Even during the dream, she was irritated by it. Guinevere was an irrelevance now, and the sleeping Adelia didn’t want to be bothered with her, but the woman with a skull’s face came walking forward out of the mist. This time she had Arthur’s Excalibur in her hand; this time she spoke. “You are close now,” she said. “You are close to me. Come nearer.”
Crossly, Adelia woke up, not frightened-what dream could overtop the terror of reality?-merely resentful that her rest had been disturbed and left her with a nagging sense of a duty not done.
It was still dark outside, but the light of its fire showed that the kitchen was full of bodies-only the comfortable sound of snoring dispelled the impression that there’d been a massacre.
Opposite her, brothers James and Aelwyn slept, their cowled heads using the table as a pillow. Other figures, just discernible in the shadows, lay scattered around the floor on palliasses produced from somewhere. A hammock slung from two flitch hooks contained the bishop of Saint Albans. Adelia got up and hurried over to him, dislodging a cloak that someone had laid over her in the night.
Rowley’s color was good; so was his breathing. Without waking him, she smoothed his hair from his face before investigating the others on the floor.
The abbot lay on his side, one elegant hand around his chin, as if he was thinking, though his eyes were tight shut. Next to him squatted Brother Titus, snoring louder than anybody, his head cradled on his knees-a sleeping guardian of Hilda, who was stretched out nearby, the rope around her waist still attached to its hook. The woman’s eyelids were only half closed, and her teeth were bared, which, though she too was asleep, gave her the appearance of a chained, recumbent dog ready to snarl at any intruder.
Before Adelia had slept, Rowley, Sigward, and the other monks had been agreeing that Hilda was mad; it had settled everything for them-a neat, all-encompassing explanation that might save her from the gallows under the law that the insane, not being responsible for their actions, should escape execution. It had been male reasoning for the mysterious turbulence that they seemed to think affected women during the menopause. Last night, in the discussion that Adelia had been too tired to enter into, Rowley had been adamant that in her madness Hilda had felt impelled to protect Glastonbury from the Arthur and Guinevere skeletons being proved a fraud.
There was no cause to think otherwise; the woman was undoubtedly deranged. Equally without doubt, the Pilgrim’s-and the abbey’s-future depended on supplicants coming to the grave of King Arthur.
And yet, to Adelia now, it didn’t answer. It could only have been Hilda who’d tried to bury Mansur and herself-the woman had a positive propensity for entombing people. Such savagery argued a deeper, more urgent reason, if reason there was.
Adelia moved on to peer at the body nearest the door. Millie, thank God. The girl was breathing steadily. There was a plaster on her head, bound in place with linen. The sallow skin of her face was no paler than it always was. Another one, then, who, with luck, had taken no harm from the desperate night.
The only person missing was Godwyn.
Adelia went out to attend to nature. Rejecting what the gentry called the odeur de merde emanating from the trench latrine with its neatly holed plank that the monks had dug near their kitchen garden-so enriching for the vegetables-she found some convenient bushes, then went to the pump just outside the kitchen itself for a wash.
In the east, the sky was beginning to lighten. Somewhere a thrush was attempting its first song of the day.
It would be dawn soon, and if a merciful God could again extend His munificence and allow the three souls on Lazarus Island to be found alive and well, she, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, would be forever in His debt.
A figure netting trout from the stew by the light of a lantern gave a hail and came stalking toward her.
Brother Peter appeared friendlier than on their previous meetings. “Here,” he said, “that darky wizard’s a proper marvel, in’t he? Done a good job for”-he paused to wink-”you know who. Think he’d like some of me pumpkins? They’ve come on wonderful well with all this sun, if the storm ain’t ruined ’em.”
Yes, Adelia told him, sighing, the lord Mansur would be pleased to be rewarded with pumpkins for having saved Will and the tithing.
He lingered. “Heard as there was a right to-do last night. What were you and the bishop doin’ down that bloody hole?”
“Not enjoying ourselves, I can tell you that,” she said.
“Mad as May butter, that Hilda. Allus was. Never could reckon as how poor old Godwyn put up with her.”
Adelia had a thought. “Could you do me a favor, Brother Peter?”
They went to the site of the tunnel, its lid still lying on one side. Adelia couldn’t bear to look into the hole, but, on her instructions, the lay brother clambered down happily enough and emerged with the box and sword left on its steps. They were dry; the water hadn’t reached them-indeed, it had retreated. “What’s these doin’ down there?” he asked.
“Can I borrow your lantern?”
When he gave it to her, she merely thanked him and turned away before he could ask more questions.
…
THE BOX INTRIGUED ADELIA; to have been placed so deep in the tunnel suggested that its contents were of value. Or incriminating. Or both. Emma’s jewels, probably. In which case, what happiness-if Emma were still alive-to return them to someone who had been suffering all the privations of a castaway as an earnest that she was to be restored to her former life.
Then, like Pandora before her, Adelia thought, To hell, I just want to know what’s in the thing.
There was time to open it before the rescue began, and no need to wake the people in the kitchen before then, which she undoubtedly would if she went there-a noisy business if the box’s hasp continued to prove as obdurate as it had.
She took lantern, sword, and box to the only place where there was both privacy and a table.
Despite the poverty of their resting place and the drenching the storm had inflicted on the cloths that covered them, the forms of Arthur and Guinevere retained the dignity accorded to all the dead in silent immobility.
It was disturbed as Adelia, apologizing to them, shoved the covering away from Arthur’s feet and placed the lantern between them before committing the same indignity on Guinevere by positioning the box between hers.
She left the door open to add what natural light there was to that of the lantern.
It was a noisy business. Inserting the sword tip under the hasp was difficult and caused much scratching and, on Adelia’s part, much swearing under her puffing breath.
At last the hasp yielded its grip on the prong. Adelia put the sword down and lifted the box’s lid.
Not jewels. Bones. Pelvic bones.
Behind her, somebody coughed.
Adelia swung round like someone guilty, hiding the box with her body.
Godwyn stood in the doorway. Godwyn the good thing, to whom she owed her life and Rowley’s and, perhaps, Emma’s. Godwyn the bad thing, who had permitted an uncontrollable wife to try to silence those who’d incommoded her. Godwyn, who had done nothing to stop Millie being beaten.
“What do you want?” she snapped. She was being interrupted on the brink of discovery, and she did not want him to see the box; it might be his, but its contents most certainly were not.
Anyway, there was a terrible patience to the man, which made her nerves twang. He didn’t move, face impassive; only his eyes showed the resignation of an ox awaiting the fall of the poleax.
“You’ll speak for her, lady, won’t ee?” he said. “The bishop do think high of you; you’ll tell him as she ain’t in charge of what she does. Iffen she’s taken to court, a word from his lordship to the judges… make a mort of difference that would…”