A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

IT HAPPENED WHEN they were passing through the Bocage, that woody and rich farming area of southwest Normandy where cows grazed knee-deep in grass behind high hedges dotted like sprigged muslin with rose hips and light green hazelnuts.

Adelia, who’d been riding high and comfortably on her new saddle, had her attention diverted from lichened cottages and tiny, towerless churches by her horse. The horse had been acting bizarrelyfor the last two days, staggering occasionally and yawning. Now, the palfrey kept stopping to rub her head against any fence post they passed.

“I think Juno’s ill,” she said.

Mansur beckoned to the nearest groom, who came up.

Adelia dismounted so that the man could examine the mare. “Is she tired? Have I been riding her too hard?”

“Not you, mistress-you ain’t but a puff of wind on her back.” His name was Martin, and he liked Adelia, who’d successfully treated a toe damaged when a horse had stepped on it. He walked around the mare, running his hands down flanks that had been becoming thinner, then took her head between his hands.

“Hello, hello, what’s this here?” He pointed to the bare patches around the eyes and nostrils where the skin appeared inflamed.

Adelia peered with him. “It looks like sunburn. How can that be?” She’d never heard of a horse getting sunburned.

“It do look like sunburn,” Martin said, and called for the head groom. “Here, Master Tom, what d’you make of this?”

There was a good deal of head scratching by both men, more questioning of Adelia about the horse’s behavior, more examination during which the animal remained listless.

“You thinking what I’m thinking, Master Tom?” Martin asked.

The head groom sucked his teeth. “Ragwort.”

“That’s what I reckon.”

Master Tom turned on Adelia. “You been letting this poor beast graze on the verges while you been on her back?”

“No, well, not much. Not where there’s ragwort.” She knew the plant; the ubiquitous bright yellow weed had to be avoided by humans and, it seemed, by horses as well. “I certainly wouldn’t have let her eat it if I’d seen it.”

“Well, some bugger’s been givin’ it to her-and lots of it over a fair old time for her to get into this state. She was fit as a flea when we left Caen.”

“In her feed at night, you reckon?” Martin asked.

“Could be, could be,” Master Tom said. “She’d not likely’ve touched it while it was growing…”

“But that loses its taste when it’s dried,” Martin finished for him.

“Still and all, what bastard would do that to a horse?”

“What can be done for her?” Adelia begged. Inattentive as she was to the equine world generally, she and the mare had gone this far on the journey together and it was painful to see the animal in such distress. Allie would know what to do, she thought.

Master Tom shrugged. “Nothing. Not with ragwort poison. Put her out of her misery. Nothin’ else to do.”

Juno was led into woodland and her life ended by a quick and expert slash across the throat. The Bishop of Saint Albans immediately began an inquiry-as it turned out, an unsuccessful inquiry-to find out who was responsible for what must have been systematic poisoning of the horse in its nightly stable over the course of several days, something that inevitably pointed to a person belonging to the princess’s train.

“The poor beast,” Lady Petronilla said loudly to Adelia across the dinner table that evening. “You must feel dreadful now that you were so cross with her when you tumbled off her the other day.”

“I was cross with myself, not the horse.”

It was no use pointing out, as Captain Bolt and Rowley did, that Mistress Adelia invariably handed over her horse to the grooms to stable when the cavalcade reached its destination for the night, and was thereby absolved from feeding it ragwort. The company was left with the impression that she had cursed her horse and that, alone among all the other horses, it had subsequently died.

As SCARRY TELLS Wolf that night: “it begins.”

ADELIA WAS FINALLY vouchsafed an explanation of the “Sir Nicholas and the shoes” mystery when there was another disturbance at night, this time at the Abbey of Saint-Sauveur de Redon on the approach to Aquitaine, the duchy that had once belonged to Queen Eleanor and had passed to Henry Plantagenet on their marriage.

Again, she and the ladies-in-waiting, in their sleep, heard an alarmed feminine shout and male activity coming from somewhere beyond their room.

On this occasion, however, they were roused by their door crashing open and Lady Petronilla’s maid, Marie, rushing through it, whimpering.

“In the name of God, Marie,” said Lady Beatrix, querulously “What is it?” She glanced at the hours candle on the bedside table to see that only half its length had burned down. “It’s the middle of the blasted night.”

“He done it to me this time, m’lady,” Marie sobbed. “Terrible frit he gave me. And look what he done.” She lifted her leg to display the fact that one of her feet was without its shoe.

“Who did? And where have you been?” (The maids slept on palliasses in the same room as their mistresses.)

“There was this noise in the passage outside, m‘lady, and I got up to open it, thinking as one of the dogs had got shut out, and there weren’t nothing there so I went down the passage a bit, and, oh m’lady, it weren’t a dog at all, it were Sir Nicholas.”

“Oh, dear,” said Lady Petronilla. “Well, never mind. And you, mistress, stay here, it’s nothing for you to concern yourself with.”

But Adelia had already wrapped herself in a cloak and gone outside to see what was to be seen, leaving Boggart, whom the Last Trump could not have disturbed, to sleep on.

The Bishop of Saint Albans was outside the door, watching a strange procession wending its way toward a turret stair that led down to the men’s guest quarters.

Two men-at-arms, one of them Captain Bolt, were supporting a staggering Sir Nicholas Baicer while, in front of them, the knight’s squire, Aubrey, was walking backward holding what looked like Marie’s shoe in front of his master’s nose as another man might tempt a dog into following him with a biscuit.

Adelia shut the bedroom door quietly behind her so that the ladies-in-waiting should not hear and turned to her lover. “Well?”

“It’s young Aubrey’s fault, he’s supposed to measure how much Nicholas drinks at our feasts.” Rowley was finding the occasion amusing.

“What has he done?”

It appeared that there was a fine line, only a cup or two of wine, to be drawn between a pleasantly tipsy Sir Nicholas and a Sir Nicholas who was overtaken by a lust that directed itself at feminine feet.

“Any woman,” explained Rowley, still amused, “as long as she has such extremities on the end of her legs, is in danger of having a drink-sodden Sir Nicholas throwing himself at her boots and applying his tongue to their leather.”

“And that’s what happened to Marie?”

“So it seems. He must have outmaneuvered his squire. Last time it was one of the laundresses.” He caught sight of Adelia’s face. “No harm done. He’ll snuggle down in bed with the maid’s shoe and be off to sleep like a lamb. He won’t remember in the morning.”

“No harm done? The girl was frightened.”

“Nonsense. It’s one way of getting her boots clean. Now, then…” Rowley pulled Adelia toward him. “… since you’re here…”