The Serpent’s Tale

The convent enfolded her; the long, low, plain room spoke soothingly of proportion. It was dark outside now, and the glow of the brazier gave a shadow to each of the beams in the ceiling, making a pleasingly uniform pattern of dark and not-so-dark stripes against white plaster. Even muffled by the wool that Gyltha had stuffed in the cracks of the shutters to keep out the cold, the distant sound of the nuns singing Vespers was a reassurance of a thousand years of disciplined routine.

And all of it an illusion, because a corpse lay in its icehouse and, seven miles away, a dead woman sat at a writing table, both of them waiting…for what?

Resolution.

Adelia pleaded with them: I can’t give it to you, I’m frightened, I want to go home.

But jagged, almost forgotten images kept nudging at her mind: snowy footprints on a bridge, a letter crumpled in a saddlebag, other letters, copied letters, Bertha’s piglike nose snuffling at a scent…

Gyltha returned carrying a large pot of mutton and vegetables in broth, some spoons, a loaf tucked under one arm, and a leather bottle of ale under the other. She poured some of the broth into Allie’s bowl and began mashing it to a pulp, putting the pieces of meat into her mouth and chewing them with her big, strong teeth until they, too, were pulp, then returning them to the bowl. “Turnip and barley,” she said. “I’ll say this much for the sisters, they do a fair supper. And good, warm milk from the cow with little un’s porridge this morning.”

Reluctantly, because to mention one of the convent’s problems was somehow to solidify it, Adelia asked, “Is Bertha still in the cowshed?”

“Won’t come out, poor soul. That old Dakers still want to scrag her?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

Feeding Allie, who was making spirited attempts to feed herself, took concentration that allowed no thought for anything else.

When they’d wiped food off her hair as well as off their own, the child was put down to sleep and the two women ate their supper in silence, their feet stretched out to the brazier, passing the ale bottle back and forth between them.

Warm, the pain beginning to lessen, Adelia thought that such security as there was in her world rested at this moment in the gaunt old woman on the stool opposite hers. A day didn’t go by without a reminder of the gratitude she owed to Prior Geoffrey for their introduction, nor a strike of fear that Gyltha might leave her, nor, for that matter, puzzlement at why she stayed.

Adelia said, “Do you mind being here, Gyltha?”

“Ain’t got no choice, girl. We’m snowed up. Been snowing again, if you’d notice. Path down to the river’s gone and blocked itself again.”

“I mean, galloping across country to get here, away from home, murder…everything. You never complain.”

Gyltha picked a strand of mutton from her teeth, considered it, and popped it back into her mouth. “Somewhere to see, I suppose,” she said.

Perhaps that was it. Women generally had to stay where they were put, which in Gyltha’s case had been Cambridgeshire fenland, a place that Adelia found endlessly exotic but that was undoubtedly very flat. Why should not Gyltha’s heart drum to adventure in foreign places like any crusader’s? Or long to see God’s peace retained in her country as much as Rowley did? Or require, despite the risk, to see God’s justice done on those who killed?

Adelia shook her head at her. “What would I do without you?”

Gyltha poured the remnants of the broth from Adelia’s bowl into hers and put it down on the floor for Ward. “For a start, you wouldn’t have no time to find out who done in that poor lad, nor who it was done for Rosamund,” she said.

“Oh,” Adelia said, sighing. “Very well, tell me.”

“Tell ee what?” But Gyltha was smirking a satisfied smirk.

“You know very well. Who’s arrived? Who’s been asking questions about the boy in the icehouse? Somebody wanted him found and, sure as taxes, that somebody is going to question why he hasn’t been. Who is it?”

It was more than one. As if blown ahead of the snow that had now encased them, four people had arrived at Godstow during Adelia’s absence.

“Master and Mistress Bloat of Abingdon, they’re ma and pa to that young Emma as you took to. Come to see her married.”

“What are they like?”

“Big.” Gyltha spread her arms as if to encompass tree trunks. “Big bellies, big words, big voices-he has, anyhow, bellows like a bull as how he ships more wine from foreign parts than anybody else, sells more’n anybody else-for a nicer price than anybody else, I wouldn’t be surprised. Hog on a high horse, he is.”

By which Adelia gathered that Master Bloat reveled in a position he’d not been born to. “And his wife?”

In answer, Gyltha arranged her mouth into a ferocious simper, picked up the ale bottle, and ostentatiously prinked her little finger as she pretended to drink from it. She hadn’t taken to the Bloats.

“Unlikely murderers, though,” Adelia said. “Who else?”

“Their son-in-law-as-will-be.”

Another person with a valid reason for coming to Godstow.

“Aaaah.” So the beautiful, gallant writer of poetry had come to take his bride. How nice for that wild, charming girl, how nice that love would lighten the winter darkness for a while at least. “How did he get here?”

Gyltha shrugged. “Arrived from Oxford afore the blizzard set in, like the others. Seems he’s lord of the manor over the bridge, though he don’t spend much time there. Run-down old ruin, Polly says it is.” Gyltha had made friends in the kitchen. “His pa as took Stephen’s side in the war had a castle further upriver during the war, the which King Henry made un pull it down.”

“Is he as handsome as Emma thinks he is?”

But Adelia saw that here was another that hadn’t been taken to-this time, in depth. “Handsome is as handsome does,” Gyltha said. “Older’n I expected, and a proper lord, too, from his way of ordering people about. Been married before, but her died. The Bloats is lickin’ his boots for the favor of him making their girl a noblewoman.” Gyltha leaned forward slightly. “And him kindly accepting two hundred marks in gold as comes with her for a dowry.”

“Two hundred marks?” An immense sum.

“So Polly says. In gold.” Gyltha nodded. “Ain’t short of a shilling or two, our Master Bloat.”

“He can’t be. Still, if he’s prepared to purchase his daughter’s happiness…” She paused. “Is she happy?”

Gyltha shrugged. “Ain’t seen her. She’s kept to the cloisters. I’da thought she’d come rushing to see this Lord Wolvercote…”

“Wolvercote?”

“That’s his lordship’s name. Suits him, an’ all; he do look proper wolfish.”

“Gyltha…Wolvercote, that’s the man…he’s the one who’s raised an army for the queen. He’s supposed to be at Oxford, waiting for Eleanor to join him.”

“Well, he ain’t, he’s here.”

“Is he now? But…” Adelia was determined to follow the gleam of romance where it led. “He’s not a likely murderer, either. It speaks well for him if he’s prepared to delay a war because he can’t wait to marry young Emma.”

“He’s delayin’ it,” Gyltha pointed out, “for young Emma plus two hundred marks. In gold.” She leaned forward, pointing with her knitting needle. “You know the first thing he do when he got back to the village? Finds a couple of rogues robbin’ his manor and hangs ’em quicker’n buttered lightning.”

“The two on the bridge? I wondered about them.”

“Sister Havis ain’t happy. She made a right to-do about it, according to Polly. See, it’s the abbey’s bridge, and the sisters don’t like it being decorated with corpses. ‘You take ’em down now,’ she told his lordship. But he says as it’s his bridge, so he won’t. And he ain’t.”

“Oh, dear.” So much for romance. “Well, who’s the fourth arrival?”