A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

which lay Spain.

“That’s where we’re going?” Adelia asked the O’Donnell. “That castle?”

“That’s where we’re going. You’ll be safe there. Even Cathars are safe there.”

She nodded. A stronghold. But it had become embedded in her that Cathars were safe nowhere, and this prominence was visible for miles. She saw the all-encompassing eye of the Cathar-hating Church swiveling toward it, marking it, watching its victims as they crawled up to it-and wrinkling in a foreboding wink.

Perhaps it was strongly defended.

It didn’t help that they arrived at dawn, reminding the five ex-prisoners of their entry into Aveyron; the village’s cocks crowing, shutters opening, people calling to one another to come out and see.

But this time the calls turned to welcome. “Don Patricio. Look, it’s Don Patricio.” Children, shouting the name, ran ahead as the Irishman, waving to his admirers, led his little cavalcade up the main street, and up again over chasm-crossing bridges, through mossy, crumbling archways until they reached half-open doors and the dim interior of the castle’s hall.

“It’s Don Patricio. Don Patricio.”

In response to the children’s noise, a woman whose bare breasts were concealed only by her long and beautiful dark hair came out of an upper room to lean over a balcony and smile at the Irishman. “Is it you, Patrick? Where’s my silk?”

“Not this trip, my lady Where’s your husband?”

From the language both were using-an individualistic and just understandable version of Occitan-Adelia realized that they were amongst Catalans, who populated both sides of the Pyrenees as well as the mountains themselves. These were a people who regarded themselves as a separate nation from the French, Spanish, or Plantagenet kingdoms-disliking the French most of all.

“Dead last Michaelmas, alas,” the woman said.

Widowhood didn’t seem to be overburdening her with grief-a young man was emerging from the room behind her, hastily buttoning himself into a priest’s cassock.

O’Donnell called: “Come down, then, Fabrisse. I have some refugees for you.”

While she went back to fetch some covering, the priest sidled quickly down the stairs, his hand flicking embarrassed blessings toward the newcomers before he disappeared through the entrance.

The woman came down in a more leisurely fashion, making the most of it, her superb legs showing through the gap of the cloak she’d wrapped herself in.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Countess of Caronne,” said O’Donnell.

“The Dowager Countess,” she corrected. “And any friends of Don Patricio’s are welcome here. You’ll forgive the count himself not making an appearance. At the moment he’s asleep in his cradle.”

She had a lovely, dangerous face; high cheekbones; dark, slanted, amused eyes that studied each of her ragged guests while the introductions were made, raising her eyebrows at the unprepossessing dog they had brought with them, taking in Boggart’s pregnancy with approval, dwelling particularly on Adelia.

“You have luggage?” she asked and was told they had not. “Then we must see what we can do in the way of clothes-they will have to be of hemp, unfortunately, this man”-she bared little white teeth at the Irishman in a snarl-“having neglected to bring what I ordered. But breakfast first.” She let out a screech. “Thomassia.”

There was an answering screech from somewhere to the left. “What?”

“Breakfast for seven, two of them to be taken up to the solar…” Her eyelashes fluttered at the O’Donnell. “… where you can tell me all about it.”

They’re lovers, Adelia thought, and felt a curious sense of relief, though she wasn’t sure why Adding the title of “philanderer” to the man’s many facets placed him for her; putting him in a category that was recognizable, an adventurer with, quite probably, a woman in every port-this sort of woman; lovely, careless with her favors.

I can be easy with him now.

Breakfast was generous; goat’s cheese, goat’s milk, ham, sausage, smoked trout, fresh bread fetched from the village with a strong olive oil to dip it into, herb-flavored wine, some preserved figs that had been picked from a tree that rambled around and into the kitchen’s window slit, all of it served by Thomassia, a stubby young woman, whose nonstop instructions in a Catalan patois made her sound bad-tempered but which, from the way in which she kept nudging her guests’ arms toward their wooden plates, seemed to be urges to keep them eating. Ward, a type of dog she’d not seen before-who had?-made her laugh and was thrown scraps until he could eat no more.

Thomassia was especially solicitous toward Mansur, frequently extending her hand to him. “S endevi-ina, s endevi-ina, el contacontes.”

“What does the bint want of me?”

“I think,” Adelia said. “I think she’s asking you to tell her fortune.”

Mansur was offended. “I am no cup reader.”

“I’ll tell the lassie her fortune.” Rankin leaned over the table to grab Thomassia’s hand. Even while cramming food into his mouth, he hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “Tell her she’s a wee angel, so she is, and all this feast lacks is parritch. Tell her she’s destined for a fine husband.”

Adelia did her best. “What’s parritch?” she muttered at Ulf.

“A mess of cracked oats. He made me eat some once. Never again.”

Finally replete, they were returned to the hall and saw what, because they’d been so grateful for its immediate protection, they’d missed at first-a poverty that had not been reflected in their meal. The furniture was sparse and worn, some of it battered. The stones of the floor showed grass growing through cracks. Other cracks in the walls had either been roughly repaired or not repaired at all, letting in long bars of sunlight.

It occurred to them that the stables they’d passed on their way in had been empty, nor had there been any sign of servants other than Thomassia.

Hardly what was to be expected of a comital palace.

Adelia remembered Henry Plantagenet’s contempt for countries which, as this one did here, maintained a system of partible inheritance, by which land and property were divided equally between heirs.

In England, under Henry II, Norman law insisted instead on primogeniture, whereby the eldest legitimate son inherited everything. “Primogeniture forces younger brothers to go out and work for their bloody living,” the king had told her. “It leaves estates intact, keeps a proper aristocratic structure, it means alord is alord.” He’d added what was of more importance to him: “And he’s easier to tax.”

Dividing property, subdividing it for the next generation, then for the next ad infinitum, meant, he’d said, “that some poor sod ends up with a title, a few fields, and not so much as a clout to wipe his arse on.”

Presumably, the baby Count of Caronne asleep in his cradle upstairs was such a one.

So we’re vulnerable, Adelia thought, because these mountain people in their poverty are vulnerable.

There could be no protection for the Cathars here, not even the Catholics who tolerated them; no true asylum here from the rich, omnipotent enemy that surrounded them. They might think themselves secure, but Adelia knew they were not.

IN THE ROOM UPSTAIRS, where the arms of Caronne were carved into one of its thick stone walls, the Countess of Caronne sat on her rumpled bed, listening, her eyes watching the O’Donnell where he stood at the window looking out over its colossal view as he told his tale.

When he’d finished, she said: “That was a risk you took rescuing her, Patrick.”

He didn’t turn round. “That was a risk I took rescuing them all.”

“Her.”

He gave a grunt that was half a laugh. “So obvious?”

“To me, yes.”

He slammed his fist on a sill two feet thick. “Why? Will you tell me that? Why? Of all the women… she’s nothing to look at, stubborn as a Munster heifer, and all she can see is her fokking bishop.”