The Serpent’s Tale

burn in hell.

But Adelia’s ethos was Salerno’s, where Arab, Jewish, and even Christian minds refused to set barriers on their search for knowledge. She had lectured him: “How can it be God’s purpose to watch a man drowning when to stretch out one’s hand would save him? You were drowning in your own urine. Was I to fold my arms rather than relieve the bladder? No, I knew how to do it and I did it. And I knew because I had studied the offending gland in men who’d died from it.”

An oddly prim little thing she’d been then, unsophisticated, curiously nunlike except for her almost savage honesty, her intelligence, and her hatred of superstition. She had at least gained something from her time in England, he thought-more womanliness, a softening, and, of course, the baby-the result of a love affair as passionate and as unsuitable as that of Heloise and Abelard.

Prior Geoffrey sighed and waited for her to ask why, busy and important man that he was, he had sailed forth to look for her.

The advent of winter had stripped the fens of leaves, allowing the sun unusual access to the river so that its water reflected back exactly the wild shapes of naked willow and alder along the banks. Adelia, voluble with relief and triumph, pointed out the names of the birds flying up from under the barge’s prow to the stolid baby on her lap, repeating their names in English, Latin, and French, and appealing to Mansur across the water when she forgot the Arabic.

How old is my godchild now? the prior wondered, amused. Eight months? Nine? “Somewhat early to be a polyglot,” he said.

“You can’t start too soon.”

She looked up at last. “Where are we going? I presume you did not come so far on the chance of baptizing a baby.”

“A privilege, medica,” Prior Geoffrey said. “I was taken back to a blessed stable in Bethlehem. But no, I did not come for that. This messenger”-he beckoned forward a figure that had been standing, cloaked and transfixed, at the barge prow-“arrived for you at the priory with a summons, and since he would have had difficulty finding you in these waters, I volunteered to bring him.”

Anyway, he’d known he must be at hand when the summons was delivered; she wouldn’t want to obey it.

“Dang bugger,” Adelia said in pure East Anglian-like Mansur’s, her English vocabulary was being enlarged by Gyltha. “What?”

The messenger was a skinny young fellow, and Adelia’s glare almost teetered him backward. Also, he was looking, openmouthed, to the prior for confirmation. “This is the lady Adelia, my lord?” It was, after all, a name that suggested nobility; he’d expected dignity-beauty, even-the sweep of a skirt on marble, not this dowdy thing with a dog and a baby.

Prior Geoffrey smiled. “The lady Adelia, indeed.”

Oh, well. The young man bowed, flinging back a cloak to show the arms embroidered on his tabard, two harts rampant and a golden saltire. “From my most reverend master, the lord Bishop of Saint Albans.”

A scroll was extended.

Adelia didn’t take it. The animation had leeched out of her. “What does he want?” It was said with a frigidity the messenger was unused to. He looked helplessly at the prior.

Prior Geoffrey intervened; he had received a similar scroll. Still using Latin, he said, “It appears that our lord bishop needs your expertise, Adelia. He’s summoned you to Cambridge-something about an attempted murder in Oxfordshire. I gather it is a matter heavy with political implications.”

The messenger went on proffering his scroll; Adelia went on not taking it. She appealed to her friend. “I’m not going, Geoffrey. I don’t want to go.”

“I know, my dear, but it is why I have come. I’m afraid you must.”

“I don’t want to see him. I’m happy here. Gyltha, Mansur, Ulf, and this one…” She dandled the child at him. “I like the fens, I like the people. Don’t make me go.”

The plea lacerated him, but he hardened his heart. “My dear, I have no choice. Our lord bishop sends to say that it is a matter of the king’s business. The king’s. Therefore, you have no choice, either. You are the king’s secret weapon.”

TWO

Cambridge hadn’t expected to see its bishop again so soon. Eighteen months ago, after his appointment to the see of Saint Albans, the town had turned out for him with all the pomp due a man whose word ranked only a little below that of God, the Pope, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

With equal pomp, it had seen him off on an inaugural circuit of his diocese that, because it was huge, like all England’s sees, would take him more than two years to complete.

Yet here he was, before his time, without the lumbering baggage train that had accompanied him when he left, and with gallopers coming only a few hours ahead to warn of his arrival.

Still, Cambridge turned out for him. In strength. Some people fell on their knees or held up their children to receive the great man’s blessing; others ran at his stirrup, babbling their grievances for him to mend. Most just enjoyed the spectacle.

A popular man, Bishop Rowley Picot. One of Cambridge’s own. Been on Crusade. A king’s appointee to the bishopric, too, not the Pope’s. Which was good, King Henry II being nearer and more immediately powerful than the Vatican.

Not one of your dry-as-a-stick bishops, either: known to have a taste for hunting, grub, and his drink, with an eye for the ladies, so they said, but given all that up since God tapped him on the shoulder. And hadn’t he brought to justice the child murderers who’d terrorized the town a while back?

Mansur and Adelia, followed disconsolately by the bishop’s messenger, had insisted on scouring Cambridge’s fair for Gyltha, and now, having found her, Mansur was holding her up so that she could peer over the heads of the crowd to watch the bishop go by. “Dressed like a Christmas beef, bless him,” Gyltha reported down to Adelia. “Ain’t you going to let little un look?”

“No,” Adelia said, pressing her child more closely to her.

“Got a crosier and ever’thing,” Gyltha persisted. “Not sure that hat suits un, though.”

In her mind’s eye, Adelia saw a portly, portentous, mitered figure representing, as most bishops did, the hypocrisy and suffocation of a church that opposed not only herself but every advance necessary for the mental and physical health of mankind.

There was a touch on her shoulder. “If you would follow me, mistress. His lordship is to grant you an audience in his house, but first he must receive the sheriff and celebrate Mass.”

“Grant us a audience,” Gyltha mimicked as Mansur lowered her to the ground. “That’s rich, that is.”

“Um.” The bishop’s messenger-his name had turned out to be Jacques-was still off- balance; Saracens and fishwives were not the sort of people he was in service to deal with. Somewhat desperately, he said, “Mistress, I believe my lord expects his interview to be with you only.”

“This lady and gentleman come with me,” Adelia told him, “or I don’t go.”

Being in Cambridge again was distressing her. The worst moments of her life, and the best, had passed in this town; the place was haunted by spirits whose bones rested in peace while others still shrieked to a god that hadn’t heard them.

“The dog, too,” she added, and saw the poor messenger’s eyes roll. She didn’t care; it had been a concession to come at all. When she’d stopped off at her house on the way in order to pack suitable winter clothing for them all, she had gone so far as to wash her hair and change into her best dress, shabby though it now was. Further than that, she would not go.

The episcopal residence-the bishop had one in every major town in the diocese-was in Saint Mary’s parish, a building now abuzz with servants preparing it for unexpected habitation.