“Better teach him that new measure Ann was showing you,” suggested Henry from the window seat.
Johanna slid to those restless feet of hers, her heartbreak momentarily forgotten. “Yes! Yes! How did it go, Henry?” she cried eagerly, picking up the heavy folds of miniver.
In his clear tenor he began to hum an infectious little dance tune, picking out an accompaniment on the lute. Johanna kicked aside the rushes to try over the steps. “Come and try it!” she urged, dragging Richard from his chair; and blunderingly, he let her guide him through the opening movements of a masque.
“Don’t look so solemn about it, man!” laughed Henry, to whom such accomplishments came easily.
“And even if you don’t do it very well, you’re so ridiculously good-looking all the ladies of Navarre will want to dance with you,” encouraged Johanna.
“Until all six foot of him lingers on their feet!” laughed Henry.
It was long after curfew, and the servants were coming in from the barns and kitchens to sleep. Before huddling themselves in their cloaks around the hearth, they stood in grinning groups assisting at the lesson. Sometimes they offered criticism, sometimes they applauded. The doings of the young Plantagenets were the high-lights of life to them.
“Not so bad!” decided Henry, when his brother had conscientiously mastered the steps. He winked at Johanna as he laid down the lute. “Now I come to think of it, didn’t Sholto say his sister Berengaria was quite a little beauty?”
Richard let go of Johanna’s hand as if she had the plague. “God help me!” he exclaimed. “Shall I have to dance with her?”
Part II
Navarre
Chapter Seven
King Sancho of Navarre’s tournaments were famous throughout the civilised world. His hospitality was so lavish and the standard of tilting so high that all the most celebrated champions in Europe angled for invitations. Competitors with feudal responsibilities in cold climates were only too glad to take an annual holiday at his sunny southern court. At his laden board they met everybody who mattered; and such was the enthusiasm of the Spanish populace, the blaze of heraldry, and the stir of trumpets in his lists that even seasoned warriors could recapture something of the din and stir of battle at Pamplona.
It was fun for their womenfolk as well. Most of them were related by marriage, which made plenty of matter for a good gossip and, while lending half an ear to their husbands’ everlasting sports talk, they could note what kind of wimples were being worn in Paris or Milan.
Probably the only woman who was bored was Berengaria. She was tired of being Queen of Beauty and having to crown the victors. Of course, she had only to look in the metal of her mirror to know that she was beautiful; but then, being Sancho’s only daughter, she supposed that she would have been chosen had she been as ugly as a witch. Her flower-decked pavilion always looked down upon the same scene. The tiltyard thronged with people. The townsfolk crowded round the barriers of the oblong lists, leaving a gap at either end for the competitors, whose tents stretched like a field of gaily striped mushrooms to the castle walls. The groups of men-at-arms looking down from the battlements.
The guests were much the same this year as last. The same banners floated from the King’s stand, the same kind of rose garlands decorated her own. Her ladies had been making them for days, and she was weary of the sight of them. Berengaria loved roses best in a garden, and hated the way Isabella and Henrietta crushed them with eager elbows as they leaned over the balcony, showing off their bright new gowns.
All the forenoon she had sat opposite to her parents, smiling at the victors and saying the right thing to important guests as they strolled past between bouts. And now the heat and clamour had given her a headache. The herald’s shrill trumpeting had become an agony. She still listened politely each time the Marshal called the names of fresh combatants, but once all eyes were upon them in the lists she took the opportunity of moving farther into the shadow of the awning and surreptitiously reading an illuminated book of poems.
“Why don’t you watch, Madam?” asked her youngest lady, to whom it was like all the minstrels’ tales come true.
“Because I hate the sight of blood, Yvette,” confided Berengaria. Not for worlds would she have had Isabella and Henrietta overhear confession of such weakness. From the front of the pavilion scraps of their conversation drifted back like a thin dissonance through the deep harmony of the words she was reading.
“That scarred knight with the black plume fought all through the last Crusade. I asked him if the Saracen girls were really so beautiful—”
“Look, Henrietta, there goes my handsome Sicilian! How he kissed me last night!”
Their voices were drowned by a fresh fanfare. This time even the booming voice of the Marshal was inaudible through the cheering of the crowd. A knight spurred across the lists, making sparks fly as he pulled his charger to its haunches before the King. Without looking up, Berengaria knew it must be William de Barre, back from the Holy Land. De Barre, making a spectacular entrance. How she loathed the man! A proud, hard-bitten champion, who went from one tournament to another winning all the prizes.
“What do you suppose he does with them all?” Yvette was asking.
“Distributes them among his women!” Isabella told her succinctly.
At least, thought Berengaria, there is one prize he will never win. Although of bastard blood, he had had the temerity to ask for her in marriage, and it said much for her father’s tolerance that he was still invited to compete. She wished that Raymond of Toulouse or someone could unhorse him. “How uninterestingly alike they all look in their armour!” she yawned. “This is the last bout before dinner, isn’t it, Henrietta?”
“Yes, Madam. And if Sir William de Barre wins he will meet Count Raymond tomorrow in the final bout.”
“Of course he will win,” said Berengaria. “There is never anything new in these tournaments.”
“There is a new foreign knight, Madam,” reported Isabella, over her shoulder.
“He’s riding in now. On such a sorry charger!” laughed Henrietta.
Yvette turned eagerly to look. “He is so tall!”
“And awkward,” scoffed Isabella.
“And red-headed,” added Henrietta. “And instead of a proper heraldic device there’s just a silly sprig of broom stuck in the helmet his page is handing up to him.”
Berengaria put down her book. “If he wears broom he must be my brother’s friend, Richard Plantagenet. I hear he arrived late last night from England.”
“That is the odd shaped island where they have fogs, isn’t it?” asked Yvette, staring inquisitively at his back. “Is it true that all the men there have tails?”
The older girls’ laughter covered her with confusion. Berengaria laughed too; but then she always took the trouble to explain. “Of course not, child! That’s only some silly legend left over from the Dark Ages. These Plantagenets are Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine as well as kings of England, and their mother was once Queen of France. So you see, this young man’s elder brother will be quite an important person one day.”
“Well, nobody seems to know this one now,” remarked Isabella, pertly.
Yvette leaned over the balcony. “He looks quite embarrassed,” she murmured compassionately. Having come straight to court from her convent school she could sympathize with his embarrassment.
“Throw him your new Damascus girdle, Isabella!” giggled Henrietta.
“And have it trampled in the dust!” Isabella was not the sort of wench to back a loser. She fastened the jewelled thing more securely about shapely hips that had snared a rich Sicilian. “What chance has a raw young man like that against real crusaders?”
Berengaria sprang up. Indignation always had the power to override her gentle diffidence. “Is that the kind of hospitality Navarre shows to strangers?” she demanded. “How do you know he may not some day fight Saladin as well as any of them?”
By stretching out a hand she c
ould almost have touched his shoulder. He sat his horse quietly just below her pavilion, watching his adversary’s impressive showmanship. For days he had been horribly sea-sick in a single-masted galley. His arrival had been spoiled by disappointment at finding his friend, young Sholto, away; and he had not yet had time to get to know anyone else. Unfamiliar surroundings and the babel of an incomprehensible tongue confused him. “Just my luck to arrive late and get drawn against their champion in my first round!” he thought, remembering his prophecy to Johanna.
The crowd loved the way the veteran crusader loosened an experienced arm in a series of clever practice thrusts and made his mighty stallion rear and stamp to show off his fine horsemanship. Certainly, man and horse together were an impressive sight. The last word in armour with ringed mail from thigh to toe, scolloped saddle trappings of crimson leather, and a gorgeously plumed ceremonial heaume held by an obsequious squire. In the hurry of his expulsion from England poor Richard had brought no heaume at all—just a plain, tight-fitting battle helmet, a steel haubert considerably dented in the frequent wrangles for his heritage, and one slender stripling of a page.
All the same, the King of Navarre’s daughter, who had been brought up to love fair play, plucked a pink rose bud from the wreath she wore and, in full view of her father’s subjects, threw it deliberately—not to the seasoned warrior—but to the unknown competitor. It struck with a soft plop against his clean-shaven cheek, and he turned angrily, quieting his startled horse.
“He is quite handsome!” exclaimed Isabella, and the others laughed at the chagrin in her voice.
“I threw it for Sholto’s sake,” explained Berengaria, in case they might think that she too had noticed the fact.
Richard stared up at her with little gallantry. It was his first big tournament. Queens of Beauty, he had always supposed, were heartless and vain like the lady in the minstrel’s ballad who threw her glove among the lions. Probably those giggling girls leaning over the balcony were out to make a fool of him because they knew he hadn’t a dog’s chance. Young Blondel, quick to cover his discourtesy, saved the blossom from an impatient hoof and handed it up to him.
Trumpets blared and de Barre bellowed a challenge. With a vicious spur he urged his stallion to the attack. And still the tall Norman stared rather incredulously at the dusty petals in his mailed palm.
“Oh, hurry, hurry!” breathed Berengaria.
Richard looked up then and grinned reassuringly. So it was true. Someone wanted him to win. The slender rose girl with the kind eyes who looked as if she had walked straight out of the lovely Provencal legends his mother used to tell. He leaned to Blondel for his shield, and the Spanish sunshine glinted on the gold leopards snarling across its blood-red surface. Like a lean, crouching leopard himself, he balanced his lance to get some favourite grip, then clapped down his vizor and charged.
Towards him in a cloud of dust thundered his man. Even to Richard’s optimistic mind it looked as if such a mountain of steel and muscle must mow him down. “God help me not to disappoint that rose girl!” he prayed, swerving in time to take a glancing blow that, at full force, would have felled an ox. The force of it shook his confidence. This was the real thing. “Just because I’m supposed to be pretty good at home—” he thought, picturing his pride humbled in the dust before all this assembly of international sportsmen. King Sancho’s shout of “Well saved!” helped to steady him.
As he wheeled his horse, Richard overheard a critic by the barrier say, “Hopelessly outclassed in weight and experience, of course, but he has youth and speed…” Acting on the hint, he used both to forestall by the fraction of a second each cunning ruse of his opponent. The Frenchman no longer fought contemptuously. In the second encounter he paid Richard the compliment of fighting furiously. He had seen a favour flung by a girl whose high birth had put her out of his own reach, and he was out to kill.
But Richard’s eyes had gone light with the lust of battle, his brain cold as ice. He settled closer in the saddle to enjoy the one kind of game at which he was master. The spectators began to shout wildly each time he dodged death, but he was no longer conscious of them. Concentration had come back to him. His whole world was whittled down to one arena where two horsemen wheeled and thrust. Yet, fantastically enough, part of his mind was back in England where he had practised these very strokes beside the placid Thames. If only he could believe himself back there, delivering them as coolly and unhurriedly as he had then, he felt that he might win. It was Robin’s voice—a thin, controlling memory—that gave him patience and precision now. “Wait, man—wait! Any fool can strike. It’s choosing the moment that counts.” And then Robin himself—part of the placid river and the sturdy oaks—showing him that clever counter-thrust. “Let the other fellow go all out. And now—when he has over-ridden himself—”
In each encounter Richard’s timing was perfect. The intoxication of success was upon him. He felt the crowd with him at last. A lovely crowd, appreciative of all the finer points, and generous in praise. His famous adversary was tiring. Past the peak of his prime and a gross liver, de Barre must have realised that he could not stay another round against such fitness. He came on like a maddened bull, blind with rage. Now—now was the moment. Richard stood in the stirrups and drove his lance home with all his strength.
Berengaria covered her face with her hands. She could not bear the sight of blood. She heard a crescendo of hoof beats, the crash of steel and splintering wood. A sibilant intake of breath passed like the rustle of stiff ripe corn across the crowd. The silence that followed was split by a man shouting hoarsely, “My God, de Barre is in the dust!”
“Only his armour saved him!” chanted the delirious crowd.
“The lance broke against it with such force that it slid down and pierced the Plantagenet’s own horse,” moaned Yvette, in a sick, shuddering heap at Berengaria’s feet.
Seasoned crusaders leapt to their feet and women wept hysterically. Lusty men-at-arms cheered and countrymen threw their capuchins in the air. When Berengaria dared to look, the great, invincible de Barre was lying in the middle of the tiltyard. His heaume had fallen off, its fine plumes matted in a stream of blood flowing from the belly of his opponent’s horse. As he rolled on to his back the muscles of his bull neck bulged obscenely from the restriction of the gorget that had saved him. And standing over him was the tall Plantagenet, swinging a great two-handed sword. He had pulled it from the vanquished Frenchman’s scabbard. Mercifully for de Barre, King Sancho’s baton clattered into the lists before the point had time to reach his throat. Richard lowered it reluctantly. It was just the kind of sword he had been coveting, and would make a good souvenir of a splendid fight.
Chapter Eight
After the spectacular bout in which the great de Barre was brought low all was clamour and confusion. People shouted and took up their bets and jumped the barriers. Heralds and judges vied with each other in proclaiming names and achievements of the morning’s victors. A whole army of grooms seemed to spring into the lists, and quite important people helped to lift the vanquished champion from the ground. “Just as well I didn’t finish him off!” thought Richard. “But no man ought to have a neck like that.” Now, just why had he hated it so? Something to do with a girl…He was still leaning on the tall sword feeling oddly tired when he became aware of a pleasant, stocky young man who was wringing his hand and wishing him luck in the next bout.
“I am glad it will not be until to-morrow!” panted Richard. “Do you know this Raymond of Toulouse I have to tilt against next?”
“Quite well.”
“Is he anything like this one?” Richard waved a vague hand in the direction of the group gathered round his late opponent.
“God forbid!” The words, were said with such amused friendliness that Richard laid aside all defensive pretence. “What I mean is, have I a chance?” he asked simply.
“I’d say it ought to be a pretty good fight,” laughed the young man. “You see, I am Toulouse.”
Involuntarily, Richard shot out a hand. “Splendid!” he cried, and would have liked to stay and talk. But a squire was already at his elbow, respectfully summoning him to the King. He could see the Queen’s women, like a bright parterre of multi-coloured flowers, beckoning to him with their handkerchiefs. The sweets of victory awaited him. But first he stooped to gentle his dying horse. “You carried me well, old friend,” he whispered. At sound of his voice the poor beast whinnied pitifully, and he bade Blondel have it put out of pain.
Elation was tinged with gaucherie as he approached the royal stand. But a new world was opening before him. A world in which he was somebody, apart from his title. A world full of friends. Richard rose to their approval with youthful flamboyance and, to his relief, found that most of them spoke Norman-French. Men stretched across each other’s shoulders to grip his sword-hand, and women threw him flowers. “Where did you learn that counter-thrust?” asked the jovial king, and Richard found himself telling them about his small military successes in Aquitaine and about Robin’s prowess in England. Friendship with Philip of France might be a profitable business proposition, he reflected, but a few words of praise from Sancho of Navarre set the seal on a sportsman’s record.
“Time to collect your laurels, mon brave!” Toulouse reminded him. Friendly hands pushed him towards the Princess’s pavilion. He took the short wooden steps at a bound and stood smiling down at her. “I cannot reach. You will have to bend down,” she reminded him, under cover of the cheering.
“I am already at your feet,” swore Richard, dropping to one knee. “Without your rose I’m sure I couldn’t have tackled that blustering son of Mars!”
From beneath demurely lowered lashes, her brown eyes laughed down at him. “Why, I thought you were sent here to learn pretty speeches!”
“I suppose some busybody had to tell you that!” he muttered, hating his father for the humiliation.
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