He had very mixed feelings as he mounted Jewel and rode back to Berkhamsted, thankful to be getting away from her bigoted parents, but full of regret for apparently abandoning his love and leaving her uncomforted.
Lord, make me worthy of her.
Fourteen
1362
If Berkhamsted had been transformed by the arrival of the Fair Maid of Kent, the court at Bordeaux surpassed it. The old archbishop’s palace had been taken over by the new Prince and Princess of Aquitaine, and completely renovated. Its halls were hung with richly embroidered tapestries, and in the banqueting chamber great feasts were held, with veal and venison, sucking-pig and the traditional boar’s head, severed from the animal as it roasted on a spit, and served with all manner of sweet and savoury accompaniments, notably the famed Bordeaux wine, used to steep duck and goose before roasting.
Wulfstan had his own servants, and aspiring scriveners to be taught how to read and write in English and French, so as to make his own work lighter. By day the court was entertained with jousting tournaments, archery contests, hunting deer and boar in the thick forest north of the river Garonne on which the city stood, and the popular sport of falconry. In the evenings there was music and dancing, and inevitably some flirting between the ladies and gentlemen of the court.
It was not only English nobles and courtiers who revelled in this earthly paradise. Many of the Gascon nobility had feared that the Prince’s rule would be harsh, and expected to be heavily taxed, but their fears proved to be unfounded, for they were welcomed graciously by the Prince and his beautiful wife at the palace, and far from being taxed, they were showered with hospitality and gifts. After so many years of warfare, it was time to celebrate peace, to the relief of the whole nation.
Wulfstan enjoyed it all, and felt a certain pride at being on close terms with the Prince, and therefore a figure of some standing at this magnificent court. The Prince’s boast that it would outshine all other European courts seemed to be coming true. Early on, Wulfstan made a discovery which caused him some irritation: André Demoins had somehow inveigled himself into the Prince’s circle, and no doubt would be full of his own importance as a self-styled ‘courier’ of secret messages between the various European courts, including the Vatican, allegedly at risk to his own life and limb. Wulfstan made a mental note to keep well out of his way; the man’s remark about ‘old men’s work’ still rankled. However, unable to hunt or shoot arrows, his preference for outdoor sport was falconry, and it was at a gathering of hawking enthusiasts that he found himself in the company of Demoins again, who hailed him like a long-lost equal.
‘Wulfstan, old friend, we meet again in fortunate circumstances, do we not? Our former comrades would envy us now! What opulence at the court of a banished Prince and Princess, eh?’
‘Good morning, Demoins,’ said Wulfstan shortly. ‘I’d hardly use the term banished. The King is making good use of the Prince of Wales to preside over a period of peace after so much warfare.’
‘Let’s hope it will continue, then,’ said Demoins sceptically. ‘I wouldn’t trust a Frenchman further than I could spit. Mark my words, there’ll be local rebellions at all points of the compass.’
‘Which is why we’re here, to put down any uprising before it gets a foothold,’ replied Wulfstan, turning away in the direction of the Princess and a group of her ladies. She smiled and beckoned to him.
‘You’re the brave young soldier who served my husband so well at the Battle of Poitiers, and lost an arm whilst helping to capture the French King John,’ she said. ‘My ladies have been talking about you, so come and show yourself to them!’
A wave of shyness came over Wulfstan who blushed like a schoolboy, but quickly recovering himself he bowed to the Princess and the eager young ladies who surrounded her. His eyes immediately fell upon one of them, auburn-haired and creamy complexioned; she had extraordinary green eyes with little flecks of gold – and his cheeks reddened even more, to his annoyance. He had no wish for involvement with Lisette de l’Isle, and withdrew his gaze, turning to the other ladies who were smiling and whispering to each other about his handsome features. He heard some praise his eyes, some his high forehead, his mouth and strong jaw; it was extremely disconcerting.
‘Tell me, Sir Wulfstan, is there any lady here in the court at Bordeaux that you would like to meet and speak with?’ asked the Princess in a teasing tone, only half serious, but willing to make an introduction for him if he so wished; she was known for her romantic schemes, always happy to smooth the course of true love between shy lovers.
Wulfstan shook his head awkwardly. He would like to have said that he was betrothed to the girl of his dreams, but he simply did not want to name his sweet, innocent Beulah in the company of these sophisticated females, nor listen to their comments about her.
‘Or perhaps your heart is already engaged elsewhere?’ asked the Princess with a knowing look at her ladies who tittered charmingly.
Wulfstan bowed again, as if to show that her guess was correct, and she smiled in good-natured understanding. ‘Then we must not tempt you away from this lucky lady! Even so, I hope you will join in the dancing this evening, for you have a surer step than many a man with two arms!’
He bowed again, and said that he would be happy to dance with any of her kind ladies – and as he spoke, became aware that Lisette de l’Isle was openly staring at him. For a moment he met those greeny-gold eyes, then turned resolutely away.
‘She’s ravishing, isn’t she?’ said a voice at his side. It was André Demoins, still close at hand.
‘She is indeed a gracious lady, and ’tis no wonder that our Prince chose her above all the others he might have had,’ Wulfstan replied coolly.
‘No, stupid, I didn’t mean the Princess, though I grant you she is a gracious lady – no, I mean the lady Lisette de l’Isle, whose heart I intend to besiege this summer! She likes to pretend to play hard-to-get, but I can see through her tricks. Watch me, Wulfstan, I’ll have her bedded before summer’s end!’
His arrogance grated on Wulfstan. Even a haughty lady-in-waiting deserved to be spoken of with respect. He made no reply, but went to collect his falcon, Belle, to put her through her paces. Demoins’ eyes narrowed as he looked at Wulfstan’s retreating back.
Damned if our Sir Wulfstan Wynstede hasn’t got his own eye on her, he thought, in which case he’s heading for a very public humiliation. If he thinks his absent arm makes him irresistible, he can think again. Some chance!
As the days grew longer and warmer, the Princess turned her attention to the palace gardens. She had maintained a bountiful garden and orchard at her home in Kent, and was determined that her new home would boast one equally fine, one more jewel in the palace’s crown. The Prince granted her every wish, allowing her to make what changes she wanted, and soon the rather nondescript acre within the palace’s rear wall had become an ideal venue for pleasant walks, deep conversations and, inevitably, assignations of a romantic nature. The area had been laid out in the French style of formal squares and circles, but Joan said she wanted something to remind her of England. A wide central pathway, or allée, sloped downwards from the top end to the bottom, flanked by fruit bushes and partly covered by a pergola over which pink roses climbed. It ended with a tall, dense hedge of myrtle which curved round a shady arbour that the Princess had enlarged as a place to sit with her companions. Beyond the hedge the ground rose up to a grassy bank for those who preferred to sit in the full light and warmth of the sun, while beside and slightly below the arbour was a plot in which the Princess grew her favourite of all the summer flowers, the exquisite Madonna lilies – ‘the Virgin’s own’, as she called them. Majestic purplish buds appeared for several days, and then one by one they unfolded their large white petals tipped with a faint pink blush, like angels’ trumpets, the Princess said. Within each bloom the plentiful pollen, like gold dust, floated away on the still air or clung to the hairy honey bees that sucked the sweet nectar from the flowers’ he
arts; and by day and night the heady perfume drifted up and across the garden like some rare incense. Wulfstan inhaled the fragrance, closing his eyes and trying to picture Beulah in the garden at Greneholt Manor, but the scent of the lilies seemed to fill his head and strangely disturb his senses.
In such a setting the year drew towards midsummer. The Princess took half a dozen of her ladies down to the arbour one afternoon with their embroidery frames, to ply their needles and indulge in merry court gossip in the shade. They did not at first see Wulfstan seated on the bench behind the myrtle hedge, reading the Roman de la Rose in French; but the gentle rise and fall of their voices, which included that of Lisette de l’Isle, combined with the intoxicating scent of the lilies, caused his eyelids to droop, and he lost track of the allegorical love story; instead he tried to think of Beulah, and acknowledged to himself that she would never fit into the circle of this pleasure-loving court. He realized with some dismay how little he knew of her, the real girl under that pious demeanour, she who had always been taught by her parents what she should think and believe. In this exotic setting he could not visualize her face or remember her voice.
Footsteps were heard approaching the circle of ladies, and to Wulfstan’s irritation he heard André Demoins greeting the Princess, all courtly charm. Wulfstan kept absolutely still, trying to close his ears and apply himself to the Roman.
‘So much beauty is almost too much for one man to bear,’ said Demoins, bowing low and addressing the Princess. ‘Might I join you for a brief, privileged moment, Your Grace? I have been walking beside the Garonne, attempting to compose a poem in praise of your unmatchable court, but no words of mine can do you justice.’
‘A poem? Oh, Monsieur Demoins, let us hear it!’ begged the Princess with her delightful smile. ‘Is it about any one of my ladies in particular?’
‘I dare to say that it may be addressed to one of these fair damsels, Your Grace, and beg pardon for my presumption,’ he replied, taking a piece of manuscript paper from inside his cloak. Suzanne d’Avour, a pretty, fair-haired girl of seventeen giggled, and glancing saucily at her companions, asked if the poem was addressed to her.
‘I would not dare to name the lady, Mademoiselle, for fear of offending her,’ he answered, ‘and I hardly dare to repeat these unworthy lines, but—’
‘Oh, say no more, André, but read us your poem and let us be the judge of it!’ The Princess’s voice was just a trifle impatient, and Demoins began to read what he had written, a fulsome piece about a lover languishing for his true love; Wulfstan recognized several words and phrases lifted straight out of the Song of Solomon, and could not help listening. He wanted to move away, but dared not betray his presence.
At first there was silence among the ladies, and then one of them quietly rose and left the group; turning round the corner of the myrtle hedge, she came in sight of Wulfstan. He stared in surprise at her clinging turquoise-green gown and abundant red hair tumbling upon her white shoulders: Lisette de l’Isle. She walked towards him as he sat on the bank, and looked down at the book in his hands, bringing with her a wave of delicious fragrance – was it from the Madonna lilies?
‘What book is that?’ she demanded.
‘An old French allegorical poem,’ he said, looking up at her briefly and without smiling. He did not care to show any interest in her, even though she had apparently decided to condescend to him.
‘Read me some lines of it,’ she ordered.
He resented her imperious tone. ‘I am no troubadour, Mademoiselle; I can’t read or sing from the written page.’ For a moment he looked straight into those green-gold eyes, and then said, ‘You had better listen to Demoins for that sort of entertainment.’
He applied himself again to the story on the page, leaving her standing and looking down at the top of his head; then she moved away, not back to the Princess’s circle listening to Demoins’ poem, but by another path that led back to the palace.
Mixed emotions whirled in Wulfstan’s head, and he could no longer concentrate his attention on the book. Then the thought came to him that the lady had shown a preference for him over Demoins, and for this he allowed himself a measure of mild satisfaction.
The minstrels’ gallery was filled not only with resident musicians, but others the Prince had hired from further afield. They were practising for the evening’s dancing, and Wulfstan sat listening to a very agreeable blend of stringed instruments like the lute and psaltery blending with the pipes and the long, curved trumpet of the sackbut. It was a warm summer evening, and Wulfstan sipped the red wine of Bordeaux as he listened, closing his eyes and trying to picture Beulah in the garden at Greneholt. The company were waiting for the Prince and Princess who liked to stroll lovingly hand-in-hand in the fragrant garden at close of day, and when they entered, the musicians struck up a lively jig, kept in time by a man beating the taut skin of a tabor with his hand.
‘The music bids us all to dance!’ cried the Princess. ‘Everybody must stand up!’
The ladies and gentlemen needed no second bidding, but quickly formed a circle around the Fair Maid of Kent and her husband who hand-in-hand skipped round the inside of the circle in the opposite direction to the dancers – who then changed direction when the merry couple changed theirs. Obeying the Princess’s command, Wulfstan finished his beaker of wine and joined the circle, the lady on his left putting her hand into his belt as they circled the hall, and as the pace increased amid shrieks of laughter, and the candles glowed, the wine he had drunk gave him a sense of weightlessness, of dancing on air. When the Prince lifted his wife up on his shoulders, twirling her round and round, it was the signal for the large circle to break into groups of four, linking their right hands together above their heads as they turned alternately left and right. Wulfstan found himself in a quartet with Lisette de l’Isle and André Demoins, with pretty Suzanne d’Avour, one of the Princess’s ladies-in-waiting. When the royal couple began to dance hand-in-hand, the quartets broke into pairs and Wulfstan turned to Suzanne, only to find that his right hand was firmly linked with Lisette’s left, while Demoins had hold of her right. He had no left hand to offer Suzanne, and at a nod from Lisette, she went to find another partner. Not all the dancers stayed in the hall, but disappeared into passages and dark corners of the castle for furtive kisses, and something of this nature must have been Demoins’ intention.
‘That fellow’s still hanging on to you, Lisette,’ he growled. ‘Let him go!’
Wulfstan loosened his hold on her hand, only to find that the lady gripped it more tightly; he heard her sharp command to Demoins, ‘Let me go, I tell you, or the Prince will hear of it!’
Wulfstan had a momentary glimpse of the man’s furious face before Lisette began to pull him away from the dancers and out into a passage that led to the kitchen; his head was whirling after all the Bordeaux claret he had drunk, and he allowed himself to be led through to the Princess’s garden. The intoxicating scent of lilies on the evening air roused forbidden sensations, and he seemed to be passing a series of hedges, then beneath a pergola and through it, following a rustling gown and a trail of perfume, and they at last reached the Princess’s arbour, now in deepest shadow. Here she turned to him and offered her lips, snaking her arms around his neck. He could just see the glitter in her eyes, and desire awoke in him; he pressed her slender body against his hardness, and all self-control vanished. Breathing rapidly, he almost groaned with sheer, uncontrollable need, and felt himself sinking with her to the ground; it mattered not to him that the grass was already damp with the dew of night. She kissed his lips again, and he kissed her eyes, nose, forehead and neck, not gently but fiercely, and she drew away for a moment to pull up her costly gown and assist him to unbutton.
It was natural, it was simple, it was beyond description as beneath a sky full of stars, his member thrust into her. He had become a slave of his body as straightway his lifestream poured out; she responded at once, arching her back and moaning with a pleasure that seemed to link
them with the garden, the lilies, the night sky. There were no words, only sighs and long-drawn-out breaths as the tempest subsided and they lay in each other’s arms; his body was satiated, though his mind had not caught up with its heedless actions.
Slowly reality began to intrude. The air was chilly on their flesh, the grass was wet. From the palace the distant strains of music reached their ears. It was time to return to earth. She stood up, and held out a hand to him, inviting him to get up also; they rearranged their clothes, he drew her towards him for a last kiss, and then they went their separate ways, not back to the hall, but by winding passages and stairs, he to his bedchamber and she to hers.
He awoke in the early hours, needing to go to the close-stool. His head throbbed and there was a sour taste in his mouth from the red wine. His heart and mind began to ask questions: what had happened, what witch’s spell had led him to lay with Lisette de l’Isle, a woman he did not even like?
The answer came with shameful simplicity. He had got drunk on too much Bordeaux claret, and had committed fornication while under the influence of it. That was all. He had betrayed his faithful Beulah. Again. He was utterly unworthy of her.
But what would happen now? Would Lisette de l’Isle now consider him to be her lover? Or would she revert to haughty disdain? How should he behave towards her when next they met? What would she say, if anything? He was not looking forward to the unavoidable encounter, and decided not to take any action, but leave her to indicate what direction they should take, what to show the rest of the world.
As it turned out, Princess Joan left them no choice. The next day she was full of smiles and congratulations to them both over the breakfast table. She had seen their abrupt departure from the dancing, and had assumed that they had gone to some private place of assignation, there to exchange kisses and lovers’ sweet talk. She gently teased Lisette, causing a deep flush to spread over her lovely features, even to her neck.
Every Noble Knight Page 22