Ariana Franklin - A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

He referred to a squat, strong-smelling goblin of a man in wide sailcloth trousers and a waistcoat that showed bare, brown arms with muscles like iron balls.

Deniz grunted.

“Denise?” Adelia whispered to Mansur. They were strange names she was encountering today.

“ Deniz . In Turkish it means ‘the sea,’” Mansur told her.

The O’Donnell’s eyes slid in their direction. “Indeed it does, master,” he said. “For it’s the sea I fished him out of, and there’s nobody understands it better.”

He speaks Arabic as well as Latin, Adelia thought. We must be careful.

“And the breeze’ll come up tonight,” he was saying, still looking at her and Mansur, “so we can catch the tide at dawn, and I’ll not be missing it in the kerfuffle of getting all the fine ladies and gentlemen to their berths that early.”

It was kerfuffle enough as it was. Horses were kicking at being led down into the hold. Shouting dockers loaded chests of treasure and clothes, followed anxiously by the ladies-in-waiting holding up their skirts. Priests and clerks teetered on gangways and argued with the sailors about which boat should take them.

All very well, Adelia thought, but where is our protection? The treasure they were carrying with them en route would surely attract robbers; women, servants, and clerics were unlikely to be able to fend them off.

Then, in the distance, she saw the tall figure of Captain Bolt briskly ushering his men aboard the second ship-and was comforted. She and the good captain had made each other’s acquaintance during one of her previous investigations. As well as showing himself to be an excellent soldier devoted to his king, he’d been kind to her. He was the one who, at Henry’s command, had cleared the Somerset forest of the late Wolf’s remaining outlaws, and, afterward, had the bodies of those she’d so desperately searched for disinterred and given Christian burial.

Disengaging Boggart from a hawser she’d fallen over and managed to become entangled in kept Mansur and Adelia momentarily delayed on the quayside.

Again, the Bishop of Saint Albans casually strolled over to them. “Who is this?”

Adelia finished brushing Boggart down. “It’s my new lady’s maid.”

“Good God.” He turned to Mansur. “My dear doctor, is that box yours?” He pointed to a large packing case waiting with others at the end of the quay to be loaded.

“No, my lord.”

“Really? I thought it might contain your medicaments. Perhaps you should make sure.” He bowed briefly to Adelia and returned to the group of clergy.

“What was that about?” Adelia snapped, looking to Mansur. Their box of medicaments had already been taken aboard.

“Let us see. Tell that clumsy female to stay where she is.”

“Stay here,” Adelia told Boggart.

Together she and the Arab went to investigate, encountering an odor that was at once strong and familiar to Adelia’s nostrils. “It’s Ward,” she said, clutching Mansur’s arm.

“The dog? How can it be?”

“I’d know that smell anywhere.” She hurried to the packing case. Behind it, hidden from the quay’s hubbub, stood a young man holding a piece of string to which was attached a small, unsavory-looking dog. Both were happy to see her but, while the animal bounced its welcome, the youth kept his face straight and his East Anglian speech lugubrious.

“Ain’t supposed to be seen with you two, am I? Disregarded, that’s what I gotta be, so Prior said.”

Adelia collapsed on him. “Ulf, oh Ulf. It’s you. What are you doing here? I am so pleased to see you. Oh, Ulf.”

Gyltha’s grandson had grown since they’d first encountered each other in the Cambridgeshire fens. The truculent, ill-favored child he’d been then, one she’d come to love-and had saved from a terrible abductor-was now considerably cleaner except for the light stubble on his chin. His unruly hair was hidden by the wide-brimmed hat of a pilgrim, but like most fenmen, he still pretended to a gritty dispassion.

“Get off,” he said, wriggling out of Adelia’s clutch. He nodded at Mansur, who nodded back; neither face showing pleasure at the meeting, though their eyes were glad.

“And Ward, too.” Adelia cupped her hands round her dog’s face, careful to wipe them on her kerchief afterward. “What are you both doing here?”

“Me, on the king’s orders. I’m incognito, I am. And that there stinker’s here a-cause the prior a-reckoned as you’d need him.”

Adelia smiled. “I’m in no danger this time.” Prior Geoffrey of Cambridge, her first friend in England, always worried for her safety had given her Ward’s predecessor, an equally smelly hound, so that, should she be at risk, she could always be traced by its scent.

As it had turned out afterward, the dog had indeed saved her life and lost its own in doing it. When, to her regret, she’d been forced to move from Cambridge, Ward had been one of the friends she’d had to leave behind.

“Prior don’t think so,” Ulf told her, “‘That girl’s born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.’ That’s what he said. ‘You take that odiferous bugger to her and tell her to keep him close,’ he said. And that’s what I’m a-doing.”

“But what’s all this about the king’s orders?”

Ulf tutted at her ignorance. His gaze directed itself deliberately on a large, plain wooden cross leaning beside him against the packing case. “Cos o’ that.”

Adelia looked at it for a minute before it came to her. “My God,” she said. “You’re the crucifer. So the king consulted Prior Geoffrey-how wise of him.”

“He don’t have to heft it,” Ulf said with feeling. “That’s heavy, that old bit o’ wood, considering it’s hollow and what’s inside it don’t weigh too much. Story is I’m a-taking my grandpappys cross to Jerusalem to put on the Holy Sepulchre so’s to account for Grandpappys sins.” He grinned.

She smiled fondly back. His grandfather had sinned. Prior Geoffrey, leader of Saint Augustine’s in Cambridge, where Ulf was now learning law, had, as a young priest, formed a happy but illicit relationship with the equally young Gyltha, a liaison that, in the second generation, had produced this wonderful grandson.

The subterfuge was clever. It was quite usual for those who couldn’t go on crusade themselves to send something of their own by proxy to the Holy Land. Henry, that crafty, crafty king, obviously with Rowleys help, had remembered his friendship with the prior, and the two of them had worked out this plan for Excalibur’s secret journey. Who would expect such a stripling to be carrying inside his cross the sword that all Christendom would kill to lay its hands on?

“And when we gets to Sicily,” Ulf said, looking round to make sure nobody could hear, “old Rowley is to crack open the wood and give you-know-what to you-know-who. Pity as you can’t see it now, bor. That’s a sword and a bit, I can tell you. That’s got magic, that has.”

“I’ve seen it,” Adelia said. Magical or not, she didn’t want to see it again.

Ulf handed the dog’s lead to Adelia and heaved the cross onto his shoulder. “I better get aboard, and you remember as I’m incognito. Us holy pilgrims don’t have nothing to do with you gentry.” He peered out, found the coast clear, and went off pretending to stagger as he went.

Adelia untied the string from Ward’s collar and replaced it with her kerchief, which looked slightly better. Neither of her new acquisitions today was going to improve her standing in the princess’s train, but she was so glad of them. And even if she and Mansur could not be seen talking to Ulf, they would at least have one loving companion on their travels-two, if you counted Ward. The boy-she supposed she must now think of him as a young man-had the solidity and common sense of his grandmother; they would be taking something of Gyltha with them.