Ariana Franklin: A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

Until she came. She and the jackasses with her, searching for erstwhile, lost companions that had been rotting in the leaf mold of a glade where they’d been slung days before, once he and Wolf had finished with them.

He can see her in that glade now, can Scarry; innocuous, worthless, like all females, yet, like all females, inspiring the godlike, lustful, exultant rage that must be slaked on her flesh as he’d wished to slake his on his mother.

Mirabile visu. A fawn caught in the thicket.

“First me and then you, eh, Scarry?” Wolf had said lovingly.

“You and me, Wolf, you and me.” It was how it had always been.

And, while Scarry pranced and watched, Wolf advanced on the offering, telling her what had been done to those she’d come looking for; the entertainment they’d provided before they’d died, the rapture of their bleating. Is agnus, ea caedes est.

Then, unbelievably, a piece of iron had connected her and Wolf, not a penis but a sword she’d had hidden. It linked them, the hilt in her hand, its point in Wolf’s chest.

Now Scarry, as he rides, weeps and whispers what had been his cry as he’d gathered the coughing, bubbling, beloved body in his arms. “Te amo. Don’t leave me, my Lupus. Come back. Te amo! Te amo!” But Wolf died that night, and the Horned Being with him.

Later, she’d sent soldiers who’d cleared the forest and hung severed pieces of Wolf’s pack from its branches.

Not Scarry, though. Using the woodcraft Wolf had taught him, he’d slipped away, to track and hill her who’d expelled him from his Garden of Eden. But she’d been too well guarded.

Eventually, desolate, a lost lamb, he’d been forced to return to the fold of the Christian God who’d triumphed, pretending he’d escaped from the outlaws’ attack on the pilgrimage, so jarred by its savagery and the murder of the good prior that he’d become a hermit in the wilderness for a while, beseeching mercy for himself and the souls of the dead.

They’d believed him. They’d rewarded him for his piety. His high connections had given him responsibility in which he had acquitted himself.

For, see, Scarry is now a shade that can adapt itself to its surroundings, blending with the devout, his prayers more pure than any others, his rant against sin louder than a trumpet. He feigns a naivete that charms.

For two years he has played his enforced role as an innocent in the virtue of Christian life, suffering it, hating it. But horned Gods do not die, and neither do their Chosen Ones. These last days, in his return to the forest, Wolf has taken up residence in Scarry’s brain, reminding him of their glorious abandonment and of the woman who ended it. “Bring her down,” Wolf says. “Kill her in My Name. You have the means.”

“I have, beloved. I shall.”

IT HAD BEEN ARRANGED between bishop and king that they should meet at Sarum Castle, but, as Rowley’s party rode along one of the straight Roman tracks that led to its hilltop across a wilting Wiltshire Plain, they saw a rider galloping toward it on yet another, with more men on horses tearing after as if they were pursuing him before he could reach its safety.

His clothes were nondescript, and in the speed of his going, his short cloak was blown parallel to his horse’s back.

“Henry,” Rowley said with admiration and dug in his spurs to meet up with the King of England.

By the time Adelia and the others joined them, the two men had dismounted and were in conversation. Adelia saw no reason to interrupt them and stayed on her palfrey, but the king strode over, took its reins to lead her apart.

He didn’t greet her, he rarely did, as if there was a special relationship between them that found courtesy unnecessary; it had little to do with sexual attraction-though there was a breath of that-more with the sense of equality he extended to her. Which could be charming but which Adelia, chafing under it today, decided was spurious; he merely had a regard for those who proved useful to him.

As she always did when he called on her, she thought: I’m a Sicilian, I am not his subject. I can refuse to do what he wants.

And knew, again, that she was helpless; she was in England, he was its king and refused to give her a passport, thus imprisoning her in a country that had trapped her even further during the years she’d spent in it by winding tentacles of love and friendship around her.

He extended a calloused hand and helped her down from her horse. “I gather the good Bishop of Saint Albans hasn’t told you why you’re summoned.”

“No.” Damned if she was going to “my lord” him, being no more pleased with him than she was with Rowley

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Henry showed his ferocious little teeth; he delighted in her illicit relations with his favorite bishop.

Adelia said nothing.

He kept on walking so that they progressed farther and farther away from the group behind them. “You’re to accompany Princess Joanna to her wedding in Sicily.”

“If I can take my daughter with me, I shall be delighted,” she said. Get the rules established from the beginning. Then, because she couldn’t resist knowing, she said: “Why?”

“To keep an eye on her health, woman, why else? I’m investing a lot in this marriage. I want the child to arrive in Palermo not only safe but well.”

“The princess surely has her own medical adviser.”

Henry II snorted. “She’s got Eleanor’s. As I remember he’s the fat bastard who cut out the fistula on my arse when we were in Poitiers and turned it putrid. Couldn’t ride for days. Eleanor has no judgment when it comes to doctors; she’s never been ill in her life.”

“There must be better ones.”

“There’s you. Or rather, officially there’s Mansur. You two can play your usual game. Winchester will be leading the party, a saintly man, and a good bishop, but not broadminded enough to accept a female as a doctor.”

“He’s broadminded enough to accept an Arab?”

The king displayed his teeth again. “He balked a bit, but I told him. ‘You wait ’til you get to Sicily,’ I said. ‘You’ll be hobnobbing with Jews, Saracens, plus various other heretics-and all of them government officials. Get used to it,’ I said.”

Aha, she’d found the weakness in his plan. She said: “What you have overlooked, Henry, is that when I pose as Mansur’s assistant, most people take me for his mistress-and the Bishop of Winchester’s not likely to let a trollop near the princess.”

“Oh yes he will. I’ve preserved your virtue…” He paused. “… such as it is. I’ve told him that the Lord Mansur is a eunuch with a perfectly respectable female assistant who interprets for him. Our good bishop needn’t be made aware of the fact that Mansur speaks better English than he does. The poor old bugger blinked, but he knows eunuchs aren’t capable of pleasuring trollops-or any other woman come to that.”

“They are, actually,” Adelia said.

The king ignored her. She received a nudge in her ribs. “I’m even giving you and Mansur a nice fat purse of money to go with you.”

That was a novelty. Henry counted every coin.

When she didn’t respond, he said: “Thought of everything, haven’t I?”

“About my daughter…”

Apparently, he didn’t hear her. “There’s another matter I want you to keep an eye on… You remember a certain sword you found in a cave on Glastonbury Tor two years ago and gave to me?”

“Excalibur?”

“For God’s sake, woman. Hush, will you?” The king looked back, but the two of them had progressed out of earshot of the group behind them.