The Serpent's Tale Read online

  Three faces were reflected in the glass, two of them surmounted by crowns. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, my dear,” one of them said—and it wasn’t talking to Adelia.

  Who, for a moment, stood where she was, staring straight ahead, trying to subdue shivering superstition, gathering all her common sense against belief in the wizardry of conjurement.

  Then she turned and bowed. There was no mistaking a real queen.

  Eleanor took no notice of her. She walked to one side of the table, bringing with her a scent that subsumed Rosamund’s roses in something heavier and more Eastern. Two white, long-fingered hands were placed on the wood as she bent forward to look into the face of the dead woman. “Tut, tut. You have let yourself go.” A beringed forefinger nudged the Greek pot. “Do I suspect too many sweeties and not enough sallets?”

  Her voice belled charmingly across the chamber. “Did you know that poor Rosamund was fat, Lord Montignard? Why was I not told?”

  “Cows usually are, lady.” A man’s voice, coming from a shape lounging in the doorway and holding a lantern. There was an indistinct, taller figure in mail standing behind him.

  “So rude,” said Eleanor, apologetically, to the body in the chair. “Men are unfair, are they not? And you must have had so many compensating qualities ... generosity with your favors, things like that.”

  The cruelty was not only verbal but also accentuated by the two women’s physical disparity. Against the tall sweep of the queen’s shape, that showed slender even in the fur wrapping it round, Rosamund appeared lumpen, her tumbling hair ridiculous for a mature woman. Compared to the delicate spikes on the white-gold crown Eleanor wore, Rosamund’s was an overweight piece of grandiloquence.

  The queen had come to the document. “My dear, another of your letters to me? And God froze you to ice in the middle of penning it?”

  Adelia opened her mouth and then shut it; she and the men in the doorway were merely sounding boards in the game that Eleanor of Aquitaine was playing with a dead woman.

  “I am sorry I was not here at the time,” the queen was saying. “I had but landed from France when I received word of your illness, and there were other matters I had to see to rather than be at your deathbed.” She appeared to sigh. “Always business before pleasure.”

  She picked up the letter and held it at arm’s length, unable to read it in the light but not needing to. “Is this like the others? Greetings to the supposed queen from the true one? Somewhat repetitious, don’t you think? Not worth keeping, yes?”

  She crumpled the parchment and tossed it onto the floor, grinding it out on the stones with the twist of an excellent boot.

  Slowly, slowly, Adelia bent slightly sideways and down. She slipped the document she’d been holding into the top of her right boot and felt her dog lick her hand as she did it. He was keeping close.

  Facing the mirroring window, she looked to see if the man in the doorway had noticed the movement. He hadn’t. His attention was on Eleanor; Eleanor’s on Rosamund’s corpse.

  The queen was cupping her ear as if listening to a reply. “You don’t mind? So generous, but they say you were always generous with your favors. Oh, and forgive me, this bauble is mine.” Eleanor had lifted the crown off the dead woman’s head. “It was made for the wives of the counts of Anjou two centuries ago, and how dare he give it to a stinking great whore like you ...”

  Control had gone. With a scream, the queen sent the crown spinning away toward the window opposite them both as if she meant to smash the glass with it. Ward barked.

  What saved Eleanor’s life was that the crown hit the window with the padded underside of its brim. If the glass had shattered, Adelia—dazedly watching the mirroring window shake as the missile bounced off it—would not have seen the reflection of Death slithering toward them. Nor the knife in its hand.

  She didn’t have time to turn round. It was coming for Eleanor. Instinctively, Adelia flung herself sideways, and her left hand contacted Death’s shoulder.

  In trying to deflect the knife, she misjudged and had her right palm sliced open by it. But her shove changed the momentum of the attacker, who went tumbling to the floor.

  The scene petrified: Rosamund sitting unconcernedly in her chair; Eleanor, just as still, facing the window in which the attack had been reflected; Adelia standing and looking down at the figure lying sprawled facedown at her feet. It was hissing.

  The dog approached it, sniffing, and then backed away.

  So for a second. Then Lord Montignard was exclaiming over the queen while the mailed man had his boot on the attacker’s back and a sword raised in his two hands, looking at Eleanor for permission to strike.

  “No.” Adelia thought she’d shrieked it, but shock diminished the word so that it sounded quietly reasonable.

  The man paid her no attention. Expressionless, he went on looking at the queen, who had a hand to her head. She seemed to collapse, but it was to kneel. The white hands were steepled, the crowned head bowed, and Eleanor of Aquitaine prayed. “Almighty God,” she said, “accept the thanks of this unworthy queen for stretching out Your hand and reducing this, my enemy, to a block of ice. Even in death she did send her creature against me, but You turned the blade so that, innocent and wronged as I am, I live on to serve You, my Lord and Redeemer.”

  When Montignard helped her to her feet, she was amazingly calm. “I saw it,” she said to Adelia. “I saw God choose you as his instrument to save me. Are you the housekeeper? They say this strumpet had a housekeeper.”

  “No. My name is Adelia. I am Adelia Aguilar. I assume that is the housekeeper. Her name is Dakers.” Pointing to the figure on the floor, her hand dripped blood over it.

  Queen Eleanor paid it no attention. “What do you do here, then, girl? How long have you lived here?”

  “I don’t. I’m a stranger to this place. We arrived an hour or so ago.” A lifetime. “I’ve never been here before. I had only just come up the stairs and discovered ... this.”

  “Was this creature with you?” Eleanor dabbled her fingers in the direction of her still-supine attacker.

  “No. I hadn’t seen her, not until now. She must have hidden herself when she heard us come up the stairs.”

  Montignard came close to wave the tip of a dagger in her face. “You wretch, it is your queen you talk to. Show respect or I slit your nose.” He was a willowy young man, very curly, very brave now.

  “My lady,” Adelia added dully.

  “Stop it, Monty,” the queen snapped, and turned to the man in mail. “Is the place secured, Schwyz?”

  “Secure?” Still without expression, Schwyz managed to convey his opinion that the tower was about as secure as a slice of carrot. “We took four men in the barge and three downstairs.” He didn’t address the queen by her title, either, but Adelia noticed that Montignard didn’t threaten to slit Schwyz’s nose for it; the man stood square on thick legs, more like a foot soldier than a knight, and nobody was in any doubt that if Eleanor had given the nod, he’d have skewered the housekeeper like a flapping fish. And Montignard, for that matter.

  A mercenary, Adelia decided.

  “Did these three men downstairs bring you with them?” the queen asked.

  “Yes.” Dear Lord, she was tired. “My lady,” she added.

  “Why?”

  “Because the Bishop of Saint Albans asked me to accompany him.” Rowley could answer the questions; he was good at that.

  “Rowley?” The queen’s voice had altered. “Rowley’s here?” She turned to Schwyz. “Why was I not told?”

  “Four men in the boat and three downstairs,” Schwyz repeated stolidly. His accent was London with a trace of something more foreign. “If a bishop is among them, I don’t know it.” He didn’t care, either. “We stay the night here?”

  “Until the Young King and the Abbot of Eynsham arrive.”

  Schwyz shrugged.

  Eleanor cocked her head at Adelia. “And why has his lordship of Saint Albans brou
ght one of his women to Wormhold Tower?”

  “I can’t say.” At that moment, she didn’t have the energy to recount the train of events, and certainly not to make them comprehensible. She was too tired, too shocked, too struck down by horrors even to refute the imputation of being “one of his women,” though not to wonder how many he was known to have.

  “We shall ask him,” Eleanor said brightly. She looked down at the writhing shape on the floor. “Raise her.”

  The courtier Montignard pushed forward and made a fuss of kicking the would-be assassin’s knife across the floor. Hauling her upright from under Schwyz’s boot, he maintained her with one arm round the chest and put the point of his dagger to her neck with the other.

  It was Death, a better facsimile than any in the marketplace mystery plays. The hood of a black cloak had wrinkled back to disclose the prominent cheekbones and teeth of a skull with pale skin so tight that the only indication, in this bad light, to show that the face had any at all was a large and sprouting mole on the upper lip. The eyes were set deep; they might have been holes. All it lacked was the scythe.

  It was still hissing sporadically, the words mixed with spittle. “... dare to touch the true queen, you dissembler ... my Master, my most northerly Lord ... burn your soul ... cast you ... utmost obscenity.” Eleanor leaned forward, cupping her ear again, then stood back. “Demons? Belial?” She turned to her audience. “The woman threatens me with Belial. My dear, I married him.”

  “Only let me strangle her, lady. Let me cauterize this pus,” Montignard said. A pearl of blood appeared from where the tip of the dagger pierced the woman’s skin.

  “Leave her alone.” Adelia managed a shout now.

  “She’s mad, and she’s half dead already, leave her alone.” Instinctively, she’d put her fingers round the woman’s wrist, feeling a hideously slow pulse among bones almost as cold as Rosamund’s. Dear God, how long had she been hiding in this ice chamber?

  “She needs warmth,” Adelia said to Eleanor. “We must warm her.”

  The queen looked at Adelia’s dripping hand held out to her in appeal, then at the housekeeper. She shrugged. “We are informed the creature needs warming, Monty. I imagine that does not entail putting it into the fire. Take it downstairs, Schwyz, and see to it. Gently, now. We shall question it later.”

  Scowling, the courtier handed his captive over to Schwyz, who took her to the door, gave an order to one of his men, saw her taken away, and came back. “Madam, we should leave. I cannot defend this place.”

  “Not yet, Master Schwyz. Go about your duties.” Schwyz stumped off, not a happy man.

  The queen smiled at Adelia. “You see? You ask for the woman’s life, I give it. Noblesse oblige. Such a gracious monarch am I.”

  She was impressive; Adelia gave her that. The prickling weakness of shock that threatened to collapse Adelia’s legs left this woman seemingly untouched, as if attempted assassination was the everyday round of royalty. Perhaps it was.

  Montignard hesitated. He nodded toward Adelia. “Leave you alone with this wench, lady? I shall not. Does she wish you harm? I do not know.”

  “My lord.” Eleanor had a metaphorical whip in her boot. “Whoever she may be, she saved my life. Which”—the whip cracked—“you were too slow to do. Now go attend to that eyesore. Also, we could profit from some warmth ourselves. See to it. And bring me the Bishop of Saint Albans.”

  Self-preservation helped Adelia to mumble, “And some brandy. Send up brandy.” She’d just properly seen the wound in her hand; it went deep and, goddamn all assassins, she needed her right hand.

  The queen nodded her permission. She showed no sign of leaving the chamber and descending to another. While Adelia considered that perverse, not to say unhallowed, considering the poor body occupying it, she was grateful to be spared the stairs. Sidling out of the royal sight, she sank down onto the floor by the side of the bed and stayed there.

  People came and went, things were done, the bed stripped and its covers and mattress sent downstairs to be burned—the queen was insistent about that.

  A beautiful young woman, presumably one of Eleanor’s attendants, came in, fluttered at the sight of Rosamund, fainted prettily, and had to be taken out again. Maids, manservants—how many had she brought with her?—carried in braziers, candles enough to light the Vatican, incense and oil burners, lamps, flambeaux. Adelia, who’d thought she’d never be warm again, began to think kindly and soporifically of the cold. She closed her eyes ...

  “... in hell are you doing here? If he’s coming, he’ll come straight for this tower.” It was Rowley’s voice, very loud, very angry.

  Adelia woke up. She was still on the floor by the bed. The chamber was hotter; there were more people in it. Rosamund’s body, ignored, sat at its table, though some merciful soul had covered the head and shoulders with a cloak.

  “You dare address my glorious lady like that? She goes where she pleases.” This was Montignard.

  “I’m talking to the queen, you bastard. Keep your snout out of ... it.” He jerked the last word— somebody had punched him.

  Peering under the bed, Adelia saw the bottom half of the queen and all of Rowley kneeling in front of her. His hands were tied. Mailed legs—she recognized one pair as Schwyz’s—stood behind him and, to the side, Montignard’s fine leather boots, one of them raised for another kick.

  “Leave him, my lord,” Eleanor said icily. “This is the language I have come to expect from the Bishop of Saint Albans.”

  “It’s called truth, lady,” Rowley said. “When did you ever hear anything else from me?”

  “Is it? Then the question is not what I do here, but what you do.”

  It’ll come in a minute, Adelia thought. The appalling coincidence of this forgathering must seem sinister to a queen who’d just been attacked.

  Cautiously, she began undoing the strings of the purse hanging from her belt and feeling for the small roll of velvet containing the surgical instruments she always carried when traveling.

  “I told you. I came on your behalf.” Rowley jerked his head in the direction of the writing table. “My lady, rumor is already blaming you for Rosamund’s death ...”

  “Me? Almighty God killed her.”

  “He had help. Let me find out whose—it’s why I came, to find out ...”

  “In the dark? This night of nights?” Montignard interrupting again. “You come and at the same time a demon rushes out of the wall to stab the queen?”

  Here it was. Adelia’s hand found the tiny, lethally sharp knife in the roll and loosened it so that its handle protruded. What to do with it she wasn’t sure, but if they hurt him ...

  “What? What demon?” Rowley asked.

  Eleanor nodded. “The housekeeper, Dampers.

  Did you hire her to kill me, Saint Albans?”

  “Elean-oor.” It was the protesting growl of one old friend to another; everybody else in the chamber was diminished by the claim of a hundred shared memories. It made the queen go back in her tracks.

  “Well, well,” she said, more gently, “I suppose you must be absolved, since it was your leman who pushed aside the blade.”

  Adelia’s hand relaxed.

  “My leman?”

  “I forgot you have so many. The one with the foreign name and no manners.”

  “Ah,” the bishop said. “That leman. Where is she?”

  Using her one good hand, Adelia pulled herself up by the bed frame and stood where everybody could see her. She felt afraid and rather foolish.

  Awkwardly, Rowley looked round. He had blood on his mouth.

  Their eyes met.

  “I rejoice that she served such a mighty purpose, madam,” the Bishop of Saint Albans said slowly. He looked back at the queen. “Keep her if you will, she’s of no use to me—as you say, she has no manners.”

  Eleanor shook her head at Adelia. “See how easily he discards you? All men are knaves, king or bishop.”

  Adelia began to panic.
He’s abandoning me to her. He can’t. There’s Allie. I must get back to Godstow.

  Rowley was answering another question. “Yes, I have. Twice. The first time I came was when she was taken ill—Wormhold is part of my diocese; it was my duty. And tonight when I heard of her death. That’s not the point ...” Being bound and on his knees wasn’t going to stop the bishop from lecturing the queen. “In the name of God, Eleanor, why didn’t you make for Aquitaine? It’s madness for you to be here. Get away. I beg you.”

  “‘That’s not the point’?” Eleanor had heard only what was important to her. Her cloak swished across the floor as she retrieved Rosamund’s letter from it. “This is the point. This, this. I have received ten such.” She smoothed the letter out and held it out. “You and the whore were in league with Henry to set her up as queen.”

  There was a moment’s quiet as Rowley read.

  “God strike me, I knew nothing of it,” he said— and Adelia thought that even Eleanor must hear that he was appalled. “Nor does the king, I swear. The woman was insane.”

  “Evil. She was evil. She shall burn in this world as in the next—her and all that is hers. The brushwood is being put in place, ready for the flame. A fitting end for a harlot. No Christian burial for her.”

  “Jesus.” Adelia saw Rowley blanch and then gather himself. Suddenly, the tone of his voice changed to one that was wrenchingly familiar; it had got her into his bed. “Eleanor,” he said gently, “you are the greatest of queens, you brought beauty and courtesy and music and refinement to a realm of savages, you civilized us.”

  “Did I?” Very soft, all at once girlish.

  “You know you did. Who taught us chivalry toward women? Who in hell taught me to say please?” He followed up the advantage of her laugh. “Do not, I beg you, commit an act of vandalism that will resound against you. No need to burn this tower; let it stand in its filth. Retire to Aquitaine, just for a while, give me time to find out who actually killed Rosamund so that I can treat with the king. For the sake of Christ crucified, lady, until then don’t antagonize him.”

  It was the wrong note.