The Serpent’s Tale

know…but I think not, don’t you? I’d welcome your medical opinion…”

One of the mercenaries in harness was slowing down, wheeling his arm for the messenger to take his place.

The voice in Adelia’s ear became a confidential whisper, changing from a gossip’s to an assassin’s. “Don’t worry for me, mistress. Our abbot has too many enemies that need to be silenced in silence. Schwyz leaves a butcher’s trail behind. I don’t. No, no, my services will always be in demand. Worry for yourself.”

He threw back the tarpaulin in order to get off the sledge.

“Will it be you who kills me, Jacques?” she asked.

“I do hope not, mistress,” he said politely. “That would be a shame.”

And he was gone, refusing to take his place in the harness. “My good fellow, I am not an ox.”

Not human, either, she thought, a lusus naturae, a tool, no more culpable for what it did than an artifact, as blameless as a weapon stuck on a wall and admired by the owner for its beautiful functionality.

The lingering trail of his perfume was obliterated by a smell of sweat and damp dirt from the next man who crawled under the tarpaulin to fall asleep and snore.

The abbot had taken position on the step behind her, but instead of helping to propel the sledge along, he became a passenger, his weight slowing the men pulling it to a stumping crawl that threatened their balance. They were complaining. At an order from Schwyz, they removed their skates and, to give them better purchase, continued in their boots.

Which, Adelia saw, were splashing. The sledge had begun to send up spray as it traveled. There were no stars now, and the vague moon had an even more vague penumbra. Schwyz had lit a torch and was holding it high as he skated.

It was thawing.

From over her head came a fruity boom: “I don’t wish to complain, my dear Schwyz, but any more of this and we’ll be marching on the river bottom. How much further?”

“Not far now.”

Not far to where? Having been asleep and not knowing for how long, she couldn’t estimate how far they’d come. The banks were still their featureless, untidy conglomeration of reed and snow.

It was even colder now; the chill of increasing damp had something to do with it, but so had fear. Eynsham would be reassured by their unpursued and uninterrupted passage up the river. Once he was in safe territory, he could rid himself of the burden he’d carried to it.

“Up ahead,” Schwyz called.

There was nothing up ahead except a dim twinkle in the eastern sky like a lone star bright enough to penetrate the mist that hid the others. A castle showing only one light? A turret?

Now they were approaching a landing stage, white edged and familiar.

Then she knew.

Rosamund had been waiting for her.

A delia had remembered Wormhold as a place of jagged, shocking flashes of color where men and women walked and talked in madness.

Now, through the dawn mist, the tower returned to what it was-a mausoleum. Architectural innuendo had gone. And the maze, for those who dragged the sledge through slush into it, was merely a straight and dreary tunnel of gray bushes leading to a monument like a giant’s tombstone against a drearier sky.

The door above its steps stood open, sagging now. The unlit bonfire remained untouched in the hall where a mound of broken furniture, like the walls, shone with gathering damp in Schwyz’s torchlight.

As they went in, a scuttle from escaping rats accentuated the hall’s silence, as did the abbot’s attempt to raise the housekeeper. “Dakers. Where are you, little dear? ’Tis your old friend come to call. Robert of Eynsham.”

He turned to Schwyz as the echo faded. “She doesn’t know it was me as had her locked up, does she?”

Schwyz shook his head. “We fooled her, Rob.”

“Good, then I’m still her ally. Where is the old crow? We need our dinner. Dakers.”

Schwyz said, “We can’t stay long, Rob. That bastard’ll be after us.”

“My dear, stop attributing the powers of Darkness to him, we’ve outmaneuvered the bugger.” He grimaced. “I suppose I’d better go up and search for my letters. If our Fair Rosamund kept one, she might have kept others. I told the fat bitch to burn them, but did she? Women are so unreliable.” He pointed at the bonfire. “Get that alight when the time comes. Some food first, I think, a nap, and then, when our amiable king arrives, we’ll be long gone, leaving a nice warm fire to greet him. Dakers.”

He must know where she is, Adelia thought. The only life here is in the top room with the dead.

“Up you go, then.” Schwyz turned away to give orders to his men, and then turned back. “What do you want done with the trollop?”

“This trollop?” The abbot looked down at Adelia. “We’ll hang on to her until the last minute, I think, just in case. She can come up and help me look for the letters.”

“Why? She’ll be better down here.” Schwyz was jealous.

The abbot was patient with him. “Because I didn’t see any letters lying around when we were here last, but little Mistress Big Eyes had one, hadn’t you, my dear? If she found one, she can find the others. Bind her hands, if you like, but in front this time and not too tight; she’s looking wan.”

Adelia’s hands were pinioned again-not gently, either.

“Up, up.” The abbot pointed her toward the stairs. “Up, up, up.” To the mercenary, he said, “Tell the men to put their minds to my dinner. And Schwyz…” The tone had changed.

“What?”

“Set a damn good watch on that river.”

He’s frightened, Adelia thought suddenly. He, too, credits Henry with supernatural powers. Oh, dear God, let him be right.

Going up the tiny, wedge-shaped, slippery, winding steps without the balancing use of hands was not easy, but Adelia did better than the abbot, who was grunting with effort before they reached the second landing. That was the stage where the tower cut them off from the noise at its base, imposing a silence in which the echo of their footsteps troubled the ears as if they disobeyed an ordinance from the dead. Go back. This is a tomb.

Light that was hardly light at all came, sluggish, through the arrow slits onto the same broken mess that had littered the landings when she’d climbed up here with Rowley. Nobody had swept it away, nobody ever would.

Up and up, past Rosamund’s apartments, empty of their carpets and gold ornaments now, looted by mercenaries, maybe even the Aquitanians, while Eleanor had kept her vigil over a corpse. Much good it had done them; loot and looters had gone to the bottom of the Thames.

They were getting close to the top now.

I don’t want to go in there. Why doesn’t it stop? It’s impossible I should die here. Why doesn’t somebody stop this?

The last landing, the door a crack open but with its ornate key in the lock.

Adelia stood back. “I’m not going in.”

Gripping her shoulder, the abbot pushed her in front of him. “Dakers, my dame. Here’s the Abbot of Eynsham, your old friend, come to pay his respects to your mistress.”

A smell like a blast of wind teetered him on the threshold.

The room was furnished as Adelia had last seen it. No looting here-there hadn’t been time.

Rosamund no longer sat at the writing table, but something lay on the bed with the frail curtains framing it and a cloak covering its upper half.

There was no sign of Dakers, but, if she had wanted to preserve her mistress still, she had made the mistake of closing the windows and lighting funerary candles.