The White Ship

by Nicholas Salaman

  The shambles in a deep pit at the back of the bailey, downwind of the castle, was full of the residue of beasts – slaughtered, sliced and brined. It was shortly to be covered with earth; meanwhile, it smelt of death. There would be more of that shortly. We both held our breath for a few paces as we passed.

  ‘My guess is, as the Comtesse said, that the Duke will want to do as little damage as possible,’ he said. ‘Not out of kindness, but because he wants the place for himself. We can use that to our advantage. Once he finds the drawbridge up, he will want to parley. He won’t want to get too close to my lady unless he can find some way to overcome her, some secret stratagem…’

  We paused in our circuit at the graves of the two little girls.

  ‘They were the brave ones,’ he said. ‘I wish we had them fighting for us.’

  ‘Perhaps they will be in their way,’ I replied. ‘Whatever the Duke may say, their treatment must weigh heavily on their grandfather.’

  LI

  The Duke was as good as his word. He arrived outside the town on a Tuesday with a small force of a hundred men. He demanded to be let in. Of course the gates were opened and the mayor hurried up to greet his liege lord and offer him the freedom of the town. The Duke was pleased to accept, and dispositions were made for the men to be quartered and their horses fed. It was mid-May now, eleven hundred and nineteen years after the death of Our Lord. The weather fine but windy, tickling the waters of the lake.

  Henry clearly did not think that the siege of the castle was going to be a grand affair. One hundred knights hardly counted as a skirmish, but it was twice as many as we had, and he did have the advantage of being Duke in his own country. We were technically revolting and could be hung from some battlement if he defeated us.

  The Duke made no effort to contact the castle and stayed in the town overnight. Juliana kept to her room and brooded. The rest of us waited for we knew not what.

  In the morning we were summoned to a parley by a trumpeter. Juliana emerged from her room, dressed regally in red. The trumpeter was dressed in all the trimmings; gold braided jerkin and hose, his trumpet draped with the royal crest. He delivered his message in that strange French they talk in England.

  ‘The Duke comes in peace and requests his daughter the Comtesse de Breteuil to accompany him to Barfleur so that she may embark with all the company and spend Christmas with him in England.’

  ‘That she will not do,’ said a clear, proud voice, before any of the rest of us could reply.

  It was Juliana, of course, looking every inch a princess. She had joined our little group, coming up behind us without our noticing as was her way.

  ‘Is that the answer you wish me to give to the Duke?’ asked the herald.

  He would have to brave the Duke’s famous temper if he came back with the wrong reply.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ said Juliana.

  She was the mistress here. There was no point in any of the rest of us speaking.

  ‘You can go back to the Duke and tell him that we will open our gates to him and ten knights, and we will parley with him at our drawbridge. We have already made plans, which I cannot break, to spend Christmas in Normandy.’

  The herald took his leave, none too happily, and returned to the town.

  ‘He comes in peace!’ said Juliana, derisively. ‘My arse!’

  She had a ripe turn of phrase when she wished. But it was a lovely arse, and now it was gone from me forever. I felt diminished.

  ‘What would you like me to do, Comtesse?’ asked the Marshal as we walked across the bailey. ‘I can keep our men in hall or round at the postern, out of sight. Or would you like them to surround you as you talk to your father across the moat with the drawbridge up?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Have the men around you. There is not a great deal of space around the bridge. We will look more than we are.’

  ‘If they manage to gain entry we are finished,’ said Juliana. ‘They will take me prisoner, and take you away to fight in their wars.’

  ‘Or cut off our heads,’ said the Marshal.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Juliana. ‘That would be a poor reward for your service. I shall make sure you keep your head on. And you too, Latiner.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Just in case we are over-run, I have ordered your palfrey to be saddled up and ready, with a mounted knight attending, and the gate to be opened for you, so you can make your escape to Pacy,’ the Marshal told her.

  ‘Thank you, Marshal. I do not think it will come to that. We just have to see that no one lets down the drawbridge,’ said Juliana. ‘Simple enough.’

  She turned and walked off with her head held high.

  ‘Simple enough,’ muttered the Marshal, ‘but nothing is simple in war, and everything has the potential for cock-up.’

  ‘I shall be sorry to leave Breteuil,’ I told him.

  He looked at me sharply.

  ‘Have you given in already?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘My pupils are dead and there is no more for me to do here. I must move on. I have to make my fortune.’

  ‘We could use you as a knight.’

  ‘Thank you, Marshal, but I don’t think it’s for me, though I am your man in the coming fight. I am drawn to the town for a change.’

  ‘What? Breteuil town?’

  ‘No, no. Some big place. Not Paris, it’s French and not too friendly to a Norman. But somewhere like … Caen … or Rouen. Yes, a man could make money there and grow to be a lord, like my father. I shall go to Rouen, if I am able, when this is over.’

  ‘Well, I shall miss you, Latiner.’

  ‘And I you, Marshal. You shall come and visit me and eat a great deal of fish.’

  He was an honest man, which counted for much in those days of half-war on the marches of eastern Normandy, with the French King Louis sniffing around for opportunity like a dog in a houseful of bitches.

  I sneaked out of the castle that evening to talk, as Eliphas had urged me to do if trouble came, with the landlord of The Bear. He told me about a place in the woods that gave folk in need a bed for the night. He did not say ‘folks on the run’, but he meant it. I made note of his directions and thanked him heartily. I rather thought I had visited that place already with Juliana. It sounded like the house of Mother Merle.

  LII

  Duke Henry turned up the next day with his bristling company of knights and archers and infantrymen. They looked well trained and keen as mustard, but they stopped outside the castle gate. After a brief discussion with the porter, the Duke, ten of the knights and a herald, who blew a horn, rode up to the raised drawbridge. And there they stopped.

  Juliana gave a signal to the Marshal and we all poured out onto the platform under the little arch housing the hoisting apparatus. Some of the scullions and even a laundrymaid from the town came out – against orders but you could hardly blame them – and stood behind us. There must have been fifty of us out there and we seemed quite a throng.

  Juliana spoke first. She was wearing a dress of fine silver cloth and looked like a goddess, I thought, with her red-gold hair and pale determined face.

  ‘What is it you want with us, sir?’ she asked, knowing full well what it was.

  ‘I am here to take you back to England where it may be that we can teach you some manners and indeed your duty. You seem to have forgotten both in your sojourn in Normandy.’

  ‘Manners?’ she retorted. ‘I do not think you are the one to teach such a thing. Is it manners to put out your grand-daughters’ eyes and mutilate them? Strange manners they are in a grandfather. If those are manners, I would wish to be uncouth. And, if you talk about duties, perhaps you should examine the duties owed by a prince to his subjects. Are not children protected in your kingdom? Suffer the little children? Not in the Duchy of Normandy with Henry at the helm!’

  The Duke reddened. He did not like his knights to hear of his recent trouble – the act had been forced on him as head of state,
but it was hardly a good example of knightly conduct.

  ‘It is your duty to obey me and accompany me back to England, if I command it. Your duty to your father and to your lord.’

  ‘I see my duty as lying elsewhere,’ she replied. ‘Who knows, you may have some prison over there with its jaws wide open for me. You have done that to your brother, my uncle. Why not to me?’

  ‘Why not indeed?’ snarled the Duke, now beginning to rage.

  ‘Pray do not lose that famous temper, Father. I am astonished that I can keep my own, which doubtless I inherit from you yourself. You come here, making accusations and bold claims, when I have hitherto been the most attentive and respectful of daughters. Then through no fault of mine, you decide to offer up my daughters to a monster who puts out their eyes and cuts off their noses, for which, through shame and the loss of all hope, they jump off the topmost turret of my castle since life has no joy or promise for them any more. I therefore accuse you of murder most foul and I am surprised – yes, astonished – that you dare show your face in my presence. Would I were a tigress and I could spring at you even now and tear you to pieces.’

  At the end of this terrifying speech, delivered in the calmest voice, she made a little pouncing movement as if she would spring across the moat, and even the Duke, as brave as any man present, flinched a little and drew back. I could see he was shocked at the news that his grand-daughters had killed themselves, but he wasn’t going to show it now.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, at last. ‘It will have to be war.’

  He held up his hand, and all his host who had waited outside the walls, charged through the opened gates (doubtless they had overpowered or suborned the gatekeeper in some way), streamed across the bailey and stopped in formation behind him. We all withdrew at that point into the hall and waited for instructions.

  Juliana conferred with the Marshal, and then spoke to us.

  ‘The Duke cannot get in. He does not want to stay long here as he is due to go south to Exmes and Courcy where there is trouble, and things in Verneusses and Anceins are starting to stir. The drawbridge is up. There is nowhere for the Duke’s men to put planks or make a temporary bridge. I have sent a messenger to tell my husband what is happening here, that his castle is under siege, and he will arrive in due course with his army. I suggest we all go back to our duties and that the Marshal and his men keep a close watch on the situation.’

  With that, she turned and mounted the stairs to her chamber. Alice was about to follow her, but I drew her aside.

  ‘If anything goes wrong,’ I said to her, ‘meet me in the dungeon and we will escape by the tunnel.’

  ‘Where does it come out?’ she asked, not altogether happily. ‘I hate tunnels.’

  ‘Down by the boat-house,’ I told her. ‘We will escape by water.’

  ‘Romantic,’ she said, ‘like King Arthur. Will there be bats in the tunnel?’

  ‘Very likely.’

  ‘Then I won’t go.’

  ‘Alice. It may not be necessary anyway. But I have to leave. Will you come with me?’

  She smiled at me, that slow smile that was very much Alice.

  ‘It will ruin my name.’

  ‘What else is here for you?’

  ‘Oh very well, then.’

  ‘And look out some warm clothes. If the Duke breaks in, you’ll need them in a hurry. Take them down to the dungeon just in case.’

  ‘You’re very sweet,’ she told me. ‘I’m not frightened if you are there.’

  Oh my God, I thought, I think I’m falling in love.

  LIII

  As it happened, the Duke did break in. Well, break is not the word. He or his marshal had twisted the arm (probably literally) of one of the little laundrymaids who came from the town every day to do the castle washing.

  She didn’t go home that night but hid away in the pantry cupboard, crept out at dawn and used the cook’s best knife to cut the thick ropes holding up the drawbridge. Down it crashed with a bang that shook the very foundations of the castle, and woke us all to the imminence of disaster. May her treacherous little soul never be washed clean!

  Henry and his men were waiting for it. They stormed across the bridge and were soon in possession of the castle. Not in total possession of course, not immediately anyway. There were still certain staircases and concealed doors, and Alice and I made use of one of them. We huddled in the corner of a tiny stairwell that led all the way from the top guard tower to the darkest dungeon down below. There then unfolded for us through the arrow-slit window, a sight that became the stuff of legend.

  The beautiful Comtesse de Breteuil, daughter of the King of England and Duke of Normandy, was standing on a ledge above the dark moat, removing her outer garments. Soldiers stopped to look at her from castle windows and from the path on the castle side. They could not understand what she was doing. Then, all at once, she jumped. It seemed to take her a long time to hit the water. Her long shift acted as a kind of cushion for air, billowing up and holding her as she fell, exposing for all of us to see, her beautiful body with the long legs and the perfect firm and rounded bottom, and as she turned, that lovely little V of golden hair between the legs. We followed the vision down as the water opened round her like a glass flower and she disappeared into the depths. There was a profound silence, and then a great cheer. It was meant to be very shaming for a lady to show her buttocks, but it seemed to have done her no harm with the men; even the Duke’s men cheered. Only the old Chaplain looked worried, and crossed himself.

  I must say my heart was in my mouth as I feared that she would drown or the weeds would wind round her long legs and drag her down to the depths where frogs would couch between her thighs as she settled into the mud. I was glad for her that she had not used that part of the moat which received the deposits from the garderobes but, even so, the water was murky. Doubtless it was also very cold. We watched and watched for the next act of the drama. And then we saw her. She was out, scrambling up the side of the moat and running across the bailey to the marshalsea where her palfrey was kept and her groom had had the instructions to be prepared.

  A voice, that I recognised as belonging to the Duke’s marshal, rang out.

  ‘She’s getting away. Stop her, you fools.’

  All was instant activity. Men were running downstairs, clattering across the drawbridge, haring across the keep, waving and shouting. But they were too late. Juliana was away, hair streaming in the wind, a veritable goddess of the chase. Through the open gatehouse she went with guards scattering as she rode through them. They would never catch her.

  ‘That’s no palfrey. That’s an Arab,’ said Alice. ‘One of her little secrets. She usually keeps it in the town. Had it brought round yesterday.’

  ‘Time for us to get going too…’

  ‘Swims well, doesn’t she?’ said Alice.

  I knew Juliana could swim. We had swum together and made love in a secret pool in the woods last summer. I was hit by a dart of sadness.

  ‘We may have to too if the boat’s not there …’ I said.

  I did mention that first we had to get out, but there was no point in alarming her further.

  LIV

  No one had been through the tunnel since Juliana and I had walked there last August. I knew because we had put a trick line of pebbles across the path to see if anyone was spying on us, and they were still in position.

  I opened the secret door and raised the candle. It was all as it had been. There was slime on the wall and cobwebs on the ceiling. A little trickle of water felt its way like a blind worm down the edge of the path. The air smelt of mould and slippery, dark things. Alice was alarmed and I have to admit (though I did not admit it to Alice), so was I. There were obstacles enough I could see, further on where the tunnel led beyond the castle walls.

  Without Juliana’s lead I had less certainty and now I could see that since I had last been here pieces of earth, stone and little chunks of masonry, possibly occasioned by the falling drawbridge
, had come loose and littered the path. William of Breteuil had been played false down here by his builders. They had done a poor job for him. I only hoped that Alice and I could reach the lake before the whole thing came down upon us.

  The more I saw of Alice, the more I liked her. She was beautiful, but best of all, she was made of fine mettle; though she was afraid, she said nothing more of it.

  Behind us I could hear footsteps clattering down the stairway to the dungeon.

  I took her by the hand, feigning confidence, shut the door behind us – it looked from a few feet away like part of the wall – and walked forward. I was aware that, if we wished to turn back, there was no obvious way of avoiding capture. There had better be no one at the other end.

  I said nothing of my trepidation; first we had to get out. The distance down that dismal passage seemed longer than before. I knew it had to pass right under the bailey and beyond the curtain wall – some two hundred yards. At various places there had been slight fractures in the ground and water oozing over the rough stone made it treacherous. Juliana had told me that in case of an enemy’s penetration of the tunnel, there was a device in the dungeon that could flood the whole length of it with water from the lake.

  It struck me now that someone inside the castle might have the idea of flushing it out in case there was anyone rash enough to think of escaping.

  Again, I did not pass this thought on to Alice.

  ‘Keep going,’ I cried. ‘Press on.’

  At any moment I expected a raging torrent to come surging round the corner.

  At last the tunnel’s end came into view. I knew from my expedition with Juliana, that the passage ended in a cave, its exit just behind a concealing and seemingly impenetrable outcrop that hid it from prying eyes. I worried now that the door might have no key; that Juliana might have been down here and taken it before she escaped; or some oaf might have dropped it, or some meddling pisspot pocketed it, but there it was, still in the lock as we had left it. It was stiff but it turned, and I wondered as I applied myself to it why Juliana had not taken this exit rather than the cold plunge in to the moat. But, of course, she more than anyone was made for the grand gesture: a defiant leap was more her style, not slinking out like a rat down a mouldy tunnel, unobserved. What an extraordinary woman she was!