“So rude,” said Eleanor, apologetically, to the body in the chair. “Men are unfair, are they not? And you must have had so many compensating qualities…generosity with your favors, things like that.”
The cruelty was not only verbal but also accentuated by the two women’s physical disparity. Against the tall sweep of the queen’s shape, that showed slender even in the fur wrapping it round, Rosamund appeared lumpen, her tumbling hair ridiculous for a mature woman. Compared to the delicate spikes on the white-gold crown Eleanor wore, Rosamund’s was an overweight piece of grandiloquence.
The queen had come to the document. “My dear, another of your letters to me? And God froze you to ice in the middle of penning it?”
Adelia opened her mouth and then shut it; she and the men in the doorway were merely sounding boards in the game that Eleanor of Aquitaine was playing with a dead woman.
“I am sorry I was not here at the time,” the queen was saying. “I had but landed from France when I received word of your illness, and there were other matters I had to see to rather than be at your deathbed.” She appeared to sigh. “Always business before pleasure.”
She picked up the letter and held it at arm’s length, unable to read it in the light but not needing to. “Is this like the others?
Greetings to the supposed queen from the true one? Somewhat repetitious, don’t you think? Not worth keeping, yes?”
She crumpled the parchment and tossed it onto the floor, grinding it out on the stones with the twist of an excellent boot.
Slowly, slowly, Adelia bent slightly sideways and down. She slipped the document she’d been holding into the top of her right boot and felt her dog lick her hand as she did it. He was keeping close.
Facing the mirroring window, she looked to see if the man in the doorway had noticed the movement. He hadn’t. His attention was on Eleanor; Eleanor’s on Rosamund’s corpse.
The queen was cupping her ear as if listening to a reply. “You don’t mind? So generous, but they say you were always generous with your favors. Oh, and forgive me, this bauble is mine.” Eleanor had lifted the crown off the dead woman’s head. “It was made for the wives of the counts of Anjou two centuries ago, and how dare he give it to a stinking great whore like you…”
Control had gone. With a scream, the queen sent the crown spinning away toward the window opposite them both as if she meant to smash the glass with it. Ward barked.
What saved Eleanor’s life was that the crown hit the window with the padded underside of its brim. If the glass had shattered, Adelia-dazedly watching the mirroring window shake as the missile bounced off it-would not have seen the reflection of Death slithering toward them. Nor the knife in its hand.
She didn’t have time to turn round. It was coming for Eleanor. Instinctively, Adelia flung herself sideways, and her left hand contacted Death’s shoulder.
In trying to deflect the knife, she misjudged and had her right palm sliced open by it. But her shove changed the momentum of the attacker, who went tumbling to the floor.
The scene petrified: Rosamund sitting unconcernedly in her chair; Eleanor, just as still, facing the window in which the attack had been reflected; Adelia standing and looking down at the figure lying sprawled facedown at her feet. It was hissing.
The dog approached it, sniffing, and then backed away.
So for a second. Then Lord Montignard was exclaiming over the queen while the mailed man had his boot on the attacker’s back and a sword raised in his two hands, looking at Eleanor for permission to strike.
“No.” Adelia thought she’d shrieked it, but shock diminished the word so that it sounded quietly reasonable.
The man paid her no attention. Expressionless, he went on looking at the queen, who had a hand to her head. She seemed to collapse, but it was to kneel. The white hands were steepled, the crowned head bowed, and Eleanor of Aquitaine prayed. “Almighty God,” she said, “accept the thanks of this unworthy queen for stretching out Your hand and reducing this, my enemy, to a block of ice. Even in death she did send her creature against me, but You turned the blade so that, innocent and wronged as I am, I live on to serve You, my Lord and Redeemer.”
When Montignard helped her to her feet, she was amazingly calm. “I saw it,” she said to Adelia. “I saw God choose you as his instrument to save me. Are you the housekeeper? They say this strumpet had a housekeeper.”
“No. My name is Adelia. I am Adelia Aguilar. I assume that is the housekeeper. Her name is Dakers.” Pointing to the figure on the floor, her hand dripped blood over it.
Queen Eleanor paid it no attention. “What do you do here, then, girl? How long have you lived here?”
“I don’t. I’m a stranger to this place. We arrived an hour or so ago.” A lifetime. “I’ve never been here before. I had only just come up the stairs and discovered…this.”
“Was this creature with you?” Eleanor dabbled her fingers in the direction of her still-supine attacker.
“No. I hadn’t seen her, not until now. She must have hidden herself when she heard us come up the stairs.”
Montignard came close to wave the tip of a dagger in her face. “You wretch, it is your queen you talk to. Show respect or I slit your nose.” He was a willowy young man, very curly, very brave now.
“My lady,” Adelia added dully.
“Stop it, Monty,” the queen snapped, and turned to the man in mail. “Is the place secured, Schwyz?”
“Secure?” Still without expression, Schwyz managed to convey his opinion that the tower was about as secure as a slice of carrot. “We took four men in the barge and three downstairs.” He didn’t address the queen by her title, either, but Adelia noticed that Montignard didn’t threaten to slit Schwyz’s nose for it; the man stood square on thick legs, more like a foot soldier than a knight, and nobody was in any doubt that if Eleanor had given the nod, he’d have skewered the housekeeper like a flapping fish. And Montignard, for that matter.
A mercenary, Adelia decided.
“Did these three men downstairs bring you with them?” the queen asked.
“Yes.” Dear Lord, she was tired. “My lady,” she added.
“Why?”
“Because the Bishop of Saint Albans asked me to accompany him.” Rowley could answer the questions; he was good at that.
“Rowley?” The queen’s voice had altered. “Rowley’s here?” She turned to Schwyz. “Why was I not told?”
“Four men in the boat and three downstairs,” Schwyz repeated stolidly. His accent was London with a trace of something more foreign. “If a bishop is among them, I don’t know it.” He didn’t care, either. “We stay the night here?”
“Until the Young King and the Abbot of Eynsham arrive.”
Schwyz shrugged.
Eleanor cocked her head at Adelia. “And why has his lordship of Saint Albans brought one of his women to Wormhold Tower?”
“I can’t say.” At that moment, she didn’t have the energy to recount the train of events, and certainly not to make them comprehensible. She was too tired, too shocked, too struck down by horrors even to refute the imputation of being “one of his women,” though not to wonder how many he was known to have.
“We shall ask him,” Eleanor said brightly. She looked down at the writhing shape on the floor. “Raise her.”
The courtier Montignard pushed forward and made a fuss of kicking the would-be assassin’s knife across the floor. Hauling her upright from under Schwyz’s boot, he maintained her with one arm round the chest and put the point of his dagger to her neck with the other.
It was Death, a better facsimile than any in the marketplace mystery plays. The hood of a black cloak had wrinkled back to disclose the prominent cheekbones and teeth of a skull with pale skin so tight that the only indication, in this bad light, to show that the face had any at all was a large and sprouting mole on the upper lip. The eyes were set deep; they might have been holes. All it lacked was the scythe.