Ann of Cambray

by Mary Lide

  Jealousy is a deadly sin, they say, and rightly so, hot and spiteful, turning all things sharp with malice. I told myself this, berated myself for such pettiness. I was no simpering maid, reared to high thoughts and flowering words; I had already killed a man for lust. You have seen how I was dragged up at the castle tail, scrabbling in the back corners of the peasants’ world. But there had been a time, in the golden afternoons at Sedgemont, when I had thought, too, of love as golden, full of promise. And Raoul was right when he taunted me with such hopes. But whether he sent her away to please me, or whether, as I suspect, it was good sense, not wanting to jeopardise his standing if the Celtic lords should come, I do not know. Nor what parting, if any, they had. Those were questions better left unasked, better unanswered.

  I have said I saw Lord Raoul but seldom. By day, he was often gone with his guard, riding with them from dawn to dusk across the moors through the wildest parts of the borderline. Sometimes they came dragging back, the horses deep in mud, the men too tired to roll from their backs. By such patrols he kept the southern marches firm, free of looters such as I had seen at work farther north, rid of raiding tribes like the one that had taken Cambray. There were frequent skirmishes, to keep his men in training, minor affairs without loss of life. But he drove himself and his men all the harder that the Celtic leaders still had sent no word, made no response to his messages. Until one day . . .

  I was listening to another of those long tales of love and grief that delight our Celtic taste, when I heard the sudden clash of arms, the sound of footsteps, voices. He burst in upon me, smiling, dressed in more noble fashion than I had yet seen, charm high upon him like a sheen.

  ‘Bestir yourself, my lady of Cambray,’ he said. ‘Put on your geegaws and your courtesies. They are coming.’

  ‘Who, my lord?’ I asked, pretending calm although my heart raced at seeing him. But he was pulling me up from the chair, where the women had been braiding my hair, so that it fell loose.

  ‘Your mother’s kin,’ he said, smiling down, his eyes bright, even his hair alive. ‘Your Celtic lords, your sly foxes lured into the open at last. God’s wounds, I began to think they had no family pride, to want to greet you. Put on your mother’s jewels to show them all previous rumours have lied, that you are cared for, safe. They have come to see you as your father’s heir. And make treaty with his overlord, God willing. Then will our work here be done.’

  There was an eagerness in his voice that told me something I had not thought before, how much perhaps he too wished to be away from here, how grievously this long, unexpected exile from Stephen’s court had cost him.

  I sent my women scurrying.

  He held me still, that hand I remembered heavy on my shoulder.

  ‘They are not children to play at games,’ he said. ‘I will show you to them to satisfy their curiosity. I would not have you speak out of turn. Say nothing, do nothing, that I do not bid you. All that is needed is that you be there.’

  I could guess at the anxiety behind his words. He had been waiting for this occasion for months. It galled him, no doubt, to have to owe it to me. Yet he should not have feared that I would spoil the chance for him.

  ‘I will say nothing to disgrace you,’ I told him stiffly. ‘I will be a model of decorum, my lord.’

  He put his finger across my mouth.

  ‘Swear not so much,’ he said. Tempt not your Celtic gods. But think, think, before you speak. I have set no trap for them. They come of their own accord and I will offer them a treaty such as we had in King Henry’s day: to rule freely behind the boundaries they agreed to then. There is no treachery unless they will see one.’

  ‘I shall be honey sweet, my lord of Sedgemont,’ I said coldly. ‘As overlord, you can do no other than order me.’

  ‘That is what I am afraid of,’ he said. ‘Play not Countess of Warwick with me here. I shall not drop dead of shock, but you may wish it.’

  I wanted to say again, ‘Trust me.’ But could not.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said, letting me go. ‘See to it. The fate of Cambray as well may rest upon it. They have already crossed the outer guards.’

  ‘I cannot be ready in time,’ I cried in panic, sending everyone flying before me.

  ‘You will be,’ he said. And I was, in a dress they had sewn for me these past weeks, pale green it was, with the sides and underarms caught up to show the darker kirtle beneath. Giles went before me to hand me over the rough ground, and a small page, one of those I had lived among, came behind me carrying my mother’s gold circle, for they had told me I should not wear it as a maid unwed, a nicety I had not thought on before.

  Lord Raoul was standing to greet me, still dressed in his splendid clothes. Coming towards him over the grass in the innermost part of the camp where his pavilion stood, I had the feeling of brilliancy everywhere, blue sky, green fields, burnished mail, gleaming weapons, standard blazing in the spring sun.

  ‘The Lady of Cambray,’ Lord Raoul said. His voice was vibrant as I remembered, his hand steady. I took it so he could lead me forward. Beside him sat a small, dark man, overflowing one of those wooden stools soldiers use. He was half-smothered in furs despite the warmth of the day. When he stood up, he scarce came to Raoul’s shoulder, yet he was broad and solid, and when he moved, his legs, bound with thongs, seemed like trees, thick and ponderous. But his gait was stately, too, his hair was long and black, and his eyes small and quick, with a brightness that reminded me of Gwendyth. I would not have known him, but there was something about him that gave me pause to think.

  ‘So this is little Ann of Cambray, full grown,’ he said. ‘I should know you, kinswoman. I am half-brother to your mother, whom I dearly loved. She was as second mother to me years ago, before marriage took her far away.’

  He spoke in Norman-French as we did, slowly and coldly. Yet I sensed a warmth beneath his words.

  ‘The Lady Ann has spoken often of her Celtic kin,’ Lord Raoul said at my side, ‘although her home has been at Sedgemont.’

  The Celtic lord nodded almost disdainfully, and behind him I heard his entourage cough and stamp, as nervous as horses in new quarters.

  We sat down, Lord Raoul, the Celtic lord, and myself, and wine was brought. It seemed wrong to be sitting as with strangers.

  ‘I was young when I left the borderland,’ I said suddenly in our own tongue. ‘But I have never forgotten it.’

  I felt Lord Raoul’s start of displeasure, but before he could restrain me, or the interpreter beside us could speak, I translated for him myself, giving my most brilliant smile. On the other side, I felt my Celtic kinsman shift and half-smile, in turn, and a flicker crossed the faces of his men.

  Lord Raoul looked at me, neither smiling nor moving.

  ‘Tell him,’ he said—was there warning in his look?—‘that as he and his kindred were good friends to Lord Falk of Cambray, and through him to the Earl of Sedgemont, so would I stand high in their esteem.’

  ‘My lord uncle,’ I said, and again I saw a half-smile cross his face, ‘as dear as you were to my mother, so dear we would be to you and yours again.’

  I could hear the translator repeating the words back for Lord Raoul. He could not fault me so far.

  ‘Times have brought us far apart. But Lord Raoul of Sedgemont would be as good a friend as his grandfather, the late earl, was.’

  ‘I knew your father, Falk, well,’ said my uncle—half-uncle?—but I think he liked the name. ‘He broke no treaty with us; we were as blood kin.’

  ‘Think of me ever so,’ I said. ‘And as my father was vassal to the lords of Sedgemont, so hold we faith of them.’

  Beside me, I could feel Lord Raoul shift in his turn.

  ‘Bid him know that we would renew those treaties, ever made in friendship.’

  ‘It is what we also wish, my lord of Sedgemont,’ the Celtic voice broke in, speaking again in Norman-French, taking again that sterner tone. ‘But these past years have been hard on the borderlands. Ten years almost it i
s since Falk died, and who has kept the border policies since then? It has not been our men who have raided and despoilt the villages and farms.’

  Raoul said patiently, ‘There have been errors on both sides, my lord.’

  ‘And we have heard many rumours, accounts of battle and rebellion,’ my uncle said. ‘Even rumour of your death, kinswoman.’ He turned back to me. ‘They said you died at Sedgemont.’ There was a pause. Even Raoul did not know how to answer that.

  ‘Yet here I am,’ I said with my bright smile. ‘Come back with the spring and end of war.’

  They all laughed at that. The wine went round more freely. Lord Raoul let out his breath again.

  ‘The old treaty set the boundary marks,’ he said. ‘Lord Falk and his men kept the Norman side safe, your men the other. Both parties to the treaty were content. We have not seen many Celtic patrols, although we have been here these past months.’

  My uncle said, ‘During the reign of King Henry, late of memory, the boundary was agreed upon, and on your side you built a line of castles to hold it firm. That was to our advantage as well as yours. But since these civil wars, who cares where the boundary runs? New castles have been built across the line. Year by year, our lands are eroded away by your settlements.’ I could see Raoul was thinking of Cambray.

  ‘And we have lost Cambray, my uncle,’ I said, leaning on his arm, forestalling Raoul, ‘I would go there if I could.’

  My uncle watched us both through his small half-shut eyes. Then he took a great pull of wine.

  ‘Your wars have plagued us as well,’ he said at last. ‘When men fight for a throne, there are always those who take advantage. We have our malcontents as well as you. We do not like these shifts of fashion that lure the restless and misfit among our people across the border, to their loss and shame. Only Lord Falk’s good sense prevented greater evil when the wars first began. If Cambray were restored to you, would you not restore the lands we have lost farther north to the lords of Maneth, the greatest offenders of the Norman treaty?’

  ‘While we have a king over us,’ said Raoul, ‘we must hold faith to him. So would you find that your chief concern if one of your princes became overlord of all. I am empowered to make a treaty as it was made originally in King Henry’s day. When the time comes to fight at Cambray or Maneth, and we shall, you have my promise, we shall put both to rights, be those at fault Norman or Celt.’

  He spoke grimly. My uncle watched him closely again.

  ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘Then shall I bear back tidings to my kinsmen and great lords, that they may talk of it. For they, too, long for peace as it was in the days of Falk and the Earl Raymond, both blessed in memory. I feasted with your grandfather, my lord, near to Cambray once. It was close to the start of these wars. “If men fight for the honour of their king,” he said, “then will the kingdom be torn apart.”

  ‘He was a man of sense,’ Lord Raoul said. ‘All men of sense must deplore what civil war will bring.’

  ‘But not ambitious men,’ my uncle said. ‘They welcome it.’ They looked at each other, not needing me now, speaking to each other face to face.

  Suddenly Raoul smiled and stretched out his hand.

  ‘Men of good sense are many years in the making,’ he said. ‘My lord, I am young, but I know a man of sense when I see one.’

  My uncle grasped his hand in his great paw. ‘Then hope I to know one in the making,’ he said, and he too smiled, showing all his ill-formed teeth. He gestured to his men, who moved forward, their cloaks hanging to their heels. Outside in the warm sunlight, they swung themselves up into the saddles of their small ponies, not in the Norman way of Raoul and his men, who had to manage shield and sword and were weighed down with a mail coat about their knees, and who rode stiff legged in their high saddles as if standing upright. These horses were so small that if Raoul had ridden Norman style, he would have trailed his legs upon the ground. Yet my uncle did not look so misplaced, for all that.

  On an impulse, I stepped forward and curtsied, holding out to him some of the flowers that had been wound into my hair.

  He took them without speaking at first, the lines upon his dark skin showing deeper in the sun.

  ‘Daughter of my sister,’ he said at last, ‘who was the light of our threshold, why stayed you away so long from us? I came to see for myself that you lived, that you were who you claim to be. For all my previous doubts, I see my sister alive before me again. What news shall I give your kinsfolk?’

  ‘My uncle,’ I said, ‘tell them that I have been growing under wardship to the Lord of Sedgemont in his care, as was right and fitting. Now am I come to get Cambray, as also is right. Tell them that I am well, and that I await them here.’ Again I heard Raoul let out his breath. My uncle nodded, saluted, wrapped his cloak and reins around his right arm, and trotted off, a small shapeless bundle followed by his men. At the main gates, his footmen, who had been crouching in the grass, leaped to their feet and ran beside him towards the open moors.

  8

  We waited until they had disappeared over the crest of the hill. Then Lord Raoul turned to me. Before all his men, he put his hands about my waist, lifting me from the ground to swing me up.

  ‘Now, by my troth,’ he said, ‘that was well done, ma mie.’ And he kissed me full upon the lips.

  He set me down hastily and turned to the others, drawing his lords apart.

  Before I had left them they were already discussing, explaining, assessing what had been done, what achieved. I walked slowly away, my women a distance off, and wandered towards the first embankment, the one I had burst through on horseback how many weeks ago now? It was already spring, and I had scarcely noticed, one of those spring days when the sky is so pale blue it seems to shine with a light of its own. I sat among the grasses at the foot of the great bank, wondering, as I always did whenever I passed by, what manner of men had first thrown it up, and why; twined flowers that grew there into garlands; presently, not thinking, simply sitting and waiting. But the day had already paled, the smoke of the campfires darkened the pale blue, the wind grown chill, before he came.

  ‘Come, Lady Ann,’ he said, ‘your hand. Walk awhile beside me here.’

  He helped me to my feet, then paced beside me, forgetting sometimes to match his steps with mine, so that before long I was hard put to keep up with him.

  ‘That kinsman of yours,’ he said abruptly, ‘this uncle. What do you remember of him?’

  ‘I recall many things,’ I said, ‘simply, none clear. I would not have remembered him if you had asked me. Seeing him, I think I do.’

  ‘And his standing?’ he said.

  ‘Standing?’ I asked. ‘He is a great lord. My mother was a princess of their race.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, almost impatiently, ‘they are all great princes. But privy to what master then? Who serves he?’

  ‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘Whoever are highest in these parts.’

  He made a gesture. ‘And who are they?’ he said. ‘They change from day to day.’

  ‘No different then from your Norman kings,’ I said.

  He smiled down at me and bade me walk on. I watched him now as we went. It suddenly seemed to me that although this was the time of day when the work was done, all was still confused about us. The great gates were not yet closed. Even as I looked, I saw men gallop out. And Lord Raoul himself: I did not remember he wore his mail coat beneath his robe before, or that he had his spurs upon his heels, or fingered his dagger hilt so as he walked.

  ‘It is good news then, my lord,’ I said.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, not listening to me, watching in his turn. ‘Those horses are too close tethered,’ he bawled out suddenly, leaning over the bank. The men below scurried to obey.

  ‘You do not expect treachery, my lord?’ I asked at last.

  ‘I do not expect anything,’ he said. ‘The work today was well done. Now comes the night. One must be prepared.’

  ‘My uncle came in good faith,’ I sa
id hotly. ‘You told me there was no trap.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Raoul. ‘For all our flattery of each other, I believe he is a man of sense. But he also spoke the truth in this: he is but one among many. He made no promises on others’ behalf. What he tells me, and how they respond, is in God’s hands. But he has also seen how we are deployed, our strengths, our weaknesses.’

  ‘You did not have to let him come into your camp if you feared him,’ I cried angrily.

  ‘That also is true,’ he said, ‘but then he might not have come at all. One plays one chance against another, sets one thing against the opposite. That is the way of the world.’

  ‘Not mine,’ I said. ‘Does it not tire you, my lord, always outguessing your friends and foes?’

  The scorn in my voice must have touched some nerve. ‘I have long been used to it,’ he said shortly.

  ‘So you said once before,’ I said.

  ‘I also told you,’ he said, ‘if you but remember, that although we may scheme and plan, events outside our control are not so nice as to wait upon our ordering.’

  ‘I remember many things,’ I said, ‘including that you have had your enemy within your grasp and let him go.’

  ‘Where heard you news such as that?’ he said, coming to full stop. ‘Not at my table or in my camp. But if you mean that Henry of Anjou escaped from us, that I would not argue with. But I did not let him go.’

  It was a distinction that was fair, but I was angered.

  ‘And at Crowmarsh,’ I said, ‘what happened after that to send you trailing back here to this makeshift camp?’

  He said evenly, although I saw how he bit his lip to hide his rage, ‘Since you speak of what I do not care to talk, well then, the king would not fight. Would you have had us turn against him and the Angevins both? So peace was signed.’

  ‘And you signed it?’