Adelia and her dog sat on. From here she had a panorama of the convent walls. There were now two of Wolvercote’s men patrolling, both of them keeping their eyes on the trees behind her. A figure stood at one of the windows in the men’s guesthouse-she thought it was Master Warin.
No sign of the abbot, thanks be to God; he’d become dreadful to her, as, with her rejection, she must have become dreadful to him-and would be punished for it.
The bridge had been closed; she could tell that because some Wolvercote villagers were crowding the far side of it, wistfully watching the merrymakers on ice. Others were digging their own path down to the river.
Behind her, in the forest that she’d hoped would be hiding Henry Plantagenet and his army, she could hear the shouts of the younger convent men as, careless of wolves, they scoured the undergrowth in the hunt for a wren, their noise indicating that they were not encountering anything larger.
She looked back to see their figures running through the trees, faces blackened with soot, as tradition demanded they should be. Why it was necessary to catch a wren at all on Saint Stephen’s Day she did not understand; she could never fathom English customs. Pagan, most of them.
She returned to watching the scene on the ice.
Wolvercote was talking to Eleanor at the food table. Where was Emma?
Adelia wondered what it was that had stirred the man into setting a watch now, when he had neglected any precaution for so long. Perhaps he’d sensed the same alertness in the air that so invigorated herself-or had just glimpsed another opportunity to assert his control. Either way, he was a fool as well as a brute; what point was there in guarding the abbey and, apparently, readying it in case of siege when nearly all its occupants were capering outside its walls, any one of whom could carry news of his presence in it to his enemy?
She was glad of it-the liberation. If it hadn’t meant leaving her nearest and dearest behind, she’d have been tempted to skate off and find Henry for herself.
But Schywz had just come out of the abbey gates and was viewing the indisciplined joyousness below him like a man who could organize things better. And, damn him, he was going to organize them better. Descending the steps, approaching Wolvercote, berating…
Within minutes he’d stationed his mercenaries at each end of the river’s bend. Nobody would get away now. He was actually scolding Eleanor, pointing her toward the convent gate… She was shaking her head, having too much fun, skating away from him.
They’d have to go in soon; the sun was getting low, withdrawing brightness and such warmth as it had bestowed. At last, Eleanor’s clear diction was heard thanking Mother Edyve for the entertainment. “So refreshing…” People were beginning to climb the steps of the track.
“Mistress,” said a crisp voice behind Adelia. It was Father Paton.
Rowley’s little secretary looked incongruous on skates, but he balanced on them neatly, his mittened, inky hands crossed on his chest as if protecting himself from the unworthy. “I have it,” he said.
She stared at him. “You…found it? I can’t believe…it was such a long shot.” She had to pull herself together. “And is it the same?”
“Yes,” he said, “I regret to say that the similarity with the one you gave me is undeniable.”
“It would stand up in a court of law?”
“Yes. There are peculiarities common to each that even the illiterate would recognize. I have it here, I have them both…” He began unbuckling the large scrip hanging from his belt.
Adelia stopped him. “No, no, I don’t want them. You keep them, and my affidavit. Keep them very safe until the time comes…and in the name of Jesus, tell nobody you have them.”
Father Paton pursed his lips. “I have written my own account of this affair, explaining to whomsoever it may concern that I have done what I have done because I believe it to be the will of my master, the late Bishop of Saint Albans…”
There was a swirl of ice as the bishop’s messenger encircled them and came to a sliding stop.
Jacques’s face was ruddy with exercise; he looked almost handsome, though his bishop would not have approved of the elaborate, hand-twirling, very Aquitanian bow he gave Adelia. “It’s done, mistress. With good fortune, they’re meeting in the church at Vespers. You and this gentleman should take your positions early.”
“What nonsense is this?” Father Paton disapproved of Jacques only slightly less than he did of Adelia.
“Jacques has been delivering two invitations that I’ve written, Father,” she told him. “We are going to eavesdrop; we are going to prove who contrived the death of Talbot of Kidlington.”
“I will have nothing to do with all your supposed killings. You expect me to eavesdrop? Preposterous, I refuse.”
“What supposed killings?” Jacques asked, puzzled.
“We shall be there,” Adelia told the priest. She cut off his protests. “Yes, you shall. We need an independent witness. God in Heaven, Father, a young man was put to death.”
A rough figure with an even rougher voice had come up to them. “Get inside, you lot, and quick about it.” Cross had his arms held wide to scoop the three of them toward the steps.
Glad to go, Father Paton skated off.
“Can he help us with Bertha’s death?” Jacques asked.
“I’m not telling you again,” Cross said. “The chief says inside, so get bloody inside.”
Jacques obeyed. Adelia lingered.
“Come on, now, missis. ’S getting chilly.” The mercenary took her arm, not unkindly. “See, you’re shaking.”
“I don’t want to go in,” she said. The convent walls would imprison her and the killer together again; she was being dragged back into a cage that held a monster with blood on its fangs.
“You ain’t staying here all night.” As he pulled her over the ice, Cross shouted over his shoulder at the wren hunters in the trees. “Time to go in, lads.”
When they reached the steps, he had to haul Adelia up them like an executioner assisting a prisoner to the gallows.
Behind them, a crowd of men emerged from the trees of the far bank, shouting in triumph over a small cage twisted from withies in which fluttered a frightened wren. They were hooded, covered in snow, their black faces rendering them unrecognizable.
And if, whooping and capering with the rest, there was one more figure going in through the convent gates than had left them, nobody noticed it.
The convent carpenter had laid boards across the end rafters of the church’s Saint Mary side chapel in order to facilitate the removal and replacement of struts that showed signs of rotting, creating a temporary and partial little loft in which the two people now hiding in it could listen but not see. Adelia and Father Paton were, quite literally, eavesdroppers.
It had taken considerable urging to get the priest to accompany her into the rafters. He’d protested at the subterfuge, the risk, the indignity.
Adelia hadn’t liked it, either. This wasn’t her way of doing things, it was arbitrary, unscientific. Worse, the fear she felt at being once more in the abbey sapped her energy, leaving her with a deadening feeling of futility.
But coming in through the chapel’s door, a draft had wavered the candles burning on the Virgin’s altar, one of them lit by Emma for Talbot of Kidlington, and so she had bullied, shamed, and cajoled. “We have a duty to the dead, Father.” It was the bedrock of her faith, as fundamental to her as the Athanasian Creed to Western liturgy, and perhaps the priest had recognized its virtue, for he had stopped arguing and climbed the ladder Jacques set for them.
Now Vespers had chimed, the faint chanting from the cloisters had stopped. The church was empty-ever since the mercenaries had proved troublesome, the nuns had transferred the vigil for their dead to their own chapel.