“Is the coffin of oak, do you know?”
“No, I don’t.” The king was becoming impatient.
If it was, and if her fenlanders were right, she might be able to gain a rough, very rough, idea of when the coffin had been interred, perhaps as long ago as Arthur’s time—and therefore beyond anybody’s knowledge as to whom it contained.
She considered. The king was assigning her a task that, for once, had no risk to it and would enable her, Mansur, Allie, and Gyltha to be sustained until she could decide what to do with the rest of her life.
Actually, Adelia was intrigued, not so much by the search for an ancient and mystical king—though that, too—but as to why a woman had been put to rest in a monastic graveyard.
“Very well,” she said. “I will try and ensure that the skeletons are old enough to be beyond identification, but further than that I cannot go. I will not say they are Arthur’s and Guinevere’s, because I doubt if anybody can. I won’t lie for you, Henry.”
“Or to me?”
She smiled at him. “Never that.”
“I know,” he said. “One of the few.” If Henry Plantagenet hadn’t been who he was, Adelia might have suspected that the sudden blur in the royal blue eyes came from tears.
He rallied. She was given a royal kiss on the cheek and a royal slap on the back. Robert the scribe was set to writing a warrant investing “my best beloved Lord Mansur and his interpreter, Mistress Adelia Aguilar” with almost enough power to raise an army and invade France.
But as always when he thought he was being overgenerous to her, the king made her pay for it.
“By the way,” he said, dangerously casual. “Glastonbury and the bishopric of Wells have always been at daggers drawn—and now Glastonbury is saying that Wells bribed some poacher to set the fire. If I don’t intervene, the Pope will—and I’m not putting up with an interfering Vatican. Bloody prelates, more trouble than they’re worth. I’m sending a peacemaker down to get both of the buggers to kneel to me and promise to be good.” The blue eyes became wicked. “Guess who the peacemaker’s going to be. Go on, guess.”
“The bishop of Saint Albans,” she said dully.
“The very same.” Henry, who had no more chastity than a tomcat, reveled in his favorite bishop’s sexual dilemma.
Don’t, she thought. Leave us alone; we have come to terms. Rowley must serve God, I must serve medicine, and the two are incompatible.
Not getting a rise out of her, Henry persisted. “I expect you’ll meet.”
“No, my lord,” she said, “we won’t.”
“Still keeping to his oath of chastity, is he?”
She didn’t answer, and he had to let her go.
On the way back up the staircase, she realized that neither she nor the king had consulted Mansur on an investigation in which, to all intents and purposes, he was to play the leading part. Not that there had been any choice in the matter—the king was the king.
“What is your opinion, my dear friend?”
“You answered wisely,” he said. “Truth is the salt of mankind; we cannot proffer sand.”
“I don’t intend to. But about the vision… ?”
“There are true visions,” Mansur said. “Did not Khadija, the Pure One, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon her, see an angel guarding the Prophet with its wings?”
“Did she?”
Then who was Adelia to doubt the testimony of a monk from Glastonbury and Mohammed’s first wife?
FIVE
THEY REINED IN their horses at a bridge outside the gates that led to Wolvercote Manor and stayed there for some minutes, looking beyond its lodge to the house.
Somerset had displayed richness of countryside and property from the moment they’d crossed its border but nothing, so far, quite as pleasing to the eye as this place in which Emma had said she intended to make her home. It was like coming upon Arcadia.
A rectangular house of yellow stone tucked among stables and barns and trees with the tower of a domestic church rising beyond jumbled roofs of tiny slates, its wide-mouthed, chevroned doorway and mullioned windows smiled out across a moat in which it was exactly reflected. Against the setting sun, pigeons exited and landed in the little arched entrances of a cote built in the shape of a pepper pot.
Whichever ancestral Norman built this, Adelia thought, had been a nicer person than its late owner—the unlamented Lord Wolvercote’s taste would have run to a spiky grandeur.
“Don’t know as I’d mind having that ol’ cottage if as they’d give it me,” Gyltha said.
Adelia agreed; usually, she didn’t care where she lived as long as it was clean and functional and safe, but the charm of Wolvercote inspired in her a sudden and unwonted envy of Emma for possessing it.
They had come here instead of going straight to Glastonbury, partly because the road from Wells, to which their route from Wales had led them first, practically passed the manor’s approach, but mostly because Adelia was impatient to see Emma and tell her of the happy coincidence that would make them neighbors for a while. Also, she wanted to check on Roetger’s heel. It was June now, and they’d said good-bye in May.
The sky remained cloudless, and in such fields as could be seen over fruiting hedges, brown-faced, sweating men and women were cutting hay, causing an itchy, sweet-smelling dust to join that sent up by horses’ hooves meeting the dried surface of the roads.
Anyway, it would be getting dark by the time the cavalcade could reach the Pilgrim Inn at Glastonbury, which, for all the luxury Henry Plantagenet claimed for it, could hardly provide the comfort to hot, dusty, hungry, and thirsty travelers that Emma would extend to them.
King Arthur, Adelia thought, could wait; he’d waited some six hundred years—another day here or there wouldn’t hurt him.
She nodded at Captain Bolt to lead the way over the bridge. So that she’d be safe on the journey, the king had given her a military escort of half a dozen men, which included a trumpeter to blow a fanfare announcing her coming wherever she went. She’d be arriving in style.
The gatekeeper of Wolvercote’s lodge was suitably impressed and, when Bolt ordered him to tell the lady of the house that the Lord Mansur, Mistress Adelia, and their train wished to be received, went scampering across the moat’s pretty little bridge with his instructions.
His manner on his return was constrained. Awkwardly, he announced, “My lady will be pleased to admit my lord Mansur and Mistress Adelia, but their escort must remain here.”
Odd, Adelia thought. Perhaps Emma was being careful and wanted to be sure that the soldiers were friendly.
The gatekeeper winced slightly as Adelia gestured to Gyltha, who had Allie bouncing in her horse’s pannier, to follow them; she wasn’t going to leave those two behind.
A steward with a wand of office bowed the four of them into a hall as pleasantly proportioned as the house’s exterior.
Here, sun came only in shafts through the high windows. The thick stone of the walls, which was so warm outside, cooled the air, giving the room the greenish tint of a rock pool. A lovely oak staircase and fireplace, the furniture, and the setts of a rush-free floor gleamed with the deep patina of a century’s careful polishing. Perhaps too many scarlet and silver Wolvercote battle flags, some of them tattered, hanging from the timber-and-plastered ceiling took away from the room’s peace, but, presumably, Emma hadn’t yet had time to get rid of them.
“My lady begs you to wait,” the steward said. “She is employed in the solar going over the accounts with her cellarer but will attend you shortly.”
Again, odd, very odd. The Emma of old would have come rushing downstairs to meet them. Surely she wasn’t still jealous?
Adelia gave Gyltha an interrogative look. Gyltha shrugged.
They were left alone. After about a quarter of an hour, the steward appeared with cups and a jug of cooled ale on a tray, begged them to refresh themselves, and left.
More minutes went by without Emma’s appearance, or an
ybody else’s. Allie employed her time by climbing on an oak settle and jumping off it. There was no sign that another child was in the house; the only sound was the swish of a blade as somebody outside was cutting the grass.
Adelia became cross; this was deliberate rudeness. She went to the stairs to go up them, but at that moment a door at the top opened. A man with an apron came hurrying down, a ledger under his arm, doffed his cap to Adelia, and went out.
Another figure emerged onto the landing above. “Yes?” asked a female voice.
Adelia gave a brief bow and introduced herself and her companions. “Since the lord Mansur speaks little English, I am his interpreter, mistress,” she said. “We are here to see Lady Wolvercote.”
“I am Lady Wolvercote.”
“Ah.” This was the mother-in-law, then—a somewhat younger, well-dressed, and very much more formidable figure than the doting grandmother who’d taken shape in Adelia’s optimistic mind. Emma herself must be out somewhere.
That the woman coming down the stairs was mother to the rebellious murderer Henry had hanged, there was no doubt. She was nearly as tall, with the same imperious, handsome features. Dark eyes exactly like those of the man who had once dubbed Adelia a witch looked down at her now, and with something of the same distaste.
Adelia remembered that though Emma had never met her husband’s mother, she’d been impressed by her Norman ancestry, which went back to long before the Conquest. “She’s descended from Rollo the Ganger,” Emma had said admiringly.
Adelia hadn’t seen what was wonderful about descent from a Viking who had harried and pillaged Normandy until it was surrendered to him, but Emma, being the child of a tradesman, though a rich one, set store by noble heredity and seemed to think it added value to young Pippy’s descent, especially as it came down to him via the female line and not by way of his hated father’s.
This woman set store by it, too. Her look made Adelia conscious of the clothing she herself had managed to acquire on the journey—certainly better than that of the Welsh chieftain’s wife but still of very ordinary quality. However, she said politely, “I address the dowager Lady Wolvercote, do I?”
“You do not. I am the Lady Wolvercote. There is no other.”
“I mean your daughter-in-law, lady.”
“My daughter-in-law died five years ago.”
That was partly true, of course; Wolvercote had been previously married before forcibly wedding Emma, though the wife had died without bearing him any children.
Oh, dear, was this woman, too, going to oppose Emma’s claim to the manor? God prevent there having to be another trial by combat.
“I mean Emma, Lady Wolvercote,” Adelia persisted.
“I know of no such person.”
Adelia tried to be patient; the woman still wore mourning for her son, though her black silk bliaut allowed a scarlet underdress to peep through at the neck and skirt, echoing the colors of the Wolvercote battle flags.
“She sent you a letter … a sweet letter, I saw it … from Aylesbury. To say she would be coming.”
Lady Wolvercote inclined her head. “A letter arrived a while ago from a creature claiming to be my son’s wife—some whore, no doubt, trying to extract money.”
“No,” Adelia said, quietly, “she was not. She was bringing your grandson to meet you.”
“Then she would have wasted her breath. I receive no bastards in this house.”
The woman used the words “whore” and “bastard” without anger, as if she was merely stating facts. At no point did her expression change to wrinkle the excellent skin of her pale face, nor did her bejeweled folded hands make any gesture; her voice was as level as if she was giving everyday instructions to a servant. It was like exchanging remarks with a speaking statue. When she turned her head to look at Allie, who was making another attempt on the settle, Gyltha hurried forward in rescue, as if afraid the gaze would petrify the child into stone.
“Are you telling me that you didn’t receive her?” Adelia asked. “When was this?”
“Am I not making myself clear?” Lady Wolvercote said. “There has been no encounter between me and the female you mention.”
“She didn’t come? Didn’t arrive at all?”
“I have said so.”
“Then where is she?”
“I do not know,” Lady Wolvercote said. “Nor do I care.” She went to a table and rang the small brass bell that stood on it.
Immediately, the steward was in the room. “My lady?”
“Take these people to the kitchen, John. See they receive the usual sustenance before they go. Also, you may carry food and ale to the creatures at the gate, but do not allow them inside—I will have none of the Plantagenet’s rabble in this house.”
She turned to go.
This was frightening. “But … but she must have turned up,” Adelia said in desperation. “She was on her way here. Where is she?”
The only answer was the brisk tap of Lady Wolvercote’s shoes on the risers of the staircase as she went up them.
As the door of the solar shut quietly behind its mistress, the steward stepped forward. “If you would come this way …”
“To the kitchen?” Gyltha shouted at him, as if she was above such places. “We ain’t coming to no bloody kitchen. You can stuff—”
Adelia put out a hand to stop the inevitable invective; though deeply disturbed, she was trying to keep her head. “We would be grateful for a supper before we go,” she told the steward meekly, “and so would our men.”
As they followed the steward, Gyltha gave her a look worthy of the gorgon who’d just left them. “You toleratin’ this?”
“Yes. We may learn something.” The servants were likely to know what had happened. Refused entry, Emma would not have gone quietly; people must have heard the argument—that encounter between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law would have been a case of Greek meeting Greek, the only trouble being that the marble-faced Greek upstairs had the advantage of possession.
As they were led through the hall’s serving door and across a courtyard, Adelia asked Mansur quietly in Arabic, “What do you think happened?”
“A coldhearted bint that one, but why should she lie?”
That was what was so worrying: If Lady Wolvercote had thrown Emma out of her house, she would not, Adelia felt, have had any compunction in saying so. In which case, Emma had not reached Wolvercote Manor at all. It might be that she had delayed her visit for some reason—but for a month? Or, and this was the worst possible explanation, she and the others had been attacked somewhere on the road to Wells.
However shaming it was to be fed in the kitchen like a beggar, it would be an opportunity to ask questions, and Adelia was prepared to suffer humiliation if she could find out what had happened to her friends.
They crossed a courtyard to a square, pretty building in the same stone as the house and with an octagonal roof. The heat coming out of its open door was nearly enough to send its visitors teetering backward.
“Perhaps you would prefer to sit on the lawn and eat,” the steward suggested.
Gyltha said with energy that she would prefer to eat with the soldiers at the gate and marched off, pulling Allie along with her.
Adelia and Mansur braved the kitchen. A single aperture near the roof allowed more smoke out than light in, leaving two fires set into the walls to illuminate a scene like Vulcan’s forge. A man stripped to the waist, his skin gleaming with sweat, retrieved rounded loaves from an oven with the aid of an enormous spatula. Other figures were setting a table in the center of the room with a surprisingly dainty collation of carved chicken and ham, flaked trout, preserves, scones, butter, and honey.
A pewter jug held wine, another ale, but when Mansur shook his head at both and Adelia explained that alcohol was unacceptable to his religion, one of the servants was dispatched to fetch cooled barley water from a cellar.
Obviously, the immutable law of hospitality to travelers, however base, was one t
he descendant of Rollo the Ganger had trained her staff not to break. Which in itself was concerning because if Emma and her party had arrived on the Wolvercote threshold, the people in this kitchen would have known about it—and they didn’t.
Or they said they didn’t.
Adelia questioned them as a group and then individually. “Have you heard of or seen a lady traveling with attendants in the area? She is young and fair and has a two-year-old child with her. Did she come here?”
She was competing for their attention with Mansur, whose robe and kaffiyeh with its golden-roped agal around his head seemed to engross and almost frighten them, as if an angel or demon had sprung through the door. The brilliant whiteness of his clothes—how he kept them so clean while traveling, Adelia had never fathomed—was always noticeable, but in ports like Cambridge where the occasional Arab trader came and went, his appearance did not excite quite so much curiosity. Here in the depths of the country, they had never seen anything like him.
“A lady,” Adelia reiterated, “with a child. In a traveling cart. Horses, maids, grooms, a priest.”
For a moment, the man shoveling the loaves swiveled around to look at her and she went expectantly toward him, but he shook his head and turned back to his bread.
No, no, they had seen nobody like that. The boy turning a spit crossed his fingers while making his denial, and a maid was taken with hysterical giggles, but these responses Adelia, again, had to attribute to Mansur’s presence. She gave up.
She tried questioning the steward when he led the two of them to the gates. He shook his head. “No, mistress, we have received no one of that description.”
“I didn’t ask if she was received, I want to know if she came here.”
“No, mistress, I’m sorry.”
Yet there was something… .
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