by Mary Lide
Then, too, there was the fact that I had nowhere else to go. Cambray was still occupied. Even if I had gone there, I might not have been well received. I could not return to Sedgemont. And unless I came full-heralded, escorted as was fitting, welcomed, in short, as to my rightful place and accepted with due pomp and dignities, I meant to have no dealings with the Lord of Sedgemont at all.
When the time is ripe, I thought, not knowing when or how that would be, but feeling that it was due me at some time, only then will I show him who I am. It did not fit my self-image to be caught skulking about his camp.
I know as well as you that it is sin for women to go abroad in men’s guise, but what would you have me do else? I could not have crept among the camp women; indeed, would never have thought of that had not the old man in the village put me in mind of it. No doubt, there were many women attached leechlike to this camp as to all others, if not within, then close without the walls. What army moved without them? Older perhaps, more experienced, I might have attempted it. I believe I could at least have spoken like them still; they would be Celts, most of them here, although it was long since I had talked in my own tongue. But other things were beyond my counterfeiting at that time, not so much because I had led a sheltered life, but because I had had no practice at any other. And within the camp itself, there were added advantages that, in my case, made life easier for me.
First of all, I was not unaccustomed to work about stable and yard. Had not I lived at Sedgemont as I had, I could not have managed it. Then, too, I was slight enough to be taken for one of the younger pages, who were always underfoot, doing the most menial of tasks. Then, too, most of the men who served Lord Raoul were like my friendly companion: plain, serviceable lords not given to flaunting rank and badges in the Angevin style. Except for the hawks of Sedgemont, worn by Lord Raoul’s household guard in Norman fashion, his vassals were content as my father had been with plain colours, plain gear. Today a page who does not wear his master’s device even to the toes of his long shoes is an object of ridicule. Then I could merge without difficulty into a group of nondescript youths, whose ranks varied, depending how their masters came and went. For this was a feudal host, not mercenary troops; they served a few weeks at a time, as long as their feudal bond ordered. Some stayed longer, some less. Some welcomed the chance, perhaps, of life in the field as place of adventure, although the routines, when one learned them, were not so exciting as all that. Had my old lord spoken to anyone of me, he would have found it hard to track me down, to say nothing of a ‘father’s overlord’. And all this coming and going gave me opportunity to hide myself away from too-close contact, from scrutiny.
How did I live, then, in a camp of men? Among the boys, keeping myself to myself, running errands for the older among us, helping the younger, speaking seldom so I gained a reputation for moroseness. The weather improved, which was fortunate; mild now with sudden promise of spring, which comes earlier to the western reaches of the country. Night caused most difficulties, but I bedded near my horse, wrapped in my cloak with bundles of leaves and twigs to soften the ground. Sometimes then I would lie back beneath clear skies and try to imagine what my life would become. At times that seemed as difficult as remembering what it had been. At other times, when the soughing of the wind over the moors was like waves upon a beach, a long slow sound, I would think of Cambray and wonder if, after all, like one of those Celtic women warriors of old, I would ride my horse up to its walls and storm them with my men. Or, in more thoughtful mood, I would realise again that if Lord Raoul and all his men could not take it by force then we must think of some trick, some subterfuge, and I would rack memory for some clue as to how the walls might be breached. Or, best of all, I would imagine how it might be that Lord Raoul himself would come to me and beg for help, and pledge my full right to Cambray at last. But these were all childish imaginings, the last I would have. Childhood had long gone.
It was a rough life. The Lady Mildred, I thought, might have swooned for horror of it, and yet perhaps not. She was harder than she seemed. When grief came to her, she endured with more grace and courage than I would have done. Lord Raoul kept his men occupied. He worked to form them to a coherent group, and when they were not on patrol, he tired them at drills and exercises. They were often restless with each other though, wild and angry, mainly because they saw no end to their work, more than a year of it. A thankless task is a border watch, chasing strays for the most part, like dogs, back where they belong. There were often fights among the common men, once a knifing that left two dead. The younger boys crowded avidly after such sights, partly no doubt because it satisfied their desire for action. I saw men punished for wrongs they had done, and the punishments, although just, were swift and hard. A flogging I saw, a branding of a thief. I went quickly away to stop my ears from the screams, but they echoed on. We ate roughly, but in this warmer, milder weather—better than Giles’s reports would suggest—I learned to scrabble for myself at the communal kitchens, and water was to be had in plenty from a spring in a dell or niche at the cliff’s edge among a scrawny stand of trees. Our greatest lack was bread, for grain was always in short supply along the border; and under pain of death, it had been forbidden to take supplies without payment of some kind. Lord Raoul’s vassals dined apart from the common mass, waited on by their squires and pages, but they ate no better or worse than we did. And so the pattern of life continued.
We rose at dawn, when the mists were still thick like crusts and frost sometimes lay like shards upon the grass. We took the horses to be watered down the steep cliff paths to the river, and we groomed and saddled those that were to be ridden out. Many a cuff for some imagined flaw I had dodged myself. Yet it was easier than now. The horses’ gear was plain and serviceable, like the men who rode them; neither needed cosseting, finery, or favours. The patrols rode out in the early morning and returned by late afternoon. Once I saw Lord Raoul at their head, his standard flying. Once I saw him return and watched how the Celtic women, who, as I had thought, had leave to roam into the camp, came running to cheer.
Like the womenfolk of Sedgemont, I thought, turning aside, and remembered what the old man had warned: He will have forgotten you. Well, when the patrols were gone out, those left behind rode at the tilt, or practised sword play (I watched Giles at that one day; he had improved, but he did not win the bout), while the boys ran errands, cleared up the debris of the camp, and cleaned arms and tack, that everlasting cleaning of sword and shield. Yet I learned the value of it. A rust spot will catch as you seek to draw your sword free of its sheath, and that delay will kill you if your enemy is faster. A dented shield cannot deflect a blow as rapidly as a perfect one. Bowstrings that are not coiled will not tighten around the bow. A warped arrow will not fly true. So a knight relies upon his pages and squires to see that all his accoutrements are in order, as once he served his lord. Each in turn knows that if he fails, another man’s life rests on his conscience. That, too, is a trust among fighting men, one bound to the next as in a chain. And in the evening, when the patrols had returned, with game, if we were lucky, caught on their way back, the great wooden gates that had been fitted to the entrance were swung into place. Then, when horses were cared for, and weary men pulled off their sweat-stained mail coats—then was there time for gossip and talk. Sometimes the older boys who waited on their lords at table would bring back some piece of news which we fastened on as eagerly as we did the scraps of food they smuggled out. Sometimes, someone would take up a lute or pipe and sing songs, bawdy, most of them, but funny for all that. Sometimes we would even creep to the main tent where Lord Raoul and his friends dined and hear him play, although I never stayed to listen myself for fear of discovery. And sometimes we would go down to the outer bank where the Celtic women would dance and sing for the men, if they did not scare us away. And if one of these, a tall red-haired woman I had noticed before, often left by herself and slipped towards Lord Raoul’s tent, well then, that too had to be borne.
One day there was a surge of excitement. A group of Celtic riders had come up to the outer guards and were let pass. First came their foot soldiers, running with their spears held at a slant. Then the horsemen themselves. It was strange to see them coming down off the moors on their small ponies in their furred hooded cloaks, stranger still to have them pass without stopping to salute as once they would have done. Had I been in my father’s keep, they would have tossed some gift at my feet: strings of polished stones, fox skins, once, when I sat with Talisin, a basket of woven reed with faint speckled eggs glowing in their nest of fern. They brought no gifts to Lord Raoul’s tent, nor did they knuckle salute as they used to do to my father, but rode their ponies swiftly, hands close to hips near their axe shafts. I craned among the rest to catch a glimpse of them, to hear their talk perhaps, but they said nothing. And when they left, they were still silent. Later, they sent gifts of their own Celtic beer and wine, thick with honey, but they never came again; and hopes that they might have been envoys for the greater Welsh princes died away, and with it the hope of the treaty that made this border watch meaningful.
Perhaps it was their coming that made me careless again, or perhaps it had released some tension among us all. Or, as is most likely, my luck ran out. I had been in the camp for several weeks now. Looking back, I see how unlikely it was that I had remained so long without being detected. But I might have survived a while longer had I been careful and kept to my silent, unobtrusive role.
There were many rumours abroad: that once the treaty with the Celts was made, Lord Raoul would move against the Angevins again; that he and the king would meet; that we would all go back to Sedgemont—this last, perhaps a source of disappointment to the younger boys who had not yet fleshed their swords. Over such military discussion was I undone. The hour was early, yet already smoke of woodfires began to stain the upper air. Huntsmen had been bringing in venison on large stretchers of wood. We would eat well tonight when the patrols returned. It was the time when weary men doffed their harness and lolled at ease in their tents waiting for the evening feast. There had been a flurry of activity in the women’s quarters. We had heard them laughing and shouting in their place against the wall, and I thought, too, how they would be kept busy that night, although that thought gave me no pleasure. Perhaps even, it was hearing them that made my mind wander. I had become so used to thinking of myself like one of my companions, thin and dirty in my rough, stained clothes. Catching glimpse of those women, among them the red-haired one I mentioned before, cavorting in her new finery, made me suddenly conscious of where I was and who I was. I sat glumly at the edge of a circle of boys, not moving away by myself, which, if I had kept to my usual habit, I would have done. And in this way I became involved in their quarrels. This was ill fortune, not contrived by malice. They were used to me, thinking, no doubt, if they thought at all, that I served some good-tempered lord who was more lenient, or that, which was part true, I served no man, was one of the flotsam that always attaches itself to a soldiers’ camp. Some of them lay on their backs idly, with eyes half-closed. Others ruminated aloud about the state of our affairs. Perhaps if I had kept some work in hand, I would not have been noticed. I have yet to meet a boy who will complain or question anyone willing to help him at some task he hates. But I know, if I am to be honest, that it was my unfortunate tongue. One dark-haired youth, son of a vassal lord and therefore privy to the latest news, was telling us what he had heard at his father’s table. Lord Raoul had been present.
‘And he says,’ the boy was ending his story triumphantly, ‘that if the Celts could be persuaded we would keep faith with them, then they would be more willing to treat with us. But the lords of Maneth must be curbed first. They threaten all the border lands to our north.’
They laughed. ‘As soon as tell the north wind not to blow,’ one mocked. ‘The Lord of Maneth pays little heed to us. You cannot hope to have him by the horns until the affair of Anjou is settled.’
How they weighed the country’s woes, these young boys scarce in their teens, world-weary men they were, when they spoke of such things.
‘And you cannot take Anjou,’ another said, ‘unless the king be with you.’
‘And the king will not stir up trouble. . .’ a third chimed in. ‘Unless he must,’ they all sang out together.
How cynical they sounded for ones so young, untried yet, still novices to war.
‘But there still is Cambray . . .’
‘Lord Raoul spoke on that, too. He said, finally, “It is not worth the risk.’”
‘Therein his thinking runs astray,’ I said angrily. ‘Cambray holds the key to all the south.’
‘Indeed, Sir Know-All.’ It was my turn to be mocked. ‘Lay your battle plans before him, Sir Know-All. He would welcome them, Sir Know-All.’
They laughed at their joke.
‘Had the old Lord of Cambray, Falk, still lived, that would have been another tale. Or his son. But they are both dead. There is no one to claim or hold Cambray.’
‘There is a daughter of the house,’ I said, a devil prompting me.
‘Mark at him,’ they crowed again, ‘she’s dead or gone. In a convent somewhere. You’ve thoughts of her perhaps?’
A bigger, older boy I had always avoided sat heavily beside me, leaning on the shield he had been polishing so that I was forced to give ground.
‘For one who does so little,’ he said, ‘you have great ideas and take up great space. Go tend your master’s wants. God’s wounds, have you nothing better to do than babble rubbish.’
‘Let him be,’ the dark-haired boy intervened. ‘It is but a poor spineless thing at best. Because your Sir Richard works you to the bone, do not envy those whose tasks are lighter. No master claims him, fool, because he is not worth it.’
I did not mind their jibes. I knew of what little value they held me; they had often told me so before.
‘But who is his master?’ said the older boy slowly. ‘Even if the man is dead now, he must have had a name. What was his degree, his rank? How came this worthless worm to tag along with us?’
He turned to me, nudging me with the shield edge.
‘Churl,’ he said, ‘who serves you? Or who did you serve? Your name?’
I was already slipping aside, but one of my companions caught me by the leg so my tormentor could rise and grab my arm. Between them I was caught as in a vice. As they tugged and pulled, I tried to break free again, kicking at them with my other leg. That was a second mistake. I should have known better, ought to have lain still, let them abuse me to their pleasure. I should have tried to talk my way free as I had done before. Showing violence pleased them.
The elder boy swung his fist at me, knocking me to the ground. Before he could follow with a second blow, the dark-haired boy leaped at him. Within seconds, they were all scrabbling furiously together, I, as the original cause of the disturbance, forgotten in the pleasure of hitting at one another. I lay in their midst, half-dazed, but with presence of mind to drag the shield beside me for cover. When there was a lull, I planned to crawl away. But ill luck dogged me that day. As the others pushed and fought, part in anger, part in jest, as I had seen them a hundred times, a man’s voice shouted at us. I heard horse’s hooves thundering to a stop. The struggle ended abruptly, which should have been warning enough. Had it been someone of less importance, they would not have been so prompt to obey. Then, too, I should have stayed where I was, half-hidden; but in the protracted silence that followed, I moved the shield aside to see what was happening. The other boys had stepped back so that I still remained in the centre.
Before us stood a horse, a man upon its back. He must have just returned for he was wearing full mail and was still armed. The horse was lathered with hard riding and champed and snorted as its rider held it to the bit. But the man’s helmet was off, and his silver-blond hair blew freely. Ill luck that he should have passed by at this time. Ill luck that he should have chosen now to ride about his camp. Ill luck that he should catch me
off guard. I tried frantically to look aside, pulled at the hood that covered my head, but it had been knocked aside in the struggle.
He cannot know me, I thought; in the dust and shadow he will not know who I am.
But I would have known him anywhere.
‘You, boy,’ Lord Raoul said. ‘Come here.’
7
Slowly I began to rise, dusting my clothes to give myself time to think. That too was a mistake. I heard the others hiss. I should have leaped to my feet when he bade me.
He spurred his horse to make it turn, bad-tempered beast, like its master.
‘You,’ he said again, in a voice that made me cringe. ‘I mean you.’
The other boys backed away from me then as the horse moved restlessly. They could understand my reluctance, no doubt; but then, if someone was to take the brunt of blame, better I than they. He was scowling now, high above me on his great horse. But he looked well, his face was brown, his hair tousled, the mail coat unlaced at the throat.
‘You,’ he said again, ‘look at me.’
Perhaps even then I could have braved him out. Perhaps, if I had not panicked, I could have satisfied his curiosity and the incident would have passed by. But as always in his presence, something cracked my resolution no matter how I tried to hold it.
Without warning, I suddenly hurled the shield that I had been holding under his horse’s feet, making it rear and shy away with a great clatter of hooves, and almost unseating him, so that he had to grab at rein and bit to keep it under control. The confusion was my chance. Without clear thought except to escape, I leaped past the group of pages who had scattered in fear and plunged down the slope of the hill towards the first of the horse lines. There was a small stone wall there, more a bank than a wall, but I went over it head first, enough to have broken my neck had not there been a group of serfs beneath, sitting with backs against the stones, playing some game of chance in the dust. I landed on them, sending them sprawling in turn. Before they could recover, I took to my heels down the line of horses, tied head to wall, putting as much distance as possible between us, slipping beneath the tethers to the next row, setting them all snorting and stamping.
