A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

but Jibril’s command that her whereabouts be kept a secret from everybody was obeyed to the letter, and her request had been ignored-courteously, but ignored.

Rowley had arrived in Palermo, they’d told her that much. Yes, my lord bishop was also aware of her presence in Sicily, but it was better, since spies were everywhere, that there be no contact between the Ziza and the outside world.

Well, she’d said to herself I shall see him at the wedding. And an unworthy thought had followed that one: It won’t do him any harm to wait until then.

It was unfair on Rowley and, perhaps, the O’Donnell who had taken such care of her, but she had no energy for men and the emotion they engendered. Indeed, it hadn’t been until she was installed in the luxury of the Ziza that she’d realized that she and the others were tired to the bone.

It was enough, it was deep sensual pleasure, to be waited upon like pashas, to take a soak in a heated pool big enough to swim in, to be massaged, oiled, perfumed, to have beautiful clothes laid out for their choice, to have cooks vying to tempt their appetites with dishes that took the palate to succulent heaven.

All this in an edifice built for Norman kings by Arab craftsmen so that they wandered through an eye- bewildering, senses-enchanting, fountain-murmuring zigzag of stalactite and honeycombed ceilings and dazzling mosaics amidst living, pacing peacocks.

It suited the four of them to be by themselves, to banter and remember another time of friends and contentment in Caronne. Each knew that the others woke up sweating from nightmares of screams and flames. In Adelia’s dreams a murdered laundress came time and again to point a shaking, accusing finger, but though they shared these memories they didn’t speak of them, trying to make themselves well in an earthly paradise and each other’s beloved company

To be guarded by the scimitar-bearing men who stood at every entrance was, for the time being at least, not irksome but a source of comfort. Adelia convinced herself that, whoever he was, Scarry had died, or given up and gone away, to bother her no more.

If she could have had Allie and her parents with her, it would have been as near Heaven as she could reach.

IN ONE OF the poorer areas of Palermo, a landlord and his wife are discussing the man to whom they have just rented a space in the attic of their shambling lodging house.

“His money’s good,” Ettore points out. For rooms are at a premium with the forthcoming wedding attracting so many people into the city, but the fact that the stranger hadn’t quibbled at being charged a gold tari for what even Ettore can’t claim to be luxurious accommodation has taken the landlord aback.

“Did you look at his eyes?” Agata crosses herself. “Made me go all gooseflesh. And not a word out of him. Don’t you leave me alone with that creature.”

Her husband, too, has been perturbed by his new, silent guest, but a gold tari is a gold tari. “His money’s good,” he says again.

“ANOTHER PRESENT, RAFIQ?”

The majordomo’s hands were cupped as if he offered the gift of a sip of water. “From the Gracious One, lady I was to say that it arrived by boat this morning. It is in the Court of the Fountain, if you would follow me. It is for the Lord Mansur also.”

Mansur, Adelia saw, kept his hand on the dagger in his sash as they went; even here, he was never as relaxed as she was, always scanning the walls to the gardens as if Scarry might leap over them with a knife in his teeth.

It had been an overcast day, and the court was made chilly by the water spurting from the stone lion’s head in the wall where two people, a man and a woman, stood under one of the palm trees, watching the stream’s twirling progress along the conduit in the tiled floor.

They turned.

The man had a close-shaven beard and humorous eyes. He was slightly shorter than the elegant woman with him.

They were a couple that had once come across a bawling, abandoned baby girl on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius during an exploration. Childless themselves, they had taken the baby home and, in raising it, had given it the profit of their affection and exceptional intelligence. On finding, as she grew up, that their foster daughter had a mind to match and even outrank their own, they had enrolled her in the School of Medicine at Salerno at which they were both professors.

Adelia stumbled toward them to take them in her arms. In laying her face against theirs, she felt the same tears of gratitude on their cheeks that were falling down hers.

EVEN WHEN DINNER was finished, the explanations were not, and the company, sitting cross-legged on its cushions, remained round the table long after the dishes had been cleared away.

“But this is terrible,” Dr. Gershom said, not for the first time. “Who is this monster? Such a thing to happen to our darling.”

“We must remain calm,” Dr. Lucia told him-it was her mantra. “Jibril will find the madman and have him put away”

“He had better. She doesn’t leave my sight until he is.” He looked at his wife: “And I am calm, woman.”

“No, you’re not. Only when dealing with your patients. They will live longer than you do, old man.”

It was an old, old exchange that, to Ulf and Boggart, taken aback, sounded like the beginning of an argument.

Adelia and Mansur caught each other’s eye and smiled. No change here, then. This ill-assorted couple bantered, sometimes insulted each other, to a degree that concerned strangers, especially those who, like most Sicilian husbands and wives, used elaborate courtesy to one another in public, whatever they might do in private. Those who knew them well, however, recognized the disguise of a devotion so deep that each had preferred ostracism from their families, one Roman Catholic, the other Jewish, rather than not marrying.

It had never occurred to Adelia that her foster parents’ arguments were anything other than freedom of expression, nor that the roots of the tree sheltering her while she was growing up could ever be shaken.

“And Henry Plantagenet to tear a mother away from her child?” asked Dr. Gershom. “Is that royal? The deepest-dyed ruffian would hesitate. I need to see my granddaughter.”

“We shall see her if we go to England.”

Adelia caught her breath. “You might come to England? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dr. Lucia said: “Some time ago, that deepest-dyed ruffian of your father’s sent us a most courteous letter, praising you, Adelia, and saying that if we should wish to visit England, he would be delighted to have us under his protection.”

“Henry did?” Adelia was amazed.

Gershom sniffed. “Every now and then one of his fancy couriers has called in at Salerno on his way to Palermo with a letter to tell us how you get on. Your mother thinks that’s courtesy I say it’s no more than our due for taking our daughter from us and keeping her away His invitation is a puff, a sop to keep us happy.”

“Oh, no,” Adelia said, still surprised, but with certainty. “No, it isn’t. If he’s offered you a place in England, he truly wants you there.”

The Plantagenet did nothing out of sensitivity She wondered why he had done it at all; she hadn’t thought he’d even been aware of her parents’ existence. But he was a canny monarch with a network of information like no other, and two more of the world’s most gifted doctors would be of considerable use to his kingdom.

What amazed her was that they should be considering it; she’d thought them too deeply founded into Southern Appenine rock to be dislodged.

Staring at her mother, Adelia saw what, in the misty happiness of seeing her again, she had missed-a dent on the woman’s cheekbone.

She leaned over to touch it, gently “How did that happen? Has Father been beating you again?”

“I should have,” Gershom said bitterly. “If ever a stubborn, obstinate maypole of a woman deserved knocking down, it is that woman there. Didn’t I tell her not to go visiting her Salerno patients without Halim to guard her? Did she listen? Mansur, my old friend, where were you? You’d have seen them off.” His face changed. “They