The Serpent’s Tale

slit.

“Well, there damn was,” Peg said.

The door to the lockup opened and a bad-tempered sentry came out. “Oh, get on home,” he shouted. “No need for this rumpus. Straw caught fire, is all. I stamped it out.” It was Cross. He locked the door behind him and gestured at the crowd with his spear. “Go on. Get off with you.”

Relieved, grumbling, people began to disperse.

Adelia stayed where she was.

“What is it?” Mansur asked.

“I don’t know.”

Cross leveled his spear at her as she came up to him from the shadows. “Get back there, nothing to see. Go home…oh, it’s you, is it?”

“Is she all right?”

“Old Mother Midnight? She’s all right. Hollered a bit, but she’s dandy in there now, bloody sight dandier than it is out here. Warm. Gets her meals regular. What about the poor buggers got to guard her, that’s what I say.”

“What started the fire?”

Cross looked shifty. “Reckon as she kicked the brazier over.”

“I want to see her.”

“That you don’t. Captain Schwyz told me: ‘No bugger talks to her. No bugger to go near ’cept to bring her meals. And keep the bloody door locked.’”

“And who told Schwyz? The abbot?”

Cross shrugged.

“I want to see her,” Adelia said again.

Mansur reached out and took the spear from the mercenary’s hand with the ease of pulling up a weed.

Blowing out his cheeks, Cross unlatched an enormous key from his belt and put it in the lock. “Just a peep, mind. Captain’s bound to be here in a minute; he’ll have heard the rumpus. Bloody peasants, bloody rumpus.”

It was only a peep. Mansur had to lift Adelia up so that she could see over the mercenary’s shoulder as he blocked the door to stop them from going in.

What light there was inside came from burning logs in a brazier. Except for an ashy patch on one side, a deep ring of straw circled the curve of the stone walls. Something moved in it.

Adelia was reminded of Bertha. For a moment, a pair of eyes in the straw reflected the glow from the brazier and then disappeared.

Boots could be heard crunching the ice as their owner came toward them. Cross tore his spear away from Mansur. “Captain’s coming. Get away, for God’s sake.”

They got away.

“Yes?” Mansur asked as they walked.

“Somebody tried to burn her to death,” Adelia said. “The slit’s up on the back wall, on the opposite side from the entrance. I think somebody tossed a lighted rag through it. If Cross was guarding the door, he wouldn’t have seen who it was. But he knows it happened.”

“The Fleming said the brazier tipped over.”

“No. It’s bolted to the floor. There was no sign that a brand fell out of it. Somebody wanted to kill her, and it wasn’t Cross.”

“She is a sad, mad bint. Perhaps she tried to burn herself.”

“No.” It was a natural progression. Rosamund, Bertha, Dakers. All three had known-in Dakers’s case, still did- something they should not.

If it hadn’t been for Cross’s quick reaction in putting the fire out, the last of them would have been silenced.

Early the next morning, armed mercenaries broke into the chapel where the nuns were at prayer and carried off Emma Bloat.

Adelia, sleeping in, heard of it when Gyltha came scurrying back from the kitchen where she’d been to fetch their breakfast. “Poor thing, poor thing. Terrible to-do ’twas. Prioress tried to stop ’em and they knocked her down. In her own chapel. Knocked her down.”

Adelia was already dressing. “Where did they take Emma?”

“Village. Wolvercote it was, and his bloody Flemings. Carried her to his manor. Screaming, so they said, poor thing, poor thing.”

“Can’t they get her back?”

“The nuns is gone after her, but what can they do?”

By the time Adelia reached the gates, the rescue party of nuns was returning across the bridge, empty- handed.

“Can nothing be done?” Adelia asked as they went by.

Sister Havis was white-faced and had a cut below her eye. “We were turned back at spearpoint. One of his men laughed at us. He said it was legal because they had a priest.” She shook her head. “What sort of priest I don’t know.”

Adelia went to the queen.

Eleanor had just been acquainted with the news herself and was raging at her courtiers. “Do I command savages? The girl was under my protection. Did I or did I not tell Wolvercote to give her time?”

“You did, lady.”

“She must be fetched back. Tell Schwyz-where is Schwyz?-tell him to gather his men…” She looked around. Nobody hadmoved. “Well?”

“Lady, I fear the…um…damage is done.” This was the Abbot of Eynsham. “It appears that Wolvercote keeps a hedge priest in the village. The words were said.”

“Not by the girl, I’ll warrant, not under those circumstances. Were her parents present?”

“Apparently not.”

“Then it is abduction.” Eleanor’s voice was shrill with the desperation of a ruler losing control of the ruled. “Are my orders to be ignored in such a fashion? Are we living in the caves of brute beasts?”

Apart from Adelia’s, the queen’s was the only anger in the room. Others, the men, anyway, were disturbed, displeased, but also faintly, very faintly, amused. A woman, as long as it wasn’t their own, carried off and bedded was broad comedy.

There was an embryonic wink in the abbot’s eye as he said, “I fear our lord Wolvercote has taken the Roman attitude towards our poor Sabine.”

There was nothing to be done. Words had been said by a priest; Emma Bloat was married. Like it or not, she had been deflowered and-as it was in every male mind-probably enjoyed it.

Helpless, Adelia left the room, unable to bear its company.

In the cloister walk, one of Eleanor’s young men, lost to everything about him, was blocking the way as he walked up and down, strumming a viol and trying out a new song.

Adelia gave him a push that sent him staggering. The door of the abbey chapel at the end of the cloister beckoned to her, and she marched in, only knowing, on finding it blessedly empty, that she was wild for a solace that-and she knew this, too-could not be granted.

She went to her knees in the nave.

Dear Mother of God, protect and comfort her.

The icy, incense-laden air held only the reply: She is cattle as you are cattle. Put up with it.

Adelia pummeled the stones and made her accusation out loud. “Rosamund dead, Bertha dead. Emma raped. Why do You allow it?”

The reply came: “There will be medicine for our complaint eventually, my child. You of all people, with your mastery of healing, should know that.”

The voice was a real one, dry and seemingly without human propulsion, as if it rustled out of the mouth on its own wings to flutter down from the tiny choir to the nave.

Mother Edyve was so small, she was almost hidden in the stall in which she sat, her hands folded on her