The Serpent’s Tale

her time to poison a dozen of Henry’s whores.”

He leaned across the table to Adelia, sweeping a space between them, spilling his wine bowl and hers. “You know him, you know his temper. You’ve seen him out of control. He loves Rosamund, truly loves her. Suppose he shouts for Eleanor’s death like he shouted for Becket’s? He won’t mean it, but there’s always some bastard with a reason to respond who’ll say he’s doing it on the king’s orders, like they did with Becket. And if their mother’s executed, all the boys will rise up against their father like a tide of shit.”

He sat back in his chair. “Civil war? It’ll be here, everywhere. Stephen and Matilda will be nothing to it.”

Mansur put his hand protectively on Gyltha’s shoulder. The silence was turbulent, as if from noiseless battle and dumbed shrieks of the dying. The ghost of a murdered archbishop rose up from the stones of Canterbury and stalked the room.

Father Paton was staring from face to face, puzzled that his bishop should be addressing the doctor’s assistant with such vehemence, and not the doctor.

“Did she do it?” Adelia asked at last.

“No.” Rowley wiped some grease off his sleeve with a napkin, and replenished his bowl.

“Are you sure?”

“Not Eleanor. I know her.”

Does he? Undoubtedly, there was tender regard between queen and bishop; when Eleanor and Henry’s firstborn son had died at the age of three, Eleanor had wanted the child’s sword taken to Jerusalem so that, in death, little William might be regarded as a holy crusader. It was Rowley who’d made the terrible journey and lain the tiny sword on the high altar-so of course Eleanor looked on Rowley kindly.

But like everything else in royal matters, it was King Henry who’d arranged it, Henry who’d given Rowley his orders, Henry who’d received the intelligence of what was going on in the Holy Land that Rowley’d brought back with him. Oh, yes, Rowley Picot had been more the king’s agent than the queen’s sword carrier.

But still claiming special knowledge of Eleanor’s character, the bishop added, “Face-to-face, she’d tear Rosamund’s throat out…but not poison. It’s not her style.”

Adelia nodded. She said in Arabic, “I still don’t see what you want of me. I am a doctor to the dead…”

“You have a logical mind,” the bishop said, also in Arabic. “You see things others don’t. Who saved the Jews from the accusation of child murder last year? Who found the true killer?”

“I had assistance.” That good little man Simon of Naples, the real investigator who had come with her from Salerno for the purpose and had died for it.

Mansur, unusual for him, struck in, indicating Adelia. “She must not be put in such danger again. The will of Allah and only the will of Allah saved her from the pit last time.”

Adelia smiled fondly at him. Let him attribute it to Allah if he liked. Actually, she had survived the child killer’s lair only because a dog had led Rowley to it in time. What neither he, nor God, nor Allah had saved her from were memories of a nightmare that still reenacted themselves in her daily life as sharply as if they were happening all over again-often, this time, to young Allie.

“Of course she won’t be in danger again,” the bishop told Mansur with energy. “This case is completely different. There’s been no murder here, only a clumsy attempt at one. Whoever tried to do it is long gone. But don’t you see?” Another bowl tipped as he thumped the board. “Don’t you see? Everybody will believe Eleanor to be the poisoner; she hates Rosamund and she was possibly in the neighborhood. Wasn’t that Gyltha’s immediate conclusion? Won’t it be the world’s?” He took his eyes away from Mansur and to the woman opposite him. “In the name of God, Adelia, help me.”

With a jerk of her chin toward the door, Gyltha nudged Mansur, who nodded, rose, and took an unwilling Father Paton by the scruff of his neck.

The two who remained seated at the table didn’t notice their going. The bishop’s gaze was on Adelia; hers on her clasped hands.

Stop resenting him, she was thinking. It wasn’t abandonment; mine was the refusal to marry, only mine the insistence we shouldn’t meet again. It is illogical to blame him for keeping to the agreement.

Damn him, though, there should have been something all these months-at least an acknowledgment of the baby.

“How are you and God getting along?” she asked.

“I serve Him, I hope.” She heard amusement in his voice.

“Good works?”

“When I can.”

She thought, And we both know, don’t we, that you would sacrifice God and His works, me and your daughter, all of us, if doing so would serve Henry Plantagenet.

He said quietly, “I apologize for this, Adelia. I would not have broken our agreement not to meet again for anything less.”

She said, “If Eleanor is proved guilty, I won’t lie. I shall say so.”

“Ya-hah.” Now that was Rowley, the energy, the shout that shivered the wine in its jug-here, for an instant, was her joyous lover back again.

“Couldn’t resist, could you? Are you taking the baby with you? Yes, of course, you’ll still be breast-feeding- damned odd to think of you as lactating stock.”

He was up and had opened the door, calling for Paton. “There’s a basket of mushrooms in my pack. Find it and bring it here.” He turned to Adelia, grinning. “Thought you’d want to see some evidence.”

“You devil,” she said.

“Maybe, but this devil will save its king and its country or die trying.”

“Or kill me in the process.” Stop it, she thought, stop sounding like a wronged woman; it was your decision.

He shrugged. “You’ll be safe enough, nobody’s out to poison you. You’ll have Gyltha and Mansur-God help anyone who touches you while they’re around-and I’m sending servants along. I presume that canine eyesore goes, too?”

“Yes,” she said. “His name’s Ward.”

“One more of the prior’s finds to keep you safe? I remember Safeguard.”

Another creature that had died saving her life. The room was full of memories that hurt-and with the dangerous value of being shared.

“Paton is my watchdog,” he said conversationally. “He guards my virtue like a bloody chastity belt. Incidentally, wait until you see Fair Rosamund’s labyrinth-biggest in Christendom. Mind you, wait til you see Fair Rosamund herself, she’s not what you’d expect. In fact-”

She interrupted. “Is it at risk?”

“The labyrinth?”

“Your virtue.”

All at once, he was being kind. “Oddly enough, it isn’t. I thought when you turned me down…but God was kind and tempered the wind to the shorn lamb.”

“And when Henry needed a compliant bishop.” Stop it, stop it.

“And the world needed a doctor, not another wife,” he said, still kind. “I see that now; I have prayed to see it; marriage would have wasted you.”

Yes, yes. If she had agreed to marriage, he’d have refused the bishopric the king had urged on him for political expediency, but for her, there had been the higher priority of her calling. She’d have had to abandon it-he’d demanded a wife, not a doctor, especially not a doctor to the dead.

In the end, she thought, neither of us would bestow the ultimate, sacrificial gift on the other.

He got up and went to the baby, making the sign of the cross on her forehead with his thumb. “Bless you, my daughter.” He turned back. “Bless you, too, mistress,” he said. “God keep you both safe, and may the peace of Jesus Christ prevail over the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” He sighed. “For I can hear the sound of their hooves.”