by Lisa Hilton
‘I’m sure I shall, sir.’
He leaned forward conspiratorially so that I startled at the flash of the gold serpent at his throat. ‘And mind you are not too obedient. I have great plans for us, Isabelle, great plans.’
I looked modestly at the toes of my slippers as he kicked his horse into a trot, and leaned my head against my mother’s side while we watched the men wind away down the road as we had done so many times before. The spring sky was still light and although the day had been so eventful I had that feeling of flatness that comes when others set off on a journey and one is left behind. My mother pulled me to her and hugged me fiercely, so tight that I could feel our heartbeats meld for a moment in her embrace.
‘Don’t be sad, Maman,’ I said stoutly, ‘Papa will come back, he always does.’
‘I’m not sad, little one,’ she murmured, her lips in my hair. As though she was speaking to herself, I heard her whisper, ‘We still have a little time.’ She released me and looked the way they had gone.
‘Will they be away long, Maman?’
‘Normandy is very far, little one, and there will be a great deal of business to be done. Things will change, now that King John holds his brother’s lands … if he can hold them.’
‘What do you mean?’
My mother looked weary and distracted but she answered my question patiently, as she always did. ‘King John of England and our cousin King Philip of France are enemies. They have always disputed the rights of the English kings to their holdings here but King Richard lived here most of his life when he was not on Crusade. He was known, understood. This John is English, he speaks English and he conspired with English lords to overthrow his brother. And there is another heir to the crown, Duke Arthur.’
‘The son of Duchess Constance of Brittany?’
My mother smiled. ‘What big ears you have, my treasure! Well remembered. Yes, Duke Arthur claims the crown because he is the son of King John’s elder brother. If he declares for King Philip it will go badly for the English.’ She sighed, her eyes were far away on the road with my father, I thought. ‘But this is not your affair. You are betrothed now. We will do what women do – we will wait.’
I was pleased that I should not be seeing Hal for a good long time, at least. ‘And you shall stay here until May Day, Agnes says?’
‘Yes, little one, until the May is brought in.’
I couldn’t understand why she looked so thoughtful. My father was often absent, and this time he hadn’t even gone off to fight. ‘Anyway, I’m here. And we can play every day,’ I announced firmly.
‘Of course we can, little love, of course we can.’
My mother’s women were waiting to attend her to supper, she kissed me and promised to come to tuck me into bed, but as she walked slowly back to that huge castle, so vast compared to our home in Angouleme, I could see that the straight reed of her spine was held with effort and her head leaned wearily to one side. Perhaps she wasn’t worried about Papa, perhaps she was sorry that I should stay at Lusignan when she had to leave. But though I loved my maman better than anyone, I was accustomed to spending long periods without her, and the thought of her sorrow slipped from me as I too walked up to the castle, imagining what a great lady I should be, and how I should make stupid Hal sorry and respect me when he came back home.
CHAPTER TWO
FOR A LONG WHILE AFTERWARDS, I THOUGHT THAT WHAT I saw at Lusignan on May Eve was a dream. And longer still, after I stopped believing it, I told myself that I still did.
Agnes had put me to bed early. I was excited at the thought of waking at dawn to watch the village girls dancing in their spring ribbons with sweet-scented boughs in their arms. I chattered and wriggled until Agnes sent down to the kitchens for a posset, and when I had licked the last of its milky, honeyed sweetness from the bowl, it seemed that I slept, but I could not have been sleeping because here was Agnes drawing back the bed curtains and lifting me up in only my smock. I lolled drowsily in the cushions while she untied my plaited hair so that it hung around my face, pale as new corn in the light of her candle. In my dream, Agnes was in her smock, too, and her hair was unbound, with thick grey streaks running through its nut-brown polish. I ran my fingers through them as I rested against her shoulder, squirming as we came out into the cool night air. It seemed very dark and I thought, later, that I must have been asleep since I did not think to ask why she had woken me, or where we were going. Then I was swung through the air and I could smell horses and a man’s sweat, clean and sharpened by the night, but though we were moving I heard no hoof beats, so I thought placidly that we must be flying, and closed my eyes to the soothing rhythm.
So we rode, or flew, and when I opened my eyes again, or dreamed I opened them, we were in a clearing by a river, moonlight scudding over the ripples like the grain in black silk, on a little pebbled beach overhung with trees. The stones crunched below us as someone came to tie the horse and I sensed other horses, waiting in the darkness. As I was carried down, I could see that their legs were bunched in pale rags. I tried to twist up my head to see the man who carried me, but the hood of his cloak was thrown over his face, and though I told myself in my lulled state that I ought to be afraid, my body was soft and loose and I left my head nestled comfortably against his shoulder, hard beneath the thick wool. I sensed other people moving around us. We were making for the glow of a huge bonfire further down the shore, crackling and throwing up billows of smoke and the scent of wood ash. And still, I was not afraid, even when I saw what waited there.
Next to the fire was a great boulder and on it stood a horned man. A stag’s antlers were fixed to his head, which was covered in a kind of leather mask, and long dull robes enveloped him to his feet. Around him in a circle huddled more cloaked shapes and beyond them, in a clutch of faces illuminated in the dancing firelight, I recognized Agnes. Several of my mother’s maids seemed to be there also, and other faces, too newly familiar from the castle and the village, though they were working people to whom I had never spoken. They moved aside to make way for us as I was carried to the boulder, where the horned man towered above me. Whoever was carrying me set me gently down, my bare feet flinching against the rough stones, as the first circle of shapes rose up and gathered around me. I staggered a little, dizzied by the light, turning my head slowly.
‘Who brings this child?’ the horned man was speaking. Though his voice was muffled by the mask it seemed familiar to me.
‘I do.’ In my dream, I knew my mother’s voice and thought, as is the way of dreams, that I was safe, because she was there. Her hood had fallen back a little as she moved to take my arm and I saw that her hair too was loose, its heavy waves dark gold.
‘Do you come of your own free will?’ He was speaking to me. I nodded dumbly.
‘You must answer,’ my mother’s voice floated towards me from far away, as though it twisted among the logs at the heart of the fire.
‘Yes,’ I responded.
‘Do what I desire,’ the horned man said.
Mother’s hands were on my shoulders, pressing me to my knees. I was so cold now that I could not mind the sharp stones through the fine lawn of my smock. Her voice wound into my ear, ‘Thou art my god.’
‘Thou art my god,’ I mumbled.
The horned man held out his hand, and as my mother reached up to receive what was in it I felt other hands untying the laces at my back until the shift fell from my shoulders and I felt half my back scorch suddenly in the fire heat. My mother held my left shoulder and turned her face away, the hood falling forward, covering her, as I sensed a sudden, sharp pain above my shoulder blade, a pain that swam from me even as it cut me, as though I were dreaming the hurt of another’s body. My mother gripped me tightly, so tightly her arm shook, and her fingers digging into my skin hurt more than the strange new pain that rippled across my back. The horned man reached down once more and I saw that he held a long, thick awl, its sharp point disappearing into the darkness as he brought it to the mouth of
the mask. Arms pulled me to standing, though I could barely straighten my stiffened legs. The horned man then knelt, leaning down from the boulder so that the smell of his robes was over my face and I knew they were not cloth but animal skin, stiffened and reeking. He placed his palm over my face, its heel against my mouth, and as I gasped for breath I drew in a thin, irony liquid. He turned his hand and extended the fingers, like a bishop, I felt my mother’s hand inclining my head to kiss it. I wanted to spit and smear the juice from my face, but as I tried to clean it on my smock the group behind us began to clap and cheer, so I turned my head to the firelight and tried to smile into my mother’s eyes.
And then, the dream broke into fevered fragments, so that one moment I was sitting on Agnes’s lap, with a cloth before us, with food and jugs spread out, and she was feeding me a piece of chicken with raisins; then I was lying in front of the fire, my eyes spinning, as a strange music woven of flutes and harps and clapping hands drew each one of the muffled figures up into a dance that coupled them back to back and whirled them around the fire against the path of the sun; then my mother climbed on the rock, her streaming hair mingling with the fire as she threw away her cloak, tall and pale and slender, her thigh bound with a red cord, and the other women likewise, so that they were naked in the orange flames, their bodies smoothed and silvered, cast in their hair, with deep hollows between their legs. The horned man moved among them, a lantern burning between his antlers, turning them two at a time in the dance, spinning like the stars in the invisible heavens, and they were laughing, beating time with their feet and singing in a language I had never heard. Then I must have slept truly, for when I woke the figures around me were sleeping in the first pearl glow of dawn, their bodies covered once more with dew-dampened cloaks, and the horned man was gone. In his place was Lord Hugh, curled on the boulder with the gold serpent wound at his throat.
For a while I watched him sleeping. My mind was spinning, my body tight and chilled, though someone had thrown a cloth over me as I slept. As I sat up, Lord Hugh opened his eyes and stared back at me, those dark eyes swallowing the first rays of the sun as he blinked slowly. As I made to sit he bounded down in one movement and lifted me to my feet, calling ‘Isabelle! Good morning!’ and as I creaked into my curtsey the shapes around me stirred and sprang up as though the stones were suddenly alive, so that when I raised my face to his it seemed that he had summoned the morning, and all around us the women began chattering, splashing their faces in the river water, braiding up their hair, producing baskets of bread and cooking pots as though we were on a picnic.
‘Where is my mother?’
‘At the castle, of course,’ replied Agnes, looking her usual, neat, daytime self.
‘But she was here … we were all here, in the night.’
‘Silly. I brought you down for the maying and you fell asleep. The others were resting – they’d been out gathering the boughs. Don’t you remember?’
I looked about and saw that there were piles of plane twigs lying about, their leaves uncurling in the early warmth to release their fresh, sticky scent. Some of the village girls were seated, twining apple mint, mayweed and bryony into garlands for their hair.
‘Yes. Perhaps. Agnes, I had such a funny dream!’
‘Come and have some food. There’s milk and fresh honeycomb.’
‘But Lord Hugh … is my papa here with him?’
‘Not yet, little one. Come and eat.’
It was not until later on May Day, after we had breakfasted and walked to the village to make the churchyard gay with May blossoms, skipping to the wooden whistles that Agnes said were the custom at Lusignan, until after my mother and her maids had watched the dancing, her face now as bright and clear as the morning, that I felt it. Agnes had sent me to make myself neat for dinner, as Lord Hugh was in the castle, and as I reached up to comb my hair, I felt that sharp pain in my shoulder.
‘Owwww! Agnes, it hurts. Are there fleas in my bed?’
‘I should think not!’
‘But it hurts.’
‘Let me see.’ She unlaced my fresh smock and peered at my skin. ‘A spider bite, maybe. From when you were resting on the ground this morning. I have some mallow balm, that will soothe it.’
I didn’t believe her. When the adults had gone to their sleep after dinner I went to my mother’s room. I wanted her looking glass. The maids must have been in the dormitory as my mother’s chamber was empty, smelling of beeswax from the scrubbed boards covering the floor. The cushions were plump and neat, my mother’s wooden chair, her chest and travelling boxes neatly arranged. I hunted among the combs and pins laid out on her box, but the looking glass wasn’t there. Perhaps she had combed her hair before lying down and had it in her closet. I pushed open the door, quietly so as not to wake her, but as I stole inside I tripped over her slippers which had been discarded at the foot of her big, curtained bed.
‘Isabelle!’ My mother was seated in the window, her hair uncovered and her feet bare. Lord Hugh was hunched in close to her, they sprang apart as though I had caught them whispering secrets. ‘Isabelle! What are you doing creeping about like this?’
‘I’m sorry, Maman, I just wanted—’
‘Can’t you see that I’m speaking with Lord Hugh? Where is Agnes? Why are you wandering about by yourself?’
I did not understand why she should be so cross. At home I was always running in and out of her chamber. Perhaps it was because I was betrothed, now. ‘I came to look at your glass, Maman. A spider bit me, Agnes says. I’m sorry.’
‘Run along now,’ she said more gently. ‘We can have the apothecary take a look if it troubles you, later. Off you go.’
I shuffled disconsolately down to the garden, my shoulder still stinging. I felt like crying, but I didn’t really know why. Yet that was how it was for the time until my mother departed and left me alone at Lusignan. We went to Mass together each day, she heard my letters with a set of polished ivory blocks Lord Hugh had given me, I walked with her on the ramparts and she came to kiss me before drawing my bed curtains at night, but my maman seemed to be somewhere else. Before, she had loved telling me stories but now when I snuggled into the pillows and begged her to tell me of the great battles of the Crusades once more, she would sigh and smile, and blow out the lamp. ‘Maybe tomorrow, little one.’ And though she was as beautiful as ever, the most beautiful lady in Poitou, the maids said, her face looked drawn and her eyes were never still, dashing like butterflies under her dark lashes, as though she was watching for something that wasn’t there. I wanted my mother. I wanted more than anything to curl up against her side, smelling the rosewater in her linen, and fall asleep with her lips warm on my brow, but I was strangely afraid to go to her chamber, and when once I tried, there were two maids outside the door who told me that the countess was not to be disturbed.
*
My bridal chests were arranged in the closet off my own chamber. They contained the linens which had been spun for me since I was born until the day that I married, pressed and packed with sweet smelling herbs, the betrothal gifts my mother had accepted from the Poitou lords who had sent plates and carpets to mark the union of Lusignan and Taillefer, and the jewels that my father had presented to me for my wedding. I had never taken much interest in their contents but now I waited until Agnes was resting and filched the bunch of keys that she wore on her girdle and unlocked them, rooting carelessly through their contents until I found what I needed. Two pewter dishes, traced with rievaulx at their edges, a gift from one of my father’s stewards. Not the finest things I owned, to be sure, but I propped one on the chest top against the wall and sat with my back to it, my gown unlaced, holding the other in front of my chest, tipping it against the light until I caught a wavering glimpse of my pale skin in its dull sheen.
The dish was heavy, and the reflection poor, not nearly so good as my mother’s glass, but with patience, allowing my eyes to travel over and over the line of my shoulder, I thought I could make it out, the littl
e wound I had explored so many times with my fingers under the bedclothes at night. It no longer pained me but the smooth plane of my flesh was scarred up beneath my hand, and in the silver glow of the dish I could see the form of it, a thin wavering line that looked to me, as I twisted and strained, like a serpent’s tail. Quietly, I replaced the dishes, stuffing them into a wad of woollen blankets, then fumbled my way through the keys until I found the one which opened the armoire. This was the finest chest, worked in walnut intarsia the colour of gold and cinnamon, lined with cedar inside. My marvellous white betrothal gown lay on top, carefully rolled away by Agnes. Spitefully, I took my knife and made a little cut in the hem.
And each day after that, I sliced away at it a little more, until it became a habit that I craved, the whisper of the fabric as it slipped compliantly apart. I would never wear it again. When Agnes took it out to be cleaned it would collapse like a handful of snowflakes and I would say that the mice must have eaten it, for somehow I blamed that shimmering tissue for taking my mother from me. Its curling white edges haunted me like the moonlight of my strange May Eve dream.
So with each cut, I hardened my heart a little against my mother, though I did not know it then. I did not mention the strange wound, either. I told myself that I must have been scratched on a May bush, and that it would heal. But in the last days before my mother’s going, I could not sleep. When I closed my eyes I would see the horned man reaching down towards me in the vagrant light of the flames, and I woke sweated and twined in the bedclothes, calling for Agnes. But when she came, it was as I had seen her on May night, naked, with her hair tumbled about her face, and I came truly awake and screamed so loud that the guards rushed in, all the way from Lord Hugh’s chamber with their axes raised. My mother appeared, dreamy in her nightshift with a cloak thrown over, but when she knew that I was safe she scolded me.