Ariana Franklin - The Serpent’s Tale

Gyltha shrugged. “His child, too.”

“You wouldn’t think so.”

The messenger’s voice came from the door. “My apologies, mistress, but his lordship asks that you will interview Bertha.”

“Bertha?”

“Lady Rosamund’s servant, mistress. The mushrooming one.”

“Oh, yes.”

Apart from the unremitting prayers for the dead in the church and the canonical hours, the convent had shut down, leaving it in a total, moonless black. The compass of light from Jacques’s lantern lit only the bottom of walls and a few feet of pathway lined by snow as he led the two women to their quarters. There Adelia kissed her baby good night and left Gyltha to put her to bed.

She and the messenger went on alone, leaving the outer courtyard for open ground. A faint smell suggested that somewhere nearby were vegetable gardens, rotted now by the frost.

“Where are you taking me?” Her voice went querulous into the blackness.

“The cowshed, I’m afraid, mistress.” Jacques was apologetic. “The girl’s hidden herself there. The abbess put her to the kitchens, but the cooks refused to work with her, seeing it was her hand that fed the poison to the lady Rosamund. The nuns have tried talking to her but they say it’s difficult to get sense from the poor soul, and she dreads the arrival of the lady’s housekeeper.”

The messenger chatted on, eager to prove himself worthy of inclusion into his bishop’s strange, investigative inner circle.

“About the blazon on the poor young man’s purse, mistress. It might profit you to consult Sister Lancelyne. She keeps the convent’s cartulary and register, and has a record of the device of every family who’s made a gift at some time or another.”

He’d been making good use of his time. It was a messenger’s attribute to persuade himself into the good books of the servants of households he visited. It got him better food and drink before he had to set off again.

Walls closed in again. Adelia’s boots splashed through the slush of what, in daytime, must be much-used lanes. Her nose registered that they were passing a bakehouse, now a kitchen, a laundry, all silent and invisible in the darkness.

More open land. More slush, but here and there footprints in a bank of snow where someone had stepped off the path.

Menace.

It came at her, unseen, unaccountable, but so strong that she hunched and stood still under its attack as if she were back in the alleys of Salerno and had seen the shadow of a man with a knife.

The messenger stopped with her. ”What is it, mistress?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.” There were footprints in the snow, valid, explicable footprints no doubt, but for her, remembering those on the bridge, they pointed to death.

She forced herself to trudge on.

The acrid stink of hot iron and a remnant of warmth on the air told her they were passing a smithy, its fire banked down for the night. Now a stable and the smell of horse manure that, as they walked on, became bovine-they had reached the cowshed.

Jacques heaved open one of the double doors to reveal a wide, bespattered aisle between partitioned stalls, most of which were empty. Few beasts anywhere survived the Michaelmas cull-there was never enough fodder to see herds through the winter-but farther up the aisle, the lantern shone on the crusted backsides and tails of the cows that had been left alive to provide winter milk.

“Where is she?”

“They said she was here. Bertha,” Jacques called. “Bertha.”

From somewhere in the dark at the far end of the shed came a squeak and rustle of straw as if an extra-large mouse were making for its hole.

Jacques lit their way up the aisle and shone the lantern into the last of the stalls before hanging it from the hook of an overhead beam. “She’s there, I think, mistress.” He stood back so Adelia could see inside it.

There was a big pile of straw against the stall’s back wall. Adelia addressed it. “Bertha? I mean you no harm. Please talk to me.”

She had to say it several times before there was a heave and a face was framed in the straw. At first, with the lantern sending downward light on it, Adelia thought it was a pig’s, then saw that it belonged to a girl with a nose so retroussé as to present only nostrils, giving it the appearance of a snout. Small, almost lashless eyes fixed on Adelia’s face. The wide mouth moved and produced sound high up the scale. “Non me faux,” it sounded like. “Non me faux, non me faux.”

Adelia turned back to Jacques. “Is she French?”

“Not as far as I know, mistress. I think she’s saying it was not her fault.”

The bleat changed. “Donagemme.”

“‘Don’t let her get me,’” Jacques translated.

“Dame Dakers?” Adelia asked.

Bertha hunched in terror. “Turmeinamouse.”

“‘She’ll turn me into a mouse,’” Jacques said helpfully.

The irresistible thought came, shamefully, that in the case of this child, the dame’s powers to turn her into an animal would not be stretched very far.

“Antrappi.” Bertha was becoming less frightened and more confidential, poking forward now to show a thin upper neck and body under head and hair colored the same as the straw that framed them. Her gaze became fixed on Adelia’s neck.

“‘And catch I in a trap,’” Jacques said.

Adelia was getting the hang of Bertha’s speech. Also, she had become angry, as she always did at the suggestion of magic, appalled that this girl should be terrorized by black superstition. “Sit up,” she said.

The porcine little eyes blinked and Bertha sat up instantly, spilling straw. She was used to being bullied.

“Now,” Adelia said, more quietly, “nobody blames you for what happened, but you must tell me how it came about.”

Bertha leaned forward and poked at Adelia’s necklet. “What be that purty thing?”

“It’s a cross. Haven’t you seen one before?”

“Lady Ros do have similar, purtier nor that. What be for? Magic?” This was awful. Had nobody taught the girl Christianity?

Adelia said, “As soon as I can, I shall buy you one of your own and explain it to you. Now, though, you must explain things to me. Will you do that?”

Bertha nodded, her eyes still on the silver cross.

So it began. It took infinite labor on Adelia’s part and wearisome, evasive repetition on Bertha’s, pursuing the theme that it wasn’t her fault, before any relevant information could be teased from her. The girl was so ignorant, so credulous, that Adelia’s opinion of Rosamund became very low-no servant should be so deprived of education. Fair Rosamund , she thought. Not much fairness in the neglect of this sad little thing.

It was difficult to estimate her age; Bertha herself didn’t know it. Between sixteen and twenty, Adelia guessed, half-starved and as unaware of how the world wagged as any mole in its run.

Jacques, unnoticed, had slid a milking stool against her hocks, allowing her to sit so that she and Bertha were on a level. He remained standing directly behind her in shadow, saying not a word.

Ever since she’d heard of Rosamund’s death, Adelia had believed that what she would eventually uncover was the tale of a sad accident.

It wasn’t. As Bertha gained confidence and Adelia understanding, the story that emerged showed that Bertha had been the accomplice, albeit unwittingly, to deliberate murder.

On the fatal day, she said, she’d gone into the forest surrounding Wormhold Tower to gather kindling, not mushrooms, pulling a sledge behind her to pile it with such dead branches as could be reached with a crook.

Lowest of all Rosamund’s servants, it had already been a bad morning for her. Dame Dakers had walloped her for dropping a pot and told her that Lady Rosamund was sick of her and intended to send her away, which, Bertha being without family to turn to, would have meant having to tramp the countryside begging for food.