by Norah Lofts
‘Look,’ I said, ‘if it eases your bother, here is your gold piece. Take it and your bear and go away and avoid whatever it is that threatens you if you enter.’
He looked at the coin I proffered but made no move to accept it.
‘You mock me,’ he said a trifle sullenly. ‘And you have already paid Stefan! To cheat and take charity because a castle looked black against the sunset would be ridiculous. I’d remember and scorn myself as long as I lived. If you please…’ he said, and with the same incongruous grace with which he had bowed when I first praised him, he stood aside and indicated that I should lead the way across the drawbridge.
Pleased that my little plan to relieve the tedium of the bower was going, after all, to succeed, I led the way in; and once inside, the boy shed his uneasiness and began to look about him with interest. We went to the stables and saw the bear safely kennelled and I sent a young groom running to seek honey and gave another the strictest instructions that the animal was not to be teased or interfered with.
‘You’re very kind,’ the boy said in a warm, friendly voice.
I remember thinking how wrongly he judged me. A genuinely kind person is kind to everyone; I am not. Something in me—the devil, perhaps—makes it possible for me to be kind only to those who are, if but temporarily, in worse plight than my own. A clumsy young page in disgrace, a young esquire homesick in exile, Blanco, our eunuch, dogs, mules, donkeys—to these I was invariably kind. Ordinary people I could only treat with kindness when they were sick or miserable and therefore pitiable. And that, of course, was easily understandable; for of every ordinary person, even if it were only a washerwoman, provided she were healthy and formed like a human being, I was jealous.
As we crossed the dusty tourney field on our way to the Queen’s Tower and the boy told me that I was kind, I knew perfectly well that a year before I should never have dreamed of bringing him up to the castle in order that Berengaria and her ladies might enjoy his music. A year ago Berengaria, superbly beautiful, legitimate, Father’s favourite, adored by everyone who saw her, had been to me the epitome of all that was enviable and hateful. A year ago I should have listened to the boy’s music and selfishly delighted in the thought that here was something which I had enjoyed and she had missed.
II
What had happened in the last year to change my attitude towards my half sister was that she had fallen in love, so completely and so apparently hopelessly and in such a romantic kind of way that ever since the evening when she had told me about it I had found it possible to regard her almost as though she were a person in a song or a story.
At Pamplona, immediately after Easter each year, a trial of arms always known as the Spring Tourney was held and Father had, for years, made a point of inviting the most famous knights and of providing the most extravagant prizes, so the event was well renowned and well attended. Sancho, Berengaria’s brother (known as Sancho the Bold to distinguish him from Father who was called Sancho the Wise), took especial delight in producing, if possible, some specially famous contestant and, this year, had managed to bring to Pamplona one who was most often engaged in serious warfare and had little time to attend tournaments in outlying kingdoms—Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Aquitaine, eldest surviving son of the King of England.
In many courts his arrival would, I suppose, have caused a ripple of excitement amongst the ladies but it so happened that in our bower I was the only one who took any interest in jousting. Berengaria was a little short-sighted and found a tournament a blur which was watched at the cost of dust in the nostrils and in the hair and of din which made her head ache. Pila freckled very easily and preferred to stay indoors; and Catherine had once watched a tourney in which a knight of whom she was fond was killed. Only on the rarest occasions would they venture out into the ladies’ gallery, a section of the battlement overlooking the field and always punctiliously prepared with a canopy and flowers and pennons for our occupation. I loved the tourney, enjoyed watching all the famous men and learning their names, nicknames and histories, but I was self-conscious about being in the ladies’ gallery all by myself; I could imagine a visitor going home and saying that the gallery at Pamplona had nothing but a monkey in it! So unless my other half-sister, Blanche, happened to be home on a visit from her convent or one of the other ladies offered to accompany me, I usually watched from a far less favoured and conspicuous spot amongst the grooms and kennel boys and any scullion who had managed to evade his duties for an hour. Apart from being less noticeable, it was more interesting because the menials always knew everything about all the contestants and many a choice bit of gossip did I pick up as I watched.
On the third and last day of this Spring Tourney the day chanced to be warm and balmy and not too bright and Berengaria said that she thought it would please Father if we all ventured out; so, armed with scarves to wave and flowers to drop upon the victors, and followed by pages carrying cloaks in case it turned chilly and jugs of wine and little cakes for our refreshment, we set out from the Queen’s Tower to the tourney field and climbed into the ladies’ gallery.
The display that morning was most impressive and exciting and I watched enchanted. We saw one knight in plain black armour acquit himself superbly, unseat his opponent and then make his horse dance skilfully backwards while he acknowledged the cheers and the shouting in which we women were joining, waving our scarves and tossing our flowers.
In the midst of the excitement I felt a pull at my sleeve and heard Berengaria saying, ‘Anna, who is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, and went on with my cheering. Then two young squires came forward and assisted the knight to doff his helm and without turning my head I said:
‘Oh yes! I recognise him. He is Richard Plantagenet and reputed to be the best knight in the world.’
Bareheaded now, the man rode towards us, his horse mincing and curvetting. We screamed our acclamations and threw down the last of our flowers. He lifted a hand and moved his head in salutation and acknowledgment and then rode away.
Berengaria made one of her obvious, flat little remarks.
‘What very red hair he has,’ she said. She spoke casually, and the words might have been taken as an expression of disapproval.
That evening when it was time to retire Berengaria surprised me by asking me to perform the offices of waiting woman. Usually the four of us took turns at this duty and adhered strictly to the rule because Catherine, Maria, and Pila were all inclined to be jealous about it. They regarded that hour or so of intimacy as a privilege. I, to be honest, did not. By the end of the day I was often more tired than I would admit and it bored me to stand brushing and brushing Berengaria’s hair and gently reviewing the day’s events, which were seldom very exciting, when I could have been reading by the last light of the guttering candles in the bower. Sometimes I renounced the “privilege” to one of the others, though that was a bother, too, because I had to rotate the favour and often there were arguments and squabbles.
This evening wasn’t even my ritual turn and I said so. However, Berengaria said, ‘But I want to talk to you, Anna.’ So I repressed a sigh of weariness and, when old Mathilde, Berengaria’s woman, arrived with the fresh candles and led the way into the sleeping chamber, I rose and followed. As we helped Berengaria out of her long linen undergown and her shift she reached down, bundled them together and held them out to Mathilde.
‘Wash these,’ she said.
‘Tonight?’ Mathilde asked, astonished ‘Why; my lady dear, they were fresh only last week.’
‘Wash them,’ Berengaria repeated simply. Mathilde, wooden-faced, took them. I knew what was in her mind. She had been waiting woman to Berengaria’s mother who, towards the end of her life, had been raving mad and Mathilde was always on the watch for what she called “signs.” Berengaria, who was extremely lovely to look at and Father’s favourite child, was completely spoiled and given to whims and fancies; and whenever she expressed one or fell into a temper or suffered from a headac
he or a mild fit of low spirits, Mathilde said, ‘Ah, poor dear, that’s a sign.’ Now she blundered away with the linen which had been worn for a week only and must be washed overnight; and I knew that she would weep into her washtub because such an unreasonable demand was “a sign.”
‘That’s got rid of her,’ Berengaria said. ‘No, Anna, leave my hair for a moment.’ I had taken brush in hand, prepared to get through my duties as expeditiously as possible. ‘Sit down.’
I sat down on the foot of her bed and she seated herself on the stood near the shelf which bore her silver mirror, part of the loot which our grandfather had brought back from his crusade. Mathilde had already loosened her hair and it now fell over her shoulders, a dark, rippling, silken cloak which ended well below the edge of the stool. She pushed it back from her face with her hands which she then cupped around her chin, resting her elbows on her knees.
‘Now, Anna, you know everything. Tell me everything you know about that knight we watched this morning—the one with the red hair.’
‘I told you his name. He’s the Duke of Aquitaine and if he outlives his father he will be King of England. He’s supposed to be the strongest and bravest fighter in the whole of Christendom.’
‘Young Sancho persuaded him to come and joust here; he’s been trying to get him for years but generally he’s busy with real fighting. I think that’s all I know.’
‘I want him for my husband,’ Berengaria said.
That made up for the hours and hours I had spent in this very chamber, brushing that mane of hair and listening to trivial chat. I was seventeen years old, almost a year younger than Berengaria, and for the whole of seven years which I had spent at the court in Pamplona the matter of Berengaria’s eventual marriage had been a subject for talk, gossip and speculation. Sancho, our father, was a man of peculiar notions. Unlike most men of his rank, he had married for love and although his lovely wife had become a madwoman he had, with the exception of one piece of dalliance, of which I was the unfortunate result, remained faithful to her. And he had openly stated his intention of allowing all his children to choose mates for themselves. Berengaria, whose beauty had been bruited abroad for many years, had been much sought after, for even princes who must marry within the royal degrees desire to find wives as attractive as possible, but Berengaria had refused every offer so far made and Father had done nothing to direct her fancy.
Blanche, whose behaviour I privately considered to show far more of the “signs” Mathilde watched for, had at the age of fourteen betaken herself to the convent at St. Lucia where she lived as a lodger. She was always just going to become a novice but she never did. Every now and then she would come back to Pamplona and give us little pious talks about the dedicated life, eat her head off, sit out a tournament with me, indulge in a mild flirtation with any man who happened to be handy and then suddenly retreat again into her convent. And Young Sancho spent his time going from court to court, from jousting to jousting, always falling madly in love with some completely ineligible lady and then falling out of love again. And Father seemed not to mind at all. A very strange royal family with two princesses who should have been betrothed long since and a prince who showed no sign of his responsibility to the succession.
And now here was Berengaria announcing her choice of husband at last; and I, her crippled, bastard half-sister who had spent the first two days of the tourney in company with the grooms and scullions, was forced to say:
‘Oh dear. That is awkward. The Plantagenet is betrothed, and has been for some years, to the Princess Alys of France.’
Most young women, at such a moment, would have looked disappointed. Berengaria’s expression remained almost unchanged. That grandfather who had gone on crusade and brought back many of the ideas and furnishings which made the castle at Pamplona so luxuriously comfortable had one day mentioned, in the presence of Berengaria’s mother, then a young woman, the Saracen habit of slitting the eyelids of girl babies in order to give them that doe-eyed, flowerlike look. He said that this custom was responsible for the placid, unchanging beauty of Eastern women which remained, he swore, unaffected even by a thrust of sword or spear through the body. Years later, when he was dead and Berengaria’s mother had borne a girl baby, this curious crumb of information had floated to the surface of her demented mind and nothing would do but that this child’s eyes should be slit in the Saracen fashion. And it so happened that Father, back from his Sicilian campaign, had brought with him a captive, a Saracen physician and surgeon—for in the East the two trades are combined—who was competent to perform the operation. Apparently what our grandfather had said was true; much of the expression of the human face does derive from the eyes and the muscles around them. Berengaria’s mouth could smile, pout or look sour but her eyes always remained wide open, flowerlike, denying all human feeling; and unless you were used to her and observed her very closely, it was almost impossible to perceive what, or how, she was feeling.
So now she did not look disappointed or even concerned. ‘Who told you that?’ she asked.
‘Nobody,’ I said. ‘But they were talking about it—the servants, I mean—while I watched the tournament yesterday and the day before.’
‘Then it might not be true?’
‘It might not but it most likely is. Servants’ gossip, though sometimes overcoloured, is generally reliable in content.’ I spoke of what I knew.
‘I’ll ask Father to see to it,’ Berengaria said.
I felt a little sorry for Father; it seemed hard that Berengaria, having waited so long, should now have taken a fancy to a man already betrothed; but that was hardly my business.
‘Shall I brush now?’ I asked.
We spoke no more on the subject until I was about to leave her, when she said, ‘I should be obliged to you, Anna, if you would treat this as a confidence. I told you because, after all, you are my sister and I wanted to tell someone.’
I assured her that her secret—if such it could be called—was safe with me, as it was, for I had seen enough of gossip and the results thereof during my seven years at court; moreover, I am not by nature communicative. I wished her good night and left her.
Her choice of myself as confidante neither pleased nor flattered me—as she had said, she wanted to tell somebody and had chosen me because I was less likely to gossip and at the same time more likely to supply information than any other of her ladies; and having her secret in my keeping did not immediately alter my attitude towards her.
But gradually, over the next month or so, my interest in the affair and in Berengaria herself developed. She had, as she had mentioned her intention of doing, spoken to Father who had also heard of the engagement between Richard and Alys. ‘Alas, sweetheart,’ he said, ‘you are too late in the field.’ But under pressure from Berengaria he admitted that this betrothal had been made long since and that it did seem a little strange that, both parties being now well past marriageable age, it should not have been honoured. And finally he committed himself to making inquiries and what he found out certainly hinted at a curious state of affairs.
Apparently Alys had been sent to England as a mere child in order that she might grow up in the language and customs of the country of which she was to be Queen and had been reared with the Plantagenet children. Ever since she had become nubile there had been repeated efforts on behalf of her French relatives to arrange for the marriage to be celebrated but always some excuse had been made and the date pushed forward to some unspecified future. Richard, who was on the worst of terms with his father—that was in the Angevin tradition—never went to England and the young King of France, Alys’s brother, had recently expressed himself as dissatisfied and puzzled by the whole business.
This much information Father had obtained by indirect means and when he reported it to Berengaria she said, ‘Then there is hope for me! Will you, Father, as you love me, approach Richard himself?’
Father was very reluctant. ‘To mention such a matter hints at ignorance both of circu
mstances and procedure. We in Navarre are not so cut off from the world as not to know that the betrothal has never been officially broken, nor so unmannerly as to disregard it.’ But Berengaria was very insistent and Father, who had never been able to deny her anything, gave in and sent Cardinal Diagos to Richard’s headquarters at Rouen with orders to make discreet inquiries and, if the omens were propitious, to put out a cautious feeler.
Diagos, a most courtly and diplomatic old man, must have mistaken the propitious moment, or else the subject was a very sore one indeed, for he sent back and reported that at the first experimental mention of Alys’s name the Duke of Aquitaine had reached for his battle-axe and roared out, ‘By Christ’s Holy Cross, I swear that the next man to mention marriage to me I’ll split from chin to chine!’
That most effectively quelled further inquiries. But side by side with this report Diagos sent home a new rumour which said that Henry, very much at odds with Richard over the administration of Aquitaine, was planning to marry Alys to his younger son, John, with whom he was on good terms. It sounded as though Henry regarded the girl as a prize for good behaviour, not as the partner in a firm betrothal.
Berengaria chose to regard this as a most encouraging report and began to beg Father to write to Richard himself.
‘He cannot cleave you if you remain in Navarre,’ she said, and no one could tell whether she meant the words as a joke or as one of her matter-of-fact statements, for her voice and her face remained expressionless.