Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  Countess Maud, silent and unconvinced, allowed Gwyn to hurry her across the court and into the tower. In their rooms Hyrtha said, “No, lady, I have not seen Sir Brian.”

  “It was quite a dinner,” said Gwyn to Hyrtha, after Countess Maud had closed the door of her tiny room. “Brian sang a song — at the priest’s insistence. Countess Maud was beside herself. And then the priest from the Pope’s mission came in and said the camp had been destroyed — ridden through by knights from the court.”

  “What did the king say?”

  Gwyn stared at her maid. “You are not surprised. Then you know about the trouble at the camp?”

  Hyrtha reddened. “I — had heard something of it. I did not think it would interest you. I am sorry, lady.”

  Gwyn smiled briefly. “No matter. But I do not like the air of this court. There is nothing of God in it — even the holy churchmen from Rome are not safe.” She shook her head. Frowning, she added, “And it seems that the shadow that moves behind all here is the worst of all. Perhaps the devil masquerades as a holy man.”

  They fell silent for a bit. Hyrtha built up the fire in the hearth. Gwyn, after a long time, said, “I forgot Brian. I promised his mother I would search for him. Do you stay here, in case the Lady Jeanne calls.”

  Gwyn descended the unlighted stairs. She slipped out of the door and emerged into the darkened courtyard.

  She did not know where to look first, but instinct drove her to look in the shadows. She began to make a circle of the courtyard. She moved into the shadows, feeling her way with her feet, where there was little light to guide her. She had made a quarter circle of the stone wall, when her foot fell upon something that crunched beneath her weight. Reaching down quickly, she put her hand on broken wood and strings. She lifted it and examined it with the tips of her fingers in the dark. It was a lute, broken beyond repair. Could it be Brian’s lute?

  There were a dozen or more lutes within the castle walls, she was sure. But since Brian had sung tonight, she was acutely anxious. Brian’s lute had a nick in the neck, where his hand had slipped while he was carving the wood. It had happened before they left the lodge, and he had not yet been able to carve another.

  She stood in the shadows, her fingers seeing for her in the dark. They slid up the neck of the broken lute — there it was! Brian’s lute, without a question!

  But where, then, was Brian? Flambard had spoken truly — he carries it wherever he goes.

  But the lute was broken, and Brian was not here.

  Then she heard …

  A muffled laugh came from not far away. She stood rooted to the spot, listening, still in the dark. A shaft of light fell between her and the sound, and she dared not cross it, for she would be seen, and recognized.

  From the distance she heard what happened next. There were faint shadows, moving in the darkness beyond the shaft of light. Subdued voices came to her in the still night air, and the soft sound of muffled laughter. The sounds were muted, stealthy, and secret, as though they belonged to the night, and darkness, and somehow to evil.

  Gwyn stood, clutching her cloak to her throat against the night air, and against the chill that she felt from the shadows beyond. She was now not even sure they were men, not until she heard Brian’s voice, a voice she knew well, cry out in protest. She took a step forward.

  Now, her eyes accustomed more to the darkness, she could see a circle of shapes — fiends, or men, she was not sure. But Brian’s cry had come from the midst of the circling, weaving figures.

  And then, suddenly, there was one wild shriek and the shape of the circle ahead altered. Brian must have fallen, for the shapes diminished in height, like a black fire burning low.

  Gwyn could not move. Nor would it have done any good, she knew instinctively. There was evil all around her, soulless danger — as though she stood on the rim of the pit, watching demons at play, torturing their victim.

  And then the cry rang out again. Brian’s voice, no more than an hour since tuned to sweet song — now screaming, grating, rough with pain.

  And the devils laughed.

  8

  Gwyn sped, silently, to the round tower. Once inside she barred the door behind her. She dragged up the stairs, slowly. There was nothing she could say to Brian’s mother, since she had seen nothing. And yet, in her heart, she knew well that Brian had suffered the ultimate horror.

  She stopped on the dark stairs, feeling the uneven stones beneath her feet. She heard her own breath rasping and waited until her blood stopped pounding in her temples and the tumult in her head slowed.

  She could not face Maud, not with the knowledge of what had just happened as clear in her face as she knew it must be now. The low, malice-filled laugh, the soft sounds that had meant little to her as she stood outdoors in the shadows, now took on their full horror. The delicate sound, like a sigh, of silk tearing, the muted scuffling as Brian was lifted from his feet and dropped to the ground with a dull thump, like the sound of a dog’s tail on the hearth. Or, her country-bred mind told her, like a leveret, uselessly braving the hounds, drumming out a futile defiance with its hind feet.

  And at last, the cry that would ring through her dreams — the piercing scream of Brian as his torturers accomplished their dark will on him.

  What could she say to his mother?

  She entered the room, where the fire burned low in the grate, and found Countess Maud slumped once more in the chair, her chin on her hands.

  Without looking up, Countess Maud said, “You didn’t find him.”

  Gwyn said, “No, I did not see him.” She realized she was still holding the broken stem of Brian’s instrument, and her voice died away. Maud looked up then, at the alteration in Gwyn’s voice, and exclaimed, a single wordless cry.

  “You did find him!”

  Gwyn could only shake her head mutely. “I saw nothing,” she began, but Maud interrupted her with a wild wave of one hand. With the other Maud tore the instrument from Gwyn’s hand, not noticing that the broken wood left a long streak of blood where it scratched Gwyn’s hand. “You needn’t tell me!” cried Maud in a frenzy. “I know what happened. Those obscene minions of the king couldn’t keep their hands off my Brian! But it’s all my fault! This lute! I should not have let him have it. I should have sent him to Normandy, to take over the estates! Perhaps it is not too late.”

  Gwyn shook her urgently. “Come, Countess. We must think what to do first. How can we —”

  “Save him?” said Countess Maud, with a startlingly mad look upward at Gwyn. “I shall save him. I shall send him away now, my pearl of little price — I think that is what the psalmist says, is it not? — my pearl has lost its value. But I shall send him — where was it, Gwyn, I would send him? Never mind, I shall remember, one day. But first, I shall kill them. Kill them all. You will help me, Gwyn?”

  She stared, beseeching, and Gwyn could only shake her head. It was too late to send Brian away from harm, for the harm had already been done.

  Finally Maud spent her sudden frenzy and dropped the lute listlessly from numb fingers. She made her way back to the chair, and sat again with her chin on her hand, and gazed into the embers. After a long while, as the shadows lengthened, etching deep wrinkle lines in the woman’s face, she began to speak.

  “You didn’t know the old king,” she said. “He was a hard man, but he was an honest man. He confirmed me in my fiefs when my husband died. This king would have seized them all. He has taken the thing most dear to me in my life. The old king was an honest Christian man. The Eastern vice would not have gained a foothold under the Conqueror. Gwyn, I hope you die young, for it is a vicious thing to grow old and be helpless when Satan stalks the earth. The Crusades should not concentrate on bringing back Jerusalem from the hands of the pagans. Satan has stalked the land here, and the crusaders should fight evil closer to home.”

  Gwyn’s horror at what she had heard outside the tower was overshadowed by the nearer madness at hand. Countess Maud rambled, until Margit cam
e, roused by her mistress’s constant talk, and took one look. She vanished and came back in a short time with a bowl of a dark liquid.

  “Come, my pretty babe,” cooed Margit, “drink all this up for Margit, and we’ll make it all better.”

  To Gwyn’s amazement Countess Maud rose obediently and clung to Margit, forgetting Gwyn. “Margit, my dear, come with me and we shall plan together how to kill them all. None shall be left alive, I swear it to you …”

  Without even a backward glance at Gwyn, Margit drew Countess Maud from the room and closed the door firmly behind them.

  The next day Countess Maud seemed to pretend that all was right. Gwyn caught a fleeting glimpse of Brian and was shocked at his pallor. The lost, desperate look in his eyes would, as the day wore on, be replaced by a glazed numbness, as she had seen in the eyes of a mortally wounded beast.

  The countess by now gave little indication that she had moved a step toward madness. She inquired, gently, as though of a child, of her son’s adventure the night before.

  “And where did you go, son? I waited for you, but you must have gone far.”

  “I went far enough,” said Brian distantly.

  “You found,” said Countess Maud, with a shrewd expression in her dark eyes, “an adventure, no doubt. I do not wonder, for the king’s court is full of —”

  “Oh, Mother, be quiet.”

  But Countess Maud was not yet done. “Where is your lute?”

  “My — my lute?” Brian stammered. He had not thought about his lute, clearly, in the past hours. He had undergone an overwhelming upheaval in his life, an experience that in its pain and shock might have driven him mad. In fact, during the night just past he had wondered whether he were not already lunatic, from sleeping under the moon’s rays. But with the day’s breaking his fever of the night fled like the last wraiths returning to the graveyard at cock’s crow. In its place lurked a new feeling, a strange magnetic tugging at him that he must sort out. He might one day find the words and the notes to sing from his heart, but just now he could barely speak.

  “Yes, son, your lute,” said Countess Maud hardly. From under a cushion in the chair she occupied she brought out the shredded neck of his instrument. “Here it is. Broken. Tell me, son, who did this to you.”

  Brian leaped to his feet. “I shall not tell you! I shall never tell you anything! Just leave me alone!” His voice rose on the last words into a scream that Gwyn heard from the next room. The door slammed behind him, and she knew Countess Maud was alone. It was a time to be alone, thought Gwyn, and she dropped to her knees in prayer.

  Later in the day Hyrtha beckoned to Gwyn and drew her aside.

  “Is it Jeanne?” asked Gwyn anxiously. But Hyrtha’s mind was on her own affairs, for once. She asked Gwyn, “Did you see the men from His Holiness the Pope?”

  Gwyn shook her head. Then, correcting herself, she said, “I did see the emissary himself. But he has a large train that has been quartered outside the walls. There is a limit apparently to what even this king will allow inside the walls.”

  And in truth, the fortress was overly full even now. They could not possibly have accommodated the twenty men who came with the minister from the Pope. Hyrtha said, “I wonder whether my brother might be in this group.”

  Gwyn looked startled, and Hyrtha hastened to explain. “My brother had learning. He was to be a priest, before the Normans came. He escaped, and once I heard that someone had seen him with some priests.”

  Gwyn nodded solemnly. “You wish to seek information?”

  Hyrtha said simply, “I have to know. If there is word of my brother, I must find out.”

  “But how do you know that there will be word of your brother with the Pope’s emissary?”

  A cloud passed over Hyrtha’s face. Gwyn was sorry she had raised any doubt, for she knew that Hyrtha was now clutching at straws. Gwyn could understand how forlorn Hyrtha must feel. Added to Gwyn’s own loneliness was deep compassion for the girl. To see one’s family, and all one’s neighbors, ground into dust under the mailed heel of the invader must have been almost more than the girl could stand. There was really no choice. Gwyn said, “I’ll watch over Jeanne. I won’t sleep much tonight anyway.”

  The relief in Hyrtha’s face was almost tangible, and she quickly slipped into her cloak and was ready to leave when Gwyn stopped her. “How will you get out of the bailey? The Pope’s train is camped beyond the gates.”

  Hyrtha smiled, a secret look of knowledge dancing in her eyes. “I will be all right.”

  The tower in the bailey where William Rufus kept his nunnery was cramped and uncomfortable. Even though the fresh breezes of May sidled through the narrow arrow-slit windows, yet the overwhelming smell of dampness, of cold stone that never warmed, of leftover ashes from small fires lighted at night to banish the raw night air, never left the rooms. But it was better, Gwyn knew, than the keep across the moat. The keep was the oldest part of Winchester Castle, built upon foundations immeasurably old before the Normans restored the fortification. The keep was not occupied, as a general rule, being regarded as the last defense against an overpowering enemy that had probably breached the outer walls and was advancing across the bailey.

  Then, and only then, would the last defenders, fighting a rear-guard action, cross the moat to the keep with its un-breachable walls and pull up the drawbridge, secure for the time behind the portcullis.

  But now, in William’s peaceful court, the keep beyond the moat had devolved into storage and watchtower usage and the drawbridge was never raised.

  It crossed Gwyn’s mind that she still had not learned how Hyrtha had been able to avoid the Norman sentries and wait, hidden, for her to come to the tower in the corner of the bailey. No doubt, she decided, the girl’s Saxon friends helped her. It was the only solution she could think of, and she really did not want to know more. It was sufficient that Hyrtha was a pleasant, capable girl, possessed of great gentleness and sweetness of disposition.

  Hyrtha was gone, leaving Gwyn to sit by the child’s pallet, and wonder at Hyrtha’s confidence. To walk down the stairs, unbar the door of the tower, and step outside into the dark was no real problem. But to cross the courtyard, alive with Norman soldiers and their servants, and try to get through the gates, which were closed and barred at nightfall, surpassed Gwyn’s understanding. Hyrtha had seemed sure, though, and Gwyn turned her attention to the child next to her.

  Jeanne was not sleeping. Her breathing came unevenly, and Gwyn leaned over her, to examine the child’s face. There was no sign of fever, but Jeanne’s faint little voice came, eerie in the night. “Gwyn, am I going to die?”

  Gwyn was shocked, but she said, “No, of course you’re not. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  Jeanne was silent for a few moments, and then she said, “I wish I would.”

  Gwyn knew she must make some effort to reassure the child. “Why would you want to die?” She squeezed the child’s fingers in hers, feeling them lying limp and cold in her warm hand.

  “He hurt me,” said Jeanne simply. “He put his hand under my shift — I tried to get away, but he held me tight and his armor hurt my chest.” She drew a gasping breath. “His hand was like iron — Like a dagger under my shift, and he — he —”

  She lost her hold on her story. She whimpered and pulled her night shift down with both tiny hands. “Don’t hurt me,” she moaned. “Don’t don’t don’t —”

  Gwyn scooped up the child in her arms and held her close, rocking her back and forth and crooning meaningless syllables to her. Jeanne turned her head toward the wall. Her voice came then even more muffled than before. “My father would never let that man near me, I know that. My father would have killed him!”

  Gwyn could think of no words to console the child. Her own thoughts were chaotic enough. The court of William the Red was quite possibly the worst den of evil in all of Christendom. Her experience of course was not large, but surely there could be nothing worse than what had just happened to Brian
. She rubbed the sore spot on her hand where the shards of the lute had scratched her. Hyrtha, an innocent girl, was now trying to find her brother, the only other member of that family left unharmed. Although, Gwyn amended, harm was something that struck the soul and was not necessarily visible on the outside.

  Gwyn felt suddenly immeasurably old. All her years till now, she reflected, had not prepared her for the wickedness of King William’s court, his rule over the land he called his. Where the king was, there the court lived, and there the morals of the reign were set. And in King William’s reign, she had heard, already he was being called the demon king. No churchman — except Flambard — and he was sometimes called the Prince of Devils — could abide the cruelly riotous atmosphere in Winchester Bailey.

  In the last days Gwyn had begun to wish she had never been born half Norman. How much different would she be — in herself — if her mother had married a Welsh prince, suitable to her own rank? Would she be just such another as trotted alongside the Welsh ponies, following Lord Rhys ap Llewellyn?

  As the night wore on, Gwyn’s spirits sank lower and lower. She thought Jeanne had fallen asleep, but suddenly the grasp on her hand became convulsive, and Jeanne sat up in bed. “I cannot abide that man,” said Jeanne, “and I shall not marry him. I shall simply die first. I wish the Three Butterflies could get me away.”

  Gwyn soothed her. “You will not have to marry him for a long time. Not until you grow up. You know he is going to the Holy Land on crusade. So you will have all the time there is between now and when he comes back.”

  Jeanne’s tongue babbled on. “Perhaps he’ll be killed.” She looked into the shadows in the corner of the room, and Gwyn could see the whites of her eyes. She was for the first time truly afraid for Jeanne. The child was half mad, and the contrast between the laughing girl of a few days ago and this poor cringing creature was more than Gwyn could stand. She reached her arms out and folded Jeanne within them, pressing her close to her heart. There was little comfort she could give, for they were both in the hands of the king. Both must do the king’s bidding, but surely some way out could be found for the child. Then, as she rocked the girl back and forth in her arms, feeling the child’s sobs subside, Gwyn’s thoughts took a new turn.