The Serpent’s Tale

Two heavy figures appeared on her left, their swords sparking as they fought. She jumped out of their way and they vanished again.

If I call him, he will come, she thought. She was still a bargaining counter; he’d want to use her as a shield. She had a knife, she could threaten him into standing still. “Abbot.” Her voice was high and thin. “Abbot.”

Something answered her in a voice even higher. In astonishment. In a crescendo of agony that rose into a falsetto beyond what was human. In shrieks that pulsed through the mist and overrode all noise of battle and silenced it. It overrode everything.

It was coming from the direction of the maze. Adelia began running toward it, sliding in the slush, falling, picking herself up, and blundering on. Whatever it was had to be helped; hearing it was unendurable.

Somebody splashed past her. She didn’t see who it was.

A wall of bushes loomed up. Frantically, she used her hands to follow it round toward the maze entrance, toward the screaming. It was diminishing now; there were words in it. Prayer? Pleading?

She found the entrance and plunged inside.

Curiously, it was easier to see in here, merely gloomy, as if the tunnels were bewilderment enough and had regimented the mist into their own coils. The hedged doors were open, still giving straight passage.

He’d gone a long way in, almost to the exit that led to the hill. The sound was softening into mumbles, like somebody discontented. As Adelia came up, it stopped altogether.

The last paroxysm had sent the abbot arching backward over the mantrap so that his stomach curved outward. His mouth was stretched open; he looked as if he’d died roaring with laughter.

She edged round to the front. Schwyz was scrabbling at the mess where the machine’s fangs had bitten into Eynsham’s groin. “It’s all right, Rob,” he was saying. “It’s all right.” He looked up at Adelia. “Help me.”

There was no point. He was dead. It would take two men to force the mantrap open. Only hate like the fires of hell had given Dakers the strength to lever the struts apart so that their jaws lay flat in the dirt, waiting to snap up the man who’d had Rosamund poisoned.

The housekeeper had sat herself a couple of feet away so that she could watch him die. And had died with him, smiling.

There was a lot of clearing up to do.

They brought the wounded down to Adelia on the landing stage, because she didn’t want to return to the tower. There weren’t many, and none were badly injured, most needing only a few stitches, which she managed with the contents of the king’s sewing case.

All were Plantagenet men; Henry hadn’t taken any prisoners.

She didn’t ask what had happened to Schwyz; she didn’t care much. Probably, he hadn’t, either.

One of the barges that came upriver from Godstow contained Rosamund’s much-traveled coffin. The Bishop of Saint Albans was aboard another. He’d been with Young Geoffrey at the storming of the abbey and looked tired enough to fall down. He kept his distance on seeing Adelia, though he thanked his God for her deliverance. Godstow had been liberated without loss on the Plantagenet side. Wolvercote, now in chains, was the only one who’d put up any resistance.

“Allie’s safe and well,” Rowley said. “So are Gyltha and Mansur. They were cheering us on from the guesthouse window.”

There was nothing else she needed to know. Yes, one thing. “Lawyer Warin,” she said. “Did you find him?”

“Little sniveling fellow? He was trying to escape via the back wall, so we put him in irons.”

“Good.”

The thaw was proceeding quickly. Untidy plates of ice floating downriver and bumping into the landing stage became smaller and smaller. She watched them; each one carried its own little cloud of thicker fog through the mist.

It was still very cold.

“Come up to the tower,” Rowley said. “Get warm.”

“No.”

He put his cloak around her, still without touching her. “Eleanor got away,” he said. “They’re hunting the woods for her.”

Adelia nodded. It didn’t matter one way or the other.

He shifted. “I’d better go to him. He’ll need me to bless the dead.”

“Yes,” she said.

He walked away, heading for the tower and his king.

Another coffin was carried to the landing stage, assembled from pieces of the bonfire. Dakers would be accompanying her mistress to the grave.

The rest of the dead were left piled in the courtyard until the ground should be soft enough to dig a common grave.

Henry came, urging on the loading, shouting to the oarsmen that if they didn’t row their hearts out, he’d have their bollocks; he was in a hurry to get to Godstow and then on to Oxford. He ushered Adelia aboard. The Bishop of Saint Albans, he told her, was staying behind to see to the burials.

The fog was too thick to allow a last glimpse of Wormhold Tower, even if Adelia had looked back, which she didn’t.

The Plantagenet wouldn’t go inside the cabin, being too concerned with piloting the rowers away from shoals, occasionally jotting notes on his slate book and studying the weather. “There’ll be a breeze soon,” he said.

He didn’t let Adelia go inside, either; he said she needed air and sat her down on a thwart in the stern. After a while, he joined her. “Better now?”

“I’m going back to Salerno,” she told him.

He sighed. “We’ve had this conversation before.”

They had, after the last time he’d used her to investigate deaths. “I am not your subject, Henry, I’m Sicily’s.”

“Yes, but this is England, and I say who comes and goes.”

She was silent, and he began wheedling. “I need you. And you wouldn’t like Salerno now, not after England; it’s too hot, you’d dry up like a prune.”

She compressed her lips and turned her head away. Damn him, don’t laugh.

“Eh?” he said. “Wouldn’t you? Eh?”

She had to ask. “Did you know Dakers would set the mantrap for Eynsham?”

He was astonished, hurt. If he hadn’t been trying to woo her, he’d have been angry. “How could I see what in hell the woman was dragging? It was too damn foggy.”

She’d never know. For the rest of her life, she’d be questioned by the image of the two of them, him and Dakers, sitting together in the garderobe, planning. “He’ll die, but not by my hand,” he had said. He’d been so certain.

“Nasty things, mantraps,” he said. “Never use ’em.” And paused. “Except for deer poachers.” And paused. “Who deserve ’em.” He paused again. “And then only ones that take the leg.”

She’d never know.

“I am returning to Salerno,” she said, very clear.

“It’d break Rowley’s heart, oath or not.”

It would probably break hers, but she was going anyway.

“You’ll stay.” The nearest oarsmen turned round at the shout. “I’ve had enough of rebellion.”

He was the king. The route to Salerno passed through vast tracts of land where nobody traveled without his permission.

“It’s his oath, isn’t it?” he said, wheedling again. “I wouldn’t have made it myself, but then, I’m not bound to chastity, thank the saints. We’ll have to see what we can do about that-I yield to nobody in my admiration for God, but He’s no good in bed.”

It was a quick journey; the thaw was putting the Thames into full spate, carrying the barge