The Serpent’s Tale

It was agonizing to watch such effort, but watch they did, having to keep refocusing their eyes as Dakers inched her burden along like an ant through the shifting grayness.

Leave it, whatever it is, Adelia begged her. They haven’t seen you. Go and die at your own choosing.

Another blink and there was only fog.

“So…” the king said. “You’d taken one of Eynsham’s templates from this chamber to Godstow and given it to the priest… Go on.”

“His handwriting is distinctive, you see,” she told him. “I’ve never seen another like it, very curly-beautiful, really-he uses classically square capitals but fills them in with whirls and his minuscule…”

Henry sighed, and Adelia hurried on. “Anyway, Sister Lancelyne, she’s Godstow’s librarian, once wrote to Eynsham asking if she might borrow the abbot’s copy of Boethius’s Consolation in order to copy it, and he’d written back, refusing…”

She saw again the learned little old nun among her empty shelves. “If ever we get out of here, I’d like Sister Lancelyne to have it.”

“A whole Philosophy? Eynsham has a Boethius?” The Plantagenet eyes gleamed; he was greedy for books and totally untrustworthy when it came to other people’s.

“I should like,” Adelia said clearly, “Sister Lancelyne to have it.”

“Oh, very well. She’d better look after it. Get on, get on.”

“And while we’re about it”-there had to be some profit out of this-“if Emma Bloat should be widowed…”

“She will be,” the king promised. “Oh, yes, she will be.”

“She’s not to be forced into marriage again.”

With her own fortune and Wolvercote’s lands, Emma would be a prize. She would also, as the widow of one of his barons, be in the king’s gift, a valuable tradeable object in the royal marketplace.

“Is this a horse fair?” the king asked. “Are you haggling? With me?”

“Negotiating. Regard it as my fee.”

“You’ll ruin me,” he said. “Very well. Can we proceed? I need evidence of Eynsham’s calumny to show the Pope, and I doubt he’ll regard curly handwriting as proof.”

“Father Paton thought it was.” Adelia winced. “Poor Father Paton.”

“Anyway…” Henry was looking around the table. “The bastard seems to have taken his template with him.”

“There are others. What we can’t prove is that he employed an assassin to kill…who did kill.”

“I shouldn’t worry about that,” the king said. “He’ll probably tell us.”

I’ve condemned a man to torture, she thought. Suddenly, she was tired and didn’t want to say any more. If Schwyz managed to put a flame to the bonfire in the hall, there was no point to it, anyway.

She abridged what was left. “Then Rowley arrived. He told Walt, that’s his groom, to look after me when the attack came. Walt, not knowing, told the assassin, who told Eynsham-who is very afraid of you and decided to run and take me with him.” It sounded like the house that Jack built. That’s all,” she said, closing her eyes, “more or less.”

Drips from the icicles were increasing, pattering like rain onto the windowsills of a silent room.

“Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar,” the king said, musing.

It was an accolade. She opened her eyes, tried to smile at him, and closed them again.

“He’s a good lad, young Geoffrey,” Henry said. “Very loving. God bless him. I got him on a prostitute, Ykenai- strange name, the saints only know what race her parents were, because she doesn’t. Big woman, comfortable. I still see her occasionally when I’m in London.”

Adelia was awake now. He was telling her something, a tit for tat, payment for her trouble. This was about Rosamund without mentioning her name.

“I set her up in a pie shop, Ykenai, and very successful it’s been, except it’s making her bigger than ever. We talk about pies, there’s a lot to making pies.”

Big women, comfortable, bouncy mattresses, as Rosamund had been. Women who talked about little things, who didn’t test him. Women as different from Eleanor as chalk to cheese-and maybe he’d loved both.

Wife and mistress both treacherous. Whether Rosamund had been ambitious herself or had been stirred into it by a devious abbot, the result was the same; she had nearly sparked a war. The only female refuge this man, this emperor, had left lived in a London pie shop where at least one loyal son had been born to him.

Henry’s voice came from the window, nastily. “While he was with you, did the Bishop of Saint Albans tell you of his oath?” He wanted to hurt someone else who’d been betrayed.

“Yes,” she said.

“He swore it in front of me, you know. Hand on the Bible, ‘I swear by the Lord God and all the saints of Heaven that if You will guard her and keep her safe, I shall withhold myself from her.’”

“I know,” she said.

“Hah.”

For the first time in days, she could hear the chatter of birds, as if small, frozen hearts were being thawed back to life.

Henry reached over and took the remnant of cheese out of her fingers, squashed it, and scattered the crumbs along the windowsill.

A robin flew down immediately to peck, its wings almost touching his hand before flying off again.

“I’ll bring spring back to England,” its king said. “They won’t beat me, by Christ, they won’t.”

They have beaten you, Adelia thought. Your men aren’t coming. Everybody betrays you.

Henry’s head had gone up. “Hear that?”

“No.”

“I did. They’re here.” His sword rasped from its scabbard. “Let’s go down and fight the bastards.”

They weren’t here. It was birds he’d heard. The two of them would stay here forever and decompose alongside Rosamund.

She dragged herself to the window.

Alarmed men were emerging from the kitchen, turning this way and that, confused by the fog, running back to fetch weapons. She heard Schwyz’s shout: “Round the other side. It came from the rear.”

The Abbot of Eynsham was taking undecided steps toward the entrance to the maze, then away from it.

“Yes,” Adelia said.

Henry’s dagger that had cut her hands free was on the table. She took it up with a ferocious joy. She wanted to fight somebody.

But she couldn’t. For one thing…“My lord, we’re locked in.”

He was standing on tiptoe, feeling around the top of the coronal that held the curtains of Rosamund’s bed. His hand came away with a key in it. He waved it at her. “Never get into a hole without a second exit.”

Then they were out of the door and pattering down the stairs, Henry leading.

Two landings down, they met one of Schwyz’s men running up, sword drawn. Whether he was trying to find somewhere to hide or had come for her, Adelia never knew. His eyes widened as he saw the king.

“Wrong way,” Henry told him, and stuck him through the mouth. The man fell. The king ran him through again, raising him on the swordpoint as if on a skewer, and flicked him off so that he was thrown round the next bend. Kept flicking him, a heavy man, round the next and the next, though he was long dead by the time they reached the hall.

The air outside was discordant with shouts and the clash of metal. The fog had thickened; it was difficult to make out who was fighting whom.

The king disappeared, and Adelia heard a gleeful howl of “Dieu et Plantagenet” as he found an enemy.

It was like being in the middle of battling unseen ghosts. With the dagger ready, she began walking cautiously forward to where she’d last seen Eynsham. One killer had escaped; she’d be damned if another thwarted justice. This one would if he could; not a courageous man, the abbot; he killed only through others.