Henry Plantagenet was a ferret and an employer of ferrets. He’d nosed out Adelia’s profession in a second and penned her up in England, like one of the rarer animals in his menagerie, until he found a use for her. He knew exactly how things stood between her and his bishop; he’d known when their baby was born-and its sex, which was more than the child’s father had known. A few days afterward, to prove that he knew, a royal messenger in plain clothes had delivered a gloriously lacy christening gown to Adelia’s fenland door with a note: “Call her what you will, she shall always be Rowley-Powley to me.”
Compared to the king, Eleanor walked within a circle of vision encompassing only her personal welfare and the certainty that God was most closely concerned with it. The questions she’d asked in this chamber had related solely to herself.
Adelia wondered whether she should enlighten her. Rowley and the queen must have corresponded in the past; she would know his writing. Showing her these documents would at least prove that he hadn’t written them for Rosamund to copy. She might even recognize the penmanship and know who had.
Wait, though. There were two crimes here.
If Mansur or her foster father had been watching Adelia at that moment, they would have seen her adopt what they called her “dissecting face,” the mouth tightened into a line, eyes furious with concentration, as they always were when her knife followed the link of muscle to sinew, pursued a vein, probed, and cut effect in order to find cause.
What made her a brilliant anatomist, Dr. Gershom had once told her, was instinct. She’d been offended. “Logic and training, Father.” He’d smiled. “Man provided logic and training, maybe, but the Lord gave you instinct, and you should bless him for it.”
Two crimes.
One, Rosamund had copied inflammatory letters. Two, Rosamund had been murdered.
Discovering whom it was who had urged Rosamund to write her letters was one thing. Discovering her murderer was another. And both solutions were contradictory, as far as Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Bishop of Saint Albans were concerned.
For the queen, the letter writer would be the villain and must be eliminated. Eleanor didn’t give a damn who’d killed Rosamund-would, if she learned who it was, probably reward him.
But for Rowley, the murderer was endangering the peace of the kingdom and must be eliminated. And his claim was the greater, because murder was the more terrible crime.
It would be better, at this stage, to give Rowley open ground for his investigation rather than complicating it by allowing the queen to pursue hers.
Hmm.
Adelia gathered up the documents on her lap, put them back in the footstool box, and replaced its lid. She would do nothing about them until she could consult Rowley.
Eleanor continued to fidget. “Has this benighted tower no place of easement?”
Adelia ushered her toward the garderobe.
“Light.” The queen held out her hand for a candle, and Adelia put one into it-reluctantly. She would see the naughty paintings.
If Adelia could have been any sorrier for the woman, it was then. When you came down to it, Eleanor was consumed by sexual jealousy as raging as that of any fishwife catching her husband in flagrante, and was being stabbed by reminders of it at every turn.
Adelia tensed herself for a storm, but when the queen emerged from under the hanging she looked tired and old, and was silent.
“You should rest, madam,” Adelia said, concerned. “Let us go down…”
There was noise from the stairs, and the two guards in the doorway uncrossed their spears and stood at attention.
A great hill of a man entered, sparkling with energy and frost and dwarfing Schwyz, who followed him in. He was enormous; kneeling to kiss the queen’s hand only put his head on a level with hers.
“If I’d been here, my dear, ’twouldn’t have happened,” he said, still kneeling. He pressed Eleanor’s hand to his neck with both of his, closing his eyes and rocking with the comfort of it.
“I know.” She smiled fondly at him. “My dear, dear abbot. You’d have put your big body in the way of the knife, wouldn’t you?”
“And gone rejoicing to Paradise.” He sighed and stood up, looking down at her. “You going to burn ’em both?”
The queen shook her head. “I have been persuaded that Dampers is mad. We will not execute the insane.”
“Who? Oh, Dakers. She’s mad, sure enough, I told you she was. Let the flame have her, I say. And her bloody mistress with her. Where is the whore?”
He strode across the room to the table and poked the corpse’s shoulder. “Like they said, cold as a witch’s tit. Bit of fire’d warm they both up, get ’em ready for hell.” He turned to wag his finger at Eleanor. “I’m a simple Gloucestershire man, as you know, and, Sweet Mary save me, a sinner, too, but I love my God, and I love my queen with all my soul, and I’m for putting their enemies to the torch.” He spat on Rosamund’s hair. “That’s the Abbot of Eynsham’s opinion of you, madam.”
The visitor had caused Montignard to stand up. He was busily and jealously-and uselessly-trying to gain the queen’s attention by urging her to eat. Eynsham, a man built more for tossing bales of hay than for shepherding monastic sheep, dominated the room, taking the breath out of it with the power of his body and voice, filling it with West Country earthiness and accent.
Bucolic he might have been, but everything he wore was of expensive and exquisite clerical taste, though the pectoral cross that had swung from his neck as he bent to the queen was overdone-a chunk of dull gold that could have battered a door in.
He’d taken years off Eleanor; she was loving it. Apart from the egregious Montignard, her courtiers had been too weary from traveling to make much fuss over her escape from death.
Or my part in it, Adelia thought, suddenly sour. Her hand was hurting.
“Bad news, though, my glory,” the abbot said.
Eleanor’s face changed. “It’s Young Henry. Where is he?”
“Oh, he’s right enough. But the chase was snappin’ at our heels all the way from Chinon, so the Young King, well, he decides to make for Paris ’stead of yere.”
Suddenly blind, the queen fumbled for the arm of her chair and sank into it.
“Now, now, it’s not as bad as that,” the abbot said, his voice deep, “but you know your lad, he never did take to England-said the wine was piss.”
“What are we to do? What are we to do?” Eleanor’s eyes were wide and pleading. “The cause is lost. Almighty God, what are we to do now?”
“There, there.” The abbot knelt beside her, taking her hands in his. “Nothing’s lost. And Schwyz here, we’ve been speaking together, and he reckons it’s all to the good. Don’t ee, Schwyz?”
At his urging, Schwyz nodded.
“See? And Schwyz do know what he’s about. Not much to look at, I grant, but a fine tactician. For here’s the good news.” Eleanor’s hands were lifted and hammered against her knees. “You hear me, my glory? Listen to me. Hear what our commander Jesus have done for us-He’ve brought the King of France onto our side. Joined un to Young Henry, yes he has.”
Eleanor’s head came up. “He has? Oh, at last. God be praised.”
“King Louis as ever is. He’ll bring his army into the field to fight alongside the son against the father.”
“God be praised,” Eleanor said again. “Now we have an army.”
The abbot nodded his great head as if watching a child open a present. “A saintly king. Weedy husband he was to you, I’ll grant, but we ain’t marrying him, and God’ll look kindly on his valor now.” He hammered Eleanor’s knees again. “D’you see, woman? Young Henry and Louis’ll raise their banner in France, we’ll raise ours here in England, and together we’ll squeeze Old Henry into submission. Light will prevail against Dark. Twixt us, we’ll net the old eagle and bring un down.”