A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

She sat up, making the robin flutter away “I am not. You know I want to go, but Henry entrusted Joanna’s health to me…”

“Yes, you bloody well are. There’s somebody in her household means you harm, and I’m not just talking about Father Guy You go tomorrow”

He could answer the call of his duty, but hers was of no account. By God, she’d been right not to marry him; he’d have stifled her.

He said: “And the sooner you get away from those women back there, the better.”

“I’ll have you know, those two nuns are better Christians than…”

“They’re not nuns,” he said. “They’re Cathars.”

Cathars.

She stopped shouting at him. Cathars. Another word that carried disturbance with it. A name hardly heard in England, nor in Sicily for that matter, but it brought a response of unease from somewhere in her memory. “Cathars? Aren’t they heretics?”

“Yes, they damn well are. I’d no idea their heresy had spread so far north. Of course they don’t eat meat; it’s forbidden them. Didn’t you notice neither of those women wears a cross? Which reminds me, I meant to replace yours-this is dangerous territory to be without one. There’s bishops around here would as soon put a Cathar on the fire as kindling.” He leaned back and regarded her without enthusiasm. “They’d throw you, if they saw you now. What the hell are you wearing?”

“Aelith lent Boggart and me some of their robes. One felt the cowshed was not the place for Emma’s satins. Rowley, we’ve been trying to save lives. Ermengarde, Aelith, they’re good women; they’ve worked like mules. If Christianity isn’t about tending the sick, what is it about?”

“It’s not about Cathars calling us the Church of Satan, and refusing to pay their bloody tithes because they say we’re all corrupted by riches.”

A diamond flash of the bishop’s seal ring on his finger as he gestured made Adelia’s lips twitch; he saw it and tucked his hands into the folds of his excellent robe, like a boy whose fingers had been raiding a jam pot.

“Well…” he said. “Well, the point is… the point is that, now it’s turned out not to be the plague, Joanna, like a good little princess, has decided to come and pay a royal visit to her faithful servants. When she does, she’ll bring Winchester with her to give his blessing to the sick and he’ll bring the chaplains. For Christ’s sake, imagine what Father Guy will do when he realizes that you and the others have been sojourning with a couple of heretics who reject the Trinity… God’s eyes, Adelia, they believe in reincarnation. Reincarnation… I ask you.”

She got to her feet; the last thing she must do was bring trouble on two women who’d been so kind. “Tell Joanna she needn’t visit. Most of the patients should be ready to travel this afternoon if you send us some carts. The Irishman can go with them. I’ll come along with the rest tomorrow”

“And then set out for England?” he insisted. When she hesitated, he said: “I’ve spoken to Mansur. He agrees.”

In which case he’d manacled her, just as he had at Poitiers. Without Mansur she had no standing. “Damn you,” she said.

“Good.” He took up the letter again; he had the look he wore when he was about to disarm her. “So now, I’ll read you Henry’s postscript. “And to my daughter’s lady Arabic speaker, her kings greetings. She is to know that a certain child at Sarum progresses well under the care of the queen and a dragon of the name of Gyltha with whom she is acquainted.”

“Oh.” Adelia sat down. “Oh. She’s well. They’re both well.”

“Less than a month ago.” He was pleased with himself. “Henry’s messengers travel fast.”

She began pummeling him in her joy. “You couldn’t have read that first, could you? To hell with Barbarossa and Lombards and popes, the most important thing in it was about our daughter.”

He caught her hands and imprisoned them in his. “You’ll miss me until I get back to England,” he said.

“No, I won’t.”

“You will. You adore me.”

And the trouble was that she would, and did.

CARTS WERE SENT, and by evening the cowshed hospital was cleared of all patients except Ulf and Rankin who, Adelia felt, could do with another night’s rest.

She went down to the road to watch the little procession wind its way toward the mountains that hid Figeres. In the light of the torches they carried, she could see hands that she’d held when they were suffering waving to her. She waved back and saw the O’Donnell sweep off his cap in salute.

The Irishman had been curiously reluctant to go. “I’m not happy we should be leaving you behind, mistress. Master Ulf’s been telling me there’s a mysterious killer been stalking you like a fox after a chicken.”

“Has he indeed?” She’d have a word with Ulf. “The fox exists more in that lad’s imagination than real life. But we’ll be leaving ourselves tomorrow. And I understand that you’re needed at Figeres right away”

“So my lord Saint Albans tells me.”

“Then you must go.” (From the first, Rowley had looked with a jaundiced eye on what he called the admiral’s wish to soothe the fevered brow of Adelia’s patients. “Wants you to soothe his fevered prick, more like,” he’d said.)

If the summons to Figeres was Rowley’s ruse to prevent the O’Donnell spending one more night in her company, she was relieved by it; helpful as he’d been, the Irishman still made her feel uncomfortable; his eyes were too long, and they watched her too much.

“Will you not at least keep Deniz by you?” he’d asked.

“No.” She’d been sharper than she meant to be. “I have Mansur and Ulf and Rankin.” Then, because in truth she didn’t know what she’d have done without him and his Turk, she said: “We are eternally grateful to you both.”

He spread his hands. “Ipsa quidem pretium virtus sibi, mistress. Virtue is its own reward.”

He wasn’t cast down by her refusal; he went off singing. Even when the carts had disappeared into the twilight, she could still hear his voice:

But they couldn’t keep time on the cold earthen floor

So to humor the music, they danced on the door.

Walking back up the track, she stopped at the cowshed to make sure that Ulf and Rankin were warm enough by the fire that Mansur had built for them, then went on up to the nuns’ cottage.

In telling her about Cathar belief, Rowley had expected her to be as indignant as he was. He was, in his way, a very orthodox Catholic, which, she supposed, a bishop had to be.

She’d found the Cathar faith strange, certainly, but then she found some of the precepts held by the established Church to be as strange. The Trinity, for example; she’d never been able to get her mind to encompass that precept. It was in the Cathars’ favor that they rejected it.

To Cathars, it appeared, the material world was the devil’s creation. The soul had to be liberated from it by living a pure life so that, when the body died, it could be returned to the light of Heaven which was its proper destination.

Since God wouldn’t have sent his son to live bodily amongst evil, Christ had been a spirit and, therefore, could not have suffered crucifixion-hence their refusal to recognize or wear the cross.

“And they recognize women priests as well as male,” Rowley’d said, shaking his head. “Parfaits, they call them. Perfect, God give me strength.”

“Tut-tut,” she’d said. “Women priests. Enough to make the angels weep.”

“Enough to make me weep. And take that look off your face.” Reaching the cottage now, she saw that Sister Ermengarde was speaking to someone who was only a shape in the orchard, so she sat down on a bench by the front door to wait for her.

Boggart was sitting in the open doorway, using the light from the room behind her to practice stitching, using a threaded bone needle on a scrap of cloth given her by Ermengarde, who’d been horrified to learn that the girl couldn’t sew.

“The bishop’s making plans to send you, me, and Mansur home tomorrow,” Adelia told her. “Will you be glad