Ariana Franklin - Mistress of the Art of Death

Rowley saw her look. “May we go on now?” he asked, as if she had demanded the delay. He pulled on the reins without waiting for a reply.

Adelia roused herself. “I haven’t thanked you,” she told him, and felt the pressure of Ulf’s hand on her shoulders. “We thank you…” There weren’t words for it.

She might have dislodged a stone from a dam.

“What in hell did you think you were doing? Do you know what you put me through?”

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“Sorry? Is that an apology? Are you apologizing ? Have you any conception…? Let me tell you it was God’s mercy I left the assize early. I set out for Old Benjamin’s because I was sorry for you in your misery. Misery? Mary of God, what was it for me when I found you gone?”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. Somewhere, deep in the impassivity of exhaustion that encased her, a tiny shift, a bubble of movement.

“Matilda B. said you’d likely gone to church to pray. But I knew, oh, I knew. She was waiting for the bloody river to tell her something, I said. It’s told her. She’s gone after the bastard like the witless female she is.”

The bubble grew and was joined by others. She heard Ulf snuffling, like he did when he was amused. “You see…” she said.

But Rowley was remorseless, his wrongs too great. He’d heard Hugh’s horn blowing on the other bank and had waded the bloody river to get to him. Immediately, the huntsman had suggested tracking Adelia by Safeguard’s scent.

“Hugh said Prior Geoffrey attached the bloody animal to you for that very purpose, having worried for your safety in an alien town and no other canine leaving a scent so rank. I always wondered why you went everywhere with the cur, but at least it had the sense to leave a trail, which was more than you did”

Bless him, so cross. Adelia looked down at the tax inspector and breathed in the magic of the man.

He’d made a dash into Old Benjamin’s house and up to Adelia’s room, he said. Grabbed the mat the Safeguard slept on and came down again to shove it under Hugh’s hounds’ noses. He’d acquired the horses by snatching them from under passing, innocent, protesting riders.

Galloping along the towpath…following the scent along the Cam, then the Granta. Nearly losing it across country…“And would have if that dog of yours hadn’t stank the heavens out. And years off my life with it, you shatterbrained harpy. Do you know what I’ve suffered?”

Ulf was now openly guffawing. Adelia, hardly able to breathe, thanking Almighty God for such a man. “I do love you, Rowley Picot,” she managed.

“That’s neither here nor there,” he’d said. “And it’s not funny .”

She began drifting off to sleep and was kept in the saddle only by the pressure of Ulf’s hands on her shoulders-for him to clasp her round the body was too painful.

Later, she was to remember passing through Barnwell priory’s great gates and thinking of the last time she and Simon and Mansur had entered them in a peddler’s cart, as ignorant as babes unborn of what faced them. They’ll know now, Simon. Everybody will know.

After that, the dozes deepened into a long unconsciousness in which she was only vaguely aware of Rowley’s voice like the rap of a drum issuing explanation, orders, and Prior Geoffrey’s, appalled but also giving instruction. They were overlooking the most important thing, and Adelia woke up long enough to voice it-“I want a bath”-before relapsing to sleep.

“…AND IN THE NAME OF GOD, stay there,” Rowley told her. A door slammed.

She and Ulf were alone on a bed in a room, and she was looking up at the timber beams and purlins of a ceiling she’d seen before. Candles- candles? Wasn’t it day? Yes, but shutters were closed against rain that beat on them.

“Where are we?”

“Prior’s guesthouse,” Ulf said.

“What’s happening?”

“Dunno.”

He sat beside her with his knees drawn up, staring at nothing.

What is he seeing? Adelia put her undamaged arm round him and hugged him close. He is my only companion, she thought, as I am his. The two of them had survived a travail that no one now living had made; only they knew how great was the distance they’d traveled and how long it had taken them and, indeed, how far they had yet to go. Exposure to the extremes of darkness had made them aware of things, not least about themselves, that they should not have known.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Nothin’ to tell. She poles up to where I was fishing and it’s ‘Oh, Ulf, I think the punt’s leaking.’ Nice as honey. Next thing there’s stuff over my face and I’m gone. Woke up in the pit.”

He threw back his head and an incredulous cry that spoke for the shattered innocence of the ages rang through the room. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Desperately, the little boy turned on her. “She was a lily. He was a crusader.”

“They were freaks. It didn’t show in their countenance, but they were freaks that found each other. Ulf, there are more of us than there are of those. Infinitely more. Hold fast to that.” She was trying to hold fast to it herself.

The child’s eyes fed off hers. “You come after me.”

“They were not going to have you.”

He considered it for a while, and then something of its old self crept back into the ugly little face. “I heard you. Gor, you didn’t half swear. I ain’t heard cussing like that, not even when the troopers came to town.”

“You ever tell anybody and it’s back to the pit.”

Gyltha was in the doorway. Like Rowley, who loomed behind her, she was furious with relief. Tears ran down her face. “You little maggot,” she shouted at Ulf. “Didn’t I tell you? I’ll wallop your backside for you.”

Sobbing, she ran to gather up her grandson, who gave a sigh of contentment and held out his arms to her.

“Out,” Rowley told them. There were laden servants behind him; Adelia saw the concerned face of Brother Swithin, the priory guest-master.

As Gyltha headed for the door with Ulf in her arms, she paused to ask Rowley, “Sure as I can’t do nothing for her?”

“No. Out you go.”

Gyltha still lingered, looking at Adelia. “Was a good day when you came to Cambridge,” she said. She went out.

Men came in with a huge tin bath and began pouring steaming jugs of water in it; one had bars of yellow soap resting on a pile of the harsh segments of old sheeting that passed for towels in the monastery.

Adelia watched the preparations hungrily; if she could not wash the filth the killers had imposed on her mind, she could at least scrub it from her body.

Brother Swithin was troubled by the arrangements. “The lady is injured, I should fetch the infirmarian.”

Rowley said, grimly, “When I found the lady, she was rolling on the ground in battle with the forces of darkness; she will survive.”

“There should at least be a female attendant…”

“Out,” Rowley said. “Out now.” He opened his arms and scooped the whole boiling of them to the door and shut it on them. He was a massive man, Adelia realized. The fat she’d derided was lessened; he was still heavy, but great strength of muscle had been revealed.

Lumbering to where she lay, he put his hands under her armpits, lifted her so that she stood on the floor, and began undressing her, picking her dreadful clothes off with surprising delicacy.

She felt very small. Was this seduction? For certain he would stop when he reached her shift.

It wasn’t and he didn’t; this was care. As he picked up her naked body and slipped it into the bath, she looked into his face; it might have been Gordinus’s, intent over an autopsy.