A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

“I’m going alone,” he said. “Quicker. As for clothes, I’ll see what I can do, though I doubt the country market I’ve in mind will provide much in the way of fashion.”

“Thank you,” she said tersely She’d never been dependent on a man, even on Rowley, and she hating that she was dependent on this one who had done so much for her already.

He rode off the next morning, taking the other mount with him, and didn’t come back until evening, riding a shaggy black pony with six others like it on a leading rein behind him. “Merens stock,” he said of them, “nothing stronger for mountain going.” He’d also bought sacks of oats for horse feed, two shapeless, heavy woolen smocks for Adelia and Boggart-“all I could find”-and some equally thick cloaks, as shaggy as the ponies, for all of them. “We’ll be needing these. It’s going to be cold.”

It was. During the day they were kept warm by their cloaks and the steam rising from their laboring ponies, but by evening it was near to freezing. At least they were at liberty now to build roaring fires at night, for there was nobody to see them.

Adelia had not believed that there could be such a vast stretch of uninhabited country. Occasionally, in the distance, they spotted a shepherd and heard the tiny wail of a flute as he piped to his flock, but that was all.

The landscape became dramatic, plunging into deserted, isolated valleys before rearing toward the sky in chaotic formations of crags that grew out of the close-fitting grass that covered them like the top of a man’s bald head emerging from a fringe of hair. There were tarns, still little lakes trapped in a mountain scoop that reflected clouds and sky and circling eagles.

There was no stopping, except to let the ponies graze, and no roads, though it seemed as if they followed some track that now and then revealed itself in worn, close-set stones, and Adelia wondered if some ancient people had built themselves a way that led to the coast.

They became hardened, surprisingly fit, even Ward. Rankin especially was a man reborn, whistling and singing songs from the Highlands of which this country reminded him. “It suits me well,” he’d say. “Ay, it suits me well. A drap of usquebaugh and I’d call the king my uncle.”

“Some rotgut they drink in Scotland, so he says,” Ulf explained to Adelia. “Made from peat water, Gawd help us.”

Adelia’s worry was for Boggart who, when it was time to rest the ponies by dismounting and leading them, had developed the slight waddle of a woman in late pregnancy

The Irishman noticed it. “When’s the baby due?” he asked when the two of them were walking together alongside Ulf.

“I don’t know, she doesn’t know, either. Could be this month, could be next.” Adelia realized she’d lost track of time. “What’s the date?”

He pushed back his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, calculating. “Must be Saint Cecilia’s Day as near as dammit.”

Nearly the end of November. And going south, farther and farther away from Allie. She panicked: “Why can’t we use a decent, fast road? Why do we have to stick to these bloody mountains?”

He shrugged. “For one thing, your ladyship, there’s only one road round here and that leads to Toulouse, which, I may tell you, we’re bypassing because if Princess Joanna’s procession has left Figeres, which it will have by now, that’s where it will be passing through and I’ve no wish to bump into it. For another, where we’re going is in the mountains, and the track we’re on is as quick a way to get to it as any.”

“What does it matter if we bump into the others? Why can’t we rejoin the procession?”

“Acause,” Ulf intervened, patiently, “you got an enemy in the undergrowth and until he’s flushed out we ain’t taking no more risks, are we, Admiral?”

“He’s right, lady,” O’Donnell said. “There’s been too many nasty coincidences, so Master Ulf’s been telling me, and a good run is better than a bad stand, as my old granny used to say. In the name of God, what are you doing, woman…?”

Adelia had fallen over again. “Lying down with my face in the grass,” she hissed. “What are you doing?”

She saw a flash of his white teeth as he extended a hand to help her up, but suddenly she’d had enough. She was lost in this limbo on top of the world; they were all lost; they would wander it forever, die in it.

Hammering her fists on the ground, she gave way to a temper tantrum. “I don’t know where we are. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t want to be here. I hate this bloody country it’s cruel and I hate it. I hate everything. I want my daughter, oh God, what am I doing in this place? I want to go home.”

It was Mansur who lifted her up and led her away He sat her on a rock, knelt down, wiping her face with his sleeve, and chastising her.

“You are rude to him. None of us want to be here, yet we are in the merciful hand of Allah who sent this man to us. Without him, we would have followed Ermengarde to the fire.”

She leaned forward so that she could bury her face in the rough, strong-smelling wool of his cloak. “I want to go home, Mansur.”

“I know.” He let her cry herself out, patting and soothing her like she patted and soothed Ward when he was frightened.

At last she raised her head. Over the Arab’s shoulder, she could see Rankin staring at the sky as if it was of absorbing interest. Deniz had taken feeding bags from the mule’s pack so that the ponies could have some oats. The O’Donnell was watching him, chewing on a piece of grass.

Boggart and Ulf were staring after her in alarm, and she thought how good they were; apart from Ulf’s lament for Excalibur, there’d been no whining from either of them. They made her ashamed.

Still sniveling she said: “I’m sorry.”

He patted her again. “If you break, we all break.”

Wearily, she kissed him and stood up. “I’m not broken, just a bit creased.”

She walked over to the O’Donnell. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

He took the piece of grass out of his mouth. “I’ll get you home,” he said quietly “but first I fulfill my obligation to Henry and his daughter, for that’s my duty.”

“I understand.”

“Now here’s the plan. I lodge the five of you in this village I know whilst Deniz and I go on to Saint Gilles. My ships are there, but my captains’ll not sail without I tell them to.”

She nodded.

He went on: “If Joanna’s arrived, I launch her and her party off to Palermo. If she’s not there yet, I give my captains their sailing orders for when she does come. Either way, I’ll be back for you. How’ll that be?”

The sky was all at once brighter; somewhere a chaffinch was trilling as it did in England; the world had righted itself.

She smiled at him. “I am ashamed,” she said.

“No need.” Abruptly, he got up and went to help Deniz with the ponies.

“Ain’t he a marvel, missus?” Boggart whispered.

“Yes,” Adelia said, and meant it. Suddenly she grinned. “But if he mentions his old granny again I’m going to kill him.”

Eleven

THE CASTLE OF CARONNE gave the impression that a dragon had landed on a jagged mountaintop, had fancied its effect against the limitless sky, furled its wings, and turned to stone. Then, as if the dragon could afford it protection, a village had snuggled itself into the forest just below, forming a horseshoe of houses edged with fields so steep that the sheep and goats grazing on them appeared lopsided. At the very bottom was a little church.

Away in the long way distance but still visible were the Pyrenees, the snow-topped range of mountains over