The Serpent’s Tale

The girl sat on a stool in the corner of Adelia and Gyltha’s room. She’d torn the veil off her head, and long, white-blond hair swayed over her face as she rocked back and forth. Allie, upset by the manifestations of such grief, had begun to bawl and was being jiggled quiet again in her mother’s arms. Ward, also showing an unexpected commiseration, lay with his head on Emma’s boots.

She’d fought to be there, literally. When at last they’d been able to prise her away from the body, she’d stretched her arms toward Adelia, saying, “I’ll go with her, her. She understands, she knows.”

“Dang sight more’n I do,” Master Bloat had said, and Adelia had rather sympathized with him-until, that is, he’d tried to drag his daughter off, putting a hand over her mouth so that her noise would attract no more attention than it had.

Emma had been his match, twisting and shrieking to beat him off. At last Sister Jennet had advised compliance. “Let her go with this lady for now. She has some medical knowledge and may be able to calm her.”

They could do nothing else, but from the looks Master and Mistress Bloat gave her as she helped their daughter toward the guesthouse, Adelia was aware that she’d added two more to her growing list of enemies.

She managed to persuade the girl to drink an infusion of lady’s slipper, and it calmed her enough that she could answer questions, though Gyltha, who was gently rubbing the back of Emma’s neck with rose oil, frowned at Adelia every time she asked one. A silent argument was going on between them.

Leave the poor soul alone, for pity’s sake.

I can’t.

She’s breaking her heart.

It’ll mend. Talbot’s won’t.

Gyltha might sorrow for the stricken one, but Adelia’s duty as she saw it was to Talbot of Kidlington, who had loved Emma Bloat and had ridden to the convent through snow to take her away and marry her, an elopement so financially disastrous to a third party-Adelia’s thoughts rested on the Lord of Wolvercote-that it had ordered his killing.

Master Hobnails and Master Clogs hadn’t been waiting on an isolated bridge on a snowy night for any old traveler to come along; common scoundrels though they undoubtedly were, they weren’t brainless. They knew, because somebody had told them, that at a certain hour a certain man would ride up to the convent gates… Kill him.

They had killed him, and then they’d fled over the bridge to the village-to be killed themselves.

By the very man who’d employed them in the first place?

Oh, yes, Wolvercote fitted that particular bill nicely.

Though perhaps not entirely. Adelia still puzzled over the lengths someone had gone to in order to make sure that the corpse was identified as Talbot’s. She supposed, if it was Wolvercote, he’d wanted Emma to know of her lover’s death as soon as possible, and that her hand-and her fortune-was now his again.

Yes, but presumably, when Talbot didn’t turn up, that way would have been made open. Why did the corpse have to be put under her nose, as it were, right away? And why in circumstances that pointed the accusing finger so directly at Wolvercote himself?

Do you see what they’ve done?

Who were the “they” that Emma thought had done it?

Adelia put Allie on the floor, gave her the teething ring that Mansur had carved for the child out of bone, and sat herself by Emma, smoothing back the long hair and mouthing “I have to” over her head at Gyltha.

The girl was almost apathetic with shock. “Let me stay here with you.” She said it over and over. “I don’t want to see them, any of them. I can’t. You’ve loved a man, you had his child. You understand. They don’t.”

“’Course you can stay,” Gyltha told her.

“My love is dead.”

So is mine, Adelia thought. The girl’s grief was her own. She forced it away. There’d been murder done, and death was her business. “You were going to Wales?” she asked, “In winter?”

“We’d had to wait, you see. Until he was twenty-one. To get his inheritance.” The sentences came in pieces with an abstracted dullness.

To Talbot of Kidlington, That the Lord and His angels bless you on this Day that Enters you into Man’s estate.

And on that day Talbot of Kidlington had set out to carry off Emma Bloat with, if Adelia remembered aright, the two silver marks that had been enclosed in Master Warin’s letter.

“His inheritance was two silver marks?” Then she recalled that Emma didn’t know about the marks because she didn’t know about the letter.

The girl barely noticed the interjection. “The land in Wales. His mother left it to him, Felin Fach…” She said the name softly, as if it had been spoken often, a sweet thing held out to her in her lover’s voice. “‘Felin Fach,’ he used to say. ‘The vale of the Aeron, where salmon leap up to meet the rod and the very earth yields gold.’”

“Gold?” Adelia looked a question at Gyltha. Is there gold in Wales?

Gyltha shrugged.

“He was going to take possession as soon as he gained his majority. It was part of his inheritance, you see. We were going there. Father Gwilym was waiting to marry us. ‘Funny little man, not a word of English…’” She was quoting again, almost smiling. “‘Yet in Welsh he can tie as tight a marriage knot as any priest in the Vatican.’”

This was dreadful; Gyltha was wiping her eyes. Adelia, too, was sorry, so sorry. To watch suffering like this was to be in pain oneself, but she had to have answers.

“Emma, who knew you were going to elope?”

“Nobody.” Now she did actually smile. “‘No cloak, or they’ll guess.

I’ll have one for you. Fitchet will open the gate…’”

“Fitchet?”

“Well, of course Fitchet knew about us; Talbot paid him.”

Apparently, the gatekeeper counted as nobody in Emma’s reckoning.

The girl’s face withered. “But he didn’t come. I waited in the gatehouse…I waited…I thought…I thought…oh, Sweet Jesus, show mercy to me, I blamed him…” She began clawing the air. “Why did they kill him? Couldn’t they just take his purse? Why kill him?”

Adelia met Gyltha’s eyes again. That was all right, then; Emma put her lover’s killing down to robbers-as, at this stage, it was probably better that she should. There was no point in inflaming her against Wolvercote until there was proof of his culpability. Indeed, he might be innocent. If he hadn’t known of the elopement…But Fitchet had known.

“So it was a secret, was it?”

“Little Priscilla knew, she guessed.” Again, that entrancement at being taken back to the past; the subterfuge had been thrilling. “And Fitchet, he smuggled our letters in and out. And Master Warin, of course, because he had to write the letter to Felin Fach so that Talbot could take seisin of it, but they were all sworn not to tell.” Suddenly, she gripped Adelia’s arm. “Fitchet. He wouldn’t have told the robbers, would he? He couldn’t.”

Adelia gave a reassurance she didn’t feel; the number of nobodies who’d known about the elopement was accumulating. “No, no. I’m sure not. Who is Master Warin?”

“Were they waiting for him?” She had her nails into Adelia’s skin. “Did they know he was carrying money? Did they know?”

Gyltha intervened. “A’course they didn’t.” She pulled Emma’s hand off Adelia’s arm and enfolded it in her own. “Just scum, they was. Roads ain’t safe for anybody.”

Emma looked wide-eyed at Adelia. “Did he suffer?”

Here, at least, was firm ground. “No. It was a bolt to the chest. He’d have been thinking of you, and then… nothing.”