by Mary Lide
It was still April, and on an April evening that was closing fast (for the days had not yet lengthened and the morning had been gray with rain), with some of the other boys I had been leaning over the battlements on the seaward side. The boys were counting the fishing boats, which, having ridden out the storm in the shelter of the quay, were now going out for the night catch; I was watching the sea gulls, which floated like puffs of smoke, now sucked down by the wind close to the water’s edge, now blown up above our heads, when a cry from the castle watch on the landward side gave the alarm. Already the lookout in the gate towers had sounded the warning bell, and down in the outer courtyard men came spilling out from the guardroom, half dressed, strapping on their swords as they ran.
Some rushed to double-bar the great gates, which had already been bolted up for the night; others came clattering up the narrow stairs to the battlements to overlook the moors. A border castle takes its duties seriously, never thinks itself safe, and never takes safety for granted; else it may not long survive. So our men peered over anxiously into the twilight, straining to see what threatened us. A group of horsemen it was, although they had left foot soldiers in plenty at the moor’s edge; the horsemen, six or seven of them, advanced boldly behind their leader, who now rode up openly to the gate and hammered at its thick oak timbers with the iron rim of his round shield. Celtic horsemen they were, Celtic dressed in fine wool tunics and cloaks, leggings cross-gartered into soft leather boots, no chain mail, no iron helmets, their weapons Celtic round shields and broadswords set in wide scabbards richly ornamented, with gold interlaced. And when their leader lifted up his head in answer to our shouts, there was a gleam of gold about his throat; some Celtic warlord this must be, with his men, although it was difficult to catch all that he said, his voice half muffled by his cloak with its lining of red fox fur and his speech that border mixture of Norman and Celt. By then, of course, the Cambray guard was out in force. Dusk is a strange and dangerous time to be abroad, and no one comes knocking at a castle gate at that hour except for some reason best not known to honest men. Yet it was clear that these travelers were tired, their horses almost stumbling for weariness and their leader’s gray stallion, a knight’s charger this, no Celtic moorland horse, already lame. The men riding behind were small and dour-faced. It was clear, too, from the way they held themselves, not looking anywhere except straight ahead, hiding their anxiety beneath a stern air, that they had probably never been so far from home before but were too proud to let anyone else know that. They were older men, this escort, and there was something in their bearing, their looks and their manner, that suggested they were part of a personal guard to some older lord, someone whom they had served long and knew well. Yet the man who led them, when he showed himself, was young, too young to have such men serve him unless he had inherited them. And when he ordered them, it seemed sometimes they answered him in such a way, or anticipated his command, as if order and response had already been rehearsed. Their leader certainly was young, not old enough even to have the shadow of a beard, although in the torchlight—for our guard had bawled for pages to bring flares and hold them over the walls—in that light he showed himself proudly, for all that his face was lined with dirt and fatigue. Copper-colored hair he had, grown long and thick, and his eyes, dark and large, looked out over high cheekbones. It was his mouth most of all that betrayed his lack of age. For all that he looked decisive, firm-chinned, his lips were dry with apprehension or tension, too; and when he pivoted his lame horse to dodge the splutters of wax that fell from the torches, the gleam of gold at throat and wrist flashed an uneasy red-like fire
Earl Raoul was the king’s warden of the borderlands, and when the earl was in residence, Celts often rode in to visit him, sometimes to chat over old days. Many of them were friends, especially since the lady of Cambray had many Celtic kin. Often, too, the Celts came to complain about some loss incurred in a border raid or at some revenge the Norman settlers in these parts had taken against them, unwarranted, or so they always claimed. (They never came, of course, to make amends for the raids they made and the damage they in turn had caused.) But they never ever came like this, at night, in such haste, nor with such a fierce look of resolve. For that, too, was obvious beneath that young air of pride and weariness, and seeing it, other men drew back, sensing some feeling that made them ill at ease. So when the gates at last were unbarred and the seven horsemen were allowed to ride in, many Cambray men still stayed to watch, fingering their sword hilts nervously; and those on the battlements held their place and kept arrows notched to their bowstrings.
The young man, young lord, swung himself out of the saddle and bent to examine his horse with an air of concern that told better than words its worth to him. “By God,” one of the Cambray guard whistled through his teeth, “that horse has been bred from a Cambray stallion,” and he whistled again in disbelief. The Cambray horses are famous in these borderlands and beyond, and sometimes it is true that Celts will bring one of their small mares to breed either openly or in secret. But they seldom ride up to Cambray gates on a horse so bred. Nor do local lords often come with so large an escort, and seldom leave so many foot soldiers camped outside. For now beyond the walls the small pinpricks of flame could be clearly seen where the rest of the men had settled down for the night, each in his place out there on the flinty ground. These men would have come trotting beside the horsemen all the way, covering distance with their long mountain stride, holding to the stirrups as they ran. Now, weary, too, no doubt, they hunkered down without complaint among the heather and the rocks, asking no more than water to drink and a chunk of dry bread to gnaw upon. I watched them for a long while myself, curious what made such men run for miles at their lord’s command, their weapons strapped upon their backs, their big Welsh bows, such as Hue had, tied to the arrow case. And when our castle guard, still uneasy themselves, clouted us boys back down the steps, driving us out of their way, I went alone to my own bed and thought about those Celts long before I slept. Mine was a hard bed, I grant, on the kitchen floor among the scraps, but at least there was a roof over my head and a fire for warmth. These Celtic soldiers could run for days, carry all their food with them, live on air, and never willingly come inside Norman castle walls. Yet so loyal were they to their lord that if he bade them, they would try to tear down those walls with their bare hands. I remember wondering what manner of men they were, loyalty so strong in them that they would die at their lord’s command.
I had not thought on such a thing before. Perhaps it was some forewarning that made me ponder it, that made me shudder even in the fire’s warmth. And when I slept, I still dreamed of those men. Their small flame points among the heather were like their courage, determined and resolute. And it seemed to me, in my dreams, that their resolution, whatever caused or nurtured it, would blot out all things else and would sometime change our lives.
But I was to find out one day that when things grow bleak enough to bring a man against a wall, then even the weakest of us can show equal determination if we must. So I dreamed, dark, uneasy dreams, full of foreboding, until a sudden tug upon my arm sent me flaring awake.
I alone roused. No one else stirred. Around me were the sleeping forms of mother, half sisters, the other kitchen folk, a dog or two huddled inside for warmth, some men-at-arms, who, drinking late after the evening’s excitement, had bedded down among the rushes, cloaks pulled over their heads for comfort. It was not yet light, lacking perhaps an hour until dawn. The world still slept peacefully. The time of trial I speak of was not yet. Another tug upon my arm brought me half upright. The Lady Olwen was bent over me, and it was her voice, urgent with command, that bade me get up and follow her. The time of trial not yet come by many a year, and yet a time of trial ahead, and she, childlike, womanlike, now set on it.
Half awake, I did as she said. It speaks much for my devotion, I suppose, that without further questions, without complaint, without hesitation even, I moved silently past those sleeping forms, pa
using only long enough to hunt for my shoes. I slept, of course, in all my clothes, not like those noble lords and ladies, who, they said, and I have found out for a fact since, bed naked beneath embroidered sheets on mattresses of goosedown. Lady Olwen’s shape was a faint blur in the predawn light, but she glided along in her quick way so that I had to hurry to keep up with her. She said nothing, turned back only once to ensure I was still behind her, and came out into the cold morning air, running before me over the cobblestones toward the stables.
There was no one about. The kitchen at Cambray stands apart from the rest of the keep with its guardroom and hall; the night watch had not yet changed so there were no men lounging to chat and stretch around the well and joke among themselves when the new guard took their place. Not even the cocks had crowed; the hounds slept on, heads on paws, dreaming of the morning hunt, and behind the stable was a silence seldom found in that busy place. Lady Olwen was waiting for me. She was enveloped in a long gray cloak that covered her from head to foot, making her blend into the morning like a wraith. She had not braided her hair but had tied it back into a snarl of red, and when she spoke and her head covering fell back, I saw that down one side of her face a long bruise showed blue across her cheek and along her chin.
Seeing I had noticed, she hastily pulled the hood into place, saying merely, “I need you to come with me. Those Celtic envoys will leave at dawn to go home. I must be there before them at the crossroads.”
“Crossroads?” I know I echoed the word, still sleep-bemused, not taking in half she said.
She answered impatiently, unlike herself; quick she had always been but never abrupt like this, nervous and tense, as if something important awaited her. “They leave at dawn, I tell you, by the western road. We must get there before they do. It is a matter of,” she hesitated, “honor,” she said at last. I should have known from the way she spoke, the word she used, too serious, too solemn, that no good would come of such adventuring. But I gaped at her through the mist and, in my way, let her speak on. She hurried over the words as if she had practiced them, as if she had spent a long time thinking what to say. Now I suspect she had believed she would have to persuade me and had used all the arguments at once. “They came last night in haste,” she told me, “to speak with my father; they leave in haste today. This will be the only chance I have to meet with them.”
Now, there are obviously many things I should have asked, and anyone of sense would have asked them: Why is it so important that you speak with them at all? What is this honor? What this haste? But, catching a glimpse of her little horse already tied to the door, already saddled and waiting for her, I said simply, “I cannot ride so how can I keep up with you? And if they leave at dawn, when the gate is unbarred, how shall we get ahead of them?” Simple questions that only a fool would ask, and she answered them impatiently. “Their lord’s horse is lame,” she told me. “It has cast a shoe. The blacksmith will make him a new one, but the fire is out in the smithy. It will take time to heat it up. By then we will be far ahead. And under these sacks, look, spread like that, who will know me or my horse? As for riding,” and then she did smile, “I’ll ride. Your strong legs can keep up with me, your strong Celtic legs. Besides.” She was untying her horse, giving me the sacks to drape across its back and down its flanks. “Besides, I’ve unstrapped all their harnesses. That will delay them, too.”
“But the guard will never let us through,” I said at last. You see again how she befuddled me and how I played into her hands. Never a word I spoke of “impossible,” never “no,” only “How shall it be done?” And she showed me how, her fingers more deft than mine, and more skilled to quiet her horse when it shied.
And so it was when the castle gates opened at first light, as is the custom, to let men in and out—peasants to ride out to the fields with farm tools, peasants to ride in with milk and eggs, boys to lead out flocks of sheep or herds of pigs, grooms back in with horses and grass—why, easy it was, as she had said, for us to go out in their midst, heads down, trotting along about our own affairs. And in truth who would care, what harm did we, she like any castle wench on her small pony, under her gray cloak and dirty sacks? And I, no need to hide who I was. It was only when we were through the gates and turned past the village toward the road running west that I came to my wits at last. Like a blow on the head it was, to knock sense back in rather than let it out. Swept up in the need for haste, the need for disguise, rushed along in the midst of that first bustle of a castle’s waking up, the peasant’s world (which the lords of a castle never know about, although it is the world that feeds and nourishes them), I suddenly woke up myself. As I have said, the track we were following ran west and for a while skirted the edge of the village fields along the cliff. On one side were the fields, plowed into strips, each strip showing a different color green; on the other side, out of sight, was the sea, and below us, dimly through the fog, we could hear the surf beating on the rocks. It had stormed all yesterday, and the ground was wet, each grass blade and bush coated with rain; and where the spiderwebs were stretched, face-high, great drops of water showered down on us. I stopped dead, I say, one hand still looped about her stirrup in the Celtic way, dug my toes into the springy turf, and refused to move another step. Engrossed in her plans, overwhelmed by her, I always came too late behind her in everything, but eventually reason had caught up with me.
“Why?” was all I asked.
She knew what I meant without need of any more words but would not reply, tried to spur on the horse to drag me along. Once out of sight of the castle guard, she had rolled up the sacking and thrown it under a bush, another explanation due, somehow, on our return. And now all those other things that she had spoken of poured over me in a flood as she still tried to urge me forward.
“Hurry, hurry,” she said when I would not budge. “What’s amiss?”
“You are,” I said, for once blunt myself. “What are we doing? God’s head, the smithy fire out, you say; who put it out? Their bridle straps cut? They’ll cut our throats when they discover that. What honor? What lord?” And looking hard at her, as now I did, I saw how she had harnessed her horse, not with its lady’s trappings of red and silver, but with a man’s saddle or, since a man’s saddle would have been too big, with a boy’s gear (not Lord Hue’s, I prayed), and although she rode astride, her skirts looped up, the dress she wore beneath the cloak was her best; green it was, with a silken sheen, although it was already torn and muddied about the hem. And there was that bruise on her face.
“God’s teeth, ” I swore, for once resolute. “Not one step more until you explain.”
At first she would not say a word either, pursed up her lips and grew balky herself. Then, sensing determination in me, too, she began to argue as only she could. “Not cut the bridles,” she said, picking on one small point as if I had meant it as the most important one, “unstrapped, I said. As for the fire, I doused it; but anything can put out a fire, and we have had enough rain these past days to flood a hundred fires. And if you stand here blathering like a dolt,” for she was not always nice in her choice of words, “we’ll lose the advantage time gives us.”
“Not another step,” I repeated.
She grew cunning then, in the way of womenfolk, wheedling me. “Come, dear friend,” she said, although I knew her fingers itched to whip me, “I cannot do without you today, and you would never fail me. I have a message to give those Celtic men. Or rather,” she lowered her eyes at my look (she might not tell all the truth, but she never lied), “or rather,” she corrected herself, “to their lord. You’d not want me to ride alone without a guard?”
“No.” I thought. “But you’ve not asked your father’s men to escort you because you would not dare.”
“No harm in it,” she next coaxed, “to watch my Celtic kin ride home. They came in friendship, and so they leave. My message is only a personal one.”
And when I still would not move or let go of her rein, which by now I had firmly grasped, �
��Well, then,” she said, between tears of frustration and rage, “I’ll tell you all, if only, dear, dear friend, you will walk ahead.”
Her anger I could deal with, I was used to that, but not her tears. And so it was, moving forward again, away from the coast as the path now began to veer directly west, she told me what had occurred to make her come here so much in haste. Hear it as she told me it, childlike, womanlike—which was which I cannot tell now and could not then. For I think she did not know herself, and the reasons that she gave, although spoken without guile, were true only in part.