The Serpent's Tale (9 page)

Here he comes, the rider. Up the road that leads from the river to the convent, his horse’s hooves muffled by the earlier snow but still audible in the silence.

He’s nearing the gates, slowing—does he mean to go in? But Villain Number One has stepped out in front of him, the crossbow cocked and straining. Does the rider see him? Shout out? Recognize the man? Probably not; the shadows are dark here. Anyway, the bolt has been loosed and is already deep in his chest.

The horse rears, sending its rider backward and tumbling, breaking the bolt’s flights as he falls. Villain Number Two snatches at the reins, leads the terrified horse to the trees, and tethers it there.

“He’s on the ground and dying—a crossbow quarrel is nearly always fatal wherever it hits,” Adelia said, “but they made sure. One or other of them—whoever he was has big hands—throttled him as he lay on the ground.”

“God have mercy,” the bishop said.

“Yes, but here’s the interesting thing,” Adelia told him, as if everything else had been commonplace. “
Now
they drag him to the center of the bridge. See? The toes of his boots make runnels in the snow. They throw his cap down beside him—dear
Lord
, they’re stupid. Did they think a man fallen from his mount looks so tidy? Legs together? Skirts down? You saw that, didn’t you? And then,
then
, they fetch his horse to the bridge and slice its leg.”

“They do not take him into the trees,” Mansur pointed out. “Nor the horse. Neither would have been found if they’d done that, not until the spring, and by then, no one could see what had happened to them. But no, they drag him to where the first person across the bridge in the morning will see him and raise the hue and cry.”

“Not giving the killers as much time to get away as they might have.” The bishop was reflective. “I see. That’s…eccentric.”

“
This
is what’s eccentric,” Adelia said. They’d come up to the body again. At the bottom of the bridge where the others were gathered, somebody had made a makeshift brazier and lit a fire. Faces, ghastly in the reflection of the flames, turned hopefully in their direction. “You goin’ to be much longer?” Gyltha shouted. “Little un’s due a feed, and we’m dyin’ of frostbite.”

Adelia ignored her. She still didn’t feel the cold. “Two men,” she said, “and they are poor, judging from their footwear. Two men kill our rider. Granted, they take the money from his purse, but they leave the purse, a good one that has his family crest on it. They leave his boots, his cloak, the silver buckle, his fine horse. What thief does that?”

“Perhaps they were disturbed,” Rowley said.

“Who disturbs them? Not us. They are long gone before we come up. They had time to strip this poor soul of everything he…had. They do not. Why, Rowley?”

The bishop thought it through. “They want him found.”

Adelia nodded. “It is vital to them.”

“They want him to be identified.”

Adelia’s exhaled breath was a stream of satisfaction. “Exactly. It must be known who he is and that he is dead.”

“I see.” Rowley considered. “Hence the suggestion that we hide his body. I don’t like it, though.”

“But that will bring them back, Rowley,” Adelia said, and for the first time she touched him, a tug on his sleeve. “They’ve taken pains to have this poor young man’s death declared to the world. They’ll come back to find out why it isn’t. We can be waiting for them.”

Mansur nodded. “Some fiend intends to profit by this killing, Allah ruin him.”

Adelia jiggled the bishop’s sleeve again. “But not if the boy seems merely to have gone away, just disappeared.”

Rowley was doubtful. “There’ll be someone at home, worrying for him.”

“If so, they’ll want his murderers found.”

“He ought to be buried with decency.”

“Not yet.”

Pulling his arm from her grasp, the bishop went away from her. Adelia watched him go to the parapet of the bridge and lean over it, looking at the roaring water that showed white in the moonlight.

He hates it when I do this,
she thought.
He was prepared to love the woman but not the doctor. Yet it was the doctor he invited along, and he must bear the consequences. I have a duty to that dead boy, and I will
not
abandon it.

Now she was cold.

“Very well.” He turned round. “You may be fortunate in that Godstow possesses an icehouse. Famous for it.”

While the body was being wrapped in its cloak and its possessions collected, Adelia went to the fire to feed her baby.

The Bishop of Saint Albans gathered his men round him to tell them what Dr. Mansur had discovered from reading the signs in the snow.

“With the mercy of God, we may hope to catch these killers. Until then, not one of you—I say again,
nobody
—is to mention what we have seen this night. We shall keep this body reverently, but secretly, hidden in order to find out who comes back for it—and may God have mercy on their souls, for we shall not.”

It was well done. Rowley had fought in Outremer on Crusade and found that men responded better for knowing what their commander was about than those merely given reasonless commands.

He drew an assenting growl from the circle about him, the messenger’s particularly fervent—he and the others spent much of their lives on the road, and they saw the rider on the bridge as any one of themselves fallen to the predators infesting the highways. As Good Samaritans, they had been too late to save the traveler’s life, but they could at least bring his killers to justice.

Only Father Paton’s frown suggested that he was assessing how much the corpse was going to cost the ecclesiastical purse.

Baring their heads, the men took the body up and put it in the cart. With everybody walking beside it, leading their horses, they crossed the bridge to Godstow nunnery.

G
odstow Abbey with its surrounding grounds and fields was actually a large island formed by curves of the Thames’s upper reaches and tributaries. Although the porter who unbarred its gates to the travelers was a man, as were the groom and ostler who saw to their horses, it was an island ruled by women.

If asked, its twenty-four nuns and their female pensioners would have insisted that it was the Lord God who had called them to abandon the world, but their air of contentment suggested that the Lord’s wish had coincided exactly with their own. Some were widows with money who’d heard God’s call at their husband’s graveside and hurried to answer it at Godstow before they could be married off again. Some were maidens who, glimpsing the husbands selected for them, had been overwhelmed by a sudden vocation for chastity and had taken their dowries with them into the convent instead. Here they could administer a sizable, growing fiefdom efficiently and with a liberal hand—and they could do it without male interference.

The only men over them were Saint Benedict, to whose rule they were subject and who was dead these six hundred and fifty years; the Pope, who was a long way away; the Archbishop of Canterbury, often ditto; and an investigative archdeacon who, because they kept their books and their behavior in scrupulous order, could make no complaint of them.

Oh, and the Bishop of Saint Albans.

So rich was Godstow that it possessed
two
churches. One, tucked away against the abbey’s western wall, was small and acted as the nuns’ private chapel. The other, much larger, stood on the east, near the road, and had been built to provide a place of worship for the people of the surrounding villages.

In effect, the abbey was a village in itself, in which the holy sisters had their own precincts, and it was to these that the travelers were taken by the porter. A maid carrying a yoke squeaked at the sight of them and then curtsied, spilling some milk from the buckets. The porter’s lantern shone on passageways and courtyards, the sudden, sculptured pillars of a cloister where the shutters of the porter’s windows opened to show white-coifed heads like pale poppies whispering, “Bishop, the bishop,” along the row.

Rowley Picot, so big, so full of energy and intent, so loudly male, was a cockerel erupting into a placid coop of hens that had been managing happily without him.

They were met by the prioress, still pinning her veil in place, and begged to wait in the chapter house where the abbess would attend them. In the meantime, please to take refreshment. Had the ladies any requirements? And the baby, such a fine little fellow, what might be done for him?

The beauty of the chapter house relied on the sweep of unadorned wooden crucks and arches. Candles lit a tiled floor strewn with fresh rushes and were reflected back in the sheen of a long table and chairs. Besides the scent of apple logs in the brazier, there was a smell of sanctity and beeswax—and now, thanks to Ward, the stink of unsavory dog.

Rowley strode the room, irritated by the wait, but, for the first time since the journey began, Adelia fed young Allie in the tranquillity the baby deserved. Its connection with Rosamund Clifford had made her afraid that the abbey would be disorderly, the nuns lax and no better than they should be. She still had bad memories of Saint Radegund’s in Cambridge, the only other religious English sisterhood she’d encountered until now—a troubled place where, eventually, a participant in child killing had been unmasked.

Here at Godstow the atmosphere spoke of safety, tidiness, discipline, everything in its place.

She began to doze, lulled by the soporific mutterings of Father Paton as he chalked the reckonings onto his slate book. “To cheese and ale on the journey…to provender for the horses…”

A nudge from Gyltha got her to her feet. A small, very old nun, leaning on an ivory-topped walking stick, had come in. Rowley extended his hand; the nun bent creakily over it to kiss the episcopal ring on his finger. Everybody bowed.

The abbess sat herself at the head of the board, took trouble to lean her stick against her chair, clasped her hands, and listened.

Much of Godstow’s felicity, Adelia realized within minutes, was due to this tiny woman. Mother Edyve had the disinterested calm of elderly people who had seen everything and were now watching it come around for the second time. This young bishop—a stripling compared to her—could not discompose her, though he arrived with a Saracen, two women, a baby, and an unprepossessing dog among his train, telling her that he had found a murdered man outside her gates.

Even the fact that the bishop wished to conceal the corpse in her icehouse was met calmly. “Thus you hope to find the killer?” she asked.

“Killer
sss
, Abbess,” the bishop hissed impatiently. Once again, he went over the evidence found by Dr. Mansur and his assistant.

Adelia thought that Mother Edyve had probably grasped it the first time; she was merely giving herself time to consider. The wrinkly lidded eyes embedded into a face like creased calfskin closed as she listened, her veined hands reflected in the high polish of the table.

Rowley ended with, “We are assured that there are people who wish the young man’s death and name to be broadcast; when there is only silence, they may return to find out why.”

“A trap, then.” It was said without emphasis.

“A trap is necessary to see justice done,” Rowley persisted, “and only you to know about it, Abbess.”

He is asking a great deal of her
, Adelia thought. To conceal a body unmourned and unburied is surely against the law and certainly unchristian.

On the other hand, according to what Rowley had told her, this old woman had kept both her convent and her nuns inviolate during thirteen years of civil war, much of it waged in this very area, a feat suggesting that the rules of men, and even God’s, must have been tinkered with somewhere along the line.

Mother Edyve opened her eyes. “I can tell you this, my lord: The bridge is ours. It is our convent’s duty to maintain its structure and its peace and, by extension therefore, to catch those who commit murder on it.”

“You agree, then?” Rowley was taken aback; he’d expected resistance.

“However,” the abbess said, still distantly, as if he hadn’t spoken, “you will need the assistance of my daughter prioress.” Sliding it along her belt from under her scapular, Mother Edyve produced the largest chatelaine Adelia had ever seen; it was a wonder it didn’t weigh her to the floor. Among the massive keys attached to it was a small bell. She rang it.

The prioress who had first greeted them came in. “Yes, Mother?”

Now that she could compare them, Adelia saw that Sister Havis had the same flat face and the same calfskin, though slightly less crinkled, complexion as the abbess. “Daughter prioress,” then, was not a pious euphemism; Edyve had brought her child with her to Godstow when she took the veil.

“Our lord bishop has with him a consignment for our icehouse, Sister Havis. It will be stored there secretly during Lauds.” A key was detached from the great iron ring and handed over. “There shall be no mention of it to any soul until further notice.”

“Yes, Mother.” Sister Havis bowed to her bishop, then to her mother, and left. No surprise. No questions. Godstow’s icehouse, Adelia decided, must have stored more than sides of beef in its time. Treasure? Escapers? Situated as it was between the town of Wallingford, which had held out for Queen Matilda, and Oxford Castle, where King Stephen’s flag had flown, there might well have been a need to hide both.

Allie was wriggling, and Gyltha, who was holding her, looked interrogatively at Adelia and then at the floor.

Adelia nodded, clean enough. Allie was put down to crawl, an exercise she was refusing to perform, preferring to hitch herself along on her backside. Wearily, the dog Ward disposed himself so that his ears could be pulled.

Rowley wasn’t even thanking the abbess for her cooperation; he had moved on to a matter more important to him. “And now, madam, what of Rosamund Clifford?”

“Yes, the Lady Rosamund.” It was spoken as distantly as ever, but Mother Edyve’s hands tightened slightly. “They are saying it was the queen poisoned her.”

“I was afraid they would.”

“And
I
am afraid it may precipitate war.”

There was a silence. Abbess and bishop were in accord now, as if they shared a foul secret. Once again, trampling horsemen milled around the memories of those who had known civil war, emitting to Adelia a turbulence so strong that she wanted to pick up her baby. Instead, she kept an eye on her in case the child made for the brazier.

“Has her corpse arrived?” Rowley asked abruptly.

“No.”

“I thought it had been arranged; it was to be carried here for burial.” He was accusatory, the abbess’s fault.
Whereas,
thought Adelia,
any other bishop would have commended a convent that refused to inter a notorious woman in its ground.

Mother Edyve looked down the side of her chair. Allie was trying to pull herself up by one of its legs. Adelia rose to go and remove her but the abbess held her back with an admonishing finger, then, without a change of expression, took the little bell from her chatelaine and passed it down.

You know babies
, Adelia thought, comforted.

“Our foundation is indebted to the Lady Rosamund for many past kindnesses.” Mother Edyve’s voice tweeted like a distant bird. “We owe her body burial and all the services for her soul. It was arranged, yet her housekeeper, Dakers, refuses to release the corpse to us.”

“Why not?”

“I cannot say, but without her consent, it is difficult to amend the situation.”

“In the name of God,
why
not?”

Something, and it might have been a gleam of amusement, disturbed the immobility of the abbess’s face for half a second. From the floor by her chair came a tinkling as Allie investigated her new toy. “I believe you visited Wormhold Tower during the lady’s illness, my lord?”

“You know I did. Your prioress…Sister Havis fetched me from Oxford to do so.”

“And both of you were led through the labyrinth surrounding the tower?”

“Some crackbrained female met us at the entrance to it, yes.” Rowley’s fingers tapped on the table; he hadn’t sat down since entering the room.

“Dame Dakers.” Again, the suggestion of amusement like the merest breath on a pond. “I understand she will admit nobody since her mistress died. She adored her. My lord, I fear without she guides you through the labyrinth, there is no way of gaining the tower.”

“I’ll gain it. By God, I’ll gain it. No body shall remain unburied whilst I am bishop here….” He stopped, and then he laughed; he’d brought one through the gates with him.

It is his saving grace
, Adelia thought as she melted and smiled with him, to see the incongruity of things. She watched him apologize to the abbess for his manner and thank her for her amiability—until she saw that the nun’s pale old eyes had turned and were watching
her
watching
him.

The abbess returned to the subject. “Dame Dakers’s attachment to her mistress was”—the adjective was carefully considered—“formidable. The unfortunate servant responsible for bringing in the fatal mushrooms has fled from the tower in fear of her life and has sought sanctuary with us.”

“She’s here? Good. I want to question her.” He corrected himself. “With your
permission
, madam, I should like to question her.”

The abbess inclined her head.

“And if I may trespass on your kindness a little more,” Rowley went on, “I would leave some of my party here while Dr. Mansur and his assistant accompany me to Wormhold Tower and see what may be done. As I say, the good doctor here has investigative abilities that can enable us…”

Not yet. Not today. For God’s sake, Rowley, we’ve traveled hard.

Adelia coughed and caught Gyltha’s eye. Gyltha nudged Mansur, who stood next to her. Mansur looked round at them both, then spoke in English and for the first time. “Your doctor advise rest first.” He added, “My lord.”

“Rest be damned,” Rowley said, but he looked toward Adelia, who must go with him when he went, or why was she here?

She shook her head.
We need rest, Rowley.
You
need it.

The abbess’s eyes had followed the exchange and, if it had told her nothing else, though it probably had, she’d learned enough to know the matter was settled. “When you have disposed of the unfortunate gentleman’s body, Sister Havis will see to your accommodation,” she said.

I
t was still very dark and very cold. The nuns were chanting Lauds in their chapel, and everybody else with a duty to do was performing it within the complex of buildings, out of sight of the main gates, where a covered carriage containing a dead man had been left just inside them.

Walt and the men-at-arms were guarding it. They stood, stamping and slapping their arms to keep warm, stolidly ignoring the inquisition of the convent porter, who was leaning out of a bottom window in the gatehouse. Sister Havis told him sharply to withdraw his head, close the shutters, and mind his own business. “Keep thy silence, Fitchet.”