The Serpent’s Tale

walls.

A blacker runnel scarred the moonlit whiteness where a new track had been dug to the river. They were linked now, the abbey and the Thames. For the first time, there was an escape route from this seething, overfilled cauldron of humanity where paragons and monsters fought the ultimate, yet never-ending, battle in suffocating collision.

At least one soul had taken it. Somewhere in that metallic wilderness, Dakers was risking her life not, Adelia knew, in order to disappear from her captors but to reach the thing she loved, though it was dead.

TWELVE

When, early next morning, Adelia opened the shutters on Saint Stephen’s Day, it was to find that something had happened to the view from the guesthouse. Yes, of course, a new path was leading down to the bank-they’d cut rough steps in it-but it was more than that; the sense of isolation was gone, and expectation had taken its place.

It was difficult to see why; dawn was blessing the deserted countryside with its usual ephemeral touch of apricot. The snow was as solid as it had been and contained no human footprints as far as the eye stretched.

Yet the white forest across the river was, somehow, less rigid…

“They’re here.”

Mansur joined her at the window. “I see nothing.”

“I thought I saw something in those trees.”

They stood looking. Adelia’s excitement trickled away; the expectation was in her, not in the view.

“Wolves, most like,” said Gyltha, who was skulking at the rear of the room, avoiding the light. “I heard them last night, horrid close they was.”

“Was that when you were vomiting into the chamber pot?” Adelia asked interestedly.

Gyltha ignored her. “Right up to the walls, they were. I reckon they found young Talbot’s horse as was left in the woods.”

Adelia hadn’t heard them-it had been bears that prowled her sleep. But Gyltha was probably right; it would be wolves among the trees-less frightening than those inside the walls.

Yet the leap of hope that Rowley was alive and had brought the king and his men to them had been so volcanic that she couldn’t relinquish it altogether. “There could be an army hiding out there,” she said. “It wouldn’t attack without knowing the strength of the force inside the abbey-the sisters might get hurt. He’d wait, Henry would wait.”

“What for?” Mansur asked.

“Yes what for?” Gyltha was being determinedly talkative to show that she wasn’t suffering. “He wouldn’t need an army to take this place-me and little Allie could storm it by ourselves. And how’d the king get here? No, old Wolf knows he’s safe til the snow melts. He ain’t even posted lookouts.”

“He has now,” Mansur said.

Adelia leaned out. Gyltha joined her. Immediately below, a man in Wolvercote scarlet and black was patrolling the walkway running along the hopelessly inadequate castellations of the convent wall, his morning shadow falling rhythmically on the merlons as he passed and disappearing at each crenel. He had a pike in one hand and a rattle in the other.

“What’s he guarding us from?” Gyltha asked. “Magpies? There ain’t no army out there. Nobody don’t fight in winter.”

“Henry does,” Adelia said. She was hearing Rowley’s voice, vibrating from the near-incredulous pleasure with which he’d spoken of his king’s exploits, recounting the tale of the young Plantagenet when, fighting for his mother’s right to the throne of England against his uncle Stephen, he’d crossed the Channel with a small army in a bitter Christmas gale, catching his enemies hibernating-and beating them.

Until now, Wolvercote had been relying on an English winter to keep his enemy as powerless to move as he was. But whether it was because the umbilical path through the snow now connected the convent to the outside world, or whether there was something in the air today, Saint Stephen’s day, he had set a guard…

“He’s afraid.” Adelia’s own voice vibrated. “He thinks Henry’s coming. And he could, Mansur, the king could-his men could skate upriver and get here.” She had another thought: “I suppose Wolvercote could even skate his men down to Oxford and join the other rebels. Why hasn’t he?”

“The man Schwyz thought of it. He is the better tactician,” Mansur said. “He asked Fitchet if it could be done. But further down, the Thames is deeper and has more tributaries, its ice does not hold and cannot be risked. Nobody can go or come that way.” Mansur spread his hands in apology to Adelia for disappointing her. “Local knowledge. No one moves until the snow melts.”

“And close them bloody shutters,” Gyltha said. “You want this baby to freeze?” Suddenly gentle, she added, “Nobody in the outside world don’t know we’re here, my duck.”

“The woman is right,” Mansur said.

They’ve lost hope, she thought. They’ve given Rowley up for dead at last. Godstow festered like an unsuspected bubo in the world’s white flesh, waiting to spread its poison. Only the birds overhead could know that it flew the pennant of a rebel queen-and birds weren’t likely to tell anybody.

But today, against all evidence, hope told Adelia that there was something beyond these shutters. At least there were steps leading to the river, and the river, however treacherous, led to the outside world. It was sunny, and there was an indefinable feeling in the air.

She’d been afraid too long, besieged too long, threatened too long, shut in dark rooms during daylight like a hostage-they all had.

Hearing talk and laughter, she gave the shutters a push that threw them back against the wall and leaned out again.

Farther along, the convent gates were opening and a crowd of chattering men and women were assembling outside them. In their center was a slim, elegant figure dressed in furs with a sheen that glowed in the sun.

“The queen’s going skating,” Adelia said. She turned round. “And so are we. All of us. Allie, too.”

Everybody did. It was, after all, Saint Stephen’s Day, which, by tradition, belonged to the servants, whom, since they could not go home to their villages, had to enjoy it in situ. Tonight it would be their privilege to have their own private feast on last night’s leftovers.

Almost every worker in the abbey tumbled out onto the ice, some without skates but all carrying the traditional clay box that they rattled invitingly under the noses of the guests.

Having made her contribution, Adelia turned to delighting her daughter by attaching her belt to the cradle and skimming the child in it over the ice as she skated. Others on skates similarly obliged those who had none, so that the wide sweep of the Thames became a whirl of sledges and trays, of puffed jokes and pink cheeks, through which a smiling queen sailed, swanlike, with her courtiers gaggling after her.

The nuns joined them after Lauds, the younger ones shrieking happily and vying with Sister Havis, who, while making it seem stately, outraced them all.

A brazier was placed on the ice near the bank and a chair carried to it so that Mother Edyve could sit by its warmth in company with the walking wounded that Sister Jennet had brought from the infirmary. Ward, whose attempts to scrabble along behind Adelia kept ending with his legs splaying into a quadrant, gave up the battle and settled down to sulk on the piece of carpet under the abbess’s chair.

Adelia saw her patient and skated over to him, dragging the cradle behind her. “Are you progressing well?”

Poyns’s young face was abeam. “Right nicely, mistress, I thank ee. And the abbess is giving me a job, assistant gatekeeper to Master Fitchet. Don’t need two arms in gatekeepin’.”

Adelia smiled back at him. What a nice abbey this was.

“And thank Master Man…Manum…thank the doctor for me; God and the saints bless him.”

“I will.”