A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

Above her, the O’Donnell slid down easily with the grappling hook under his arm. He gave it to Deniz and shook his head at the rope still dangling from the window. “It’s a sad thing to leave all that fine hemp. Ah, well, maybe the good bishop’ll hang himself with it.”

Taking her left arm, he hurried her over the roof to where a rope ladder was tied to a stanchion. “Can you manage, missus?”

She didn’t know if she could; there’d be fifty feet or more to go. Peeping over the edge, she could see only blackness.

As she hesitated, he got onto the rope ladder himself, curving his body outward so that it could form a cradle for her own. “Manage now?”

“Yes.”

It was still difficult; the ladder swung outward and from side to side and she could only hold on with her left hand, but with the fear of falling negated by the Irishman’s arms forming a protective circle, she managed it. Deniz slid down after them in one movement.

They were outside the palace-out. In the shadow of its retaining wall what seemed to be a large company was shifting about nervously: two horses, two hounds, the laden mule that had always carried O’Donnell’s equipment, Mansur, Boggart, Rankin, Ulf-and the recumbent body of a man.

Instinctively Adelia bent over it. O‘Donnell nudged her with his boot. “Sentry. Leave him.” He looked toward the others and spoke in Arabic. “Get ’em mounted, Deniz.” Turning back, he handed Adelia the shoe she’d lost outside Ermengarde’s cottage. “You’ll be needing this.”

From somewhere in the depths of the palace, an alarm bell began clanging. The empty cells had been discovered.

Already, the darkness of the fields ahead of them was beginning to lighten. Deniz and the O‘Donnell were shoving Boggart onto one of the horses, Mansur was commanding her to move. “’Delia, now.”

Unable to help herself, Adelia touched the recumbent sentry’s neck. He was dead. As her hand withdrew, something squirmed toward her and licked it.

It was Ward.

She gathered him up, hugging his thin, dirty body to her own, before she was dragged away and, still clutching her dog, was thrown up on the horse carrying Boggart. Ulf scrambled up behind her. Rankin and Mansur were already on the other mount.

Then they were off, hounds, horses, mule, the O’Donnell and Deniz loping beside them with reins in their hands.

Not fast enough, she thought. The bare hill ahead was brightening by the second; they would be as obvious on it as a cluster of running deer, but not as speedy. She heard the Irishman puffing at Deniz: “They’ll… look to the square first. Minute or two… before they think of the tower.”

A minute or two. A minute or two to cover acres of open ground. Not enough. She could hear shouting coming from the palace, orders being given, the bell clanging and clanging.

They were reaching the top of the hill, disturbed larks rising up, fluttering and twittering as if to warn Aveyron that the heretics were loose. Were over it. Into trees. No slowing down. Lord, dear Lord, forgive my sins. Don’t let us burn, don’t let us burn. Have mercy on us.

They snaked through woods, they splashed along streams to throw off the scenting hounds yelping in the distance behind them; they jolted up gradients of scree that gave way with loud rattling beneath cantering hooves and the running men’s feet. No stopping, no stopping. Except once when, under the shelter of a mountain’s overhang, they watched a file of mounted men on the skyline encouraging their dogs to search, O’Donnell and Deniz with their hands clasped round the muzzles of their own two hounds to stop answering yelps.

Off again, under a bleak sun that stared accusingly down at them, into the shade. No stopping, no stopping, up and down a landscape that reared around them to make progress more difficult. On until, whether they died in flames or not, they must stop, but were forbidden by the Irishman’s insistent: “Not yet. We’re not away yet.”

“We must,” Adelia whispered. “The baby” God knew if that child could bear any more of this-certainly Boggart couldn’t; the girl was only semiconscious.

“Not yet. We’re not away yet.”

Thirst. A scrabble in a mountain stream to scoop water into their mouths and let the horses and mule nuzzle it. Off again, bumping, holding on, O’Donnell and Deniz tirelessly dragging at horses that began to stumble.

Darkness, chill. The sound of dripping water. A cave. They were all inside. A stop-please God the last.

“This’ll do,” the O’Donnell said.

IT WAS A WONDERFUL CAVE, once the escapees were fit enough to appreciate it-a process that took time, rest, food, and plenty of water from the clear, cold lake that lay within it.

The floor was of blackish earth embedded with big, round pebbles, and, though the entrance to it was narrow, the walls rose to something near cathedral height so that voices were returned in an echo that recalled to Adelia the tunnel outside their cells.

“A land of caves, the Languedoc,” the O’Donnell told them, “as riddled with holes as a weeviled cheese.”

But how, she wondered, had he known about this one? There was little opportunity to ask him; as they recovered, Mansur, Rankin, and Ulf were full of questions…

“Well now, that five Cathars were claiming to have acquaintance with Princess Joanna struck me as strange when Peter-you remember Peter who usually served us when we dined? When he told me about Aveyron’s letter, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the five of you, unlike some who didn’t care. I left word at Figeres that I was going ahead to Saint Gilles to arrange shipping. Instead, Deniz and me went to the cowshed to find it burned down, and the Ermengarde’s cottage with it. Well, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind man, my old granny used to say.”

“But how did you find us?”

“It was the odiferous mongrel,” the O’Donnell said. “What we did find, lying near the cottage, was one of her ladyship’s shoes. A good deal of time we’d have wasted but for that. Her scent would have faded after all this time but that dog’s could survive a sea gale, and his head was forever on her feet. I gave the shoe to my hounds to sniff, and right enough, didn’t it lead us straight over the mountains? And there was our little stinker whining to get in through the Aveyron palace gates. Thank him nicely, now.”

Adelia rubbed her cheek against the head of the dog in her arms. The mongrel had been much wasted by his vigil outside the palace, barely able to walk-he’d had to be put up on the mule amongst its packages during the escape. Though he was recovering now that he was being regularly fed, his mistress could hardly bear to let him go; as both of them were almost as filthy as each other, she could indulge in petting him as he deserved.

However, it was the Irishman the rest of them thanked with every grateful protestation they could think of. He and Deniz had scouted the palace, made their plan, used their rope craft-“Never venture forth without plenty of rope and a good mule to carry it”-to get in, and out.

“But how did you know where in the palace we were?” Ulf asked.

Affecting to preen, the man put his thumbs under his shirt collar. “We put up at an inn, Deniz and me, two innocent pilgrims on their way to the shrine at Rocamadour, and careless with their money. ”Isn’t this the grandest town with the grandest palace you’ve ever seen, Deniz?” “Sure and it is, master-I wonder what it’s like inside?”

He put his hands down. “We didn’t need even that stratagem. The town was still talking about Ermengarde, God rest her soul, and anticipating the burnings to come-without much enthusiasm, I may say. Not a popular man, Bishop of Aveyron. There was much discussion about whether you were in his cells-they’re not popular, either, I can tell you-or in the tower. By the time it had finished, we knew every mouse hole in the place.”

Who are you? Adelia wondered. The fleeting reference to Ermengarde and burning had been made easily and it was as if his account of their rescue might have been a mere exploit carried out on a whim. Yet to do what he had done argued a ferocity of purpose to free them, which their previous acquaintance hardly merited. He had saved their lives at considerable risk to his own.

She asked what was, to her, the question: “Was it the Bishop of Saint Albans who sent you after us? Where is he?”

“In Italy, lady.” O’Donnell’s long eyes slid toward her. “Went straight on to Lombardy, as ordered by King Henry He’ll be joining up with us in Palermo, when he’s spared.”