A Murderous Procession (7 page)

The Bishop of Winchester, still complaining to the king, was pointing out the two vessels allocated for the princess’s crossing; one for Joanna herself and her court, the other for the lesser mortals attached to it.

Adelia rather sympathized with the frightened little bishop; to her inexperienced eye the two boats, though freshly and brightly painted, were lower slung, with one bank of oars, two masts, and less ornamentation, than the becastled vessels she’d been in before. Only a limp royal Plantagenet pennant showed which was the princess’s flagship.

O’Donnell was insisting that the company spend the night aboard. “Me Turkish friend here thinks he scents a sou’westerly breeze on the way, do you not, Deniz?”

He referred to a squat, strong-smelling goblin of a man in wide sailcloth trousers and a waistcoat that showed bare, brown arms with muscles like iron balls.

Deniz grunted.

“Denise?”
Adelia whispered to Mansur. They were strange names she was encountering today.

“
Deniz
. In Turkish it means ‘the sea,’” Mansur told her.

The O’Donnell’s eyes slid in their direction. “Indeed it does, master,” he said. “For it’s the sea I fished him out of, and there’s nobody understands it better.”

He speaks Arabic as well as Latin,
Adelia thought.
We must be careful.

“And the breeze’ll come up tonight,” he was saying, still looking at her and Mansur, “so we can catch the tide at dawn, and I’ll not be missing it in the kerfuffle of getting all the fine ladies and gentlemen to their berths that early.”

It was kerfuffle enough as it was. Horses were kicking at being led down into the hold. Shouting dockers loaded chests of treasure and clothes, followed anxiously by the ladies-in-waiting holding up their skirts. Priests and clerks teetered on gangways and argued with the sailors about which boat should take them.

All very well,
Adelia thought,
but where is our protection?
The treasure they were carrying with them en route would surely attract robbers; women, servants, and clerics were unlikely to be able to fend them off.

Then, in the distance, she saw the tall figure of Captain Bolt briskly ushering his men aboard the second ship—and was comforted. She and the good captain had made each other’s acquaintance during one of her previous investigations. As well as showing himself to be an excellent soldier devoted to his king, he’d been kind to her. He was the one who, at Henry’s command, had cleared the Somerset forest of the late Wolf’s remaining outlaws, and, afterward, had the bodies of those she’d so desperately searched for disinterred and given Christian burial.

Disengaging Boggart from a hawser she’d fallen over and managed to become entangled in kept Mansur and Adelia momentarily delayed on the quayside.

Again, the Bishop of Saint Albans casually strolled over to them. “Who is this?”

Adelia finished brushing Boggart down. “It’s my new lady’s maid.”

“Good God.” He turned to Mansur. “My dear doctor, is that box yours?” He pointed to a large packing case waiting with others at the end of the quay to be loaded.

“No, my lord.”

“Really? I thought it might contain your medicaments. Perhaps you should make sure.” He bowed briefly to Adelia and returned to the group of clergy.

“What was that about?” Adelia snapped, looking to Mansur. Their box of medicaments had already been taken aboard.

“Let us see. Tell that clumsy female to stay where she is.”

“Stay here,” Adelia told Boggart.

Together she and the Arab went to investigate, encountering an odor that was at once strong and familiar to Adelia’s nostrils. “It’s Ward,” she said, clutching Mansur’s arm.

“The dog? How can it be?”

“I’d know that smell anywhere.” She hurried to the packing case. Behind it, hidden from the quay’s hubbub, stood a young man holding a piece of string to which was attached a small, unsavory-looking dog. Both were happy to see her but, while the animal bounced its welcome, the youth kept his face straight and his East Anglian speech lugubrious.

“Ain’t supposed to be seen with you two, am I? Disregarded, that’s what I gotta be, so Prior said.”

Adelia collapsed on him. “Ulf, oh Ulf. It’s you. What are you doing here? I am so
pleased
to see you. Oh, Ulf.”

Gyltha’s grandson had grown since they’d first encountered each other in the Cambridgeshire fens. The truculent, ill-favored child he’d been then, one she’d come to love—and had saved from a terrible abductor—was now considerably cleaner except for the light stubble on his chin. His unruly hair was hidden by the wide-brimmed hat of a pilgrim, but like most fenmen, he still pretended to a gritty dispassion.

“Get off,” he said, wriggling out of Adelia’s clutch. He nodded at Mansur, who nodded back; neither face showing pleasure at the meeting, though their eyes were glad.

“And Ward, too.” Adelia cupped her hands round her dog’s face, careful to wipe them on her kerchief afterward. “What are you both doing here?”

“Me, on the king’s orders. I’m incognito, I am. And that there stinker’s here a-cause the prior a-reckoned as you’d need him.”

Adelia smiled. “I’m in no danger this time.” Prior Geoffrey of Cambridge, her first friend in England, always worried for her safety had given her Ward’s predecessor, an equally smelly hound, so that, should she be at risk, she could always be traced by its scent.

As it had turned out afterward, the dog had indeed saved her life and lost its own in doing it. When, to her regret, she’d been forced to move from Cambridge, Ward had been one of the friends she’d had to leave behind.

“Prior don’t think so,” Ulf told her, “‘That girl’s born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.’ That’s what he said. ‘You take that odiferous bugger to her and tell her to keep him close,’ he said. And that’s what I’m a-doing.”

“But what’s all this about the king’s orders?”

Ulf tutted at her ignorance. His gaze directed itself deliberately on a large, plain wooden cross leaning beside him against the packing case. “Cos o’ that.”

Adelia looked at it for a minute before it came to her. “My God,” she said.
“You’re
the crucifer. So the king consulted Prior Geoffrey—how wise of him.”

“He don’t have to heft it,” Ulf said with feeling. “That’s heavy, that old bit o’ wood, considering it’s hollow and what’s inside it don’t weigh too much. Story is I’m a-taking my grandpappys cross to Jerusalem to put on the Holy Sepulchre so’s to account for Grandpappys sins.” He grinned.

She smiled fondly back. His grandfather
had
sinned. Prior Geoffrey, leader of Saint Augustine’s in Cambridge, where Ulf was now learning law, had, as a young priest, formed a happy but illicit relationship with the equally young Gyltha, a liaison that, in the second generation, had produced this wonderful grandson.

The subterfuge was clever. It was quite usual for those who couldn’t go on crusade themselves to send something of their own by proxy to the Holy Land. Henry, that crafty,
crafty
king, obviously with Rowleys help, had remembered his friendship with the prior, and the two of them had worked out this plan for Excalibur’s secret journey. Who would expect such a stripling to be carrying inside his cross the sword that all Christendom would kill to lay its hands on?

“And when we gets to Sicily,” Ulf said, looking round to make sure nobody could hear, “old Rowley is to crack open the wood and give you-know-what to you-know-who. Pity as you can’t see it now, bor. That’s a sword and a bit, I can tell you. That’s got magic, that has.”

“I’ve seen it,” Adelia said. Magical or not, she didn’t want to see it again.

Ulf handed the dog’s lead to Adelia and heaved the cross onto his shoulder. “I better get aboard, and you remember as I’m incognito. Us holy pilgrims don’t have nothing to do with you gentry.” He peered out, found the coast clear, and went off pretending to stagger as he went.

Adelia untied the string from Ward’s collar and replaced it with her kerchief, which looked slightly better. Neither of her new acquisitions today was going to improve her standing in the princess’s train, but she was so glad of them. And even if she and Mansur could not be seen talking to Ulf, they would at least have one loving companion on their travels—two, if you counted Ward. The boy—she supposed she must now think of him as a young man—had the solidity and common sense of his grandmother; they would be taking something of Gyltha with them.

In any case, would the coming year be so bad?

The disgusting phrase she’d heard men use about rape—”Lie back and enjoy it”—came to her mind. Yes, she was being used, forced to accede to a demand against her will. On the other hand, Allie was as safe as she could be and had Gyltha to look after her, while she herself was about to set out on a journey she’d been wanting to make for years and in a style that, apart from the inevitable dangers of all travel, was as safe as possible under the circumstances.

Adelia took in a breath of air in which the seagulls were gliding for the pleasure of it. She touched Mansur’s hand. “Oh well . . .” she said.

He inclined his head; he knew what she meant, he always did. He was another who was going home.

NIGHT
HAS
FALLEN
on the harbor. It is hot, uncomfortable, and crowded in the cabins of the royal vessels as they wait for the wind that will come with the dawn tide, but the passengers are tired so that, one by one, their lanterns—no naked flame is allowed on board
—
are extinguished. Except for their riding lights, the ships are mere shapes, like two dragons in the darkness…

No, one lantern is still burning. One man prefers the deck to his cabin and has wedged himself against a hatch so that he can commune with his Messiah in peace
—
or as much peace as the Messiah gives him,

“We have been introduced, beloved.” Scarry’s mouth moves but no sound comes from it. “I managed to abide her, for so I must. Even close to, she is no beauty—except for the smile, which she gave once, and then… well, I confess it:
suum cuique pulchrum.
The skin is dark blond like that of a Greek. You would have enjoyed chewing on it.

“Her eyes, which are brown, show an insult to all men. I am anyone’s match, they say, I have knowledge. What presumption, what challenge.

“I have employed a minion to search her luggage. There is no sign of Excalibur, but of a certainty she knows where it is. To whom else would the king have entrusted it but her, who led him to it?

“Keep your temper, my joy, my love, as I do. We have time, we have a thousand miles. We shall have the sword, and she shall be brought down. But slowly, piece by piece, a pedibus usque ad caput, chop, chop, until the wits go.

“For you, Wolf. On your altar. To you who were the equal of a god.”

A
STRONG
BREEZE
came up, as the little Turk had said it would.

The Bishop of Winchester performed the usual ceremony, committing the boats and everyone in them to the mercy of God. To his concern, however, the admiral performed a ceremony of his own. Standing on the prow of his flagship, he raised his arms and spoke to his waiting crews in Irish, his voice traveling easily from ship to ship:
“Amach daoibh a chlann an righ.”

Adelia asked one of the oarsmen what he’d said and was told,

“It’s the words Eva the witch says to the Children of Lir when she turns them into swans: “Out with you on the water, ye children of the king.”

“Isn’t that a curse?” It was certainly pagan.

“Maybe, maybe, but swans do float and keep a-floatin’. And it’s with us sailors, d’ye see, that we’d rather have a curse from himself than a blessing from the Pope.”

Whatever it was, the oarsmen were able to take their ease while the vessels proceeded smartly over the Channel under sail, heeling slightly with the wind a-beam.

WORD
ISSUED
FROM
Joanna’s deck cabin. The princess was seasick. Dr. Arnulf, looking none too well himself was being called to her side.

“And we attend, too,” Adelia told Mansur firmly. “Not that I know of anything to help seasickness, but if he goes, we go.”

The precedent that Arnulf was not Joanna’s
only
appointed doctor must be set.

The royal cabin was crowded, dark, and smelled of vomit. The sufferer was hidden in a cluster of people who hung onto beams and, occasionally, one another to keep upright. From the midst of anxious ladies-in-waiting and maids, the new arrivals heard the voice of Dr. Arnulf: “The bile is blackish, the princess should be bled at once. Fetch me my leeches.”

“Ginger.” This was Joanna’s nurse, Edeva. “Ginger’s good.”

“Surely …” It was the Bishop of Winchester’s turn. “... a bone of Saint Erasmus attached to her stomach would be more efficacious; I think we have one in the ossuary we brought with us, haven’t we, Father Guy?”

Which of the saints was Erasmus? Adelia had a vague remembrance of Somerset herdsmen invoking him to cure cattle pest; presumably he turned his spiritual hand to maritime upsets as well.

Father Guy pushed past her without greeting, hurrying to get his box of bones. His colleague, Father Adalburt, Adelia noticed, was also here, using an aspergillum to sprinkle holy water on anyone he could reach which, because of the crowd around her and the ship’s brisk motion, did not include the princess.

“The nurse speaks well,” Mansur said quietly in Arabic. “Ginger is good, but the child also needs fresh air.”

Adelia was taken aback; it was rare for Mansur to prescribe, but he probably knew more about
mal de mer
than she did; in his sad youth among the monks who’d castrated him he’d been sent on the long voyage to sing in Byzantium.

She raised her voice. “The Lord Mansur wishes to see his patient.”

There was a reluctant movement that gave them both passage through to where Joanna lay shivering and uncomplaining, her pointed little face livid under a swinging lantern—an object that, Adelia thought, couldn’t be helping matters. The girl looked up at Mansur without interest, raised herself and was sick into a bowl.