A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

enormous well and where laundresses had every sort of equipment to do their work.

Here, the princess’s women had been able to catch up on the laundry that the sometimes primitive facilities of the various hostels they’d stayed at had denied them. (Brune had never let Locusta forget the monastery outside Alencon where the monks still used the river and cleaned their robes by beating them with stones.)

Sheets and clothing hanging from lines fastened from pillar to pillar obscured the way, and Captain Bolt had to brush them aside as he led Adelia and Boggart toward a corner where more lanterns showed a gathering of people standing in a circle near one of the enormous iron washing vats set above its brazier. Ward pattered after them, then stopped and slunk away.

Rowley was there, so was Father Guy, Mansur, two of the palace guards, and one of Brune’s young washerwomen, whose sobs were sending echoes hiccuping around the vault.

The head laundress, it appeared, would complain no longer.

“It was our turn to do the wash, the palace women’d done theirs,” the girl was saying, “and we’d done ours and we’d gone up for the night and she saw us to bed like she does, then she come back down to see all was right for the morning wash, like she does… did, oh God have mercy on her poor soul.”

“And?” Father Guy asked sharply

“So when she didn’t come up, I come down again to see why, and there she was with her poor head in the tub. Awful it was, master, awful.”

Brune’s body lay on the tiled floor, her soaked cap dislodged so that some of her hair dripped down an already dripping bodice. Her skirt was dry.

“Like this?” Rowley asked. He leaned over the edge of the vat, head down.

The girl nodded. She was clutching a scrubbing board to her chest like a shield. “I couldn’t get her up, master. Tried and tried, I did, but she were too weighty so I ran for help. And him there…” One of the guards nodded, “… he gets her up out of the tub but she were dead then, God have mercy, sweet Mary have mercy”

“Why is the vat full, child?” This was Father Guy, accusatory. “Do you not empty the water out at night?”

Apparently they did, then filled the vats again ready for the next day’s wash. “Very particular ’bout that, she was. Saves time in the morning, see, all we has to do then is light the fires. Oh, God have mercy, master, she didn’t… didn’t mean to drown herself did she? Say she won’t go to hell, will she, master?” The girl collapsed under the thought of her chief eternally damned for the sin of suicide. Adelia went to comfort her.

Father Guy tapped his long fingers together as he considered. “I see no reason to assume such a thing; she was a God-fearing woman, one of the few amongst us, I fear. Was she in any way distressed today? No? Then cause of death is clear-an accident. Do you not agree, my lord?”

“So it seems,” the Bishop of Saint Albans said. “What does the Lord Mansur think? He’s the doctor.”

Every eye looked toward Mansur, who spoke in Arabic. “What do you say?”

“I don’t like it,” Adelia said in the same tongue. There was a raw, red area on Brune’s upper lip. She lapsed into Norman French for the benefit of the chaplain. “The lord doctor wishes to examine her.”

Father Guy appealed to a higher authority. “Surely it is unnecessary for the Saracen to interfere, my lord bishop. It is obvious that this female had a turn, an apoplexy, something, as she bent over the tub, causing her to flop forward unconscious and drown. Let us inform the seneschal of the matter, ratio decidendi.”

Rowley made up his mind. “Get along and do it, then. And while you’re about it, Father, ready the palace priests for the poor dame’s funeral.”

“You…” Father Guy pointed at the guards, “… take her up.”

“Not yet.” Rowley’s voice was sharp. “There’s an examination to be made before we move her, and prayers to be said.”

The chaplain hovered, casting venomous glances at Mansur, unwilling to leave a Christian corpse to a heretic. “Then let me fetch Doctor Arnulf.”

“If you wish it, and if he’s prepared to get himself out of bed, which I doubt. Now, Captain.” Rowley turned to Bolt. “If you would escort this young lady to the buttery and see she’s given some brandy And you two”-this was to the guards-“bring a litter.”

Before he went, Father Guy confronted Adelia. “I hear this poor woman quarreled with you recently, mistress.”

“Does that matter now?”

“I hope it does not, mistress, I hope it does not.”

Politely but firmly, Captain Bolt urged the chaplain toward the stairs to the hall, his other arm around the little laundress who went, still sobbing, still clutching the scrubbing board.

“Foul play?” Rowley asked when they’d gone.

“I’m not sure.”

“Then make sure, and be quick about it.”

Adelia wondered for a moment whether Boggart should leave, too, but, well, the girl was now part of the household and might as well be introduced to the work that it did.

“Prepare yourself Boggart,” she said. “I am going to try and find out exactly how this lady died.”

She went down on her knees by the corpse. She paused to make her supplication to the dead. Forgive me and permit your poor flesh to tell me what your voice cannot.

The jaw was showing early stages of rigor mortis. The red patch on the dead woman’s upper lip had definitely been caused by friction.

Moving swiftly, Adelia began opening Brune’s outer clothing, ignoring Boggart’s horrified intake of breath.

There was deep bruising on both of the upper arms. “Hmmm.”

“Well?” Rowley asked with impatience.

He also was ignored.

Both eyes were shut-probably had been closed by one of the people who’d gathered around the corpse; there was nothing more naked than the staring eyes of the dead.

Adelia forced up one eyelid, then the other. She was remembering two corpses, that of an old man, the other a child, which had been brought at different times to her foster father for examination, both of them with an abrasion similar to Brune’s on the upper lip-both unnatural deaths, as he had discovered.

Rowley and Mansur were talking quietly together, but she paid them no attention. Attempting to pull the woman’s bodice down, she found it too tightly laced at the back. She looked up at Boggart. “Help me turn her over.”

The maid shrank away. “Oh, mistress, it ain’t right what you’re doing.”

Adelia, her nerves always frayed when her concentration on a corpse was interrupted, lost her temper. “Ain’t right? It ain’t right what’s happened to this woman, and I need to find out why it did. She’s heavy Help me turn her over.”

Shocked-her mistress had never been cross with her before-Boggart did as she was told.

Parting the gray hair, Adelia found blood. After examining the wound, she undid the back of the bodice and pulled it open. Crisscrossed abrasions on the spine showed where the laces had been pressed into it. Hmmm. “Now we turn her over again,” she said.

With the body once more faceup, and with Boggart still whimpering, Adelia exposed Brune’s large white breasts. The chest was unmarked.

“In the name of God, hurry, will you?” Rowley was hissing. “They’ll be coming for her soon. What’s the verdict?”

Without haste, Adelia raised Brune’s skirt and spread the legs. No, the vaginal area had been untouched.

Slowly, she sat back on her heels. “I’m fairly sure she didn’t drown, Rowley I’d like to dissect the lungs of course…”

“Oh, yes, necropsy would go down very well,” the bishop said between his teeth. “Of course you can’t dissect her. In the name of God, just tell me what happened.”

Adelia looked up. “I think she was smothered. Somebody hit her head from behind-Mansur, see if you can find a weapon-and then, when she staggered, pulled her down and knelt on her arms-see the bruising, there and there-while he held something over her mouth and nose, something rough… you see where it rubbed against the upper lip?”

“This?” Mansur had found a coarse towel on the floor. One of the pegs that had held it up remained on the