by Norah Lofts
‘But, sire, even Charlemagne permitted liberties to his dwarf!’
He winced a little, as I guessed he would, and went on in a slightly more reasonable tone:
‘You’re saucy, but sometimes I think you’re the only one of my brood with a grain of sense. And you must see that this time I must take a stand. I’ve been patient, I’ve been lenient. I did all I could to get her the man who’d taken her fancy. But now the time has come when we must be sensible. Otherwise, before we know where we are, she’ll be hopping into bed with a handsome young groom or lute player—such things have been known!’
XIII
Even while I hated her there had been things which I was bound to admire about my half-sister. Her beauty, naturally, and her dignity, her sense of what was fitting and seemly and her reserve. But these had been offset by what I can only call a contempt for her character; I had always thought her spoiled and pampered, given to peevishness, indolence and waywardness. I had often looked at her and wondered what manner of person she would have been had she been born as I was.
Now I knew.
For now she found herself in a position where her beauty and rank availed her nothing; in fact, they militated against her. It was because she was beautiful and a princess that Isaac of Cyprus was suing for her hand and it was because she had been pandered to in the past that Father had taken this sudden decision to break her will. She had also to bear the sharp disappointment of hearing Diagos’s message concerning Richard’s imminent marriage.
Nobody could have borne such a shower of blows with more fortitude.
She cried. She cried often and violently but only in the privacy of her own apartment, alone or in my presence. But throughout the ten days of the Cypriot emissaries’ stay in Pamplona she never gave in public any sign of a state of mind that was not assured, composed, serene. And incredibly courageous.
One evening after a banquet of great magnificence, when no one was quite sober the archduke, who was small and fat and swarthy, very much like an upended pig, finely dressed, approached and laid in her lap a most resplendent rope of pearls. It would have reached to the knees when hung about the neck and every pearl was matched and perfect. He made one of his speeches, saying that Isaac had sent them, knowing that they were unworthy to touch the fairest neck in Christendom but hoping that she would, out of kindness, accept them. It was a very awkward moment. Father, who had been expressing himself very freely during the last few days, was within earshot; everybody of any consequence at court was looking on. The archduke was actually on his knees beside her.
She picked up the pearls and ran them slowly, appreciatively, through her, fingers. Then she said:
‘They are beautiful. Very beautiful. Indeed too beautiful and too precious to grace any neck save that of an empress. I pray, Your Highness, preserve them carefully until such day as the Empress of Cyprus may wear them.’ And she bundled the great shining things together and pressed them into the archduke’s hand.
It was not a refusal; it was not a promise. It committed her to nothing.
Alone with me, in the privacy of her own chamber she said, ‘If I had put them over my head, which was his wish, they would have been a halter, like the bit of rope with which goats are dragged to the market!’
‘You evaded the issue beautifully,’ I said. ‘But before they take leave they will demand a plain yes or no. There will come a moment, Berengaria—’
‘But I have said no! To Father. And he can tell them in privacy. I didn’t see why I should say it this evening in the face of them all. He knows that I said I would marry Richard Plantagenet or nobody and if he chooses to play this game with Isaac’s messengers he can’t blame me if I play it too. It would be churlish not to. He knows my mind and I know my mind but since he chooses to be civil, I must be as civil as I can. And despite what Diagos said, you know, Anna, we haven’t yet heard from that boy. Another day gone!’
‘And when we do,’ I said, ‘I am afraid that it will be to the effect that the Knight is to marry the Lady. What then, Berengaria?’
‘I’d sooner die than marry the Emperor of Cyprus or any other man on earth. Father knows that. He just thinks that I can be cajoled, bribed with ropes of pearls and flattering speeches. But he is wrong.’
There came an evening when, after supper, Father sent for Berengaria. We had all eaten together in the great hall and had been, on the surface, very agreeable and merry. After the warm, sweaty, food-laden, wine-heavy atmosphere of the hall, the solar had struck very chill and Pila had offered to brew us a hot posset before we retired and Mathilde was carrying hot bricks from the oven to heat our beds. There was that general feeling of relaxation which comes when people retire to privacy after a public display.
‘Tell His Majesty that I shall present myself in a very short time,’ Berengaria said to the page who brought the message. ‘Pila, you go on with your posset; I’ll drink it before I go. Anna, come with me. Mathilde, fetch the white gown and the gauze wimple. Catherine, my sapphire necklet, if you please. And tell Blanco to get a lantern ready.’
She and I went into the bedchamber.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘the moment has come. I have to tell him again. I’ve hoped and prayed—’ She turned suddenly and, clenching her fists, beat hard and furiously against the stones of the wall. ‘Good my God,’ she said in a terrible voice, ‘haven’t I borne enough?’
I took her by the shoulders and swung her round.
‘You’ll ruin your hands. Look, you’ve broken the skin already.’ The blood was indeed starting out in little red beads against the whiteness. She brushed her hands roughly against the stuff of her gown. And then suddenly she relapsed into placidity. She stood like a statue while we brushed her hair and put her into the new dress and arranged the gauzy wimple. When Pila brought in the posset Berengaria said, ‘A stirrup cup, Anna,’ and smiled at me as she drank.
She had never looked so lovely; she never looked so lovely again. The new dress was white and made from a roll of the Damascus silk which our grandfather had brought from the East. Its ground was chalky-white and the pattern of roses shone on it, creamy-white. Her wimple was like a veil of mist. Only the black hair, half shrouded by the wimple, the fresh rose paste on her lips, the blue and black of her eyes and eyelashes and the sapphires about her neck mitigated the whiteness. She looked like a woman made out of marble or snow.
We saw her set off, accompanied by Blanco. We turned back to the fire and drank our possets and warmed our toes. A lively gossip broke out. Pila and Catherine were quite sure that when the princess returned she would be betrothed. Empress of Cyprus.
‘And time, too,’ said Mathilde, going to and fro with the hot bricks. ‘If her mother, God rest her, had lived, my lady would have been married long since.’
‘But it was worth waiting for,’ Pila said comfortably. ‘Empress of Cyprus. That sounds well.’
‘The Emperor is elderly—and fat,’ Catherine said, ‘and he has been married before.’
‘Then he is experienced, easygoing and not too hard to please,’ Lila said.
They chatted on until they were yawning with weariness. ‘Go to bed,’ I said. ‘I will await the princess’s return. This is my evening for duty.’
They demurred; they wanted to stay up and congratulate her. But time went on, the posset had been drunk and the fire began to die down. Finally they agreed to go to bed. Mathilde and I were left in the bower.
She was asleep and I was almost dozing when there was a clatter at the door and in ran one of Father’s pages, scarlet-cheeked and breathless from haste. He gasped out that His Majesty wanted me, nobody else, and immediately. ‘He said Your Grace was to come in your night gear if you had retired.’
Mathilde, struggling up out of her slumber, inquired if anything was wrong. When I told her the King had sent for me she said:
‘Ah, they’re drinking to her health and happiness. The pity is that her dear mother shouldn’t have lived to see the day. Drink one cup for me, Y
our Grace.’
But I had a less comfortable and cheerful view of what might await me. I expected to find Berengaria weeping and Father in a rage.
I called Blanco out of his kennel and allowed him to carry me across to the King’s apartment, that bleak, austere apartment which nevertheless I regarded as a privilege to enter, so highly did Father rate the privacy it afforded. Only state matters with some element of secrecy in them or family affairs were discussed in that room; it had an unused air which combined with its bare stone walls and floor and its severe furnishing to make it cheerless and forbidding.
When I first entered I could see Father kneeling at the farther end of the room. His back was to me and his head was lowered. Berengaria I could not see at all. I had a momentary ridiculous idea that, having exhausted himself by argument, he had taken to prayer and had sent for me to pray with him. Then, hobbling forward, I saw the reason for his posture. Berengaria lay stretched on the floor and he, on his knees, was bending over her. Then I thought that she had fainted; she had spent herself by argument and either genuinely or tactically swooned. It went through my mind how timely, how convenient, how useful women’s swooning fits could be.
A second afterwards I saw the reality. All the bosom of Berengaria’s new white gown and the ends of her gauzy wimple were dabbled with blood; and Father, with the end of his long-hanging sleeve, was wiping away the blood which flowed in a steady stream from a long thin wound in her neck.
He had heard my arrival and turned his face to me. It was quite distraught and a horrible grey-green in colour. ‘Oh, my God, Anna,’ he said. ‘Look at this—’
I thought she had provoked him too far and he had struck her with a knife in his hand. On the table stood a dish of russet-skinned winter apples and one apple, half peeled, lay near the table’s edge.
I enjoy stories of violence but in real life I shrink from it. And to blood I have an aversion; I don’t like the sound of the word or the look of it when it is written. The idea of Father, in a moment of rage, drawing blood on his Berengaria, his favourite and his most beloved, made me feel quite sick.
Berengaria lay there looking like a beautiful white victim of some old ritual sacrifice and Father’s hands were like a butcher’s. I said in a very thin, shaky voice:
‘Shall I send for Ahbeg?’
‘I did. As soon as it happened. He should be here by now. Oh, my God, she’ll die. Send again, Anna, or go yourself. I’ll kill the old devil if he doesn’t hurry.’ He whipped his other sleeve round his hand and renewed his mopping.
By that time I had had a chance to notice that the blood, though messy and nasty, was not pumping out in the bright red flood that pours from a fatal wound. And as I stumbled to the door I said so. I had got the door open and was shouting to the pages, who were housed a little way down the passage, when I saw the dancing light of a lantern on the curve of the wall and heard the sound of brisk steps and shuffling ones. In a moment Ahbeg, accompanied by a page, rounded the corner.
‘He’s here,’ I said over my shoulder.
Ahbeg had one hand on the page’s arm and his other fumbling at the wall.
‘Don’t let anybody else in,’ Father said. So at the door I dismissed the page, offering my own arm to the old man, and led him inside the room. He peered about blindly, distrustfully.
‘The King sent for me,’ he said in a high quavering voice. ‘Where is he? What is the matter?’
I realised that he was almost blind. He was older and thinner and much dirtier than when he had come into the bower to set the bone in Blondel’s ankle.
‘Oh, thank God you’ve come,’ Father said. ‘It’s my girl. I was telling her something—for her own good—and she up with a knife and cut her throat. Here, Ahbeg, here. Look…’ Ahbeg was peering about like a bat. Father took him roughly by the arm and dragged him across to where Berengaria lay.
‘Bring a candle and hold it steady,’ the old man said. He bent over stiffly and looked at Berengaria between narrowed lids.
‘Nothing to make a fuss about. A very trivial wound. No more than a cut finger.’ I heard Father drew in a great gusty breath of relief.
‘Cut throat indeed,’ Ahbeg said grumblingly. ‘A mere scratch on the neck. And I can’t get down on my knees nowadays. Lift her up. Isn’t there a table or a settle or something?’
He peered about.
Father, with some of the ghastly colour gone from his face, lifted Berengaria and laid her on the table and I took the only cushion that was in the room and placed it under her head. By that time the steady red stream, unstaunched, was flowing over her shoulders.
Ahbeg dipped into the ragged, bulky aumônière which he wore on his girdle and brought out a needle and thread which he handed to me.
‘Thread that for me,’ he said. ‘Small things baffle me nowadays. Bigger things I see very well, and where wounds are concerned I have eyes in my fingers. Sire, do not concern yourself. I’m an old man and I never knew any female creature to deal herself a fatal blow yet. They do sometimes jump into water and then scream for help and sometimes they swallow poison—that is fatal. But no woman ever yet knifed herself successfully. Nor ever will.’ I handed him the threaded needle which he took without acknowledgment.
He turned to the table, gathered the soiled wimple into a handful and wiped away some of the blood. Then, as dispassionately as though he were stitching a rent in a piece of cloth, he sewed the edges of the wound together. I felt sick again but somehow I could not avert my eyes. He was so quick and so expert.
And Berengaria never stirred. I flinched and shuddered each time the needle went home and Father, at the far end of the room, walked about, saying, ‘My God, my God!’
Ahbeg made eight stitches and cast off—a tapestry term. Then he fumbled again in his pouch and finally produced a small linen bag from which he took a pinch of grey powder.
‘Hold your hand,’ he said to me. I did so and he placed the grey powder in my palm. Then he closed his aumônière, carefully putting the little linen and the needle and thread into it first.
‘Hold your hand,’ he said again, and as I did so he spat into my palm. It was horrible. I almost screamed. With the forefinger of his right hand he mixed the grey powder and the spittle into a paste, using my hand as though it were a utensil. And the paste he then smeared over the wound and over the stitches. A little blood was seeping through and before he had done my palm was something utterly repulsive, Berengaria’s blood, Ahbeg’s spittle… and what was the grey powder, I wondered… dried, pulverised toad?
‘Now there will be no pain and no festering,’ he said, wiping his own fingers on the rose damascened gown of his patient. ‘Make no attempt to wake her. The swoon will pass into sleep and that will mend the shock. The wound itself is nothing. I would not have wasted the good thread on any but the princess.’
‘Ahbeg,’ Father said, suddenly turning from his pacing and his calling upon God, ‘I want no word of this to get about.’
‘Am I a hen to cackle in the yard?’ Ahbeg asked, and went shuffling to the door. There he turned. ‘When she wakes she will be thirsty—give her anything save wine. Water; milk, broth, anything. Good night to you, sire.’ I might not have been present.
‘Good night, Ahbeg—and thank you,’ Father said.
He came and stood by me at the end of the table where Berengaria lay like a dead girl with the blood already turning rusty-red on her gown and on her flesh and the grey-green paste smeared across her neck as though the wound had festered.
‘Well,’ Father said, ‘that’s something off my mind. I’ve never known Ahbeg to be wrong. But what are we to do now? What are we going to say to the rest of them? Fernando and the archbishop are expecting an answer; I promised them an answer tomorrow morning. I was just talking to her, I’d have you know, Anna. Just talking. Not raging or upbraiding, though she was being as obstinate as the devil. I was peeling her an apple—that will show you—and she took the knife out of my hand, Anna, while I was peeling her
an apple. My dear, this has been a shock for you too! Perhaps I should—I’m afraid I just thought, Anna and Ahbeg. It is at such moments that one knows upon whom one relies. There now, I’ll get you some wine, Anna…’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that I would like to wash my hand. What with the spit and the blood—somehow I want to hold it well away from me and, what with one thing and another, I feel like a crab.’
He rushed to the corner where his basin and ewer stood behind a plain canvas screen and brought me the basin of water and a clean linen towel. When I had washed I felt better, more in command of myself. Father took back the basin and, casting a look at where Berengaria lay, still like a dead girl, said:
‘It would be a fine story, wouldn’t it, for Fernando to take back to his brother—that the princess knifed herself rather than marry him! And how should I look? Like a fiend who bullied his daughter into mortal sin—I, the most patient, indulgent father in all Christendom. I swear to you, Anna, I was talking to her most reasonably, saying much the same as I said to you the other day.’
He looked at me helplessly. And I remembered all he had done for me. Even the ten gold pieces I had given Blondel were his bounty. So I sat and thought and enjoyed the pleasant sensation of a scheme, cunning, complete in every detail, sliding into the mind as smoothly and neatly as a hand slides into a glove.
‘We must say that Berengaria was taken ill while she was with you and that you sent for Ahbeg, who said it might be plague. That will cause a scare; but you and I have been badly scared this night and who are the rest that they should escape a little scaring? Plague comes suddenly and the buboes form in the neck and the groin and the armpits. And plague keeps everyone at a distance. Even the archbishop and the archduke will gladly take leave of Pamplona. After a few days we will discover that Ahbeg was mistaken and that the lump in her neck was an abscess which he lanced in the hope that a clean line would be less unsightly than the ragged hole left by the natural breaking. That, sire, will set a new fashion when the story gets about, and every woman with an abscess will run straight to a surgeon. Meanwhile it will be natural enough that I, having been already exposed to danger, take charge of the sickroom. How does that sound to you?’