Ariana Franklin - The Serpent’s Tale

The abbot made experimental pirouettes on the ice, admiring his shadow in the steel mirror of the river. “Yes, yes,” he said. “One never forgets.”

He paid no attention to Adelia-she was luggage now. He nodded at Schwyz, who nodded at his men. Two mercenaries picked up trails of harness leading from the sledge and heaved themselves into the straps. Somebody else mounted the sledge’s running board behind Adelia and grasped the guiding struts.

The abbot looked up at the convent walls lowering above him. “Queen Eleanor, sweet broken reed, farewell. Veni, vidi, vadi ,” then raised his eyes to the star-sprinkled sky. “Well, well, on to better things. Let us go.”

“And quiet about it,” Schwyz said.

The sledge hissed as it moved.

They headed north.

Adelia retched into her gag. Nothing to stop him from killing her now.

For a while, she was so afraid that she could hardly see. He was going to kill her. Had to kill her.

Appalling sadness overtook her. Images of Allie missing her, growing up without her, small, needy. I’ll die loving you. Know it, little one, I never stopped loving you.

Then the guilt. My fault, darling; a better mother would have passed it by, let them all slaughter one another-no matter, as long as you and I weren’t wrenched apart. My fault, my grievous fault.

On and on, grief and fear, fear and grief, as the untidy, white-edged banks slid by and the sledge whispered and grated and the men pulling it grunted with effort, their breath puffing wisps of smoke into the moonlight, taking her further and further into hell.

Discomfort forced itself on her attention-the bundle beneath her had spears in it. Also, the gag tasted abominable and her arms and wrists hurt.

Suddenly irritable, she shifted, sat up, and began to take notice.

Two mercenaries were pulling the sledge. Another was behind. Four skated on either side, Schwyz and the abbot ahead. Nine in all. None of them her friend Cross-she hadn’t been able to make out the faces of the two mercenaries packing the sledge, but both were thinner than Cross.

No help, then. Wherever they were headed, Schwyz was taking only his most trusted soldiers; he’d abandoned the others.

Where are we going? The Midlands? There was still smoldering discontent against Henry Plantagenet in the Midlands.

Adelia shifted and began investigating the sacking with her wrists, tracing the spears in it along the shafts to their blades.

There.

She pressed down and felt a point prick into her right palm. She began trying to rub the rope against the side of the blade but kept missing it and encountering the spear point instead so that it went uselessly into the rope’s fibers and out again, an exercise that might eventually unpick them if she had a week or two to spare…

It was something to do, though, to fight off the inertia of despair. Of course Eynsham would have her killed. Her use to him as a bargaining counter would last only until he could be sure Henry wasn’t pursuing him-and the chance of that receded with every mile they went north. Most of all, he would kill her because she’d seen the worm wriggling in that brilliant, many-faceted, empty carapace, and he had seen her see it.

Her arms were becoming tired…

Tears still wet on her face, Adelia dozed.

It was heavy going for the men pulling the sledge, and even for those merely skating. Afraid of pursuit, they hadn’t lit torches, and though the moon was bright, the ice gave a deceptive, smooth sheen to branches and other detritus that had been frozen into it so that the mercenaries fell frequently or had to make detours round obstructions-occasionally heaving the sledge over them.

In her sleep, Adelia was vaguely aware of being rolled around during the portages and of muffled swearing, aware, too, that men were taking rests on the sledge, crawling under the tarpaulin with her to get their strength back before giving up their place to the next. There was nothing sexual in it-they were too exhausted-and she refused to wake up. Sleep was oblivion…

Another passenger came aboard, exhaling with the relief at being off the ice. Fingers fumbled at the back of her head and undid the gag. “No need for this now, mistress. Nor this.” Gently, somebody pushed her forward and a knife sawed at the rope round her wrists. “There. More comfy?”

There was a waft of sweet, familiar scent. Licking her mouth, Adelia flexed her shoulders and hands. They hurt. They were still traveling, and it was still very cold, but the stars had dulled a little; the moon shone through a light veil of mist.

“You didn’t need to kill Bertha,” she said.

There was a pause.

“I rather think I did,” Jacques said reasonably. “Her nose would have betrayed me sooner or later. I’m afraid the poor soul literally sniffed me out.”

Yes. Yes, she had.

Bertha crawling forward in the cowshed, snuffling, using the keenest sense she had to try and describe the old woman in the forest who’d given her the mushrooms for Rosamund.

“Smelled purty…like you.”

It wasn’t me, Bertha. It was the man standing behind me. “A him. Not a her.”

The girl had been sniffing the messenger’s scent-the perfume that was a feature of him even when he dressed up as an old woman picking mushrooms.

“Do you mind?” he asked now. It was solicitous, hoping she wasn’t upset. “She wasn’t much of a loss, really, was she?”

Adelia kept her eyes on the two mercenaries dragging the sledge.

Jacques tucked the tarpaulin round her and sat sideways to peer into her face, reasonable, explaining, no longer the wide-eyed young man with big ears, much older, at ease. She supposed that’s what he was, a shape-changer; he could be what he wanted when circumstances demanded.

He’d taken Allie in her cradle and put her on the step.

“Ordinarily, you see, there is no need for what I call auxiliary action, as there was in Bertha’s case,” he said. “Usually, one fulfills one’s contract and moves on. All very tidy. But this particular employment has been complicated-interesting, I don’t deny, but complicated.” He sighed. “Snowed up in a convent, not only with one’s employer but, as it turns out, a witness is not an experience one wants repeated.”

A killer. The killer.

“Yes, I see,” Adelia said.

After all, she’d lived with revulsion ever since she’d become aware that he’d poisoned Rosamund. To use him in the necessary business of getting Wolvercote and Warin to convict themselves in the church had been an exercise in terror, but she’d been unable to think of any other stratagem to placate him. By then she’d sniffed the mind that permeated the abbey with a greater menace than Wolvercote because it was free of limitation, a happy mind. Kill this one, spare that, remain guiltless.

It had been necessary to amuse it, like a wriggling mouse enthralling the cat. To gain time, she’d let it watch her play at solving the one murder of which it was innocent. To keep the cat’s teeth out of the neck of a mouse that asked questions.

She asked, “Did Eynsham order you to kill her?”

“Bertha? Lord, no.” He was indignant. “I do have initiative, you know. Mind you”-an elbow nudged Adelia’s ribs-“he’ll have to pay for her. She’ll go on his account.”

“His account,” she said, nodding.

“Indeed. I am not the abbot’s vassal, mistress. I really must make that clear; I am independent; I travel Christendom providing a service-not everybody approves of it, I know, but it is nevertheless a service.”

“An assassin.”

He considered. “I suppose so. I prefer to think of it as a profession like any other. Let’s face it, Doctor, your own business is termed witchcraft by those who don’t understand it, but we are both professionals pursuing a trade that neither of us can lay public claim to. We both deal in life and death.” But she’d touched his pride. “How did I give myself away? I did try to warn you against too much curiosity.”