The Serpent’s Tale

the queen’s orders had been necessary and perceptive; they might well defuse a situation that was becoming intolerable. And if a feast could introduce gaiety into Godstow, by God, it needed it.

With the resurgence of Eleanor’s energy came an invitation. “To Mistress Adelia, a summons from her gracious lady, Queen Eleanor.” Jacques brought it.

“You running errands for royalty now?” Gyltha asked at the door. The messenger had found brighter clothes from somewhere, curled hair hid his ears, and his perfume reached Adelia, who was across the room.

He’d also found a new dignity. “Mistress, I am so favored. And now I must go to the Lord Mansur. He, too, is summoned.”

Gyltha watched him go. “Aping they courtiers,” she said with disapproval. “Our Rowley’ll kick his arse for him when he comes back.”

“Rowley’s not coming back,” Adelia said.

When Mansur strode into the royal chamber, one of the courtiers muttered audibly, “And now we entertain heathens.” And as Adelia followed behind with Ward ambling at her heels, “Oh, Lord, look at that cap. And the dog, my dear.”

Eleanor, however, was all kindness. She came sweeping forward, offering her hand to be kissed. “My Lord Mansur, how pleased we are to see you.” To Adelia: “My dear child, we have been remiss. We have been kept busy with matters of state, of course, but even so I fear we have neglected one with whom I fought against the devil’s spawn.”

The long upper room had been the abbess’s, but now it was definitely Eleanor’s. For surely Mother Edyve had not scented it with the richness of the heathen East nor filled it with artifacts so colorful-shawls, cushions, a gloriously autumnal triptych-that they eliminated the naive, biblical pastels on her walls. Mother Edyve had never knelt at a prie-dieu made from gold, nor would her bedposts have roared with carved lions, nor had gossamer, floating like cobwebs, descended from the bed’s tester over her pillow, nor male courtiers like adoring statuary, nor a beautiful minstrel to fill the abbatial air with a love song.

Yet, Adelia thought, still astonished by the bed-how had they got the thing on the boat?-the effect was not sexual. Sensual certainly, but this was not the room of a houri, it was merely…Eleanor.

It had certainly drawn Jacques into its spell. Lounging in a corner, he bowed to her, beaming and waggling his fingers. So here he was, and-to judge from the joy exuding from him, his even higher boots, and a new style of hair that hid his wide ears-in Aquitanian fashion paradise.

The queen was plying Mansur with dried dates and almond-paste sweetmeats. “We who have been to Outremer know better than to offer you wine, my lord, but”-a click of elegant royal fingers toward a page-“our cook magicks a tolerable sherbet.”

Mansur kept his face stolidly blank.

“Oh, dear,” Eleanor said. “Does the doctor not understand me?”

“I fear not, lady,” Adelia said. “I translate for him.” Mansur was fairly fluent in Norman French, which was being spoken here, but the pretense that he was restricted to Arabic had served the two of them well, and probably would again; it was surprising what he learned when among those who believed him not to understand. And if Bertha’s killer was somewhere among this company…

What could be wanted of him? He was being treated with honor for someone whose race the queen had gone on Crusade to defeat.

Ah, Eleanor was asking her to pass on praise to Mansur for his medical skill in saving the life of “one of dear Schwyz’s mercenaries”; Sister Jennet had sung so highly of him.

That was it, then. A good physician was always worth having. Christian disdain for Arab and Jew did not extend to their doctors, whose cures among their own people-partly brought about, Adelia believed, by their religions’ strict dietary laws-gave them a high reputation.

So she herself was here merely as an interpreter.

But no, apparently she was a witness to Eleanor’s courage; history was being changed.

Propelling her around by a hand on her shoulder, the queen told the story of what had happened in the upper room of Wormhold Tower, where, in the presence of a rotting corpse, a sword-wielding demon had appeared.

Eleanor, it seemed, had held up a calm hand to it. “Thou art a Plantagenet fiend, for that race is descended from demons. In the name of Our Savior, go back to thy master.”

And lo, the fiend had dropped its sword and slunk back whence it had come.

What did I do? Adelia wondered.

“…and this little person here, my own Mistress Athalia, then picked up the sword the fiend had dropped, though it was still very hot and stank of sulphur, and threw it out of the casement.”

Glad I could help. Adelia speculated on whether the queen believed her own nonsense and decided she didn’t. Perhaps Dakers’s attack had shocked and embarrassed her so that she must now present it to her advantage. Or perhaps she was playing games. She was bored; all these people were bored.

Having oohed and aahed throughout the recital, the courtiers applauded-except Montignard, who, with a dirty look at Adelia, burst out with, “But it was I who ministered to you afterwards, lady, did I not?” though the list of the things he had done was overlaid by a slow hand clap from the Abbot of Eynsham leaning against one of the bedposts.

Eleanor turned on him, sharp. “Our neglect is actually yours, my lord. We charged you to look after our brave Mistress Amelia, did we not?”

The abbot surveyed Adelia from the tips of her snow-rimed boots to the unattractive cap with its earflaps on her head and down again until his eyes met hers. “Lady, I thought I had,” he said.

The queen was still talking. Shocked, Adelia didn’t hear her. The man wished her harm, had tried to procure it. At the same time, she felt his regard, like that of a swordsman saluting another. In a way she had not yet fathomed, she, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, known only in this place as the Bishop of Saint Albans’s fancy and a useful picker up of demonic swords, mattered to Lord Abbot of Eynsham. He’d just told her so.

The queen’s hands were spread out in a question, and she was smiling. The courtiers were laughing. One of them said, “The poor thing’s overwhelmed.”

Adelia blinked. “I beg your pardon, lady.”

“I said, dear, that you must join us here; we cannot have our little helpmeet living in whatever hole the abbey provides. You shall move in with my waiting women, I am sure they have room, and you shall take part in our sport. You must be so bored out there.”

You are, Adelia thought again. Eleanor probably did secretly feel she had a debt for having her life saved, but even more, she needed a new pet to play with. Ennui was everywhere, in the screech of female bickering coming from the next room where the waiting women waited, in the pettish laughter directed at herself, the sense that they had run out of butts for their wit and required another.

This, after all, was a company and queen that left one castle once it had begun to stink and moved on to the next, hunting, entertaining, and being entertained, kept clean and fed by an army of cooks, fullers, laundresses, and servants, many of whom had been left behind on the trail to war that Eleanor had taken, and even more subsequently lost to the snow. Without these resources, they festered.

One of the courtiers was ostentatiously holding his nose over Ward, though the young man’s own person, let alone his linen, was hardly more delectable.

Move in with them all? Lord, help me. She wasn’t going to accept an invitation to step into an overcrowded hell, even when extended by a queen.

On the other hand, if one of these was Bertha’s killer, how better to sniff him out than by asking questions and, hopefully, receiving answers? Move in with them? No, but if, by day, she could have access to the royal chambers…

Adelia bowed. “Lady, you are all goodness. As long as my baby would not disturb your nights…”

“A child?” The queen was intrigued. “Why didn’t they tell me? A little boy?”

“A girl,” Adelia told her. “She is teething and therefore wakeful…”

There was a light scream from Montignard. “Teething?”

“A synonym for screaming, so I do understand,” Eynsham said.

“Our two lords do not like babies,” Eleanor confided to Adelia.