by Mary Lide
Lord Raoul had begun to pace back and forth with his halting stride, and his wolfhounds padded behind him, their ears still pricked in alarm. She watched him, watched her son, both with the same face, the same silver-blond hair, the same high cheekbones. But when she spoke again, it was not of her eldest child.
“You tormented Hue,” she said. “You denied him his heart’s wish before everyone. He is still a boy, and you hurt his pride.”
“Pride.” Lord Raoul’s voice grated like winter ice. “I grant him his years. He boasted of using them as a man.”
“What will you do to him?”
“What should I do,” he said, “that I might do to any dog that lunged at me from the back?”
She was silent, her head bowed. I remembered what had been said of her. Child of war, of woe am I. She had known so many griefs, too many, that now her sons should bring her more.
“My lord, my lord.” She might have been pleading for herself. “He is headstrong, wild. His temper tears him apart. At other times he is gentle, kind. Already he will be on his knees repenting what he has done.”
“Thank God,” he said, “that he did not strike deeper, then, to have murder to repent him of.” He swung around on her. “Or will he repent that he did not strike deeper, harder, to rid himself of me? Or of his older brother at least?”
She sucked in her breath, such a gasp of pain that I felt my own breast twist with it.
“You wrong him,” she said.
“Perhaps so, perhaps not.” He spun back on his heel. “But this you grant. Rage, jealousy gnaw at him, some dissatisfaction I cannot name, like a beast that gnaws its own flesh. If I gave way to it, what would he next want, what next would satisfy him? Nothing would, nothing does. The more he gets, the more he craves.”
“Because in himself he is dissatisfied,” she said. “You wrong him. The only thing he craves is your love.” She suddenly stood up, pulling a blanket from a heap of rugs they had brought to cover Robert.
“Raoul,” she began. I saw her forehead, as white and delicate as a girl’s, furrowed now with thought. She struggled with the words to make him understand. I felt the tension in her, stretched like cord. She said, “The only thing he wants from you is your love. Raoul, once in my childhood, I wanted love myself. My father, Falk, denied me it, and all my life, until I met you, I longed for it as a man dying of thirst longs for drink.”
“You did not kill to get it,” he said.
“I did not have to.” Her voice was suddenly very clear. “I had enemies to do that for me, to show me what my loss was. I beg you, before it is too late for him, show him you believe in him. Forgive him, before it will be too late for you.”
I heard the words, like stones dropped into a deep lake. They spoke of things long past, long gone, and yet as stones when they are dropped, they stirred up ripples that spread and spread. Who knows where at last they end?
He stood in front of the fire, rubbing his fingers over the scar that cut across his cheek. She suddenly reached up and took his hand in hers to still it with her own.
“My lord,” she said, each word a caress. I had never heard women speak so to men before, nor yet men to women, soft, almost tenderly, although then I would not myself have recognized tenderness. “Raoul,” she said, “for all the pains you have endured for my sake, for all those long-past griefs, so that it shall not be hate that wins.”
He said, almost to himself, “Sometimes I think all comes from that, spilled out because of it. Had Henry not hated me, he would not have looked to be revenged. Had Geoffrey Plantagenet, his brother, not hated him, there would have been no conspiracy, no Boissert Field, no Welsh expedition to trap us both. And had not I, for pride, for hate, fought against them as I did, we would never have been driven apart.”
They spoke of the past, names, people I could not know, almost felt I should not know. They were things, I sensed, that had not been spoken of in many years, things done, not done, that had been laid to rest until this day’s events had dredged them up.
She said, “Hue is your son. Yet his birth has been a twisted thing, unraveled between us all these years. He senses it. Stephen’s wars, Henry’s malice, Hue’s birth, they are all part of the same tale, and now your sons have inherited it.”
Upon the floor Robert stirred and opened his eyes. They were dark-fringed, purple-shadowed against his white skin, where the brown seemed to have faded. He attempted to pull himself upright against a chair.
“Father,” he said. His voice was weak. I had never heard him use that childish term. “Father, are you hurt?”
“You took it all.” Lord Raoul stood over him. “Now have you your first blooding to be a man.” He tried a smile. “The other day you complained, I think, that you had never had a wound. They are not so pleasant, wounds, that I myself would seek them out. Even honor smarts.” He was laughing, but I saw the firelight glint upon his face, catch at that faint scar. “My son,” he said, “I thank you for my life.”
“Father.” Robert repeated the word almost childishly. “He did not mean to strike at you.” He struggled as his mother had with the words. “He thinks himself older than he is, he burns to excel before you more than anyone. If I had held the dagger, he would have died for you.”
I had never heard Robert speak so much. I saw his mother move beside him, uneasy lest he strain himself and start the bleeding again.
“Father.” A third time that childhood name, although by nature he was much more formal, usually gave his father title, as was courteous. “Let him go with you to Winchester. You can give excuse now why I cannot. I wished for it, but there will be other times for me. Take him and show him to the world.”
Lord Raoul said almost wonderingly, “You, too? Your mother already pleaded for it herself. But you? You are my heir, you are the older born. I cannot change that law.”
But Robert was continuing, as if one point had been settled, as if he moved to a second one. “And let him know what lands are his inheritance: Sedgemont or Cambray, or even Sieux, if you prefer. But give him one.”
His father stepped back as if stung.
“So,” he said, “that also! By God, inheritance, is that what you have in mind? Is that the way these days, to carve your father’s body before his death? I did not look to see my sons carve me up. When I am in my grave, ask for my lands, not before, snarling over them like dogs over bones. I tell you, Robert of Sieux, what is yours is already bestowed. Ask nothing else.”
“Not for me, for him.” Robert’s voice had weakened, but not his will. It came out suddenly strong, as strong and clear as his sister’s, his mother’s, as strong and implacable as that older man’s.
“Acknowledge him and give him title to his inheritance. Let him ride at your side. Knight him. My turn at honor will come. ”
Father and son stared at each other, frustration, aye, and dislike, as palpable, as strong as steel. Yet love was there, too, and forgiveness.
Suddenly Lord Raoul let out one of his soldier’s oaths and strode to the doorway, his hounds at his heels. He snatched at a hunting spear as he went.
“Where shall you go?” Lady Ann cried, running after him, her skirt flapping like a girl’s, her unbound hair fraying into wisps.
“By the Mass,” he said, not stopping in his stride or turning around, “by the rood, but I am bedeviled by your arguments, and by your son’s. Let me forth. More pleasure lies in these mists and bogs than ever in your Celtic snares. Ann, I need time to think. I have said already more than I should. Events, places, people forgotten all these years—I would not remember them.”
“Forgive me, my lord,” she said, clinging to his arm. “We shall not harbor old resentments to make new ones. But we have said what we all know is truth, and you have said so yourself. Hue will never have peace without your giving it. Better to have left him with my Celtic kin, in those Celtic hills where he was born and half of him still lives despite himself, than to bring him back to be always a second to your first.”
He put her aside, not ungently. “Peace!” he said. Then, “I shall think of it.”
We heard him striding down the stair. The captain of his guard snapped to salute below. Presently there was a clamor as his men ran and clattered at his command. They crossed the yard, splashing through the rain, and we heard the thunder of their horses’ hooves across the bridge, dying away. Then only the soft drip of mist, the distant sound of the sea beating on the rocks below the cliffs.
Robert said, with a sigh, “It is done. He will grant our request. But I could wish that it had been done in other wise. And that in granting it, he will not make a gap between us who else have been so close.”
“And you, my son,” she said, “who wished for as much, what then?”
He sighed again, almost smiled. “There will be time for me,” he said, “but not, perhaps, for him.”
She took his hand and sat beside him on the floor. I sensed the bond between them, without words, without thought. Aye, sensed and perhaps envied it, and knew again what Hue must feel, what envy, what longing it must rouse in him.
Then Robert moved restlessly, a second time tried to sit up. He said, as if remembering something, “Had Hue not stumbled as he ran, I would have been too slow. Who was it who flung himself around Hue’s knees?”
He looked about him, painfully turning his head, even to the very corner where I was still hid. At his nod the Lady Ann herself rose up, took down a torch from the wall sconce, and fetched me forth. I came reluctantly, you may be sure, so stiff and bruised I scarce could move, great purple patches spreading where they had stamped on my ribs.
“Come up, come up,” she said in her way, “no harm, no wrong.” For perhaps she thought I was afraid of what I had done or expected some evil result. Afraid, yes, but not of that, that I count one of the best moments of my life, for me, for them, only to be compared with one other time—and that to be told in due course.
“Why,” Robert’s voice, too, was light, a ripple of laughter underneath, “ ’tis a bag of bones in its kitchen rags.”
He stretched out his sound arm and shook my shoulders to loosen the rushes and straw that were tangled in my hair, tried to brush off the dust. “God’s my life,” he swore, “Urien the Bard! What are you doing here, my fine cockerel, hanging on my high lord’s table post, thrusting into our affairs?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but since no explanation seemed to fit, I closed it again with a snap. The reason I had come seemed so far removed from what I had seen, had done, I could not even link them in my mind. And yet a sort of calm came over me, almost like that I had experienced when I had waited for Hue to knock me down in the stableyard. I knew this was the moment I had long dreamed of, yet I felt neither fear nor elation, not even hope. Numbness was all.
Robert was continuing in his precise Norman way. “Had you not moved when you did, I should be a dead man, or my father dead and my brother hanged for a patricide. We owe you much. What will you take from me in return?’’
I answered, in as simple a fashion as if, being thirsty on a hot day, I needed a drink of water, or as if I asked someone to hand me a broom, as if this were an everyday occurrence, as if such question, such reply, were commonplace. “To serve you, my lord, and your house. Nothing else.”
Then he did laugh, cut short when he tried to move his arm. “I looked for my inheritance. By the Mass, I did not expect so quick response. Well, if this be the first fruit of it, I take it willingly, although it be but a meager choice. Sir page, if you would be part of my entourage, go get yourself washed at the well, have the women find you better clothes. And take upon yourself your first duty, to wait on me while my arm mends. Thus shall we both be satisfied.”
Afterward I marveled at my coolness, too. Afterward I thought, that is how it is, how in a moment, a flash, a life can change. You shall serve me. With those few words was my life made. So might it be that a dead man could look at the blade which would kill him, or a drowning man a wave which swallows him; that moment passed, a transition made, the live man dead. Or, in my case, what before was dead made to quicken and come alive.
But later Lady Ann drew me to her side and brushed back my hair with her long, cool fingers as she had brushed her son’s. “Urien,” she said, in her low, earnest voice, “do you truly wish this, or even know what it is you have wished for? Listen now. Long ago I had a friend, a squire. He was a serf at Sedgemont when I went to live there after my father’s death. To be a squire was not within his expectation or thought, yet because he was my dearest, best-loved friend of those days, I believed, when chance gave him the opportunity, that he had chosen well. And rejoiced with him in his good fortune. He rose to meet with kings and ride with lords and fight a noble battle in the end. But death took him young, unexpectedly, far from the place and ways he knew as home. And so has death taken many men I have known who ventured beyond the confines of their own world. I speak not to alarm or dissuade you; the choice is yours. But beyond Cambray are many different ways, most of them harsh and cruel. I tell you this from my own heart. Cambray is where I belonged, too. Dearly have I paid to have left it.”
I said, ‘‘Lady, never in my life before have I achieved anything. Even as a serf. But to honor you as best I can, that is something I can do.”
She smiled. ‘‘Well,” she said, releasing me, ‘‘you shall be my eyes, my voice. Aye, I think in those ways you will serve us well. God grant us all such loyal friends.”
Thus it was I won my name, and thus in turn my vocation was given me. Neither has been a thing to regret. Although the Lady Ann spoke truth, that far from Cambray all was not as fair as in my youthful eagerness I would have believed.
And so it was, in due course, I also learned the arts of poetry, reading, writing, and their skills. And, as shall be told in its place, how to write and sing in Celtic style that I should be crowned at their festivities and be treated with more ceremony than any Celtic warlord. But as they tried also to teach me horsemanship, the art of sword and lance, and hunting skills, those I tell you plainly were a waste of effort, although for a while there was no greater swaggerer, in his new crimson tunic with the golden hawks of Sedgemont, than this new page set on the path to chivalry.
As for the Lady Olwen, since I had kept my oath and never spoken of what had befallen her and Prince Taliesin, and since it had long been obvious that good luck had kept it secret from her family (for which I for one gave thanks to God), who was I to mention it now? But I still sensed constraint between us, so that sometimes when we met unexpectedly, she would turn her eyes away as if she were afraid I had known too many of her thoughts. Then, too, when she sat with Robert, often that friend of her brothers, that young Norman lord I have mentioned, Gervaise of Walran, made a third. It seemed to me that although Lady Olwen used her brother as excuse, she was not loath to laugh with Lord Gervaise, so that I was forced to sit also and listen to them. And it seemed to me that the more her sadness grew (and I saw sadness in her eyes, her walk, her very expression when she thought she was alone), the more she smiled at Lord Gervaise. While he, poor soul, he smiled the broader that she smiled at him. My scowls—for it is not easy to sit and watch an older, certainly higher-born man usurp your place—my sulks became a thing of jest until, out of very shame, I hid my devotion. But I knew that she, in her secret thoughts, as I in mine, had not swerved one inch.
Robert stayed longer at Cambray than he meant, for although at first his wound healed clean, a sudden infection spread, a fever set in, and it was high autumn before he left. Much was to happen before that time, as you shall hear. Earl Raoul and his men rode away on a July morning, fair and mild, to lighten the heart and cheer the mind. They went to Winchester as I had supposed, to see a king’s son crowned. And Hue rode with them.
Chapter 4
So Earl Raoul, his son, and their entourage rode away, to be gone for the while from our lives. I forgot my newfound dignity and hung over the walls with the other boys until the distant figures disappear
ed into the shadows of the whaleback hills. From time to time I ran down into the inner courtyard, where Lord Robert lay in the shade, for I felt he should be informed of all that occurred; that at least was his right. He was swathed in furs, albeit the day promised warm, and lay with eyes closed, face turned to the wall. I do not know if he heard half that I said. I panted out each new detail in my excitement, for it had dawned on me that next time there was a leave-taking from Cambray, we should be among those who left; farewell then, I thought, to ignominy. But for all my enthusiasm, which I could no more contain than a leaking barrel can hold back its wine, Lord Robert lay as languid as a sleeping dog and merely nodded from time to time to show that he was awake. This was the first sign that his wound had taken ill, but he bore its discomfort silently, in no way wishing to delay anyone.
First in line came the outriders, in scarlet cloth stitched with gold, bearing before them the flags of Sieux and Sedgemont. These riders were mounted on matching grays of the Cambray herd. The wind that always blows off the moors on hot days caught at the folds of cloth and stiffened them until the banners spread and snapped like sails. Following them rode the earl and his household guard, carrying the earl’s own standard spread with its golden hawks. Today Earl Raoul rode a gray stallion, too, and around him his personal companions, veterans all, chatted together casually as the younger knights did not dare. They were of an age, these men, not old, not young, as comfortable in their high-backed saddles and their well-worn mail as in an old pair of shoes. I wondered how long it had taken them to learn to ride like that; they had been trained in childhood, of course. I felt my heart beat double-fast as the earl gave his quick salute and they clattered out the open gates and wheeled through the village, heading east. Each of these knights had brought his own squire, who led a spare horse, loaded with gear, and each had draped across his own mail the surcoat of red. And under their casual air they were hard and alert. I think I have never seen such proud display, a riot of color and panoply and strength.