The Serpent's Tale (29 page)

“Leave un, girl. Come on up now. ’Tis shameful, this. Gor dang it, what be it with her?” The fat man’s voice.

The woman’s was kinder but no less disturbed. “Yere, yere, don’t take on like this, my duck, you’m upsetting your pa. What’s this dead un to you? Come on up now.”

The fat man looked around in desperation and caught sight of Adelia standing in the doorway, illuminated by the sun behind her. “Here, you, come and give us a hand. Reckon our girl’s fainted.”

Adelia moved closer. Emma hadn’t fainted; her eyes were wide and stared at nothing. She had thrown herself so that she lay arched over the corpse under her. The knuckles of her gripping hands were like tiny white pebbles against the black wood of the catafalque beneath it.

Going closer still, Adelia peered down.

The nuns had put coins over the eyes, but the face was the face of the dead young man on the bridge, whom she and Rowley had lowered into the icehouse. This was Master Talbot of Kidlington.

Only minutes before, she had been examining the boots of his murderers.

She became aware that the fat man was blustering—though not at her. “Fine convent this is, leaving dead people round the place. It’s right upset our girl, and I don’t wonder. Is this what we pay our tithes for?”

The infirmaress had come into the church, Jacques with her. Exclamation and exhortation created a hubbub that had an echo, Sister Jennet’s crisp pipe—“Now, now, child, this will not do”—interspersed with the bellows of the father, who was becoming outraged and looking for someone to blame, while the mother’s anxiety made a softer counterpoint to them both.

Adelia touched Emma’s clawed hand, gently. The girl raised her head, but what she saw with those tormented eyes Adelia couldn’t tell. “Do you see what they’ve done? To him, to
him
?”

The father and Sister Jennet were standing away now, openly quarreling. The mother had stopped attending to her daughter in order to join in.

“Control yourself, Master Bloat. Where else should we have lain a body but in a church?” Sister Jennet did not add that as far as Godstow and bodies were concerned, they were running out of space.

“Not where a man can fall over it; that’s not what we pay our tithes for.”

“That’s right, Father, that’s right….” This was Mistress Bloat. “We was just being shown round, wasn’t us? Our girl was showing us round.”

Emma’s eyes still stared into Adelia’s as if into the Pit. “Do you see, oh, God, do you see?”

“I see,” Adelia told her.

And she did, wondering how she could have been so blind not to see it before. So
that
was why Talbot of Kidlington had been murdered.

W
here were you going to elope
to
?”

“Wales.”

The girl sat on a stool in the corner of Adelia and Gyltha’s room. She’d torn the veil off her head, and long, white-blond hair swayed over her face as she rocked back and forth. Allie, upset by the manifestations of such grief, had begun to bawl and was being jiggled quiet again in her mother’s arms. Ward, also showing an unexpected commiseration, lay with his head on Emma’s boots.

She’d fought to be there, literally. When at last they’d been able to prise her away from the body, she’d stretched her arms toward Adelia, saying, “I’ll go with her,
her.
She understands,
she knows.
”

“Dang sight more’n I do,” Master Bloat had said, and Adelia had rather sympathized with him—until, that is, he’d tried to drag his daughter off, putting a hand over her mouth so that her noise would attract no more attention than it had.

Emma had been his match, twisting and shrieking to beat him off. At last Sister Jennet had advised compliance. “Let her go with this lady for now. She has some medical knowledge and may be able to calm her.”

They could do nothing else, but from the looks Master and Mistress Bloat gave her as she helped their daughter toward the guesthouse, Adelia was aware that she’d added two more to her growing list of enemies.

She managed to persuade the girl to drink an infusion of lady’s slipper, and it calmed her enough that she could answer questions, though Gyltha, who was gently rubbing the back of Emma’s neck with rose oil, frowned at Adelia every time she asked one. A silent argument was going on between them.

Leave the poor soul alone, for pity’s sake.

I can’t.

She’s breaking her heart.

It’ll mend. Talbot’s won’t.

Gyltha might sorrow for the stricken one, but Adelia’s duty as she saw it was to Talbot of Kidlington, who had loved Emma Bloat and had ridden to the convent through snow to take her away and marry her, an elopement so financially disastrous to a third party—Adelia’s thoughts rested on the Lord of Wolvercote—that it had ordered his killing.

Master Hobnails and Master Clogs hadn’t been waiting on an isolated bridge on a snowy night for any old traveler to come along; common scoundrels though they undoubtedly were, they weren’t brainless. They knew, because somebody had told them, that at a certain hour a certain man would ride up to the convent gates…. Kill him.

They
had
killed him, and then they’d fled over the bridge to the village—to be killed themselves.

By the very man who’d employed them in the first place?

Oh, yes, Wolvercote fitted that particular bill nicely.

Though perhaps not entirely. Adelia still puzzled over the lengths someone had gone to in order to make sure that the corpse was identified as Talbot’s. She supposed, if it
was
Wolvercote, he’d wanted Emma to know of her lover’s death as soon as possible, and that her hand—and her fortune—was now his again.

Yes, but presumably, when Talbot didn’t turn up, that way would have been made open. Why did the corpse have to be put under her nose, as it were, right away? And why in circumstances that pointed the accusing finger so directly at Wolvercote himself?

Do you see what they’ve done?

Who were the “they” that Emma thought had done it?

Adelia put Allie on the floor, gave her the teething ring that Mansur had carved for the child out of bone, and sat herself by Emma, smoothing back the long hair and mouthing “I have to” over her head at Gyltha.

The girl was almost apathetic with shock. “Let me stay here with you.” She said it over and over. “I don’t want to see them, any of them. I can’t. You’ve loved a man, you had his child. You understand. They don’t.”

“’Course you can stay,” Gyltha told her.

“My love is dead.”

So is mine,
Adelia thought. The girl’s grief was her own. She forced it away. There’d been murder done, and death was her business. “You were going to Wales?” she asked, “In
winter
?”

“We’d had to wait, you see. Until he was twenty-one. To get his inheritance.” The sentences came in pieces with an abstracted dullness.

To Talbot of Kidlington, That the Lord and His angels bless you on this Day that Enters you into Man’s estate.

And on that day Talbot of Kidlington had set out to carry off Emma Bloat with, if Adelia remembered aright, the two silver marks that had been enclosed in Master Warin’s letter.

“His inheritance was two silver marks?” Then she recalled that Emma didn’t know about the marks because she didn’t know about the letter.

The girl barely noticed the interjection. “The land in Wales. His mother left it to him, Felin Fach….” She said the name softly, as if it had been spoken often, a sweet thing held out to her in her lover’s voice.
“‘Felin Fach,’
he used to say.
‘The vale of the Aêron, where salmon leap up to meet the rod and the very earth yields gold.’”

“Gold?” Adelia looked a question at Gyltha.
Is there gold in Wales?

Gyltha shrugged.

“He was going to take possession as soon as he gained his majority. It was part of his inheritance, you see. We were going there. Father Gwilym was waiting to marry us.
‘Funny little man, not a word of English…’
” She was quoting again, almost smiling.
“‘Yet in Welsh he can tie as tight a marriage knot as any priest in the Vatican.’”

This was dreadful; Gyltha was wiping her eyes. Adelia, too, was sorry, so sorry. To watch suffering like this was to be in pain oneself, but she had to have answers.

“Emma, who knew you were going to elope?”

“Nobody.” Now she did actually smile.
“‘No cloak, or they’ll guess.

I’ll have one for you. Fitchet will open the gate….’”

“Fitchet?”

“Well, of course Fitchet knew about us; Talbot paid him.”

Apparently, the gatekeeper counted as nobody in Emma’s reckoning.

The girl’s face withered. “But he didn’t come. I waited in the gatehouse…I waited…I thought…I thought…oh, Sweet Jesus, show mercy to me, I
blamed
him….” She began clawing the air. “Why did they kill him? Couldn’t they just take his purse? Why kill him?”

Adelia met Gyltha’s eyes again. That was all right, then; Emma put her lover’s killing down to robbers—as, at this stage, it was probably better that she should. There was no point in inflaming her against Wolvercote until there was proof of his culpability. Indeed, he might be innocent. If he hadn’t known of the elopement…But Fitchet had known.

“So it was a secret, was it?”

“Little Priscilla knew, she guessed.” Again, that entrancement at being taken back to the past; the subterfuge had been thrilling. “And Fitchet, he smuggled our letters in and out. And Master Warin, of course, because he had to write the letter to Felin Fach so that Talbot could take seisin of it, but they were all sworn not to tell.” Suddenly, she gripped Adelia’s arm. “Fitchet. He wouldn’t have told the robbers, would he? He
couldn’t.
”

Adelia gave a reassurance she didn’t feel; the number of nobodies who’d known about the elopement was accumulating. “No, no. I’m sure not. Who is Master Warin?”

“Were they waiting for him?” She had her nails into Adelia’s skin. “Did they know he was carrying money?
Did they know?
”

Gyltha intervened. “A’course they didn’t.” She pulled Emma’s hand off Adelia’s arm and enfolded it in her own. “Just scum, they was. Roads ain’t safe for anybody.”

Emma looked wide-eyed at Adelia. “Did he suffer?”

Here, at least, was firm ground. “No. It was a bolt to the chest. He’d have been thinking of you, and then…nothing.”

“Yes.” The girl sank back. “Yes.”

“Who is Master Warin?” Adelia asked again.

“But how can I go on without him?”

We do
, Adelia thought.
We have to.

Allie had hitched herself over to replace Ward by pushing him off and settling her bottom on Emma’s boots. She put a pudgy hand on the girl’s knee. Emma stared down at her. “Children,” she said. “We were going to have lots of children.” The desolation was so palpable that for the other two women the firelit room became a leafless winter plain stretching into eternity.

She’s young
, Adelia thought.
Spring will come to her again one day perhaps, but never with the same freshness.
“Who is Master Warin?”

Gyltha tutted at her; the girl had begun to shake.
Stop it now.

I can’t.
“Emma, who is Master Warin?”

“Talbot’s cousin. They were very attached to each other.” The poor lips stretched again.
“‘My wait-and-see Warin. A careful man, Emma, but never did a ward have such a careful guardian.’”

“He was Talbot’s guardian? He handled his business affairs?”

“Oh, don’t worry him with them now. He will be so…I must see him. No, I can’t…. I can’t face his grief…. I can’t face anything.”

Emma’s eyelids were half down with the fatigue of agony.

Gyltha wrapped a blanket round her, led her to the bed, sat her down, and lifted her legs so that she fell back on it. “Go to sleep now.” She returned to Adelia. “And you come wi’ me.”

They went to the other side of the room to whisper.

“You reckon Wolvercote done in that girl’s fella?”

“Possibly, though I’m beginning to think the cousin-cum-guardian had a lot to lose when Talbot came into his estates. If he’s been handling Talbot’s affairs…It’s starting to look like a conspiracy.”

“No, it ain’t. It was robbery pure and simple, and the boy got killed in the course of it.”

“He didn’t. The robbers
knew.
”

“No, they bloody didn’t.”

“Why?” She’d never seen Gyltha like this.

“A’cause that poor girl’s going to have to marry Old Wolfie now whether she likes it or don’t, and better if she don’t think it was him as done for her sweetheart.”

“Of course she won’t have to…” Adelia squinted at the older woman. “
Will
she?”

Gyltha nodded. “More’n like. Them Bloats is set on it.
He’s
set on it. That’s why her wanted to elope, so’s they couldn’t force her.”

“They can’t force her. Oh, Gyltha, they
can’t.
”

“You watch ’em. She’s a high-up, and it happens to high-ups.” Gyltha looked toward Heaven and gave thanks that she was common. “Nobody didn’t want me for my money. Never bloody had any.”

It did happen. Because it hadn’t happened to Adelia, she hadn’t thought of it. Her foster parents, that liberal couple, had allowed her to pursue her profession, but around her in Salerno, young, well-born female acquaintances had been married off to their father’s choice though they cried against it, part of a parental plan for the family’s advancement. It was that or continual beating. Or the streets. Or a convent.

“She could choose to become a nun, I suppose.”

“She’s their only child,” Gyltha said. “Master Bloat don’t want a nun, he wants a lady in the family—better for business.” She sighed. “My auntie was cook to the De Pringhams and their poor little Alys was married off screamin’ to Baron Coton, bald old bugger that he was.”

“You have to say yes. The Church says it’s not legal otherwise.”

“
Hunh.
I never heard as little Alys said yes.”

“But Wolvercote’s a bully and an idiot. You know he is.”

“So?”

Adelia stared into Emma’s future. “She could appeal to the queen. Eleanor knows what it is to have an unhappy marriage; she managed to get a divorce from Louis.”

“Oh, yes,” Gyltha said, raising her eyes. “The queen’s sure to go against the fella as is fighting her battle for her. Sure to.” She patted Adelia’s shoulder. “It won’t be so bad for young Em, really….”

“Not bad?”

“She’ll have babies, that’s what she wants, ain’t it? Anyways, I don’t reckon she’ll have to put up with un for long. Not when King Henry gets hold of un. Wolvercote’s a traitor, and Henry’ll have his tripes.” Gyltha inclined her head to consider the case. “Might not be bad at all, really.”

“I thought you were sorry for her.”

“I am, but I’m facing what she’s facing. Bit o’ luck she’ll be widowed afore the year’s out, then she’ll have his baby and his lands…yes, I reckon it might turn out roses.”

“Gyltha.”
Adelia drew back from a practicality unsuspected even of this practical woman. “That’s foul.”