The White Ship

by Nicholas Salaman

  Our happiness continued through eleven whole days of the Christmas Feast. What fun, what glory, what mystery, what joys we had: the visit from the Man in Red all the way from the North where the Normans came from, King Herod playing hide and seek with the children, clutching at draperies and cupboards with his long bony fingers … the gypsy fiddlers and the story-tellers … the Weird Woman and the fortune-tellers … the dancing and jigging to a consort of vielles … the great frost when we skated on the lake and roasted chestnuts on the fire built on ice … the Mystery Plays performed with magical effects by none other than Eliphas who turned up with his troupe, or what seemed to be a troupe because with Eliphas you could never really tell…

  I congratulated Eliphas after the performance, and suggested to him that perhaps he was the angel, because it was said that we might entertain angels unawares, to which he gave no answer but looked at me thoughtfully.

  ‘Bertold, my friend, nothing happens in this world without a purpose, dark though it may seem to you,’ he told me. ‘Our meeting in Verneuil was inevitable. I should like to help you, for you have chosen a hard path. Juliana is a beautiful woman but her stars are afflicted. I fear that your feelings for her may lead you into danger. Have a care. The great are clumsy with lesser people.’

  I thanked him for his kindness. ‘But what do you mean?’ I asked, ‘Juliana loves me. We are happy.’

  ‘It is good to be happy at Christmas. But we are insects on a leaf, drifting down the river. Listen hard, and you will hear the sound of the weir.’

  ‘It may be so,’ I told him. ‘But Death will be swallowed up in victory.’

  ‘That may be so,’ he said. ‘But Death is Death. And it is God’s wish as well as mine that you stay alive as long as possible. I will help you to do that, as much as is in my power. I urge you to be careful.’

  I had no idea what he was talking about but he was a good man, even a remarkable man, and he had my interests at heart which was good enough for me, so I thanked him and assured him I would look after my life as if it were my own. He laughed at that, and gave me a playful dig in the ribs.

  ‘You really think it is, don’t you? That’s funny.’

  And then Juliana came out and laughed with us and we kissed and danced and ate sweetmeats while the stars cartwheeled overhead into the Year of Our Lord 1119.

  XXVIII

  On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the Feast of Epiphany when Christ was revealed to the Magi as the Son of God, we had a feast indeed. It seemed that the entire town had been invited, and we had to have a couple of extra cooks in from Verneuil: Master Hugh, and Gilbert Mimizan, the pastryman.

  The steward had finally been told by Juliana that the game was up and he had better stop lining his pockets or he would be arraigned for theft at the next assizes, and likely strung up by his scrawny neck. He went white and buckled, and then he buckled to. Supplies for the feast came from as far away as Paris. The town bakers worked for us night and day on the eve of the feast.

  The hall was ready: the minstrels were in the gallery and the wine, ale and bread were on the tables – apart from the top table where the wine was waiting in a huge, ornately worked silver jug. The jug featured, in relief, the fate of Acteon, who was turned into a deer and hunted by Artemis and her maidens and was a gift from the Duke to his daughter, to remind her of him, she told me later, being hunted by everyone.

  Three hundred people now took their places. I have never seen so much food in all my life, not even at Mortagne where my father enjoyed the pleasures of the table, lusty old beggar. Juliana had surpassed herself. All the while, the minstrels played on their organistra and lyras, and a recorder came in from somewhere; and all the while we chattered away like the geese we were so busy eating. At the end, you would not have thought anyone would feel like dancing, but some did. Others simply slumped at the table. So there was more music, and then Eliphas did a magic show, extracting strings of sausages from the Chaplain’s cassock. Juliana went upstairs with the little girls, who were happily exhausted, and I slipped out a little later to meet her, unnoticed except by Fulk. And then there were games of forfeit again, which we returned to, and at last a storyteller round the fire with ghost stories and tales of love and war. And then, all at once, in the middle of all this, there was an apparition.

  It was a figure wild of eye, lank of hair, pasty of face, big of belly, bandy of leg, with a mouth that opened and shut like a gurnard’s.

  ‘What the devil’s going on?’ it said.

  You’ve guessed it. It was Eustace, risen from his bed and looking worse than Lazarus.

  ‘Who gave permission for all this?’ he asked, groaning and holding his head.

  ‘I did,’ said Juliana.

  He could not think of an answer to that.

  ‘Well … well …’ he said, and then he passed out.

  ‘Take him back to bed,’ she ordered. ‘I know him. He’ll be up tomorrow.’

  And that was the end of the best Christmas we ever had at Breteuil or would ever have anywhere again.

  XXIX

  True to Juliana’s prediction, Eustace was up next day, looking slightly better for his fortnight’s illness, but having shed none of his unpleasantness. He hated the idea of our having had fun without him. He would see to it next year that he ran the revels. They would be a man’s revels, none of this silly girls’ stuff.

  He was prodigiously hungry, and while he made a great breakfast out of some of the leavings of the feast, his mind was full of something new, to me at any rate, what he called the Ivry problem. He summoned me to sit with him while he stuffed his enormous jowls with capons and roast pork. It seemed that he had made up his mind to try and employ my skills on his behalf, to seduce me from Juliana. Fat chance, of course, but since he was so fat he had to give his chances a go.

  The problem all stemmed from Amaury de Montfort who had, it seemed, been stirring Eustace up on the subject of the nearby castle of Ivry which belonged to the Duke. But it didn’t really belong to the Duke, Amaury maintained, it belonged to Eustace. Why did it belong to Eustace? Because it had been granted by Duke Robert, Henry’s brother, to William of Breteuil, Eustace’s father.

  I realised it was another Amaury plan to cause trouble for both Henry and Eustace; Juliana had told me that Amaury had his eyes on Breteuil to which he himself had a good claim. He hoped by rocking the boat that he might end up, after some cathartic brouhaha, stepping into the vacant castle himself. Besides, he loved rocking boats. If he saw so much as a wooden duck on the water, his instinct was to go up and pat its bottom.

  After breakfast, Eustace took a walk in the bailey where a path had been cleared in the snow. At last he had a grievance of his own. He must have Ivry back. There would be trouble in eastern Normandy until he did. The Duke would know next time not to take Eustace of Breteuil for granted.

  He invited me to walk with him and, though I pleaded my lesson with the children, he insisted. He wanted my counsel, and outlined his cause. He should have had a chancellor to do this kind of work but the last incumbent was infirm, and Eustace had not got round to appointing another. I think he thought that I might be able to do the work of scribe and accountant without the dignity of office or reward.

  I tried to tell him that I thought his cause was futile. He was already a great baron, he had four other important castles, what need was there of more? Disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm, he even sought the opinion of his wife who also counselled against it. Her father would not be happy, she said. Had Eustace not made himself nuisance enough already? She told me later that she should have argued strongly in support of his plan, for Eustace had a habitual reflex of immediately rejecting anything that she suggested, but the die was cast.

  Eustace thought about it some more, and the more he thought, the more convinced he became that Ivry should be his. A spell of milder weather prevailed, and he even rode over with a few knights to have a look at the place. What he saw entranced him. The knights liked it too – as they
would.

  ‘A fine place,’ he announced on his return. ‘I immediately felt I had come home when I saw it. The house of my fathers…’

  So there it was. Inflamed by the weasel words of Amaury de Montfort, and against his wife’s advice, Eustace sent what was tantamount to a challenge to the Duke, his father-in-law. He wanted his castle back or (reading between the lines) the Duke could look for his allegiance elsewhere. The Duke, of course, already knew about Eustace – it was better to have him as an unofficial enemy than an uncertain friend – but it was another thing to spell it out in a letter.

  If Henry had been in a better position vis à vis his enemies – principally King Louis of France, the Comte of Flanders, the Comte of Mortain, Amaury de Montfort, Robert de Bellême ’s son down in the south of the Duchy, and ex-Duke Robert’s son, William Clito (wherever he was, always lurking away somewhere) – he would have told Eustace where to get off, indeed he would have put it more roundly since he was a man who didn’t mince his words and had a proverbially robust temper.

  But on this occasion he was sweetly reasonable. He was all affability indeed. He proposed, in a couple of weeks’ time, to visit Eustace and the lovely Juliana, his beloved daughter, and to bring with him Harenc, the Castellan of Ivry himself, together with his young son. He sent Eustace a letter using these very words which the Comte received with considerable satisfaction.

  ‘You see,’ he said to Juliana that evening in hall, thrusting the unsealed parchment towards her as he mangled a capon wing, ‘what a mistake you made in advising against tweaking the Duke’s nose, and what sound judgment I displayed. As in war; so in peace. I am a leader in the tradition of my forebear Osbern who would never grovel for a favour.’

  ‘The Duke my father is a clever man, they do not call him Beauclerc for nothing,’ Juliana replied. ‘It takes a clever man to depose a duke who would be king, and take both titles for himself. Be careful not to enrage him or it will be the worse for you and, I fear, for us. This letter says he will be with us in a week’s time. We must prepare the castle to receive him. Bertold, you must also prepare since the Castellan’s son is the same age as Marie, and he will need some entertaining.’

  ‘He is just a castellan, a keeper of a castle, Lady Juliana,’ said Eustace contemptuously. ‘Just a caretaker, not even a vicomte. He and his son must take what they find.’

  ‘And I suppose my father is just a duke and a king and must do the same?’ retorted Juliana, with some spirit. ‘You are like a mastiff, Eustace, only good for war and mauling people.’

  The Comte took that as a compliment.

  ‘Very good. Mastiff. I like that.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You will heap misfortune upon this house and upon yourself. In no way do I understand you or wish to do so,’ she said. ‘I give up.’

  ‘You had better,’ he advised her, ‘because you know I will win in the end.’

  He was stupid enough to believe it, and a great misfortune was to fall on the house of Breteuil because of it.

  XXX

  The Castellan of Ivry Castle and his son appeared ahead of the Duke, with a modest body of men as befitted his custodial rank. Ralph Harenc was not a nobleman, but one of the new men who were coming up – my sort of man; an honorary bastard (he might even have been a real one). He was a good soldier, stern and brave it was said, but he was also a good administrator. Duke Henry liked that; he was a man after his own heart. ‘More gets done by good administration than by any clash of arms’ was a favourite maxim of his.

  At any rate, Harenc, with his bristling black beard, seemed a good enough sort of man; straight as a die. I would not have liked to have got on the wrong side of him. You could see he could be severe even on his own men, and hard in battle. Yes, he was a hard man – not one to laugh much. I dwell on his character because much of the trouble that was to come was because of it. I should say, if it was a case of dishonour to him or his family, he would be implacable.

  His little boy, Roger, was quiet and polite, a good-looking lad of some eight years old. He was introduced to the girls and led away to play. He was not the kind of boy who scorned to play with little girls; if he would have preferred to have gone off to look at the horses or play with some of the younger pages, he did not let on.

  All in all, the Harencs made a good impression on me and on the Comtesse too, I discovered. She whispered a few words to me as I followed her upstairs after the children. We tried to avoid too many conversations in public.

  The Comte had taken to calling me her lap-dog in her presence; luckily he did not know quite what a dog I was. I kept reminding myself of my good fortune. I was in love with her and she with me. She had told me so and I believed her, though I never really knew what went on in that lovely head under its cauldron of red-gold curls. We snatched moments together in the midst of all these plots and machinations, and I rather hoped this was going to be one of them. Going upstairs was always a good start, but I was still understandably anxious, as I think she was, that I should not lose my testicles through some careless indiscretion relayed to the explosive Eustace. There was always the dark-haired Alice to consider, but I knew that she looked at me favourably and without rancour, and I instinctively felt that she would not rat on us.

  ‘If Amaury wants Harenc to trick us, I don’t think that is going to happen,’ Juliana said when we reached the top of the stairs and were safely out of sight of the hall. ‘He is not that kind of person. So we must consider what it is that Amaury has up his sleeve. I suspect it will be some kind of agreement he makes with Eustace – behind my back, of course. My father arrives tomorrow. Amaury will keep out of the way.’

  We left Roger to Marie and Pippi, and the girls, having shown him their room and their goldfish, kindly offered to take him round the castle and bailey. The old nurse was asleep so Juliana and I went into the wardrobe and locked the door.

  We made love, but there was something troubling her and afterwards she wept a little. I had never seen her cry, and of course I asked what was the matter. At first she shook her head.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ I told her.

  ‘I cry because I love you, little Latiner.’

  ‘And I love you too,’ I told her eagerly. ‘I want it to go on for ever.’

  ‘That is just it. It can’t.’

  ‘But why? We can find a way. Eustace is bound to fall off his horse or be killed in battle…’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘I am married to a bad man, perhaps a mad man, certainly a fool. I am in love with you, but whatever is to come of that? I feel something bad is going to happen.’

  ‘To me?’ I thought, I’m afraid selfishly, of my testicles.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps to you. Perhaps … I don’t know. Something bad is going to happen. I feel it in my heart. It weighs on my heart. I dreamt of a ship on dry land, hauled up on the rocks. In England that means a death. I have the power, you know. My mother had it … she used to say she was a wicce. That is what you call a witch, but it is not quite the same. It means a sorceress.’

  ‘Perhaps it was too much venison pie,’ I said, foolishly.

  ‘Don’t joke, little Latiner. A cloud is drawing over this place. As long as Eustace does not turn Harenc against us. I could see he did not like him. He will start to call him Herring and make fun of him.’

  All at once there was a beating at the door, and I panicked.

  ‘Madame. Madame,’ called a voice.

  ‘Yes, who is it?’

  I hid myself, as we had pre-arranged, behind the curtain covering the spices in the far corner. I tucked myself down below the boxes.

  Juliana rearranged her long dress and opened the door. Peeping out, I saw Alice, standing outside in some agitation.

  ‘The butler needs more grains of paradise for the spiced wine to greet the Duke tomorrow. The wine must be steeped overnight, he says.’

  The girl made to come and get it, as if she knew that I was there, but she was stoppe
d by a look from Juliana that would have halted a knight in full armour charging on a Percheron.

  ‘You tell the butler from me, Alice, to use cinnamon and galangale, and that the King and Duke, my father, prefers good wine neat – unless of course the wine he buys for a king is not up to the job and he neither.’

  The proud Alice looked abashed, unusual for her, and I felt a fleeting sense of sympathy for her.

  Although besotted with Juliana, there was something about Alice that excited my interest – more than interest, if I’m to be honest. You must have sometimes passed someone in the street who smiled at you, and you sensed that a secret message passed between you, that you were both members of a society which until then you hadn’t known existed. Alice was beautiful, and had almost lain with me, once, in my dreams. You can’t get over a thing like that. My loyalty to Juliana was unshakeable: in terms of honour, since she was my lady; in terms of love, since I was bewitched by her; and, it pains me to say it, in terms of practicality, because the last thing I wanted to do was to find myself back at Mortagne, humping casks. Can a man be in love with two girls at once? I asked myself again. I think you know what the answer to that is.