A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

by Ariana Franklin

  “Oh, dear.” Adelia put the pilgrim’s boot back on with the instruction to keep the area between his toes clean and, above all, dry

  “I have reprimanded her.”

  “In English? Now this is a tincture of myrrh and marigold. No, you don’t drink it, you apply it to the affected skin twice a day”

  “I used sign language,” Mansur told her.

  “Oh, dear.”

  “It is time to complain of that fat camel to the bishop. She used sign language back. It was not polite.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  As they rode back up the line, Brune was waiting for them. She’d got down from her cart to stand in the middle of the road, red-faced, arms akimbo, with an expectant group of fellow servants round her.

  “You, mistress,” she shouted at Adelia. “Yes, you. I got a bone to pick with you.” She turned dramatically to her audience while pointing at Adelia. “Know what she done? She only sends that big heathen to complain about her laundry, that’s what she done. Babbling away in that squeak of his, he was, shakin’ his black finger at me like I was dirt. Well, I ain’t putting up with it, not from them as don’t believe in our Lord Savior.”

  It went on and on, an outpouring of righteousness that Adelia, taken aback, could see had been in preparation for some time. Brune was enjoying it.

  Adelia’s friend Martin tried to intervene. “All right, missus, that’s enough…”

  But the laundress was being carried away by her own oratory. Sweeping the groom aside, she raised her tirade’s volume to make sure that the growing crowd could hear her. “I’m on the side of our dear Jesus, I am, my lord, and them as is spitting on his blessed cross in the Holy Land can do their own laundry, even if I’m martyred for it.”

  “What’s this now?” Attracted by the rumpus, Admiral O’Donnell had come up unnoticed.

  Brune turned to him. “I maybe a common washerwoman, my lord, but Queen Eleanor used to say as my soul was as clean as my washing. ‘You speak out for the Lord, good Brune,’ she used to say…”

  “Ah, you’re a fine doorful of a woman, Mistress Brune, but if it’s a saying you want, I’ll give you one of my old granny’s back in Ireland: ‘Spite never speaks well.”’

  With that he picked the laundress up like a sack and threw her back in her cart. He dusted his hands and turned to the crowd: “And here’s another one for ye: ‘For what can be expected from a sow but a grunt?”’

  IN THE ENSUING cheers and boos, for the head laundress is popular with some but not others, Scarry rides off, his head turned away to hide his gratitude for the fat plum that Lucifer has, again, dropped so lusciously into his palms.

  “Your God go with you, Mistress Brune. May you rest in peace.”

  Seven

  ADELIA ALWAYS THOUGHT she would have got on well with Poitiers’s first bishop despite the eight centuries that separated them. An independent thinker, most literate and forbearing of early saints, he’d had a wife and daughter-those being the days when the priesthood had been allowed to marry.

  Also, she thought, anybody who, on converting to Christianity, had chosen the baptismal name of Hilarius must have been fun to meet.

  As she rode close behind the princess’s carriage, it was possible to believe that the city had never lost the good nature that Saint Hilarius, or Saint Hilaire as they called him now, had bequeathed it. Bells rang a welcome. The waving crowds lining the slopes of winding streets to see Joanna go past showed real joy at her return to her mother’s people. She was their princess. From the overhanging windows, dried rose petals and affection came scattering down on the girl familiar to Poitiers since she was a baby

  They were to spend a week here and, desperate to hurry on to Sicily and get back though Adelia was, she couldn’t but be glad of it. Humans and animals were becoming irritable with fatigue; they needed a rest.

  As they emerged onto the plateau on which stood the heart of Poitiers, she heard Joanna give the appreciative moan of someone who’d come home. White stone towers and frontages were pinkish ochre in an evening sun that was turning the water of the encircling rivers some 130 feet below into calm, willow-draped coils of amethyst.

  Adelia felt a pang for the exiled, imprisoned woman whose favorite seat this had been and who’d so indelibly set her mark on it. For who but Eleanor could have had ordered the trees in the open spaces to still be so pretty in late autumn or set up playing fountains of nude figures that would have scandalized her first husband, the pious Louis? And, though the cathedral she and Henry had begun wasn’t finished, its frontage was already a miracle of carving that told the Bible story, and it must have been Eleanor’s influence that included in it a baby Jesus in what looked like his bath watched over by sheep.

  Only a few miles away, in A.D. 732, Charles Martel, Duke of the Franks, had turned back the Islamic tide that was sweeping the Frankish kingdom and saved it from Moslem conquest-a turning point for Europe of which Poitiers was proud and which, Adelia feared, might cause Mansur’s presence in the city to be regarded as an offense, especially among unsophisticates like the head laundress and Joanna’s nurse, who would lose no time in broadcasting it.

  Unlike the Young King, Richard Plantagenet hadn’t rushed to meet his sister; he was not, as Adelia saw at a glance, an impulsive youth.

  He stood at the doors of Eleanor’s palace like a colossus, taller than and as splendid as Young Henry but weightier, both physically and mentally and dressed in gold.

  The brothers did not get on. They had combined in the revolt against their father, but when the three of them made peace and Henry II had ordered the elder to go and help Richard put down the Aquitanian rebels, the Young King had deserted the fight and gone off to take part in more tournaments.

  Just looking at Richard now, Adelia knew that if it ever came to open war between them, the younger would win.

  After bowed to Joanna and kissed her hand, his deep voice rang over the courtyard: “Here is my beloved sister, princess of my blood. Who befriends her is my friend; who harms her shall feel the might of my fist.”

  Unnecessary, Adelia thought. Who would harm that child?

  Joanna, however, gazed up at her brother in adoration as, with her fingertips on his, she was led into a hall as big and as impressive as any Adelia had ever seen.

  The feast held in it that night also reflected Eleanor’s taste-it certainly wouldn’t have been Henry’s.

  Every course was elaborate; not a boar head without its tusks and an apple in its mouth, not a peacock without its fanned tail, nor an oyster without its faux pearl-yet the food was of a freshness suggesting that everything had been alive or growing yesterday in this richest of all countrysides. Youthful knights far outnumbered the women guests, which, again, would have suited Eleanor, who liked male admiration, especially from the young.

  Her son did, too, it seemed. Though the women he knew well, such as Lady Beatrix, Lady Petronilla, and Mistress Blanche, were being accorded the honor of sitting with him at the top table, as were the bishops of Winchester and Saint Albans, the handsome Locusta, whose lack of position and a title hardly merited it, was with them, and looking somewhat uncomfortable at being so singled out.

  But then, Adelia thought, perhaps Richard wants to discuss with him the plans for the rest of their journey to Sicily.

  Or was it that? When the duke addressed the ladies, which he did charmingly enough, his eyes were dull. When chaffing with his knights, or in conversation with Locusta, or accepting a dish from his kneeling page-a slim, beautiful lad-his whole face became refreshed.

  Sitting in her unexalted place in the middle of one of the long tables below the dais, Adelia’s glance met her lover’s. She raised her eyebrows in interrogation.

  He gave back the merest twitch of his head. I thínk so.

  For a moment the intimacy of understanding between the two of them was so sweet she could think of nothing else. Again, she asked herself: Why didn’t I accept him when he offered? Fool, you fool, look at us n
ow.

  She got herself under control and turned her mind back toward Aquitaine’s princely duke. If she and Rowleywere right, how dreadful for the young man. In the world’s eyes, not just a sin but a crime; to be something nobody wanted him to be, not even himself. Perhaps, then, the frenetic need to save his soul and placate his disapproving God could only be assuaged by taking up His banner and killing His enemies.

  His reception of Mansur had been as coldly courteous as it had been to her but, presumably not daring to offend his father, he had at least given the Arab a place at the feast as high as Dr. Arnulf’s.

  On their way to their beds, Adelia heard Lady Petronilla say to the other ladies-in-waiting, “My dears, now we are home.”

  IN THE CHILLY NIGHT, two men are walking and talking in the garden that was once Eleanor of Aquitaine’s. One of them has a massive shadow which sometimes blends into that of the other.

  “The sword is mine by right,” he says. He keeps his voice low but it is deep with authority. “Who else am I but Arthur’s heir? Who else will use it to defend our sweet and gracíous Lord from His enemies?”

  “I know where it is, and you shall have it by the time we reach Palermo, my lord,” says the other shadow. “For, indeed, you are its rightful owner. Without you, Christendom will be cast into darkness and the Holy Places lost forever. Your father refuses to raise it in their defense.”

  “You will refer to him as the king.” For all Richard’s hatred of his father, anything that diminished Henry Plantagenet’s royalty diminished his own.

  “The king of course,” says Scarry in apology. And then: “It is meet and right that you should have it, for if you could see the unworthiness of those to whom it has been entrusted, you would weep.”

  He pauses because there is a sob from beside him; Richard the Lionheart is weeping. He cries easily; often he cries in church.

  After a considerate wait, Scarry goes on: “To take it is to rescue it from another thousand years of oblivion.”

  In the darkness, Scarry inclines his head a little, listening to the echo of his own words issue into the October air. That was rather fine; didn’t sound like theft at all.

  He resumes: “When the time comes…” It is a euphemism for the death of Henry II; both men know it. “… when the time comes it shall be as if it were rediscovered. And this hand…” Another pause as the lesser shadow blends into the first while Scarry plops a kiss on the royal palm. “… and this hand, this blessed, blessed hand, may then raise Excalibur that heretics everywhere shall flee in confusion at the sight of it, back to the Pit from which they were raised.”

  “Yes,” Richard says. “Yes. It is meet and proper that this should be so. It is not demeaning that is done for the greater glory of God.”

  “It is not.” There is a cough of some delicacy as Scarry slides from the divine to the financial. “And… er… there have been expenses.”

  “You will be paid as promised. On delivery. Now leave me.”

  Bowing, Scarry leaves and, looking back, sees that the colossus has fallen to its knees and its clasped hands are raised high in supplication for… what? Absolution? Removal of the thorn that so torments its poor flesh?

  “You’re praying to the wrong master, idiot,” Scarry says quietly, and disappears into the blackness from which he has come.

  EVEN THOUGH it was cold at night, these October days in Aquitaine were warm, and Joanna dived into her old haunts, a child again, scuffling through the autumn leaves as she played ball and blind man’s buff with those of her own age, obviously as healthy as a ferret, leaving her doctors to their own devices.

  There were creature comforts: enough bedrooms to give Adelia one of her own, to be shared only with Boggart and Ward-and, oh joy it had a garderobe in it. There was a ladies’ bathing place with a marbled, sunken bath twenty feet long. Every side table contained fruit and sweetmeats.

  With it all, there was an alteration of sound. The Aquitanians amongst the wedding train had immediately reverted to their native tongue, the langue d’oc, so that the air of the palace echoed with it as if a breeze had wafted in from another, more exotic continent. It varied so much from the Norman French she was used to that Adelia, who soaked up languages like sand absorbs water, had difficulty with it at first but then, recalling her visits to the Occitan valleys of Italy, where the people spoke a patois version, was soon able to get her tongue round it and, when in church, to join the others in the Occitan version of the Paternoster-“Paíre de Cel, Paire nòstre, sanctificat lo teu Nom”-like a true Languedocienne.

  However, the magic of the langue d’oc was not to be found in ecclesiastical chant but when it sang of love of woman. Draped over balustrades, leaning against statues, sighing, singing to their lutes and viols, were young nobles in whom Eleanor had inspired the tradition of courtly love. Any pretty noble lady would do; the thing was to adore her without hope of consummation.

  Wherever they went, a flock of young men surrounded Lady Beatrix, Lady Petronilla, and Mistress Blanche like brightly colored birds around a spillage of corn.

  Adelia, to her surprise, attracted a trouvère of her own, at least ten years younger than she was. She wondered if Sir Guillaume was too immature, too temporarily infatuated, or too stupid to realize that she was not of high birth and was in fact persona non grata amongst this newly arrived company or if, in this heady enchanted place, nobody had bothered to tell him.

  As she wandered the herb gardens, replenishing what stock from it she could, it was not unpleasant to be followed about by a youth who swore to the strum of a viol that he was wasting away for love of her.

  Rowley didn’t agree. He made a beeline for her. “And who’s that popinjay when he’s at home?”

  Bless him, he can still be jealous. How satisfactory.

  She said: “That’s Sir Guillaume de Chantonnay I think he sings rather well.”

  “Really? I’ve heard more tuneful corncrakes.” He stalked off.

  Practically the only person with whom Poitiers Palace did not agree was Father Guy He was outraged by the palace’s spiritual laxity in gambling. He loathed the singing that praised not God, but the female form. He saw damnation in the powder and paint, the low-cut dresses and trailing sleeves of the women-now ridiculously long-and in the short tunics that exposed the tightness of the hose over young men’s buttocks.

  He said so, volubly, and was further outraged that his fellow chaplain seemed delighted by all he saw. “Will you imperil your hope of Paradise?” he yelled at Father Adalburt when he caught him sitting up late with some of Richard’s knights at a game of Hazard.

  “But these worthy gentlemen asked me to join them,” Adalburt bleated.

  “Of course they did, you fool. You keep losing.”

  Adelia’s only regret was that she now had no contact with Ulf The pilgrims had been accommodated for the duration in a monastery just outside the city. However, it was nice to see more of Locusta, who, for now, could cease shuttling up and down between the voyagers and their nights’ stay

  “You should try and rest more often,” she told him. “You were beginning to look quite peaky.”

  Locusta grimaced. “It wasn’t rest I was after.” He looked to make sure he wasn’t overheard. “To be honest, mistress, there’s a lady in town whose acquaintance I was hoping to renew. She was very, um, hospitable to me when my uncle and I last passed through Poitiers, but the duke sees to it that I am kept in his company”

  He looked round again. “Between you and me, practicing sword fights and tilting at the quintain all day is neither my idea of rest nor entertainment.”

  Smiling, Adelia sympathized. “Perhaps my Lord Mansur should claim you tomorrow to show him the town’s pharmacists, and you could slip away.”

  “Mistress,” Locusta said. “He would have my eternal gratitude.”

  But it was Adelia who was to slip away…

  The next day Captain Bolt took her to one side. “You’ll be wanting somewhere to prepare your medic
ines and tinctures, mistress. There’s a nice little house down on the River Clain would suit you.”

  “Thank you, Captain, but I don’t need it.” The palace’s cook general had allowed her a space in one of his kitchens in return for her witch hazel potion to clear up his skin trouble.

  “Yes, you do, mistress,” Bolt insisted.

  “No, I…” She saw his eyes. “Ah, perhaps I do.”

  It was a very small, somewhat crumbling house, very drafty and damp; its lower floor was essentially a boathouse and the blue-painted shutters to its upper rooms opened out onto a creaking, curlicued little balcony overlooking a quiet and deserted section of the river. At the back there was an outhouse that served as a kitchen.

  To whom it belonged, Adelia never found out, but, for the purpose for which it was now intended, it was perfection-a boat could approach it unseen.

  Nevertheless, it posed a quandary which, suddenly embarrassed and not explaining matters at all well, she raised with Mansur.

  He went to the core of it immediately. “You wish to be alone there.”

  “Well, yes. In any case, as Lord Mansur you are too lofty to stay anywhere else except the palace, and for you and I to share such lowly accommodation would cause talk. But I don’t like leaving you here by yourself. Duke Richard doesn’t welcome you, for one thing, and, for another, you’re not supposed to understand what anyone says.”

  But, it appeared, the former easygoing dukes of Aquitaine had been more tolerant of other races and beliefs than the present one was, and had brought back with them Arabs, even Jews, from the East who’d proved to be useful servants and had since become an accepted part of its palace’s fabric, whether Richard liked it or not.

  “There is a scholar in the library here, old Bahir,” Mansur said. “He will keep me company, we shall play chess together. He translates Arabic texts so that the duke may learn more of Muhammad’s faithful before he goes to kill them.”