by Mary Lide
‘Or would you rather I borrow from your women,’ I said. ‘They may not need their kirtles as much as I do.’
He stopped, taken aback. ‘What do you know of them?’ he said at length.
‘Enough,’ I said. ‘I have eyes and ears. Not that it is my concern . . .’
‘By God, it is not,’ he said, still staring. ‘You fight roughly these days, Lady Ann. But since you welcome plainness, I tell you plainly. Call her here, for any reason whatever, she’ll have your eyeballs forth, and worse from me.’ He gave a grin. ‘In truth, she holds me so dear as to carve me to flesh and bone rather than let you close . . .’
‘There is not the slightest fear of that,’ I said haughtily. ‘You need not end your wenching on my account.’
Then he did begin to laugh. ‘Oh that you are rich,’ he cried. ‘I did not know I had missed your honeyed tongue until I heard it again. Come, I will tease you no more. Cry quits. Except one last thing.’
He watched me. I should always have mistrusted him when he poised to strike. ‘Why ran you for safety here? There are other, nearer places as safe.’
Confusion stained my cheeks. I looked at him, wordless, and felt the blush painful and slow spread across my skin. Nothing would have dragged those tangled emotions into speech. Once again, he stretched out his hand, his fingers barely brushing my chin.
I said at last, slowly, ‘I use you to get Cambray.’
Once I would have shouted forth my wish, but now I felt that he would know it for the lie it was in part. There were other things I wanted as well.
‘So be it, my . . .’
And he turned upon his heel.
The water was still warm, as balm to aches and bruises. I was black and blue with them and caked with dirt. But best luxury of all was the sudden realisation that I no longer had to pretend. I had not known the strain was so great until, not having it, I knew the luxury of being without it. I have said that my life had taken on a pattern of its own, that within that pattern there was much I had come to admire. I felt what I had missed only when I was given my real self back again. And, ingrate that I was, I dropped the new life for the old without regret, almost without remembrance. In this, I think, I was no different from others who have found themselves caught up in strange events, who revert to normal when they can. I think too that without the training of my early days at Sedgemont, I would never have learned such adaptability. I say this not to praise myself. For in one thing I stand completely at fault, although I was to pay for my lack of thought, a heavy price in the end.
In my complacency, I quite forgot the woman in the inner tent. She must have long before slipped away, for she was not there when I dressed myself, in one of those embroidered smocks the Lady Mildred must once have worked. Laughing to myself at the thought of her anger had she but known the use made of it, rejoicing in my return to womanhood, I forgot my rival quite; what she might feel, might do, could have heard. I was still young and arrogant in those days. I could dismiss her from my mind as easily as I dismissed my life as a common page within the camp. Since then I have told myself a thousand times that Lord Raoul spoke true although he clothed his words in jest. His lustings were not my concern. He knew best how to handle them. He might have said more, as truthfully—that as I was his ward, I had no claim to his affections; that as his vassal, I stood so far beneath him that it was presumption on my part to expect any; that as a woman, I should be used to men’s ways, be hardened to their infidelities. For it is also true, as I have said before, that men are not expected to think as women do, nor have we women any right to complain, being considered incapable ourselves of thought. My pleasure at being with him again (which I did not deny, although I would have concealed it from him) was tempered by the warning given by the old soldier in the ruined fort.
Great lords do not need to wait for such as you. He will long have forgotten you.
It appeared he had. And I did not like the woman who had replaced me. I thought myself demeaned by her. I resented her very presence in the camp.
But if my thoughts were vexed and perturbed, what might that other woman’s have been? Might she not have felt as threatened, as grieved, by me? Might not jealousy have struck her as deep? It is a trait we Celts all share. Even you, my poet, bear witness to that. Those verses you scribble when you leave this room, the rhymes you mutter as you roam about the shore, do not they concern the emotions of the world: love, and hate, and all their attendant woes? Do not we sing them more loudly, suffer them more deeply, than any other race? For all my fine feelings, I was not as open-honest as she might have been. She would have no one close to him, have no one share him. I would not have her close, but was not yet ready to take her place. As later that, too, became clear.
When Lord Raoul returned, we were content enough to act as old comrades might. We exchanged stories, thoughts, adventures, over a hunk of meat and cups of wine. I had almost forgotten dainty manners and the pleasure of sitting at a meal without having to fight for scraps. I do not know what explanations he had given of my appearance, either good enough or curt enough to reduce surprise or show of curiosity, although what was said behind my back, God knows, and there has been gossip about it ever since.
He told me that on the morrow he would meet with his chiefest lords to let news of my arrival seep out among the Celtic hosts. Meanwhile, I must learn to be patient as they had. He encouraged me to eat and drink, and to tell my tales of soldier’s life as I had found it. What I said both amused and angered him, I think, for he could not forget how I had tricked him, even when he most swore it was forgotten, and to crown all, I fell asleep in the midst of one of his most raucous camp yarns, which, a year ago, even I might not have understood.
I roused as he placed me gently within the inner tent. The floor there was strewn with rugs and a couch was stretched against the farther wall. As I had surmised, it was empty.
‘I will not turn you forth from here,’ I said, as he laid me on the couch.
‘There is no need,’ he said, his voice warm with wine, low and husky as I had not heard in him before, although I had heard it so in other men. ‘There is room for both.’
I came full awake at that.
‘Count not on me to make the pair,’ I said. ‘You already have a bed mate.’
‘Now, by Saint George,’ he said, stopped midway in pulling off his shirt. ‘That is meanly said. Harp you still to the same tune. You have a shrewish mind, my lady. He who beds you must be girded about with steel that you should watch his every move.’
‘And why not?’ I said, retreating to the far end of the bed. ‘It is known that a woman’s virtue lies in her chastity. Perhaps a man’s should, too.’
‘You have a way of looking at things,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘that defies all rules I have heard of. Learned you such ideas in your convent, Mistress Pert?’
He would not take me seriously. And yet, God knows, it would have tempted many a woman to have had him thus, alone to herself.
‘I know,’ I said, ‘that great lords abide by their own rules. You scatter bastards as other men do corn, along the byways and highways of this world. Look at your King Henry. But marriage, I think, is worth more pains than that. I would have a husband who would keep faith with me, as I with him.’
‘I had forgot,’ he said, ‘these great hopes you place on wedlock. But I am not husband yet, nor as far as I know have I fathered bastards. There are other choices between those extremes.’
‘Lord Raoul,’ I said, ‘I have offered to wed you. But that does not give you leave to bed me first.’
‘Now, by the Rood,’ he said, stopping to stare again, ‘spoken like a trooper. I had forgot that you could be so blunt.’
‘No doubt you find my words strange,’ I said, ‘coming from one who lies so far beneath you . . .’
‘Not so far beneath as I could wish,’ he said, his eyes glinting. ‘By Jesu, it would tempt any man to stop you.’
‘I have not come all this way,’ I sa
id, ‘to have you rape me at the end.’
‘Rape, is it,’ he said. ‘You speak of things you know little of. You have been with my men these past weeks. Did you think of rape then? There would have been none to hear your screams. If my men had caught you, they would not have been gentle.
‘As I can be,’ he added, when I did not reply. ‘I have brought neither bastards nor rape to my bed, Lady Ann. If you were willing, we might yet find joy within.’
‘I will save that for my wedding day,’ I said.
‘Marriage is but a game,’ he said contemptuously. ‘It is you maids who talk it out-of-place, to make its importance loom so large.’
‘Then is Cambray a pawn still,’ I said. ‘Not even for love must I forget that.’
‘What do you know of love, Lady Ann,’ he said, watching me carefully, his voice stern and thoughtful, ‘that you name love and lust so lightly?’
‘As much as your Celtic harlots, at least,’ I said angrily.
‘Nay,’ he said, ‘I do not swear to love them forever and a day, nor do they expect it. But if it be love to enjoy and pleasure one body to another, that I have known. When you have learned that much, then may you talk to me again of love.’
‘So speak all men,’ I cried, ‘making women your playthings, to sport with.’
He looked at me and shrugged. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but I find few that complain. Even you might not. Think on that.’
I summoned up my purpose. For he was handsome, young, and all his maleness tempted me. It would have been so easy then to have let resistance go. I had but to bend my head or move my arms, or smile, and those strong hands I had felt before would have closed tight. If he had made a move towards me that night, I know that I could not have withstood him. I think he knew it too. It says perhaps something of the man he was that he did not press advantage home, although not even he may have known why.
‘But then no man will wed me,’ I cried. ‘If you use me, Lord Raoul, who then will have me? And how will I keep Cambray?’
He stared for a while, not speaking, not smiling. Then, without another word, he turned and left.
Alone in the large bed, I raged at my wilfulness. Cambray had cost me dear that night.
With the morning, all seemed easier between us. Perhaps that was because, as at Sedgemont, I saw him seldom. I think he avoided me except the few times we met formally. I dined with him and his chief lords once, fewer in numbers than I had imagined, but seeming cheerful enough. My old lord, fellow companion of the journey, sat at the other end of the table. I would have spoken to him for old times’ sake, but thought it wiser then to keep silent; we never talked again, he and I, and afterwards it was too late. The men spoke mainly among themselves, of horses and hunting, and the elusive Celts who vanished like mist before they could track them down. Sometimes they reminisced of the war, mending their speech when they remembered I was there; but had I been one of the squires who listened so avidly, I would have gathered little news.
One story that I do remember, I think they told more to warn than to amuse .. . how the Countess of Warwick, that goodly dame, left guardian of the castle in her husband’s absence, had gone against his wishes and opened the gates to Anjou’s men, despite the fact that King Stephen’s guard had come to help her.
‘And so the shrew let in the Angevins,’ said one, ‘and out the king. There’s no faith in women ever. For when her husband, the earl, heard of it, he died of shock. And she sat there with Henry, drinking her husband’s wine, convinced she had done well by him, that she had made way for him to join with Anjou against the king.’
‘I’d keep my wife where I could see her,’ said another.
‘Yet she guards your keep while you are here,’ said a third, amid a burst of laughter.
‘These wars have given them power they do not need,’ said the first. ‘The more we leave them to watch and ward, the more they’ll move the world about our ears. Women were more modest once.’
He raised his goblet and drank, not looking at me. I do not think they liked having me there; a woman in a camp of men may be a cause of trouble, an evil sign. But Raoul was ever cheerful, sending out his messengers farther each day, using, as he had said he would, my presence as bait to lure the Celts towards us.
All the news of what had happened before I got from Giles, whom, as I have said, I persuaded to give forth his information, piece by piece, until most of it became clear as I have told you already. But what the situation now was I could not be sure. And whether war or peace or endless waiting, no man seemed willing to judge. Giles himself had learned, too, to be discreet. He asked no questions of me, although once he would have hung on every word I said. He had grown taller, thinner, quieter. Yet there was still much we could talk of, still have in common. He had seen the grey horses of Cambray running wild upon the moors, and we sometimes spoke of how we would tame them again and bring them back to the stables there as in my father’s day. But never did Giles ask me what I had done all this while, or where I had been or how come here. And if he showed, in many ways, his enthusiasm for his new life and his new master, that too was as it should be.
One other thing—I mean besides giving me Giles as guard—did Lord Raoul do for my comfort. Since it was not fitting that I remain alone, he brought an old woman and her daughters to attend me. How or where he found them I cannot say, but when she spoke to me in the old tongue, the words fell like music on my ears. Almost ten years it was since I had last spoken it, yet I still remembered it. And she had known Cambray when it had been a happy place.
Whether Raoul knew this also, or whether it was by chance, I could not tell, but for the first time I found someone to talk of my early home, my brother, and, most of all, my mother, whom I had never known. Much at that time was revealed to me, of my mother’s love for her own Norman knight, and his for her, that her death was a loss he could not bear, so that even to look at me was to make him turn aside for grief.
‘And like you are to her, my lady,’ the old woman said, ‘hair, eyes, height. Lord Falk must have seen her anew each day. If he had lived to see you grown, he would have loved and forgiven you. But there are men like that, who love deeply only once. So was it with him, so with her.’
‘And did she foresee the end?’ I asked once, remembering the prioress’s taunts.
‘Who knows what she knew,’ the old woman said, looking at me askance with the deep, dark eyes of her race. ‘There be those who say it was a gift we all once had, we Celts, to foretell the future; and having lost it, we have lost all our power that made us masters of this land and others besides. If you had not gone so far away, you would have heard many rumours of your father’s and Talisin’s deaths. For Lord Falk was growing old; he doted on his son. He paid too little heed to dangers that were without his walls and kept all his thoughts and energies within his own keep.’
She brushed my hair, restored now to its own length, twining it with ribbons in the old style.
‘There is an old song,’ she said, ‘that they still sing in the hills.’
She began to croon to herself, one of those Celtic lays that you, my poet, so much admire, so strive to emulate. It tells of death, betrayal, disaster; which of our songs does not? There was one part I think I must have heard Gwendyth sing, for it sounded familiar, especially the line that begins, ‘Warriors all, we fall before our time, drowned in the arms of the sea . . .’
I had forgotten words and tune, but on hearing them I marvelled that they were so familiar.
When she had finished, she said, ‘Our strength has been destroyed, our fate controlled by these last years. When was there not a time that our young men were not betrayed, our hopes ended?’
‘But if she knew of their deaths,’ I cried, ‘could not she have saved her son, saved her husband?’
‘You speak as if it were a gift, this knowledge, to grant, to withhold,’ the old woman said. She shook her head. ‘I cannot answer you. To know is one thing; to change what happens, another.’
She put her hand on mine, it was still strong and firm, like Gwendyth’s, showing no sign of age.
‘If she had had the power to alter the future, be assured she would have, although God grant us mercy from such power. She loved her children dearly, even you, whom she saw but for one short hour.’
She patted my hand again, guessing perhaps at the sadness that welled forth from my heart.
‘It was long ago,’ she said again. ‘Had she and Lord Falk lived, they would have held your worth as high as your brother’s. But your father was Norman, lady. Why would he listen or understand such things as we have been speaking of? Why would she warn him, to break his heart before its time. It died soon enough when your noble brother died. That all men could see for themselves. But when she left him, his life stopped.’
We did not always speak of such far off and melancholy things. Nor was the Cambray I knew such a sad place. But the most part of what I can tell you comes from the lips of that old dame, God rest her soul. And in a strange way, she comforted me. Since then, whenever the future has looked dark, I have found strength in marvelling at my mother’s courage, who, knowing, had tried to shield the others from the pain of knowledge. God grant us all such depth of love, such endurance.
So we passed time peacefully enough, in the pavilion Lord Raoul had set for my use apart from the others. It was surrounded by guards under Giles’s command, but I did not feel confined; there was so much to talk and to think about. Sometimes I walked in the evening with my womenfolk and saw the boys and squires about their accustomed tasks, and was tempted to stop and speak with them, although I never did. And once I went to the outer wall, where I used to creep in the evenings, and heard the outcry from the women’s quarters beyond the lines. They were leaving, had been ordered to leave. I forced myself to turn away without watching, although I would have dearly loved to wait and see if all had gone, including the red-haired woman. Shame prevented my asking or speaking of her. Yet jealousy of her still burned my thoughts. Had Talisin had such a woman, I would have shrugged, knowing it was the way of men. But not with Raoul.
