Pavane sm-35

by Keith Roberts

  The peasants still lived and were governed by the ancient rhythms of moon and sun, ploughing and reaping, death and birth; and all old things, whether or not sanctified by the rulers of Rome, appealed strongly to her. Sometimes she would go with her nurse and her father’s seneschal and play on the nearby beaches. She would watch the endless roll and thunder of the sea, and ask strange questions of the seneschal; such as whether the Popes, from their golden throne, could order the waves that washed the shores of England, marching in their violet ranks to break against the ancient cliffs. He would smile at her, answering heresy with discretion, till she grew bored and scampered off to hunt for shells on the beach or seaweed, or pick the crinoid fossils from the rocks and give them to him for fairy beads. She felt an odd sympathy with the fabric of the land itself; once she took a flake of shale and pressed it to her throat and cried, and said that day she was made right through of stone, dark and stern as the Kimmeridge cliffs and as indomitable. Her waywardness caused in the end her removal to Londinium.

  In her sixteenth year her father caught her with a bailiff, learning the handling of his motor vehicle; how to slip the bands of its gearbox and drive it in forward and reverse round the slopes of the outer bailey. Maybe some gesture, some turn of the head, reminded Robert too clearly of the girl who had died so many years ago; he pulled his daughter squawking from the machine, clipped her ear, and chased her off to her room.

  The resulting interview, compounded as it was of Eleanor’s wounded dignity and her father’s always uncertain temper, proved disastrous. Eleanor vented her feelings in multilingual phrasing new even to Robert; he retaliated with a strap, the buckle of which left several marks that threatened permanence. He confined his daughter to her chamber for a week; on the day of her release she refused to leave and it was a fortnight before he caught sight of her down below the wet-ditch messing with some soldiers out at target practice. He sent immediately for his seneschal.

  A time at the Court of Londinium seemed the only thing for Eleanor; there would be no more riding and hawking, and certainly no consorting with mechanicals. She must be brought if possible to a realisation of her station, and instructed in the skills expected in a lady of good birth. To the seneschal Robert entrusted the task, with the purely private directive that his daughter must be cultivated or killed. She left a fortnight later, with many snorts and head-tossings. He waited by the gate to see her go, but she ignored him. That was a flash of temper she regretted the rest of her days, for she never saw him alive again.

  The accident happened on a feast day, when the lower bailey was filled with the tents of acrobats and jugglers and sweetmeat sellers, while the place resounded to shouts and laughter and the clatter of cudgels where the young bloods of the surrounding villages tried their strength one against another. Robert’s horse bucked as he crossed the outer bridge, and threw him; he struck his head against the stone, and fell into the dry ditch. The fair was quietened, and doctors brought from Durnovaria; but his skull was crushed, and he never reopened his eyes. Eleanor, summoned by a signal that fled from Challow Hill to Pontes inside an hour, rode hard; but she came too late.

  She buried her father at Wimborne, in the ancient Minster there, in the painted tomb he had built to share with his wife; and the party rode back slowly to Corfe Gate, the horses and the motors dressed with black, the slack drums thudding out a dirge. It was still September; but a chilling wind moaned in from the sea, and the sky was grey as iron. Eleanor reined when she came in sight of the castle, and waved the rest of her people on down the long dim road. The seneschal waited, his horse fretting in the wind, till the mourners had passed nearly out of sight in distance; then she turned to him, her cloak whipping round her shoulders. She looked older and very tired, dark shadows under her eyes and tear tracks marking her cheeks. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘here I am a great lady; and that is the house I own…’

  He waited silently, knowing her mind; she swallowed, and pushed the hair out of

  her eyes. ‘John,’ she said, ‘How many years did you serve my Father, Robert?’

  He sat his horse impassively and considered before he answered. Then finally, ’Many years, my Lady.’

  ‘And his father before him?’

  Again the same answer. ‘Many years…’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You served him well; I left him alone, and sent no word. And it was all over such a trifling little thing. I’ve almost forgotten why we first fell out. Now it’s too late of course.’ She sat quiet a moment, stroking the neck of her horse as it fidgeted in the cold. Then, ‘Have you a sword?’

  ‘Yes, Lady.’ ‘Then give it me, and get down off your horse. This much I can do…’

  He waited while she held the sword and looked unseeing at the damascene-work on the blade. ‘A title is a little empty thing,’ she said, ‘to such as you. Yet will you take it from me?’

  He bowed; and she touched his shoulder lightly with the steel. "Whether the King confirms my choice or no,’ she said, ‘to us you will be Sir John…’ Then she turned her horse and rode hard for the castle, narrowing her eyes to see up at its glooming battlements and towers. So she came home, to a mourning place; and soon to the anger of Pope John.

  From the outset Eleanor’s position was a curious one. The successive Lords of Purbeck had held their lands in feoff from the King; under normal circumstances she could have expected to be married off fairly rapidly and to see the demesnes granted to another. But she was, or would one day be, an heiress in her own right as granddaughter of the last of the Strange family; and in the restricted economy of the times the annual tax paid by that huge house accounted for a measurable proportion of the revenue to the Crown. Since Charles, King of England and nominally at least of the Americas, was expecting to make an extended tour of the New World in the spring he was content to let matters rest at least until his return; Eleanor was confirmed in her position of authority, although there were many up and down the country who resented the decision.

  She took her duties with great seriousness. One of her first self-allotted tasks was to tour the boundaries of her lands with a circuit judge, settling such petty differences as had arisen since her father’s death. She rode informally, with only her seneschal in attendance, stopping off at cottages and farms as the fancy took her, speaking to all in the language of their birth, and her liege-folk scattered over the breadth and length of Dorset were much impressed. Where she found hardship she alleviated it not by gifts of money, too easily spent in the local taverns, but with clothing and food and grants of freeholds. She saw much suffering, and was shocked by it; she began in fact to feel dissatisfaction with her own way of life.

  ‘It’s all very well, Sir John,’ she said one evening shortly after her return to Corfe Gate. ‘But I’ve really achieved nothing at all. I suppose one’s bound to get a glow of wellbeing from a few small charities but looked at in a broad view they’re meaningless. One or two people are probably better off for not having to scrape and save and find their rent every week but what about all the rest I haven’t been able to do anything for? As long as the Church applies a censorship to certain forms of progress, which is what she does however strenuously the Popes deny it, we shall always be a scrappy little nation living just above the famine line. But what else am I to do?’

  They were dining in the sixteenth century hall beside the great keep; she waved a hand at the furnishings, the richly hung walls, and spluttered over a mouthful of food. ‘I can’t pretend,’ she said, ‘that I don’t like this life, and being able to buy horses and dogs when I want and nylons and perfumes, things the ordinary people never get to see let alone afford… You know,’ she added, grinning suddenly, ‘when my poor father sent me off to town I had a fancy to run away and give it all up; just live the simple life, working the soil and rearing a family like a peasant girl. Only what I’ve seen has changed all that; I realise now I should have ended up having innumerable children by some brawny oaf who stank of pigs, and dying before I was thirty
from sheer hard work. Or am I just getting cynical? Do tell me, you say so very little any more.’

  He poured wine for her, smiling.

  ‘I was arguing with Father Sebastian the other day,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I quoted the thing about giving all you have to the poor. He said that was all very well but you had to come to terms with the Scriptures and realise there had to be teachers and leaders for the people’s own good. It seemed an awful get-out to me, and I couldn’t help saying so. I told him if the Church would sell half her altar plate she could buy shoes for everybody in the country, and a lot else besides; and that if the Pope would make a start in Rome I’d see about getting rid of a few job lots of furniture down in Corfe. I’m afraid he didn’t take very kindly to it. I know it was wrong of me but he annoys me sometimes; he’s so pious, and it seems to mean so very little. He’d walk miles in the snow to pray for a sick child, he’s a very good man; but if there was more money about to start with maybe the child wouldn’t have been taken ill. It all seems so unnecessary…’

  The winter was hard and long, the brooks and soil frozen like stone, even the rim of the sea sharded with ice. The towers clacked, on days when the Signallers could clear their arms of ice, with news of other parts of the country suffering as badly or worse. The spring that followed was late and cold, and the summer nearly as bad. Charles postponed his trip to the New World till the following year, spending his time, according to the semaphores, in organising relief schemes for the areas worst hit by famine. When autumn came round again, and the rush-bearing to the churches, the worst news of all arrived, brought by the urgently clattering grids. The taxation system of the country was to be reviewed; commissioners were already at work assessing contributions to be made by each area not in money but in kind.

  Eleanor swore when the news was brought to her, and would certainly have given the officials a hot reception had they presented themselves at her hall; but nobody came near. Instead she was supplied via the semaphores with a list of the goods she would be expected to levy. Other parts of the country had been taxed in everything from turned ware to parsnips; Dorset’s contribution would be in butter, grain, and stone. ‘It’s quite ridiculous,’ fumed Her Ladyship, stamping up and down the little room that served her as office and study combined. ‘Butter and stone are all very well, or would be if they didn’t represent extra taxes; but grain! The people who drew this up must know very well there’s practically no arable farming round here at all; what little wheat we do grow is strictly for our own use and after a summer like we’ve had there’ll be barely enough of that to go round; I’m confidently expecting to have to set up soup kitchens in the bailey like they did once or twice in my father’s time. In Italy they don’t seem to have much idea of what a bad season can do to the produce of the farms; not that I suppose for a minute this junk ever came from Rome. It was probably drawn out by some fatpaunched little clerk in Paris or Bordeaux who’s never seen England and doesn’t want to and will sell our stuff over there at vast profits as fast as we can ship it. Anybody would think they’re deliberately trying to break us. If I squeeze all they demand out of the folk round about there’ll be deaths from starvation before the spring; on the other hand why I should buy in from Newworlders in Poole, give them back what I took from them, and ruin myself in the process I can’t imag -’

  She stopped dead; and the look in her eyes showed plainly she’d just received the import of a crude lesson in economics. ‘Sir John,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m not going to do it. There’s no reason, except pure maliciousness, why I should either starve my people or pauperize myself.

  She tapped her teeth thoughtfully with a stylus. ‘Have the towers send this message,’ she said. ‘Our crops are bad, if we meet these taxes we shall be in trouble before the spring. Tell them we’ll pay with a double levy next autumn; at least that’ll give us the chance to get some more acreage under cultivation, unless of course they decide to change their demands by then. Failing that we’ll make up in… oh, worsted, manufactured goods, whatever they want; but grain, no. It’s out of the question.’ So the message was passed; and a second signal was routed to Londinium informing the King of her reply to Rome.

  Next day the towers brought word that Charles was displeased, and had ordered Eleanor to pay; but by then it was too late, her answer was already clattering across France. ‘I’m afraid there was no help for it,’ she said to her seneschal, ‘but to present him with a fait accompli; what I’d like to have said to him, and to Pope John as well, was that there was no blood to be got by squeezing Dorset stone, though they were both very welcome to come on down and try.’ She was sitting at her dressing table, making up her face as she had been taught at Court; she drew a careful bow on her lips, blotted with a tissue. ‘God knows the Church is rich enough already,’ she finished bitterly. ‘What she expects to gain by sitting on the necks of a few poor savages in England, I have no idea…’

  She dismissed the whole subject; at the best of times politics tired her rapidly, and she was becoming very interested in certain surreptitious alterations she was making to her home. The most daring of them, and the most heretical, was the installation of electric lighting. She had commissioned a craftsman of the village to build and wind a generator, and proposed to drive it by a steam engine of a type designed to be fitted into lorries. The work had to be done secretly as although the principles of the electro-motive force had been known for many years the Church had never sanctioned its domestic use. The completed unit was to be housed in one of the towers of the lower bailey wall, far enough away for its clanking not to disturb the household’s rest, and Eleanor expected if not spectacular results, at least enough light to dispel the worst gloom of winter. And heating too, if things went well; for she had remembered from her schooling that a wire, suitably wound on an earthenware former, could be made to glow redly if sufficient difference in potential could be created between its ends. To her questions as to whether her generator would bring this state of affairs about, the seneschal replied quietly that such a thing was not inconceivable; but further than that he refused to be drawn.

  ‘Why, Sir John,’ said Eleanor archly, ‘you don’t sound as if you approve. Last winter I swear I had frostbite in at least nine of my toes, and that in spite of sleeping in flannel so thick the Pope himself would have been impressed by my rectitude. Would you begrudge me what little comfort is left to my declining years?’

  He smiled at that, but wouldn’t answer; and shortly afterwards the generator began to chuff and an element glowed brightly at the foot of Her Ladyship’s bed, frightening the wits out of a chambermaid who ran to the Serjeant of the Pantry with a tale that the stones themselves were burning, grinning at her with scarlet mouths.

  The same day Eleanor received a visit from a Captain of the Guild of Signallers. They sent runners from the outer barbican and she changed hastily, receiving him in the Great Hall with her seneschal and several gentlemen of the castle in attendance. A man of such status commanded great respect in the old times and Eleanor loved the Guild with all her heart though they had never been and never would be subjects of hers. The respect was mutual; for who else, on the occasion of Robert’s fortieth birthday, would have been taken to the Semaphore and let to spell her father’s name with her own hands, on the levers only Guildsmen were allowed to move?

  The Captain came in stolidly, a grizzled man in worn green leather with the silver brassard and crossed lanyards of his rank displayed in place. His eyes took in the electric light with which the place was flooded, but he made no comment. He came straight to the point, speaking bluntly as was the way for the Guild; for when kings watched their semaphores as eagerly as commoners they had never found a use for fancy words.

  ‘My Lady,’ he said. ‘His Eminence the Archbishop of Londinium took horse today for Purbeck, bringing with him a force of some seventy men, hoping to take you unprepared and make you yield your hall and your demesnes to John.’

  She went pale, but a red anger spot
glowed on each cheek. ‘How can you know this, Captain?’ she asked coolly. ‘London is well over a day away, and the towers have been quiet. Had it been reported, I would have been told.’

  He shifted his feet where he stood with legs apart on the carpeting of the dais. ‘The Guild fears no man,’ he said finally. ‘Our messages are for all who can to read. But there are times, and this is one of them, when words are best not given to the grids. Then there are other, swifter means.’

  There was a hush at that, for he meant necromancy; and that was not a subject to be lightly, bandied, even in the free air of Eleanor’s hall. The seneschal alone understood his meaning fully; and to him the Signaller bowed, recognising a knowledge greater and more ancient than his own. Eleanor caught the look that passed between them and shivered; then she recovered herself and tossed her head.

  ‘Well, Captain,’ she said, ‘our gratitude is deep. How deep, only you can know. If you have nothing to add to what you’ve told me, can I give you wine? My Hall would be honoured.’

  He bowed again, accepting the gesture; and few enough there were who could have offered it, for the Guildsmen didn’t come often into the houses of the uninitiated, even the great of the land.

  She roused out some two score of her liege-folk and armed them, and when His Eminence came in sight of Corfe towers the semaphores had already informed him of the state of things inside. He quartered his men in the village and came on with an escort of half a dozen, making a great show of the peacefulness of his intentions. They were conducted through the outer gate by a conspicuously well-armed guard and taken to the Great Hall, where they were told the Lady Eleanor would receive them. So she did; but not for over an hour, and the great man was fuming and striding the carpet well before that. She hung back in her room, seeing to the last details of her makeup and dress; she had previously sent for her seneschal and asked him to attend her.