‘What lady in her right mind would have me? And what father in his senses would commit his daughter to me?’
‘You undervalue yourself,’ said Anselm, suddenly compassionate. ‘And for all your self-mockery and your apparent pride in your wrongdoing, I think at heart you are lonely and feel cut off from other men, and from women. A wife might heal you.’
‘I might be the ruin of her.’
‘You bewilder me.’ Anselm shook his head wearily. ‘That a man can prefer other men ... if you graze two stallions in a field together they don’t mount each other. A stallion only becomes excited when he sees a mare. This thing is unnatural, my lord. If you could only tear it out of yourself…’
‘Well, I can’t.’
‘Then God preserve you.’ Anselm rose, shaking his head. ‘Have I your leave to go?’
‘You have indeed.’ Compassion had been a mistake; Rufus had flushed in resentment. He sat in his chair with his knees apart, palms resting upon them. ‘Understand this, Anselm. I rule here, no one else. Not you, not any of my barons. Anyone who starts an insurrection will be very s…sorry. Now stop prophesying doom and trying to save my s… soul. It’s beyond redemption,’ said Rufus with a grin.
Anselm sighed, folding his hands into the sleeves of the embroidered Archbishop’s robe which was much too ornate for his taste, and went out, down a flight of steps, and out of doors, into the open air. He wanted the freshness of air and wind to blow away the cloud of hopelessness which had settled on him, and the sick spiritual smell of corruption.
But he was careful of his Archbishop’s panoply, even though he disliked it, and he did not linger outside, for once again, it was pouring with rain.
It was in the November of the next year, just as Rufus was putting down the revolt among his barons which Anselm had foretold, that Pope Urban, after a long and truly sorrowful contemplation of a Europe racked by bitter winters and soaking summers and the misery of hunger and disease which these things inevitably bred, climbed into the pulpit of Clermont-Ferrand cathedral, looked down at the distinguished congregation afforded by a full-scale Papal Council, and then, repeating with authority what many priests were already saying without it, announced that the sins of men had now piled so high that the end of the century would surely mean the end of the world unless they bestirred themselves to set things right.
Let them repent, he said, and go forth to right the greatest wrong of all and pray that God in His mercy would allow them in so doing to ransom themselves from the consequences of all other sins.
Let them go forth to the Holy Land and set free the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the infidel.
The response was immediate and huge, like the waves rolling outwards from a submarine earthquake.
They deposited Normandy, like a piece of gigantic and valuable flotsam, on King Rufus’ personal beach.
And then, as though the earthquake had been accompanied by storms, both Rufus and his brother Henry were smitten, lightning-blasted, into love.
PART V
IN WHICH LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE
1096 – 1098 AD
One Count and Lady 1096
Two Count and King 1096
Three Desperation 1096
Four Love and War 1098
CHAPTER ONE
Count and Lady 1096
Archbishop Anselm, not one of those who believed in the imminent end of the world, and strongly of the opinion that a land still shuddering from a barely-crushed baronial revolt needed to retain all the spiritual guides it could, not to mention the law keeping abilities of its most honest magnates and their knights, had already, and passionately, made his views clear.
But the news of the crusade was nevertheless humming round England as the appalling winter of 1095 and 1096 crawled miserably towards an overdue spring. In Romsey, it caught the Abbess Christina’s imagination.
‘As it chances, we have nearly completed a beautiful illuminated copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History,’ she informed her nuns. ‘It was meant for our own library but now we shall sell it. We shall also turn to at once and make a new copy of Asser’s Life of King Alfred, also to be illuminated, and penned in our most elegant Carolingian book-hand. Our abbey is not poor and we shall of course send a straightforward donation as well – but would it not be wonderful, my daughters, if through the work of our own hands, we could contribute a little band of knights, with their horses and armour and mounted squires? They would carry our badge into battle. We must go about it so that toil and devotion take the place of expenditure on raw materials wherever possible. We have ample vellum in stock, but what we use, we must replace this year from the skins of calves reared on the abbey estates. We must mix all our own ink and gather as many of the ingredients for ourselves as we can, not take the easy way and buy them in. We must…’
Winters in Romsey were not as bad as those in Inverness, but this one, thought Edith, was bad enough. There was a heavy snowfall in March. Mixing ink, therefore, though messy and apt to smell peculiar, was a task with compensations. The black ink was made with bark and galls gathered from trees in the nearby woods and crushed with a pestle, while the red ink needed beaten egg. Crushing and beating were energetic and kept one warm. In addition, before being finally mixed with iron salts, gum arabic and some sour wine condemned as unfit for drinking, the crushed bark and gall had to be thoroughly boiled. The little stone workroom with the vaulted ceiling and the narrow windows filled with green-tinged glass had a fire. Edith and the two nuns assigned with her to the work, pounded, whisked, boiled and strained in an atmosphere cheerful with steam and firelight.
‘It’s fortunate that we have sufficient galls and things in hand,’ young Sister Lucy remarked, stoking the fire, while Edith’s pestle steadily thudded. ‘I wouldn’t care to be out in the woods just now. I heard a wolf last night.’ She shivered. ‘It was a long way off, but still…’
Edith had heard it too, a distant howl like grey smoke wreathing upwards to the frosty moon. Unlike Sister Lucy, she had not been afraid. The sound had excited her with its wildness and its desire. A cuckoo, a nightingale, a wolf… strange, even wondrous, that they could all call the selfsame echo out of her soul.
Because of that echo, her brown hair was still unveiled and uncut, in swinging braids. Her aunt had not yet renewed her campaign to make a nun of Edith. Edith had felt Christina’s eyes on her many times; the campaign was not ended. As yet, nothing had happened, but she was still vulnerable, only fifteen. And Christina, she suspected, to use a warriorlike turn of phrase such as might have appealed to King Malcolm, was waiting for a good opening. There were times when Edith secretly quailed after catching her aunt’s eye and wondered, as she had at Vespers just after her return to Romsey, whether she would not do best simply to give in.
But she hadn’t quite come to it yet. Not yet. It was as though she, too, were waiting…
‘This lot is ready to strain now,’ said the elderly Sister Winefred, peering into the pan. She set the iron mesh strainer over an earthenware bowl. ‘Bring it here, Sister Lucy. Sister Lucy, why are you cocking your head to one side like that?
Have you heard another wolf?’
‘No, Sister. I thought I heard a man’s voice,’ said Sister Lucy.
‘Is there much difference?’ Sister Winefred never hesitated to tell anyone who would listen that she had entered religion because she preferred to take orders from an abbess who had earned the right to give them, rather from some man who imagined that authority came with masculinity like the mane on a horse, no matter how stupid or ignorant he might be. ‘Bring that pan here, I said. And Edith, would you… Edith, where are you going?’
‘We need some more firewood and some more of that sour wine,’ said Edith breathlessly, and also cunningly providing herself with a double errand by way of ensuring that she had at least a single one.
‘We’ve enough wine, what are you talking about? Firewood… well, presently perhaps, but…’
‘Now,’ said Edith
decisively, and was gone.
The workroom door opened onto a paved courtyard round which various functional buildings stood. The kitchen and buttery were nearby. Edith ran into the kitchen, waved away the noisesome steam from her face – one of the Lenten meals of salt fish was being cooked – and found the Sister in charge. ‘We need another jug of that bad red wine and some wood .…oh, Sister, I am so very sorry to bother you when you’re so busy.’
She was in luck.
When visitors came, refreshments were usually served and a tray was being assembled now, and with the best silver cups and dishes at that. ‘Is that for the guest room? Can I take it in for you? To make up for being a nuisance?’ She gave the Sister a most winning smile and received one back; most of the nuns liked Edith.
‘That’s thoughtful of you. Someone’ll run along to the workroom with your firewood and that while you’re seeing to this. Mind your manners, now. The guest’s someone important.’
‘I can see that,’ said Edith, indicating the silver, and with thumping heart took up the tray.
She went out of the door on the far side of the kitchen, not into the courtyard but into the snow-covered grassy space in front of the guest house. The workroom had windows looking that way, too. It was through these that that resonant male voice, so startlingly familiar although she had only heard it once, had come. She bore the tray across the snow, indifferent to the chill of it through her soft shoes, knocked and went in.
And stood for a moment transfixed, because she had been completely mistaken. The man talking to Abbess Christina was not Rufus. She would have laid her hand on a pile of saints’ bones and sworn that the voice had been his, but this was someone much younger, still surely in his twenties, with black hair, cut short although a lock of it was tumbling into his brown eyes, and a strong, square, tanned face.
He smiled at her appreciatively, however, as ignoring her aunt’s what-on-earth-are-you-doing-here? eyebrows, she poured wine and handed him cakes. He was certainly important, even if he wasn’t Rufus. Edith’s eye, practised in these matters as the eye of a princess was bound to be, took in the extreme fineness of his mulberry-coloured wool tunic and the fact that the clasp of his fashionably short blue cloak was solid gold set with amethysts and garnets. She wanted to know who he was. She therefore curtsied gracefully as she gave him his goblet and said boldly: ‘Edith of Scotland at your service, sir.’
‘My God, I wish you were,’ said the young man sincerely, and with the freedom of one who is. used to speaking his mind.
In tones of steel, Abbess Christina said: ‘This is Count Henry, brother of the king.’ That explained it. Brothers, with different faces but the same voice. ‘You will be interested in his purpose here.’ The steel now had an edge on it. ‘He comes from Normandy with the news that Robert Duke of Normandy will take part in the crusade and will gladly accept our abbey’s contribution. The ink you should at this moment be making is for the books which will provide part of that contribution.’
‘I’m a double courier as it were,’ said Count Henry. ‘I bear letters both to Mother Abbess and to my brother the king. I am delighted to meet you, Lady Edith. I am rewarded for humbling myself to be a messenger. Please take some wine with me.’
Abbess Christina’s expression verged on the murderous. There might well be retribution after Count Henry had gone. Nevertheless Edith was obliged to repress a giggle before saying gravely: ‘But my lord, there are only two goblets.’
‘Share mine,’ said Henry gallantly, holding it out to her. His brown eyes danced. With a surge of wonder, for the first time Edith became aware of possessing power. She could almost see herself reflected in those eyes; a little flushed from her run to the kitchen and her cold walk across the snow with the tray, her brown hair smooth and shining (how fortunate that she had washed it only two days ago). She took the cup and sipped, and smiled back at Henry.
She recognised his breed. There were hard lines already in his face; he had had to fight for survival and he had learned how to be ruthless. But her father had been like that; it was something she understood. Her father had loved and protected her mother all the more for his ability to fight mercilessly against other men. And she was her father’s daughter. She was attracted, not repelled.
But Aunt Christina was glowering at her and Count Henry wouldn’t stay long. He couldn’t protect her once he was out of sight. She gave the cup back to him and shook her head gently. ‘I must go back to my work now, my lord. I am happy to have met you. The work goes well, Mother Abbess. The scribes won’t be delayed for lack of ink.’ She curtsied and smiled again and her eyes said to Henry: come back if you can. Gracefully, she left.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said meekly to Abbess Christina later, standing with downcast eyes in order that her aunt should not see the wild dancing in them. ‘But what could I do? I went to the kitchen for some things we needed and offered to carry the tray to help Sister. And then…’ Planning her defence, while pounding bark, she had been visited by inspiration. ‘…. he seemed a very bold man. I was a little afraid of what he might say. I thought it best just to tell him who I was. I had to drink from his cup when he gave it to me. It wouldn’t have been polite to refuse. I am sorry if I did wrong.’
‘No,’ said Abbess Christina unwillingly, eyeing her niece with extreme suspicion. ‘I can’t say that you did wrong.’ If the child were truly as innocent as she appeared, it would be a mistake to say anything which might disturb that innocence. If only one could be sure that it existed to start with. ‘We’ll say no more about it,’ said the abbess, cautiously.
In seven days, Henry was back.
‘He wishes to talk to you privately. He has a message for you from some member of your family, I understand,’ said Christina. ‘I shall of course be in the room though not within hearing. Count Henry has never been reported as misbehaving himself with ladies in public. But I will be there.’
‘A message from my family?’ Edith asked when she was face to face with Henry, the obligatory tray of refreshments between them, this time officially for her to share. Joyously she studied his face, filling in the details of the image which she had held in her mind throughout all the intervening week.
‘No,’ said Henry. ‘I just wanted to see you again. We’ll have to invent a message. Your brother King Edgar of Scotland is well, recognised by my brother King William, and on excellent terms with him, but I suppose you know all that. You could say that although your brother does not yet summon you home, he wants you to know you’re not forgotten and he hopes to see you in Scotland one day. I expect he would send you a message like that if he’d happened to think of it.’
‘Yes, I’ll say that. It might be a good thing. Aunt Christina would like me to become a proper nun. It might be as well if she thinks my brother is against it, as my father was. You say you came only because…’
‘I have to go back to Normandy soon, with the king’s answer to Duke Robert. But I had to come here first. I think when I came before, the abbess was angry with you. I wanted to make sure you were all right.’
‘She told me I was forward,’ said Edith candidly. ‘But that’s nothing, with her.’
‘Oh? And what, with Mother Abbess, amounts to something? Tell me.’
She found herself answering, telling him of the old struggle between herself and her aunt over the veil. Henry, listening, was gripped with an astonishing mixture of indignation, pity, and sheer admiration. He had been, a week ago, extraordinarily moved by the sight of this vivacious Scottish princess, so completely unsuited to her surroundings. He had gone away with the memory of her shining in his brain and found, that same night, that as though Edith were a flame and himself a taper, he had urgent need of a woman. A serving girl had obliged him. But he had recognised the origin of the symptoms. Only, with a princess of Scotland, there could be no easy taking and leaving. If he loved Edith, it could only be as a husband. And finding himself not averse to the idea, he had come back to talk to her a second time.
To discover that she was not only a young and delight-fully pretty princess of Scotland; she was also the victim of ill-usage and a valiant fighter into the bargain. It would take a valiant fighter, he thought, to stand up to Abbess Christina, especially when hampered by the twin disadvantages of youth and a good upbringing.
‘I wish you were not in the Abbess’s power,’ he said. ‘Something must be done about that, I think.’
‘I think she dislikes me,’ said Edith. ‘She thinks I’m silly.’
‘I can’t believe that you’re ever silly. In what way?’
‘We hear wolves sometimes in the forest, especially in winter. I said once that a wolfs howl sounded like smoke rising to the sky and she told me not to be absurd, that you can’t talk about a noise as though it were something you could see. But it did sound like that, to me!’
‘It sounds like it to me as well and of course you can use words to do with seeing, to describe a noise. The nuns have to sing the Office, don’t they? I wonder how many times Mother Abbess has said that this nun or that has a silvery voice, or a golden voice? Sunlight,’ said Henry, ‘always sounds to me like a clash of cymbals. Especially very bright sunlight, on a July morning in a heatwave.’
‘Cymbals? I’ve always thought it was like trumpets. But there isn’t much difference, is there? But only in the morning. In the afternoon when it’s become sleepy and hazy, it’s like a bee humming, an enormous golden bumble bee.’
‘Or a vast ginger cat purring. What does a blackbird’s song look like?’
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