The White Ship

by Nicholas Salaman

  They allowed me to sleep most of the day, then at last they woke me up, and I crawled to my room at the inn for some respectable clothes. Lisette insisted that I have a bath, which was the best thing she could have done. My stiff, pale limbs unbent and regained some colour in the warm water. I changed into more respectable clothes, persuaded her with silver pennies to keep my room for me, had a huge supper, and then took a thick coat the landlord provided (not as warm as my sheepskin), and my own sullen carcass out onto the jetty to catch the evening boat for Southampton with Stephen and a couple of minor lords. He made me feel like a piece of questionable luggage.

  Again, it was a clear, calm evening. They preferred to sail on such a night for the stars made navigation easier. Stephen and a couple of lords sailed with me. It was my first visit to England and we arrived, as dawn was breaking, in Southampton – not much of a place at that hour. We transferred to horses and by evening we were at the King’s palace in Winchester. A reaction to my previous night’s ordeal had set in and I was already dog-tired.

  Half-dead though I was, I dreaded the confrontation with Henry, knowing he would be suspicious of me and my lone survival, and I was given little time to settle my story. I was ushered into a hall full of nervous-looking lords and courtiers, and I braced myself for a meeting that I knew could be disastrous. I was grateful that at that point Stephen resisted the suggestion of a lord called Robert d’Oilly who spoke in the slight quacking dialect they use here, so I only caught the gist of it – that I should report immediately to the King. I was dead on my feet. It seemed to me that we were all players in some kind of mummer’s charade in which we had our allotted and ludicrous parts.

  ‘It would surely be better,’ Stephen said, ‘if this terrible news were broken by someone he loves, but for whom his natural delicacy would mitigate any anger he might feel at this calamity.’

  ‘Terrible news, terrible news,’ said the courtiers.

  Stephen, at least, spoke proper French, but he had ever a politician’s way of talking. We were in a parlement of birds, and he was the heron, always waiting.

  ‘Who then?’ quacked d’Oilly.

  ‘Who then?’ asked others, looking about dazedly like chickens. ‘Who then? Who then?’

  You could see they were all scared of the King, as I was. I looked from one to another of these old birds with Norman names who lived in England – William de Mohun, Robert de Lacy, Bishop Roger of Salisbury, and so on – and I said to myself, we make better lords in Normandy. I was careful, however, to look subservient. I wanted to scatter corn for them.

  ‘Why not you?’ another wise owl asked Stephen. ‘You’re supposed to be his favourite.’

  ‘Not I! He would doubtless blame me for the whole affair. You tell him, Tancarville. You yourself have lost a son in the shipwreck.’

  Poor man. I did not know young Tancarville, but perhaps I might have recognised him if he walked in now with seaweed in his hair.

  ‘No, no. I am already quite overcome. What about you, de Lacy?’

  ‘No, I fear I have almost lost my voice.’

  ‘William Bigod, now, he is a straight-talking man…’

  ‘But where is he?’

  ‘He’s drowned.’

  ‘Ah.’

  At last Theobald, Comte de Blois, Stephen’s brother and a better general, an energetic cock-robin of a man, suggested a little boy, son of one of the courtiers. This child of six or seven years of age was, at times of ease and relaxation, a favourite of the King’s and made him smile. Surely Henry would not be angry with him!

  The barons and courtiers, the whole lot of them, rose as one, swooped around the room, and settled on this proposal, which I thought disgusting and showed how low England had fallen. Tired though I was, I put my hand up and volunteered myself again, but they looked at me as though I were a sea-urchin.

  The small boy, Robin – who reminded me, and perhaps the King, for a sad moment of Roger, the Castellan of Ivry’s little chaffinch – was briefed by me, by the barons and by Stephen himself, and was finally considered to have got the drift of the disaster. At first he thought it was a fine game, but as I told the story his eyes grew bigger and his mouth turned down.

  ‘Everybody dwowned?’ he asked. ‘Even the fine lady?’

  ‘Everybody. And the Prince too,’ I told him. ‘That is what you must tell the King. They went straight down. No one was saved except me, and I am a nobody.’

  He didn’t want to do it, indeed his mother came and made a fuss, but the barons over-ruled her. They would have rolled the little fledgling along to the King with their beaks, and his mother as well, if they had thought it would help. It might have done too, because she was a good-looking woman.

  When he had taken in what he could, and repeated his message to everyone’s satisfaction, he was ushered into the throne room, all by himself, where the King was at work, at a table, with a map of Normandy in front of him drawn up by the Brother Cartographer of Saint-Sulpice, a man with terrible piles. Comte Stephen kept the door ajar and we jostled for position behind him, squawking and muttering. The King was sitting at his table.

  ‘Ah, Robin,’ he said, ‘I am afraid I am too busy to talk at the moment. Come back a little later.’

  But Robin did not go. The King was puzzled; a little impatient, as he can be.

  ‘I am busy, Robin. Come back later.’

  Robin kept standing there. The King raised his voice.

  ‘Robin. Later.’

  Robin burst into tears.

  ‘I am sorry, Robin, but really … What is the matter with you?’

  Robin forgot his careful briefing and blurted everything out.

  ‘It is the White Ship, sire. She is wrecked. Prince William and your generals and your daughters, everyone is dwowned!’

  At that point, the King folded his wings and fell forward in a fit. He had to be helped to a private room where he drank a great deal of strong wine and ate nothing, not even a lamprey. He kept to this room and spoke to no one, it was said, for a week. Some said he never smiled again.

  The boy Robin had inadvertently saved me from the King’s questions, and the barons thereafter completely ignored my existence in that way they have – I had been given quarters near the scullions – so I took the opportunity of the King’s affliction, and returned to Normandy by stealth to find temporary accommodation in the Abbey of Saint-Sulpice.

  I had seen Juliana’s revenge complete and a mighty king brought to his knees, and I felt disgusted with myself. I had been responsible for killing three hundred people, and I couldn’t even go to Confession because what priest these days could keep a confession like that to himself?

  LXXIV

  This is where the accountant should draw the line.

  The King is in debit to the tune of that thing he prized the most: an heir, a boy just married, on the verge of manhood. He has also lost two bastard daughters and a bastard son who was also a good general. In fact the loss of his generals seems to have hit him almost as hard as that of his son. He has lost a host of good men, a dozen pretty girls and possibly a couple of mistresses.

  I am in debit to the King. He will find out that I survived and will come after me, even though I once saved his life. Some will say that I, the bastard FitzRotrou, sabotaged the White Ship so that my half-brother, heir to the Comte de Perche, should die and the bastard inherit. I don’t think the King will believe that, but he will feel that my presence at Barfleur was more than coincidence. What he will do is anyone’s guess, but I wouldn’t like to be in my shoes when he works it out.

  Juliana is in debit to the tune of two daughters and a husband she never loved and, you might say, a lover she never husbanded.

  Eustace will, of course, be blamed for having started it all. In addition to that, he too is in debit to the tune of a spouse and two daughters, and his reputation.

  The Castellan of Ivry is in debit of a son’s eyes and the goodwill of all who read my writings.

  The town of Barfleur
is in debit because the Duke will never use the place again.

  Today I learned, through a letter delivered to the abbey, that I am also in debit of a father. This grieves me more than ever I could have thought possible. He died three weeks ago. They sent for me, but did not know where I was. The word was I had been drowned.

  It is not all debit, however.

  On the credit side, Alice and our child (not yet born) are now at Mortagne. Alerted by a message from Juliana, my father summoned Alice to await me at his castle. Her note says that she sat with my father – it was an impostume in his chest – until the end. I am indebted to her for that. When I assume the title of Comte de Perche, she will be my Comtesse. Perche is a useful county to the Duke.

  My partner, or rather ex-partner Haimo, is also in credit – not just because his books are in order, but because he has a wife now – Berthe, of course. I could see where that was leading. I have urged him to sell the business, buy Berthe a rich manor, and get the lad Bertrand – now rewarded by Haimo – to destroy my accountancy system. The religious authorities seem to have taken against the Arabic ciphers and the lewd concept of zero.

  But enough of accountancy.

  Juliana is in neither credit nor debit, she is in a nunnery. It is better not to say where, but I thought of her a great deal as I completed my History. ‘When we have to part, think of me as dead,’ she told me once. Even so, and in spite of promises made and anticipations of regret, I discovered where she was. It would be invidious for me to tell you how I found her, but I did, with difficulty and the help of Eliphas.

  LXXV

  After a prolonged sojourn in my old abbey of Saint-Sulpice where I was well received by Brother Paul, and restored in body and mostly in mind, I rode once more to Rouen to say farewell to Haimo and Berthe, and to settle my affairs with the butcher. Berthe was with child upon which I congratulated them both. Here at their house I found Eliphas again who put me on the path to Juliana. I told him that my purpose was to speak with her one last time before I closed my account and headed for Mortagne.

  He approved of my plan but said I would find her changed. ‘She looks much the same but she is different. It is like speaking to someone who has gone through the gate.’

  I had no idea what he meant by that but I resolved to find out.

  The convent was only a slight detour from the road that led to Perche, and twenty miles or so from the abbey at Saint-Sulpice itself. As I rode Blackberry down the hill to the town of Chambois, set beside the stripling river Dives, I could see the buildings just beyond the town, set on a little eminence. I wasted no time in the town dawdling at the inn, though I could have done with a draught of beer, fatigued as I was from my ride. I wanted to press on for Mortagne where my future lay, but I had to put the past to rest.

  I handed Blackberry to the nunnery’s stable-boy and made my way back again to the front gate and the porter. The Sisters had employed a large man for that role. He and his dog growled at me as I entered his lodge. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘Do you have an invitation?’

  ‘In a way,’ I told him.

  He didn’t seem happy with that, so I tried to explain that the Duke’s daughter would like to see me, and that I would tell her father if any jumped-up nunnery porter got in the way.

  He rose slowly as if being hoisted by some invisible but neglected device, and went into the main body of the building. He was gone for a little while. The dog – a mastiff cross – looked at me as if I were some kind of felonious chop.

  Finally, the man returned.

  ‘You are to come with me,’ he said. ‘And no funny tricks. Sister will see you now.’

  We walked across the front courtyard and entered into a kind of vestibule. A nun appeared from behind a grille.

  ‘You want to speak to Sister Juliana,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She will see you for quarter of an hour. That is all.’

  It was more than I had feared and less than I wished, but I was incandescent with excitement. I was in love with someone else, I knew that and she knew that, but I still felt like a foolish swain with a heart too big for my ribs at the prospect of seeing Juliana again.

  There was the sound of a latch, a door opening behind me, I turned, and she was there; my own, my love. They had not dressed her as a nun because she had not yet taken her vows. She wore a simple grey dress. Her hair was up. She took my hand and we walked out into the garden.

  She looked paler and, I have to say, older than I remembered. That was good; anything to make me want her less – but it didn’t. She had always been slim, but now she was thin and there was sadness in her eyes. That, I felt, would never change; it was resident. And there was resignation too. Although a king’s daughter, she had been dealt a hard hand. It sounds like treason to say it, but I thought I noticed a silver strand in the golden hair.

  ‘Come away, Juliana,’ I whispered. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Come away to what? Come away with you? I think not. My life is over. That is what I want it to be. The meal is over, it is time to digest and reflect. And then, I think, a sleep.’

  ‘I love you.’

  There you are. I blurted it out like a schoolboy.

  ‘I know you do, but love is really not enough. Love is just the scent of the flower. It attracts the bee who goes tumbling around in the pollen. What a thing is love, says Bertold the Bee!’

  There were plenty of them out here, tumbling with the lavender.

  ‘But, of course, it is just an addictive aroma,’ she continued, ‘a preface to something absolutely basic and rather crude. If you turn it into something else, you’re missing the point. It’s not a nice smell at all. It’s marsh-gas, and the next thing you know, you’re in the marsh, up to your neck.’

  Did she really believe what she was saying? Indeed, had she ever really loved me? I didn’t want to ask her. It seemed so callow.

  ‘Did you ever really love me?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘Well, then, let’s leave now and go away together.’

  ‘You are forgetting something.’

  I knew what I was forgetting: Alice. I had never felt more wretched. How hard it is to seem a hero to oneself – and yet we are meant to be the heroes of our own lives.

  ‘What happened to Eustace?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s around. I think someone cut his balls off.’

  ‘Was that you?’

  ‘Probably.’

  I thought: I am going to kill myself if I stay here much longer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry too.’

  Neither of us wanted to mention her little girls. I thought of them and felt the tears welling up. Funny, isn’t it, how we have no control over our tear ducts. They are rather like the penis in that respect.

  Neither of us mentioned the three hundred people who had died. I understood now what Eliphas had meant about passing the gate.

  ‘Five minutes to go,’ said the nun, coming out with an hour-glass, and then going out again.

  ‘Let me know how you’re getting on,’ I said.

  ‘You too.’

  We both knew we wouldn’t.

  ‘It was bad of you to kidnap Alice,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t kidnap her. I just said that I had.’

  ‘So why didn’t she come and find me?’

  ‘I needed her.’

  ‘You kidnapped her.’

  ‘In a way, yes. Alice is very fond of me.’

  I thought of that little conversation I had had with Alice on the bed in Berthe’s house.

  ‘She’s very fond of me too,’ I told her.

  ‘As I am. We all seem to have trouble with that.’ The ghost of a smile lit up her face for an instant.

  ‘I had better go,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Look out for my father. He’ll be coming round asking questions.’

  ‘Yes. You too.’

  The old nun reappeared and made shooin
g gestures.

  ‘I think it would be best if you didn’t come back,’ Juliana said to me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Goodbye, my dearest, sweetest heart,’ she said. She had never called me that before. She kissed me on the cheek, and held me close for a long moment. And that was how it ended. It was time to leave for home.

  Post scriptum

  I have written, long after the event and in the interests of truth and of history, this account of the proceedings leading up to the wreck of the White Ship, and my part in them, as I have seen my old friend Vitalis scribbling away with his ecclesiastical history in the Abbey of Saint-Évroult. I will not trouble you with my own subsequent history. It has had its share of sun and shadow, which is the portion of mankind.

  Vitalis will doubtless have written his account of the wreck even as I have written mine. They will be very different, but mine is the true one because I was on the ship. That is why it is important for you to have the story from me, as it happened – not a reported event, but a confessional statement. I have written it, of course, in Latin since it is the lingua franca of the educated and will always be understood when our rough dialect has rotted into gibberish.

  My history is written on vellum, and I will place it in a sealed container made of lead, the construction and concealment of which I have entrusted to my old friend Eliphas whose hermetic secrets and mysterious arts could not be put to better use.

  I have asked him to place it somewhere in the demesne of the Abbey of Saint-Sulpice where it will not be found in many a hundred years – for it would be death to myself and others if it were opened in our lifetimes. I will not ask him where he puts it. Perhaps it will never be found, but I believe the truth will out, and the very earth itself will bear it upwards until it comes up like a thorn in the skin, at last, to the wonder and pity of the world.