Ariana Franklin - The Serpent’s Tale

“Her’s a dragon,” Bertha whispered, looking round and up in case Dame Dakers had flown in, flapping her wings, to perch on one of the cowshed’s beams. “Us calls her Dragon Dakers.”

Miserably, Bertha had gathered so much fuel-afraid of Dragon Dakers’s wrath if she didn’t-that, having tied the bundled wood to the sledge, she found it impossible to pull, at which point she had sat down on the ground and bawled her distress to the trees.

“And then her come up.”

“Who came?”

“ Her did. Old woman.”

“Had you ever seen her before?”

“’ Course not.” Bertha regarded the question as an insult. “Her didn’t come from our parts. Second cook to Queen Eleanor, she was. The queen. Traveled everywhere with un.”

“That’s what she told you? She worked for Queen Eleanor?”

“Her did.”

“What did this old woman look like?”

“Like a old woman.”

Adelia took a breath and tried again. “How old? Describe her. Well-dressed? In rags? What sort of face? What sort of voice?”

But Bertha, lacking both observation and vocabulary, was unable to answer these questions. “Her was ugly, but her was kind,” she said. It was the only description she could give, kindness being so rare in Bertha’s life that it was remarkable.

“In what way was she kind?”

“Her gave I them mushrooms, didn’t her? Magic, they was. Said they’d make Lady Ros look on I with”-Bertha’s unfortunate nose had wrinkled in an effort to recall the word used-“favor.”

“She said your mistress would be pleased with you?”

“Her did.”

It took time, but eventually something of the conversation that had taken place in the forest between Bertha and the old woman was reconstructed.

“That’s what I do for my lady, Queen Eleanor,” the old woman had said. “I do give her a feast of these here mushrooms, and her do look on me with favor.”

Bertha had inquired eagerly whether they also worked on less-exalted mistresses.

“Oh, yes, even better.”

“Like, if your mistress were going to send you off, she wouldn’t?”

“Send you off? Promote you more like.”

Then the old woman had added, “Tell you what I’ll do, Bertha, my duckling, I like your face, so I’ll let you have my mushrooms to cook for your lady. Fond of mushrooms, is she?”

“Dotes on ’em.”

“There you are, then. You cook her these and be rewarded. Only you must do it right away now.”

Amazed, Adelia wondered for a moment if this was a fairy tale that Bertha had concocted in order to conceal her own guilt. Then she abandoned the thought; nobody had ever bothered to tell Bertha fairy tales in which mysterious old women offered girls their heart’s desire-or any fairy tales at all. Bertha was incapable of concoction, anyway.

So that day in the forest, now eager and full of strength, Bertha had tied the basket of mushrooms to the wood on her sledge and dragged both back to Wormhold Tower.

Which was almost deserted. That, Adelia thought, was significant. Dame Dakers had left for the day to go to a hiring fair in Oxford in order to find a new cook-cooks, it seemed, never endured her strictures for long and were constantly leaving. The other staff, free of the housekeeper’s eye, had taken themselves off, leaving Fair Rosamund virtually alone.

So, in an empty kitchen, Bertha had set to work. The amount of fungi had been enough for two meals, and Bertha had divided them, thinking to leave some for tomorrow. She’d put half into a skillet with butter, a pinch of salt, a touch of wild garlic, and a sprinkling of parsley, warmed them over a flame until the juices ran, and then taken the dish up to the solar where Rosamund sat at her table, writing a letter.

“Her could write, you know,” Bertha said in wonder.

“And she ate the mushrooms?”

“Gobbled ’em.” The girl nodded. “Greedy like.”

The magic had worked. Lady Rosamund, most unusually, had smiled on Bertha, thanked her, said she was a good girl.

Later, the convulsions had begun…

Even now, Adelia discovered, Bertha did not suspect the crone in the forest of treachery. “Accident,” she said. “Weren’t the old un’s fault. A wicked mushroom did get into that basket by mistake.”

There was no point in arguing, but there had been no mistake. In the selection Bertha had saved and Rowley had shown Adelia, the Death Cap was as numerous as any other species-and carefully mixed in among them.

Bertha, however, refused to believe ill of someone who’d been nice to her. “Weren’t her fault, weren’t mine. Accident.”

Adelia sat back on her stool to consider. Such an undoubted murder, only Bertha could believe it an accident, only Bertha could think that royal servants roamed the forest bestowing gifts of enchanted mushrooms on anyone they met. There had been meticulous planning. The old woman, whoever she was, had spun a web to catch the particular fly that was Bertha on the particular day when Rosamund’s dragon, Dakers, had been absent from her mistress’s side.

Which argued that the old woman had been privy to the movements of Rosamund’s household, or instructed by someone who was.

Rowley’s right, Adelia thought, someone wanted Rosamund dead and the queen implicated. If Eleanor had ordered it done, she’d hardly have chosen an old woman who’d mention her name. No, it hadn’t been Eleanor. Whoever had done it had hated the queen even more than Rosamund. Or maybe merely wanted to enrage her husband against her and thereby plunge England into conflict. Which they might.

The shed had become quiet. Bertha’s mumbles that it wasn’t her fault had faded away, leaving only the sound of cows’ chewing and the slither of hay as they pulled more from their mangers.

“For God’s sake,” Adelia asked Bertha desperately, “didn’t you notice anything about the old woman?”

Bertha thought, shaking her head. Then she seemed puzzled. “Smelled purty,” she said.

“She smelled pretty? In what way pretty?”

“Purty.” The girl was crawling forward now, her nose questing like a shrew’s. “Like you.”

“She smelled like me?”

Bertha nodded.

Soap. Good scented soap, Adelia’s one luxury, used only two hours ago in the allover wash to cleanse her from her travels. Bars of it, made with lye, olive oil, and essence of flowers, were sent to her once a year by her foster mother from Rome-Adelia had complained in one of her letters of the soap in England, where the process was based on beef tallow, making its users smell as if they were ready for the oven.

“Did she smell like flowers?” she asked. “Roses? Lavender? Chamomile?” And she knew it was useless. Even if Bertha was conversant with these plants, she would know them only by local names unfamiliar to Adelia.

It had been a gain, though. No ordinary old woman gathering mushrooms in a forest would smell of perfumed soap, even supposing she used soap at all.

Rising to her feet, Adelia said, “If you smell her scent again on anybody else, will you tell me?”

Bertha nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the cross at Adelia’s throat, as if, ignorant of its meaning, it still spoke to her of hope.

And what hope has she, poor thing?

Sighing, Adelia unfastened the chain from her neck and slid it with its cross into Bertha’s dirty little hand, closing her fingers over it. “Keep this until I can buy you one of your own,” she said.

It cost her to do it, not because of the cross’s symbolism-Adelia had been exposed to too many religions to put all her faith in a single one-but because it had been given to her by Margaret, her old nurse, a true Christian, who had died on the journey to England.