The Serpent’s Tale

“Hadn’t long arrived before you turned up,” he said. “Heard you coming up the stairs, so Dakers and I beat a retreat. First rule when one’s outnumbered-learn the enemy’s strength.”

And learn that Rosamund, in her stupidity and ambition, had betrayed him. Like his wife, like his eldest son.

Adelia felt an awful pity. “The letters, my lord…I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t mention it.” He wasn’t being polite; she mustn’t refer to it again. Since he’d covered the corpse, he hadn’t looked at it.

“So here we are,” he said. Still cautious, he leaned out. “They’re not keeping much of a watch, I must say. There’s only a couple of men patrolling the courtyard-what in hell are the rest doing?”

“They’re going to fire the tower,” she told him, “and us in it.”

“If they’re using the wood in the hall, they’ll have a job. Wouldn’t light pussy.” He leaned farther out of the window and sniffed. “They’re in the kitchen, that’s where they are…something’s cooking. Hell’s bollocks, the incompetent bastards are taking the time to eat.” He loathed inefficiency, even in his enemies.

“I don’t blame them.” She was hungry, she was ravenous. A magic king had skewed this death chamber into something bearable. Without sympathy, without concession to her as a woman, by treating her as a comrade, he had restored her. “Have you got any food on you?”

He struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Well, there, and I left the festive meats behind. No, I haven’t. At least, I don’t think so…” He had a pocket inside his jacket and he emptiedits contents onto the table with one hand, his eyes still on the courtyard.

There was string, a bradawl, some withered acorns, needle and twine in a surprisingly feminine sewing case, a slate book and chalk, and a small square of cheese, all of them covered in oats for his horse.

Adelia picked out the cheese and wiped it. It was like chewing resin.

Now that she was more composed, events were connecting to one another. This king, this violent king, this man who, intentionally or not, had set on the knights that stirred Archbishop Becket’s brains onto the floor of his cathedral, had sat quietly behind a hanging and listened, without sound, without moving, to treachery of extreme magnitude. And he’d been armed.

“Why didn’t you come out and kill him?” she asked, not because she wished he had but because she truly wanted to know how he’d restrained himself from it.

“Who? Eynsham? Friend to the Pope? Legate maleficus? Thank you, he’ll die, but not at my hand. I’ve learned my lesson.”

He’d given Canterbury to Becket out of trust, because he loved him-and from that day his reforms had been opposed at every turn. The murder of the Jew-hating, venomous, now-sainted archbishop had set all Christendom against him. He’d done penance for it everywhere, allowing the monks of Canterbury to whip him in public, only just preventing his country from being placed under the Pope’s interdict banning marriage, baptism, burial of the dead…

Yes, he could control his anger now. Eleanor, Young Henry, even Eynsham, were safe from execution.

Adelia thought how strange it was that, locked in a chamber with a man as helpless as herself, at the top of a tower that any minute could be a burning chimney, she should be at ease.

He wasn’t, though; he was hammering the mullion. “Where are they, in God’s name? Jesus, if I can get here fast, why can’t they?”

Because you outstripped them, Adelia thought. In your impatience, you outstrip everybody, your wife, your son, Becket, and expect them to love you. They are people of our time and you are not; you see beyond the boundaries they set; you see me for what I am and use me for your advantage; you see Jews, women, even heretics, as human beings and use them for your advantage; you envisage justice, toleration, unattainable things. Of course nobody keeps up with you.

Oddly enough, the one mind she could equate with his was Mother Edyve’s. The world believed that what was now was permanent, God had willed it, there could be no alteration without offending Him.

Only a very old woman and this turbulent man had the sacrilegious impudence to question the status quo and believe that things could and should be changed for the betterment of all people.

“Come on, then,” he said, “we’ve got time. Tell me. You’re my investigator-what did you find out?”

“You don’t pay me for being your investigator.” She might as well point this out while she had the advantage.

“Don’t I? I thought I did. Take it up with the Exchequer. Get on, get on.” His stubby fingers drummed on the window sill. “Tell me.”

So she told him, from the beginning.

He wasn’t interested in the death of Talbot of Kidlington. “Silly bugger. I suppose it was the cousin, was it? Never trust the man who handles your money…Wolvercote? Vicious, that family. All rebels. My mother hanged the father from Godstow Bridge, and I’ll do the same for the son. Go on, go on, get to the bits that matter.”

He meant Rosamund’s death, but it all mattered to Adelia, and she wasn’t going to let him off any of it. She’d been clever, she’d been brave, it had cost too many lives; he was going to know everything. After all, he was getting it free.

She plowed on, occasionally nibbling at the cheese. Drops from melting icicles splashed on the sill. The king watched the courtyard. The body of the woman who’d begun it all lay on her bed and rotted.

He interrupted. “Who’s that…Saints’ bollocks, he’s stealing my horse. I’ll rip him, I’ll mince his tripes, I’ll…”

Adelia got up to see who was stealing the king’s destrier.

A thickening mist hid the hill and gave an indistinct quality to the courtyard below, but the figure urging the horse into a gallop toward the maze entrance was recognizable, though he was bending low over its neck.

Adelia gave a yelp. “Not him, not him. He mustn’t get away. Stop him, for God’s sake, stop him.”

But there was nobody to stop him; some of Schwyz’s men had heard the hooves and were running toward the maze, uselessly.

“Who was it?” the king asked.

“The assassin,” she told him. “Dear God, he mustn’t get away. I want him punished.” For Rosamund, for Bertha…

Something had happened to frighten him if Jacques was deserting Eynsham and the second installment of his precious payment.

Then she was pulling at the king’s sleeve. “It’s your men,” she said. “He must have heard them. They’re here. Shout to them. Tell them to go after him. Will they catch him?”

“They’d better,” he said. “That’s a bloody good horse.”

But if Henry’s men had arrived and the assassin had heard them and decided to cut his losses, there was no sign of them in the courtyard and no sound.

Together, Adelia and the king watched the pursuers return, shrugging, to disappear toward the kitchen.

“Are you certain your men are on their way?” she asked.

“We won’t see them til they’re ready. They’ll be coming through the rear of the maze.”

“There’s another entrance?”

The king smirked. “Imitate the mole, never leave yourself only one exit. Get on with it, tell me the rest.”

Jacques’s escape anguished her. She thought of the little unmarked grave in the nuns’ cemetery…

The king’s fingers were tapping again, so she took up her tale where she’d left off.

There was another interruption. “Hello, where’s Dakers going?”

Adelia was beside him in an instant. The mist had begun to play tricks, ebbing and flowing in swirls that deceived the eye into seeing unmelted mounds of snow as crouching men and animals, but it didn’t hide the thin black figure of Rosamund’s housekeeper crawling toward the maze.

“What’s that she’s dragging?”

“God knows,” the king said. “A sawing horse?”

It was something large and angular, too much for the human bundle of bones that collapsed after each pull but which managed to steady itself to pull again.

“She’s mad, of course,” the king said. “Always was.”