A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

by Ariana Franklin

  “We don’t know which damned vessel Scarry’s on, if he’s on any,” he said. “We had to divide the household between three crafts. Most of the servants along with the horses are in my biggest cog, The Trinité, which set out at the same time as the Nostre Dame that’s got Richard aboard. Scarry could be on either, but he could be skulking aboard the Saint Patrick, in which case I’ll be too busy keeping an eye on wind and weather to see what he’s up to. For all any of us know, we’re taking our goose into the fox’s lair, as my old granny used to say.”

  He looked straight at Adelia. “You be afraid, now. Fear keeps you on the qui vive.”

  There was no sentiment in the way he said it, no fond glance; he could have been talking about a breakable piece of cargo that needed careful stowing in his ship’s hold. His declaration of love might never have been made, but it placed a burden on her, as it does on those who cannot love in return.

  If it hadn’t been that she’d met Rowley first, she could have loved this man, she thought. Bold, confident, amused and amusing, and, hidden beneath it all, an infinite kindness.

  But as he’d said, one had as little control over one’s heart as over the rise and fall of the sun-and she’d given hers to somebody else.

  She had kept faith with him and told nobody about what he’d said, not even Fabrisse, though, she realized now, the woman had known all along.

  Dear God, but she would miss Fabrisse, who had become her twin. When it was time for the two of them to say good-bye, they clung to each other, rendered almost inarticulate by a parting that would inevitably be permanent.

  At last Adelia tore herself away. “I owe you so much… I can’t…”

  “Don’t.” Fabrisse wiped away tears. “To me, you have been… I will never find…”

  “Fabrisse, take care, take care.”

  “You are the one… you take care.”

  Yet, as the hopeful, yelping seagulls following their boat dotted Adelia’s view of the diminishing figure waving energetically from the castle seawall, it seemed to Adelia that the woman in greatest danger was not herself but the one who defied the Church by her loving shelter of Cathars. For a second, a bonfire flared in Adelia’s mind, and the person amidst its flames was not Ermengarde, but the Dowager Countess of Caronne.

  ON BOARD THE ST. PATRICK, Captain Bolt had been chafing badly at the absence of a princess he’d been ordered to protect and spat hard words at the O’Donnell for taking her away. Pleased as he was to see Adelia, his anger made him unapproachable and it wasn’t until a day or two later, when he’d calmed down somewhat, that she could tell him of Rankin’s defection.

  That didn’t please him, either. “Happy, is he? He’s no right to be happy, bloody deserter.”

  In fact, the reception to Adelia and the others was cold. The only welcome was to the princess. Even this, though made to appear ecstatic, was overdone, for underlying it was resentment that she had been content to recuperate among magicians and foreigners rather than insist on being returned to her own dear household.

  Joanna’s nurse’s reception was the most honest: “You naughty little widdershin, you. Why’n’t you take me along? What they been a-doing to you, so pale as you are. Still and all, my honeypot, you’re alive and that’s a mercy o’ God.”

  Blanche’s greeting from her two fellow ladies-in-waiting was chilly; she had broken ranks, not consulted, preferred a Saracen and a witch to the orthodoxy of Queen Eleanor’s own choice of physician.

  What they would say if and when they saw the scar on Joanna’s abdomen, Adelia didn’t like to think.

  The Bishop of Winchester lectured Blanche and the O’Donnell for their temerity in kidnapping the princess. In view of Joanna’s good spirits, his chiding was unheated, but it was noticeable that he did not include the names of Mansur and Adelia in his prayers of thanksgiving for his charge’s safe return.

  Father Guy took their reappearance hard and refused to speak to them.

  Dr. Arnulf tried squirming his way back into royal favor. An unfortunate episode, but one he was prepared to overlook; however, had the dear princess stayed under his supervision, she would not be so pallid nor show that slight stiffness when she walked.

  Joanna was having none of it. She owed her life to Adelia and knew it, though she upheld the fiction that it was to Lord Mansur to whom her recovery should be attributed. Both had to be treated with honor in her presence. Mistress Adelia was even promoted to sharing the royal cabin-and, yes, the dog with her. (Ward, like her new friend, Ulf, made Joanna laugh.)

  The fact of the scar seemed to concern the princess not at all. Perhaps she thought it would never be seen; nudity was infra dig for noble-women; they usually wore a light shift even in the bath. Adelia was afraid that the girl didn’t realize she would have to strip naked in front of her husband, or even if she was fully aware of the sexual side of marriage.

  And when would that be imposed on her? What sort of man was William of Sicily?

  When the nurse Edeva, in a rare burst of confidence, confessed to Adelia that she had never seen “my lambkin so blithe as aboard this here ship,” Adelia hoped that this time spent on board the St. Patrick wouldn’t turn out to be the most carefree of Joanna’s life.

  It was a cold voyage but one made under a clear sky. The O’Donnell took advantage of a bitter northerly wind and crammed on all sail, sending St. Patrick bowling along at a rate which was fast but which, now that Joanna and the others had gained their sea legs, upset nobody’s stomach. For Adelia, there was a reassuring sense of freedom that convinced her Scarry was not on board.

  She spent what time she could on the quarterdeck with Mansur and Ulf, watching Italy go by and wondering whether the traffic on the coast roads that she could see in the distance included one particular rider heading for Sicily.

  After two days, her captain took pity on her. “If it’s Saint Albans you’re looking for, he’ll be long farther south by now.”

  “If he hasn’t been held up in Lombardy,” she said, adding uncomfortably”

  “Ah, now, a little thing like international relations shouldn’t stop him from keeping an appointment with you in Palermo.” The Irishman’s mouth twisted. “It wouldn’t stop me.”

  Adelia winced. She said quickly: “Will we catch up with Duke Richard?”

  “Overtake him, at this rate. Nostre Dame’s not got the speed of Saint Patrick. The Dame’s a lumberer, and she needs to set in for forage and water from time to time, so I had to allocate Locusta to her captain for his advice on the friendliest ports.”

  Somebody else was missing from St. Patrick’s complement. “It was an odd thing,” the O‘Donnell said, “but embarking at Saint Gilles, our good chaplain, Father Adalburt, who is not the idiot he looks, was taken by a sudden determination to sail on Nostre Dame with Duke Richard. Now why would the man desert his princess and bishop like that, d’ye think?”

  Adelia shrugged. “I suppose Richard’s religious views accord more closely with his own.”

  “‘F you ask me,” Ulf cut in, gloomily, “he reckons he’s got better prospects under the duke. He can go crusadin’ with him. He’ll probably end up Bishop of Jerusalem.”

  “God help the Holy Places,” O’Donnell said, and Adelia laughed.

  The Irishman had a thought and turned to Ulf. “A wooden cross, was it?” He used his hands. “So big by so big?”

  “Yes.” Ulf had never left off bewailing the taking of his cross; not just because he was afraid to face Henry II and tell him he’d lost it-though he was-but because he was tortured by the thought of great Arthur’s Excalibur in dirty hands.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” O’Donnell said, “I’ve not remembered until now, but I saw a wooden cross being taken aboard Nostre Dame at Saint Gilles. I remarked it because it was so rough a thing, not at all like the jeweled crucifixes that went on with it.”

  Ulf’s hands clenched. “Who was carrying it?”

  The Irishman shrugged. “One of the crew, I think.”
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br />   Ulf looked at Adelia. “Scarry I told you, I told you, that was Scarry in the cowshed.”

  “Dear God. I’m sorry, my dear, so sorry”

  “What’re you sorry for? You said Richard’d want it and now he’s got it, that murdering bastard’s sold it to him.”

  The St. Patrick yawed slightly and the O’Donnell went aft to shout at his tillerman to keep his eye on the wind.

  “What’re we going to do?” Ulf demanded.

  “I don’t know. Nothing we can do.” Except despair at the perfidy of men in their lust for power.

  EVERYBODY WAS ON DECK to stare at Vesuvius on the evening that they sailed past the Bay of Naples. The volcano looked flat-topped and disappointingly undistinguished.

  Father Guy took the opportunity for an extempore sermon, explaining that the eruption that Pliny the Younger described had been God’s punishment on Pompeii’s and Herculaneum’s citizens for their wickedness in not being Christians. “Just as our Lord destroyed the Cities of the Plains.”

  Joanna interrupted him. “Mistress Adelia was found on the slopes of Vesuvius, weren’t you, ‘Delia?”

  “I was.”

  “How romantic,” Lady Petronilla said, acidly “Like baby Moses in his basket. Only drier.”

  “So if we miss Sicily and sail into Egypt, we’ve got somebody to lead us out of it,” said Lady Beatrix.

  It was getting chilly. Everybody except Adelia and the watchful Mansur deserted the quarterdeck for the warmth of the lower deck.

  We’ll be passing Salerno soon. Past the two best people in the world. I don’t even know if they’re still alive. Dear Lord, let them be alive so that, perhaps, on the way back, I may see them again.

  A hand touched her shoulder, making her jump.

  It was Blanche. “We’re only days from Sicily. What are we going to do? Mother of God, what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Adelia told her. “But I was just thinking about my foster father. Some years ago, he was called to Palermo to attend on King William. He’s a great doctor, you see.”

  “William?”

  “My foster father.”

  “And he cured the king? What of?”

  “I didn’t ask. He wouldn’t have told me, a patient’s complaint is confidential.”

  Blanche was stuttering with hope. “Perhaps… perhaps he took a worm thing out of William as well. Do you think the king’s got a scar like Joanna’s?”

  “I have no idea. Probably not.”

  “Your father might have influence with the king, he could plead with him for Joanna’s sake.”

  Adelia was irritated. “Why should anyone plead for her? William’s lucky-he’s getting a sweet-tempered bride instead of a dead one.”

  But Blanche had seen a life raft in what she was certain would be the wreckage of Joanna’s marriage. Within minutes, she was begging the O’Donnell to put the St. Patrick into Salerno and haul Dr. Gershom aboard.

  Impatient though he was with any further delay, the Irishman agreed, mainly because of Adelia’s joy at the thought of seeing her parents so soon.

  It was not to be. As the St. Patrick rounded Punta Campanella, the wind of a typical Mediterranean storm veered them helplessly westward. By the time it released its grip and returned to its former direction, St. Patrick’s position was due north of Sicily and the ship could only make a straight run to the port of Cefalù.

  It was there that Princess Joanna asked for the assurance that Adelia would put off the return to England long enough to see her married. “Promise me. Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  IN THE DARK hold of the Nostre Dame, an exchange is made between Scarry and Duke Richard’s secretary; a rough wooden cross for a purse of gold.

  But the duke is not as pleased as he should be and summons Scarry to him. “They say you are ill.”

  “No, my lord. It is merely that being at sea does not agree with me. I am well enough.” And indeed Scarry does feel better than he did, though every now and then, when he is alone, he unscrews his head in order to relieve it.

  “They say you talk to yourself.”

  “Not to myself, my lord, I pray to my God.”

  For, truly, he does pray to Satan. And, to Wolf, he has to give constant reassurance: “she will be in Sicily. There she was ordered, and there she shall die.”

  Sometimes Wolf believes him and sometimes he doesn’t, which is when their arguments attract attention.

  “It is good to talk to the Almighty,” the duke said. “But see to yourself, you are covered in grime. I have no use for the deranged.”

  Scarry, who has moments of wonderful clarity, knows in that moment that Richard has forgotten the service that he, Scarry, who is now expendable, has rendered him. Scarry knows that the duke believes the sword has been willed miraculously to him, as if God’s arm has pierced the clouds with it and put it into his hand to be used for God’s almighty purpose.

  “who does that bastard talk to?” Wolf wants to know as the duke walks away.

  “The wrong deity,” Scarry tells him.

  Thirteen

  ADELIA, MANSUR, ULF, and Boggart, carrying her baby, stood hidden amongst the crowd on the road to Palermo’s gates to see Joanna ride up to the capital of her new kingdom to be received by her bridegroom and rank upon rank of Sicilian ambassadors and clergy in peacock robes.

  She was accompanied by Richard, whose height made her look even smaller than she was. Ulf peered for Excalibur, but whatever sword was in Richard’s bejeweled scabbard, it wasn’t King Arthur’s.

  For once, everybody’s eye was on the princess, not her brother. The ladies-in-waiting had dressed her in pearl-encrusted gold, a diadem encircled the long fair hair, her head was held high on its little neck, and she was smiling.

  Watching her go past, Adelia could have cried; so brave, so tiny. As Ulf said-with tears in his own eyes-“These bastards better be good to her.”

  It looked as if they would be; the people standing twelve deep along Joanna’s route shouted huzzahs and blessings to their new queen, scattering bay leaves for her white palfrey’s gilded hooves to tread on.

  Ahead of her went the trumpeters, all shining, flag-bedecked silver. Behind rode Petronilla and Beatrix, pretty and laughing, and Blanche, also pretty, but with the strain showing; then the Bishop of Winchester and the chaplains.

  Then the O’Donnell in Arabic robe and face-enfolding white headdress, the traditional garb for an admiral of Sicily, an honor that had been given him for his services to the country.

  Then gleaming knights with spears, their horses with scalloped scarlet reins and saddles, and behind them Captain Bolt, his men in Plantagenet uniform with the brass-bound treasure chests.

  England was doing its princess proud.

  Then they’d gone. A curve in the road to the gates, and the press of people, denied Adelia the view of Sicily’s king and whether the reception committee contained the Bishop of Saint Albans.

  If Rowley had arrived on the island, the O’Donnell had promised to contact him to say that she had, too, and was well. Which was good of the Irishman, though he took no pleasure in it.

  “Where will you be staying? Out of sight, I hope.”

  “My foster father has a house he keeps for his visits to Palermo. In the Jewish Quarter by the Harat al-Yahud.” It was a joy to say it. “We’ll stay there until the wedding.”

  “Make sure you do.”

  He’d arranged for Adelia, Boggart, Mansur, and Ulf to disembark from the St. Patrick, with Deniz accompanying them to act as go-between, before anyone else. “And see you’re veiled if you venture out.”

  As they gained the teeming streets of Palermo, their ears were deafened by the noise of four different languages-all of them ofncial-being screamed at once; their eyeballs were assaulted by clashes of violent color; their nostrils shriveled under an onslaught of every kind of stink mixing with every kind of perfume; they had to dodge peddlers trying to sell them sugared almonds and ribbo
ns, and prostitutes of both sexes wanting to sell something else. They had to get out of the way of trains of mules and donkeys carrying spices from the East or building materials from the North, resist the call of traders from their shops in the arched walkways, make sure that the purses the O’Donnell had provided them with weren’t cut from their belts…

  For Adelia, it was magical. “Look, look. See that ruined temple? It’s Greek. My father said that Archimedes taught there when he wasn’t in Syracuse… And that building’s the Exchange, and down there’s the Street of the Scent-makers-just sniff… And the mill over there, can you see it? That’s where they make paper… Stop a minute, I must buy some cassata, you’ll love it, Boggart. It’s an Arab cake; Mansur calls it Qas’at… And sciarbat-Lord, I hope old Abdalla still sells it-he makes it from fruit chilled by mountain snow…”

  She was a child again, on a visit with her parents to a sanctuary of marvels. She’d thought then that every capital city must be like this one; now she knew that Palermo was the most brilliant, prosperous metropolis in the world, unique.

  Even so, she was entering the past through a different gate; she was Odysseus succumbing to the song of the Sirens, not returning to Ithaca. This could truly be home only if Allie and Gyltha were to join her and Mansur in it.

  The Arab, like a man long parched of water, disappeared to say his prayers in the first mosque vouchsafed to him since he and Adelia had set off for England.

  As they waited for him, Boggart, clutching Donnell, saw her first camel train: “What-a mercy is them things? Lord bless me that I should see hillocks on the move.”

  But, marvel though they did, it was the sheer heterogeneity of the city that soothed the souls of the four former prisoners of Aveyron, who’d seen what intolerance could do.

  Sometimes, savoring the moment, they stopped to watch those who would be mortal enemies elsewhere walking together in reasoned argument; they saw a fellow with a cross on his tunic-thus showing that he was on his way to the Levant to kill Saracens-bemusedly asking for directions from an Arab; a skullcapped Jew chatting with a tonsured monk; the high hat of a Greek Orthodox priest wobbling at a joke told him by a Norman knight.