A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

That was the most straightforward route. Coming to England, she’d traveled it in reverse, by boat from Salerno up the Italian coast to Genoa, through the Mont Cenis pass into France and thence to the Channel.

Now, she saw, they would be going overland via the extreme west, hugging the edge of the Atlantic, down through Aquitaine, to Saint Gilles on the Mediterranean coast, where they’d board ship for Sicily It would take longer and involve somewhat more time at sea-Adelia still remembered with discomfort the Mediterranean storm that had nearly capsized the boat taking her to Genoa; she didn’t like ocean voyages.

“We decided the route through Northern Italy would be a little too exciting for the princess, didn’t we, my lord bishop?” Locusta said.

His uncle smiled back at him. “We did indeed. The peace between the Lombards and Barbarossa is a little too fragile; we can’t allow Joanna into a war. From Saint Gilles you will travel by ship all the way to Sicily”

“I see. Then I think, my Lord Mansur thinks, that you have done excellently”

“Thank you.” The bishop looked at his nephew. “Let us hope it goes according to plan for you, eh, Locusta?”

The young man sighed. “Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit. We can only hope.”

Adelia smiled at the young man. “Locusta?”

“I was christened William, lady” He shook a finger in mock disapprobation at the bishop. “But it seems I emerged from the womb so angular and covered in black hair that my good uncle here nicknamed me for a lobster before it is boiled. Locusta I was and Locusta, I fear, I must remain.”

At the door, the Bishop of Winchester was agitatedly telling Admiral O’Donnell, “But they are the wrong sort of boats…”

Hearing disputation, Henry approached them. Adelia, about to leave the room, stopped to listen.

The bishop appealed to the king. “This person, my lord… I have been to the harbor… this person is taking us over the Channel in the wrong sort of boats.”

“Wrong sort of boats, O’Donnell?”

The seaman shrugged. He was very tall. “My lord, what’s wrong is the wind. If it fails to rise, my oarsmen will be rowing us across the Channel.” He looked down at the bishop. “The little fella here is complaining at the lack of castles…”

“Indeed, indeed,” the bishop said. “There should be castles, turrets on our boat, it is too plain. One at the front, one at the back, for defense against pirates…”

“I believe ‘fore and aft’ is the correct expression,” Henry said. “What pirates? Are you aware of any pirates in my Channel, O’Donnell?”

“I am not, me lord. Didn’t you and I clear it of the bastards long ago? However, if the little fella wants castles, he can have castles, for they’re a marvelous way of capsizing a boat in a storm-but not on my fokking ships he doesn’t.”

Henry took the bishop by the elbow. “You see, my lord, Admiral O‘Donnell may be a foulmouthed, disrespectful, opinionated limb of Satan and, what’s worse, an Irishman, but at sea he’s Neptune and nobody knows the English seas better-nor the Mediterranean, come to that.” He turned back to O’Donnell. “Is that where you’ve been these last two years?”

There was a gleam of white teeth. “A mari usque ad mare. And in Christian company, sure enough. Enriching me soul ferrying crusaders to the Holy Land.”

“Enriching your pocket, you mean. God’s eyes, I should have been a bloody sailor. Well, let us go and see if we can whistle up a breeze.”

O’Donnell saw Adelia watching him and gave an elaborate bow.

So this man would be accompanying them overland on their journey to the Mediterranean, would he? She wished he wasn’t; he made her uncomfortable; she didn’t know why; there was something about him…

On the way out of the door, she was accosted by the princess’s ladies-in-waiting. They were young, beautiful, and exquisitely dressed-Adelia was glad she was in Emma’s pretty bliaut and cloak-and might have been sisters except that Mistress Blanche, as her name indicated, was fair, the other two dark. Suddenly friendly, they spoke as if of one mind, like triplets. “My dear,” trilled Lady Petronilla in an Aquitanian accent, “you have no maid with you? Such a misfortune. How did it happen?”

“Allow us to remedy that situation for you,” said Lady Beatrix, another one from Aquitaine to judge from her speech. “We can, can’t we, Blanche?”

“The moment the king mentioned your lack, it came to us.” Lady Petronilla snapped her fingers at a slight figure standing in the doorway “So fortunate that we have such a one who is surplus to our requirements. The girl was attached to the household of my sister-in-law, Lady Kenilworth, you know, who no longer has need of her.”

“We gift her to you,” Lady Beatrix said, barely suppressing a giggle.

The gift came forward, tripped over its overlong skirt, and fell down.

“English, I fear,” Mistress Blanche said in a stage whisper, “but we are sure she will suit you admirably”

“Thank you,” Adelia said, bewildered.

That was too much for them; they turned and walked away, their shoulders shaking.

Adelia helped her new maid to her feet. “What’s your name?”

“Boggart, ladyship, I’m Boggart.”

“Boggart? It can’t be your name.”

Here in England, a boggart was a clumsy and malicious household sprite that caused milk to sour, objects to disappear, and animals to go lame. This child, only fifteen if she was a day, looked innocent enough with her round, freckled face and wide blue eyes.

“I think so, ladyship,” Boggart said, cheerfully. “Never known no other.”

“But what were you christened?”

“Don’t know as I was, ladyship.”

Oh, dear. Adelia regarded her new acquisition; the girl was clean but her small hands were those of an unlikely lady’s maid, being calloused and with grime in the wrinkles of the knuckles that no scrubbing could remove. Yet a lady’s maid was required on this journey, if only to provide Adelia with necessary status. “Well, um, Boggart, are you willing to enter my service?”

“Eh?” From the girl’s look of incomprehension, it seemed she was puzzled by being given an option. “What’d I have to do?”

“Lord, I don’t know.” Adelia, never having had a lady’s maid as such, was flummoxed; Gyltha had run her household with a rod of iron and such efficiency that Adelia’s requirements had been seen to almost without her noticing. What did ladies’ maids do?

“I could clean your boots,” Boggart said, eagerly. “I’m a wonderful boot cleaner.”

Adelia sighed. The Aquitanian ladies had given her a pig in a poke. They’d wanted rid of this child; the wonder was why they’d brought her along in the first place. But the sudden hope in the poor little thing’s eyes made rejection of her unthinkable.

“I belong to you now, then, do I, ladyship?”

“You don’t belong to anybody. I’m asking you if you’d like to enter my employment.”

Again the look of incomprehension. Nobody had told Boggart that slavery had been abolished in his lands by William the Conqueror, that she was not a parcel to be passed from hand to hand. “I’m a wonderful boot cleaner,” she repeated.

Adelia gave another sigh. “I suppose that’ll do to start with.”

With Boggart trailing behind her like a puppy, she followed the rest of the guests out onto the ramparts.

Southampton had become a major port, trading good English wool with Normandy in return for wine, and today its harbor was busy with ships coming in and those waiting to go out once there was wind.

The Bishop of Winchester, still complaining to the king, was pointing out the two vessels allocated for the princess’s crossing; one for Joanna herself and her court, the other for the lesser mortals attached to it.

Adelia rather sympathized with the frightened little bishop; to her inexperienced eye the two boats, though freshly and brightly painted, were lower slung, with one bank of oars, two masts, and less ornamentation, than the becastled vessels she’d been in before. Only a limp royal Plantagenet pennant showed which was the princess’s