The Serpent’s Tale

at speed. Henry spent the rest of the time making notes in his slate book. Adelia sat and stared into nothingness, which was all there was to see.

But the king was right, a light breeze had come up by the time they approached Godstow, and from some way off, the bridge became just visible. It appeared to be busy; the middle span was empty, but at each end people were milling around a single still figure.

As the barge passed the village, the activity among the group on this side of the bridge became clearer.

It was a hanging party. Taller than anybody else, Wolvercote stood in the middle of it with a noose around his neck while a man attached the other end of the rope to a stanchion. Beside him, the much smaller figure of Father Egbert muttered in prayer.

A young woman was watching the scene from the abbey end. The crowd of people behind her was keeping back, but one of them-Adelia recognized the matronly shape of Mistress Bloat-tugged at her daughter’s hand as if she were pleading. Emma paid no attention. Her eyes never left the scene on the other side of the bridge.

Seeing the barge, a young man leaned over the bridge’s parapet. His voice came clear and jolly. “Greetings, my lord, and my thanks to God for keeping you safe.” He grinned. “I knew He would.”

The oarsmen reversed their rowing stroke so that the boat could keep its position against the flow of the water and allow the exchange between king and son. Above them, Wolvercote kept his gaze on the sky. The sun was beginning to come out. A heron rose out of the rushes and flapped its gawky way farther downriver.

Henry put aside his slate book. “Well done, Geoffrey. Is everything secured?”

“All secure, my lord. And, my lord, the pursuers I put after the queen have sent word. She is caught and being brought back.”

Henry nodded. Pointing up at Wolvercote, he said, “Has he made confession for his sins?”

“For everything except his treachery to you, my lord. He refuses to be absolved for rebellion.”

“I wouldn’t absolve the swine anyway,” Henry said to Adelia. “Even the Lord’ll have to think twice.” He called back, “Tip him over, then, Geoffrey, and God have mercy on his soul.” He gestured to his oarsmen to row on.

As the boat passed by, two of the men lifted Wolvercote up and steadied him so that he stood balanced on the parapet.

Father Egbert raised his voice to begin the absolution: “Dominusnoster Jesus Christus…”

Adelia turned away. She was near enough now to see Emma’s face; it was completely expressionless.

“…Deinde, ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nominee Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

There was a thump of suddenly tightened rope. Jeers and cheering went up from both ends of the bridge.

Adelia couldn’t watch, but she knew when Wolvercote had stopped struggling because it wasn’t until then that Emma turned and walked away.

A crowd of soldiers, nuns, and serving people, nearly everybody in the abbey had gathered on the meadow below the convent to cheer King Henry in.

For Adelia there were only three, a tall Arab, an elderly woman, and a child whose small hand was being flapped up and down in welcome.

She bowed her head in gratitude at the sight of them.

After all, I have no need for any but these.

Allie seemed to have learned another word, because Gyltha was trying to make her say it, first encouraging the baby and then pointing toward Adelia, who couldn’t hear it through the cheering.

There was a shout from the opposite bank that cut through the noise. “My lord, my lord. We have recovered the queen, my lord.”

At an order from Henry, the barge veered across the river toward a group of horsemen arriving through the trees. A man with the insignia of a captain of the Plantagenet guard was dismounting, while one of his soldiers helped the queen down from his horse where she’d been riding pillion.

A gate in the barge’s taffrail was opened and a gangplank laid across the gap between it and the bank. The captain, a worried-looking man, came aboard.

“How did she get across the river?” Henry asked.

“There was an old wherry further down, my lord. We think Lord Montignard poled her across…my lord, he tried to delay her capture, he fought like a wolf, my lord…he…”

“They killed him,” the queen called from the bank. She was brushing the soldier’s restraining hand off her arm like a speck of dust.

The king went forward to help her aboard. “Eleanor.”

“Henry.”

“I like the disguise, you look well in it.”

She was dressed like a boy, and she did look well in it, though as a disguise it would have fooled nobody; her figure was slim enough, but the muddy, short cloak and boots, the angle of the cap she’d stuffed her hair into, were worn with too much style.

The cheering from the abbey had stopped; there was an openmouthed silence as if people on the far bank were watching a meeting between warring Olympians and waiting for the thunderbolts.

There weren’t any. Adelia, crouched in the stern, watched two people who had known each other too well and been too long together to surprise now; they had conceived eight children and seen one of them die, ruled great countries together, made laws together, put down rebellions together, quarreled, laughed, and loved together, and if, now, all that had ended in a metaphorical attempt to disembowel each other, it was still in their eyes and hung in the air between them.

As if, even now, she couldn’t bear to look anything but feminine for him, Eleanor took off her cap and sent it spinning into the river. It was a mistake; the boy’s costume became grotesque as the long, graying hair of a fifty- year-old woman fell over its shoulders.

Gently, mercifully, her husband took off his cloak and put it around her. “There, my dear.”

“Well, Henry,” she said, “where’s it to be this time? Back to Anjou and Chinon?”

The king shook his head. “I was thinking more of Sarum.”

She tutted. “Oh, not Sarum, Henry, it’s in England.”

“I know, my love, but the trouble with Chinon was that you insisted on escaping from it.”

“But Sarum,” she persisted. “So dull.”

“Well, well, if you’re a good girl, I’ll let you out for Easter and Christmas.” He gestured to the rowers to take up their oars. “For now, though, we’re making for Oxford. Some rebels there are waiting for me to hang them.”

An enraptured Adelia woke up in panic. There was a river between her and her child. “My lord, my lord, let me off first.”

He’d forgotten her. “Oh, very well.” And to the rowers, “Make for the other bank.”

Against fast running water, the procedure was lengthy, and the king tutted irritably all through it. By the time the barge was settled at a disembarking point on the requisite bank, it had gone long past the abbey, and Adelia was handed ashore on a deserted stretch of meadow into mud that she sank in up to the tops of her boots.

The king liked that. He leaned over the taffrail, humor restored. “You’ll have to squelch back,” he said.

“Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord.”

The barge took off, its dipping and rising oars sending glittering droplets back onto the surface of the water.

Suddenly, the king was running along the barge’s length to the stern so that he could tell her one more thing. “About the bishop’s oath,” he called, “don’t worry about it. ‘…if You will guard her and keep her safe…’ Very nicely phrased.”

She called back. “Was it?”

“Yes.” The rapidly increasing distance between them was forcing him to shout. “Adelia, you’re my investigator into the dead, like it or not…”

All she could see now was the Plantagenet three-leopard pennant fluttering as the barge rounded a wooded bend, but the king’s voice carried cheerfully over its trees: “You’re never going to be safe.”