The Serpent’s Tale

evidence I would not wish king or queen to hear, even supposing he could voice it, which-”

“Christ’s eyes, do I finish him?”

“You do.”

“Nnnnnn.” Adelia threw herself forward. Schwyz pulled her back.

“I know, I know.” The abbot nodded. “These things are upsetting, but I have no wish to lose the queen’s esteem, and I fear Father Paton could disabuse her of it. Did you provide him with my text on which dear Rosamund based her letters? Of course you did. What an enterprising little soul you are.”

He was talking. He’d condemned the priest to death and he was talking, amused.

“Since I stand in high regard with our blessed Eleanor, it would be-what is the word?- inconvenient if she knew I was the goad that pricked her into further rebellion. In view of my desertion, she might tell Henry. As it is, she will be informed of a murderous intruder to the abbey, d’ye see, and that we, the good Schwyz and myself, are in brave pursuit to stop him before he reaches the king’s lines. In fact, of course, we are leaving the lady to her inevitable fate; the snow has proved too much for us, the amiable Lord Wolvercote too little… As Master Schwyz says of that gentleman in his rough way-he couldn’t fight a sack of shit.”

Schwyz had let go of her and was walking toward Father Paton.

Adelia closed her eyes. God, I beg you.

A whimper from Father Paton, a hot smell. A hush, as if even this company was awed by the passage of a soul to its maker.

Then somebody said something, somebody else laughed. Men began carrying bundles and crates out to the porch and down to the river.

The abbot’s finger went under Adelia’s chin and tilted her head.

“You interest me, madam, you always have. How does a foreign slut like yourself command the attention not only of a bishop but a king? And you, forgive me, without an apparent grace to bless yourself with.”

Keeping her eyes closed, she jerked away from him, but he grasped her face and angled it back and forth. “Do you satisfy them both? At the same time? Are you a mistress of threesomes? Do you excel at lit a trois? Cock below and behind? Arsehole and pudendum muliebre? What my father in his elegant way used to call a bum-and-belly?”

There would be a lot of this before the end, she thought.

She looked straight into his eyes.

Great God, he’s a virgin.

How she knew it in that extremity…but she knew it.

The face above hers diminished into an agonized, pleading vulnerability-Don’t know me, don’t know me-before it resumed the trompe l’oeil that was the Abbot of Eynsham.

Schwyz had been shouting at them both; now he came and hauled Adelia upright. “She better be no trouble,” he said. “We got enough to carry.”

“I am sure she won’t be.” The abbot smiled on Adelia. “We could send to the kitchen for the baby if you prefer and take it with us, though whether it would survive the journey…”

She shook her head.

Eynsham, still smiling, gestured toward the door. “After you, mistress.”

She went through it and down the ice steps like a lamb.

THIRTEEN

The moon had edged a little toward the west, so that two more cloaked mercenaries cast long, sharp, stunted shadows on the ice as they loaded a large sledge with the packages the others were bringing down. One of them picked up Adelia and slung her on top of the bundles, hurting her arms as she landed on them. Somebody else slung a tarpaulin over her, and she had to toss her head round until a fold fell back and she could see.

Go south, she thought. Make them go south, Henry’s there. Lord, make them go south.

The abbot, Schwyz, and some of the other men were clustered around her, balancing against the sides of the sledge as they put on skates, intent, not talking.

They have to go south-they don’t know the king’s attacking Oxford.

Oh, but of course they did. They knew everything-Rowley had inadvertently told them.

Lord, send them south.

The abbot made experimental pirouettes on the ice, admiring his shadow in the steel mirror of the river. “Yes, yes,” he said. “One never forgets.”

He paid no attention to Adelia-she was luggage now. He nodded at Schwyz, who nodded at his men. Two mercenaries picked up trails of harness leading from the sledge and heaved themselves into the straps. Somebody else mounted the sledge’s running board behind Adelia and grasped the guiding struts.

The abbot looked up at the convent walls lowering above him. “Queen Eleanor, sweet broken reed, farewell. Veni, vidi, vadi,” then raised his eyes to the star-sprinkled sky. “Well, well, on to better things. Let us go.”

“And quiet about it,” Schwyz said.

The sledge hissed as it moved.

They headed north.

Adelia retched into her gag. Nothing to stop him from killing her now.

For a while, she was so afraid that she could hardly see. He was going to kill her. Had to kill her.

Appalling sadness overtook her. Images of Allie missing her, growing up without her, small, needy. I’ll die loving you. Know it, little one, I never stopped loving you.

Then the guilt. My fault, darling; a better mother would have passed it by, let them all slaughter one another-no matter, as long as you and I weren’t wrenched apart. My fault, my grievous fault.

On and on, grief and fear, fear and grief, as the untidy, white-edged banks slid by and the sledge whispered and grated and the men pulling it grunted with effort, their breath puffing wisps of smoke into the moonlight, taking her further and further into hell.

Discomfort forced itself on her attention-the bundle beneath her had spears in it. Also, the gag tasted abominable and her arms and wrists hurt.

Suddenly irritable, she shifted, sat up, and began to take notice.

Two mercenaries were pulling the sledge. Another was behind. Four skated on either side, Schwyz and the abbot ahead. Nine in all. None of them her friend Cross-she hadn’t been able to make out the faces of the two mercenaries packing the sledge, but both were thinner than Cross.

No help, then. Wherever they were headed, Schwyz was taking only his most trusted soldiers; he’d abandoned the others.

Where are we going? The Midlands? There was still smoldering discontent against Henry Plantagenet in the Midlands.

Adelia shifted and began investigating the sacking with her wrists, tracing the spears in it along the shafts to their blades.

There.

She pressed down and felt a point prick into her right palm. She began trying to rub the rope against the side of the blade but kept missing it and encountering the spear point instead so that it went uselessly into the rope’s fibers and out again, an exercise that might eventually unpick them if she had a week or two to spare…

It was something to do, though, to fight off the inertia of despair. Of course Eynsham would have her killed. Her use to him as a bargaining counter would last only until he could be sure Henry wasn’t pursuing him-and the chance