Ariana Franklin - A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

“Oh, yes, necropsy would go down very well,” the bishop said between his teeth. “Of course you can’t dissect her. In the name of God, just tell me what happened.”

Adelia looked up. “I think she was smothered. Somebody hit her head from behind-Mansur, see if you can find a weapon-and then, when she staggered, pulled her down and knelt on her arms-see the bruising, there and there-while he held something over her mouth and nose, something rough… you see where it rubbed against the upper lip?”

“This?” Mansur had found a coarse towel on the floor. One of the pegs that had held it up remained on the washing line, the other was still attached, as if the cloth had been snatched down.

“Quite likely And there is blood in her eyes, typical of asphyxiation.”

“Murder, then,” Rowley said.

There was a squeak from Boggart.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Must have been a strong fellow, she’s a large lady”

“He hit her on the head first with something heavy and sharp, perhaps a sword pommel, something like that, and weakened her…” Adelia looked up at Mansur, who shook his head; he’d found no weapon. “But, yes, he was strong-I doubt a woman could have done it. She struggled, poor thing, hence the mark on her lip where the cloth rubbed against it.”

She closed her eyes, imagining the scene, the frantic turning of the head, the poor, thrashing legs… “And then he lifted her up to prop her over the tub with her head in the water, hoping we would think she’d tipped forward from a sudden apoplexy and drowned.”

“Damn,” Rowley said with force. “Well, put her clothes straight.”

“But the sheriff, somebody in authority must see these injuries first. What’s the procedure in Aquitaine?”

“The procedure is that this woman appears exactly as we found her. So do it.”

She didn’t understand why he was cross, nor why he and Mansur were looking at each other as if they knew something she didn’t. However, it wasn’t decent that the corpse should lie there exposed as it was; presumably the sheriff, a coroner, whoever it might be, could do the examination when it came to laying it out.

Between them, Adelia and Boggart made Brune respectable again.

The guards returned with a litter, lifted the corpse, and took it away with the bishop’s cloak laid over it.

Rowley didn’t go with them. Instead, he took Adelia’s chin in his hand and looked into her eyes. “She drowned, sweetheart. Brune drowned.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Is there any indication as to who killed her?”

Helplessly Adelia looked around. Apart from the towel the killer had dropped, nothing; wet footprints were all around the vat, but so many of them as to be useless. “No… somebody… a man most probably. We must start inquiries.”

“And how many men do you suppose are in this palace?”

Now she was becoming angry; he was frightening her. “More than have access to this undercroft. There can only be a few allowed down here.”

“You think so? Did you notice the steps down to this place? Entrance tucked away, virtually deserted at this time of night? Anybody not just servants, could sneak down here.”

“Someone might have seen him, Rowley We must ask.”

“No, we mustn’t.” He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Do you know how long that would take? What it would entail?”

She was bewildered. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want a delay either, but there’s a killer loose…”

“There isn’t. Is not. This is a case of drowning pure and simple, an accident.”

He stiffened; the sound of voices was coming from the stairs beyond the curtains of washing; officialdom was arriving. “Quick, get her out of here, Mansur. Explain it to her. I’ll stay Go with them, Boggart.”

Boggart and a still-bemused Adelia were dragged away to a dark corner and made to stand behind a sheet. Several people were blundering through the forest of washing toward Rowley and the lanterns. She heard the deep voice of the seneschal and then Lady Beatrix’s as the lady-in-waiting passed her: “Oh, I agree, absolutely frightful. Drowning herself, so careless of the woman. Joanna will be inconvenienced, there was nobody like Brune for getting stains out of embroidery…”

And Lady Petronilla: “What is that smell?”

Adelia, who feared they’d scented Ward crouching at her feet, held her breath, but the ladies went past without seeing her. “Oh, my lord bishop, there you are. Is this where it happened? How terribly, terribly ghoulish.”

“We go,” Mansur whispered.

They went. Rowley had been right; the stairs led to a deserted passageway

Nobody was in Eleanor’s garden either, and it was there that Adelia refused to go any farther. “Are you going to alert the authorities or am I?”

Gently Mansur steered her to a bench and sat on it beside her. Boggart crouched nearby, holding on to Ward for comfort and looking nervously around at the bushes for murderers.

The Arab’s voice was a bat’s squeak in the darkness. “She insulted you. They will say you had her killed. Or made her kill herself.”

Adelia’s mouth fell open. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t here. The guards saw me come in. Captain Bolt…”

Mansur went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “That you wished her dead, perhaps inspired her or someone else to see it done.” He took her hand. “We are strange to them, you and I. There has been misfortune on this journey; the Bishop of Winchester talks of little else. I can listen because they think I do not understand them and I hear disquiet. Three times now you have been angry, first with the horse Juno…”

“I wasn’t angry with her…”

“And then with the Sir Nicholas…”

“I wasn’t…”

“More recently with Brune.”

“She was angry with me.”

“And all three have died in circumstances that are odd. A horse eats poison, a knight is shot while hunting, a woman is drowned.”

“They can’t think I killed any one of them. Each time I was somewhere else.”

“You did not have to be there. You engineered it. Or I did. The horse, the knight, both were murdered. If this time, Brune’s death is deemed an accident, they may regard the fact that she offended us as a coincidence, but the Bishop Rowley does not want attention drawn to her killing. It will be bad enough as it is; there will be talk, superstition.”

“That’s nonsense. Why would we want her dead? For what reason?”

“Why would anyone want her dead? And therein lies the reason. Publicly, she offended only us.”

She was following his remote, high voice as if through a fog, unable to see which direction its meaning came from. “And how are we supposed to have made someone kill her for us? Or have her put her head in the tub from a distance?”

“Witchcraft.” It was said mildly as the Arab said all things mildly but, for Adelia, it was a blast of putrefaction into the night air. It felled her so that she put her arms over her head to shield herself just as the little laundress had held the scrubbing board between her and evil.

Witchcraft. Always, always, since she’d left Salerno, where they knew what she was, and what she did, and appreciated her for it, superstition had attached itself to her heels so that the skill she’d been granted to benefit mankind must be hidden by stratagems so wearying that she was sick of them.

But there was one thing it could not do. She brought her arms down and sat up.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Somebody killed Brune, they took away her life, her life, Mansur. Her body cried it out to me, her soul cries it. I cannot, I will not allow murder to be ignored.”