Ann of Cambray

by Mary Lide

  ‘I do not complain,’ he said moodily. ‘If others speak of these things they speak out of turn.’

  ‘Giles told no tales,’ I said, ‘but I know as well as you, you would not have stayed so long here had there been hope of mending your cause with the king.’

  ‘I will not deny it,’ he said. He smiled. ‘Come, it is not so grave. Perhaps he has called me to make me earl at last.’

  ‘Earldom is a title he has bestowed on many men,’ I broke in. ‘It is an empty honour at best.’

  ‘I did but jest,’ he said quietly. ‘That is not the honour I speak of. Come, love, do not quarrel with me this last day. The king’s messenger came last night. Did not you hear him, hammering at the gates as if to wake the dead? We must prepare to leave as soon as he is ready, this noontide, if we can . . .’

  ‘So soon,’ I said, but my thoughts ran ahead, frightening me with their clarity. ‘You will leave me, Raoul, after all, although you know that Stephen has not been just or faithful to you. For such faithlessness will you abandon me and Cambray. And then what will become of us?’

  How easily he slipped home the blade that ended hope, and how meekly I accepted its wound. The Lady Mildred herself could not have been more humble, more self-effacing, as I followed him down the steps to the courtyard where I could already see the horses being bridled, the saddlebags prepared. Then to the Hall, where we must sit and hear the messenger’s complaints until, overcome by his efforts, he fell into a doze over his flagon of ale. Then, whilst he slept, to ride out for one last look at Cambray. How shall I describe so bittersweet, so golden-grey a day? The long damp wheat shimmered at our passage; the tassels of oats and rye dropped under their own weight; Cambray shone rich with harvest about us. And all I saw was desolation, as he gave instructions for the care of this, the care of that.

  He knew me well enough to sense what I was thinking, the more because I did not speak of it. And if I had, would not he have said, ‘It is the lot of women to have their men ride out to danger. It is the lot of men to be lured away from safety to war, else are they not men.’

  Dispute that argument, if you can, poet. I cannot. Yet then I was still young, still hopeful. I knew he showed his concern by cheerfulness, refusing to turn to tragedy what time was left. I thought perhaps I could change his purpose if I made one last attempt, one other way. In that, too, I was mistaken. I should have kept quiet. Yet, if I had, how much else would have been changed.

  The sun was already high when we returned. Then had I to go first to see about domestic affairs; for pride’s sake, we set a good table that day, although such feasting taxed our resources. But a king’s messenger must be honoured. And when I had seen all prepared to my liking, I slipped out from the castle and made my way down to the sands. The squires were waiting where they always used to wait, at the back of the dunes, so the horses could crop among the rough grasses growing there. They knuckled salute as I went by and turned back to their dicing. Even the guard who spun round on hearing me smiled and pointed with his sword blade which way I should go. I might have been a child again, so little did my presence concern them. But I had no childlike purpose in mind.

  The sands were wide and empty at low tide, smooth except for footprints that went down to the sea beyond the rocks where the tide turns. Across the bay, the water shimmered and the breakers came creaming in. I could see Raoul far out among the waves. How long since I had sat like this, gathering piles of clothes at my feet, waiting for him to return? He came presently, running and stumbling through the shallows to stand before me.

  I sat up with my cloak around my shoulders.

  ‘Take me with you,’ I said.

  ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘It will not be for long.’ But I knew he lied.

  ‘Then stay here.’

  ‘Ann,’ he pleaded with me, ‘you have not understood what I must do. If your Celtic gifts had power to see ahead, you could foretell me all the future. If you cannot, I must not wait it here, like some caged bear.’

  ‘I see nothing,’ I said, ‘that does not include us both. What should I be or do after this, if you are not there as well?’

  He said at last, ‘You have Cambray. Since I first knew you, that was what you yearned for. It is worth the keeping.’

  How could I tell him that it was as nothing after all; thus do the gods make sport of us to turn our dearest wishes to dust.

  ‘Then go and be damned,’ I cried. ‘Find some highborn lady at your court. Forget us here.’

  ‘Ann,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘I have had high women and low, and have had enough of both. And of courts and courtiers as well. If I could stay, I would . . .’

  ‘I do not believe you,’ I cried. ‘Men are ever so, dishonest at the end.’

  ‘Dishonest,’ he said, angry now. ‘By all the saints, where is this honesty of women to be found? Was my betrothed in France so honest that when I first visited her, I surprised her with her lover? Bound I was to her as a boy, and yet would have kept my vows. But even thoughts of my land and wealth could not keep her lust still. And the Celtic woman of my camp, who betrayed us to the lords of Maneth . . . Ah, you knew of that?’

  ‘I knew.’

  ‘You never spoke to her.’

  ‘Nor you, my lord,’ I said. ‘But I do not hold her blameworthy. So shall I do if you forsake me. I count that honesty.’

  He shook me hard so that my cloak fell off and all my nakedness was revealed cold to the wind that blew the fine sand in stinging gusts.

  ‘So you have come, like the rest,’ he said almost bitterly, ‘to use your charms. A siren to tempt me ... I thought for something more than that from you.’

  ‘Then am I no more than any other of your women,’ I said, 'that you have loved and left. Lord Raoul has had his sport of me, too: is that what I should think?’

  He looked at me hard. Well, we have but one life and may pay for it through eternity, but it seemed to me that what life is and all its vigour, its essence, shone in him then. He was alive, from the salt-crusted curls to the long, lean body where the wind had turned old wounds blue against the brown flesh.

  ‘Do not forsake me, Raoul,’ I said, wiping my eyes where the wind stung.

  ‘I would not forsake you . . .’

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said, and there was misery in his voice. ‘Do not tempt me. Think instead that free of me, you can keep Cambray safe at least.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  He had turned aside again, staring out to sea with his sea-grey eyes.

  ‘Think,’ he said. ‘You can still hold Cambray of the next Lord of Sedgemont.’

  As I tried to interrupt, he said, ‘What did you expect? We have had a little respite here, that is all. When Henry returns, he will have that vengeance you once warned me of. Think. If I can influence Stephen, I shall. But I live on borrowed time, free of me, you keep your lands, avoid my fate.’

  ‘Say it is not so, Raoul, say it will not be so.’

  I clung to him then, trying to stop his mouth against such bleakness. I had goaded him into the truth; I wished that he had never spoken it. I should have kept quiet myself. What could I say except encompass him that he might drown in me, find there an end to whatever search for honour, hope, drove him on.

  ‘Or is it,’ he said, his mouth at my neck bone, ‘that you truly seek me out for passion’s sake, that you burn for it? I cry you pardon. I thought you wooed my lands and name . . .’

  ‘Do not jest now,’ I whispered. ‘We have such little time.’

  He said, his mouth lower still, ‘Nice ladies at court are not so generous with their favours. Did once I call you skin and bone? You are flesh and heart and all that men could desire. Remember that I, Raoul of Sedgemont, say that. Ann, I am not Talisin. I cannot recreate the past for you. And all the future looks dark. But this present, this now, I have given you, as you have given it to me. Remember it.’

  We fell upon the sands; we struggled with each other, part in love, part fear. Except
once, before passion was spent, he raised himself upon his arms, forcing me to look at him, that I might take in his naked flesh and my own.

  ‘Now, now,’ he cried, every word a thrust, a plunge, that his self might burrow into mine, ‘this is now. Remember me so.’

  I clung to him that his force might be passed on to me, an empty well that he would replenish, that there beside the sea, some spark of what we had been might live on, even when we were done. This was our parting, our farewell.

  Afterwards we helped each other dress, wordless, brushed off the sand, wiped away stains of love. Then, separate, apart, we walked back up the beach, the wind already freshening. The sentry saluted, squires sprang to their feet, horses snorted and stamped. From the courtyard, I watched the bustle of departure as if it happened far away, in another time that concerned not me. Raoul waved off his pages impatiently as they fussed with the setting of the last straps. He strode across the yard, his mail swinging to his knees, his face framed by the steel coif that he wore beneath his helmet, already remote, gone a long way off.

  ‘I shall send word,’ he said. ‘Look for my seal that you know me.’

  He dipped his head that they might set his helmet in place, a mask that hid all I must remember.

  They brought up the black stallion, but he bade them let it go, gathered the reins, and vaulted into the saddle without touching stirrup. His flag bearer swung up on his own horse; the king’s messenger, well fed but still white-faced for weariness, still mud splattered, climbed upon his own. He wore full armour, too, carried the king’s crest as proof of his mission, but his face was drawn, and faint-hearted was his smile, as if he doubted his ability even to find the king’s court again.

  The other men were already waiting. They knew Raoul never stayed about his parting. He raised his arm; they thundered across the bridge. I ran to the walk around the battlements where this morning we had stood and talked, and watched them move across the faint purple moors until they dipped from sight and were gone. But long after, I followed them in my mind’s eye that I should understand all that he had said, should remember rightly.

  I live on borrowed time.

  What good is life or youth or love that cannot withstand another man’s revenge? What means honour to a man dead? Who shall remember anything when time and death have faded it?

  I have tried to explain before how Raoul did not reveal all his thoughts at once, although I think that day I had shaken him enough for him to show more than he meant. I do not speak now of plans, of strategy, but of his own self, his own identity. I had not known before, for example, that he had felt betrayed by women, that he came as slowly as I towards the idea of love. And although I have long known what honour was—a man’s oath is as a promise to God, not lightly made, not lightly broken, and death is better than dishonour—I had not known how he would choose when faced with a decision between honour and—what? Deep, harsh things lay beneath the abrupt words I had forced from him. I have thought them over many times since then; by shifts and starts have some of them become clear at last, part from what other men said later, part from what I could guess at myself. Let me put them in order for you here, although to do so I must take you to the world of the court and its high affairs, that world we had both, for a moment, thought to escape. But we were as trapped by it as anyone; no one escapes its hold on us.

  Anything that the great do has some effect on everyone. Now saw I what he meant. Now fell it with full force upon us.

  As I look back from a long life, I see more clearly than he could then, although he guessed at it, how much the nature of our world has altered since. We live in an age of change. One day people will reflect on it and give it names of their own to explain and justify. You have but to look around you to see the changes for yourself: in church, in village, in castle keep. The way we think, the prayers we say, the rules we abide by, all these were new and strange to me, who has seen the changes harden into custom, law. Yet then I would not have thought them possible . . . And danger, you who live in settled times have forgotten what death and danger are, what civil war can destroy, that even when the war is over, private quarrels still rage on. Consider for a moment a traitor’s death. They hang you first, choking and gasping for breath, and cut you down alive and rip the bowels from you, geld you, burn your genitals before your living eyes before they hack you limb by limb. I have seen a man die thus. It is no death for any man, but, for a young one, vibrant with life, perhaps knowing himself beloved, knowing love for the first time . . .

  Raoul kept his thoughts to himself but he must have guessed what name Henry would brand him with. He had not wished to speak of it, but sometime I would have to know . . .

  Free of me, you keep your lands, avoid my fate.

  I cannot marry you.

  A traitor drags with him all his kin. Wife, children, family, all must share the consequence, if not the manner, of his death, to be burned out root and stem, cut off from lands and titles evermore.

  What if a cause be half-lost, one need not fight the less.

  He had half-guessed his fate perhaps since his return from France; certainly he knew it when he rode out from Sedgemont to await the landing of Henry of Anjou, when he saw how Stephen had lost heart and will. But if he anticipated what his loyalty would cost, he would not swerve from it. What man of honour could?

  Would it please you to have me proved a coward, a man of no faith?

  Long have I regretted my silence when he hurled that question at me.

  Raoul knew he had been a marked man long before Wallingford, when those who would have avoided open battle nevertheless would have accepted him as the king’s champion to fight against Anjou, long before the Treaty of Westminster, which followed; long perhaps before Raoul had come back to England to inherit Sedgemont.

  I have known these Angevins before.

  Well, what he knew of them, they, too, would know of him. The struggle between the counts of Sieux, the counts of Anjou stretch back into an earlier history when, as descendants of those Norse bands who had invaded northern France, both had fought over the same territory there. Was it wise then to antagonise the heir of a family that had now grown so strong as to control almost all of those northern lands? Why had Raoul put himself in the forefront of the opposition to Henry of Anjou? And would Henry kill him when he came to power in England?

  The first two questions I cannot answer. Judge the last for yourself. Number in your mind, if you dare not aloud, the names, in France and England both, whom Henry has destroyed. Remember, again if you dare, that archbishop slain at his own high altar at Canterbury, by that same Henry’s command. And once Becket and Henry had been friends . . .

  Yet no man is all bad, and in Henry, as in others, good struggled sometimes to overcome evil as the sea may fret away at a black unyielding rock. But let Raoul speak to these last points in his own words; as afterwards I heard them, to tell you what befell when he left Cambray and came again to King Stephen’s court.

  I have said I am no chronicler. I piece together what I can, as things were told to me, perhaps years later. The story of how he left and we met once more may seem strange to you, as improbable as the events themselves that followed hard upon that meeting . . . Yet, had not Stephen died and Henry become king, none of them would have happened; my tale would end here. I wish it had. But as one ripple moves, it sets the next to moving.

  Anything that the great do has effect on everyone.

  Now were we caught full centre in that widening circle. Nor can I tell you everyday occurrences, who said what, did which, to make a pattern that will please you. There are gaps in my knowledge when I was not there to see for myself. For facts you must rely upon those monkish texts which swear to the truth of all they write. But do not be surprised if some of the things I tell you never find the way into their accounts. Their idea of truth is as one-sided as mine. Except they never will admit it. Raoul’s journey east, for example. It is mentioned in several of those texts, since travellers about
the king’s business could command royal entertainment along the way, and monasteries, bishops’ palaces, are noted for their hospitality. You can read for yourself where they stayed, how long, but why they were there, what they said, what they intended, no one will tell you that.

  One chronicler records even what they ate, all sixteen courses, washed down with so many draughts of mead, cider, claret, and mulberry wine. A plenteous feast for men used to soldier’s fare. As the pious complaint which ends the description points out, little was left when they were done . . .

  ‘As locusts in the land of Egypt did they devour our sustenance . . .’

  Another passage from this same source speaks only of the king’s messenger ‘reeling beneath the burden of disdain; wheresoever he passed people spat at him for hate . .

  The poor man reeled, no doubt, for weariness. As for hate and anger, Raoul saw no one who spat at them, except the monks themselves, discreetly behind their long sleeves. Yet neither were people open-faced, joyful, glad to see them pass as in former days. Cautious, watchful, weary: those were the words he would have used to describe what he saw, and they were enough to trouble him, as if he journeyed through an exhausted land, too tired to concern itself about its fate.

  They found the king at Dover. He had already abandoned his castle at London to his mercenaries, and had come to this small flea-infested town of hovels, dominated by its unkempt castle above the white cliffs. It in no way resembled the castle that later was to be built there, and why Stephen had chosen to go there was never explained, if he had a plan to await word of Anjou’s doings in France or to travel there himself, or merely to inspect this chiefest of his Channel defences (although, in truth, it was but a sorry imitation of defence).

  But as Raoul and his men clattered up the narrow cobbled streets and under the portcullis at the gate, they could see again the evidence of disinterest all about them, the neglect. Raoul restrained himself that night from clouting the stable boys when they came at last reluctantly to take the horses, for, as he said, ‘I remembered your complaints, that all men vent their spleen upon their grooms. Yet they deserved worse, for the stables were filthy, saddles and gear rotting on the ground, not one horse there sound for riding, not one kept in training. I was not so restrained the next day. And everywhere we went, even passing through the guards, we noted sign of slackness: ill-kept weapons, ill-kept men, passwords ignored. The king’s own personal guard did not salute as they should, but slouched at their post. Great courts are not always so grand as you would think. And this was worse than most, although there may have been reason.’