Ariana Franklin: A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

“What are they doing now, in the name of God?” Adelia asked.

“Lost the ball,” Will said, laconically

“Good.”

But her eye fell on a Martlake woman with a bulging midriff under her smock who was wending her way smartly along a nearby badger track. “Where are you going, Mistress Tyler?”

“Back home, in’t I? ‘Tis too much for I what with the baby due and all.”

For one thing, Mistress Tyler had shown no sign of pregnancy while in church on the previous Sunday For another, the badger track led in the direction of Shepfold. For a third, Lady Emma was Adelia’s good friend-so that, despite her pretension to neutrality, Adelia really wanted Shepfold to win. “You put that ball down,” she shouted. “You’re cheating.”

Mistress Tyler, holding tight to her protuberant and wobbling waistline, began to run.

Adelia, chasing after her, failed to hear the whoomph of an arrow burying itself in the tree beside which, a second before, she’d been standing.

Will and Alf looked at it, looked at each other, and then hurled themselves in the direction from which the flight had come.

It was useless; the marksman, having chosen a clear shot, had made it his only one before melting into a forest in which a hundred assassins could be hiding.

Returning to the tree, Will pulled the arrow out with some effort. “Look at that, Alf.”

“We got to tell her, Will.”

“We got to tell somebody” They had a high regard for Adelia, who had twice saved them from a desperate situation, but, though agonized for her safety, they’d also wanted to preserve her peace of mind.

They advanced to where she was tussling with Mistress Tyler. At that moment, the ball fell to the ground from under the Martlake woman’s skirt-and was spotted.

Before the two Glastonbury men could reach their heroine, she and her opponent had been overwhelmed by a pile of players. In trying to get her out, Will and Alf lost their temper and put their fists and boots at the disposal of the Shepfold team.

So did Adelia…

Some five minutes later, a familiar voice addressed her from its height on a magnificent horse: “Is that you?”

Muddy and panting, Adelia extricated herself to look up into the face of her lover and the father of her child. “I think so.”

“G’day, Bishop,” said Mistress Tyler, trying to restore order to her smock.

“And a good day to you, madam. Who’s winning?”

“Martlake,” Adelia told him, bitterly “They’re cheating.”

“Is that the ball?” Seated in his saddle, the Bishop of Saint Albans pointed to where a round object shedding pieces of bracken had flown up from a group of fighting players.

“Yes.”

“Thank God, I thought it was somebody’s head. Hold my horse.” Dismounting, flinging off his cloak and hat, Rowley waded in…

THAT NIGHT THERE was weeping and gnashing of teeth in the parish of Martlake while, three miles away in Shepfold, a limp piece of leather was carried high on a pole into the great barn of Wolvercote Manor with all the pomp of golden booty being brought back to Rome by a triumphant Caesar.

Outside, carcasses of pigs and sheep turned on spits and hogs-heads spouted the best ale to all who would partake of it. The lady of Wolvercote herself, limping slightly, deftly flipped pancake after pancake from the griddles into the hands of her villagers while her husband, who had used his oak crutch with effect during the match, poured cream onto them.

The bard, Rhys, another attachment to Lady Emma’s household, had abandoned his harp for a vielle and stood, sweating and bowing away, in the doorway so that parents and children danced to his tune in long lines around the victory fires. Beyond, in the shadow of trees, young bodies rolled in celebratory copulation.

Inside the barn, Adelia sternly regarded the Bishop of Saint Albans sitting beside her daughter-and his-on a hay bale, the resemblance between father and child enhanced by the black eye sported by each. “Look at you. I hope you’re both ashamed of yourselves.”

“We are,” Rowley said. “But at least we didn’t kick Mistress Tyler.”

“Did she?” Allie was charmed. “Did Mama kick Mistress Tyler?”

“Hard.”

“I’ll fetch some pancakes,” Adelia said, and then, over her shoulder: “She kicked me first.”

While she was gone, Will, holding a mug of ale, came up to ruffle Allie’s hair and doff his cap to her father. “I was wondering if as I could have a word, Bishop. Outside, like…”

Adelia took Allie back to bed through the weave of dancers, bidding good nights, throwing a kiss to Mansur who was executing his sword dance for Gyltha, the love of his life and Allie’s nurse.

For perhaps the first time in her life, she realized, she was content.

When, eight years ago, the King of England, who was troubled by a series of unexplained killings in his county of Cambridge, had sent to his friend, the King of Sicily, begging for a master in the art of death from the famed School of Medicine in Salerno, it was Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar who’d been chosen to go.

It had occurred neither to the Sicilian king nor to the school that they had made an odd choice; Adelia was the best they had.

However, her arrival in England, where women doctors were anathema, had caused consternation.

Only by the subterfuge of Mansur pretending to be the medical expert and she merely his assistant and translator had Adelia been able to do her job by solving the murders-and done it so well that King Henry II had refused to allow her to return to Sicily, keeping her as his own special investigator.

Damn the man. True, England had given her the happiness of friends, a lover, and a child, but Henry’s requirement of her had more than once put her in such danger that she’d been deprived of the tranquillity with which to enjoy them.

The Church had driven her and Allie, Mansur, and Gyltha from Cambridge, but Emma, out of gratitude for being allowed to marry as she pleased-a boon that Adelia had successfully begged the king to grant his rich young ward-had built her a house on the Wolvercote estate, thus giving her the first home of her own she’d ever had.

Gyltha and Mansur had settled down together-to everybody’s surprise but Adelia’s.

(In Sicily, it was not unusual for eunuchs to have a happy sexual relation with a woman-or another man, for that matter; castration didn’t necessarily mean impotence. In England, where eunuchs were a rarity, that fact was unknown; it was thought merely that Mansur had a peculiarly high voice, and that he and Gyltha were just… well, peculiar.)

And for the last two years, Henry II had not interrupted this idyll by asking Adelia to do anything for him, might perhaps-oh joy-have forgotten her.

Even her fraught relationship with Rowley-begun during an investigation, and before the king had insisted on elevating him to a bishopric-had settled into a sort of eccentric domesticity, despite his extended absences as he toured his diocese. Scandalous, of course, but nobody in this remote part of England seemed to mind it; certainly Father Ignatius and Father John, both of them living with the mothers of their children, had not seen fit to report it to Adelia’s great enemy, the Church. Nor was there a doctor for miles around to be jealous of her skill; she was free to be of use to suffering patients in this part of Somerset-and be beloved for it.

I have found peace, she thought.

She and Allie put the hens away for the night and released Eustace, Allie’s lurcher, from the confinement that had been necessary to keep him from joining in the football match. “We beat Martlake, we beat Martlake,” Allie chanted to him.

“And tomorrow we shall all be friends again,” Adelia said.