There was a swirl of trumpets, and she had to turn away as the crowd in the nave parted to give passage to the procession of princes, archbishops, bishops, and ambassadors making its way toward the choir.
There was only one for her.
Rowley looked uncomfortable, as he always did when he was in full regalia; the miter had never suited him.
She loved him all over again, had never stopped loving him. Only a grubby and unworthy fit of pique, she realized, had stopped her going to him the minute she arrived in Palermo. In seeing him now, she no longer cared that his duties had taken him away so that she’d been left to the protection of another man. There was no other man; never would be.
Dare I wave at him? Ooh-hoo, sweetheart, I’m here.
Hardly The moment had passed in any case; the sumptuously robed men processing the nave now were lesser bishops and clergy from other countries.
One of them, the Bishop of Aveyron.
Adelia put her hand to her mouth to stop a moan. The monster was here, invited, accepted, a symptom of gangrene, which, if the princes of the world did not cut it out, would infect the earth. And there, going past now, was the other ghoul, Father Gerhardt—and Father Guy with him, chatting, as if contagions were multiplying and joining up.
She looked toward the face of the Pantocrator. Don’t let them, don’t let them.
A choir had begun singing an epithalamium, announcing the arrival of the bride.
Adelia had to crane her neck to see the smallest figure in the cathedral come walking slowly up the aisle, accompanied by her brother.
Across his outstretched palms, Duke Richard carried a glittering sword, ready to lay it on the marriage altar. Excalibur had finally reached the destination for which it was meant.
Adelia thought of the Glastonbury cave where it had been found and in which the quiet bones of its original owner still rested undisturbed. She stood on tiptoe to look for Ulf—this was his moment as well as hers—but she couldn’t see him.
Beside her brother, her hand on his arm, Joanna looked like an exquisite, trailing forget-me-not. They’d dressed her in the same lovely blue as the Pantocrator’s cloak. There were flowers and diamonds in her hair.
But she was tiny, so tiny. Adelia wanted to snatch her up and run.
What would they do to her, these wolves in their cassocks and copes? What inept bloodletters would they call in to attend to her if she fell ill again?
The ignorant are trying to set science back a thousand years. They may succeed. Nor can I be your doctor anymore, little one; they wouldn’t let me. In any case, there is another child who needs me, and I must go home.
Home, she thought. This isn’t home. Home is Gyltha and Allie and Rowley and a rainy little island ruled by a bad-tempered king who looks forward, not back. I shall go home.
But first there was a marriage ceremony to be performed.
WHERE IN HELL IS SHE? The Bishop of Saint Albans, crammed like a celery stick between the two pumpkins that were the Bishop of Winchester on one side and the papal legate on the other, ran his eyes over the nave’s congregation, trying to locate his woman. Or, if not Adelia, then the thing that was out to harm her.
In the last three days, he’d enlisted keen-eyed, sharp-witted Palermo-born Sicilians to try and find its hiding place. He’d spent his own nights in this city asking questions, hunting. Nothing. The snake had slithered into the undergrowth so that it could rise and strike when the opportunity came.
He’s here, somewhere in this packed, bloody cathedral, because she’s here, and he knows she is.
Rowley’s eyes went back to the women’s section. There were two hundred or more females in there. Why did they all have to look the same? Apart from the fact that some were wider or thinner, taller or shorter than others, their bloody veils rendered them indistinguishable bottle tops.
Are you one of them, damn you? Which one?
And what the hell am I doing here, bobbing up and down like an overdressed cork, praying for this, for that, and not giving a tinker’s curse for any of it because it is nothing—dear God, not even God—if I lose her.
IN ANOTHER PART of the cathedral, an Irishman used his height to peer over surrounding heads in order to find the only one that mattered to him. He was angry at himself, and her; of all the women he’d known throughout the seven seas—most of them intimately—he was flummoxed by why he’d been cursed with this one.
I am a Colossus, did you know that? I stride the oceans, I can forward wars and I can hinder them. Mermaids fawn on me. Women beautiful as the dawn wait on me; whores and saints and some that are both. And in the middle, like wrecking rock, there’s you.
She wasn’t beautiful, he’d seen camels more graceful than her as she stumped along, glaring at fokking plants in case they’d be of use to her fokking patients. And never a look in his direction; the only smile on her for that fokking useless bishop, lighting up the world with it.
Why would I die for that one? Because, O’Donnell, you poor bastard, the moment you saw her, her dimensions fitted exactly into the empty space in your misbegotten soul, and there’s damn all you can do about it.
BETTER PLACED THAN all of them to have a view of the congregation below, another pair of eyes looks down from behind one of the artful pillars of the cathedral’s northern clerestory.
The monkish usher, who’d asked the eyes’ owner what he wanted up there and tried to impede him reaching it, lies on the steps of the concealed staircase with gushing holes where his own eyes had been.
The thing that had once possessed an identity of its own, and is now a dead man called Wolf, gives a red-tongued yawn. There is no need for him to concern himself; she will be revealed to him, just as the path that has led him to this place has been cleared for every step he’s taken against her in the last 1,000 miles.
He lets drops of the usher’s blood drip from his knife onto the floor, then peers into the congregation below. It is merely a matter of waiting. She will be shown to him.
IN THE ZIZA PALACE, Ward had been fed and watered—at arm’s length—by the servant Rafiq, and then shut in the Lady Adelia’s bedroom until she should return.
For a while the dog slept, then began snuffling at the door which, when it opened to allow a servant to come in with a duster and horse-tail polish, he slithered out of, unseen. He was good at slithering, an art that he’d perfected at the Ziza, where dog-hating servants tended to give him a surreptitious kick if they saw him.
Until he came to the entrance hall, he went unnoticed. Its great doors were open to allow fresh air through the hall’s tunnel vaulting and into the rest of the palace, though guarded by the scimitared sentries, men who, in Ward’s experience, were harder kickers than most.
He made a dash for it and, hearing the shouts behind him, skirted the pool outside at a speed that left him panting as he gained the slope to the busy streets. There the stinks were delicious. Flattening and weaving to avoid the boots of passersby, Ward enjoyed them, forgetting Adelia and adding his own contribution.
But now, ah, here was a scent he recognized; it wasn’t Adelia’s but one equally familiar and pleasing. The dog began the arduous job of detecting it from a thousand others so that he could trace it; sniffing, occasionally making a false cast, but finding it again, following the route that Mansur had taken to the cathedral.
THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER was making the most of his allotted part in the wedding by droning Latin supplications at a length that matched the other Latin drones preceding his.
The mass of bodies in the cathedral was producing a heat that had encouraged an usher to open its doors in the hope that fresh air might dispel the sleep overcoming most of the congregation.
In fact, the only invigorating part of the ceremony so far had been when Duke Richard revealed the provenance of the sword he carried. He’d lacked grace in doing it but, adapting the words from the Book of Samuel with which the priest Ahimelech had given the sword of Goliath to David, he’d handed Henry of Engl
and’s gift to William and mumbled: “Ecce hic gladius Arturi regis. Behold, great king, I give you Excalibur.”
The woman next to Adelia had grabbed at her with hennaed fingers: “Excalibur. Did he say Excalibur?”
“Yes.”
“Arthur is here, then. Arthur has come to us.” It was a susurration on every breath so that, for a moment, the very saints in their plaques seemed to whisper a name that would make Sicily invulnerable.
Again, Adelia had looked for Ulf but, again, couldn’t see him.
After that, the ceremony once more degenerated into ordeal by boredom, and Adelia wondered how Joanna and William were surviving it on their knees, knowing, God help them both, that it was to be succeeded by another immediately afterward when they moved to the palace’s shimmering Palatine Chapel for Joanna’s coronation.
Adelia’s eyelids drooped and, being so tightly wedged between other women, she was able to doze standing up.
She woke up when a clear voice said: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, take and wear this ring as a sign of my love and faithfulness.”
They were exchanging rings. Joanna was married.
Hopefully, Adelia looked to her left where the side door led to the cathedral’s cloister. Only a moment ago, it seemed, the afternoon winter had been shining through it; now it was diminishing into twilight. The day was nearly over.
Not the ceremony, however; the congregation wasn’t to be released yet; not until Joanna and William had signed a register of their marriage.
She felt a jab in the ribs from the lady next to her, whose temper, despite the joy of Excalibur, had not been improved by heat or overcrowding. “Is that you? Kindly control yourself.”
Adelia, equally irritable, denied any lapse in good manners. But there was undoubtedly a sudden and awful smell. She looked down at her shoes to see that they were being rolled on by Ward in his pleasure at having discovered them. “I’m afraid it’s my dog.”
“Then get rid of it before we all faint.”
Adelia managed to reach down and gather Ward up. The chance of reaching the side door through her packed neighbors seemed remote, but, though they tutted and exclaimed behind their veils, a waft of Ward sent the ladies stepping back on one another’s feet in their eagerness to clear an exit for him.
“You,” Adelia said, when she’d gained the cloister, “what am I going to do with you?”
She pulled one of her long silk sleeves out of her cloak and knotted its end round the dog’s collar. If he wasn’t to infect the cathedral again, she would have to wait until the service inside was over and the others could rejoin her, which might well be another half hour or longer.
The sky had turned gray at the onset of evening, with occasional gusts of wind that blew dust along the cloister; it would be a cold wait.
It was then that she thought of the marionettes at the stall in La Kalsa’s piazza. She could now afford both the mule and the camel, probably the fighting men as well, though Allie would be less interested in them than the animals. This empty time was as good a moment to buy them as any; tomorrow might be taken up with other matters, seeing Rowley, going home, perhaps.
Well, damned if she’d return to England without a present for her daughter. And La Kalsa wasn’t far away; she could be there and back in no time ...
THE SUDDEN DISTURBANCE among the female guests had drawn attention to a woman leaving the cathedral with a horrible-looking dog in her arms.
On the men’s side of the nave, Mansur began struggling through impeding bodies to reach her, his flailing arms making a passage for Ulf and Dr. Gershom behind him.
Up in the clerestory, behind their filigree screen, Dr. Lucia and Boggart, with Donnell in her arms, started up and headed for the stairs.
The Irishman hadn’t seen Adelia go, but, alarmed by Mansur’s sudden movement, he began making his own way out.
From his higher position in the choir, the Bishop of Saint Albans saw all this, and something more—the shadow of a figure with a knife in its hand slipping along the clerestory.
I’ll never get to the side door in time.
Go the front way and the hell with everything.
Rowley charged out of his stall and began running, stripping off his cope as he went. He sent his miter spinning onto the altar steps, his jeweled crook of office still bouncing and clattering on the stones of the nave for some seconds after he’d disappeared out of the cathedral’s great front door, leaving a shocked and staring congregation behind him.
THE MARIONETTE-MAKER, a fat and elderly bearded Greek, was being difficult. “Signora, the knights, yes, I have plenty of those, but of the beasts I have only the two my sons are manipulating this moment. They are a draw, a favorite with children, I cannot let those last two go until I have made more.”
It was a ploy, of course. The damned man was going to put up the price; he’d seen her standing outside his booth before she came in, slavering over the dancing, kicking camel and mule; seen, too, that she was richly dressed, despite the unlovely dog to which her dangling sleeve was attached.
The booth was basically a long, thin canvas tent and smelled of paint and wood shavings. At this end, directly behind the stage, the backsides of two younger men waggled as they leaned over its little proscenium arch, expertly working the strings of the puppets for the benefit of the openmouthed children and adults outside who watched them. At the other end, the tent’s flaps were pulled up to let in light on a long bench on which lay half-finished figures amidst a complexity of struts and string.
Signor Feodor had sat her down when she’d entered, offered her a glass of sherbet, and got ready for the bargaining without which no sale in La Kalsa was complete.
She sipped her drink: “How much, Signor?”
“For the knights, a gold tari. For the animals, two.”
“Each?”
He spread his hands. “What would you, Signora? The articulation to make them kick and bite is complex. Also, as I say, I am reluctant to let them go.”
It was a ridiculous price. Normally, she’d have pretended to walk out of the shop, and he’d have called her back with a lower offer, and she’d have pretended to leave again, and he’d have called her back ... but it would take time that she didn’t have—while he did.
“Three tari for the lot,” she said.
“You would ruin me, Signora? Five.”
“Four.”
“Four and a half, and I am a fool to myself.”
“Done,” she said. “Wrap them up.”
She’d surprised him; he’d have gone down to three and a half. He was on his feet in a second, tapping the son pulling the animals’ strings on his rump. “We have a sale, Eneas.”
Because she’d overpaid, much grateful attention was given to parceling the puppets. She would be traveling far with them? Then they must be encased in wool to prevent damage. And the lucky recipient? A girl? Allow us to include a box of Greek delight for her....
Ward was pulling at her sleeve and making the noise in his throat that indicated he’d smelled something or somebody he knew and liked. Still sitting with the glass in her hand, Adelia turned her head to peer through the narrow gaps in the calico ribbons that hung over the booth’s entrance to keep out flies.
The piazza was beginning to celebrate its king’s wedding; flares were being lit, merchants were redoubling their efforts to sell plaster-cast depictions of a crowned bride and groom, drink stalls were doing a roaring trade, and, in the square’s center, a dais was being put together for a band to accompany the night’s dancing.
“Who’ve you seen, you silly dog?”
Then she saw who it was because his was the only figure in the piazza that was totally still. A man she knew was standing on the far side of the piazza under a fan-shaped palm tree, looking toward the booth, where the two remaining marionettes were still jouncing.
He and she had traveled the same one thousand miles—much of it together.
“Poor thing,
he’s ill” was her first thought; his hair, which was capless, had been allowed to grow bushy, his robe was worn ragged, while his face had the fixity of suffering.
Adelia got up to go and greet him. As she did it, the wind gusted, swaying the fronds of the man’s palm tree, raising his hair, and sending shade and light flickering over him as, once, they had flickered over a wild figure in the glade of a Somerset forest, striping his face as it had been striped then.
The eyes gleamed when the light caught them, then went dark; they weren’t staring at the marionettes; it was the booth’s curtain strips. When the same gust of wind that had revealed him blew them aside to reveal her, he smiled. She saw his teeth. And the knife in his hand.
She couldn’t move.
“There, Signora. Signora?”
The string handle of a heavy parcel was being slipped over the untrammeled wrist of her left arm. Still she didn’t move.
All this way, destroying as he went, unsuspected. He’d killed. He’d smiled and killed ... who? She was unable to remember, only that they were dead. Now it was her turn.
A group of people moved, chattering, across the square, blanking him out for a moment. When they’d gone, the space beneath the palm tree was empty.
She began to move backward slowly, pulling Ward with her, the parcel weighing on her other arm as it groped for any obstruction behind her. It was a shrinking away, not so much through terror for herself—though she was terrified—as through a dreadful revulsion. That thing out there was disordered, no longer human, more a giant poisonous insect unable to control itself; its antennae had discovered her and its fangs would sink into her whether or not there were people around to watch.
“Get away. Get away.” She didn’t know if she said it to the creature or herself.
“Signora?”
She kept backing off until she bumped into the marionette table. Then she turned and began running for the opening at the rear of the tent, Ward galloping beside her.