Grave Goods by Ariana Franklin Page B

lord king had insisted on speed, a requirement that literally overrode all others.
    On reaching the Severn they’d transferred to a boat and disembarked at Cardiff Castle on the Welsh coast, their destination, only to discover that Henry had moved on with his troops.
    “Been another rebellion,” Bolt told them after making inquiries. “Young Geoffrey’s holding out at Caerleon ’gainst another Welsh attack. The king’s gone to relieve him.”
    “We’ll have to wait here, then,” Adelia had said, relieved by the thought of a rest.
    “No, mistress. We’d better get on.”
    “Into a battle? You can’t take us into danger.”
    Bolt was astonished by her lack of faith in Henry Plantagenet. “There won’t be no battle by the time we gets there. The king’ll have mopped up that load of bloody Taffies quicker’n sixpence.”
    And so he had, if the heads on the battlements and the quiet, darkened countryside all around were anything to go by.
    Having quelled the revolt, Henry was establishing the peace—not that there was any sign of it in barbican or bailey, both in a commotion as soldiers tried to pack up weaponry against a counterflow of clerks unpacking chests of documents, all this among braying mules, frightened, scattering hens and pigs, and a cracked voice from a high window shouting orders to those below. “Where are those bloody maps? I need more ink up here. For the love of God, will you bastards
hurry.”
    The place stank of urine and manure, nor did the smell improveas Adelia and the others were rushed up staircases and past arrow slits where archers had stood day and night repelling an encircling enemy.
    The king was striding up and down a slightly less noisome though just as turbulent chamber, dictating the terms of two different treaties with two different and defeated rebel Welsh lords to two different scribes, occasionally shouting instructions out the window, while a fusty little man ran alongside him, trying to apply leeches to a bare and inflamed-looking royal arm. In a corner, a young man whom Adelia recognized as the king’s illegitimate son and general-in-chief, Geoffrey, was talking to several tired-looking insigniaed men in heavy fur mantles, presumably Welsh chieftains. Pages were laying out food on a table, kicking away sniffing hounds as they did it. A line of hawks on perches were screeching and flapping their wings. Incongruously, a limp-looking man in another corner was playing a small harp and singing to it, though what it was was impossible to hear.
    Captain Bolt announced the newcomers in a shout that only just penetrated the noise: “The lord Mansur, Mistress Adelia, and …” He looked despairingly at Gyltha, who was holding Allie. “And company.”
    Henry glanced up. “You took your damn time. Sit down somewhere until I’ve finished… .”
    “No,” Adelia said clearly.
    Everybody stopped what they were doing, except the harpist, who went on quietly singing to himself.
    Past caring, itching with fleas and fury, Adelia told him, “The Lord Mansur and company require a bath and a rest. And they need them now.”
    All eyes looked in her direction and then, in one slow movement,were turned on the king. Henry’s temper when he was flouted was renowned—Thomas à Becket had died from it.
    He blew out a breath. “Geoffrey.”
    “Yes, my lord?”
    “Is there a bath in the castle?”
    “I don’t know, my lord.” The young man’s mouth twitched. “A bath wasn’t, er, part of our armory.”
    “Better find one. And some beds.”
    “And clean clothes,” Adelia said. “Women’s.”
    The king sighed again. “Samite? Lace? Any particular size?”
    Adelia ignored the sarcasm. “Clean will do,” she said.
    At the door she turned and addressed the little doctor: “And if you’re supposed to be treating that wound, get those leeches off it and put on some bog moss—there’s plenty of the bloody stuff in the valleys; we’ve been squelching through it for two