Shield of Three Lions

by Pamela Kaufman

  My conclusion: I couldn’t abide being here without him. When all the winnowing was done, that remained. He must stay. I was weak with pain at the thought of his leaving. The rest could be resolved if he’d remain at Wanthwaite. Somehow we’d get back on our old footing and all would be well. Just how, I’d work out day by day.

  I reviewed every moment since he’d returned to Wanthwaite, balanced this item against that like my notched stick and finally logic rewarded me.

  Benedicite, I knew what ailed the oaf!

  ’Twas so simple to fix! I’d talk to him first thing in the morning.

  WHEN I WOKE, Enoch was gone.

  “When did he leave?” I shouted furiously at Donald.

  “Befar Prime, My Lady.”

  “Go after him then! He can’t have gone far and I must talk with him.”

  Donald stared curiously. “I’m sorry, Alix, boot have ye looked at the weather? There be a blizzard cumin’ on.”

  Indeed snow fell aslant before a heavy wind.

  “But he can’t travel in this!” I cried, anguished. “He’ll freeze to death!”

  Gruoth signaled to Donald to leave, then put her arms around me. “Don’t fret, darlin’, Enoch’s nocht a fool and he rides wi’ three other brawny highlanders. Yif it’s truly too dangerous, they’ll turn back.”

  “I must get him, Gruoth. If no one else will go, I’ll ride alone.”

  She pulled me close and stroked my back. “I take it that the philter worked then.”

  “No!” I jerked away. “That wasn’t what was needed at all. I see what’s bothering him—have a plan. Oh, Gruoth, I must talk with Enoch. Everything will be all right once he understands.”

  At Sext, I donned a fur hood and cape, high boots and gloves, and went to saddle Thistle. Donald came with me, over Gruoth’s objections. But she needn’t have carried on so, for we didn’t even get as far as the Wanthwaite River. If I hadn’t known every tree and shrub of the park, we would have been lost the instant we crossed the bridge, so fierce was the blizzard, so blinding the snow.

  Through the long dreary afternoon we sat huddled by the fire and I sensed the Scots’ unvoiced criticism. What had I done to drive Enoch to give up his life in a storm? As for me, I suffered bereavement and guilt in equal parts. ’Twas worse than when he’d fallen into the Rhône, for I could bear no responsibility for the bridge’s breaking. In this case, I knew well that he was running from me.

  Then the door flew open in late afternoon and they were back! Like snow-covered bears they stumbled in carrying Dugan in their arms. His toes, perhaps his feet as well, had been taken by frost and they’d had to turn back to try to save him.

  “Ye’ve killed him wi’ yer woodly journey!” Matilda accused Enoch. “I hope now yell stay home.”

  “I’m leavin’ in the morning,” he said stoically. “Boot I’ll gae alone.”

  Gruoth and I joined Matilda in heating water and ale, my heart galloping in my chest. For long hours we labored over poor Dugan. Enoch thought he might lose three toes, but the others could be saved. Meantime, the wind growled around the castle and my heart sang counterpoint: be as be may, he couldn’t leave in this gale.

  Then I took my bold step. “Husband, ’tis time we retired.” I held out my hand, defying him to refuse in front of the others.

  But he did.

  Raising gruff brows, he ignored my hand. “I’ll sleep next to the fire.”

  Placing my rejected hand to my hair in a pretense of arranging a wisp, I repeated. “Nonetheless, you’ll not refuse me a few moments of your time before retiring. ’Tis a matter of life and death.”

  Everyone was watching. Enoch pressed his lips and gazed at me wearily, as if ‘twere a common tug between us.

  Then he rose and walked heavily up the stair. Gruoth quickly thrust a candle in my hand and I followed.

  The Scot sat on the bed, his head buried in his hands. I placed the candle on the trestle and leaned against the door so he couldn’t escape without hearing me.

  “I’m very glad you returned, Enoch. It gives me a chance to tell you something now.”

  He didn’t move. I wondered if he’d gone to sleep in that position.

  “You see, I’ve changed my mind. Now that I know … of course we need not seek an annulment. You understand that naturally as long as I thought you a pimpreneau …”

  He raised a face haggard and sober in the dim light. “I want the annulment. And I’ll get it.”

  “I know very well you don’t want to be wed to me. Didn’t you tell me the very first night? And of course you haven’t …”

  “And won’t.”

  “But you went through the ceremony and so did I. And there are certain advantages so long as we understand each other. Therefore …”

  He moved to rise and I rushed forward to stop him. Grabbed his blouse.

  “I know why you don’t want to be wed to me!” I cried.

  “Do ye soothly?” There was a note of detached curiosity in his voice. He disentangled my hands and politely pushed me back.

  “Aye, ’tis clear as water. You don’t want to be wed to me because I’m a female!”

  “Quhat?” His face showed I was right. He was interested again.

  “You see, I do know. All I had to do was to look back. In Acre when you said: ‘Betimes I’d rather have a schitten kite for a brother but I do love thee.’ And in Messina when …”

  “I remember,” he said sharply. “Air ye suggestin’ I’d like to be married to Alex?”

  “Aye, Alex but not Alix.” I almost laughed in triumph. “You want a brother. I might not understand if I hadn’t been on a Crusade but I believe most men prefer brothers to wives. The oath of chivalry and …”

  He raised his hand. “Alix, I doona want to be wed with a boy. Alex and Alix be as alike as a pea and a pearl in my mind …”

  “In mine too! I’ll dress like a boy! Act like a boy! In time you’ll forget.”

  Now he stood and walked into the dark. I picked up the candle to follow and found him leaning against the wall. I placed the candle on the trestle, wondered if I dare touch him now. Then he turned and his face reminded me oddly of Richard’s in the depth of his despair.

  “Well, I wanted to avoid this fer both our sakes, but yif you insist, and only yif yell speak the truth …”

  “I promise!” My heart leaped with hope despite his tone. He must love me still.

  “I doona want ye as wife because ye have changed, but I’m not referrin’ to yer sex. I tried to keep ye innocent and I loved ye innocent. But when ye fell—’twas over.”

  “Fell? From the quintain?”

  “Dinna play stupid, Alix, I warned ye. Ye knaw well what I mean.”

  There was a profound silence between us. From the hall below, Gruoth’s voice rose in a plaintive song. I knew she was trying to help me, but I needed quiet to think.

  “No, Enoch, I don’t. You’ll have to explain. I’m sorry.”

  “Very well. I doona know exactly when the foul act took place, but I learned about it the day after ye left Acre.”

  “Go on: ‘foul act.’” My heart sank. His very tone made me feel guilty of some heinous crime, though I knew not what.

  He had difficulty. “When ye became the king’s mistress.” He strode to the window and pretended to gaze out into the black blizzard. The wind’s shriek mixed with Gruoth’s wail.

  “The king’s mistress!” I laughed hysterically.

  “’Tis nocht comical to me!” He turned back. His voice shook and rose in pitch. “Aye, I knaw that the two of ye mun have laughed to think how ye were foolin the poor slubberdegullian Scot, makin’ him gae into the tunnel, fight in the field and all the time ye were slaverin’ and kissin’ in the king’s pavilion.”

  “You fool! Oaf! Dullard!” I screamed. “How could I be mistress to a man who loves boys? How could I have suspected that you’d sold me as a boy if I’d been making love as a girl?”

  “The king himself told me! Begged me
to relieve him of yer puling caresses! Sayed how he was sick of yer childish passion whan he had work to do!”

  Rage at Richard overwhelmed my immediate concern. “He said that of me? How dare he! If you could have seen him weeping when he discovered the truth! Seen how he almost killed me! He thought you put me up to fooling him! Did he tell you that as well?”

  “Boot I didna knaw …”

  Now I was so angry that I no longer cared what happened. “Even so, suppose I had been the king’s lover. You took doxies night and day, aye, right under my nose so that at times I had no place to bed. But did I ever accuse you?”

  “Boot I’m a man!”

  “We were brothers! Took an oath to let the other do as he pleased in love.”

  “We couldna be brothers whan ye were a girl.”

  “Why not? So I lost one bulge and gained two others, my character is the same! My mind! My heart! Alex is Alix, I am I!”

  “And both Alex and Alix be a fool, say I, yif ye think the placement of bulges doesna matter. Men air not the same and therefore our behavior canna be the same. I have such desires ye canna dream of.” He almost choked, leaned his forehead to the wall.

  I recalled my boiling liver in Paris but thought it best not to argue the point.

  “So because I’m female, I’m besmirched by love. Is that what you mean?”

  For a moment he was struck dumb, then tried to reply in his strangled voice. “Yif ye loved King Richard, I canna make complaint, I grant ye.”

  I turned away from him, agitated. Gruoth’s plaintive song rose and I sought a message in its throbbing notes.

  Then, behind me, Enoch spoke again, his question tinged with dread. “Tell me soothly Alix. Did ye love Richard?”

  I took a long deep breath.

  “Not in that way,” I answered with absolute conviction. There was no time now to explain exactly what I’d felt, but I kenned that my future happiness depended upon persuading Enoch of my innocence. “He wore sweet woodruff as my father did, even looked like my father, and after the Rhône he said he was willing to be my parent. I clung to him because I couldn’t bear to lose another father.”

  “Boot ye could bear to lose a brother. When ye did lose the king, ye didna cum to me; ye tried to escape me forever.”

  “Only because I knew you were following me,” came words deep from inner recesses. “I knew you’d sought passage on Philip’s ship.”

  “Ye knew I followed, aye, but ye ran wi’ all yer might.” His inexorable logic followed.

  More and more affrighted by his power of argument, I became foolhardy. “You blithering idiot, I would never try to get away permanently. We fought a game of bones between us from the first hour we met, as you well know, but underneath I never wanted to win the roll. Why do you think I almost died when I thought you drowned? Why did I seek you in panic if I woke and found you gone? You know I never want to lose you! Haven’t I just offered to be a boy forever if you’ll stay? Please!”

  There was a long silence. Gruoth no longer sang; only wind snarled in the courtyard below.

  “Ye’re mast cunning when ye need me, Alix. Ye have a strong bent fer survival. How do I knaw that ye want me fer myself and not fer my skills in running Wanthwaite?”

  “I want you for yourself, Enoch.” I took a deep breath and prepared to use my last weapon. “I swear on our treasure buried in the fruit cellar.”

  He stood still as a stone. Hadn’t he heard me? Or understood? My heart thumped in panic.

  “Nay Alix,” he said at last, his voice muffled. “That no longer be the treasure I crave.”

  Now I was suffocated by fear.

  “I have nothing more to give. Except myself.”

  I saw his teeth gleam in a sudden smile.

  “Air ye still offering yerself as a boy?”

  My lips trembled so it was hard to answer. “Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter. Whichever you prefer.”

  His hand reached forth, caught a strand of my hair and wound it on his finger. “Don’t ye knaw?”

  “Mmmm, no.” I could barely speak.

  “Did ye ne’er notice how oft I suggested we bed doon early in Acre? I couldna wait to put my arms around ye.”

  “I didn’t think …”

  “Or how I found excuse to kiss yer bonny face when we greeted, when we said farewell, when angry or glad?”

  “Maybe I did …”

  “Waesucks, I was worriet sick that I might have caught the king’s complaint.” His hand went to my shoulder, pulled me forward a step. “Alix, yif I stay, ye mun be my wife. Do ye ken my meaning?”

  Don’t think too hard, just do it. “Aye, aye,” I breathed.

  “And I willna sleep on the floor again.” His voice was thick as velvet, and close.

  My heart pounded in panic, victory, I know not what. Everything was moving so fast. Was this what I’d planned?

  “I under—stand …”

  “Alix, I love thee.”

  The words hung like jewels.

  “I love thee!”

  He snuffed out the candle and I fell or was pulled into his arms.

  “Would never leave thee, never. Or my heart would breist.”

  I felt his heart drum against my cheek.

  “Have yearned for thee night and day, canna bear one more instant …”

  “Love,” I echoed faintly.

  He pulled at himself and great shadowy birds flew in the rafters.

  “Want you, love you …”

  “Love,” I repeated giddily.

  Then his lips were on mine, strange in their devouring passion, and ’twas hard to remember how well I knew him. Everything throbbed and thrummed around us and I couldn’t think at all. Then he picked me up in strong possessive arms, so like and unlike former times, and I tried to recall other instances so I wouldn’t be frightened but somehow couldn’t for this moment was too strong, and I thought I must swoon.

  He laid me on the bed where I quaked with cold and fear. Now I learned that the flying birds had been his clothes and, gently, he began to remove mine.

  “Don’t tremble, little love, for I adore thee soothly would never hurt thee. Ah, my dearworth gem, wi’ lips swater than any spice, swater than dews that donk the dunes …”

  And I was warmed by his body which fit mine so perfectly and his kisses grew deeper, deeper, and an inner glow warmed me as well and all I knew was the contact between us, the center of everything.

  “Oh, Alix, Alix, there…”

  We were locked together, riding on Dere Street again, galloping harder and harder as the tangled trees whizzed above us and we panted in the effort to get where we were going, pounding, and I was suffused with wondrous joy as we came closer, closer and closer …

  Fermented honey bubbles exploded all through me and I lay suspended in spreading sweetness.

  I LOST ALL TRACK OF THE WORLD. Our bodies wearied, quickly revived, felt exhilaration after exhilaration such as I’d never imagined. We were cooing doves, busy bees, curious cats; we mixed sweet confession with bawdy laughter and seering ecstasy. And I was happy, aye, so happy I couldn’t bear my own joy. To think that we were wed! That this would go on forever! Why had no one ever told me? Fortune’s Wheel whirled like a dervish.

  Once, in a quiet moment while Enoch slept, I thought on Richard. I had denied him to Enoch, even as Judas had his Lord, and I sent a quiet prayer for forgiveness around the hostile globe to the king, wherever he might be. I pictured him lying under the flapping canvas of his pavilion in the winter rains, his body wrapped in cold steel instead of flesh-and-blood arms, and I pitied him with all my heart. ’Twas vain and toty for an insignificant lass to feel compassion for a great king, I knew, but for one brief period I had been privy to his heart and in some odd manner knew him better than anyone. Soothly he was the enfant perdu par excellence, lost from the cradle onward in a grim world of hatred, venomous rivalries and chilling rejection. By comparison, how fortunate I had been. Although I had lost those dearest to me, my
father, mother, Maisry their love still resided here as long as I drew breath. And I saw in a great awesome revelation that even my present glorious love with Enoch had built on all those former loves, including my first intense passion for Richard. No, no love should ever be denied, nor could it die even if it were not to be consummated; therefore, Richard, forgive me.

  No sooner had I thought the words than the fur robe at the arched window billowed inward, bringing with it a breeze warm as springtime, redolent of blossoms, and a shimmering silver miasma floated across the room, then hovered directly over me. In awe, I recognized a stirring and knew that my soul had been restored. I was encapsulated in total silence, lost all sense of time or space, caught in a sweet peace I’d not felt since my father rode forth many years ago. Instantly I understood that my parents were now ready to depart for Heaven, had come to bid me final farewell, but without sadness, for we were connected by a cord of love which stretched forward and backward to all eternity.

  I burrowed my face close to Enoch’s strong beating heart: and I was home at last.

  My first published work was a short essay called “Why I Like to Read,” submitted by my third-grade teacher to Scholastic magazine. Since that time I have read so much, absorbed so many tales, legends and histories that I cannot, with any authority, separate what is original in my work and what is a pastiche of digested lore. So to all those fantasies that became a part of me, and to the people who recounted them, I am deeply grateful.

  At a more conscious level, I would like to give special recognition to a selected few of the many works that stimulated and informed my imagination during the writing of Shield of Three Lions. In the first chapter of Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will there was a brief description of the medieval rape laws. I pursued her references, read further on my own and finally discovered the seminal work for me: Tractabus de legibus by Ranulf de Glanvill, written in the twelfth century of Henry II. Of the many useful biographies, I should mention Richard the Lion Heart by Kate Norgate, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings by Amy Kelly and England Without Richard by J. T. Appleby Histories of the Third Crusade were kept by the royal historians and commentaries were written by their Arab counterparts; I was particularly influenced by The Crusade of Richard Lion-Heart by Ambroise and translated from the Old French by Merton Jerome Herbert. The fine books on the medieval background are endless in number but the most important is Daily Living in the Twelfth Century by Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. The author loosely translates one of the most informative works written during the period, De nominibus utensilium by Alexander Neckham. Neckham, milk-brother to Richard I, had a vigorous curiosity which he applied to every aspect of life. He traveled from Oxford to Paris where he studied, then returned to serve in the Plantagenet Court. Even writers of his own day quote him extensively. Ultimately of course, literature itself was my best source. The period comes to life in the poignant lyrics, bawdy drinking songs, troubadour poetry and the works of Chaucer and William Dunbar.