Ariana Franklin: A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

Certainly the cathedral’s monks felt that they, like Queen Eleanor, were imprisoned. As the portcullis went up for the king, a number of them tried to rush under it to gain the bridge outside. They were held back, none too gently, by sentries.

A richly dressed, rock-faced official bowed to the king. “Welcome, my lord.”

“All well, Amesbury?”

“All well, my lord.” The castellan looked venomously toward the monks. “Except for them. They keep trying to get out.”

“Why shouldn’t they?”

Amesburywas taken aback. “Because… my lord, because they are against us, you. The cathedral favors the queen; they could be taking secret messages to her supporters, engineering her escape, anything.”

Henry strolled over to the most vociferous of the monks. “Where do you want to go?”

“The river.” The man waved a fishing rod. “It is Friday, we need fresh fish, the dear queen needs it. All that monster there allows us is dried herring.”

“Off you go, then.”

The monk stared for a moment, unbelieving, and then, with his companions, bolted for the bridge. Amesbury hissed with disapproval.

Engineering the queen’s escape would be a considerable feat, Adelia thought as she and the others followed Henry Plantagenet across a moat, under the shadow of portcullises, and through guarded gates until they reached the castle bailey and the heart of this tiny city Like all town centers, it contained a busy market but, again, Adelia felt suffocation; only the wind was free, managing to swoop over the palisade to rattle the calico covers of the stalls and send the Plantagenet pennant on the roof beating against its pole as if it hated it.

Eleanor met them on the steps to the keep. “My lord.”

“My lady”

King and queen gave each other the kiss of peace with apparent affection.

“Maudit.” Eleanor snapped her fingers at Amesbury “Refreshment for my guests.”

“Amesbury, madam,” the castellan pleaded. “I tell you, my name is Robert of Amesbury.”

“Really?” Eleanor looked interested. “I wonder why I keep thinking it’s Maudit.”

Adelia felt Mansur touch her arm. “Maudit?”

“It means accursed,” she muttered back.

“Ah.”

The queen and the Bishop of Saint Albans were long acquainted, but her greeting to him was coldly formal-he was the king’s man and always had been.

She was kinder toward Mansur: “My lord, I have instructed my daughter’s doctor to welcome your opinion. I have held a high regard for Arab medicine ever since I went on crusade with my former husband.”

The former husband had been the King of France-Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, didn’t marry just anybody. Ostensibly, the dissolution of that marriage had been because she’d given Louis two daughters, not an heir, but Adelia privately thought that Eleanor had been too much of a handful for that pious and indecisive French monarch.

The queen waited until Adelia translated and Mansur had bowed, then turned to Adelia herself with warmth. “I recollect you very well from our time in Oxfordshire, Mistress Amelia. Together, we overcame demons, did we not? It is a comfort to me that you will be in attendance on my child for her journey. And this is to be my little ward whilst you are gone, is it?”

Allie, who’d been carefully instructed, behaved well and curtseyed as she should, though her mother could have wished her less wet and muddy.

Careful not to touchher, Eleanor smiled at the child before addressing the king. “Henry, our dress allowance will have to be raised.”

The queen looked better than on the last occasion Adelia had seen her when, disguised as a boy, she’d been trying to escape her husband’s soldiers; then male attire had accentuated her fifty-one years as opposed to Henry’s forty Despite having given birth to a total of ten children, she was once more elegant, slim, and poised. There was no complaint that she, consort to two kings, who’d ruled the great duchy of Aquitaine in her own right and traveled to the Holy Land with an entourage of Amazons, was facing a lifetime’s incarceration; she might have been welcoming them to one of her own palaces.

Adelia knew her to be an impulsive, erratic woman with none of her husband’s intellectual power-but what pride was here, and what stoicism.

The chilled white wine brought to the keep’s second-floor apartment was excellent, as were the accompanying little biscuits. A harper sat in one corner, singing a love song.

It was a fine room, to which Eleanor had contributed touches of color with Persian carpets, cushions, and Flemish tapestries, but candles had to counter the shade provided by the outside walls that kept the sun from its windows.

A pretty cage for an exotic bird, Adelia thought, but still a cage.

Her heart bled for her own nestling now to be confined in it-and for Gyltha, a woman who had lived her life under sweeping and untrammeled horizons as an eel-seller in Cambridgeshire’s fenland. In fact, if Gyltha had not agreed to stay here with the child, Adelia would have bolted with both of them but, when consulted, Gyltha had said: “Little’un’s too young to be lollopin’ round foreign parts, bor, and I’m too old. Reckon as the queen’ll have to put up with the two of us.”

Immensely comforted, Adelia had kissed her. “She’ll be lucky to have you.”

And, indeed, as it turned out, Eleanor’s staff had been so reduced that she welcomed Allie’s nurse as an addition to it.

There was a sharp contrast between the two girls about to change places; Princess Joanna was a small facsimile of Eleanor in both dress and looks but without the lightning-bolt energy of either of her parents. Her little face was immobile. She kept close to a large, comfortable-looking woman in plain traveling dress, presumably her nurse.

There was a difference, too, in their leave-taking. Queen and princess kissed each other good-bye without emotion. Eleanor blessed her. “May your marriage be a happy one, my dear child, and may God and his sainted martyr Thomas à Becket have you in their keeping.”

This was a shaft at the king and Eleanor drove it home with a happy smile at her husband. “Saint Thomas is our daughter’s especial saint. She prays to him every night, do you not, my child?”

“Yes, madam.”

Adelia and Allie’s parting had to be equally short-the king wanted to reach Southampton next day. Adelia was nearly undone by her daughter’s stricken face; she’d tried to prepare the child during the journey to Sarum, but it was obvious that the reality had only now sunk in. Kneeling down so that they were on a level, she said: “Allie, I love you more than anything in the world. I wouldn’t be leaving you unless I had to. The queen has much to teach you but always remember that you are already splendid in my eyes.”

Oddly enough, it was Amesbury, with unexpected kindness, who saved them both from breaking down. Adelia had seen Rowley talking to him.

Lapsing into a Wiltshire accent, the castellan bent down toward Allie as she fought to keep her lips from quivering. “Do ee know what I got in the palace mews, my beauty?”

Allie shook her head.

“Kestrel. Fine young brancher and looking for a young lady as’ll train un to the fist.”

Allie held her breath. “I could do that, I help our austringer at home. I helped him mend a peregrine’s tail feather with an imping needle.”

“Did ee now? You’re the one, then.” The castellan/jailer looked at Adelia. “I’ve got a young un, six he is, a keen falconer. She could come out to fly the bird with him and me across the plain.”

Unable to speak her gratitude, Adelia grasped the man’s hand.

Nevertheless, it was terrible to turn around as she rode away and see that small figure with Gyltha at her side, waving from the ramparts. Mansur didn’t look back at all, but his silence suggested another parting that had been equally hard.