The Serpent's Tale

by Ariana Franklin

  Poison in ink, drip, drip.

  And the writer had penned them for Rosa-mund to duplicate in her own hand. He or she— more likely he—had even attached notes for her instruction.

  “Be more legible, for the queen did scoff at your lettering and call you ignoramus.”

  “Write quickly that this may reach the queen on her anniversary as she does set much store by that date and will be the more affected.”

  “Hurry, for my messenger must come to Chinon, where the queen is kept, before the king moves her elsewhere.”

  And most telling of all: “We win, lady. You shall be queen before summer comes again.”

  At no point did the instructor name himself. But, thought Adelia, he was someone who’d been near enough to Eleanor to know that she had ridiculed Rosamund’s writing.

  And a fool. If his hope was to engineer a divorce between Henry and Eleanor and set Rosamund up as queen, he was lacking the most fundamental political sense. Henry would never divorce Eleanor. For one thing, even if wifely treason was grounds for divorce—and Adelia didn’t think it was—Henry had caused too much offense to the Church over the death of Becket and had suffered for it; he dare not offend again. For another, he had a regard for the order of things. Even more important to him was the fact that by losing Eleanor, he would lose her great Duchy of Aquitaine, and Henry, though a beast, was a beast that never gave up land.

  In any case, the easygoing English might wink at their king’s mistress, but not a mistress imposed on them as queen; it would be an insult.

  I know that, and I’m a foreigner.

  And yet these letters had been good enough to inspire a stupid, ambitious woman to copy and send them, good enough to inflame a queen into escaping and urging war by her sons against their father.

  Rowley could be right; the person who had written these things had done so to create war.

  There was a loud sniff from the other side of the room. Eleanor spoke in triumph. “She is going. She has begun to stink.”

  That was quicker than expected. Surprised, Adelia looked up to where Rosamund was still stiffly inclined over her work.

  She looked round further and saw that, in search of comfort, Ward had settled himself on the trailing end of the queen’s ermine cloak. “I’m afraid that’s merely my dog,” she said.

  “Merely? Get him off. What does he do here?”

  One of the men-at-arms who’d been nodding in the doorway roused himself and came in to deposit Ward on the landing outside, then, at a nod from his queen, returned to his post.

  Eleanor shifted; she’d become restive. “Saint Eulalie grant me patience. How long will this take?” The vigil was becoming tiresome.

  Adelia nearly said, “A while yet,” and then didn’t. Until she knew more about the situation, she had better stay in the role of a woman whom the queen accepted as a somewhat soiled part of Rowley’s baggage train but who’d nevertheless been chosen by God to save the royal life and was being kept close to the royal side as a reward.

  But you should know more about me, Adelia thought, irritated. I am dying with curiosity; so should you be. You should know more about everything: how Rosamund died, why she wrote the letters, who dictated them ... you should have had the room searched and found these exemplars before I did. It’s not enough to be a queen; you should ask questions. Your husband does.

  Henry Plantagenet was a ferret and an employer of ferrets. He’d nosed out Adelia’s profession in a second and penned her up in England, like one of the rarer animals in his menagerie, until he found a use for her. He knew exactly how things stood between her and his bishop; he’d known when their baby was born—and its sex, which was more than the child’s father had known. A few days afterward, to prove that he knew, a royal messenger in plain clothes had delivered a gloriously lacy christening gown to Adelia’s fenland door with a note: “Call her what you will, she shall always be Rowley-Powley to me.”

  Compared to the king, Eleanor walked within a circle of vision encompassing only her personal welfare and the certainty that God was most closely concerned with it. The questions she’d asked in this chamber had related solely to herself.

  Adelia wondered whether she should enlighten her. Rowley and the queen must have corresponded in the past; she would know his writing. Showing her these documents would at least prove that he hadn’t written them for Rosamund to copy. She might even recognize the penmanship and know who had.

  Wait, though. There were two crimes here.

  If Mansur or her foster father had been watching Adelia at that moment, they would have seen her adopt what they called her “dissecting face,” the mouth tightened into a line, eyes furious with concentration, as they always were when her knife followed the link of muscle to sinew, pursued a vein, probed, and cut effect in order to find cause.

  What made her a brilliant anatomist, Dr. Gershom had once told her, was instinct. She’d been offended. “Logic and training, Father.” He’d smiled. “Man provided logic and training, maybe, but the Lord gave you instinct, and you should bless him for it.”

  Two crimes.

  One, Rosamund had copied inflammatory letters. Two, Rosamund had been murdered.

  Discovering whom it was who had urged Rosamund to write her letters was one thing. Discovering her murderer was another. And both solutions were contradictory, as far as Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Bishop of Saint Albans were concerned.

  For the queen, the letter writer would be the villain and must be eliminated. Eleanor didn’t give a damn who’d killed Rosamund—would, if she learned who it was, probably reward him.

  But for Rowley, the murderer was endangering the peace of the kingdom and must be eliminated. And his claim was the greater, because murder was the more terrible crime.

  It would be better, at this stage, to give Rowley open ground for his investigation rather than complicating it by allowing the queen to pursue hers.

  Hmm.

  Adelia gathered up the documents on her lap, put them back in the footstool box, and replaced its lid. She would do nothing about them until she could consult Rowley.

  Eleanor continued to fidget. “Has this benighted tower no place of easement?”

  Adelia ushered her toward the garderobe.

  “Light.” The queen held out her hand for a candle, and Adelia put one into it—reluctantly. She would see the naughty paintings.

  If Adelia could have been any sorrier for the woman, it was then. When you came down to it, Eleanor was consumed by sexual jealousy as raging as that of any fishwife catching her husband in flagrante, and was being stabbed by reminders of it at every turn.

  Adelia tensed herself for a storm, but when the queen emerged from under the hanging she looked tired and old, and was silent.

  “You should rest, madam,” Adelia said, concerned. “Let us go down ...” There was noise from the stairs, and the two guards in the doorway uncrossed their spears and stood at attention.

  A great hill of a man entered, sparkling with energy and frost and dwarfing Schwyz, who followed him in. He was enormous; kneeling to kiss the queen’s hand only put his head on a level with hers.

  “If I’d been here, my dear, ’twouldn’t have happened,” he said, still kneeling. He pressed Eleanor’s hand to his neck with both of his, closing his eyes and rocking with the comfort of it.

  “I know.” She smiled fondly at him. “My dear, dear abbot. You’d have put your big body in the way of the knife, wouldn’t you?”

  “And gone rejoicing to Paradise.” He sighed and stood up, looking down at her. “You going to burn ’em both?”

  The queen shook her head. “I have been persuaded that Dampers is mad. We will not execute the insane.”

  “Who? Oh, Dakers. She’s mad, sure enough, I told you she was. Let the flame have her, I say. And her bloody mistress with her. Where is the whore?”

  He strode across the room to the table and poked the corpse’s shoulder. “Like they said, cold as a witch’s tit. Bit of fir
e’d warm they both up, get ’em ready for hell.” He turned to wag his finger at Eleanor. “I’m a simple Gloucestershire man, as you know, and, Sweet Mary save me, a sinner, too, but I love my God, and I love my queen with all my soul, and I’m for putting their enemies to the torch.” He spat on Rosamund’s hair. “That’s the Abbot of Eynsham’s opinion of you, madam.”

  The visitor had caused Montignard to stand up. He was busily and jealously—and uselessly—trying to gain the queen’s attention by urging her to eat. Eynsham, a man built more for tossing bales of hay than for shepherding monastic sheep, dominated the room, taking the breath out of it with the power of his body and voice, filling it with West Country earthiness and accent.

  Bucolic he might have been, but everything he wore was of expensive and exquisite clerical taste, though the pectoral cross that had swung from his neck as he bent to the queen was overdone—a chunk of dull gold that could have battered a door in.

  He’d taken years off Eleanor; she was loving it. Apart from the egregious Montignard, her courtiers had been too weary from traveling to make much fuss over her escape from death.

  Or my part in it, Adelia thought, suddenly sour. Her hand was hurting.

  “Bad news, though, my glory,” the abbot said. Eleanor’s face changed. “It’s Young Henry.

  Where is he?”

  “Oh, he’s right enough. But the chase was snappin’ at our heels all the way from Chinon, so the Young King, well, he decides to make for Paris ’stead of yere.”

  Suddenly blind, the queen fumbled for the arm of her chair and sank into it.

  “Now, now, it’s not as bad as that,” the abbot said, his voice deep, “but you know your lad, he never did take to England—said the wine was piss.”

  “What are we to do? What are we to do?” Eleanor’s eyes were wide and pleading. “The cause is lost. Almighty God, what are we to do now?”

  “There, there.” The abbot knelt beside her, taking her hands in his. “Nothing’s lost. And Schwyz here, we’ve been speaking together, and he reckons it’s all to the good. Don’t ee, Schwyz?”

  At his urging, Schwyz nodded.

  “See? And Schwyz do know what he’s about. Not much to look at, I grant, but a fine tactician. For here’s the good news.” Eleanor’s hands were lifted and hammered against her knees. “You hear me, my glory? Listen to me. Hear what our commander Jesus have done for us—He’ve brought the King of France onto our side. Joined un to Young Henry, yes he has.”

  Eleanor’s head came up. “He has? Oh, at last. God be praised.”

  “King Louis as ever is. He’ll bring his army into the field to fight alongside the son against the father.”

  “God be praised,” Eleanor said again. “Now we have an army.”

  The abbot nodded his great head as if watching a child open a present. “A saintly king. Weedy husband he was to you, I’ll grant, but we ain’t marrying him, and God’ll look kindly on his valor now.” He hammered Eleanor’s knees again. “D’you see, woman? Young Henry and Louis’ll raise their banner in France, we’ll raise ours here in England, and together we’ll squeeze Old Henry into submission. Light will prevail against Dark. Twixt us, we’ll net the old eagle and bring un down.”

  He was forcing life into Eleanor; her color had come back. “Yes,” she said, “yes. A pronged attack. But have we the men? Here in England, I mean? Schwyz has so few with him.”

  “Wolvercote, my beauty. Lord Wolvercote’s camped at Oxford awaiting us with a force a thousand strong.”

  “Wolvercote,” repeated Eleanor. “Yes, of course.” Despondency began to leave her as she climbed the ladder of hope the abbot held for her.

  “Of course of course. A thousand men. And with you at their head, another ten thousand to join us. All them as the Plantagenet has trampled and beggared, they’ll come flocking from the Midlands. Then we march, and oh what joy in Heaven.”

  “Got to get to fuck Oxford first,” Schwyz said, “and quick, for fuck’s sake. It’s going to snow, and we’ll be stuck in this fuck tower like fuck Aunt Sallies. At Woodstock, I told the stupid bitch it couldn’t be defended. Let’s go straight to Oxford, I said. I can defend you there. But she knew better.” His voice rose from basso to falsetto. “Oh, no, Schwyz, the roads are too bad for pursuit, Henry can’t follow us here.” The tone reverted. “Henry fuck can, I know the bastard.”

  In a way, it was the strangest moment of the night. Eleanor’s expression, something between doubt and exaltation, didn’t change. Still kneeling by her side, the abbot did not turn round.

  Didn’t they hear him?

  Did I?

  For Adelia had been taken back to the lower Alps of the Graubünden, to which, every year, she and her foster parents had made the long but beautiful journey in order to avoid the heat of a Salerno summer. There, in a villa lent to them by the Bishop of Chur, a grateful patient of Dr. Gershom’s, little Adelia had gone picking herbs and wildflowers with the goatherd’s flaxen-haired children, listening to their chat and that of the adults—all of them unaware that little Adelia could absorb languages like blotting paper.

  A strange language it had been, a guttural mixture of Latin and the dialect of the Germanic tribes from which those alpine people were descended.

  She’d just heard it again.

  Schwyz had spoken in Romansh.

  Without looking round, the abbot was giving the queen a loose translation. “Schwyz is saying as how, with your favor on our sleeve, this is a war we’ll win. When he do speak from his heart, he reverts to his own patter, but old Schwyz is your man to his soul.”

  “I know he is.” Eleanor smiled at Schwyz. Schwyz nodded back.

  “Only he can smell snow, he says, and wants to be at Oxford. An’ I’ll be happier in my bowels to have Wolvercote’s men around us. Can ee manage the journey, sweeting? Not too tired? Then let you go down to the kitchens with Monty and get some hot grub inside ee. It’ll be a cold going.”

  “My dear, dear abbot,” Eleanor said fondly, rising, “how we needed your presence. You help us to remember God’s plain goodness; you bring with you the scent of fields and all natural things. You bring us courage.”

  “I hope I do, my dear. I hope I do.” As the queen and Montignard disappeared down the stairs, he turned and looked at Adelia, who knew, without knowing how she knew, that he had been aware of her all along. “Who’s this, then?”

  Schwyz said, “Some drab of Saint Albans’s. He brought her with him. She was in the room when the madwoman attacked Nelly and managed to trip her up. Nelly thinks she saved her life.” He shrugged. “Maybe she did.”

  “Did she now?” Two strides brought the abbot close to Adelia. A surprisingly well-manicured hand went under her chin to tip her head back. “A queen owes you her life, does she, girl?”

  Adelia kept her face blank, as blank as the abbot’s, staring into it.

  “Lucky, then, aren’t you?” he said.

  He took his hand away and turned to leave.

  “Come on, my lad, let us get this festa stultorum on its way.”

  “What about her?” Schywz jerked a thumb toward the writing table.

  “Leave her to burn.”

  “And her?” The thumb indicated Adelia.

  The abbot’s shrug suggested that Adelia could leave or burn as she pleased.

  She was left alone in the room. Ward, seeing his chance, came back in and directed his nose at the tray with its unfinished veal pie.

  Adelia was listening to Rowley’s voice in her mind. “Civil war ... Stephen and Matilda will be nothing to it ... the Horsemen of the Apocalypse ... I can hear the sound of their hooves.”

  They’ve come, Rowley. They’re here. I’ve just seen three of them.

  From the writing table came a soft sound as Rosamund’s melting body slithered forward onto it.

  SEVEN

  By going against the advice of its commander and dragging her small force with her to Wormhold Tower, Eleanor had delayed its objective—which
was to join up with the greater rebel army awaiting her at Oxford.

  Now, with the weather worsening, Schwyz was frantic to get the queen to the meeting place— armies tended to disperse when kept idle too long, especially in the cold—and there was only one sure route that would take her there quickly: the river. The Thames ran more or less directly north to south through the seven or so miles of countryside that lay between Wormhold and Oxford.

  Since the queen and her servants had ridden from their last encampment, accompanied by Schwyz and his men on foot, boats must be found. And had been. A few. Of a sort. Enough to transport the most important members of the royal party and a contingent of Schwyz’s men but not all of either. The lesser servants and most of the soldiers were going to have to journey to Oxford via the towpath—a considerably slower and more difficult journey than by boat. Also, to do so, they were going to have to use the horses and mules that the royal party had brought with them.

  All this Adelia gathered as she emerged into the tower’s bottom room, where shouted commands and explanations were compounding chaos.

  A soldier was pouring oil onto a great pile of broken furniture while servants, rushing around, screamed at him to wait before applying the flame as they removed chests, packing cases, and boxes that had been carried into the guardroom only hours before. Eleanor traveled heavy.

  Schwyz was yelling at them to leave everything; neither those who were to be accommodated in the few boats nor those who would make the trek overland to Oxford could be allowed to carry baggage with them.

  Either they didn’t hear him or he was ignored. He was being maddened further by Eleanor’s insistence that she could not proceed without this servant or that and, even when agreement was reached, by the favored ones’ refusal to stand still and be counted. Part of the trouble seemed to be that the Aquitanians doubted the honesty of their military allies; Eleanor’s personal maid shrieked that the royal wardrobe could not be entrusted to “sales mercenaries,” and a man declaring himself to be the sergeant cook was refusing to leave a single pan behind for the soldiers to steal. So outside the tower, soldiers struggled with frozen harnesses to ready the horses and mules, and the queen’s Aquitanians argued and ran back and forth to fetch more baggage, none of which could be accommodated.