A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

Her father and mother had once taken her to stare at the great Arabic inscription round its entrance arch: This is the earthly paradise that opens to the view; this king is the Musta’iz; this palace is the Ziza (noble place).

Well, a little bit of luxury wouldn’t come amiss for once.

“That would be very nice,” she said.

LATER THAT DAY, in a room of the Palazzo Reale, two men were having a discussion. A beautiful room, one of many designed for valued guests; a curved and painted ceiling met the arches of the walls in a frieze of sculptured, marble fruit while, in the resultant niches, real pomegranates and oranges were piled in boat-shaped porphyry dishes on silver-topped tables. In case the guest should be cold-for though Palermo weather begins to warm in February, it was still chilly-bowls of scented oil burned in the braziers.

The discussion-it was taking place in English-was less civilized.

In fact, the room might have been a ring in which two fighting dogs strained against their leashes in order to tear out each other’s throat.

“And where is she now?” The Bishop of Saint Albans didn’t like the tale he’d been told of what had happened to his woman since he’d last seen her, and he didn’t like the man who’d told it-a man who didn’t like him either.

“I don’t know.” The lightness with which Admiral O’Donnell said it, and the ease with which he lolled on a brocaded ottoman while saying it, was an affront in itself.

“Of course you bloody know.”

“Indeed, I do not. We parted at the boat. I came on with the princess; she went off-apparently, her family owns a house in the Jewish Quarter. But she’s gone from there, the others with her, and the neighbors don’t know where.”

In fact, he had a good idea that she was in the safekeeping of Jibril, who’d questioned both himself and Blanche closely on the happenings during the princess’s journey, and shown a great interest in Adelia’s whereabouts. Yes, he was pretty sure the woman was somewhere in one of the royal palaces, in safety, thank God, but damned if he’d say so to this bishop who’d done nothing to ensure it. Let him sweat.

“Why in hell didn’t you bring her here?”

“Well now…” If it was possible to lounge with even more annoying elegance, the Irishman did it. “I decided that rejoining a royal household where somebody wants her death was not perhaps the finest move she could make.”

Did you, you bastard, Rowley thought, and what gave you the right to decide what she should do and shouldn’t? And then he thought: Saving her damned life, I suppose.

Well, he could still regain the high ground. “I’ve found him,” he said.

“Scarry?”

That’s jolted the bugger. “Come over here.”

The Irishman approached an exquisite three-legged table covered with papers and scrolls. “How did you do that, now?”

“Look at this.” Rowley picked up one of the scrolls. In his triumph, he’d lost aggression. “We had to submit a list of the names of Joanna’s household to the majordomo here at the palace, everybody traveling with her and requiring accommodation.” He batted his fist against the side of his head. “God Almighty, I don’t know why I didn’t think of the names before… it’s there as plain as bloody day”

The bell for Vespers could be heard ringing close by from the nearby San Giovanni degli Eremeti, which, with its vermilion cupolas, looked more mosque than church. Rowley ignored it.

It was a long scroll. It held not only names, but the person’s occupation and place of origin.

Rowley pointed. “There.”

The Irishman studied the name. “Him? It’s never him, surely Jesus, he was… That doesn’t necessarily mean he’d be called Scarry.”

“I know. But Scarry’s a nickname-his outlaw name, and the odds are it was adapted from this. It surprised me, too, but there’s no other on that list would lead to it-I’ve studied them all. And when you come to think about it, he’s the only one with the opportunity.”

“But he’s… I never even considered… Where is he now?”

“Nobody knows. Disappeared since the Nostre Dame landed. Which clinches the matter. Apparently, he was becoming more and more odd every day”

“Odd? I can think of more fitting terms. So he’s roaming the city somewhere?”

“I presume so. I’ve got men out looking for him-and her. In the name of God, why did you let her loose?”

O’Donnell fingered his chin. “Well now, she’s promised Joanna she’d see her married, so she’ll be in the cathedral for the wedding the day after tomorrow. She’s a woman who keeps her word…”

“I know that.”

“… but I’ll find her before then.” He got up and began moving toward the door.

Rowley stopped him. “I’ll find her. She’s my woman, O’Donnell.”

There was a smile of apparent surprise. “Is she now? Is she? And you a bishop.” The smile went. “Should have taken more fokking care of her, then, shouldn’t you?”

ULF REACHED FOR a honeyed date, a delicacy he’d not encountered before but found to his taste. “What’s funny about that? I don’t need any more silk. Go home dressed like this, and the lads’ll throw me in a pond for a clothes horse.”

“You look very nice,” Adelia said. They all did. Her own bliaut fitted like a skin at bosom and waist while its sleeves and skirt trailed in wafts of exquisite silver-green. “Though perhaps violet was a mistake with your complexion.”

“I like violet.”

Mansur pursued the matter. “So the majordomo asked you if you wanted a silk worker sent up to your room, and you said no.”

“I’m not saying it ain’t a nice room, but I don’t want it cluttered with looms and such, do I.”

“It’s a euphemism,” Mansur told him.

“Didn’t want it cluttered with euphemisms neither.” Then it dawned. “You mean…? Hell and sulfur. And I said no.”

“Quite right, too,” Adelia said. “Think of the poor girl.”

“She might have liked him in violet,” said Mansur.

Adelia put her arms behind her head and listened to a bird singing on an almond tree branch that was beginning to bud.

She remembered Homer: I was driven thence by foul winds for a space of nine days upon the sea, but on the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eater.

Boggart, cradling Donnell after his evening feed, came back from her regular, self-imposed tour of the gardens that she made “so’s he can sniff all them lovely scents up his little nose.”

She, too, was elegant. Like Adelia’s, her hair was encased in a pearl caul. Admittedly, things still tended to fall over when she passed them by, but clumsiness disappeared when she had Donnell in her arms; there never was a mother so attentive.

Adelia sat up and took the baby from her so that she could snuggle with him among the cushions and feel the down of his head against her cheek. He smelled of fresh air and milk. “No lotuses for you,” she told him, “not until you’ve got teeth.”

“Ain’t tried lotuses,” Boggart said. “They as nice as couscous?”

Even Ward had a silver collar round his neck. Since he’d played his part in the rescue from Aveyron, the Ziza’s Moslem servants had been told to quash their antipathy to dogs as unclean beasts. At first, he’d been offered a home in the only canine residence the palace contained, the royal kennels, but since its hunting pack of salukis had terrified him, he’d been allowed to rejoin Adelia and the others as one more honored guest.

His mistress had asked if she might send a message to the Bishop of Saint Albans to tell him where she was,