Hawks of Sedgemont

by Mary Lide

  “Lord Gervaise.” Lady Olwen sounded weary; she closed her eyes. “Go play the part of knight,” she told him. “If fighting you crave, here it is.”

  “Do not mock me.” Gervaise was cold himself now, his voice hard. “This Breton horde is nothing. If this prince of yours,” his mouth closed in a sneer, “has kept them together all this while, he has already achieved one miracle. Do not look for a second one. When we have done with him, Henry will do with you. And so shall I.” But she kept her eyes closed, would not look at him, and did not acknowledge what he said.

  “Get you below,” he told her at last, defeated by her silence. “Out of sight. Pray God we win. And when we are wed, then look for comfort where you will.” It, too, was a threat, as ominous as the king’s. We were left alone, and she still said nothing. But when we came back to our small niche, whilst all about us during the night men ran back and fro preparing for attack, I heard her weeping silently, slowly, despairingly, to herself. A scant hour more, a scant hour less, then perhaps she could have turned to Prince Taliesin for help; then she would not have been forced to swear her oath to Lord Gervaise; then she would not have tried to outface this king. But God decides; we within, the prince without, the castle under attack, and at the end, when the king had won, as he was sure to do, death perhaps for all of us, certainly for her the death of her dreams of happiness with her prince.

  A castle under siege is the nightmare children of our age live with. Those walls we think so strong can crumble like cheese; those gates we put our hopes in fall apart as a loaf of bread is halved. Falaise was the strongest castle I have ever known, but even it could not take a besieging force as lightly as it wished. Now, as the clamor of a great fortress put on defense ebbed and flowed about our ears, diminishing, for a moment, our little hopes and fears beneath these greater ones, the Lady Olwen and I sat huddled together, two children sitting out a storm.

  But the skirmish was not to be so easily won as Henry and his lords had planned. The news the messenger did not give was soon self-evident. This was a disciplined army—as armies go, I mean. And in one thing its leaders showed good sense. Falaise is almost impregnable, a solid mass of stone on rock; where were the engineers skilled enough to undermine its rocky base? It could withstand a siege forever, and so the Celts themselves realized. They did not try to attack the fort, merely surrounded it and waited, out of sight. And they were clever. Using tactics that combined their border skills with Norman ones, they did not try a frontal attack as Henry expected but, keeping under cover by day, harried the castle by night. Hearing of this I was convinced Prince Taliesin was behind their plan. But it infuriated Henry the more. Inside Falaise he knew himself safe. Yet he could not afford to be shut in, safe or not. Time was essential to him. Falaise could outsit a year’s siege; a year’s delay would lose the king his throne.

  As for us, this distraction, if I may term it thus, saved us from the king for the while; saved us from Gervaise, no wedding possible under siege conditions, at least, no opportunity for Gervaise to spend time with us or show his bride what joys lay in store for her, being too occupied with soldier’s affairs. Sometimes we saw him on the battlements; once we watched him ride out with Henry’s guard to seek the honor his honor demanded; like the rest of the castle he allowed his fury to grow by leaps and bounds that a bunch of vagabonds should hold these Normans to their will. But for once King Henry had met his match; as soon try to trap water in the palm of your hand or catch a shadow as catch these wily Celts off guard.

  Hue was moved to a better place; his wounds were bound and the broken bones set, although it was clear it would be long before he could ride or use a sword as he once had. Yet have you seen a wild hawk caged? Either it beats its wings apart, trying to break through the bars, or it sits and pines. So now it was with Hue. I often saw him during these days of wait, although he never asked for me, and seldom spoke, except once or twice his eyes flashed when I told him of the Celts. For the most part he sat hunched in his cell, his hands spread before him on a table, as if he willed them to heal, lost in his thoughts that took him back to what he had been when his hopes ran high, forward perhaps to what he hoped again would be his. And although he never spoke to me, sometimes never looked, the bond between us tightened each day more painfully. Quick death and clean. That at least would be my gift to him.

  The castle was bewildered; each night a fresh inroad, a new attack kept us from sleep and set us all on edge. One time it was a brushfire, floated against the castle gate, causing us all to splutter and cough; another time it was a flight of arrows released at dawn from the western heights overlooking the keep; a third, the sound of chanting, to make the blood run cold. Henry was beside himself. Twice indeed he did try to break out, the first with all his guard, four abreast, the great gates thrown wide to let him out, himself openly leading his troops. The way was clear; down the rock hill they rode, and at the wood’s edge he had his standard bearer advance his royal flag and sound the charge. His Norman knights moved into step, a wall of steel to slice through an enemy. Along the wide grassy paths they moved at a gallop, lances held. But a charge needs an enemy to charge against! There was none. Except, from the trees came a new rain of death, arrows shot high in the air to stampede those horses that were not killed or maimed, to set their Norman riders in a panic; arrows from those Welsh longbows that can drive a bolt through a mail coat. And behind the Normans, moving steadily with their long Welsh stride, spearmen began to pour up the hill, toward the gates, flanked by a group of Breton cavalry, mounted and armed like a Norman troop.

  Henry saw the danger at once—the gates left open, himself cut off. “Back,” he howled, striking about him with the flat of his sword to turn his men. “Close the gates. Ram them home.” His orders could be heard, but no one dared lock a king out of his own castle. While the Welsh archers prevented a forward drive, the Welsh footmen and their cavalry prevented an easy return. Well, in the end the king won a way through, losing half his men, and once indeed having to fight for his own life, a small group of knights, seven in all, pursuing him, and he forced to defend himself against its leader, who almost rode him down.

  Inside the castle we heard of this exploit with a mixture of admiration and fear. We had no doubt it was Taliesin; had not he vowed that when he met the king in open fight, he would cross swords with him? But on the other hand, a victorious army, taking a ducal palace by storm, does not stop to inquire politely what race you are before it cuts your throat. For the first time the words “victory” or “defeat” began to be whispered openly, and those who had survived the humiliation of turning tail before a handful of mounted men began to feel the prick of fear.

  Gervaise was among the survivors. He drank heavily these days, lurched from castle watch to table in a sullen fit; the more he burned to show his prowess, the more he hated the Welsh who prevented it, the more he swore to himself that one day his chance would come.

  The second attempt to break out was different, but showed, I think, King Henry’s desperation. A small group, twenty in all, left by stealth, at night, not to defeat the enemy but to escape, abandoning castle, queen, prisoners, and all behind. Again the king was driven back by those unseen archers, whose worth, once sneered at by the Bretons, now openly proved itself. Defeated in this second attempt, King Henry grew sour. For days afterward he sulked, whilst the castle waited with bated breath. Had it been a Norman army attacking, already the siege tower would have been hauled into place, the battering rams, the catapults brought up, the sappers busy undermining the walls, all the signs of siege that strike terror into a beleaguered place. Here there was none, only a silence, and an emptiness, that struck even more fear.

  King Henry knew himself outfoxed. I had no love of this king, whose enmity had done the house I serve much harm and whose cunning was about to fall upon us personally. But I did not think him a fool either, although he had been foolish in his dealings with his sons. And no one ever accused him of cowardice. Of all the men who have ru
led the world we live in, he was the quickest to manipulate events, the most ready to negotiate without keeping faith, and the most clever to catch whatever means he could. But he knew this silence, this inaction, would lose him his war. It might even have already lost him England, where, on the northern border, King William of Scotland had made good his promise to invade, in return for Northumbria. And elsewhere Henry’s enemies outside Normandy, gloating on his predicament, had begun again to attack his lands with full force. At a loss as to what to do, the king at last turned to the one person he knew more skilled in cunning than he was, more devious, and the one, or so it is claimed, from whom he had learned what skills he had.

  Queen Eleanor had been kept, or “imprisoned,” if you prefer that term, in her own quarters at Falaise without hitherto having had a chance to see the king. But she had not been idle all this while. She knew all that went on in the castle, and all without, and the Celtic siege had thwarted her plans as well. She wanted to be free of this dreadful place, without a creature comfort to its name; she longed to return to Poitiers. Realizing perhaps more quickly than the king that this was no ordinary alliance, the Celtic forces not usually so committed to one cause, she had already begun to think of a way to undo it, thereby releasing herself from Henry’s grasp. His gratitude should win her her liberty and, incidentally, achieve the revenge she had first sought. Well, God’s will is served in many ways. We in turn were to be released from our predicament, not, as might be thought, by a prince who would have given his right arm to save us had he known us there, nor by three men who had sworn to hew down the gates of hell, nor by a king, nor by that Norman lord, who, too, longed to show his bravery (although each of these in turn played a part). Malice was the way; malice such as the queen would use. Now she turned her skill to good account.

  Not all this I know as fact. Silent are the chroniclers, as well they might be, reluctant, as ever, to reveal all the truth in an affair so unsavory. But in a castle where a king and queen are lodged, the very air breathes news; gossip hangs like spiderwebs. And the queen’s plan was simple in the extreme. The difficulty lay in persuading the king that it would work without emphasizing her part in it. And here, also, Eleanor was skillful. She knew everything in the castle and all the human emotions bound up there. Her strategy relied on human affairs; let Henry keep to his military ones. And, as in all human terms, she knew there must be a weak link somewhere. From her chambers, set apart, she began to look for it.

  Now when she summoned Lord Gervaise, I do not know what he thought. After all, once he had professed to despise her and her lascivious ways. And had I been the one she fixed upon, I do not say I could have withstood her either. She never told Gervaise what she wanted at first, I think; merely turned her charm upon him full, as she once had upon Hue. Less openly, more discreetly—for after all, her husband was the king and she was not in her own palace now—she began to work on the young lord. And I only guess that, drunk with wine and sweetness as a bee is heavy with it, Gervaise gradually began to tell her what she hoped to hear and soon willingly was pouring out his woes: his love of Olwen and her disdain, his hatred of Prince Taliesin, the embarrassment of Hue’s imprisonment.

  “But the Lady Olwen is your betrothed,” the queen must have said, smoothing his blond locks as before she had smoothed Hue’s. When she looked at a man like that, her almond-shaped eyes grew light, her face, pale from confinement, drew into a look of concern, and her voice became more husky. “What maiden could resist you?” It was as if she added: “A young man, virile, strong, courageous, a woman could die for you. Show her what you are capable of; willingly will she come to you.” I do not know. I do not say that Gervaise left her room drugged with passion for her, on fire with thoughts of chivalry and love, filled with the desire for heroic deeds to make the queen smile at him and to win him Olwen’s full consent, but I think so.

  And with this knowledge the queen now went about her attempt to persuade the king. She did not have to tell Henry the advantages to him. The advantages to herself she kept private, but they were many: the lifting of the siege to enable her to go home; the end of Hue; the destruction of the house of Sieux; the death of Olwen’s love; mischief whichever way the blow fell; and the return of Henry’s dependence upon her— many things, then, for the price of one.

  She waited one day more, when she knew inactivity would have driven Henry wild, he of all men the most restless. She also chose night, the hours of dark suiting her ways of thought because she was at an age when her beauty shone best in dim light. Yet she still was beautiful; and when she appeared before Henry in her shimmering white, beaded with her favorite pearls, like a bride, he might well have thought a second time he beheld an apparition. She had made sure that Henry was alone, not too early, not too late, and when she spoke, her voice was deep in the way it is to rouse men. “So, my lord,’’ she said, “since you have not come to me, I have come to you. I have looked for you this long while.”

  Henry, who had been seated before a fire, brooding, merely grunted and closed his eyes. But he watched her beneath his eyelashes as she put aside the book she had been carrying, as if she had been reading the scriptures devoutly, and bent over to tend the dying embers in the brick hearth, a wifely gesture meant to placate.

  “Remember, my lord,” she told him softly, “that spring you came to Poitiers for the first time? How you made your horse prance and rear; how lathered were its sides from your spurs?”

  “Took three hours to get clean,” Henry grunted laconically, but he gave a secret grin. When the queen praised him or was in a remembering mood, when she was amorous, he knew the time was come for her to make demands. In his youth, overwhelmed by her, he had not cared. Now he knew enough of women’s ways to be on his guard.

  But the queen was not dismayed. She kept her place; her voice did not change, and perhaps, in truth, she did remember. King Henry had weathered more than forty years; beside his sons he was not young. But in himself he was still active, quick; his hair, although thin, did not lack for curls; his gray eyes had not lost their feral gleam. From abstinence and hard work he had kept stoutness, his secret fear, at bay; he was broad but not an ounce of fat, and stripped, he would still make a figure of a man. The queen must have thought of that and remembered what her spies had told her of his speech with Olwen. But most of all, I think, she remembered the youth who at Poitiers those years ago had claimed her body, ravaged it, set his seal therein to make himself the equal of kings.

  Henry said lazily, “So, madame, you have been looking for me. Rather I thought you looked for your sons.”

  “Our sons,” she corrected him, “ours.”

  Henry grunted.

  She cried passionately, “Should I be left to rot, should they be set aside, while you bat to and fro the world, great king, here one day, gone the next? How should we hope to match your speed? Once,” she grew cunning, her long eyes narrowed, “once you relied on me to be your regent. Once you let me rule with you.”

  “And once,” he told her bluntly, sitting bolt upright, “you tried to supplant me. Regency.” He repeated the word contemptuously. “You wanted to be king yourself. I gave you instead Poitiers to rule. Could not that content you that you should let your sons try to oust me from my throne? Christ’s balls,” he bellowed in rage, “that unbearded whelp of yours has had the gall to take my names; Henry of England, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, he calls himself. Do I look like a ghost?”

  And he thrust himself up from his chair so violently that hearing the noise, his guards at the door spun around in alarm. The queen waved them away imperiously. On foot, beside her, the king was not much taller than she, gray eyes to match her blue ones, yet if he were the lion, she was lioness. “This time, Eleanor of Aquitaine,” he whispered, full of threat, “you have set all men against me, roused up rebels who never knew they wished me ill, scraped up from the cess pits all the scum of France. By the living cross, I swear no king was ever so tormented in his wife.”

 
“Perhaps you think so.” The more he raged, the colder she grew. Rage weakened him and gave her strength. “But think also this. Had you given your sons some part of your time, had you not ignored them, why should they have needed to bring themselves before you in this way? Did not Richard as a child write to beg your return? Did not the archbishop rebuke you for ignoring him?”

  As always she found the means to outargue him. He did not reply but beckoned to the page who cowered by the entranceway, had wine brought, and drank in great drafts to fortify himself

  “You roam the world, great king,” Eleanor was saying, “many lords and ladies know you, but not your sons.”

  “Your son, Prince Henry, liked my company so much,” Henry said caustically, “that he fled from it. Your favorite, Richard, is already on the loose in Aquitaine. As for roaming the world, remember your sons need land. Who else will give it to them if I do not?”

  It was the chance she had been waiting for. “And what use land,” she cried, almost wringing her hands, “if it all goes for naught? Shall a bastard have it?”

  “Bastard.” He repeated the word sharply. He put down the cup and stared at her. His eyes glared. “What bastard, yours or mine?”

  She ignored the cruel thrust. He knew of her amours, of course, and had always shrugged them off, but open adultery was another thing, as was open proof. Yet he also knew she was beyond childbearing age, a double insult, then. But she drew herself upright. Her scorn would have cut through flesh. “Five sons have I given you,” she cried, “four living sons. You know full well that they are yours. But there is yet another son who lives to be a danger to you.”

  “Where?” he said. “I know of none.”