The Serpent’s Tale

It was too gruesome for them. Here, in their familiar, wooden-crucked English chapter house, stood a towering figure in outlandish clothing-a heathen, king’s warrant or not-telling them what they did not want to hear through the medium of a woman with a dubious reputation.

They didn’t have investigative minds. It seemed as if none of them, not even their canny old abbess, possessed the ferocious curiosity that drove Adelia herself, nor any curiosity at all. All questions had been answered for them by the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the rule instituted by Saint Benedict.

Nor were they too concerned with earthly justice. The murderer, if a murderer there was, would be sentenced more terribly when he faced the Great Judge, to whom all sins were known, than by any human court.

The belt, the broken chain, and the measuring cord lay snaked on the table before them, but they kept their eyes away.

Well, yes, they said, but was the lack of distance between Bertha’s feet and the milking stool significant? Surely that poor misguided girl could have somehow climbed onto one of the cowshed stalls with the belt round her neck and jumped? Who knew what strength was given to the desperate? Certainly, Bertha had been in fear of what Dame Dakers might do to her, but did not that in itself argue felo-de-se?

Rowley, if only you were here…

“It was murder,” Adelia insisted. “Lord Mansur has proved it was murder.”

Mother Edyve considered the matter. “I would not have credited Dakers with the strength.”

Adelia despaired. It was like being on a toasting fork-whichever side was presented, it was flipped over so that the other faced the fire. If Bertha had been murdered, then Dakers, revenging Rosamund’s death, had been the murderer-who else could it have been? If Dakers wasn’t the murderer, then Bertha had not been murdered.

“Perhaps one of the Flemings did it, Wolvercote’s or Schwyz’s,” Sister Bullard, the cellaress, said. “They are lustful, violent men, especially in liquor. Which reminds me, Mother, we must set a guard on the cellars. They are already stealing our wine.”

That opened a floodgate of complaint: “Mother, how are we to feed them all?”

“Mother, the mercenaries…I fear for our young women.”

“And our people-look how they beat the poor miller.”

“The courtiers are worse, Mother. The lewd songs they sing…”

Adelia was sorry for them. On top of their worries, here were two strange persons, who had arrived at Godstow in company with a murdered body from the bridge, now suggesting that another killer was at large within the abbey’s very walls.

The sisters did not-indeed, could not-blame them for either death, but Adelia knew from some sideways looks from under the nuns’ veils that she and Mansur had acquired the taint of carrion.

“Even if what Lord Mansur says is true, Mother,” said Sister Gregoria, the almoner, “what can be done about it? We are snowed up; we cannot send for the sheriff’s coroner until the thaw.”

“And while the snow lasts, King Henry cannot rescue us,” Sister Bullard pointed out. “Until he can, our abbey, our very existence, is in peril.”

That was what mattered to them. Their abbey had survived one conflict between warring monarchs; it might not survive another. If the queen should oust the king, she would necessarily reward the blackguard Wolvercote, who had secured her victory-and Lord Wolvercote had long desired Godstow and its lands. The nuns could envisage a future in which they begged for their bread in the streets.

“Allow Lord Mansur to continue his inquiries,” Adelia pleaded. “At least do not bury Bertha in unconsecrated ground until all the facts are known.”

Mother Edyve nodded. “Please tell Lord Mansur we are grateful for his interest,” she said in her fluting, emotionless voice. “You may leave us to question Dame Dakers. After that, we shall pray for guidance in the matter.”

It was a dismissal. Mansur and Adelia had to bow and leave.

Discussion broke out behind them almost before they’d reached the door-but it was not about Bertha. “Yes, but where is the king? How may he come to our aid if he doesn’t even know we are in need of it? We cannot trust that Bishop Rowley reached him-I fear for his death.”

As the two went out of the chapter house door, Mansur said, “The women are frightened. They will not help us search for the killer.”

“I haven’t even persuaded them there is a killer,” Adelia said.

They were skirting the infirmary when, behind them, a voice called Adelia’s name. It was the prioress. She came up, puffing. “A word, if I may, mistress.” Adelia nodded, bowed a farewell to Mansur, and turned back.

For a while, the two women went in silence.

Sister Havis, Adelia realized, had not spoken a word during the discussion in the chapter house. She was aware, too, that the nun did not like her. To walk with her was like accompanying the apotheosis of the cold that gripped the abbey, a figure denuded of warmth, as frozen as the icicles spiking the edge of every roof.

Outside the nuns’ chapel, the prioress stopped. She kept her face averted from Adelia, and her voice was hard. “I cannot approve of you,” she said. “I did not approve of Rosamund. The tolerance that Mother Abbess extends to sins of the flesh is not mine.”

“If that’s all you have to say…” Adelia said, walking away.

Sister Havis strode after her. “It is not, but it has to be spoken.” She withdrew a mittened hand from under her scapular and held it out to bar Adelia’s progress. In it were the broken necklet, the measuring cord, and the belt. She said, “I intend to use these objects as you have done, in investigation. I shall go to the cowshed. Whatever your weaknesses, mistress, I recognize an analytical soul.”

Adelia stopped.

The prioress kept her thin face turned away. “I travel,” she said. “Mine is the work to administer our lands around the country, in consequence of which I see more of the dung heap of humanity than do my sisters. I see it in its iniquity and error, its disregard for the flames of hell which await it.”

Adelia was still. This was not just a lecture on sin; Sister Havis had something to tell her.

“Yet,” the prioress went on, “there is greater evil. I was present at Rosamund Clifford’s bedside; I witnessed her terrible end. For all that she was adulterous, the woman should not have died as she did.”

Adelia went on waiting.

“Our bishop had visited her a day or two before; he questioned her servants and went away again. Rosamund was still well then, but he believed from what he’d been told that there had been a deliberate attempt to poison her, which, as you and I know, subsequently succeeded.” Suddenly, the prioress’s head turned and she was glaring into Adelia’s eyes. “Is that what he told you?”

“Yes,” Adelia said. “It was why he brought us here. He knew the blame would fall on the queen. He wanted to uncover the real killer and avert a war.”

“He set great store by you, then, mistress.” It was a sneer.

“Yes, he did,” Adelia hissed back at her. Her feet were numb with standing, and her grief for Rowley was undoing her. “Tell me whatever you want to tell me, or let me go. In God’s name, are we discussing Rosamund, Bertha, or the bishop?”

The prioress blinked; she had not expected anger.

“Bertha,” she said, with something like conciliation. “We are discussing Bertha. It may interest you to know, mistress, that I took charge of Dame Dakers yesterday. The female is deranged, and I did not want her roaming the abbey. Just before Vespers I locked her in the warming room for the night.”

Adelia’s head went up. “What time is evening milking?”

“After Vespers.”

They had begun walking in step. “Bertha was still alive then,” Adelia said. “The milkmaid saw her.”

“Yes, I have talked to Peg.”

“I knew it wasn’t Dakers.”

The prioress nodded. “Not unless the wretched female can walk through a thick and bolted door. Which, I may say, most of my sisters are prepared to believe that she can.”

“You may say, you may say.” Adelia stopped, furious. “Why didn’t you say all this in chapter?”

The prioress faced her. “You were making yourself busy proving to us that Bertha was murdered. I happened to know Dakers could not have killed her. The question then arose, who did? And why? It was not a wolf I wanted to loose amongst sisters who are troubled and frightened enough already.”