Ariana Franklin: A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

“You great gawk,” Ulf had said, “if he is in the crowd, he’ll recognize you. Might as soon stride along ringing a bell and shoutin’, ‘Make way for the Lady Adelia.’”

“I shall not do that,” Mansur said. “I, too, will go veiled.” It was not unreasonable; many Arabs, especially the most orthodox of their faith, wore the tagelmust, the strip of cloth covering the lower part of the face.

“Let him,” Adelia had said at last. “At least, it’ll keep the dust out of his nose.”

There had been dust in plenty, but no Scarry. Looking through the curtains of her palanquin at Mansur striding beside her like a watchful Tuareg, Adelia had been reminded that they were leaving Eden’s Garden to return to the world of suspicion and fear.

But while, for Mansur, her parents, and Ulf, the immediate threat was Scarry, she was more concerned by a wider and greater menace which, here in the cathedral, was being reinforced-the wedding had been taken over by the Latin Church; she saw few Jewish rabbis among the congregation, fewer Greek clergy, while Mansur was among only a select number of Moslems wearing Islamic robes.

Yes, it was a Christian ceremony and had to be. But it’s not representative of what Sicily stands for, she thought. It begged the question as to why William had allowed a coercion that his father and grandfather would not have stood for.

The king worried her. She’d seen nothing of him since that one meeting and hadn’t expected to, but Mansur brought back gossip from his fellow eunuchs at the Ziza that was not encouraging.

“They say he spends too much time in the harem.”

“He’s popular with the people,” she’d said defensively

“Because he has beauty and charm. Because the country is in a time of peace, but he does nothing to maintain it and they are afraid. He is weak, they say The Norman feudal lords are creeping into power in his government and bringing their Church in their wake.”

And then Mansur had surprised her. He added: “Our king would have kicked their backsides for them.”

Our king.

“Dear God,” she’d said, after a moment. “Mansur, we’ve become English. ”

Now, here in the cathedral, she let her eye follow a march of slender, Saracen pillars eastward, past the high altar to the presbyterium, up the apsidal wall with its prophets, saints, and cherubim to the great mosaic that presided over them all.

Where Christ God looked back at her.

At least, if the face wasn’t God’s it was surely Man’s at his best and highest-achieving. In tiny tiles, some Byzantine genius had captured strength, love, and tenderness to give life to the Pantocrator he worshipped-and was right to worship, for here was a Ruler of All who could embrace man, woman, and child with a compassion that discounted color of skin or faith.

Adelia looked into the dark, pouched eyes that looked back into hers. Don’t let them change you, don’t let them.

There was a swirl of trumpets, and she had to turn away as the crowd in the nave parted to give passage to the procession of princes, archbishops, bishops, and ambassadors making its way toward the choir.

There was only one for her.

Rowley looked uncomfortable, as he always did when he was in full regalia; the miter had never suited him.

She loved him all over again, had never stopped loving him. Only a grubby and unworthy fit of pique, she realized, had stopped her going to him the minute she arrived in Palermo. In seeing him now, she no longer cared that his duties had taken him away so that she’d been left to the protection of another man. There was no other man; never would be.

Dare I wave at him? Ooh-hoo, sweetheart, I’m here.

Hardly The moment had passed in any case; the sumptuously robed men processing the nave now were lesser bishops and clergy from other countries.

One of them, the Bishop of Aveyron.

Adelia put her hand to her mouth to stop a moan. The monster was here, invited, accepted, a symptom of gangrene, which, if the princes of the world did not cut it out, would infect the earth. And there, going past now, was the other ghoul, Father Gerhardt-and Father Guy with him, chatting, as if contagions were multiplying and joining up.

She looked toward the face of the Pantocrator. Don’t let them, don’t let them.

A choir had begun singing an epithalamium, announcing the arrival of the bride.

Adelia had to crane her neck to see the smallest figure in the cathedral come walking slowly up the aisle, accompanied by her brother.

Across his outstretched palms, Duke Richard carried a glittering sword, ready to lay it on the marriage altar. Excalibur had finally reached the destination for which it was meant.

Adelia thought of the Glastonbury cave where it had been found and in which the quiet bones of its original owner still rested undisturbed. She stood on tiptoe to look for Ulf-this was his moment as well as hers-but she couldn’t see him.

Beside her brother, her hand on his arm, Joanna looked like an exquisite, trailing forget-me-not. They’d dressed her in the same lovely blue as the Pantocrator’s cloak. There were flowers and diamonds in her hair.

But she was tiny, so tiny. Adelia wanted to snatch her up and run.

What would they do to her, these wolves in their cassocks and copes? What inept bloodletters would they call in to attend to her if she fell ill again?

The ignorant are trying to set science back a thousand years. They may succeed. Nor can I be your doctor anymore, little one; they wouldn’t let me. In any case, there is another child who needs me, and I must go home.

Home, she thought. This isn’t home. Home is Gyltha and Allie and Rowley and a rainy little island ruled by a bad-tempered king who looks forward, not back. I shall go home.

But first there was a marriage ceremony to be performed.

WHERE IN HELL IS SHE? The Bishop of Saint Albans, crammed like a celery stick between the two pumpkins that were the Bishop of Winchester on one side and the papal legate on the other, ran his eyes over the nave’s congregation, trying to locate his woman. Or, if not Adelia, then the thing that was out to harm her.

In the last three days, he’d enlisted keen-eyed, sharp-witted Palermo-born Sicilians to try and find its hiding place. He’d spent his own nights in this city asking questions, hunting. Nothing. The snake had slithered into the undergrowth so that it could rise and strike when the opportunity came.

He’s here, somewhere in this packed, bloody cathedral, because she’s here, and he knows she is.

Rowley’s eyes went back to the women’s section. There were two hundred or more females in there. Why did they all have to look the same? Apart from the fact that some were wider or thinner, taller or shorter than others, their bloody veils rendered them indistinguishable bottle tops.

Are you one of them, damn you? Which one?

And what the hell am I doing here, bobbing up and down like an overdressed cork, praying for this, for that, and not giving a tinker’s curse for any of it because it is nothing-dear God, not even God - if I lose her.

IN ANOTHER PART of the cathedral, an Irishman used his height to peer over surrounding heads in order to find the only one that mattered to him. He was angry at himself, and her; of all the women he’d known throughout the seven seas-most of them intimately-he was flummoxed by why he’d been cursed with this one.

I am a Colossus, did you know that? I stride the oceans, I can forward wars and I can hinder them. Mermaids fawn on me. Women beautiful as the dawn wait on me; whores and saints and some that are both. And in the middle, like wrecking rock, there’s you.