A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

Sicily was ensured.

She said so to Captain Bolt as she emerged from the church to find him and a troop of his men waiting outside, ready to escort her and the ladies of the party from the Abbaye-aux-Hommes to the Abbaye-aux-Dames, where they would spend the night, Caen being unique in having two great convents, one for men, one for women, standing on either side of the city; the first built by William the Conqueror and the second by his wife, Matilda, both in expiation of their sin of marrying each other against the law of consanguinity-they’d been cousins.

“Them,” Captain Bolt responded with all the contempt of a professional soldier for men who paid for the land they held of the king by a knightly service that allowed them to go home after thirty days. “No discipline. See how they behaved in church? Shocking it was.”

WARD SPENT THE NIGHT somewhere in the bowels of the nunnery with Boggart. Dog and maid had become delighted with each other, Boggart because, for the first time in her life she had something, however smelly, on which to lavish affection, and Ward because Boggart, though lacking skill as a lady’s attendant, was a marvel at stealing food from kitchens with which to feed him.

That’s one problem solved, then, Adelia thought, as she climbed wearily into the large bed already containing Lady Beatrix, Lady Petronilla, and Mistress Blanche. Dear Lord, keep Allie safe and don’t let her be missing me as much as I’m missing her.

THE MORNING BROUGHT its own problem, a larger one.

The ladies of the party had risen early to be escorted across Caen to the Abbaye-aux-Hommes, where they were now gathered in its courtyard waiting for the great journey to Sicily to properly begin.

And waited.

Loud and angry voices could be heard coming from inside the monastery, the Bishop of Saint Albans’s louder and angrier than anyone’s.

At last he emerged, flanked by Lord Ivo and Sir Nicholas Baicer, both looking nearly as thunderous as he did. He bowed to Joanna. “My lady, I must inform you that the Young King has gone to Falaise. For a tournament, apparently And all his knights with him. He begs you to expect his return in a few days.”

What the princess replied was inaudible, but Adelia heard Lady Priscilla exclaim, “A tournament, how I adore tournaments. Oh, that he might have taken us with him.”

A few days? It might not matter to that young woman how long the journey took-she had no child waiting for her to come back.

As for the Young King… it was known that he was addicted to tournaments, but this was irresponsibility; what an abrogation of duty.

Adelia had been present at a tournament once during a visit to Emma’s Normandy manor near Calais and, for her, that had been one tournament too many. They were called entertainments, two teams of knights hacking away at each other in what was supposed to be a mock battle, but during the melee at Calais four young men had been killed and fifteen others permanently maimed.

The attraction for the victors was in holding the defeated to ransom, along with their armor and horses-a way of earning so much money that as many as several hundred eager knights would take part, not only wasting precious lives but trampling peasants’ crops for miles around. Henry in his wisdom had banned them from England but here, it seemed, under the nominal rule of the Young King, they were still legal.

She saw Captain Bolt talking with Rowley and, when he’d finished, went up to him. “What can be done?”

“Nothing.” Bolt was tight-lipped with fury. “We wait.”

They waited for four days, during which Caen’s welcome to the princess and her large company began to drain away-like its resources.

On the fifth day a messenger was sent to Falaise to ask the Young King when he was expecting to return.

Again, Adelia approached Captain Bolt. “What’s happened?”

“The messenger had to go on to Rouen. That young b…” Bolt took in a long breath. “… the Young King’s heard as there’s another big tournament there and he’s off to fight in it.”

“Rouen’s, what, eighty miles away What are we going to do?”

“I dunno, mistress. The bishops and Sir Nicholas and Lord Ivo are in conference about it.”

Master Locusta, it appeared, was frantic that his arrangements with the castles and monasteries scheduled to receive them on the way would be put out. “I’ve no wish to speak ill of the Young King, but really…”

“I think you’re justified in speaking ill of the Young King this time,” an impatient Adelia told him.

The conference lasted another day On the seventh, it came to a decision. Another messenger was sent to the Young King at Rouen to tell him that Princess Joanna and her train were finding it necessary to set off for Aquitaine immediately in the expectation that her brother and his train would catch up with her en route.

So the next morning the citizens of Caen lined the road to the southern gate to cheer and wave off the marriage cavalcade, partly to honor it and partly in relief that it was going. After all, it numbered nearly one hundred and fifty people who, with their animals, the city had been forced to accommodate and feed at its own expense.

Riding with Mansur near the head of the column, Adelia glanced back at the long, long line following behind her, and was encouraged; nobles, clerks, musicians and squires, personal servants, laundresses, grooms, luggage, and treasure, all were accommodated in carts or on mule- and horseback, a luxury that required nobody to walk, thereby speeding the journey

As the procession reached the countryside and began passing through isolated little villages, their inhabitants came out to marvel at something to be seen once in a lifetime; the golden princess and ladies in their gilded palanquin, riders cloaked in crimson cloth or silk, horses in their rainbow caparisons, the shine of armor-like a jeweled dragon come glittering out of the age of myth to prance its way along the muddy high streets.

Captain Bolt’s practiced eye, however, saw it differently Pausing beside Adelia as he rode up and down the line to make sure his soldiers kept their posts along it, he cursed Young Henry and his lack of duty

“Aren’t we better off without him?” she asked.

“Maybe. But my men’ve got a princess with a mort of treasure to guard and, if so be it comes to an attack, we’re mightily overstretched.”

“THE JOURNEY BEGINS to be unlucky for them; Young Henry has deserted us. That great fool, the Bishop of Winchester, complains of it, mala tempora currunt, yet I see in it our Great Master’s hand. We are being shown the way, Lupus mine. Send us more misfortune, O deo certe, that I may contrive to have the blame for it heaped on the head of the woman we are to bring down.”

Five

IT WAS ADELIA’S CONTENTION from personal experience that riding sidesaddle was bad for the back. Not a good horsewoman, she also thought it dangerous to be hanging on at a twisted angle should one’s mount shy or bolt. Yet riding astride was denounced everywhere as unladylike, a style for peasants, especially by the exalted company in which she now found herself.

If King Henry’s strictures to the three ladies-in-waiting had been properly observed, she should have traveled in the de luxe cushioned cart in which they and Joanna passed the journey by teasing their perfumed lapdogs, playing cards, and watching the scenery they could see through its gilded and ornamented bars. Adelia’s only experience in it, however, was her last.

It wasn’t that the little princess herself was unfriendly merely withdrawn. Lady Beatrix, Lady Petronilla, and Mistress Blanche, on the other hand, had a curve to their lips as they questioned her about her “Saracen friend.” (“Do tell us, dear-is his skin naturally that color or is it against his religion to wash?”) And inquired after her new maid. (“We hope so much that the Boggart is proving satisfactory, how nice that she’s taken to your interesting little dog.”)

After a morning of it, Adelia reverted to the sidesaddle on the palfrey allotted to her. It was a pretty but very