A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

Adelia, who would be blamed by Arnulf and the others for the princess’s death in any case, but might possibly save them from their almost certain execution were it known that death had been caused by the child’s body being cut open.

Even Henry I I’s fondness for Adelia would not outlive that.

Blanche, however, was unlikely to keep silent. She struggled between Scylla and Charybdis, the two monstrous, crushing rocks between which she had placed herself. Her grief and self-condemnation were heaped on Adelia’s head as the two of them kept their vigil beside Joanna’s bed. Sometimes it was: “You have killed her.” At other times: “Better I had let her die than bring her to you.”

Even when Joanna’s fever began to abate, the outpourings continued-though always where the girl couldn’t hear them: “What is she now? Dear Mary, Mother of God, you have ruined her.”

The scar was undoubtedly terrible; Adelia was no needlewoman; on the seventh day, when she took out the stitches, it remained a violent, puckered obscenity on otherwise pearl-colored young flesh.

Adelia said nothing in her own defense. She was too humbled. For her, the scar represented only the amazing endurance of the human body, the quick healing of young flesh, and a loving God who had forgiven the temerity of the one who’d inflicted it by granting a miracle.

THOUGH THE O’Donnell was impatient to begin the long sail down the coast of Italy, Adelia insisted that Joanna recuperate for another week after the removal of the stitches. The child did well, though when, on the third day-the tenth after the operation-she was allowed to begin walks around the bailey, Mistress Blanche pointed out angrily that the princess did so with a certain stiffness.

More days, then, to help the muscles recover, days to discover what a nice child she was. Without the enterprise of Eleanor, and with none of Henry’s command, she had a gentle charm all her own. An intimacy grew between them all that allowed the princess to discard royal aloofness and be lighthearted in their company Ulf told her bloodcurdling stories of Hereward the Wake, which delighted her, even though most of that fenland gentleman’s exploits had been directed against her great-great-grandfather, William the Conqueror. There were more bloodcurdling pirate tales from O’Donnell, while Mansur, for whom she’d developed a great regard, improved her chess.

She was captivated by Boggart’s baby and the curl of his fingers round hers. She wanted to know if giving birth hurt-“Mama said it didn’t much”-and Boggart tactfully said: “No more’n is natural.”

But it was Adelia who most intrigued her. Like all practicing physicians, Dr. Arnulf had taught the princess that medicine was an occult secret to which he alone held the key; that it should be a science which even a woman could practice was a concept she found difficult to comprehend.

“But if God ordained that I should die, wasn’t it a sin to go against Him?”

“Why should God make an ordinance against knowledge? It is there, a resource that only He could have put into the world for us to use. Deliberate ignorance is the sin. Obviously He did not mean you to die. Mistress Blanche knew that.”

“It was a miracle, then?”

Oh, dear. She didn’t want the child to believe she was a saint. “In the sense that Nature is a miracle. Nature has secrets that God wishes us to learn. If He didn’t, a swordsmith wouldn’t know how to forge steel, nor an herbalist how to extract the health-giving properties of plants. I am not a witch nor a miracle worker, just a mechanic, no more, no less, trained by a school that believes in discovering what things God has created in order to relieve His people’s suffering. Like all mechanisms, your operation could have gone wrong; that it didn’t is a privilege for which I send up prayers of gratitude every day.”

Joanna smiled. “So do I.” She became royal. “My father will ever be in your debt; so will my husband.”

Husband. She was still only eleven years old-there had been a birthday celebrated at Saint Gilles.

They became friends. Every night, when her wound was being checked, she wanted to hear about Adelia’s upbringing, which she thought exotic. She especially liked tales of Allie. “Mama loves animals, too; they should get on well.” She was suddenly wistful: “What fun to be Allie.”

Adelia wanted to spirit her off so much just then that, on impulse, she said: “We could always ask the O’Donnell to sail us into the blue… run away”

“And be a pirate?” Joanna was amused. “How funny that would be. Why should I run away?”

“Well… just suppose you don’t like Sicily”

“But I shall like it. It’s my duty, I shall be queen of it.”

Adelia never mentioned the subject again. If there was steel in Joanna’s gentle soul, it was stamped with the word duty; it could not occur to her that she was ill used or, if it did, she’d suppressed the idea. What she was aware of was the diplomacy involved; her father had arranged a most excellent marriage to a king, as he had arranged her sisters’. It was her destiny; she had no other.

WHEN ADELIA JUDGED her patient fit enough to leave the Chateau de Salses, and before they were rowed out to the St. Patrick, the O’Donnell lectured her and her companions “privatim et seriatim,” as he said, on the necessity for watchfulness.

“We don’t know which damned vessel Scarry’s on, if he’s on any,” he said. “We had to divide the household between three crafts. Most of the servants along with the horses are in my biggest cog, The Trinite, which set out at the same time as the Nostre Dame that’s got Richard aboard. Scarry could be on either, but he could be skulking aboard the Saint Patrick, in which case I’ll be too busy keeping an eye on wind and weather to see what he’s up to. For all any of us know, we’re taking our goose into the fox’s lair, as my old granny used to say.”

He looked straight at Adelia. “You be afraid, now. Fear keeps you on the qui vive.”

There was no sentiment in the way he said it, no fond glance; he could have been talking about a breakable piece of cargo that needed careful stowing in his ship’s hold. His declaration of love might never have been made, but it placed a burden on her, as it does on those who cannot love in return.

If it hadn’t been that she’d met Rowley first, she could have loved this man, she thought. Bold, confident, amused and amusing, and, hidden beneath it all, an infinite kindness.

But as he’d said, one had as little control over one’s heart as over the rise and fall of the sun-and she’d given hers to somebody else.

She had kept faith with him and told nobody about what he’d said, not even Fabrisse, though, she realized now, the woman had known all along.

Dear God, but she would miss Fabrisse, who had become her twin. When it was time for the two of them to say good-bye, they clung to each other, rendered almost inarticulate by a parting that would inevitably be permanent.

At last Adelia tore herself away. “I owe you so much… I can’t…”

“Don’t.” Fabrisse wiped away tears. “To me, you have been… I will never find…”

“Fabrisse, take care, take care.”

“You are the one… you take care.”

Yet, as the hopeful, yelping seagulls following their boat dotted Adelia’s view of the diminishing figure waving energetically from the castle seawall, it seemed to Adelia that the woman in greatest danger was not herself but the one who defied the Church by her loving shelter of Cathars. For a second, a bonfire flared in Adelia’s mind, and the person amidst its flames was not Ermengarde, but the Dowager Countess of Caronne.

ON BOARD THE ST. PATRICK, Captain Bolt had been chafing badly at the absence of a princess he’d been ordered to protect and spat hard words at the O’Donnell for taking her away. Pleased as he was to see Adelia, his anger made him unapproachable and it wasn’t until a day or two later, when he’d calmed down somewhat, that she could tell him of Rankin’s defection.

That didn’t please him, either. “Happy, is he? He’s no right to be happy, bloody deserter.”

In fact, the reception to Adelia and the others was cold. The only welcome was to the princess. Even this, though made to appear ecstatic, was overdone, for underlying it was resentment that she had been content to recuperate among magicians and foreigners rather than insist on being returned to her own dear household.