A Murderous Procession (11 page)

In a steam-filled upper room—the abbot’s was the only one large enough—Adelia watched the indistinct forms of maids come and go like ghostly water sprites as she rested her body in warm suds. It had been an unusually long journey of forty miles from their last stop to this.

From the dining room below rose the sound of tipsy men still at table singing a rousing chorus of the immemorial drinking song “Gaudeamus
igitur
.” She could hear Rowleys voice among them. This was Calvados country; the abbey made it from its own apples and served it in place of ale, despite what the ascetic Saint Benedict would have said.

“Oh, dear,” said Lady Beatrix through the scented vapor. “Sir Nicholas … Isn’t Calvados very alcoholic?”

“Very,” Blanche said. “We can only hope …”

Everybody in the room hoped with her.

From her tub in the middle of the mist, a wet princess changed the subject. “Are you sure God will not condemn us for too much bathing?” (The abbot had taken his revenge during his homily at supper by stressing the sin of vanity among women.)

“Definitely not, my lady,” came Lady Petronilla’s answer, stoutly “Cleanliness is a godly attribute.”

“So Mama says. But in his holiness Saint Thomas never bathed at all once he became Archbishop of Canterbury. They say he was crawling with lice when they undressed his dear body.”

“That’s saints,” said Petronilla firmly “It does not apply to ladies of gentle birth.”

“But when we visited the shrine of the Blessed Sylvia, we were told that the only part of her she ever washed were her fingers.”

“I’m sure she had her reasons, dear.” This was Beatrix. “But the good Lord likes his queens to be
clean.”
There was a soapy pause. “Along with their ladies-in-waiting.”

Seated in her tub at the end of the row, Adelia grinned. These were acerbic women and no friends to her, but at this moment, with the ache of her limbs being soothed away, she blessed them. She had begun to see that, in their way, they were admirable, clustering protectively round their princess, jealous for her comfort—and their own, of course—entertaining her on the long, long marches with songs—each played a musical instrument—riddles and stories, always exquisitely turned out, their hair perfectly braided under circlets and floating veils, skin like silk on their slim figures, bodices low-cut to show alabaster cleavage.

Men who saw them floundered, later remembering a dream of beauty that would not come again.

It was, she supposed, what Rowley wanted for Allie. But what sort of existence was it? Was veneer enough? Only Petronilla could read, an exercise she confined to books of manners; all three were ignorant of history, except that of their ancestry, and none of them had any conception of life outside court. They talked dreamily of what noble husbands they could expect to be gifted to, as if their marriages were to be a lottery, which, presumably, they would be.

Adelia would have welcomed a peace pact in which to get to know each of them better, but, regarding her as an intruder, they banded together so that their circle formed a fence against her in which their individuality was more or less lost.

Sighing, Adelia called through the scented steam for Boggart to bring her a towel, then winced as a crash indicated that an unguent bottle had been dislodged from the tub’s edge—the girl was trying, bless her, but
trying.
“You can get into the water now, Boggart.”

“Oh, yes, mistress. I’m getting used to that. And Ward’s got powerful dirty today, I was wondering if I should take un in with me.”

From among the vapors came a concerted chorus of “Please.”

Dried and wrapped in one of Emma’s cloaks, Adelia went out onto the landing, pausing in order to pick up her necklet with its cross from a table where the ladies had left their jewelry so that it should not get tarnished.

She couldn’t find it.

Taking a flambeau from its holder on the wall, she held it over the table so that she could see better and searched again among the pile of glittering rings, brooches, and earrings belonging to the other women.

“Damn them,” she said.
“Damn
them.” The necklet was her only ornament, worn in remembrance of her childhood nurse, Margaret, who’d given her the original—a simple thing with a plain silver cross that she’d loved, but had put in the coffin of a murdered girl who’d greatly admired it, though, as soon as she could, she’d paid for another to be made exactly like the first.

To make sure, Adelia waited until a dripping Boggart and Ward emerged from the room of baths. “You didn’t pick up my cross for any reason, did you, Boggart?”

“No, mistress.”

“No, I didn’t think you did. Damn them, those bitch … those blasted females have taken it to spite me.”

Boggart considered. “Don’t think as they can have, mistress. It was there when they all went in. I saw it. Ain’t nobody left to come outside since.”

In bed that night, Adelia lay awake for a while wondering who in the abbey was a thief, and why, out of all the jewelry on the table, he—or she—had stolen the one of least monetary value.

Well, with Allie waiting for her, time was of the essence and to make a fuss would only delay the morning’s start while a search was made and people questioned, as well as make her even less popular than she was.

Yawning, she decided she would just have to employ another silversmith when she reached Sicily

But the night was not over …

This time the screams came from the gardens overlooked by the monastery’s guesthouse windows.

This time they were terrible.

This time they were Boggart’s.

There was a resentful mutter of “Sir Nicholas slipped his leash again” from one of the other women as Adelia ran for a cloak. Downstairs, she tugged back the bolts on the door and hurled herself into the garden.

In the middle of the lawn, Sir Nicholas’s substantial and palpitating body was humped over Boggart’s feet. His hands gripped her ankles so that moonlight threw the shadow of the girl’s and man’s figures onto the grass in the shape of a monstrous crochet, except for where a small dog tugged at the seat of the man’s robe.

It would have been the scene of comedy if Boggart’s mouth hadn’t been contorted into a white O of horror and the screams pumping from it weren’t those of a soul in remembered torment.

Adelia joined Ward in tugging at Sir Nicholas’s robe—just as uselessly; the knight was fixed and oblivious. She tried kicking him. “Leave her alone, curse you,” she yelled, “Curse you, you horrid old man, leave her
alone.”

Later, she was to recall the sound of laughter coming from the guesthouse windows, but she knew then, and afterward, that this wasn’t ridiculous; something terrible was happening.

She threw herself on the man and reached round his face for his eyes, digging her fingers into them. Even then, he shook his head like a bull so that her nails merely scraped the skin of his cheeks. But somebody was lifting her and Ward to one side while somebody else with more strength than she had was dragging the great bulk away from Boggart’s feet and throwing it onto its back on the grass.

She had a glimpse of the knight’s face, unrecognizably loose and vacant, before his squire and another man hefted him to his feet and carried him away

Rowley was trying to comfort Boggart. “There, there, my dear. No need to be frightened; he has these turns, they don’t mean anything. No harm done.” She flinched away from him as he tried to touch her.

“Ask
her
if there’s harm done,” Adelia spat at him. She picked up the shivering Ward and put him in Boggart’s arms. Then, with her hand on the girl’s shoulder, she urged her toward a stone bench in the shadow of an arbor.

Rowley followed, at a loss. “Can I do anything?”

“No,” Adelia told him. “We’re going to sit here quietly for a while.”

He sat with them, next to Adelia, while on the other side Boggart gasped at something they couldn’t see. The girl was holding Ward so tightly that the tremors wracking her body were making him shake with her.

On the far side of the lawn, most of the shutters of the guesthouse were closing; entertainment over.

“Well, at least he left both her shoes this time,” Rowley said, trying for lightness.

Adelia looked down at Boggart’s shoes. She’d bought them for her in Caen, with another pair and some riding boots, to replace the hulking, hobnailed clogs—a man’s, and far too big for her—that she’d been wearing in Southampton. The girl had clutched the new shoes as she was clutching Ward now, and for along time couldn’t be persuaded to wear them in case they were sullied. Eventually, Adelia had taken the clogs and thrown them away

These were sullied now; the little ribbons that laced the sides had been mouthed so that they trailed limp and wet.

“Why does he do it?” Adelia asked. “What possible …
why
?”

“I don’t know.” Rowley paused. “She’s been attacked before, hasn’t she?”

“I think so.”

“I’m sorry.” He patted Adelia’s hand and stood up. “She won’t want me around, then.”

“No.”

For a moment, watching him walk reluctantly away, Adelia was overcome by her fortune in being loved by him. He was a man with failings, as all men had failings—as she was an imperfect woman—but his humanity concealed no clefts in which lay hidden monsters like that of Sir Nicholas; it went clean to the core.

We must both do better by Allie,
she thought,
she needs the two of us. We must do it together.

Boggart, staring straight ahead, began talking. “My fault,” she was saying. “This un …” She clutched Ward harder. “His poor little belly were upset by summat so I reckoned to walk him … My silly fault. I thought as he was a kindly gent’man. I smiled at him. Silly to make a fuss, no harm done, my fault….”

“Boggart,” Adelia said. She put out a hand to the girl’s face, to turn it toward hers. “You listen to me.
This was not your fault.
It’s happened to others. Sir Nicholas is one of those men that has a demon caged inside him. Drink lets it loose. He attacked you, but it could have been anybody, any woman at all. It could have been me. You’re no more at fault than … than a tree hit by lightning.”

“Ain’t I?”

“No.”

“Tha’s good, then.” She sounded doubtful.

“Boggart. Something happened to you. Before this, I mean. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m all right, mistress. Really I am.”

“No, you’re not. It might help if you told me.”

If Boggart was going to, the moment went. Somebody was approaching them from across the garden; Mistress Blanche was walking carefully, so as not to spill a mug in her hand.

She said: “I thought the child might need a pick-me-up. The kitchener gave me some milk. I’ve put some brandy in it.”

Adelia had to untwine Boggart’s hands from Ward’s fur and, even then, hold the mug to her lips.

In her perfect enunciation, the lady-in-waiting said: “It’s never nice, this sort of thing, but men are strange cattle. After all, he did her no harm. One just has to get over it.”

Adelia looked up sharply, but the woman had taken thought and trouble for Boggart. There was humanity here, too; even fellow feeling.

“She’s blaming herself I suppose,” Mistress Blanche said.

“Yes.”

“One always does. Tell her not to.”

It was an admission so unexpected and revealing, such an unbending, that Adelia instinctively put out her hand.

Mistress Blanche didn’t take it; there were to be no all-women-together confessions. “I was concerned for the girl,” she said. “And so should you be. She’s getting cold.”

Together, they got Boggart to her feet and took her back to the guesthouse.

FROM
A
WINDOW
Scarry has been watching them, laughing a little.

He has been holding a silver necklet with a cross in his hand. Now he drops it carefully down a crack between two uneven floorboards.

WHEN
ADELIA
TOLD
ROWLEY
about the loss of her necklet, he was concerned. “I don’t like you not to be wearing a cross.”

“Why?”

“Every other woman has one; it singles you out.”

Adelia shrugged. “I’m singled out already.”

For a moment he looked into her eyes. “You are for me,” he said.

When Ulf heard of the theft, he, too, became thoughtful.

“Funny that,” he said. “Lord Ivo’s squire told me as how somebody’s been rummagin’ in the luggage packs. Nothing taken, though.”

“Why, do you think?”

“Lookin’ for this, p’raps.” Ulf patted the wooden cross poking out from his mule’s saddlebag.

“That cannot be,” Mansur said. “If a thief is after the sword, he would search for it in the treasure chests, not luggage.”

“Would he, though,
would
he? Iffen he’s clever, he’d reckon as how the king’d know them chests’d be the first to be raided in an attack and he’d reckon old Henry would’ve hidden you-know-what somewhere else.”

Ulf’s childhood had introduced him to the criminal mind, but this was too subtle for Adelia:
“If
it’s the same thief and
if he
took my necklace instead of the ladies’ diamonds, he’s not as clever as all that.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Admiral O’Donnell coming up on his magnificent bay, accompanied by Deniz on a donkey. When those two men weren’t taking the rare opportunity, for seamen, of joining Sir Nicholas and Lord Ivo in a hunt, they spent a good deal of the time riding alongside Mansur.

Deniz said never a word, but his master persisted in asking the Arab about his native customs, telling stories of Ireland and seafaring to Adelia, and questioning Ulf about the Cambridgeshire fenlands. In fact, Ulf particularly seemed to intrigue him.

“Now isn’t that the interesting young man,” said O’Donnell, watching Ulf ride away to join his group. “A friend of yours?”

“As are all the pilgrims, I hope,” Adelia returned.

“Not your usual pilgrim, though, wouldn’t you say?”

“Is he not?” Adelia said, feigning boredom. “What’s different about him?”

“Ah, well, I can’t put me finger on it exactly … a certain lack of holy zeal, maybe. I’d say he lacks the sense of
mysterium tremendum
that most of them have, would you not agree?”