by Mary Lide
‘Beg pardon, my lady.’ The boy backed in alarm, his clipped speech sounding strange to my ears, which was used to our softer western tongue.
‘Hist, hist, my lamb,’ said Gwendyth, hauling the curtains into place, trying to straighten my dishevelled hair, which hung red and lank with heat, and arranging my torn travelling robe. ‘Forbear now, hush now.’
I paid no heed to her grumbles, and would have been out of the litter in a flash had she given me a chance, which she did not. It was light at the end of a long darkness, after confusion and death.
‘Let be,’ I cried to her in our native tongue. ‘Did you see their armour? Even the guards wear byrnies of mail. And did you see their surcoats and their shields? They have pictures on them, gold and red, was it birds?’ I tried to break free again.
'And their horses? They were bigger than ours, but not as good as my father’s greys . . . How big is the castle, think you? Is that the earl himself who comes to greet us?’
‘Lady Ann,’ she said, hushing me, although there was no one there who would have understood our Celtic speech, ‘we have not come all this way to go tumbling about in the mire with the common soldiers. Look you, how far we have come, cooped up like hens for market (the only word of complaint she let drop), ‘and weather to rot men’s bones, God save us. You can bide awhile longer in patience, as is becoming. For we are here to seek refuge with your new liege lord and suzerain, Lord Raoul; the old earl being dead, God save his soul. Nor would it be meet for your overlord to come to seek you out, he being a great lord, and you his vassal and ward. That will be his seneschal, or chief officer, that elderly knight upon the stairs. Lord Raoul, being young and unwed, is seldom here at Sedgemont. And you must remember now, Lady Ann, that we must speak as the others do, so all may understand us. And not run behind the men-at-arms and stable boys as permitted by your brother, God rest his soul. And that you are heiress to all the lands of your father in Cambray, and that you hold them in gift and fee of Lord Raoul. . .’
It was not that she was speaking in Norman-French, with less skill than I, for I knew it well enough and spoke it with my father and the upper folk at Cambray, nor was it that she would betray the Celt in us by holding their speech to be of little worth, although I told her that too. It was the words themselves, bleak and uncompromising, that brought the darkness back again. For all its similarities, Sedgemont was not my home. And we were strangers, unwanted here. All around was confusion and death . . . death to brother, father, and all my childhood had known. I turned my back upon the seneschal, Sir Brian; I would not greet his lady wife, who followed to bid us welcome. I would not smile or curtsy to all those staring men. So came I to Sedgemont, and saw it for the first time, and the stable boy, Giles, who would have put his hand out to save me, and Sir Brian and his lady, Mildred. And finally, Lord Raoul himself, whom I disliked the most of all.
I will not count the early days at Sedgemont. They merged as one, into that darkness that followed the leaving of Cambray, the journey there, the horrors before. Sufficient to say it was the autumn of that terrible year. Dark for me, dark for England. Drear weather, poor harvest, rebellion, civil war — everywhere was death. Did it seem a dream or was it as real now as the day his companions brought my brother back, wrapped in his cloak, his arms trailing beneath as if they were too heavy to lift?
‘Drowned?’ said my father as they met in the courtyard at Cambray. He leaned over the side of his great grey horse and his face turned white under its open helmet. ‘Talisin, who swims like an otter?’ He slid forward from his horse. Colour never came back to him again; he was as if a dead man, crushed by grief. Although he sat for two days more with his sword across his knees at Talisin’s bier, he never moved or spoke, not even when I was sent to his side to tug and plead with him. So, they say, sat Henry the King when news came of his son’s drowning in the wreck of the White Ship. But the king lived on to speak and plan again. Although my father’s friends came for the burying, he said no word to them, did not move, and died at the second night with his sword naked in his hand. Nor did he plan for the daughter who still survived, but turned his face to the wall. Did he die of grief, of broken heart and broken hopes, that old soldier, come at last to lands and happiness, only to have them snatched away? Had he guessed something about my brother’s death that I was to learn years after? I only know I could not believe that Talisin was dead. He was as skilful as a seal in the rough waters of our coast. At times I used to go with him as he stripped upon the beach, as careless of me as a puppy underfoot. Clad in the breech clout he wore beneath his harness, he would run into the waves, no sport of Normans this, but of the old people, the sea folk of the first ages. Once I watched him and my father together. Both their bodies were white except where wind and sun had tanned them, but my father’s was seamed with old wounds like a gnarled tree. They were of a height, but my father was thicker, and beside him Talisin looked gangling, not yet grown into his strength. I slid among the sand dunes, ruining my clothes again, and made my way down to where they had left their cloaks. There I sat and waited, whilst behind me the men tended the horses, whistled and laughed among themselves. Talisin saw me although I crouched low. He turned to say something to my father, who I thought would shout at me to be gone. But this time he looked and laughed himself. His indulgence gave me courage. I ran towards Talisin, gathering up the skirts of my dress to skip over the waves. He took me by the hand and jumped me over; the green and brown dress billowed and sank beneath the rush of water like a piece of weed. I tore it off and let it float away. Naked and happy, I swam through the breakers, and he bore me on his back like the dolphins. And when he was done, he wrapped me in his red woollen cloak and set me on his horse and we rode back to Cambray together, Gwendyth clucking and fussing that I would be the death of her. Death. How could the sea have taken my brother and thrown him lifeless, empty, upon the shore? Where were his friends that they did not help him? Why did my father sit with drawn sword in the presence of his companions? Why would my father not speak to me?
‘Look, Father,’ Talisin had said that day as we rode back, ‘she rides as well as she swims. One day there will not be a horse she cannot straddle. We will never make a Norman lady out of her.’
‘The nuns will do it when I bid them,’ my father said in his sharp way, but Talisin had laughed again, making things smooth between us. ‘She is Celt, my lord, through and through. She is of the old race, with those dark eyes and that long red hair,’ he said, making my father look at me despite himself. How could he have sat so white and still at the bier and said not a word to me for all my beggings? What had I done that he could not endure me? And of those other men who had crowded round afterwards, which ones could be trusted, which were friendly, which wished me harm?
So came I then to Sedgemont, to the castle of my liege lord, Raoul, to ask that he should hold my life and lands until I was of age to wed. For although Cambray was my father’s, he held it from the lords of Sedgemont; and I could not inherit it until, in due course, they gave me a husband of their choosing to hold it in my name. That, too, I found hard to bear, that I must leave my home and live far away, by the order of a lord I had never met but who could arrange all things to his liking. Had not I been tenacious of life, despite myself, I think I too might have turned my face to the wall then, and let darkness roll me under too deep to find, until Judgment Day bids all rise up again. Yet life there was; whether I would or not, it clung to me. And so time passed; I lived and grew, and events came to pass as you shall hear.
But one more recollection from that time, and let that year be done with. Let it go out of thought, out of mind, if we can keep it there. Yet sometimes, for all our care, those memories come crowding back, as fresh and clear as if they had happened yesterday, as if they have a life of their own, independent of us and our thoughts, as if somewhere God has had them in his keeping and reveals them to us, mirror-changed, what was and is and will be.
No doubt the damp and cold had sickened
me; no doubt death had spread his bony fingers to clutch me fast. I lay in the small bed in the anteroom where Gwendyth and I were bade go, and neither stirred nor smiled. I remember Sir Brian’s concern, which soon changed to scorn and alarm at my surliness. I remember my father’s men in their old-fashioned mail jackets; small and dark and strange they seemed beside these well-fed Norman knights, who looked askance at their old-fashioned ways. Had I been in health, curiosity would not have let me be so indifferent to what was to become of us. As it was, after that first surge of excitement at our arrival, it was indifference and lethargy I felt. And inferiority. I had never been away from Cambray before. Although my father paid me little heed, he and my brother were the sun of my world. At Sedgemont, I was desolate, having no friends, knowing no one, clinging to Gwendyth as she to me, because we had no choice. And although this place was to become my home, I did not fit into its life, as will soon be made clear.
One afternoon, when I was up and about, languid yet restless, Gwendyth decided I should go with the other children to play in the pleaunce, or pleasure gardens, which lay outside the main castle wall, built long ago, perhaps by Earl Raymond for his wife and her ladies to remind them of their French castles they had left behind. It was a heavy November day, a day out of season, close and thick as honey, although perhaps the heaviness lay in me, making it difficult to move or breathe. The gardens had been neglected, the grass ran wild, the flower beds sprawled with weeds, but it was a place for the children of the castle to frolic under the care of their nurses, who, in turn, were eyed by the men-at-arms lounging along the walks and at the castle gates. There were not many children even then at Sedgemont, for Sir Brian and his lady had none and Lord Raoul was unwed. What there were, offspring of some of the castle guards, a few younger pages from Lord Raoul’s retinue, were older than I, and if truth be told, of lower standing; although they, not I, would have thought of that. We watched one another warily. Why Gwendyth had brought me there to be with them is beyond understanding. Perhaps she thought it would amuse me, who had little truck with childish things; perhaps, more like, she hoped to make me known and befriended. Poor soul, I never did what she hoped most. These boys and girls, with their clipped speech, were an unfamiliar breed to me. I answered them curtly when they spoke, and no doubt they felt ill used that I should put on airs. I heard their serving women comment on my lack of manners, and when Gwendyth mispronounced a word, they tittered at us both.
‘I’ve no wish to be here, Gwendyth,’ I told her in our own tongue. ‘I find no pleasure in these pleasure gardens.’
‘Nay, my lady, love,’ she cajoled, ‘wait, my love, you are but shy. See, they are playing a game now. Go to, join in with them.’
It was a silly game, I thought, although children still play it; and had I been alone, I would have held myself too old to take part, for all that the others seemed to enjoy it. They bind your eyes with a hood, then turn you round and round to lose all sense of where you are. You must make your way with halting steps in and out of the bushes along the gravelled walks; feeling for the other players as you go. If you catch one, you must say who it is before they unbind your hood. I did not want to take part; and sensing my reluctance, they were careful to bind the hood the tighter and to twirl me the faster, more than they did for their companions. I felt stifled in that hood. The darkness bothered, yes, frightened me. I did not know in what direction the paths ran among the stunted bushes and daisy flowers and I kept tripping over roots and stones. From all sides I could hear laughter, thin and mocking like fingers that point; and beneath the hood, I, who never cried, sensed tears start suddenly. I stumbled from side to side. My new dress, which Gwendyth had taken such pains to copy from theirs, snagged on thorns, and my feet slid in their new high-heeled shoes. If I could, I would have ripped off all and run far away.
Suddenly a hand caught mine to steady me. It was warm and strong, a young man’s hand, and the voice that said, ‘Now, little maid, judge me who I am?’ was a young man’s voice. I tugged at the hood, its knot cutting into my forehead. ‘Guess who, guess who,’ the others cried, but my captor helped me ease off the covering although I made no attempt to name him. I stood looking into eyes I recognised, grey green, dark lashed, set in a brown face beneath long gold-silver hair.
‘Talisin,’ my heart cried out, ‘Talisin, you have come back,’ and my longing swept in a wave so strong that even today I feel its warmth. The day, the game, the darkness, melted into that flash of hope, even as I realised the eyes were not the same shape, but slanting, wider set, and the hair was cut long in the French fashion. And the face, now that I beheld it clear, was one I had never seen before.
‘You have not guessed who I am,’ he cried, his voice light with laughter, warm. It was a Norman voice. He stood there in his rich furred cloak and his rich embroidered clothes, his hand still upon my shoulder. The others came crowding round then, and with them the young men and ladies of the castle, laughing at him as he spoke, a man playing at a child’s game, and children squealed at the jest of it.
‘Come,’ he repeated with the same hint of laughter, ‘who am I?’
I only knew that I did not care who he was, since he was not what I wanted most in this world. In a fit of grief and rage, I bent and bit that hand that held me, grief and rage contending against that moment’s hope. He started back, trying to shake me off, but like a stoat or weasel, I hung on, feeling my teeth break through his skin, kicking and flailing with those high-heeled shoes Gwendyth was so proud of, hitting at his broad chest with all my might as he swung me off my feet.
They all came running in earnest then, children, ladies, servants, men-at-arms, crying out as we shook and tangled with each other
‘ ’Tis a wild creature,’ he said. ‘God’s wounds, loose me of this she-wolf before I crack her skull.’
They tore me off, standing aside afterwards as if I were indeed some mad thing. He stared at me, blood pouring from his wrist over his embroidered sleeve.
‘I thought it a child’s game,’ he said. ‘Who is she?’
There were many voices quick to give me name, although before not one would have called me by it.
‘Lady Ann of Cambray,’ he said. ‘I would doubt it.’
There was such scorn in his voice that even I cringed. They crowded round him, pointing at the blood although he paid it no heed. I heard someone explaining who I was: ‘A half-Celt, sir,’ he said, ‘whose dam was Celt,’ as if that explained all. At that insult I would have lashed out again, but they held me back.
‘Take her off,’ he said then to Gwendyth, the grey eyes that had been so merry now cold as slate. ‘Bear her off wherever you bestow unruly brats. Out of sight. Let her not grace our presence again, lest she think to feed off us a second time.’ Red with embarrassment, Gwendyth hauled me away. But I turned once, craning round almost against my will, before we passed from the garden back through the small sally port into the castle. He was standing where I had seen him first, a head taller than the rest, listening to the ninnies jabber at him as if what they said was important. They were a flock of gaily coloured birds, I thought, cooing and preening and fluttering about him. And what a fool was he, I told myself, to pay them heed, a popinjay, to preen so among them. That was the first time that I met Lord Raoul, and the last for many years. God forgive me then, but how I did hate him for not being what I had thought; how I did long to rend him as I rent myself.
So, there was darkness and grief, and for all Gwendyth’s naggings, I would not show myself abroad to be a butt for their humour. And when I had outgrown my first sense of outrage, Lord Raoul had already gone to join King Stephen at court, and all his guard with him. Sir Brian’s wife was left as chatelaine to a half-empty keep, and all the bustle of normal castle life dwindled back to the simple routine of a world of old men and frightened women. Even my small force had gone too, taken by Lord Raoul as part of his feudal levy before I realised it. And we were left alone in Sedgemont, Gwendyth and I.
It was
a strong castle. Earl Raymond had chosen well when he took and enlarged the original Saxon keep that stood in a deep valley, surrounded by forests. Isolated, well fortified against attack, it was meant to be a sanctuary, a lord’s demesne where he could feel safe. No doubt that is why I was sent there, it being more secure than a border fortress like Cambray. The woods that ringed it were like a wall of green, merging far off into a faint line of distant hills. Long before I ever crossed into those woods, I used to stare at the hills from the castle battlements and wonder what lay beyond, and I never entered beneath those cool low-hanging trees without a sense of mystery. But the real strength of Sedgemont was in its position upon the edge of a swiftflowing river that fed the valley from its northern end. Built on a great slab of rock that rose abruptly from the meadow-land that edged the castle round—another defence too: an enemy force could not creep upon us from the woods without being seen—the great walls and towers surged smoothly up, almost impregnable. We had height, water, a rolling plain before, and miles of wild forest land beyond. No wonder Lord Raoul felt safe to leave it partly staffed, in a woman’s hands. A besieging force would have had no easy victory here. And the Lady Mildred’s very nervousness was added protection, for she never relaxed watch or ward. True, these were still dangerous times and she was shy and retiring, frightened of her own shadow. In these days of tension and trouble, she saw dangers that did not even exist. But that was just as well. While she and her ladies cowered within the women’s bower, the passages, courtyards, and crannies of the castle itself soon revealed their secrets to me, who felt free to roam them as I wished. For I must explain to you who know more settled ways, how different life was then. Had things been normal, I should never have known such liberty. Even at Cambray, I was not so free as I became here. A girl cannot grow up the plaything of a castle, lacking womenfolk, or so my father used to say. Had he lived, no doubt he would have sent me to a convent as he used to threaten. Only Talisin had stood between me and my father’s threats before. ‘Let her bide,’ he used to say, hiding or pretending to hide me behind him. ‘My lord, she is still young. She will grow to woman’s ways.’ And he would smile, half to himself, beginning then to know women overwell and, like all young men, sure of himself with them. In my father’s court at Cambray, Talisin would have protected me. Arid had these been normal years, Sedgemont too would have had its share of young folk, pages of good family, come to learn their role at a lord’s table, squires to ride and fight on his behalf, young gentlewomen training to catch rich husbands . . . but squires and pages had all gone with Lord Raoul, or else their fathers kept them at home. In troublesome times, people held their families together under one roof, as indeed my father had kept Talisin; many a man has been ruined by ransom of his son captured in another man’s quarrel. And the young ladies who might have come to wait upon a lady of Sedgemont, had there been one, did not seek out the chatelaine. Lady Mildred, as I said, had no children of her own; there soon were no children left at Sedgemont at all, not that I missed them, those giggling silly brats. And I think Lady Mildred preferred to forget that I was there, being content with the older, staid servant women whom she had known since her youth. Since nothing would have persuaded me to turn to her for help, Gwendyth and I were left to fend for ourselves. Gwendyth had put the thought into my mind when she had said it was not meet for us to go running to the lords and ladies of Sedgemont. And Lord Raoul’s words too rankled deep. If I was not fit to grace his presence, then I would never seek it out. I swore I would not enter his Hall without his express apology and invitation, nor look for advice from those who served him. And since even at this young age I had a mind of my own, as stubborn as steel, I would not give way, for all Gwendyth’s coaxing.
