Like Emma.
“I’LL BE BACK in the morning,” Rowley said. “As soon as it’s light.”
She nodded. She was holding Gyltha close to her.
“Confusion,” Rowley said. “He was confused after the accident, and who could blame him? He’s just wandered off, but he can’t have gone far. And it’s a warm night, he’ll take no harm. Not Mansur.”
She nodded again.
Desperately, he said, “I have to go back, you do see that?”
She saw that. The diocese of Wells expected it; he was one of the most important men in England, and a busy one, God’s representative for thousands of square miles. What the diocese of Wells did not expect was that he should spend the night at an inn with a woman.
“I promise you, mistress,” Rowley said, trying to smile. “This time the earth has not swallowed him up.”
Hadn’t she told him about Emma, whom the earth had swallowed up? She couldn’t remember whether she had or not; fear seemed to be rendering her dumb. “Emma,” she mumbled.
“I’ll attend to it. God bless you, then, mistress. I shall see you in the morning.”
Hilda’s concern for her guests, though no doubt meant kindly, was bothersome. Adelia and Gyltha were offered everything that the landlady thought might raise their spirits, from Godwyn’s calf’s-foot jelly to her own specific against melancholy, a thick herbal concoction that they drank to satisfy her before escaping to Adelia’s bedroom. Gyltha, to keep herself busy, insisted on washing Adelia’s hair and finding fresh clothes for her. Then she sat down and, holding on to Adelia’s hand, rocked back and forth in anxiety.
“Silly old bugger, where’s he got to? Can’t hardly find his own arse in the dark, so why’s he go wandering off? What’s happening to us, ’Delia? First Emma, now him. Where’s he gone? Who’s got him? Why didn’t he stay close, silly old bugger?”
The lament went on and on until Hilda’s specific took hold and Gyltha was persuaded to lie down on the bed where she fell into a whimpering doze.
Watching her, Adelia thought how ironic it was that Gyltha was the one person who would have believed that somebody had sent the mound of earth crashing into the grave deliberately, and yet was the one person who must not be told. That a murderer was abroad… no, she mustn’t be made aware of that, not until Mansur was found. If he ever was.
It was stiflingly hot. Disengaging her hand from the sleeping woman’s, Adelia went to the window to breathe.
Twenty years ago, she thought. Twenty years ago a crime had been committed. Twenty years ago it had been necessary to bury the bodies of a man and a woman so that they should never be found. And now, when they had been found, it was vital to whoever had buried them that the skeletons should not be identified and the crime brought home.
The Year of Our Lord 1154. The day after Saint Stephen’s Day, when, by tradition, servants were allowed to leave their employer and return to their family for a while.
Was that significant? Possibly. People not usually free to travel would have been on the loose. Also, heads of households, for once, had been left to look after themselves-without servants to watch them.
But the greatest suspicion must fall on the abbey itself, the only place where it was known that a convenient hole had opened up and was ready to receive bodies.
Who had been in situ on that day? Nearly a hundred monks, all but four of them now scattered around England and France, broadcasting the plight that had befallen Glastonbury.
No, Abbot Sigward must be excluded-he’d still been holding sway as a great landlord on his island, perhaps mourning the son who’d fallen on crusade.
For a moment, Adelia thought of the shining goodness that had propelled Sigward from the position of a novitiate to that of abbot over the heads of monks who had served their abbey much longer.
Of the three who remained, all had shown hostility toward her and Mansur in their investigation. Had it been caused by more than just a desire to claim the bodies as Arthur’s and Guinevere’s?
Was one of them a murderer? All three?
No, wrong again. If one of them had crept out of terce to the graveyard, the abbot would have noticed it and said so. Wouldn’t he?
But somewhere out there was a killer who’d known what she and Mansur were about, and tried to put an end to it. He’d failed that time, but had Mansur succumbed to him now?
And Emma? Had Emma disappeared into the same web, to be eaten by the same spider?
Tired, tortured by worry, her head resounding with unanswered questions, her back aching from her efforts in the pit, Adelia laid herself down next to the twitching, muttering Gyltha. And dozed. And dreamed…
Inevitably, she was belowground, in a warren where stoats dressed in golden regalia were shouting huzzahs at King Arthur as he and his troops rode on horses up the tunnel toward its exit. In passing, he looked kindly down at her, as he always did. “Another dragon to fight,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
“I must search for Mansur and Emma,” she told him.
“Stupid, stupid you are,” he said.
Guinevere, still dressed in white feathers, her back to Adelia, stood at the mouth of the tunnel to wish farewell and good fortune to her lord.
As the cavalcade passed her, one of Arthur’s knights drew his sword and cut her in half. The blood from the severed waist filled the tunnel, catching Adelia in its torrent and carrying her, struggling, deeper into the earth.
When she woke up, it took a moment before she found out that the dampness making her clothes stick to her was not Guinevere’s blood but her own sweat.
The light of a big moon coming through the window like pale roadway was the only cold thing in the room. She got up to look out again. The street below was deserted; she leaned forward so that she could see the marketplace. It was as empty as ever.
Where is he? Almighty Father, keep him safe.
Somebody coughed. It was a human cough.
He’s come back.
Adelia ran out of the room, jumped over the sleeping Millie, skipped down the stairs, and drew back the bolts on the courtyard door. There was nobody outside. Hurrying, she went into the street. “Mansur?”
Her arms were grabbed. Somebody put a hand over her mouth; somebody else whipped a rag over her eyes, tying it tightly and catching her hair in the knot so that it pulled against her scalp.
“Nice of her to come an’ meet us,” a man said. “Save us goin’ in to get her.” There was a general snigger.
NINE
SHE TRIED BITING into the hand, but its owner kept it in place as he lifted her onto the bare back of a horse and climbed up behind her.
“Leave wrigglin’, blast you,” he said. Uselessly, she was kicking out with her bare feet. “You ain’t going to get hurt.”
She was not reassured-it wasn’t a reassuring voice, and its owner was clasping her too tightly-but after a while she stopped struggling. For one thing, it hurt her strained back; for another, it was useless. She sensed that there were several of them, whoever they were. The unshod hooves of their mounts made little noise, but their thudding suggested a cavalcade.
Rape? It was the great and immediate terror. Had she been earmarked for it? Or would they have rampaged into the inn taking any woman they found?
Wherever they were going, it was uphill; the incline was forcing her back against the strong-smelling coat of her captor. And it was quiet except for the song of nightingales and the occasional shriek of an owl.
They can do anything. God save me. How will Allie manage without me?
Was this what had happened to Emma and the others? To Mansur? It was even more frightening when the man removed his hand from her mouth-he knew there’d be no help forthcoming even if she yelled.