The Serpent’s Tale

Rowley’s voice came, muffled. “Where in hell are you?” It was impossible to locate him; the tunnels absorbed and diverted sound.

“Where are you?”

“In the name of God, stay still, I’m coming back.”

They kept shouting in order to guide him. He shouted in his turn, mostly oaths. He was swearing in the Arabic he’d learned on crusade-his choice language when he cursed. Sometimes his voice was so near it made them jump; then it would fade and become hollow, raving against labyrinths in general and this one in particular. Against Dame Dakers and her bloody serpent. Against Eve with her bloody serpent. Even, appallingly, after blackthorn tore his cloak, against Rosamund and her bloody mushrooms.

Ward cocked his ears this way and that, as if enjoying the tirade, which, his mistress thought, he probably was, being another male.

It’s women to be blamed, always women. He wouldn’t curse the man who built this horror, or the king who imprisoned Rosamund in the middle of it.

Then she thought, They’re frightened. Well, Walt may not be, but Rowley is. And Jacques definitely is.

At last a tall shape loomed out of the shadow ahead, leading a horse and coming toward her. It yelled, “What are you standing there for, woman? Get back. We should have taken the last turning.”

Again, it was her fault. Again, the mare wouldn’t move until the bishop took its bridle and pushed.

So that he shouldn’t be embarrassed in front of the other two men, Adelia lowered her voice. “Rowley, this isn’t a labyrinth.”

He didn’t lower his. “No, it isn’t. We’re in the entrails of Grendel’s bloody mother, that’s what, goddamn her.”

It came to her. Beowulf. That was the name. Beowulf, Ulf’s favorite among all legendary Saxon warriors, killer of the Wyrm, slayer of the half-human monster Grendel and of Grendel’s awful avenging mother.

“Waste bitch, boundary walker,” Ulf had said of Grendel’s mother, meaning she prowled the edge between earth and hell in woman’s shape.

Adelia began to get cross. Why was it women who were to blame for everything- everything, from the Fall of Man to these blasted hedges?

“We are not in a labyrinth, my lord,” she said clearly.

“Where are we, then?”

“It’s a maze.”

“Same difference.” Puffing at the horse: “Get back, you great cow.”

“No, it isn’t. A labyrinth has only one path and you merely have to follow it. It’s a symbol of life or, rather, of life and death. Labyrinths twist and turn, but they have a beginning and an end, through darkness into light.”

Softening, and hoping that he would, too, she added, “Like Ariadne’s. Rather beautiful, really.”

“I don’t want mythology, mistress, beautiful or not, I want to get to that sodding tower. What’s a maze when it’s at home?”

“It’s a trick. A trick to confuse. To amaze.”

“And I suppose Mistress Clever-boots knows how to get us out?”

“I do, actually.” God’s rib, he was sneering at her, sneering. She’d a mind to stay where she was and let him sweat.

“Then in the name of Christ, do it.”

“Stop bellowing at me,” she yelled at him. “You’re bellowing.”

She saw his teeth grit in the pretense of a placatory smile; he always had good teeth. Still did. Between them, he said, “The Bishop of Saint Albans presents his compliments to Mistress Adelia and please to escort him out of this hag’s hole, for the love of God. How will you do it?”

“My business.” Be damned if she’d tell him. Women were defenseless enough without revealing their secrets. “I’ll have to take the lead.”

They were forced to back the horses to one of the junctions where there was just enough room to turn each animal round without damage, though not enough to allow one to pass another, so Adelia ended up leading Walt’s mount, Walt leading the messenger’s behind her, Jacques behind him with hers, Rowley bringing up the rear with his own.

The maneuver was achieved with resentment. Even Jacques, her ally, said, “How are you going to get us out, then, mistress?”

“I just can.” She paused. “Though it may take some time.”

She stumped along in front, holding Walt’s mount’s reins in her right hand. In the other was her riding crop, which she trailed with apparent casualness so that it brushed against the hedge on her left.

As she went, she chuntered to herself. Lord, how disregarded I am in this damned country. How disregarded all women are.

She was back to the reasoning that had made her refuse to marry Rowley. At the time, he’d been expecting the king to offer him a barony, not a bishopric, thus allowing him a wife. Mad for him though she was, acceptance would have meant slipping her wrists into metaphorical golden fetters and watching him lock them on. As his wife, she could never have been herself, a medica of Salerno.

Adelia possessed none of the requisite feminine arts: She couldn’t dance well, didn’t play the lute, had never touched an embroidery frame-her sewing restricted to cobbling back together those cadavers she had dissected. In Salerno, she had been allowed to pursue skills that suited her, but in England there had been no room for them; the Church condemned any woman who did not toe its line-for her own safety, she had been forced to practice as a doctor in secret, letting a man take the credit.

As Baron Rowley’s wife she would have been feted, complimented, bowed to, just as long as she denied her true being. And how long could she have done that? I am who I am.

Ironically, the lower down the social scale women were, the greater freedom they had; the wives of laborers and craftsmen could work alongside their men-even, sometimes, when they were widowed, take over their husband’s trade. Until she’d become Adelia’s friend and Allie’s nurse, Gyltha had conducted a thriving business in eels and had called no man her master.

Adelia trudged on. Hag’s hole. Grendel’s mother’s entrails. Why was this dreadful place feminine to the men lost in it? Because it was tunneled? Womb-like? Is this woman’s magic? The great womb?

Is that why the Church hates me, hates all women? Because we are the source of all true power? Of life?

She supposed that by leading them out of it, she was only confirming that a woman knew its secrets and they did not.

Great God, she thought, it isn’t a question of hatred. It’s fear. They are frightened of us.

And Adelia laughed quietly, sending a suggestion of sound reverberating backward along the tunnel, as if a small pebble was skipping on water, making each man start when it passed him.

“What in hell was that?”

Walt called back stolidly, “Reckon someone’s laughing at us, master.”

“Dear God.”

Still grinning, Adelia glanced over her shoulder to find Walt looking at her. His gaze was amused, friendlier than it had been. It was directed at her riding crop, still dragging along the left-hand hedge. He winked.

He knows, she thought. She winked back.

Heartened by this new ally, she nevertheless quickened her pace because, when she’d turned, she’d had to squint to make out Walt’s expression. His face was indistinct, as if seen through haze.

They were losing the light.

Surely it was still only afternoon outside, but the low winter sun was leaving this side of the labyrinth, whichever side it was, in shadow. She didn’t want to imagine what it would be like in blackness.

It was frightful enough anyway. Following the left-hand hedge wherever it went took them into blind alleys time and again so that they became weary with the travail of reversing increasingly restless horses. Each time, she could