The Serpent's Tale

by Ariana Franklin

  She found the entrance and plunged inside.

  Curiously, it was easier to see in here, merely gloomy, as if the tunnels were bewilderment enough and had regimented the mist into their own coils. The hedged doors were open, still giving straight passage.

  He’d gone a long way in, almost to the exit that led to the hill. The sound was softening into mumbles, like somebody discontented. As Adelia came up, it stopped altogether.

  The last paroxysm had sent the abbot arching backward over the mantrap so that his stomach curved outward. His mouth was stretched open; he looked as if he’d died roaring with laughter.

  She edged round to the front. Schwyz was scrabbling at the mess where the machine’s fangs had bitten into Eynsham’s groin. “It’s all right, Rob,” he was saying. “It’s all right.” He looked up at Adelia. “Help me.”

  There was no point. He was dead. It would take two men to force the mantrap open. Only hate like the fires of hell had given Dakers the strength to lever the struts apart so that their jaws lay flat in the dirt, waiting to snap up the man who’d had Rosamund poisoned.

  The housekeeper had sat herself a couple of feet away so that she could watch him die. And had died with him, smiling.

  There was a lot of clearing up to do.

  They brought the wounded down to Adelia on the landing stage, because she didn’t want to return to the tower. There weren’t many, and none were badly injured, most needing only a few stitches, which she managed with the contents of the king’s sewing case.

  All were Plantagenet men; Henry hadn’t taken any prisoners.

  She didn’t ask what had happened to Schwyz; she didn’t care much. Probably, he hadn’t, either.

  One of the barges that came upriver from Godstow contained Rosamund’s much-traveled coffin. The Bishop of Saint Albans was aboard another. He’d been with Young Geoffrey at the storming of the abbey and looked tired enough to fall down. He kept his distance on seeing Adelia, though he thanked his God for her deliverance. Godstow had been liberated without loss on the Plantagenet side. Wolvercote, now in chains, was the only one who’d put up any resistance.

  “Allie’s safe and well,” Rowley said. “So are Gyltha and Mansur. They were cheering us on from the guesthouse window.”

  There was nothing else she needed to know. Yes, one thing. “Lawyer Warin,” she said. “Did you find him?”

  “Little sniveling fellow? He was trying to escape via the back wall, so we put him in irons.”

  “Good.”

  The thaw was proceeding quickly. Untidy plates of ice floating downriver and bumping into the landing stage became smaller and smaller. She watched them; each one carried its own little cloud of thicker fog through the mist.

  It was still very cold.

  “Come up to the tower,” Rowley said. “Get warm.” “No.”

  He put his cloak around her, still without touching her. “Eleanor got away,” he said. “They’re hunting the woods for her.”

  Adelia nodded. It didn’t matter one way or the other.

  He shifted. “I’d better go to him. He’ll need me to bless the dead.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He walked away, heading for the tower and his king.

  Another coffin was carried to the landing stage, assembled from pieces of the bonfire. Dakers would be accompanying her mistress to the grave.

  The rest of the dead were left piled in the courtyard until the ground should be soft enough to dig a common grave.

  Henry came, urging on the loading, shouting to the oarsmen that if they didn’t row their hearts out, he’d have their bollocks; he was in a hurry to get to Godstow and then on to Oxford. He ushered Adelia aboard. The Bishop of Saint Albans, he told her, was staying behind to see to the burials.

  The fog was too thick to allow a last glimpse of Wormhold Tower, even if Adelia had looked back, which she didn’t.

  The Plantagenet wouldn’t go inside the cabin, being too concerned with piloting the rowers away from shoals, occasionally jotting notes on his slate book and studying the weather. “There’ll be a breeze soon,” he said.

  He didn’t let Adelia go inside, either; he said she needed air and sat her down on a thwart in the stern. After a while, he joined her. “Better now?”

  “I’m going back to Salerno,” she told him.

  He sighed. “We’ve had this conversation before.” They had, after the last time he’d used her to investigate deaths. “I am not your subject, Henry, I’m Sicily’s.”

  “Yes, but this is England, and I say who comes and goes.”

  She was silent, and he began wheedling. “I need you. And you wouldn’t like Salerno now, not after England; it’s too hot, you’d dry up like a prune.”

  She compressed her lips and turned her head away. Damn him, don’t laugh.

  “Eh?” he said. “Wouldn’t you? Eh?”

  She had to ask. “Did you know Dakers would set the mantrap for Eynsham?”

  He was astonished, hurt. If he hadn’t been trying to woo her, he’d have been angry. “How could I see what in hell the woman was dragging? It was too damn foggy.”

  She’d never know. For the rest of her life, she’d be questioned by the image of the two of them, him and Dakers, sitting together in the garderobe, planning. “He’ll die, but not by my hand,” he had said. He’d been so certain.

  “Nasty things, mantraps,” he said. “Never use ’em.” And paused. “Except for deer poachers.” And paused. “Who deserve ’em.” He paused again. “And then only ones that take the leg.”

  She’d never know.

  “I am returning to Salerno,” she said, very clear.

  “It’d break Rowley’s heart, oath or not.”

  It would probably break hers, but she was going anyway.

  “You’ll stay.” The nearest oarsmen turned round at the shout. “I’ve had enough of rebellion.”

  He was the king. The route to Salerno passed through vast tracts of land where nobody traveled without his permission.

  “It’s his oath, isn’t it?” he said, wheedling again. “I wouldn’t have made it myself, but then, I’m not bound to chastity, thank the saints. We’ll have to see what we can do about that—I yield to nobody in my admiration for God, but He’s no good in bed.”

  It was a quick journey; the thaw was putting the Thames into full spate, carrying the barge at speed. Henry spent the rest of the time making notes in his slate book. Adelia sat and stared into nothingness, which was all there was to see.

  But the king was right, a light breeze had come up by the time they approached Godstow, and from some way off, the bridge became just visible. It appeared to be busy; the middle span was empty, but at each end people were milling around a single still figure.

  As the barge passed the village, the activity among the group on this side of the bridge became clearer.

  It was a hanging party. Taller than anybody else, Wolvercote stood in the middle of it with a noose around his neck while a man attached the other end of the rope to a stanchion. Beside him, the much smaller figure of Father Egbert muttered in prayer.

  A young woman was watching the scene from the abbey end. The crowd of people behind her was keeping back, but one of them—Adelia recognized the matronly shape of Mistress Bloat—tugged at her daughter’s hand as if she were pleading. Emma paid no attention. Her eyes never left the scene on the other side of the bridge.

  Seeing the barge, a young man leaned over the bridge’s parapet. His voice came clear and jolly.

  “Greetings, my lord, and my thanks to God for keeping you safe.” He grinned. “I knew He would.”

  The oarsmen reversed their rowing stroke so that the boat could keep its position against the flow of the water and allow the exchange between king and son. Above them, Wolvercote kept his gaze on the sky. The sun was beginning to come out. A heron rose out of the rushes and flapped its gawky way farther downriver.

  Henry put aside his slate book. “Well done, Geoffrey. Is every
thing secured?”

  “All secure, my lord. And, my lord, the pursuers I put after the queen have sent word. She is caught and being brought back.”

  Henry nodded. Pointing up at Wolvercote, he said, “Has he made confession for his sins?”

  “For everything except his treachery to you, my lord. He refuses to be absolved for rebellion.”

  “I wouldn’t absolve the swine anyway,” Henry said to Adelia. “Even the Lord’ll have to think twice.” He called back, “Tip him over, then, Geoffrey, and God have mercy on his soul.” He gestured to his oarsmen to row on.

  As the boat passed by, two of the men lifted Wolvercote up and steadied him so that he stood balanced on the parapet.

  Father Egbert raised his voice to begin the absolution: “Dominus noster Jesus Christus ...”

  Adelia turned away. She was near enough now to see Emma’s face; it was completely expressionless.

  “... Deinde, ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nominee Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.” There was a thump of suddenly tightened rope. Jeers and cheering went up from both ends of the bridge.

  Adelia couldn’t watch, but she knew when Wolvercote had stopped struggling because it wasn’t until then that Emma turned and walked away.

  A crowd of soldiers, nuns, and serving people, nearly everybody in the abbey had gathered on the meadow below the convent to cheer King Henry in.

  For Adelia there were only three, a tall Arab, an elderly woman, and a child whose small hand was being flapped up and down in welcome.

  She bowed her head in gratitude at the sight of them.

  After all, I have no need for any but these.

  Allie seemed to have learned another word, because Gyltha was trying to make her say it, first encouraging the baby and then pointing toward Adelia, who couldn’t hear it through the cheering.

  There was a shout from the opposite bank that cut through the noise. “My lord, my lord. We have recovered the queen, my lord.”

  At an order from Henry, the barge veered across the river toward a group of horsemen arriving through the trees. A man with the insignia of a captain of the Plantagenet guard was dismounting, while one of his soldiers helped the queen down from his horse where she’d been riding pillion.

  A gate in the barge’s taffrail was opened and a gangplank laid across the gap between it and the bank. The captain, a worried-looking man, came aboard.

  “How did she get across the river?” Henry asked.

  “There was an old wherry further down, my lord.

  We think Lord Montignard poled her across ... my lord, he tried to delay her capture, he fought like a wolf, my lord ... he ...”

  “They killed him,” the queen called from the bank. She was brushing the soldier’s restraining hand off her arm like a speck of dust.

  The king went forward to help her aboard. “Eleanor.”

  “Henry.”

  “I like the disguise, you look well in it.”

  She was dressed like a boy, and she did look well in it, though as a disguise it would have fooled nobody; her figure was slim enough, but the muddy, short cloak and boots, the angle of the cap she’d stuffed her hair into, were worn with too much style.

  The cheering from the abbey had stopped; there was an open-mouthed silence as if people on the far bank were watching a meeting between warring Olympians and waiting for the thunderbolts.

  There weren’t any. Adelia, crouched in the stern, watched two people who had known each other too well and been too long together to surprise now; they had conceived eight children and seen one of them die, ruled great countries together, made laws together, put down rebellions together, quarreled, laughed, and loved together, and if, now, all that had ended in a metaphorical attempt to disembowel each other, it was still in their eyes and hung in the air between them.

  As if, even now, she couldn’t bear to look anything but feminine for him, Eleanor took off her cap and sent it spinning into the river. It was a mistake; the boy’s costume became grotesque as the long, graying hair of a fifty-year-old woman fell over its shoulders.

  Gently, mercifully, her husband took off his cloak and put it around her. “There, my dear.”

  “Well, Henry,” she said, “where’s it to be this time? Back to Anjou and Chinon?”

  The king shook his head. “I was thinking more of Sarum.”

  She tutted. “Oh, not Sarum, Henry, it’s in England.”

  “I know, my love, but the trouble with Chinon was that you insisted on escaping from it.”

  “But Sarum,” she persisted. “So dull.”

  “Well, well, if you’re a good girl, I’ll let you out for Easter and Christmas.” He gestured to the rowers to take up their oars. “For now, though, we’re making for Oxford. Some rebels there are waiting for me to hang them.”

  An enraptured Adelia woke up in panic. There was a river between her and her child. “My lord, my lord, let me off first.”

  He’d forgotten her. “Oh, very well.” And to the rowers, “Make for the other bank.”

  Against fast running water, the procedure was lengthy, and the king tutted irritably all through it. By the time the barge was settled at a disembarking point on the requisite bank, it had gone long past the abbey, and Adelia was handed ashore on a deserted stretch of meadow into mud that she sank in up to the tops of her boots.

  The king liked that. He leaned over the taffrail, humor restored. “You’ll have to squelch back,” he said.

  “Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord.”

  The barge took off, its dipping and rising oars sending glittering droplets back onto the surface of the water.

  Suddenly, the king was running along the barge’s length to the stern so that he could tell her one more thing. “About the bishop’s oath,” he called, “don’t worry about it. ‘... if You will guard her and keep her safe ...’ Very nicely phrased.”

  She called back, “Was it?”

  “Yes.” The rapidly increasing distance between them was forcing him to shout. “Adelia, you’re my investigator into the dead, like it or not ...”

  All she could see now was the Plantagenet threeleopard pennant fluttering as the barge rounded a wooded bend, but the king’s voice carried cheerfully over its trees: “You’re never going to be safe.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Fair Rosamund Clifford holds a bigger place in legend than she does in historical records, which make only brief references to her, and I hope her shade does not haunt me for my fictional portrayal.

  The English Register of Godstow Nunnery, edited by Andrew Clarke and published by the Early English Text Society, shows that the abbey was both highly regarded and efficiently administered at this time. It was also broad-minded enough to bury the body of Henry II’s mistress, Rosamund Clifford, in front of the altar, where the tomb became a popular shrine. However, the great bishop, Hugh of Lincoln, though he had been a friend of Henry’s, was shocked to find it there when he visited the convent in 1191, two years after the king’s death, and ordered it to be disinterred and reburied somewhere less sacred in the convent grounds.

  Most of the rebellion of Henry II’s family took place on the continent but, since the nice thing for a novel writer is the gap in medieval records, I have dared to interpose one such rising in England, where we do know at least that some of his discontented barons were quick to join in Young Henry and Eleanor’s fight.

  Eleanor of Aquitaine survived the death of Henry and the imprisonment he imposed on her. In fact, she survived all her sons as well, except King John. In her seventies, she crossed the Pyrenees to arrange the marriage of a granddaughter, and suffered an abduction and, later, a siege. She died at the age of eighty-two and was laid to rest beside her husband and Richard the First, their son, in the Abbey of Fontevrault, where their effigies are still to be seen in its beautiful church.

  I make no apology for the way in which my characters go by water between Godstow and various places. The Thames around the island on which
the remains of the convent stand is navigable to a fair way farther up even now, and there is every likelihood that its tributaries have changed their courses over the years, and those of the Cherwell, now disappeared, provided better going than the lesser roads. As Professor W. G. Hoskins, the father of landscape archaeology, says in his Fieldwork to Local History (Faber and Faber), “In medieval and later times a large proportion of inland trade went by river, far more than has ever been generally realised.” Also, there are references to the Thames freezing during the very cold winters of the twelfth century.

  Incidentally, beavers were common in English rivers during the twelfth century. It was later, in the 1700s, that they were hunted to extinction for their fur.

  And, unlikely as it seems, opium was grown in the East Anglian fens, not only in the twelfth but in succeeding centuries—it is thought that the Romans brought the poppy to England, as they brought so much else. The tincture fen people called “Godfrey’s Cordial”—a mixture of opium and treacle—was still in use in the twentieth century.

  One by one, all of Henry’s sons turned against him, and he died at Chinon in 1189, probably from bowel cancer, knowing that his youngest and most loved, John, had joined the rebellion of the elder brother, Richard.

  I have given the manor of Wolvercote a fictitious lord for the purposes of this story; the real owner of the manor at this time was a Roger D’Ivri, and I have no evidence that D’Ivri was involved in any rebellion against Henry II, though it is interesting that, whether he wanted to or not, he later gave the manor to the king, who gave it to Godstow Abbey.

  The reference to paper as a writing material in chapter four may offend the general view that paper did not reach Europe, certainly northern Europe, until the fourteenth century. Granted, it wasn’t used much in the twelfth century—scribes and monkish writers were snobbish about it and preferred vellum—but it was around, though probably of poor quality. Viz the interesting article posted on the Internet: “Medieval Ink” by David Carvalho.

  The trick of getting out of a multicursal maze I owe to that lovely writer on landscape, Geoffrey Ashe, and his Labyrinth and Mazes, published by Wessex Books.