by Mary Lide
‘How goes it, then?’ he said, seeing my expression change. I repeated the phrase as I thought he must have intended.
‘You see,’ he said, turning to the queen, ‘how well I have remembered it? I have not been there since my uncle died.’ The queen was laughing also. ‘It is something, no doubt, that no honest maid should hear. My lord, here is a challenge. If you can master that strange speech, I do not give up hope for you. You yet shall speak the language of the south with me. Langue d’oc should not come so hard.’
Her words had a strange impact. They were still calm, and she gave no sign of knowing how he looked, how he had spoken to me. Yet she must have known. And what she said must have had some effect on him, seeming to recall him to where he was, what he had been about to say.
He slapped the casket down upon the table so I could rescue it, turned on his heel, and began his pacing back and forth, prowled would be more apt term, so much again like Raoul that I was startled by it.
Suddenly he spoke to me. ‘Those grey horses in our courtyard eating their weight in gold. Whose are they?’
I had forgotten them, but, of course, they had been cared for in the royal stables whilst we had been here at Bermondsey.
‘Mine, my lord.’
‘Of course,’ he said slapping his thigh, ‘the greys of Cambray. They were well known, too. I thought as much . . .’ His voice trailed off.
‘They came as gift,’ I said hesitatingly. He spun round at me on hearing that.
‘Gift,’ he said. ‘For whom? And on whose . . .’
‘You speak overmuch of gift and gift giving, my lord.’ Eleanor spoke smoothly. She had risen herself after this last exchange, had allowed her maids to wrap her in her furred cloak, had let her long hair hang in soft folds down her back. ‘I have given you a gift, my lord. It seems to please you. What have you brought me in return?’
Henry wheeled to face her; the rest of his sentence died unuttered. His face lit up, and like a boy he tugged at the inside of his dirty tunic, scattering handfuls of paper scraps and straws upon the floor. When he pulled forth his hand, it was weighted with a heavy object that clattered as he swung it to and fro.
‘Jesu, that I should forget,’ he said. ‘Lady Queen, pardon me. You see how remiss I am, and yet this hunk of metal has been so heavy that I scarce can walk with it. Lord Aumale was so grieved to have missed our crowning, he sends you this to make amends.’
Eleanor came over to where he stood and he handed her—a fortune. It was a heavy gold collar, worked with precious stones of old and curious design, no doubt a family heirloom that the king had ‘persuaded’ Aumale to give him.
Looted would be a better word, I thought, fascinated by it as all the court was. Eleanor held it up high, setting the lights dancing from the stones. Suddenly that glittering bauble made his words, which before had seemed so harmless, take on another meaning, as if the weight he spoke of could be measured in death and blood. And what would have been the ending of that sentence Eleanor had cut short, ‘A gift on whose behalf?’
I felt the impossibility of what I wanted like a dark burden that I could not shift, could not put down, but that would end in burying me, too.
The king and queen were close together now, side by side, she examining the intricate tracery with care, he watching her half-anxious, half-pleased. Presently she turned to him and laughed, her hoarse laugh, and thanked him for his thoughtfulness.
‘Come, Hal,’ she said, ‘put it on yourself.’
He took it from her and with clumsy fingers lifted her hair to close the clasp about her white neck. His breath came quicker then, and his eyes took on the predatory look I had sensed in them before. She held her hair steady with one hand while with the other she made that regal gesture of dismissal.
One by one, we curtsied and left the chamber, even the courtiers drawing back. The guards slammed the heavy doors closed, and stood with their backs to them, gazing outward with their usual stern look. Behind the doors, we heard the queen laugh again. A random thought crossed my mind, that having watched a royal birthing, we were about to witness a royal mating, too. For there was no doubt what Henry had in mind. You could sense it in the way he breathed and looked, like a stallion closing upon a mare. Yet who could tell what the queen thought.
As I went out into the hallway, still bemused by all that had happened in so short a time, conflicting thoughts aroused in me, a hand caught at my long sleeve. It was Sir Gautier, standing apart from the crush by a small window. He looked tired and, like his king, dirty, with half the mud of England plastered on his clothes. But he had not lost his alert, shrewd look.
‘Well, Lady Ann,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I see you are well bestowed here. And you look well, blooming like the English spring they keep promising us.’
His knowing eyes that took in everything passed their searching look across my face, moved openly up and down my gown until I felt half-naked.
‘And you have grown bold yourself,’ I said, almost crossly, disturbed by these openly amorous looks that seemed to be the Angevin custom. ‘I trust your mission was successful. How many men have you murdered this time?’
He put his hand across his face. ‘Lady Ann, has not a two months’ stay at court taught you to hold your tongue? You have heard what the king had to say. What you hint at is treason. I merely say how fair you look, that you seem to have won high favour, and you rend me as with your nails. Take compliments more graciously.’
‘How shall I take anything when I am fretted to death,’ I cried.
He stroked his beard in the way I remembered.
‘I hoped,’ he said, ‘that having found a place here with the queen, you would have had the chance to forget all your past troubles. Both your enemies are dead. The king will declare you his royal ward.’
‘And who will befriend my bastard child?’ I hissed. ‘Who know me in my unwed state? You said yourself they will mock me in the streets . . .’
He passed a hand over his face again, as if for weariness. He was more tired than I had thought at first. He swayed upon his feet. I remembered, against my will, how he had said that to ride after Henry was an endless hunt, each day another cast, another chase, to track him down.
‘I think you should rest yourself, my lord,’ I said, feeling my antagonism towards him wane. ‘The last time we spoke, you showed concern for me. Now feel I equal concern for you.’
He said ruefully, ‘I could sleep a week. I am not as resilient as a twenty-one-year-old. But there will be time for that hereafter. Ann, without sparking all your rage anew, let me tell you I find you well and happy here at court. You look, if I may say so, beautiful, more beautiful than I had thought. Renier says the courtiers would be falling over themselves to woo you, if you but gave them leave. But it is as if you see them not, think not of them.’
I said, ‘I have no time to waste on them. There is still too much to be done.’
He watched the other men, milling and wheeling farther off, swirling still around the queen’s closed door.
He said abruptly, almost as if not speaking to me, ‘I have done what I could. The king thinks Raoul of Sedgemont dead. I think him so myself.’
‘He lives, he lives,’ I cried, panic sweeping all dark before my eyes.
‘What man could survive those wounds?’ he said. ‘I do not say that to grieve you. It would be better that he were dead. Then would the past be buried with him.’
‘You wish him dead,’ I cried.
He said, ‘I have no wish of my own in the case. But you should ponder this. I knew how you left Sedgemont to seek him out the night before our departure. Ask me not why I have not acted on this knowledge. Know rather that I kept a promise I made you. I told Henry all I saw at Sedgemont, not what I guess at, and he thinks Raoul may not have lived.’ He turned his gaze full upon me. ‘I let him think that. Thus are his orders fulfilled. Thus, if Raoul lives, he is safe for the moment.’
He suddenly rested his head upon his arm as if to wipe
away the sweat. ‘And now have you secret knowledge of me,’ he said softly, ‘that would kill me too if Henry knew it. This have I done for you. I have kept your secrets safe. I have not told Henry all I know about you, Ann of Cambray. That, too, means I betray the king. Why stare you at me so?’ he said angrily. ‘Are you so used to men that you can twist their thoughts from their duty so easily? I have long served these Angevins, will serve them still. Yet your accusations at Sedgemont touched me deeper than I thought. Else I would not be standing here, to put my life in your hands. I have told you I have kept clear of womenfolk. Yet, even to the queen have I sent word to make things easy for you. Stay here with her, with me. I would be willing to take you as you are.’
‘With another man’s son?’ I whispered, shaken by the intensity of his words.
‘It is not what a man would want,’ he said. He almost groaned. ‘Lady Ann, I would wed you even so, to give you and your child a name. It is an honourable one. I hold lands of the king in Anjou. I have come to care for you. Forget what is past. There is no future for you in that, no hope.’
It was strange admission, wrung from this cautious, close-mouthed man. I honoured him for it. I might even have pitied him.
‘I wish I could,’ I said. ‘I have promised to help Lord Raoul of Sedgemont, to restore his lands and title, so that he may give his name to his son.’
He managed a smile at that. ‘Diplomatic to the end,’ he said, ‘not even a courtly lie to give me room for hope. I deplore your manners as I admire your tenacity. Lady Ann, be warned, be warned. You cannot come between King Henry and his will. Only time will blunt the force of his anger so that he will live to regret it. There, that too I have said against my loyalty to him. But for all your wishing, for all that you have made me help you, we cannot turn Henry from his course. That is his right as king. That is his nature as Angevin. Send word to Raoul of Sedgemont: his best hope is flight. Stay you here at court with me. As my lady wife, I can protect you.’
‘I cannot,’ I said. ‘I am tied to Raoul of Sedgemont. Whether he wants me is another matter. But I have given my word to him.’
He ran his hand across his weary face again, making his hair stand on end; even his trim beard was overgrown and rough. ‘Then know this.’ His voice was stern as I remembered it at Sedgemont. ‘Be warned by what I say. The hawk has left the woods and flown eastward. If you would live, avoid him. Know, see, do nothing.’
‘How can that be?’ I cried, when his words sank in. ‘He could not have dragged himself upright. Geoffrey would not let him come.’
He pulled me back farther against the wall, the first real anger that I had ever seen in him flashing. ‘Now, God be damned,’ he cried. ‘Shout those words aloud for all men to hear and we are all dead. I give you fair warning that my men left at Sedgemont have sent me news. Work that knowledge to your best advantage. I care not if he lives to thrust his head into the noose. Save only this: as what befalls him will affect you. And that he drag not me with him for a woman’s sake. Ever have I kept myself clear of female entanglements. You make me see how right I was to judge them harshly.’
He paused, took breath. ‘Yet, God forgive me, I will still help you if I can. And if you need help afterwards, it is there for the asking. I cannot turn my thoughts off and on, any more than you. But look for no more signs from me, unless you come to seek them yourself.’
He turned and walked away, stiffly, upright, as one who had ridden hard and long. A good man he was, I thought. Once I might have warmed to such a one, who needed me. But not now. I turned myself, gathering up my skirts to slip between the crowds of men who stared and commented.
In the quiet of our chamber, I summoned in the three of Raoul’s guard and, with Cecile, held council what next to do. For if Raoul arrived before my task was done, then might all be lost at one throw. And Sir Gautier, like me, must bear his love in silence.
The next days are as a blur. I had set each man to watch a different gate, but there were seven gates to watch. I had Cecile loiter in the entrance halls to stop him if he reached this far. I could not believe he would come, unarmed, alone. I could not believe he would come openly, and how were we then to recognise him in disguise? I still attended on the queen, sat with her in her room, rode with her on fair days in the woodlands to the south, feasted at night in the Great Hall. I saw Sir Gautier in the distance, but never a look did he give me, never sign or word.
The queen seemed preoccupied. Yet once she bade me have patience, which might mean all or nothing. And at night, when we sat eating the food that was either too cold because the king came home late, or uncooked because he would dine early, I watched in vain for any friendly face, listened for any name that Raoul might have mentioned. The king lived to his reputation of restlessness. He was up before daybreak, hunting if it was fine, riding even on foul days, until sometimes he had saddle sores upon his legs as a horse does when it is overworked. At table he was equally distracted, sometimes spending the whole meal with his justiciars, letting the food congeal upon his golden plate. Sometimes he would get caught up in some point of custom or law with his new chancellor, Thomas Becket, the young man with the shock of black hair whom Cecile had first noted at the queen’s lying-in, and they would argue back and forth, while all of us sat silent listening to them.
Once the whole court was in an uproar at some jest the king had played, having torn off the chancellor’s cloak and thrown it to a beggar in the streets. Sometimes the king would rise without ceremony, half the court pouring out with him like water from a jug. At others, he would sit as under duress, playing with those new two-pronged forks the queen had brought from France, spearing his meat with them as if practising with a lance.
The queen seemed to pay no heed to these manners of his. She surrounded herself, at mealtimes especially, with people from her own country, like Sir Renier, with whom she would talk in their own language. What they said among themselves I cannot tell, but never by look or word did she show anger at the king. And when he returned, sometimes nonchalant, sometimes petulant like a schoolboy, she still showed him no emotion at all. Perhaps that was her secret. Or perhaps it was that he often seemed so much younger than she was, at times even younger than I, that kept him in some kind of check. A boy then, about boy’s tricks, until some gesture, some expression on his face, would reveal the full-grown lion lurking underneath.
As for the queen herself, in calm moments I trusted her; at other times I could not be sure. My foolishness it was, to think that I could have persuaded either of them to my will. For both were impatient with fools, disliked obvious flattery, were quick to grasp a point, and seemed to hold each other in some kind of contest beyond my comprehension. My only hope, however, was the queen: as long as she had the king in her control, all was not over.
One night, therefore, we sat at feast. For once, the king had neither left too early nor arrived too late. He had listened indulgently while some of the queen’s young poets sang their southern songs to please her. I, too, had come to enjoy them, soft mouthed and lisping as if bathed in sun and flowers. The queen had been enchanted, clapping her hands like a child and singing with them in a low, hoarse voice. I saw for the first time how perhaps these northern colds had pinched her spirit as well as her flesh so that, like a spring flower set in warm water, she suddenly broke into bloom; and I think all men’s blood quickened because of her. I know the king was entranced. He had no eyes for anyone else that evening; there were no wandering impatient looks that I, for one, had come to dread when he fastened them upon me. But tonight he was softer, mild, and the more the queen flowered before him, the more he seemed receptive to her mood.
Afterwards, I wondered. Had she known? Had she planned it so? That, too, is something we never shall speak of. I can only guess at it. All I do know is that Henry was well fed, well rested, well content, as much as it is in his nature to be so, when there was a scuffle at the door. A guard was bawling out a name, and then a man came striding to the table where we sat
, Geoffrey hard behind him, his face still bloody where someone had beaten him.
And Raoul of Sedgemont came into the king’s Hall, into the lion’s den.
Was I the only one who stood as he came up? Did I say anything to him before Cecile pulled me down? I only knew that he was on his feet, thin and pale, with the scar of Maneth’s fist still scored across one cheek bone. He wore rough clothes: a leather padded shirt, no mail; he could not wear it yet. He had given up his sword at the gate, but his sword belt hung at his side. He could not use his right arm then, and I saw how he rested it upon the belt. And his look was fixed upon the king.
Henry, Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, King of England, leaned forward in his chair, both hands outspread upon the table, and looked at Raoul of Sedgemont.
Perhaps I would have gone to him then, but another hand grasped mine. It was the queen’s. ‘Leave them alone,’ she said. ‘We can do no more.’
‘So, Raoul of Sedgemont,’ the king said at last. ‘You come late to my crowning, sir.’
‘I am come late,’ Raoul said, ‘but I have come.’
‘For courtesy, you should have been sooner. What has kept you so long?’ When Raoul did not reply, ‘Ravaging the western borders, meddling with the Celts against my will, killing my companion.’
In the silence that followed, ‘It was fair fight,’ Geoffrey shouted out. ‘All who saw it will claim it was a fair fight, a Judgment by God. Save Maneth’s trick to blind my lord.’
I saw Sir Gautier start at his words, recognise him. But it was Geoffrey’s loyalty that betrayed him.
‘Peace with the Celts, my lord King,’ Raoul said, ‘lies within your command as with Stephen’s. If you wish it.’