Ariana Franklin - The Serpent’s Tale

“Of course. I must congratulate you on your voice; it is a joy to hear.”

“Thank you. I am Emma Bloat.”

“Adelia Aguilar.”

They fell into step, or, rather, Adelia stepped and Emma bounced. She was fifteen years old and in a state of exaltation over something. Adelia hoped it was not the bishop. “Are you an oblate?”

“Oh, no. Little Priscilla is the one taking the veil. I am to be married.”

“Good.”

“It is , isn’t it? Earthly love…” Emma twirled in sheer joie de vivre. “God must reckon it as high as heavenly love, mustn’t he, despite what Sister Mold says, or why does He make us feel like this?” She thumped the region of her heart.

“‘It is better to marry than to burn,’” quoted Adelia.

“Huh. What I say is, how did Saint Paul know? He didn’t do either.”

She was a refreshing child and she did love babies, or she certainly loved Allie, with whom she was prepared to play peep-bo longer than Adelia had believed possible without the brain giving way.

It seemed that the girl must have privilege of some kind, since she was not called back to join the sisters’ afternoon routine.

Wealth or rank? Adelia wondered. Or both?

She showed no more curiosity about this influx of strangers to the convent than if they had been toys provided for her amusement, though she demanded that they be curious about her. “Ask me about my husband-to-be, ask me, ask me.”

He was beautiful, apparently, oh so beautiful, gallant, wild with love for her, a writer of romantic poems that rivaled any Paris might have sent to Helen.

Gyltha raised her eyebrows to Adelia, who raised her own. This was happiness indeed, and unusual to be found in an arranged marriage. For arranged it was; Emma’s father, she told them, was a wine merchant in Oxford and was supplying the convent with the best Rhenish to pay for having her educated as befitted a nobleman’s wife. It was he who had procured the match.

At this point, Emma, who was standing by the window, laughed so much that she had to hold on to the mullion.

“Your intended’s a lord, then?” Gyltha asked, grinning.

The laughter went, and the girl turned to look out of the window as if its view could tell her something, and Adelia saw that when the exuberance of youth went, beauty would take its place.

“The lord of my heart,” Emma said.

It was difficult for the travelers to forgather in order to discuss and plan. Lenient as Godstow was, it could not tolerate the step of a Saracen into its inner courtyard. For the bishop to visit the women’s quarters was equally out of place. There was only the church, and even there a nun was always present at the main altar, interceding with God for the souls of such departed as had paid for the privilege. However, it had a side chapel devoted to Mary, deserted at night yet lit by candles-another gift from the dead that they might be remembered to the Holy Mother-and the abbess had given her permission for its use as a meeting place, as long as they were quiet about it.

The day’s large congregation had left no warmth behind. Blazing candles on the shrine sent out light and heat only a few feet, leaving the ogival space around them in icy shadow. Entering by a side door, Adelia saw a large figure kneeling before the altar, his cowled head bowed and the fingers of his hands interlaced so tightly that they resembled bare bone.

Rowley got up as the women entered. He looked tired. “You’re late.”

“I had to feed the baby,” Adelia told him.

From the main body of the church came the drone of a nun reading the commemorations from the convent register. She was being literal about it. “Lord, in Thy mercy, bless and recognize the soul of Thomas of Sandford, who did provide an orchard in Saint Giles’s, Oxford, to this convent and departed this life the day after Martinmas in the year of our Lord 1143. Sweet Jesus, in Thy Mercy, look kindly on the soul of Maud Halegod, who did give three silver marks…”

“Did Rosamund’s servant tell you anything?” Adelia whispered.

“Her?” The bishop didn’t bother to lower his voice. “The female’s rattle-headed; I’d have got more out of the bloody donkeys I’ve had to bless all bloody afternoon. She kept bleating. I swear, like a sheep.”

“You probably frightened her.” In full regalia, he’d have been overwhelming.

“Of course I didn’t frighten her. I was charming. The woman’s witless, I tell you. You see if you can get some sense out of her.”

“I shall.”

Gyltha had found some hassocks piled in a cupboard and was distributing them in a circle, where the candlelight fell on them, each one displaying the blazon of a noble family that didn’t want to dirty its knees when it came to church.

“Hassocks are sensible,” Adelia said, putting one under the sleeping Allie’s basket in order to keep it off the stones. Ward settled himself on another. “Why don’t the rich endow hassocks for the poor? They’d be remembered longer.”

“The rich don’t want us comfortable,” Gyltha said. “Ain’t good for us. Give us ideas above our station. Where’s that old Arab?”

“The messenger’s fetching him.”

He came, having to stoop through the side door, wrapped in a cloak, Jacques behind him.

“Good,” Rowley said. “You can go, Jacques.”

“Ummm.” The young man shifted in complaint.

Adelia took pity on him. Messengers had an unenviable and lonely job, spending their time crisscrossing the country with a horse as their only companion. Their masters were hard on them: letters to be delivered quickly, replies brought back even quicker; excuses, such as bad weather, falls, difficult country, or getting lost, discounted in favor of the suspicion that the servant had been wasting his time and his employer’s money in some tavern.

Rowley, she thought, was being particularly hard on this one; there was no reason why the young man should not be included in their discussions. She suspected that Jacques’s sin lay in the fact that, though he wore the sober Saint Albans livery, he compensated for his lack of height by wearing raised boots and a high plume in his hat, which led to the suspicion that he was following the trend introduced by Queen Eleanor and her court for males as well as women to subscribe to fashion-an idea welcomed by the young generation but condemned as effete by men, like Rowley, like Walt and Oswald, whose choice of clothing material had always been either leather or chain mail.

Walt had been heard to describe the messenger, not inaccurately, as looking like “a stalk of celery wi’ roots attached,” and Rowley had grumbled to Adelia that he feared his messenger was “greenery-yellery” and “not good, plain old Norman English,” both epithets he reserved for men he regarded as effeminate. “I shall have to send him away. The boy even wears scent. I can’t have my missives delivered by a popinjay.”

This, thought Adelia, from a man whose ceremonial robes dazzled the eye and took half an hour to put on.

She decided to intercede. “Are we taking Master Jacques with us to Rosamund’s tower tomorrow?”

“Of course we are.” Rowley was still irritable. “I may need to send messages.”

“Then he’ll know as much as we know, my lord. He already does.”

“Oh, very well.”

From the altar beyond the screen that separated them, the ceaseless muttering of prayer for the dead went on as, with different nuns taking up the task, it would go on all night.

“… of your mercy, the soul of Thomas Hookeday, hayward of this parish, for the sixpence he did endow…”

Rowley produced the saddle roll that had belonged to the dead man on the bridge. “Hasn’t been time to look through it yet.” He unbuckled the straps and put it on the floor to unroll it. With Jacques standing behind them, the four sat round and considered its contents.