The Serpent’s Tale

been literate. The table’s implements showed heavy use; Rosamund had written a lot.

Was Dakers merely proud that you could write? Or is there some other significance that I’m not seeing?

Adelia turned her attention to the two pieces of vellum. She picked up the one directly in front of the corpse- and found it indecipherable in this light; Rosamund’s literacy had not extended to good calligraphy-here was a cramped scrawl.

She wondered where Rowley was with more candles, blast him. It was taking the bishop a long time to return. For just a second, Adelia registered the fact, then found that by extending the parchment above her head with one hand, putting the taper dangerously close underneath it with the other, and squinting, it was just possible to make out a superscription. What she held was a letter.

“To the Lady Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine and supposed Queen of England, greetings from the true and very Queen of this country, Rosamund the Fair.”

Adelia’s jaw dropped. So, very nearly, did the letter. This wasn’t lese-majeste, it was outright, combative treason. It was a challenge.

It was stupid.

“Were you insane?” The whisper was absorbed by the room’s silence.

Rosamund was sending a challenge to Eleanor’s authority, and must have known it was one the queen would have to respond to or be forever humiliated.

“You were taking a risk,” Adelia whispered. Wormhold Tower might be difficult to seize, but it wasn’t impregnable; it couldn’t withstand the sort of force that an infuriated queen would send against it.

The deadness of the corpse whispered back, Ah, but instead did the queen send an old woman with poisoned mushrooms?

None of the above, Adelia thought to herself, because Eleanor didn’t receive the letter. Most likely, Rosamund had never intended to send it; isolated in this awful tower, she’d merely amused herself by scribbling fantasies of queenship onto vellum.

What else had she written?

Adelia replaced the letter on the table and picked up its companion document. In the dimness, she made out another superscription. Another letter, then. Again, it had to be held up so that the taper shone upward onto it. This one was easier to read.

“To the Lady Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine and supposed Queen of England, greetings from the true and very Queen of this country, Rosamund the Fair.”

The wording was exactly the same. And it was more decipherable only because somebody else had written it. This hand was very different from Rosamund’s scrawl; it was the legible, sloping calligraphy of a scholar.

Rosamund had copied her letter from this one.

Ward gave a low growl, but Adelia, caught up in the mystery, paid him no attention.

It’s here. I am on the brink of it.

Waving the parchment gently, she thought it out, then saw in the mirror of the window that she was, in fact, tapping Rosamund’s head with it.

And stopped, she and the corpse each as rigid as the other. Ward had tried to warn her that someone else had entered the tower room; she’d paid no notice.

Three faces were reflected in the glass, two of them surmounted by crowns. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, my dear,” one of them said-and it wasn’t talking to Adelia.

Who, for a moment, stood where she was, staring straight ahead, trying to subdue shivering superstition, gathering all her common sense against belief in the wizardry of conjurement.

Then she turned and bowed. There was no mistaking a real queen.

Eleanor took no notice of her. She walked to one side of the table, bringing with her a scent that subsumed Rosamund’s roses in something heavier and more Eastern. Two white, long-fingered hands were placed on the wood as she bent forward to look into the face of the dead woman. “Tut, tut. You have let yourself go.” A beringed forefinger nudged the Greek pot. “Do I suspect too many sweeties and not enough sallets?”

Her voice belled charmingly across the chamber. “Did you know that poor Rosamund was fat, Lord Montignard? Why was I not told?”

“Cows usually are, lady.” A man’s voice, coming from a shape lounging in the doorway and holding a lantern. There was an indistinct, taller figure in mail standing behind him.

“So rude,” said Eleanor, apologetically, to the body in the chair. “Men are unfair, are they not? And you must have had so many compensating qualities…generosity with your favors, things like that.”

The cruelty was not only verbal but also accentuated by the two women’s physical disparity. Against the tall sweep of the queen’s shape, that showed slender even in the fur wrapping it round, Rosamund appeared lumpen, her tumbling hair ridiculous for a mature woman. Compared to the delicate spikes on the white-gold crown Eleanor wore, Rosamund’s was an overweight piece of grandiloquence.

The queen had come to the document. “My dear, another of your letters to me? And God froze you to ice in the middle of penning it?”

Adelia opened her mouth and then shut it; she and the men in the doorway were merely sounding boards in the game that Eleanor of Aquitaine was playing with a dead woman.

“I am sorry I was not here at the time,” the queen was saying. “I had but landed from France when I received word of your illness, and there were other matters I had to see to rather than be at your deathbed.” She appeared to sigh. “Always business before pleasure.”

She picked up the letter and held it at arm’s length, unable to read it in the light but not needing to. “Is this like the others?

Greetings to the supposed queen from the true one? Somewhat repetitious, don’t you think? Not worth keeping, yes?”

She crumpled the parchment and tossed it onto the floor, grinding it out on the stones with the twist of an excellent boot.

Slowly, slowly, Adelia bent slightly sideways and down. She slipped the document she’d been holding into the top of her right boot and felt her dog lick her hand as she did it. He was keeping close.

Facing the mirroring window, she looked to see if the man in the doorway had noticed the movement. He hadn’t. His attention was on Eleanor; Eleanor’s on Rosamund’s corpse.

The queen was cupping her ear as if listening to a reply. “You don’t mind? So generous, but they say you were always generous with your favors. Oh, and forgive me, this bauble is mine.” Eleanor had lifted the crown off the dead woman’s head. “It was made for the wives of the counts of Anjou two centuries ago, and how dare he give it to a stinking great whore like you…”

Control had gone. With a scream, the queen sent the crown spinning away toward the window opposite them both as if she meant to smash the glass with it. Ward barked.

What saved Eleanor’s life was that the crown hit the window with the padded underside of its brim. If the glass had shattered, Adelia-dazedly watching the mirroring window shake as the missile bounced off it-would not have seen the reflection of Death slithering toward them. Nor the knife in its hand.

She didn’t have time to turn round. It was coming for Eleanor. Instinctively, Adelia flung herself sideways, and her left hand contacted Death’s shoulder.

In trying to deflect the knife, she misjudged and had her right palm sliced open by it. But her shove changed the momentum of the attacker, who went tumbling to the floor.

The scene petrified: Rosamund sitting unconcernedly in her chair; Eleanor, just as still, facing the window in which the attack had been reflected; Adelia standing and looking down at the figure lying sprawled facedown at her feet. It was hissing.

The dog approached it, sniffing, and then backed away.

So for a second. Then Lord Montignard was exclaiming over the queen while the mailed man had his boot on the attacker’s back and a sword raised in his two hands, looking at Eleanor for permission to strike.

“No.” Adelia thought she’d shrieked it, but shock diminished the word so that it sounded quietly reasonable.

The man paid her no attention. Expressionless, he went on looking at the queen, who had a hand to her head.