by Norah Lofts
I was on my feet; I had seized her arm and hung on it with all my weight, swinging her away from the wall. But I was too late and it was a gesture rather than an action.
‘It’s all right, Anna. I just had to. I had to hurt somebody.’ She stood and shuddered, and the blood fell, plop-plop. I hauled her towards a chair and pushed her down into it.
‘It’s all right,’ she said again. ‘I just could not restrain myself another minute. Ever since Richard told me I’ve been holding myself down.’ I was relieved to hear her speaking coherently, and relieved that she was not crying.
‘Mop your head,’ I said, handing her a piece of soft old linen. ‘You’re ruining your gown. And I cannot bear the sight of blood dripping.’
She mopped obediently and looked at the stained cloth in a surprised way. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know I’d broken it; it felt as hard as a pomander ball! Well, at least I managed to control myself until we were alone, though how I did it I do not know. Richard talking his hypocritical rubbish and then all these women showing what they think. I know what they think, Anna. That my days as Queen of England are numbered. Pila thinks I shall divorce him; Carmelita thinks he will divorce me; Joanna thinks I shall end in a nunnery. They’ll see! I shall be Richard’s wife and Queen of England so long as we both live. My heart is broken but I won’t be shamed in the eyes of the world as well.’ She jumped from the chair and began walking in swift uneven strides about the room, swooping round like a swallow whenever the wall barred her way. ‘That was what made me so furious with him. He doesn’t even bother to preserve a decent face on things. I begged him. “Let me come with you,” I said, “I could be ready within a quarter of an hour”. How much better it would have looked, Anna. All his sweet pious talk about danger and discomfort; he wishes me to be safe and comfortable. God’s eyes! How could any privation hurt me as much as being left here, knowing the talk, the filthy jokes that are going round? Oh, I could have smashed his head against the wall! I had much ado not to do it!’
‘Mop your head,’ I said. I looked back to other evenings, other rooms, remembering how she had paced other floors, crying that just to be with him, to see him, would be enough; she would polish his mail, groom his horse, just to be with him. And this scene was in no way a denial or contradiction of the others. She was quite consistent. She would have done and borne anything for the man who treated her as his wife, however badly, as a husband, he had used her. What had happened was the very worst thing, the most tragic thing. And quite unpredictable. We hadn’t known—
And how much, I wondered, did she know now?
As though the unspoken question had reached her, she swooped round, bearing down on me, and asked quite quietly without anger or excitement, ‘You know what Richard is, Anna? Or are you as ignorant as the rest and think that Lydia has supplanted me?’
‘I know it is wrong about Lydia,’ I replied cautiously. It was difficult to believe that she knew. She had never gone out alone, always with Joanna who was clearly innocent as the day—and that so rarely—and I could not remember a single time when she had received a visitor or a messenger alone.
‘About Raife of Clermont?’
A sick feeling moved in my stomach and rose to my throat. It was one thing to accept a situation of this sort, to gobble it up, as it were, in a vague general interest in the curious ways of the world; but it was another to sit there and look at the beautiful woman whom any man might have loved and admit, acknowledge, that a handsome young virile man had turned from her embrace to that of a man.
‘Yes,’ I said unhappily. ‘I had heard about him. I didn’t know you had. But since you do know and realise what Richard is and are annoyed because he doesn’t even trouble to pretend, you know, Berengaria, there is a good deal to he said for Pila’s suggestion. In the circumstances a divorce would be easily obtained. You’re what? Twenty-two. But you are as lovely as ever, lovely as any girl of fifteen. Think of Joanna—as old and widowed and quite infatuated with Egidio. You would have a dozen suitors.’
‘I know,’ she said surprisingly. ‘I have thought of that quite seriously and often since I learned. But there’s something twisted in me too, Anna. You know, you’ve heard me say it a hundred times, no man ever even interested me until I saw Richard. And no other man ever would. In the circumstances that may sound ridiculous but I know it is true. If it had been Tancred’s niece or Lydia or this Montferrat woman, I would have fought, Anna. I’d have torn out her hair, scratched out her eyes, made her so hideous that no man could look at her without horror—but this thing! It can’t be fought because it is something in Richard. And besides, no woman could, in the full face of the world, openly declare her rivalry with some snivelling little page boy!’
She had always been a woman of few words. Now and again, certainly, when jerked out of apathy, she had made a sharp comment, a shrewd observation. But on the whole she had been inarticulate rather than eloquent. Now the sentences followed one another, lucid, reasoned, strangely perceptive. ‘What then,’ I asked, ‘do you propose to do?’
‘Fool them,’ she said, swooping round again. ‘Fool everybody. Do you remember that night?’ She put a finger to the jewelled collar that covered the scar on her throat. ‘Father was peeling an apple and he said to me, “This is no more than a passing fancy, sweetheart, and we all outlive our fancies.” I thought, I’ll show you whether this is a passing fancy or not—and I snatched at the knife. Now they are saying, “Richard Plantagenet is a —” She used the coarse word which Pila had spat out earlier but calmly, without passion. ‘And I will show them too. I will never admit—Look, Anna, you are a woman of property. Now suppose one day you saw a necklace in a goldsmith’s booth—great sapphires, say, set in chased silver—and you wanted it more than you ever wanted anything in all your life. You went out and sold all you possessed and then hadn’t the full price but must lie, steal, cheat to get the remainder. And at last you held it in your hand, your own at last, your very, very own. And realised in that same moment that what you had taken for sapphires were chips of Venetian glass, bits of a broken goblet and the setting wasn’t silver but Cornish tin, the whole thing valueless. When you’d given your all and the whole world knew what you had given and how much you had wanted the trumpery toy. What would you do, Anna? Yell to heaven that you had been cheated, that you were a poor deluded fool? Or would you fasten it about your neck and say: This is just what I wanted and it pleases me well? Which, Anna, which?’
I don’t know, I thought. (I can’t answer. I never got what I wanted; I just want to take Blondel and build a house in Apieta—and now… There wouldn’t be even old Mathilde to tend her when I left. She had died soon after we arrived in Acre: But she’ll get some more women. And she isn’t as helpless as she seems; she’s proud and tough and I admire her. And you aren’t bound to look after people you admire. I will go now and write to Blondel.)
‘God save you, Anna,’ Berengaria said as I did not answer. ‘You are a woman and kin to me. The same blood runs in our veins. You know that you would never admit your folly. As I never will. Let them talk, let them whisper, let them guess. There are as many stories about women as of the other sort—and nobody knows. I shall always follow him wherever he goes and wear my glass-and-tin necklace so proudly that those who most suspect will be most fooled.’
‘I think that perhaps you are wise. If you are quite certain that all that is left for you is a long pretence, a masquerade.’
‘And you, Anna. I am most particularly fortunate in having you, with whom I need not pretend. Ever since Richard left, while all the others were making their speeches, I kept thinking: Presently Anna and I will be left and then I can let go…’
But I am not going to be with you long. Isn’t it just my cursed luck to have leave-taking made so difficult? However, it can’t be helped. I must say it.
I had actually opened my mouth. But her back was towards me again and her voice went on:
‘After all,
Raife of Clermont is dead and as soon as we get to Aquitaine I shall take steps to deal with Blondel.’
‘With Blondel? What in the world has Blondel to do with all this?’
She turned. ‘Didn’t you know? Now that Raife of Clermont is dead, it—is—Blondel.’
‘You haven’t any right to say that! Sheer, malicious, filthy gossip!’
‘But, Anna, Richard told me himself. He has taken Blondel with him. I could have gone with him; I would have been ready in ten minutes. That was what made me so very angry. No, he was going alone with Blondel. Doesn’t that speak for itself? Anna! Are you going to be sick? God in heaven, I thought you knew. I thought you understood what we were talking about—’
I knew that, whatever I looked like, I couldn’t look as sick as I felt. Afterwards I thought how silly it was of me to be so shocked, so immeasurably surprised. It was such a likely development but I had never given it a moment’s thought. And I was the one who had schemed to get the boy out of the bower and into the camp!
‘We let him go.We sent him,’ I said.
‘Most fortunately Blondel is discreet. He won’t flaunt his position and draw attention by demanding advantages—unless he has changed completely. And it looks far more decent for a man to go about with a lute player who has his music to commend him than to be fussing over Raife of Clermont who was neither knight nor menial. I was much relieved. This could look like an innocent situation and I shall make it my business to make it appear so. Even those who aren’t deluded shall be puzzled.’
She lifted her chin. I thought of Father’s expression, “an iron mule.” Once she had set her mind on marrying Richard, and despite the apparent impossibility of the attainment, she had had her way; now, just as stubbornly, she had set her mind upon a certain course of behaviour. She would carry that to the end too. One could not but admire.
Then I thought of the old Pyrenean proverb, “God lays His burdens on the strong backs.” There was a grain of truth there. Almost any other woman would now have been weeping and wailing, wallowing in self-pity, inviting the pity of others—and the scorn and the ridicule which so often accompany pity.
I knew that she was far braver than I. She looked things in the face. I was already seeking refuge in evasion. I’m not going to believe it about Blondel, I thought. I won’t believe it. He wouldn’t have written all those letters in that level-headed way, tempering his admiration with criticism, his praise with humour, if this thing had been true.
One fact, however, I had to face and immediately. Blondel wouldn’t be coming with me to Apieta. It would be too painful just now to proceed there alone and I didn’t wish to go back to Pamplona. I might as well go on towards Aquitaine.
II
It was arranged that we should land at Naples, proceed overland to Rome and thence be escorted by Young Sancho to Rouen or Poitou. We arrived in Rome first and settled down to wait and I can imagine no more fascinating place in which to spend a time of waiting than this great busy splendid modern papal city which was built on and of and amongst the ruins of a city which had been the centre of the world before ever London or Paris or Pamplona were named.
Now more than ever I was seeking escape from uncomfortable thoughts by taking interest in things outside myself, in books and people and gossip, in minstrels’ songs and in strange places. Rome suited me perfectly and I embarked upon a round of eager sightseeing. After the cramped, confined life on shipboard the liberty was a blessed relief and every day I hobbled about until I was so tired that I fell asleep as soon as I lay down on my bed. I even ventured into the catacombs, those awesome underground places where, in the early days of Holy Church, the first Christians in Rome assembled in secret to celebrate Mass and to bury their dead according to Christian ritual.
Occasionally Berengaria and Joanna came with me but they only enjoyed looking at the shops; they soon grew tired and petulant. Things which I found most interesting they deemed dull and made dull too. They were with me one day when I finally found Paul’s Cross.
St. Paul the Apostle is not a popular saint. Few churches and hardly any boy babies are named for him. And in Rome, where he lived so long in prison and was martyred, his memory is almost completely eclipsed by that of St. Peter, the Church’s founder and the Pope’s especial patron. One might almost think—so little is Paul regarded—that some strange rivalry between the two great Apostles had survived the centuries. However patient questioning, made easy by the fact that Latin is understood in Rome, though the language of the common people is a very debased form of it, led me at last to my goal. And Berengaria and Joanna were with me when at last I stood in a small dusty square, surrounded by squalid houses and little shops, and looked at the humble stone cross which marked the spot where Paul had met his martyr’s death. It stood in the square, unprotected; bits of rubbish had blown and come to rest against its base and even as we looked towards it a mangy mongrel dog ran up and lifted his hind leg against it.
‘Well,’ Berengaria said, ‘I can’t think why on earth you dragged us here, Anna. There’s nothing to see—’
Oh dear. Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor, whom God wanted, who was struck down on the road to Damascus and rose up blind but converted, who regained his sight and went out to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. Paul, the scholar, who could meet and defeat in argument the great sages of that time. Paul, who made that proud, astonishing statement, “I am a Roman citizen,” and stood by his rights and demanded that the Emperor should judge him here in this very city. Paul; who said, “I die daily.” His adventurous, cantankerous, unsentimental spirit had been set free on the very spot where the little dog had lifted his leg.
But there was nothing to see!
I was relieved when, dawdling back through the street of shops, we found a mercer’s and a roll of yellow silk.
‘Richard did give his consent,’ Joanna said; ‘it wouldn’t be premature to start on my wedding gown, would it?’
After that they were busy stitching and embroidering and I was free. Often I went out for the whole day, buying food when I was hungry, sitting down when I was tired. The shops alone in this city had an infinite fascination; there was nothing that could not be found in them for they catered to visitors from the very ends of the earth, pilgrims and men of all nations who came on business with His Holiness. I never tried to buy an elephant in Rome but I am quite sure that if I had attempted to do so it would have been produced either immediately or within the shortest possible time.
One day just before sunset I was on my way home, loitering through a street where there were many shops, reluctant to go back and engage in female chatter and discuss whether the embroidery should be repeated on the sleeves of the gown or confined to the hem of the skirt. I paused by the window of a goldsmith’s shop. At home in Pamplona no goldsmith would have displayed his wares; you knew where he lived and if you wanted anything of him you went in at the door, made known your requirements and were shown what he had—which was very little, since there most things were made to order. But here in Rome the goldsmith, like everyone else, was set upon tempting the passer-by. And very cunningly too. There was the open window in the wall and, jutting out into the street, there was a stout iron railing, studded with sharp spikes as a pomander ball is studded with cloves. Within the window was a sloping table covered with velvet just the colour of the night sky and scattered upon the dark blue surface, like stars upon the night, were the lovely things which were for sale.
Certainly no thought of purchase was in my mind. I never carried more money on those expeditions than would buy me a bite of food, a sup to drink, and I certainly had all the jewels I needed; but I halted by the window, fascinated by the display and the cunning way in which it was protected.
Jewels made for ears, necks, fingers. What a rich city this is, I thought, that one shopkeeper should set out such a display of wealth each morning and shutter it to safety each evening. And an emerald, I thought… Not as fine as mine, of course, but very fine, green in the
fading light; and how that ruby glows, blood-red, answering the sunset; oh, lovely, lovely! Then, like a hound that has just scented its quarry, I stood still and stiffened.
In the centre of the blue velvet lay the belt which Berengaria had made for Richard while she was waiting for him to marry her. I recognised every stitch of it, every single jewel. And I remembered how oddly touched he had seemed when she gave it to him—surprised, a little embarrassed but pleased, saying that he now had two treasures—with a glance at his gloves.
What was that belt doing here?
I hobbled into the shop which was just like a cage. An old man, rather finely dressed, rose up behind a line of iron bars and opened a grille. I mustered my Latin and my cunning and said that I was interested in the belt in the window. He said perhaps I would like to look at it more closely. Indeed, I said, I should. He laid it in my hands with a remark about the fineness of the sapphires and the beautiful diamond buckle, showing me how it fastened. And I remembered how I had been the one to suggest that fastening; it had been made from one of Berengaria’s brooches.
I tried to find out where the belt had come from. Quite frankly, so far as I could see, the old man said that he had bought it at a sale of precious things last month in the market. Objects of value came in from many places and were sold, auctioned. It was an expensive way of buying things because each purchase was taxed—oh, very heavily. It was like buying slaves; public auction was much the worst way! But just occasionally there were things of such value and beauty that one could not resist…