The Serpent’s Tale

He looked up. “Yes, as a matter of fact. A wronged and vengeful woman, and believe me, nobody is more vengeful than our gracious Eleanor, will escape any bonds, climb any mountains, cross all oceans to wreak havoc on the wrongdoer. And thus she did.”

“Then why did you have Rosamund poisoned?”

“Who says I did?” Very sharp.

“Your assassin.”

“The merry Jacques has been chattering, has he? I must set Schwyz onto that young man.”

“People will think the queen did it.”

“The king does, as was intended,” he said vaguely. “Barbarians, my dear, are easily manipulated.” He turned back to the letter and continued to read. “Excellent, oh excellent,” he said. “I’d forgotten…To the ‘supposed Queen of England…from the true and very Queen of this country, Rosamund the Fair.’ What I had to endure to persuade that tedious wench to this…Robert, Robert, such a subtle fellow you are…”

A draft twitched at Adelia’s cloak. The hanging behind Rosamund’s bed had lifted. As air came up the corbel of the hidden garderobe and into the room, it brought a different, a commoner stench to counter that of the poor corpse on the bed. It was cut off as the hanging dropped back.

Adelia walked across to the window. The abbot was still holding the letter to the light, reading it. She took up a position where, if he looked up, he would see her and not the figure creeping down the side of the bed. It had no knife in its hand, but it was still death-this time, its own.

Dakers was dying; Adelia had seen that yellowish skin and receded eyes too often not to know what they meant. The fact that the woman was walking at all was a miracle, but she was. And silently.

Help me, Adelia willed her. Do something. Without moving, she used her eyes in appeal. Help me.

But Dakers didn’t look at her, nor at the abbot. All her energy was bent on reaching the staircase.

Adelia watched the woman slip between the partially open door and its frame without touching either and disappear. She felt a tearing resentment. You could have hit him with something.

The abbot had sat himself in Rosamund’s chair as he read, still muttering bits of the letter out loud. “‘…and I did please the king in bed as you never did, so he told me…’ I’ll wager you did, girl. Sucking and licking, I’ll wager you did. ‘…he did moan with delight…’ I’ll wager he did, you filthy trollop…”

He’s exciting himself with his own words.

As Adelia thought it, he glanced up-into her eyes. His face gorged. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” she told him. “I am looking at you and seeing nothing.”

Schwyz was calling from the stairs, but his voice was drowned in Eynsham’s scream: “You judge me? You, a whore…judge me?”

He got up, a gigantic wave rising, and engulfed her. He clutched her to his chest and carried her so that her feet trailed between his knees. Blinded, she thought he was going to drop her out of the window, but he turned her round, holding her high by the scruff of the neck and her belt. For a second, she glimpsed the bed, heard the grunt as she was thrown down onto what lay on it.

As Adelia’s body landed on the corpse, its belly expelled its gases with a whistle.

The abbot was screaming. “Kiss her. Kiss, kiss, kiss…suck, lick, you bitches.” He pushed her face into Rosamund’s. He was twisting Adelia’s head like a piece of fruit, pressing it down into the grease. “Sniff, suck, lick…”

She was suffocating in decomposing flesh.

“Rob. Rob.”

The pressure on her head lessened slightly, and she managed to turn her smeared face sideways and breathe.

“Rob. Rob. There’s a horse in the stable.”

It stopped. It had stopped.

“No rider,” Schwyz said. “Can’t find a rider, but there’s somebody here.”

“What sort of horse?”

“Destrier. A good one.”

“Is it his? He can’t be here. Jesus save us, is he here?”

The slam of the door cut off their voices.

Adelia rolled off the bed and groped her way across the floor to one of the windows, her tied hands searching outside the sill for its remnant of snow. She found some and shoved it into her mouth. Another window, more snow into the mouth, scrubbing her teeth with it, spitting. More, for the face, nostrils, eyes, hair.

She went from window to window. There wasn’t enough snow in the world, not enough clean, numbing ice…

Drenched, shaking, she slumped into Rosamund’s chair, and with her pinioned hands still scrubbing at her neck, she laid her head on the table and gave herself up to heaving, gasping sobs. Uninhibited, like a baby, she wept for herself, for Rosamund, Eleanor, Emma, Allie, all women everywhere and what was done to them.

“What are you bawling for?” a male voice said, aggrieved. “You think that’s bad? Try spending time cooped up in a shithole with Dakers for company.”

A knife ripped the rope away from round her hands. A handkerchief was pushed against her cheek. It smelled of horse liniment. It smelled beautiful.

With infinite care, she turned her head so that her cheek rested on the handkerchief and she could squint at him.

“Have you been in there all the time?” she asked.

“All the time,” the king told her.

Still with her head on the table, she watched him walk over to the bed, pick up his cloak, and replace it carefully over the corpse. He went to the door to try its latch. It didn’t move. He bent down to peer through the keyhole.

“Locked,” he said, as if it was a comfort.

The ruler of an empire that stretched from the border of Scotland to the Pyrenees was in worn hunting leathers-she’d never seen him in anything else; few people did. He walked with the rolling bandiness of a man who spent more time in the saddle than out of it. Not tall, not handsome, nothing to distinguish him except an energy that drew the eye. When Henry Plantagenet was in the room, nobody looked anywhere else.

Deeper lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth than had when she’d last seen him, there was a new dullness in his eyes, and his red hair was dimmer; something had gone out of him and not been replaced.

Relief brought a manic tendency to giggle. Adelia began rubbing her wrists. “Where are your men, my lord?”

“Ah, well there…” Grimacing, he came back from the door and edged round the table to peer cautiously out. “They’re on their way, only a few, mind, but picked men, fine men. I had a look at the situation in Oxford and left young Geoffrey to take it before he moves on to Godstow.”

“But…did Rowley find you? You know the queen is at Godstow?”

“That’s why Geoffrey’ll take it next,” he said irritably. “He won’t have any trouble in either place. The rebels, God rot ’em, I’ll eat them alive, were practically running up the white flag at Oxford already, so…”

“My daughter’s at Godstow,” she said. “My people…”

“I know, Rowley told me. Geoffrey knows, I told him. Stop wittering. I’ve seen snowmen with more defensive acumen than Wolvercote. Leave it to young Geoffrey.”

She supposed she’d have to.

He glanced round. “How is little Rowley-Powley, anyway? Got a tooth yet? Showing a flair for medicine?”

“She’s well.” He could always melt her. But it would be nice to get out of here. “These picked men of yours…” she said. This was Rowley all over again. Why didn’t they ever bring massed troops?

“They’re on their way,” he said, “but I fear I outstripped them.” He turned back to the window. “They’d told me she still wasn’t buried, you see. My lads are bringing a coffin with them. Buggers couldn’t keep up.”

They wouldn’t have; he must have ridden like a fiend, melting the snow in front of him, to say good-bye, to mend the indecency inflicted on his woman.