Eleanor reined in, panting. ‘It’s no good, we’ve lost her. Honestly…’ She pulled the gauntlet off her wrist, and hooked it over her saddlebow. ‘I’m beginning to see why they talk about being bird-brained… Sir John, what is it?’
He was staring back the way they had come, narrowing his eyes against the cool bright sun. ‘Lady,’ he said urgently, ‘the hawk stooped on a hare, and fell beneath an eagle…’
He spun his horse. ‘Ride, quickly. Make for the Wareham Road…’
She saw them then; a line of specks strung out across the heath. Horsemen, moving fast. They were too far off for their features to be seen but there was little doubt of their identity; Sir Anthony had sprung his trap at last. Eleanor glared right and left. The pursuers were well spaced; hopeless to try to outflank by drawing across their line. She turned in the saddle. Ahead of her a track stretched into distance, a white thread laid across the heath; beyond was the pale glow of the sea. There was no doubt about the way; she spun her horse, flicking it into a gallop.
The men behind, their mounts fresher, gained steadily; a half mile further on they were close enough to call to her, telling her to give up. A pistol banged flatly; Eleanor turned back to the seneschal and her mount stumbled, pitching her headlong. She rolled, covering her face as she had once been taught, rose tousled but unharmed. Beside her the horse lay screaming, blood dribbling brightly from a foreleg.
She ran to it, eyes wide. The seneschal had wheeled behind her; he dismounted and thrust his reins into her hand. ‘My Lady… ride for Wareham…’
She shook her head dazedly, trying to think. ‘He’s blown, there isn’t a chance. They’d take me on the road…’ The horsemen were close; the seneschal raised a pistol, steadied the barrel on his forearm, and squeezed the trigger. By the merest accident the ball took one of the riders in the chest, fetching him from his horse; the line wheeled, momentarily confused.
A whistling sounded. Eleanor turned, fists clenched. Behind her, distant on the rutted strip of road, a heavy steamer laboured with a train of waggons. She began to run towards it, feeling the air scythe into her lungs. A pistol exploded again; this time she heard the ball cut through the grass twenty yards to her right. Another shot; she snatched a backward glance, saw the seneschal ridden down by a mounted man. Then her feet were stumbling along the road, and the engine was very close.
She stopped by it, leaning on the great rear wheel and panting, seeing the oldness of the steamer, the canopy pierced through with holes, the rust streaks and the bubbling of water from ancient boiler joints. A great worn-out wreck she was, ending her days hauling wood and manure and stone, but still liveried in the dark maroon of Strange and Sons. Her driver was a fair-haired boy in the corduroys and buckled cap of a haulier, greasy muffler knotted round his neck. Eleanor gulped and thrust her hand up so he could see the ring she wore. ‘Tell me quickly,’ she panted. ‘Where is your home?’
‘Durnovaria, Lady…’ ‘Then you are my liege man,’ she gasped. ‘Fight this treachery…’
He answered something, startled; she didn’t hear the words. His hands went to regulator and brake, she heard the sudden overworked thunder of the engine. She flung herself away; a hot drizzle lashed her face, smoke stung her lungs and the train was past, gathering speed down the road, the loco half hidden by steam as the driver used his whistle over and again.
What followed was confused. The horses, bunched, were scattered by the iron shrieking; the haulier spun his wheel, turning the engine onto the rough. Three of the waggons broke clear; the others, loaded high and bound with tarpaulin, swayed behind the steamer as she bounced towards Sir Anthony. He bellowed with rage, whirling a sword; a charger bucked, throwing a soldier over its neck; the chest of another man was crushed by cascading blocks of stone. A rider raised a pistol, firing blind; the ball struck the hornplate of the loco, throwing hot splinters into her driver’s face. He flung up his hands and a second shot took him in the armpit, bowling him from the footplate. The loco, regulator open, ploughed by Sir Anthony. Fifty yards on, one wheel struck a mound in the grass. She slewed, held back by her load; a huge grinding, a hissing explosion of steam and she landed on her side, flywheel still churning, cinders from her firebox scattering across the grass. Flames licked up at once, showing brightly through the drifting smoke. She burned the rest of the day; it was night before a peasant child crept close enough to the wreck to prise the naveplate from one mighty wheel. He kept it in his cottage, polished bright; and half a life-time later he would still tell his children the tale, and take the big disc down and fondle it, and say it came from a great road steamer called the Lady Margaret.
Escape was no longer possible; Eleanor rose sullenly and let her wrists be pinioned at her sides. She saw the seneschal, arms similarly held, queer light eyes blazing with rage; beside’ him two men supported the haulier. The boy was coughing, face masked bright with blood. Sir John’s second shot had struck the tip of the Provost Marshall’s thumb, flicking back the nail till it stood at right angles from the flesh; he was dancing and swearing, fussing with a handkerchief. ‘When slaves revolt,’ he fumed, ‘raising their hands against their masters, then there’s no more but this…’
The haulier was pulled forward. Eleanor shrieked; a falchion swung hissing to bite into his neck. The blow, badly delivered, didn’t kill; the boy scuttled to her, wetting her feet with blood while they cut at him in panic. It seemed an age before the thing was through; the body flopped and leaped, subsided into stillness.
It was the first violent death the Lady Eleanor had ever seen; and it had overtones of horror she was never likely to forget. She hung her head, trying not to faint, seeing the blood run glittering and soak into the dust. She didn’t faint; instead she began to vomit. The spasms became more violent; she tore her arms from the men who held her, dropped to her knees and panted. When she had finished she raised a face that was blazing white to the lips; and she began to swear. She swore in English and French, Celtic, and Latin and Gaelic; she cursed Sir Anthony and his men, promising them a dozen different deaths in a flat, nearly gentle voice that seemed to hold the Provost Marshall fascinated. He stopped bothering with his thumb, stood frowning; then he recollected himself and bellowed for his men to fetch the riderless horses.
The seneschal was forced to mount; a soldier swung Eleanor up in front of him and the party struck out past the crackling wreck of the steamer and across the heath, intending no doubt to rendezvous with some fishing boat that would take the captives out of reach of any pursuit. In those days there were men in Poole who would have ferried the King himself into bondage if the price was right.
Whatever scheme Sir Anthony had in mind was never put into effect. Somewhere across the heath the Signallers had seen, watching the distant fight through their great Zeiss lenses, and the pall of smoke from the burning train had been easily visible from Corfe. Signals flew, alerting not only the castle garrison but the militia of Wareham; the party was intercepted before it reached the sea. The Provost Marshall checked when he saw he was cut off, and would have made great play of having Eleanor as a hostage had she not bitten the wrist of the man who held her and tumbled off a horse for the second time that day. She landed in a stand of gorse, rose scratched and bleeding and more furious than ever; the fight was over within minutes and Sir Anthony and his people threw down their arms.
She limped to where they stood on the heath, surrounded by a ring of guns. Men ran to her but she pushed them away. She circled the prisoners slowly, rubbing her hip, picking unconsciously at the grass and twigs on her skirt; and it seemed the rage bubbled and boiled in her brain like the strange fumes of a wine. ‘Well, Sir Anthony,’ she said. ‘We made a little promise on the road. And here in the West, you’ll find we keep our word…’
He tried to barter with her then, or beg his life; but she stared at him as if he spoke an unknown tongue. ‘Ask mercy of the wind,’ she said, almost wonderingly. ‘Beg to the rocks, or the great waves of the sea. Don’t come and
whine to me…’ She turned aside to the seneschal. ‘Hang them,’ she said. ‘For treason, and for murder…’
‘My Lady-’
She screamed at him suddenly, stamping on the ground. ‘Hang them…’
Beside her a soldier sat a restless horse; she grabbed his jerkin and pulled, nearly tumbling him from the saddle. She was mounted and away before a hand could be raised, riding furiously across the heath, beating the neck of the animal with her fist. The seneschal followed her, leaving, the prisoners to their fate. She reined a mile from the castle, dropped to the ground, and ran to a knoll from where she could see her home spread out before her, the baileys and towers and the flanking hills clear in the bright air. She gripped the stirrup of the seneschal as he rode alongside, fingers twisting the stiff leather. If he’d hoped the wild ride would calm her he was disappointed. She was nearly too angry to speak; the syllables jerked out from her like the cracking of sheets of glass.
‘Sir John,’ she said, ‘before our people came, and took this land with blood at Santlache Field, that place was called a Gate. Is this not true?’
He said heavily, ‘Yes, my Lady.’
‘Why then,’ she said, ‘let it be so again. Go to my tenants in the Great Plain, and north as far as Sarum Town. Go west to Durnovaria, and east to the village on the Bourne. Tell them…’ She choked and steadied herself. ‘Tell them, they pay no tithes to Purbeck but in arms. Tell them that Gate is closed, and Eleanor holds the key…’
She tore at the seal on her finger. ‘Take my ring, and go…’
He gripped her shoulder and turned her, staring into her wild eyes. ‘Lady,’ he said deliberately, ‘this is war…’
She knocked his hand away, panting for breath. ‘Will you go,’ she fumed, ‘or shall I send another?…’
He said nothing else but touched heels to his horse and turned it; galloped north, trailing dust, along the Wareham Road. She mounted again and rode yelling into the valley, scattering the little chugging cars, sending them batwinging into the hedges; and though her soldiers raked their horses bloody, none could match her speed.
Messages were despatched at once to Charles in Londinium, but all the semaphores brought back was the news that the King had already sailed for the Americas. Sir Anthony’s stroke had been well timed; for though there were rumours the Guild could even get a message to the New World, by means no one could guess at, there was no known way of contacting a ship at sea. Meanwhile the Provost Marshall’s supporters were rampaging round the capital threatening death, destruction, and worse while Henry of Rye and Deal, under direct instructions from Rome, was hastily assembling his force. What Eleanor had predicted had to a large extent come true; all sorts of dogs were yapping in the absence of the King. The fact that the quarrel had originally come about as a result of what was now generally admitted to be an administrative error made the situation even more ironic.
Her Ladyship faced many problems down in Dorset. She could levy men from the districts round about, the commoners would flock to her banner soon enough; but a standing army must be fed and clothed and armed. For days the rage sustained her while she worked with her captains and house people drawing up the lists of what she would need. Money was clearly the first essential; and for that she rode north, to Durnovaria. What passed between her and her aged grandfather was never known; but for a solid week the crimson-dressed steamers toiled down to Corfe Gate, hauling in produce free. Flour and grain they brought and livestock, salted meat and preserves, shot and powder and wads and musket balls, rope and slow match, oil and kerosene and tar; chain hoists rumbled all night long, derricks powered by panting donkey engines swung load after load high into the keep. Eleanor had no idea what support might be forthcoming from the rest of the country and planned for the worst, packing her baileys with men and supplies. That was how Henry came to find the place so well prepared, and in such a lethal temper.
Eleanor called the seneschal to her room on the evening following the massacre. She was deadly pale, her eyes ringed with dark shadows; she waved him to a chair, sat awhile staring into the firelight and leaping shadows.
‘Well, Sir John,’ she said finally, ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking up a glorious phrase for the… thing that happened this morning. This is it. "I’ve blown a Roman gadfly off my walls." Don’t you think that’s very good?’
He didn’t answer, and she laughed and coughed.
‘It doesn’t help of course,’ she said. ‘All I can see still are those creatures in the ditch, and writhing on the path. Somehow beside that nothing else seems real. Not any more.’
He waited again, knowing there was no help in words.
‘I’ve expelled Father Sebastian,’ she said. ‘He told me there was no forgiving what I’d done, not if I walked barefoot to Rome itself. I told him he’d better leave; if there was no forgiveness he couldn’t be a comfort and he was only putting himself in mortal sin by staying I said I knew I was damned because I’d damned myself. I didn’t have to wait for any god to do it for me. That was the worst of all of course; I only said it to hurt him but I realised afterwards I meant it anyhow, I just wasn’t a Christian any more. I said if necessary I’d raise up a few old gods, Thunor and Wo-Tan perhaps or Balder instead of Christ; for he told me himself many years ago when I was still taking lessons at his knee that Balder was only an older form of Jesus and that there have been many bleeding gods.’
She poured wine for herself, unsteadily. ‘And then I spent the rest of the afternoon getting drunk. Or trying to. Aren’t you disgusted?’
He shook his head. He’d never criticised her, not in all her life: and this wasn’t the time to start.
She laughed again, and rubbed her face. ‘I need… something.’ she said. ‘Maybe punishment. If I ordered you to fetch a whip and beat me till I bled, would you do it?’ He shook his head, lips pursed.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t, would you… Anything else, but you wouldn’t have me hurt. I feel I want to… scream, or be sick, or something. Maybe both. John, when I’m excommunicated, what will our people do?’
He’d already considered his answer carefully. ‘Disavow Rome,’ he said. ‘It’s gone too far now for anybody to turn back. You’ll see that, my Lady.’
‘And the Pope?’
He thought again for a moment. ‘He’ll certainly act,’ he said, ‘and that quickly; but I can’t see him ferrying an army all the way from Italy just to put down one strongpoint. What he’s almost bound to do is instruct his people in Londinium to march against us in force; and I think too we’ll be seeing some of the Seigneurs from the Loire and the Low Countries coming over to see what they can pick up in the confusion. They’ve been wanting to stake out a few claims on English soil for years enough now, and they’ll certainly never get a better chance.’
‘I see,’ she said wearily. ‘What it comes down to is I’ve made a complete mess of things; with Charles out of the way as well I’ve played right into their hands. They’ll be flocking into England, with the Church’s full blessing, to put down armed revolt. What the end of that will be I just can’t imagine.’
She got up and paced restlessly across the chamber and back. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘I just can’t sit still and wait, not tonight.’ She sent for a writer, and the officers commanding, her troops and artillery; they worked into the small hours drawing up lists of the extra provisions they would need to withstand a full-scale siege. ‘There’s no doubt,’ said Eleanor with a flash of her old practicality, ‘that we shall be bottled up for a considerable time; till Charles gets back in fact. There won’t be any question of chivalry either, of being let to walk out with our arms or anything like that, the whole thing’s far too serious; but at least we shall know by the time we’re through who’s actually running this country, ourselves or an Italian priest.’
She poured wine. ‘Well, gentlemen, let’s hear your recommendations. You can have anything you need, arms, men, provisions; I only ask one thing. Don’t leave anything ou
t. We can’t afford to forget any details; remember there’s a rope, or worse, waiting for every one of us if we make a single slip…’
The seneschal stayed with her after the others had gone, sitting drinking wine in the firelight and talking of all subjects from gods to kings; of the land, its history and its people; of Eleanor, and her family and upbringing. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it’s strange, Sir John; but it seemed this morning when I fired the gun I was standing outside myself, just watching what my body did. As if I, and you too, all of us, were just tiny puppets on the grass. Or on a stage. Little mechanical things playing out parts we didn’t understand.’ She stared into her wineglass, swilling it in her hands to see flame light and lamplight dance from the goldenness inside; then she looked up frowning, eyes opaque and dark. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
He nodded, gravely. ‘Yes, my Lady…’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s like a… dance somehow, a minuet or a pavane. Something stately and pointless, with all its steps set out. With a beginning, and an end… ‘
She tucked her legs under her, as she sat beside the fire. ‘Sir John,’ she said, ‘sometimes I think life’s all a mass of significance, all sorts of strands and threads woven like a tapestry or a brocade. So if you pulled one out or broke it the pattern would alter right back through the cloth. Then I think… it’s all totally pointless, it would make just as much sense backwards as forwards, effects leading to causes and those to more effects… maybe that’s what will happen, when we get to the end of Time. The whole world will shoot undone like a spring, and wind itself back to the start…’ She rubbed her forehead tiredly. ‘I’m not making sense, am I? It’s getting too late for me…’
Pavane sm-35 Page 23