He’d come to the end of his orders. He was turning, kneeling to Eleanor, his sword proffered, hilt first, for her to touch. “Always your servant, lady. To you and God in majesty, I swear my fealty.”
And Eleanor was touching the hilt. Standing up. Skirting him to get to the chancel steps. Raising her small fist. Looking beautiful.
“I, Eleanor, Queen of England, Duchess of Aquitaine, do swear that you are my people and that I shall love and serve you as I love and serve my gracious Lord, Jesus Christ.”
If she expected applause, she didn’t get any. But she smiled; she was sure of her charm. “My good and faithful vassal, Lord Wolvercote, is a man of war, yet he is also a man of love, as shall be witnessed by his marriage to one of your own within a day or two, a celebration to which everyone here shall be invited.”
That didn’t get any applause, either, but from somewhere deep within the congregation, somebody farted. Loudly.
The men-at-arms turned their heads this way and that, looking for the culprit, but, though a shiver swept through the crowd, every face remained stolid.
The Abbot of Eynsham was on his feet, retrieving the situation by administering a blessing. At the “go in peace,” the doors opened and they were allowed to file out between a phalanx of armed men who directed them to go home without talking.
Back in their room, Gyltha tore off her cloak. “Are they all gone daft, or is it me?”
“They have.” She put Allie onto the bed; the child had been bored by the proceedings and had fallen asleep.
“What’s to be gained by it?”
“Infighting,” Adelia said. “He’s making sure he’s queen’s champion before she can get another. Did you see Schwyz’s face? Oh, poor Emma.”
“‘Queen’s champion’?” scoffed Gyltha. “If Godstow wasn’t for Henry Plantagenet before, it bloody is now-that’s what the queen’s champion’s gone and done.”
There was a knock on the door.
It was the mercenary, Cross, truculent as ever. He addressed Gyltha but pointed his chin at Adelia. “She’s got to come along of me.”
“And who are you? Here, you’re one of them.” Angrily, Gyltha pushed the man out onto the steps. “She ain’t going anywhere with you, you pirate, and you can tell that bloody Wolvercote I told you so.”
The mercenary staggered under the assault as he held it off. “I ain’t Wolvercote’s, I’m Schwyz’s.” He appealed to Adelia. “Tell her.”
Gyltha kept pushing. “You’re a bastard Fleming, whoever you be. Get away.”
“Sister Jennet sent me.” It was another appeal to Adelia; Sister Jennet was Godstow’s infirmarian. “The doctor wants you for summat. Urgent.”
Gyltha ceased her assault. “What doctor?”
“The darky. Thought he was a bargee, but turns out he’s a doctor.”
“A patient,” Adelia said, relieved. Here was something she could deal with. She bent down to kiss Allie and went to get her bag. “Who is it? What’s the trouble?”
Cross said, “It’s Poyns, ain’t it?” as if she should know. “His arm’s bad.”
“In what way bad?”
“Gone sort of green.”
Even as they left, accompanied by Ward, Gyltha was giving the mercenary little shoves. “An’ you bring her back as good as she goes, you scavengin’ bugger, or it’s me you’ll answer to. And what about your bloody curfew?”
“Ain’t my curfew,” Cross shouted back. “’S Wolvercote’s.”
It was in operation already. Ward gave a grunt in reply to the bark of a fox somewhere out in the fields, but apart from that, the abbey was quiet. As they skirted the church and turned up by the barn, a sentry stepped out of the doorway of the little, round pepper pot of a building that served as the convent’s lockup.
The flambeau above the doorway shone on his helmet. He had a pike in his hand. “Who goes there?”
“Infirmary, mate,” Cross told him. “This here’s a nurse. Pal of mine’s poorly.”
“Give the password.”
“What bloody password? I’m a queen’s soldier, same as you.”
“In the name of Lord Wolvercote, give us the password, see, or I’ll run you through.”
“Listen here, friend…” Avoiding the pike, Cross shambled up to the sentry, apparently to explain, and hit him on the jaw.
He was a short man, Cross, but the taller sentry went down as if poleaxed.
Cross didn’t even look at him. He gestured to Adelia. “Come
Before obeying, she stooped to make sure the sentry was breathing. He was, and beginning to groan.
Oh, well, it had been a password of sorts.
“I’m coming.”
Sister Jennet was imperiling her immortal soul by bringing in on one of her cases a man she thought to be a heathen doctor. Nor was she doing it any good, either, by acquiescing to the presence of his “assistant,” a woman whose relationship with the bishop had caused speculation among the sisterhood.
Yet that same bishop during his visit had spoken of the skill and scope of Arab medicine in general and of this practitioner in particular, and if she was religious, Sister Jennet was also a doctor manque; it was against every instinct of her nature to watch one of her patients die from a condition about which she could do nothing but a Saracen could.
The tug and counter-tug of the battle within her was apparent in the anger with which she greeted Adelia. “You took your time, mistress. And leave this dog outside. It’s bad enough that I have to countenance mercenaries in the ward.” The infirmaress glared at Cross, who cowered.
Adelia had seen infirmaries where Ward’s presence would have improved the smell. But not here. She looked around her; the long ward was as clean as any she’d encountered. Fresh straw on its boards, the scent of burning herbs from the braziers, white sheets, every patient’s head cropped close against lice, and the ordered bustle of the attendant nuns suggesting that here was efficient care for the sick.
She shut Ward outside. “Perhaps you would tell me what I can do.”
Sister Jennet was taken aback; Adelia’s manner and plainness of dress were unexpected in a bishop’s moll. Somewhat mollified, the infirmaress explained what she required of Dr. Mansur. “…but we are both imprisoned in the damned Tower of Babel.”
“I see,” Adelia said. “You can’t understand him.” Mansur probably understood quite well but could not move without her.
“Nor he me. It is why I sent for you. You speak his tongue, I understand.” She paused. “Is he as skilled as Bishop Rowley declared him to be?” At the mention of the name, her eyes flickered to Adelia’s face and away.
“You will not be disappointed,” Adelia promised her.
“Well, anything is better than the village barber. Don’t stand there. Come along.” She glared again at the mercenary. “You, too, I suppose.”
The patient was at the far end of the ward. They’d put woven screens of withies round the bed, but the smell coming from beyond confirmed the reason for Sister Jennet’s need of unchristian help.
He was a young man, his terror at his surroundings enhanced by the tall, white-robed, dark-faced figure looming over him. “It don’t hurt,” he kept saying. “It don’t hurt.”
Mansur spoke in Arabic. “Where have you been?”
Adelia replied in the same tongue. “Summoned to church. We’re under military rule.”
“Who are we fighting?”
“God knows. Snowmen. What have we got here?”
Mansur leaned forward and gently lifted a covering of lint from the boy’s left arm.
“No time to waste, I think.”
There wasn’t. The mangled lower arm was black and discharging stinking, yellow pus.
