A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

preparations for Christmas, which, whether their views coincided on the birth of Jesus or not, Cathars and Catholics celebrated at a feast for the whole village in the castle hall.

Mansur, Ulf, and Rankin spent their time assisting the village shepherds with their flocks-a purely male occupation-or used their skills to try to mend some of the castle’s dilapidation.

Taking part in these things restored to the ex-prisoners a good deal of what the Bishop of Aveyron had taken away. Rankin, especially, was most at home. “Like the Highlands wi’out the bloody rain” was how he described it, though it was beginning to be apparent that, for him, part of Caronne’s attraction lay in his growing friendship with Thomassia.

Were being absorbed, Adelia thought. This marvelous, peculiar place is taking us into its heart. She was taking it into hers, but there was no sign of the O’Donnell coming to take the five of them away, and at any time the snow might come, to cut them off from the outside world.

At night, thinking of Allie, she wondered how long this idyll would last, or how long she wanted it to.

ON CHRISTMAS EVE MORNING, the women were preparing for the next day’s feast in a kitchen festooned with the hanging corpses of hens, ducks, and geese waiting to be put on their spits, when Mansur appeared in the doorway “There is trouble in the village.”

Adelia dropped the hand mill with which she’d been grinding chestnuts for the torte aux marrons, Caronne’s version of Christmas pudding.

Her eyes met Boggart’s in the same terror. They’ve come for us. Then, with Thomassia, Fabrisse, her baby son tied to her back, and Ward at their heels, they pelted outside and heard the screaming coming from down the mountain.

Not again, God, please not again.

It sounded like slaughter. It wasn’t; when they got there, it was Na Roqua standing on the flat roof of her house, yelling at Na Lizier, who was standing on hers and shrieking back insults across the narrow alley that divided their two houses.

Just two women quarreling. Thank you, Lord, thank you.

A crowd had collected to watch so that Fabrisse had to elbow her way through it. “Sancta Maria, what is happening here?”

“Stand back,” Na Roqua screeched at her. “Don’t go into that alley. Just see what lies within it.”

The thin morning sun hadn’t yet reached the passageway and Fabrisse had to peer to see what her old friend was pointing at. Adelia peered with her and managed to make out the body of a large male goat lying on the baked earth with its head twisted at an unnatural angle.

“She has killed him,” howled Na Roqua. “The jealous bitch enticed him onto her roof and threw him off.”

“I wouldn’t entice him into hell,” Na Lizier screamed back. “Which is where he belongs. I never touched the brute.”

“Oh yes you did. Look, look, there are no hoofprints in the alley. Did he fall into it from the sky, then? You pushed him.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Blessed Mother,” Fabrisse whispered. “It’s Auguste.”

Adelia had already encountered Auguste-there was a goat-toothed tear in the sleeve of her new hemp gown to prove it. The ram was Na Roqua’s pride and joy, but a pest to everybody else, roaming at will, eating whatever it could reach, and trying to copulate with anything that had a corresponding hole. (It was no coincidence that Auguste was the Christian name of the Bishop of Carcassonne.) That he hadn’t come to a sticky end before this was because the village was even more frightened of Na Roqua than it was of the goat.

It did look like murder. Na Roqua was right, there appeared to be no hoofprints in the alley; Auguste certainly hadn’t wandered into it. Adelia tried to keep her face straight. “Such a relief,” she whispered back. “I thought it was something dreadful.”

There was no amusement on the countess’s face; it was pale. “This is dreadful. Not only will it ruin Christmas, it will start a feud that could last for years.”

“A goat?”

“These are my people, ‘Delia. I know them and I tell you that a rift between the Roquas and the Liziers…”

It had already begun. Amongst the onlookers, a Lizier grandson had made an unfavorable comment on Na Roqua and was being berated for it by one of her sons.

“You must do something” Fabrisse said.

“Me?”

“Yes, yes. You are the famous doctor. Ulf says you solve mysteries, solve this one.”

With narrowed eyes, Adelia glared toward the edge of the crowd where Ulf stood with Mansur, Rankin, and Ward, all of them watching the growing row with interest.

“And solve it so that nobody is to blame,” Fabrisse hissed. She stepped forward and raised her voice to a pitch that cut through an increasing pandemonium. “Listen to me. Listen to me.”

There was immediate quiet; the Dowager Countess might dress in tatters but she was Caronne’s authority.

Holding Adelia’s sleeve and displaying her like a landed fish, she shouted: “Here is someone who can solve this puzzle. This lady is a mistress of the art of death. Don Patricio told me. He said that the dead speak to her.”

More silence. At last, one of the Roqua sons said: “You mean, Auguste will tell her what happened?”

“Yes,” said Fabrisse.

“For God’s sake…” Adelia muttered.

“I don’t care,” Fabrisse muttered back.

“But I don’t know about goats.”

“I don’t care. It is why the Virgin sent you to us.”

That was why, was it? It was ridiculous; Na Roqua and her family were Cathars; Na Lizier and hers, Catholic. Two faiths could live side by side without quarreling, while the death of a damned goat could start a vendetta. Yet Fabrisse, who knew these people better than she did, was truly concerned that it would.

oh, Lord, what to do? I suppose I owe it to this woman, to this village, to keep the peace. Somehow.

But a goat?

However, Adelia was Adelia; if there was a truth to find, she had to find it, no matter what came later. Death was her business. For the first time in a long time, she must practice her profession.

Breaking away from Fabrisse’s retaining arm, she strode toward Na Roqua’s house and opened its low door, to be afflicted by a strong stink of goat-when Auguste had not been pursuing his wanderings, he’d shared accommodation with his mistress.

The windows were shuttered against the cold, as they were in all Caronne’s houses, so that, when they were at home, its people lived in a semi-darkness lit only by a fire.

Adelia examined the lintel of the front door, then opened the shutters in order to look at the floor of the room into which it led. She climbed the stairs, studying each step as she went. Into the upper room, then up again to the roof, where the gaze of Na Roqua and the crowd below fell upon her with embarrassing expectation.

She returned downstairs, this time into what was usually the kitchen but here had been transformed into a place from which Na Roqua, having no use for a kitchen thanks to being supplied with food by her daughters-in- law, ran her wool-carding trade.

One side of the room was packed with sheep’s wool and smelled strongly of its lanolin, although, sniffing hard, Adelia caught another whiff of goat. A set of shelves held a carding wheel and combs, a few of which had fallen on the floor.

She spent so long considering the place that, when she finally emerged outside, the crowd was getting restless. “Auguste can’t tell her much in there,” somebody pointed out, to a growl of agreement.

“For sweet Mary, it’s the animal you’re supposed to be examining” Fabrisse told her quietly, and then, shouting to the crowd: “Be quiet. She is listening to Auguste, she follows his last steps.”

Adelia ignored them all. She crossed the entrance to the alley to go next door into Na Lizier’s house.

Impossible to tell anything from the front doorstep, too many feet had passed over it. The stairs, though-only