cook her these and be rewarded. Only you must do it right away now.”

Amazed, Adelia wondered for a moment if this was a fairy tale that Bertha had concocted in order to conceal her own guilt. Then she abandoned the thought; nobody had ever bothered to tell Bertha fairy tales in which mysterious old women offered girls their heart’s desire-or any fairy tales at all. Bertha was incapable of concoction, anyway.

So that day in the forest, now eager and full of strength, Bertha had tied the basket of mushrooms to the wood on her sledge and dragged both back to Wormhold Tower.

Which was almost deserted. That, Adelia thought, was significant. Dame Dakers had left for the day to go to a hiring fair in Oxford in order to find a new cook-cooks, it seemed, never endured her strictures for long and were constantly leaving. The other staff, free of the housekeeper’s eye, had taken themselves off, leaving Fair Rosamund virtually alone.

So, in an empty kitchen, Bertha had set to work. The amount of fungi had been enough for two meals, and Bertha had divided them, thinking to leave some for tomorrow. She’d put half into a skillet with butter, a pinch of salt, a touch of wild garlic, and a sprinkling of parsley, warmed them over a flame until the juices ran, and then taken the dish up to the solar where Rosamund sat at her table, writing a letter.

“Her could write, you know,” Bertha said in wonder.

“And she ate the mushrooms?”

“Gobbled ’em.” The girl nodded. “Greedy like.”

The magic had worked. Lady Rosamund, most unusually, had smiled on Bertha, thanked her, said she was a good girl.

Later, the convulsions had begun…

Even now, Adelia discovered, Bertha did not suspect the crone in the forest of treachery. “Accident,” she said. “Weren’t the old un’s fault. A wicked mushroom did get into that basket by mistake.”

There was no point in arguing, but there had been no mistake. In the selection Bertha had saved and Rowley had shown Adelia, the Death Cap was as numerous as any other species-and carefully mixed in among them.

Bertha, however, refused to believe ill of someone who’d been nice to her. “Weren’t her fault, weren’t mine. Accident.”