A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

by Ariana Franklin

  He lets drops of the usher’s blood drip from his knife onto the floor, then peers into the congregation below. It is merely a matter of waiting. She will be shown to him.

  IN THE ZIZA PALACE, Ward had been fed and watered-at arm’s length-by the servant Rafiq, and then shut in the Lady Adelia’s bedroom until she should return.

  For a while the dog slept, then began snuffling at the door which, when it opened to allow a servant to come in with a duster and horse-tail polish, he slithered out of, unseen. He was good at slithering, an art that he’d perfected at the Ziza, where dog-hating servants tended to give him a surreptitious kick if they saw him.

  Until he came to the entrance hall, he went unnoticed. Its great doors were open to allow fresh air through the hall’s tunnel vaulting and into the rest of the palace, though guarded by the scimitared sentries, men who, in Ward’s experience, were harder kickers than most.

  He made a dash for it and, hearing the shouts behind him, skirted the pool outside at a speed that left him panting as he gained the slope to the busy streets. There the stinks were delicious. Flattening and weaving to avoid the boots of passersby, Ward enjoyed them, forgetting Adelia and adding his own contribution.

  But now, ah, here was a scent he recognized; it wasn’t Adelia’s but one equally familiar and pleasing. The dog began the arduous job of detecting it from a thousand others so that he could trace it; sniffing, occasionally making a false cast, but finding it again, following the route that Mansur had taken to the cathedral.

  THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER was making the most of his allotted part in the wedding by droning Latin supplications at a length that matched the other Latin drones preceding his.

  The mass of bodies in the cathedral was producing a heat that had encouraged an usher to open its doors in the hope that fresh air might dispel the sleep overcoming most of the congregation.

  In fact, the only invigorating part of the ceremony so far had been when Duke Richard revealed the provenance of the sword he carried. He’d lacked grace in doing it but, adapting the words from the Book of Samuel with which the priest Ahimelech had given the sword of Goliath to David, he’d handed Henry of England’s gift to William and mumbled: “Ecce hic gladius Arturi regis. Behold, great king, I give you Excalibur.”

  The woman next to Adelia had grabbed at her with hennaed fingers: “Excalibur. Did he say Excalibur?”

  “Yes.”

  “Arthur is here, then. Arthur has come to us.” It was a susurration on every breath so that, for a moment, the very saints in their plaques seemed to whisper a name that would make Sicily invulnerable.

  Again, Adelia had looked for Ulf but, again, couldn’t see him.

  After that, the ceremony once more degenerated into ordeal by boredom, and Adelia wondered how Joanna and William were surviving it on their knees, knowing, God help them both, that it was to be succeeded by another immediately afterward when they moved to the palace’s shimmering Palatine Chapel for Joanna’s coronation.

  Adelia’s eyelids drooped and, being so tightly wedged between other women, she was able to doze standing up.

  She woke up when a clear voice said: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, take and wear this ring as a sign of my love and faithfulness.”

  They were exchanging rings. Joanna was married.

  Hopefully, Adelia looked to her left where the side door led to the cathedral’s cloister. Only a moment ago, it seemed, the afternoon winter had been shining through it; now it was diminishing into twilight. The day was nearly over.

  Not the ceremony, however; the congregation wasn’t to be released yet; not until Joanna and William had signed a register of their marriage.

  She felt a jab in the ribs from the lady next to her, whose temper, despite the joy of Excalibur, had not been improved by heat or overcrowding. “Is that you? Kindly control yourself.”

  Adelia, equally irritable, denied any lapse in good manners. But there was undoubtedly a sudden and awful smell. She looked down at her shoes to see that they were being rolled on by Ward in his pleasure at having discovered them. “I’m afraid it’s my dog.”

  “Then get rid of it before we all faint.”

  Adelia managed to reach down and gather Ward up. The chance of reaching the side door through her packed neighbors seemed remote, but, though they tutted and exclaimed behind their veils, a waft of Ward sent the ladies stepping back on one another’s feet in their eagerness to clear an exit for him.

  “You,” Adelia said, when she’d gained the cloister, “what am I going to do with you?”

  She pulled one of her long silk sleeves out of her cloak and knotted its end round the dog’s collar. If he wasn’t to infect the cathedral again, she would have to wait until the service inside was over and the others could rejoin her, which might well be another half hour or longer.

  The sky had turned gray at the onset of evening, with occasional gusts of wind that blew dust along the cloister; it would be a cold wait.

  It was then that she thought of the marionettes at the stall in La Kalsa’s piazza. She could now afford both the mule and the camel, probably the fighting men as well, though Allie would be less interested in them than the animals. This empty time was as good a moment to buy them as any; tomorrow might be taken up with other matters, seeing Rowley, going home, perhaps.

  Well, damned if she’d return to England without a present for her daughter. And La Kalsa wasn’t far away; she could be there and back in no time…

  THE SUDDEN DISTURBANCE among the female guests had drawn attention to a woman leaving the cathedral with a horrible-looking dog in her arms.

  On the men’s side of the nave, Mansur began struggling through impeding bodies to reach her, his flailing arms making a passage for Ulf and Dr. Gershom behind him.

  Up in the clerestory, behind their filigree screen, Dr. Lucia and Boggart, with Donnell in her arms, started up and headed for the stairs.

  The Irishman hadn’t seen Adelia go, but, alarmed by Mansur’s sudden movement, he began making his own way out.

  From his higher position in the choir, the Bishop of Saint Albans saw all this, and something more-the shadow of a figure with a knife in its hand slipping along the clerestory.

  I’ll never get to the side door in time.

  Go the front way and the hell with everything.

  Rowley charged out of his stall and began running, stripping off his cope as he went. He sent his miter spinning onto the altar steps, his jeweled crook of office still bouncing and clattering on the stones of the nave for some seconds after he’d disappeared out of the cathedral’s great front door, leaving a shocked and staring congregation behind him.

  THE MARIONETTE-MAKER, a fat and elderly bearded Greek, was being difficult. “Signora, the knights, yes, I have plenty of those, but of the beasts I have only the two my sons are manipulating this moment. They are a draw, a favorite with children, I cannot let those last two go until I have made more.”

  It was a ploy, of course. The damned man was going to put up the price; he’d seen her standing outside his booth before she came in, slavering over the dancing, kicking camel and mule; seen, too, that she was richly dressed, despite the unlovely dog to which her dangling sleeve was attached.

  The booth was basically a long, thin canvas tent and smelled of paint and wood shavings. At this end, directly behind the stage, the backsides of two younger men waggled as they leaned over its little proscenium arch, expertly working the strings of the puppets for the benefit of the openmouthed children and adults outside who watched them. At the other end, the tent’s flaps were pulled up to let in light on a long bench on which lay half-finished figures amidst a complexity of struts and string.

  Signor Feodor had sat her down when she’d entered, offered her a glass of sherbet, and got ready for the bargaining without which no sale in La Kalsa was complete.

  She sipped her drink: “How much, Signor?”

  “For the knights, a gold tari. For the anima
ls, two.”

  “Each?”

  He spread his hands. “What would you, Signora? The articulation to make them kick and bite is complex. Also, as I say, I am reluctant to let them go.”

  It was a ridiculous price. Normally, she’d have pretended to walk out of the shop, and he’d have called her back with a lower offer, and she’d have pretended to leave again, and he’d have called her back… but it would take time that she didn’t have-while he did.

  “Three tari for the lot,” she said.

  “You would ruin me, Signora? Five.”

  “Four.”

  “Four and a half, and I am a fool to myself.”

  “Done,” she said. “Wrap them up.”

  She’d surprised him; he’d have gone down to three and a half. He was on his feet in a second, tapping the son pulling the animals’ strings on his rump. “We have a sale, Eneas.”

  Because she’d overpaid, much grateful attention was given to parceling the puppets. She would be traveling far with them? Then they must be encased in wool to prevent damage. And the lucky recipient? A girl? Allow us to include a box of Greek delight for her…

  Ward was pulling at her sleeve and making the noise in his throat that indicated he’d smelled something or somebody he knew and liked. Still sitting with the glass in her hand, Adelia turned her head to peer through the narrow gaps in the calico ribbons that hung over the booth’s entrance to keep out flies.

  The piazza was beginning to celebrate its king’s wedding; flares were being lit, merchants were redoubling their efforts to sell plaster-cast depictions of a crowned bride and groom, drink stalls were doing a roaring trade, and, in the square’s center, a dais was being put together for a band to accompany the night’s dancing.

  “Who’ve you seen, you silly dog?”

  Then she saw who it was because his was the only figure in the piazza that was totally still. A man she knew was standing on the far side of the piazza under a fan-shaped palm tree, looking toward the booth, where the two remaining marionettes were still jouncing.

  He and she had traveled the same one thousand miles-much of it together.

  “Poor thing, he’s ill” was her first thought; his hair, which was capless, had been allowed to grow bushy, his robe was worn ragged, while his face had the fixity of suffering.

  Adelia got up to go and greet him. As she did it, the wind gusted, swaying the fronds of the man’s palm tree, raising his hair, and sending shade and light flickering over him as, once, they had flickered over a wild figure in the glade of a Somerset forest, striping his face as it had been striped then.

  The eyes gleamed when the light caught them, then went dark; they weren’t staring at the marionettes; it was the booth’s curtain strips. When the same gust of wind that had revealed him blew them aside to reveal her, he smiled. She saw his teeth. And the knife in his hand.

  She couldn’t move.

  “There, Signora. Signora?”

  The string handle of a heavy parcel was being slipped over the untrammeled wrist of her left arm. Still she didn’t move.

  All this way, destroying as he went, unsuspected. He’d killed. He’d smiled and killed… who? She was unable to remember, only that they were dead. Now it was her turn.

  A group of people moved, chattering, across the square, blanking him out for a moment. When they’d gone, the space beneath the palm tree was empty.

  She began to move backward slowly, pulling Ward with her, the parcel weighing on her other arm as it groped for any obstruction behind her. It was a shrinking away, not so much through terror for herself-though she was terrified-as through a dreadful revulsion. That thing out there was disordered, no longer human, more a giant poisonous insect unable to control itself; its antennae had discovered her and its fangs would sink into her whether or not there were people around to watch.

  “Get away. Get away.” She didn’t know if she said it to the creature or herself.

  “Signora?”

  She kept backing off until she bumped into the marionette table. Then she turned and began running for the opening at the rear of the tent, Ward galloping beside her.

  She was in an alley. Turn left, yes-if she turned left and left again she would be farther down the piazza. The antennae would wave and not locate her. Run. She’d run with everything she had, regain the cathedral and be safe.

  She swung left, but there was no other turning to the left, only another alley going to the right. She took it. Again, no left turn.

  She ran, doubled back, took a narrow cut between some houses where crumbling balconies overhead formed a roof that gave an echo to her running footsteps-and, she thought in her panic, somebody else’s.

  There was no one around. Everybody had gone to the main streets to join in the celebrations. The noise of music and singing faded into quiet as Adelia became lost in the labyrinth that was the oldest and poorest part of La Kalsa…

  ROWLEY HURLED HIMSELF through the streets, shoving people out of the way, yelling for anybody who’d seen a lady and a dog. A garishly dressed woman held out her arms to him. “A lady and a dog,” he shouted at her. She laughed, and he pushed her off.

  A beggar obstructed him and Rowley knocked him flying before he realized the man had nodded. He went back and hauled the wretch to his feet. “A woman and a dog.”

  “Dressed pretty, was she? Her headed that way, sir. Have pity on an old crusader, sir.” With one hand, the beggar pointed toward La Kalsa’s piazza and extended the other for money

  He didn’t get any.

  Running, Rowley entered the piazza. It was full of men, women, and children dancing. Shouting for Adelia, he broke through prancing circles of dancers that merely reformed behind him.

  Jesus Christ, where was she? What the hell had she come here for? If it was her.

  He began looking into shop fronts. “A lady and a dog? Has she been here?”

  And then, because God was good, a fat fellow standing outside a marionette booth beckoned him over. “The lady with the dog?”

  “Was she here?”

  “Such a nice lady, the dog… well. Bought my best creations… for her daughter, she said. I have others, sir, if you…”

  Rowley shook him. “Where did she go?”

  “Out the back, sir, I don’t know why. She was running…”

  So was Rowley, through the long tent, into the alley, shouting her name. Running, Jesus, she’d been running. He felt for his sword and remembered that he was a bishop-had been-and bishops didn’t wear swords, not in a cathedral at least.

  Just as well; if he found her, he’d kill her with it. “Where are you, damn you?”

  The alleys turned and twisted; he turned and twisted with them.

  He saw a tattered shrub in a pot indicating that the hovel it stood outside served ale. He’d seen it before, minutes ago, same hovel, same fucking shrub. He was going in circles.

  Stopping, he could hear other voices shouting her name; he thought one of them was Mansur’s high treble.

  And someone else, nearer, was calling his. “My lord bishop. Bishop Rowley Bishop Ro-ow-leee.”

  Father Guy Father Guy had run after him.

  Almighty God, they were looking for him; him, the bishop who’d gone insane. He’d shamed the English Church in front of a thousand Sicilians; he was their responsibility; they couldn’t let him scamper the streets yelling for a woman. They’d take him back and shut him up somewhere because, whatever he was, he’d always belong to the Church.

  The chaplain had people with him, was coming nearer, talking. “He must be found, proctor, you understand? I want all your men out.”

  A deep voice: “We’ll find him, Father.”

  The bastards’ll hold me up.

  He backed into a doorway and stood still as death.

  Nearer now. “Lost his wits, poor fellow. Ugh, these stinking by-ways.” It was Dr. Arnulf.

  When they’d passed, he dodged down a narrow cut-through to get away from them and found himself in a d
ilapidated square with a horse trough in its middle. His eye caught a movement on the far side, the flick of a cloak’s edge as its owner disappeared around a corner. He ran after it and leaped on a hurrying figure, bringing it to the ground.

  It swore as he turned it over. It was Ulf.

  “Have you seen her?”

  “No. Thought I heard the bloody dog bark, though.”

  “Which way?”

  “This way”

  They hared off together, but there were a thousand dogs loose in the city and-“Sod it”-Ulf’s boots slid in a deposit left by one of them, sending him sprawling.

  Rowley ran on. Ahead was a cross street with a flambeau guttering in its bracket at a corner of the intersection.

  And there she was. He saw her as if in a bright frame. She was standing on tiptoe with her back to him, trying to read a street name by the light of the expiring flambeau. The dog was at her feet.

  He heard Ulf coming up behind him, cursing. To his left, at the top of the street, a tall man in white robes was hurrying down it. Mansur.

  Another figure was coming up on his right out of the darkness.

  Hearing him swear, she turned around and came toward him, smiling. He went forward and took her in his arms, still cursing her for the fright she’d given him.

  The miserable light from the flambeau glinted on an upraised blade over her shoulder.

  He swung her round so that the blade went into his own back, once, twice, before the killer was pulled away and Ulf pinioned the arms while Mansur drew the curved dagger from his sash and cut Locusta’s throat with it.

  THEY DRAGGED ROWLEY into the vestibule of a shabby tenement. Adelia never let go of him, crawling beside him with one arm under his back so that it was raised above the dirty floor, the blood from it pouring over the crook of her elbow.

  Knowledge deserted her; she didn’t know what to do.