by Mary Lide
A grizzled bear of a man was this Dylan, who kept watch over Cambray in his absence and cared for it. Dylan, of course, I knew and was wary of. He was a reason of his own to avoid this hall. I would have run a mile rather than let him see me here; he was a man quick to fault stupidity, impatient with what he would construe as laziness, loyalty to Cambray and its masters his only standard for men. I slunk back still farther into myself, although not so far away that I could not hear what was said. For what they spoke of fascinated as well as appalled.
I am no soldier, for all my name; no warrior, although at the right time, I, too, have used a sword and been wounded. But I listened to their stories as one listens to the minstrels sing of hero kings. And even Dylan, the harsh-tongued, harsh-faced old man who ruled the castle guard at Cambray with an iron hand, even he could tell a tale: how he had accompanied the earl when, but a boy, Lord Raoul of Sedgemont had come from France and fought with Stephen, who then was king, against this Henry of Anjou who now held the throne. And when Lord Raoul himself stretched out his arm to throw another log upon the fire, I saw for myself the great scar that curled around his right wrist, a wound taken for the sake of that Stephen, who, when the earl was down and like to die, had straddled him, laid about with a mighty battle-axe, saved him from certain death, and won his pledge of loyalty. Of Stephen’s wars they spoke freely enough, even with humor and, if I do not exaggerate, a touch of longing, for they were after all the wars of their youth, when they had served King Stephen well. But of their quarrels with the king who had inherited in the end, that Henry of Anjou who had hated Earl Raoul and hunted him down, they never spoke, at least not then. And although the cause must have been much on their minds, they certainly made no mention of that young Prince of Afron, whose determination to right the wrongs done his name was to shatter the border peace.
Nor was Earl Raoul impatient with his old seneschal, bearing with his boasting more modestly, answering questions for the younger men more tolerantly than many great lords would, and these border men hung on every word he said. I was entranced myself, I admit, to have these fables now made truth. Inch by inch, despite myself, I left the shelter of the wall and came closer to where they sat. I could have listened to them talk all day, almost forgetting the real reason I was there at all.
Suddenly there was a clatter on the stone stairs, a sound of feet taking the steps two at a stride. Into the hall of Cambray the lord’s sons burst, with a disregard for propriety, a noise that was almost a discourtesy. And this time it was clear both sons were in an angry mood. Once again I felt that flicker of apprehension claw at me to make my hair rise on my neck.
Their anger puzzled me. As I have explained, I had left them dicing with their squires in the stableyards. They were both good at dicing and should have won, although the game is forbidden by Church law, and sometimes Dylan had tried to prevent the men from playing it. Earl Raoul did not comment on the noise, nor did Dylan himself, deep in some story that even I had heard: how once, long ago, his companions here at Cambray had been tricked into opening the castle gates to let in an enemy, a story often told but now so embroidered as to make us laugh. But from where I crouched at the edge of the table, I could see how Robert’s hands were clasped behind his back and how he twisted the thick signet ring of Sieux about his right hand as if he would twist it off. Hardly had Dylan’s story come to an end than he broke in, so unlike his usual self I could see all men were surprised.
“Is it true, my lord,” he said, “that some weeks hence, in August, the Prince of England, young Henry, will be crowned as our next king?”
There was a sudden murmur at his words. I could not tell of surprise or displeasure or what. Who was this other prince they spoke of? It was only afterward it occurred to me, how strange that for the first time in my life I should hear men speak so freely, so casually, of kings and princes, as easily as I might talk of Jake the miller or David the stableboy. And that I should so quickly have learned to listen, unconcernedly, without comment.
Earl Raoul did not at first answer his son, merely leaned back in his carved chair and stretched his leg as if to ease it. And when he spoke, he kept his face turned to the flames.
“Empty title,” he said at last, “empty crown.”
“And yet, my lord,” Robert persisted, still unlike himself, “will not you attend?”
“I had not so purposed.”
“Nor yet your men, your vassals?”
“Nor them.”
I noted now how Hue had stayed back, had let Robert come first, speak first. Hue was in a royal rage himself, yet uncharacteristically, he held his anger curbed. I began to see the reason. What Robert would come to by more subtle means, Hue would hurl to your face. Better for Robert, then, to speak. And what had angered them was equally clear. At such a time, such an occasion as a crowning of a prince, should not the Earl of Sedgemont be there, and they with him?
“Yet they say, my lord,” Dylan intervened, in his border way, asking a question instead of answering one, “is he not a fair young man, this prince, one on whom to pin our hopes? And has not his marriage with the Princess of France settled affairs between King Louis of France and Henry, King of England? And will not he serve to smooth our difficulties here among the borderlands that his father has stirred up?”
There was a pause. Until now, I think, Lord Raoul had let the old man speak, humoring him as one might any companion who wished, as do old men, to show the world he still lived, show he still had thoughts worth listening to. But now the earl’s silence held impatience of its own.
“Hopes,” he said. His voice was even, low, but held a trace of what I sensed was a former bitterness. “Aye, hopes, as if they could heal a kingdom’s woes! Prince Henry is no doubt a fair young man, but he is too young to play at king for all that Henry, his father, will have him crowned. And I have heard that although he bestrides a horse and carries lance bravely as any man, it is his companion, William, who outshines him in the tourneys he seems to devote most time to.”
There was an appreciative rumble at that. The men at Cambray, both young and old, loved to hear such talk; it was the sort of thing they craved, these border soldiers, starved for news of a military world, living as they did upon the outskirts of it. Not one of the youngest knights would have known what a tourney was (I did not, of course); certainly few had ever taken part in one, yet all of France played at them. Willingly they hunkered down for an expert discussion by a champion on the role and art of a tourney knight. I thought the worst had passed.
Hue said, too loud, “You, my lord father, did not scorn the tourneys once to win land and fame for Sieux in France. At Boissert Field you fought in one. Is not the turn of younger men come yet?”
Once more the earl raised his eyebrows, waited for his younger son to finish, then went on, “I have heard that the prince’s friend, that William, known as the ‘Marshal,’ is counted the best of Europe’s knights, downing I know not how many men in a day, but it is also claimed that the prince’s younger brother, Richard, is already almost as skilled. Henry has the best horses, best mail that money can buy, but I do not think he is either’s match—”
“Yet they say,” Hue cut in again, “that all those lords, all the nobles of England, will be gathered in Winchester, witnesses to that prince crowned. They and their heirs.”
This time the impact of his words could not be missed. “God’s wounds,” the earl said. “All of England may seek to throw itself off Cambray’s cliffs, like lemmings intent on mass suicide. I do not have to follow them. A gathering it will be, but of fools. To what purpose will they come, these unknown lords you mention but do not name, who will attach themselves to young Henry’s camp? His father still is king. King Henry will not give up one jot of power to his eldest son, for all the pomp and ceremony. He may crown his son, a crown is not hard to find, but not one ounce more of gold, one rod of land, no, nor one ox, one castle more will he give to satisfy further that young man’s claims. I have been to crownin
gs before. There was a time when each journey the king made abroad, a crowning was held at its end, a crown to be picked up at every churchyard gate. Henry himself cried a halt to that, so why now start again a custom he dislikes? He who holds power holds it, crown or not. Those friends of the young prince who think to edge their way into the forefront of the court may find themselves in the forefront of war. When they are caught between allegiance to father and to son, let them think then what this jaunt to Winchester will cost. Cost us all, God rot them, not themselves alone.”
He swore a soldier’s oath, roaring it out. I noticed how a faint scar on his cheek stood out, so tightly now he held his anger.
“By the rood, have not we had civil war enough that men must go running, pleading for it? Is not there trouble still in France—the French king digging at Henry’s side, a maggot burrowing in upon his lands? Is not there trouble enough within the Church—an archbishop murdered, the Church fathers in discord? And here at Cambray we have sufficient unrest of our own to keep us more than occupied. Wherever Henry is, grief follows, for other men to bear. Leave well alone.”
His echoing of his elder son’s advice given that other time startled me. And Dylan—I saw now how his garrulousness could bridge a silence. “There’s a truth,” he said, wagging his white head, his dark Celtic eyes bright as a bird’s. “My lord, you and I have marched knee-deep in blood, into a war that plagued us for a lifetime, before most of them here were born or weaned. Stick to border garrisoning. I remember now—”
“But, my lord father.” Robert again was speaking. His father glanced at him quickly, looked away. In these past years Robert, too, had changed, grown broader, fitting into his height, seeming older than his years. Yet not wiser, I thought, if he challenged his father after he had so spoken. Lords do not like “if’s” and “but’s,” especially not from their sons.
I marked how the earl’s eyes darkened like his son’s, and how his knuckles whitened on the carved arms of the old chair. The firelight gleamed for a moment on the gold ring he wore, the thick seal ring that once had belonged to Falk of Cambray. “But, my lord father, will not King Henry expect you there?”
Before the earl’s reply, Hue thrust forward, although Robert tried to hold him back. I think now Robert had spoken out to try to turn his father’s wrath. He could in no way turn Hue’s.
“But I am bid attend,” Hue cried. “The prince himself orders me. Would you have me refuse a royal writ? See, Henry Plantagenet has sent me word; here it is with his seal attached.”
He tugged beneath his tunic, pulled out a parchment; whether from the prince or not, I could not tell, but I thought so then, supposed it was a message that had alerted both young men, although how that message had been delivered, how it had reached them, I did not think of that. Nor why their father had kept such news from them. I felt a pull, I cannot say of sympathy, but at that bond, which I could not put a name to but which held me in some strange way to Hue’s own thoughts. “All of England and their heirs,” Hue said, “except yours.” He stood alone now (or was it that the other men had drawn aside), legs thrust apart, head jutting belligerently. I remembered suddenly the way he had stood that day in the stableyard.
“What is here for me, my lord, but mist and rain? Shall I drag my life out in these barren hills? Are we so unwelcome, so uncouth, so unschooled in knightly ways as to disgrace an earl’s entourage?”
Lord Raoul heard him through, although another man, my father certainly, would have clouted him to the ground before he uttered a third of it. At the end he said, almost patiently, I thought, in that rational Norman way, “Then act your part, not a spoiled child crying for the moon.”
“I am no child,” Hue cried, and then I saw that flash of rage men warned against, that and something more, some other thing that made me want to cringe away for nervousness, that other thing that bound us despite ourselves, a fetter, a chain to tighten and weigh us down.
“I can match swords with any man,” Hue said, slow-voiced and cool now, as steel is heated white. “Give me horse. There is no man I cannot outfight, outride, no man who bests me on these borderlands. As you would know, my lord father, if you paid me any heed, if you would let me ride any place with you, if you would ever give me some part of your time. You would know then that I am no child. Is it not rather your past hatred of those Angevins that keeps you away? Must then I suffer for your hate?”
“That is long done with.” Lord Raoul spoke as slowly. “But no son of mine goes crawling to the Angevins.”
“No son of yours ...” Hue spat out the words, and the men again moved back a step, uneasily, like horses scenting fire. “Then, by God and all his devils, hear me out. What son am I to what father, who treats me as no son of his? A by-blow perhaps, a bastard, to drag his way through life? Shall I be kept here penned up like some churl, never to know what is my place? When shall I know it and my rights? When will you grant me them?”
There was a murmur, the sound men make when old, strange tales surface from depths where fear has buried them. It sent alarm snaking along my skin. I seemed suddenly to remember whispers I had heard but not listened to, things not spoken, yet thought.
“Am I not a son, as this elder brother here? And he a five-months child although the elder by two years. If he were bastard, born out of wedlock, should not I be the older son? Should a scant two years be time to bury me? Time will not wait for me, my lord.”
I felt the bitterness breaking out, flooding out. I felt it flow into my own mouth, like bile. I felt his energy, that coiled-up hate, that anger, running like blood beneath the skin. A bastard half-breed, so he thought himself. The accusation flew about us like scattered shot from a sling to cut and wound him, and the wounds were as deep as those scored across my own flesh.
“Or is it something else you would hide from me, some rumor that I should be privy to? If not your son, your heir, then whose son am I? Who is it that my mother’s honor protects?”
That accusation, too, went echoing around the hall, into the rafters, flaring out along the old stone walls. I think it has echoed in my mind ever since. I think it had hung there all those years.
Lord Raoul gripped the edges of the chair, heaved it back. It grated across the stone floor, so slowly that it seemed to me we should see it forever fall. But even before it had landed on its side, he had leapt, like a cat, despite his lamed leg, and caught Hue about the chest, bunching his embroidered tunic to his throat so that, being shorter, Hue was swung for an instant off his feet, dangled against his father’s tall frame.
“Unsay those words,” Lord Raoul ground out, although his voice was almost too low for us to hear, a cat’s snarl. “Never breathe a word against your mother’s name to me. You are my son. That is enough.”
He let Hue swing off his feet, tossed him to one side so that he crashed against the table where I was still crouched. He landed in a heap upon the floor. Even as his father turned his back and strode, tight-lipped again, toward the hearth, Hue sprang upright. I caught the glimpse of dagger blade as he plucked it from its sheath. His brother, Robert, saw it, too, cried warning as he ran between his father and its point. The blow struck down upon Robert’s outstretched arm. And beneath them both, I, who had never made such a move in my life, I wrapped myself around Hue’s legs to topple him.
All broke into confusion, which I cannot now describe. Guards ran and trampled and swore, stormed over me with weapons drawn. Hue butted and kicked upon the floor. Three men were needed to hold him down, and when they had bound his hands and feet, he still beat his head against the stones, thudding into benches, shaking like one gone mad. More men came running, the castle watch thudding up the stairs with drawn spears, snatching sword and pike from off the walls.
No man carries arms into his lord’s hall; none lifts weapon against him and lives. But Lord Raoul was not harmed; the blow had not been struck at him. It was Robert who lay before the hearth, the blood pooled among rushes, between the stones.
I sh
ut my eyes and willed them shut. I had never seen such blood before. I wrapped myself in my arms, curled up against such a sight, crept back into a corner out of the way.
Amid this confusion only the earl himself was calm; a soldier, used to such violence, he had taken up his son, ripped back the tunic sleeve, knotted his own belt to stem the blood. Lord Raoul, then, calm; his son, calm. And so his lady wife.
She had come down with her womenfolk, hurrying down those stairs from the room above, alerted by those first cries of outrage, of panic. Thus I had my first close look at her, the Lady Ann of Cambray, who now, too, knelt by her son, and wrapped cloths about his arm, bade her women bring her this and that, soft-spoken, as if she picked flowers in her herb gardens. It seemed to me a long while before she leaned back and looked at her husband, her own gown all stained and crumpled. Her eyes were large, too bright in her white face; her hair fell like a girl’s across her back, and her slender fingers trembled as they kept a pad pressed to the ugly gash.
“God be praised,” she said, “a flesh cut. But great loss of blood!” The sobbing of her women quieted. At a gesture from Earl Raoul, the guards dragged Hue away, who still mouthed and rolled.
“Leave us,” the earl said, “all of you.”
His men saluted, drew back, stunned, shaken into a sullenness. I heard them clatter down to the guardroom below. The castle servants, pages, squires, withdrew; the heavy door swung shut; the women fluttered like birds back to their bower. I suppose the Lady Olwen went with them. Lord Raoul, the Lady Ann, their son, were left alone. And I, rolled like a bundle of rags in a corner, where I did not dare move, I waited with them.
“That was ill-done, my lord, ill-done.” The Lady Ann’s voice had our Celtic lilt, although it shook with anxiety. She knelt beside her son, wiped his face free of dirt, the firelight playing upon her hair. I saw how, from time to time, she ran her fingers across his lips as if to assure herself he still breathed.