The Serpent’s Tale

The nun-she was one Adelia didn’t know-hissed her concern as Adelia picked up the lantern and, with the other hand, pulled back Bertha’s lids to expose the eyes.

There were flecks of blood in their whites. Only to be expected.

Getting onto her knees, Adelia held the lantern as close as she could to the neck. There were lines from the edges of the strap that the girl had hung by, but there were other marks-gouges that traveled down the throat.

And running horizontally around the skin of the neck beneath the strap bruises was a line of tiny circular indentations.

The nun was on her feet, trying to flap Adelia away from the body. “What are you doing? You are disturbing the dead.”

Adelia ignored her, didn’t even hear her. She recovered Bertha’s face with the sheet and turned it back at the other end, lifting the girl’s skirts to expose the lower body.

The nun ran from the chapel.

The vagina showed no sign of tearing or, as far as it was possible to see, any trace of semen.

Adelia replaced the sheet.

Damn. There was a way of knowing. Her old tutor, Gordinus, had shown her by opening the necks of prisoners who’d been hanged and comparing their hyoid bones with bones of those who’d been garroted-a form of execution peculiar to a district of Pavia, which had inherited it from the Romans. “See, my dear? The bone is rarely broken in garroting, whereas it is, almost invariably, in hanging. Thus, if we are suspicious in a case of strangulation, we may distinguish whether it was self- inflicted or the result of an attack by another. Also, in the case of hanged suicides, there is seldom bleeding into the neck muscles, whereas if we find it in a corpse supposed to have hanged itself, we have cause to be suspicious that we are looking at a case of murder.”

A dissection…if she could just do a dissection…oh, well, she’d have to rely on measurements…

“And what is this?” The deep voice rang through the chapel, dispelling its quiet, seeming to disturb the dust motes and bring in a sharper light.

The nun was gabbling. “Do you see her, my lord? This woman…”

“I see her.” He turned on Adelia, who had run the cord from the top of Bertha’s head to her bare toes. “Are you mad? Why do you dishonor the dead, mistress? Even one such as this?”

“Hmmm.” Having made a knot in it, Adelia wound the cord around her hand and began vaguely wandering toward the door.

Splendid in breadth and height and color, the abbot blocked her way. “I asked, mistress, why you interfere with the poor soul lying there?” The West Country accent had gone, replaced by schooled vowels.

Adelia moved past him. The strap, she thought, perhaps it’s still in the cowshed. And my chain.

The abbot watched her go and then, with a sweep of his arms, sent the nun back to her vigil.

Outside, despite a suicide, the presence of a queen, occupation by her mercenaries, and the terrible cold, the wheel of the abbey’s day was being sent spinning. Slipping on dirty, nobbling ice, Godstow’s people hurried past her to reawaken damped-down fires and start their work.

Jacques caught up with Adelia as she passed the stables. “I waited, mistress. What’s to be done with this?” He was carrying a bucket and swung it in front of her so that she had to stop. It contained an arm; Adelia stared at it for a moment before remembering that, in what seemed like another epoch, she had performed an amputation.

“I don’t know. Bury it somewhere, I suppose.” She pressed on.

“Bury it,” Jacques said, looking after her. “And the ground like bloody iron.”

The cowshed in daylight. Warm, despite the open doors. Sun shining onto its bespattered floor, quiet except for a rhythmic swish from one of the stalls, where a young woman was milking. The stool she sat on was the one that had been kicked over underneath Bertha’s hanging body.

Her name, she said, was Peg, and it was she who, entering the shed early to begin the morning’s milking, had discovered Bertha. The sight had sent her into screams, and she’d had to run back home for a drop of her mother’s soothing cordial before she could face returning to the scene and start work.

“’Tis why I’m so late today. These poor beasts’ve been lowing for me to come and relieve ’em but ’twas the shock, d’ye see. Opened the doors and there she was. Never get over it, I won’t. This old shed, ’twill never be the same again, not to me it won’t.”

Adelia knew how she felt; the comforting smell of animal flatulence and straw, the innocent homeliness of the place had been invaded. An ancient beam from which a body had hung was now a gibbet. She wouldn’t get over it, either. Bertha had died here, and of all the deaths, Bertha’s cried out the loudest.

“Can I help ye, mistress?” Peg wanted to know, carrying on milking.

“I’m looking for a necklet, a cross and chain. I gave it to Bertha. She isn’t wearing it now, and I’d like to put it in her grave with her.”

Peg’s cap went askew as she shook her head without it losing contact with the cow’s ribs. “Never seen un.”

In her mind’s eye, Adelia resurrected the scene of an hour or so ago. A man-she thought it was Fitchet the gatekeeper-had run forward, righted the stool that lay below Bertha’s feet, stood on it, and lifted the body so that the strap it hung by came free of the beam’s hook.

What, then? That’s right, that’s right, other men had helped him lay the body down. Somebody had undone the strap and tossed it away. The people clustering around, hopelessly trying to revive the dead girl, had hindered Adelia from seeing whether her cross and chain was on Bertha’s neck. If it had been, the strap had covered it and pressed it tightly against the girl’s skin as she hanged, forcing its links into her flesh and causing those indentations.

But if she hadn’t been wearing it…

Adelia began looking around.

In a cobwebby corner, she found the strap. It was a belt, an old one. A worn rivet showed where the owner had been wont to fasten it, but at the far end of the leather, another rivet had been badly contorted where it had been slipped over the hook on the beam and taken the weight of Bertha’s body.

“Where did she get a belt from, I wonder?” Adelia asked herself out loud, putting it over her shoulder.

“Dunno, she never had no belt,” Peg said.

That’s right. She hadn’t. Adelia walked slowly to the far end of the cowshed, kicking up wisps of hay as she went to see if they hid anything.

Behind her came the swish of milk as it went into the pail and Peg’s reflective voice: “Poor thing, I can’t think what come to her. ’Course, she were a bit of a looby, but even so…”

“Did she say anything to you?”

“Said a lot, always muttering away up the other end there, enough to give you goose bumps, but I paid her no mind.”

Adelia reached the stall that Bertha had occupied. It was dark here. She balanced the lantern on top of a partition and went down on her knees to start sifting the straw, feeling through it to the hard-packed earth underneath.

She heard Peg address her cow, “You’re done then, madam,” and the friendly slap on its rump as the milkmaid left it to go on to the next, and the sound of footfalls as some new person entered the shed, and Peg’s voice again: “And a good morning to you, Master Jacques.”

“Good morning to you, Mistress Peg.”

There was flirtation in both voices that brought a lightness to the day. Jacques, Adelia thought, despite his sticking-out ears and breathy overeagerness, had made a conquest.

He came hurrying up the aisle and paused to watch Adelia as she scrabbled. “I buried it, mistress.”

“What? Oh, good.”

“Can I help whatever it is you’re doing, mistress?” He was becoming used to her eccentricities.

“No.”