Free The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin Page A

snow for Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, medica of the renowned School of Medicine in Salerno, expert on death and the causes of death, to happen along and decipher it.
    For which they were going to be sorry.
    It had been a cold wait; they’d stamped their feet to keep warm. In her mind, Adelia waited with them, nibbling phantom cheese. Perhaps they had listened to the sound of Compline being sung before the nuns retired to bed for the three hours until Vigils. Apart from that it would have been quiet except for an owl or two, perhaps, and the shriek of a vixen.
    Here he comes, the rider. Up the road that leads from the river to the convent, his horse’s hooves muffled by the earlier snow but still audible in the silence.
    He’s nearing the gates, slowing—does he mean to go in? But Villain Number One has stepped out in front of him, the crossbow cocked and straining. Does the rider see him? Shout out? Recognize the man? Probably not; the shadows are dark here. Anyway, the bolt has been loosed and is already deep in his chest.
    The horse rears, sending its rider backward and tumbling, breaking the bolt’s flights as he falls. Villain Number Two snatches at the reins, leads the terrified horse to the trees, and tethers it there.
    “He’s on the ground and dying—a crossbow quarrel is nearly always fatal wherever it hits,” Adelia said, “but they made sure. One or other of them—whoever he was has big hands—throttled him as he lay on the ground.”
    “God have mercy,” the bishop said.
    “Yes, but here’s the interesting thing,” Adelia told him, as if everything else had been commonplace. “ Now they drag him to the center of the bridge. See? The toes of his boots make runnels in the snow. They throw his cap down beside him—dear Lord , they’re stupid. Did they think a man fallen from his mount looks so tidy? Legs together? Skirts down? You saw that, didn’t you? And then, then , they fetch his horse to the bridge and slice its leg.”
    “They do not take him into the trees,” Mansur pointed out. “Nor the horse. Neither would have been found if they’d done that, not until the spring, and by then, no one could see what had happened to them. But no, they drag him to where the first person across the bridge in the morning will see him and raise the hue and cry.”
    “Not giving the killers as much time to get away as they might have.” The bishop was reflective. “I see. That’s…eccentric.”
    “ This is what’s eccentric,” Adelia said. They’d come up to the body again. At the bottom of the bridge where the others were gathered, somebody had made a makeshift brazier and lit a fire. Faces, ghastly in the reflection of the flames, turned hopefully in their direction. “You goin’ to be much longer?” Gyltha shouted. “Little un’s due a feed, and we’m dyin’ of frostbite.”
    Adelia ignored her. She still didn’t feel the cold. “Two men,” she said, “and they are poor, judging from their footwear. Two men kill our rider. Granted, they take the money from his purse, but they leave the purse, a good one that has his family crest on it. They leave his boots, his cloak, the silver buckle, his fine horse. What thief does that?”
    “Perhaps they were disturbed,” Rowley said.
    “Who disturbs them? Not us. They are long gone before we come up. They had time to strip this poor soul of everything he…had. They do not. Why, Rowley?”
    The bishop thought it through. “They want him found.”
    Adelia nodded. “It is vital to them.”
    “They want him to be identified.”
    Adelia’s exhaled breath was a stream of satisfaction. “Exactly. It must be known who he is and that he is dead.”
    “I see.” Rowley considered. “Hence the suggestion that we hide his body. I don’t like it, though.”
    “But that will bring them back, Rowley,” Adelia said, and for the first time she touched him, a tug on his sleeve. “They’ve taken pains to have this poor young man’s