The Serpent’s Tale

of that receded with every mile they went north. Most of all, he would kill her because she’d seen the worm wriggling in that brilliant, many-faceted, empty carapace, and he had seen her see it.

Her arms were becoming tired…

Tears still wet on her face, Adelia dozed.

It was heavy going for the men pulling the sledge, and even for those merely skating. Afraid of pursuit, they hadn’t lit torches, and though the moon was bright, the ice gave a deceptive, smooth sheen to branches and other detritus that had been frozen into it so that the mercenaries fell frequently or had to make detours round obstructions-occasionally heaving the sledge over them.

In her sleep, Adelia was vaguely aware of being rolled around during the portages and of muffled swearing, aware, too, that men were taking rests on the sledge, crawling under the tarpaulin with her to get their strength back before giving up their place to the next. There was nothing sexual in it-they were too exhausted-and she refused to wake up. Sleep was oblivion…

Another passenger came aboard, exhaling with the relief at being off the ice. Fingers fumbled at the back of her head and undid the gag. “No need for this now, mistress. Nor this.” Gently, somebody pushed her forward and a knife sawed at the rope round her wrists. “There. More comfy?”

There was a waft of sweet, familiar scent. Licking her mouth, Adelia flexed her shoulders and hands. They hurt. They were still traveling, and it was still very cold, but the stars had dulled a little; the moon shone through a light veil of mist.

“You didn’t need to kill Bertha,” she said.

There was a pause.

“I rather think I did,” Jacques said reasonably. “Her nose would have betrayed me sooner or later. I’m afraid the poor soul literally sniffed me out.”

Yes. Yes, she had.

Bertha crawling forward in the cowshed, snuffling, using the keenest sense she had to try and describe the old woman in the forest who’d given her the mushrooms for Rosamund.

“Smelled purty…like you.”

It wasn’t me, Bertha. It was the man standing behind me. “A him. Not a her.”

The girl had been sniffing the messenger’s scent-the perfume that was a feature of him even when he dressed up as an old woman picking mushrooms.

“Do you mind?” he asked now. It was solicitous, hoping she wasn’t upset. “She wasn’t much of a loss, really, was she?”

Adelia kept her eyes on the two mercenaries dragging the sledge.

Jacques tucked the tarpaulin round her and sat sideways to peer into her face, reasonable, explaining, no longer the wide-eyed young man with big ears, much older, at ease. She supposed that’s what he was, a shape- changer; he could be what he wanted when circumstances demanded.

He’d taken Allie in her cradle and put her on the step.

“Ordinarily, you see, there is no need for what I call auxiliary action, as there was in Bertha’s case,” he said. “Usually, one fulfills one’s contract and moves on. All very tidy. But this particular employment has been complicated-interesting, I don’t deny, but complicated.” He sighed. “Snowed up in a convent, not only with one’s employer but, as it turns out, a witness is not an experience one wants repeated.”

A killer. The killer.

“Yes, I see,” Adelia said.

After all, she’d lived with revulsion ever since she’d become aware that he’d poisoned Rosamund. To use him in the necessary business of getting Wolvercote and Warin to convict themselves in the church had been an exercise in terror, but she’d been unable to think of any other stratagem to placate him. By then she’d sniffed the mind that permeated the abbey with a greater menace than Wolvercote because it was free of limitation, a happy mind. Kill this one, spare that, remain guiltless.

It had been necessary to amuse it, like a wriggling mouse enthralling the cat. To gain time, she’d let it watch her play at solving the one murder of which it was innocent. To keep the cat’s teeth out of the neck of a mouse that asked questions.

She asked, “Did Eynsham order you to kill her?”

“Bertha? Lord, no.” He was indignant. “I do have initiative, you know. Mind you”-an elbow nudged Adelia’s ribs-“he’ll have to pay for her. She’ll go on his account.”

“His account,” she said, nodding.

“Indeed. I am not the abbot’s vassal, mistress. I really must make that clear; I am independent; I travel Christendom providing a service-not everybody approves of it, I know, but it is nevertheless a service.”

“An assassin.”

He considered. “I suppose so. I prefer to think of it as a profession like any other. Let’s face it, Doctor, your own business is termed witchcraft by those who don’t understand it, but we are both professionals pursuing a trade that neither of us can lay public claim to. We both deal in life and death.” But she’d touched his pride. “How did I give myself away? I did try to warn you against too much curiosity.”

His visits to Bertha, his constant proximity, the indefinable sense of menace that lurked in the cowshed when he was there. The scent that Bertha had recognized. A freedom to roam the abbey, unnoticed, that no one else possessed. In the end, he was the only one it could have been.

“The Christmas feast,” she said.

She’d known for sure then. In the capering, warty old woman of Noah’s ark, she’d recognized a grotesque of the crone that Bertha had seen in the forest.

“Ah,” he said. “I really should avoid dressing up, shouldn’t I? I have a weakness for it, I’m afraid.”

She asked, “When did Eynsham hire you to kill Rosamund?”

“Oh, ages ago,” he said. “I’d only recently come to England to pick up commissions. Well, I’ll tell you when it was; I’d just become the bishop’s messenger-in my line of work, it’s always useful to have a reason to travel the countryside. Incidentally, mistress, I hope I gave the bishop good service…” He was in earnest. “I like to think I’m an excellent servant, no matter what the work.”

Yes, excellent. When Rowley had crept into the abbey and alerted his men, it hadn’t occurred to him that his messenger should not be informed of the coming attack along with the rest-not the irritating, willing Jacques, one of his own people.

“In fact, I shall miss working for Saint Albans,” he was saying now, “but as soon as Walt told me the king was coming, I had to inform Eynsham. I couldn’t let Master Abbot be taken, could I? He owes me money.”

“Is that how it goes?” she asked. “The word is spread? Assassin for hire?”

“Virtually, yes. I haven’t lacked employment so far. The contractor never likes to reveal himself, of course, but do you know how I found out this one was our abbot?”

The joy of it raised his voice, launching an owl off its tree and making Schwyz, up ahead, turn and swear at him. “Do you know how I recognized him? Guess.”

She shook her head.

“His boots. Master Abbot wears exceptionally fine boots, as I do. Oh, yes, and he addressed his servant as ‘my son,’ and I said to myself,

By the saints, here is a churchman, a rich churchman. All I had to do was ask around Oxford’s best bootmakers. The problem, you see, is to get the other half of the fee, isn’t it?” He was sharing their occupational troubles. “So much as down payment, so much when the job’s done. They never like to pay the second installment, don’t you find that?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Well, I do. Getting the other half of the fee is why I’ve had to attach myself to my lord Eynsham like fish glue. Actually, in this instance, it isn’t his fault; circumstances have been against him: the retreat from Wormhold, the snow…but apparently we’re calling in at his abbey on the way north-that’s where he keeps the gold, in his abbey.”

“He’ll kill you,” she said. It was an observation to keep him talking; she didn’t mind one way or the other. “He’ll get Schwyz to cut your throat.”

“Aren’t they an interesting couple? Doesn’t Schwyz adore him? They met in the Alps, apparently. I have wondered whether they were…well, you