Ann of Cambray

by Mary Lide

  In turn, I told him what I had learned of Maneth’s plans, letting him piece together the scraps of news, for my brain ached at the thought. He reined up on hearing that Lord Guy had already left to join Henry of Anjou in France.

  ‘Now, by God,’ he exclaimed when I repeated that Henry of Anjou intended to sail for France, ‘before God and Saint George, that is the best news yet.’

  ‘Best?’I repeated. I was still sitting before him, and he slid back upon the broad seat of his saddle to give me room to turn. ‘Best, when there he will be coiled, Maneth, coiled at your enemy’s ear to win favour for himself against us. And when he hears news of his son’s death?’

  ‘He’ll not get news of that awhile,’ Lord Raoul said more soberly. ‘We have buried that evidence well. And who is left to accuse us? A hundred of his enemies it could have been, even the Celts, who have as much cause to fear and dislike him. Lady Ann, you cannot know what monsters these lords have become, how many poor souls they have captured and robbed and tortured. Their licence this past year runs beyond any man’s reckoning. But we have witnesses who have escaped their torture racks to bring the proof. They lack not for enemies. It is only thanks to God they did not have you fast within the cursed place.’

  We were both silent for a while, thinking our own thoughts.

  Then he said, ‘But if Henry of Anjou has gone from England, if only briefly, well then, here comes the respite we all have been waiting for. If England is free of him, so are we. That is news worth all this hard ride.’

  ‘You mean to go back to Sedgemont?’ I asked.

  My face must have revealed my thoughts because suddenly he began to laugh. I had almost forgotten how attractive his laugh was, and his teasing voice, when he said next, ‘Why, Lady Ann, see how small a group we are. Look round about you. Here we are, the men of Sedgemont with dulled swords and week’s beards. You can count us as you ride. My other vassals I have sent across the border, and if my messengers do not reach them first before the Celts attack them, they will be dead by now. If stopped in time, then they, too, will be heading home. No, no, I do but tease you. They are safe, thank God. But I have not the heart to lure them back upon a personal quarrel. Even you would see the fairness of that. And where should we go, our camp being overrun?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘they have done enough. And so have you.’

  He laughed again, showing his teeth white against the growth of beard. At the sound, his men seemed to sit firmer in their saddles; their horses even pricked their ears.

  ‘By Jesu,’ he said again, ‘we are free then. But I did not say I would go home again, not yet.’

  I stared at him, not understanding.

  ‘Why,’ he said again, with that flash, that lilt, that was part of his personality, ‘if Gilbert of Maneth was so sure to take Cambray, perhaps we can do for him that much honour to take it in his stead. What, shall we have our enemies call us fools and not give them the lie?’

  There was a ripple among the men.

  ‘Where is Dylan?’ he said. ‘He knows Cambray better than any soldier here.’

  A man came pushing forward, Dylan it was indeed, to whom I had not spoken since that day in the stables at Sedgemont. He looked at me, a dirty cloth about his head, another, darker stained, about his forearm.

  ‘My lady.’ He saluted me, his dark eyes impudent, although he did not smile.

  I hid the memory of that last meeting when we three, he and I and Giles, had talked of Cambray. Now as I unwound the cloths about his wounds, he and Raoul spoke while the other men gathered round to listen. But first they made me repeat all that Gilbert had said, and his boasts that he could find a way within the castle without setting siege to it.

  ‘Dylan,’ said Lord Raoul when I was through, ‘What think you of that?’

  ‘We have all seen Cambray,’ Dylan said slowly, taking no more heed of what I was doing to his arm than if I had been a fly. ‘We are too few to hem it round and it is too strong to take by frontal attack. If someone would open the gates, as was done for the Celts . . .’

  ‘Or by some secret, other way?’

  Dylan considered. ‘It could be, my lord,’ he said at last. ‘Lord Falk of Cambray was clever. He had a long life living by his wits. In attack or defence, none was more skilful.’

  ‘I think that was what Maneth meant,’ I broke in, excited suddenly despite the calm way they spoke. ‘It sticks in my memory how he seemed overjoyed as if at some secret. He boasted mindlessly, yet I think he had some knowledge that he believed in. Wrung from my father’s old comrade, poor soul.’

  ‘My lord,’ Dylan said, grimacing at last as I pulled a rag tighter across the slash on his arm. ‘My lord, if I understand you right, what Gilbert of Maneth hinted at was that somehow Lord Falk had built an escape passage from Cambray. He would have thought of it as safeguard, the last route by which the defenders could flee if the castle was ever taken. I myself do not know of it, nor have I ever heard tell of it. But it is possible one of his longtime followers who came with him from France would know. In giving away that information, he would have told an enemy how to get inside the castle. Retrace the path and there you are. But that, too, I do not know. I was not there when the castle was built. And Lord Falk was close-mouthed, as you know, about his affairs.’

  ‘Cambray is made of stone,’ Raoul mused. ‘Although it is built to simple design, a square within a round, a keep within an encircling wall, it is made of stone. Few border castles are. They are mainly thrown up in haste of wood. But there are castles in Normandy, more elaborate ’tis true, which have many secrets built within their walls. If there was a passage, it must be from the keep. The keep would be the last place where they would make a stand. That, too, is made of stone.’

  Lord Raoul turned to me. ‘Lady Ann, do you know aught of this?’

  I said slowly, afraid they would mock me, ‘Gilbert’s words stuck in my mind the more they seemed to recall some memory, something that Talisin once said. But I cannot get it straight.’ And I thought again of how I used to dream in the camp of recapturing Cambray, how even then, elusive memories had clung to me, although never before had I put words to them.

  ‘If anyone would have known, the young Lord Talisin would,’ Dylan said slowly. ‘My lord, there may be something to it. It would be a family secret, perhaps entrusted also to one or two faithful retainers, but to no one else.’

  ‘How stands the castle, the keep? Refresh my memory.’

  Lord Raoul had turned again to Dylan. I watched them as they spoke, lord and soldier, yet man and man as well.

  ‘Here, my lord.’ The two men swung off their horses, the others crowding round, although I noted how, without orders, several remained watchful on the outskirts.

  Dylan squatted on the ground, drawing faint lines in the dirt with his dagger point. A circle for the outer crenellated walls, a space for the bailey, a square to indicate the keep, wavy lines to indicate the cliffs and sea.

  ‘Here be the outer walls, my lord,’ Dylan explained, using his dagger as marker. ‘Of fitted stone, not dressed. Lord Falk, they say, took the stones from an old ruined fort nearby. I have not seen stones cut so before. The main gate here, facing east away from the shore. On the opposite side, the walls go down to the cliff face. The keep, thus. A guardroom beneath, a narrow circular stair up to the Hall, another narrow stair to the women’s quarters in the solar above. I know not how they are arranged.’

  ‘Built on solid ground?’

  ‘Nay,’ said Dylan almost proudly, ‘on rock, my lord. Rock that goes a hundred feet into the sea.’

  These last words too seemed to ring into my ear. ‘Raoul,’ I cried in excitement, not noticing that for the first time I had called him by his given name. ‘Raoul, listen.’

  They looked at me expectantly, those tired dirty men, their armour ripped and stained, hacked like beggars’ cloaks at a fair. Yet there was a glint about them, you could feel it, almost touch it. I tried to put coherently what Dylan’s
words had conjured up, a sunlit day when as a small child I had played at some game with the women in the solar. The ball had rolled behind a tapestry. The tapestry was long and hung from the ceiling, covering a narrow gap between two walls that led to a window set up high at the end. Talisin had snatched the ball away from me and pushed me back from behind the tapestry, where I had crept to retrieve it.

  Don’t play there, he had said. It leads a hundred feet into the sea.

  I said, concentrating, ‘In the solar, there is only one side that faces the sea. It is a large, squarish room with several narrow cells set into the thick walls for storage and sleeping space. On one side, I think, over the main gate to the east, there are three window openings. You can look out of them. On the opposite seawall there is but one window space, set up too high to look out, and a passage leading to it, never used, a short corridor if you will, cut into the thickness of the wall, hid by a curtain before it. And it seems to me that you can hear the surging of the sea, as if the wall goes down to the sea itself . . .’

  ‘The western wall.’ Raoul and Dylan spoke as one. They turned back to the rough sketch in the earth. ‘On the seaward side.’

  Raoul pointed again to Dylan’s marks, questioning this one, then that.

  ‘And at sea level?’

  I was leaning over the edge of the saddle, as intent as the rest.

  ‘I can tell you that,’ I said. ‘Caves. There are caves—the cliffs are riddled with them.’

  ‘Tide-washed?’

  ‘Some yes, completely. Others are large and I think above sea level, at least during the neap tides. You think a passage there, then?’

  My question fell on deaf ears. They were intent about the drawings now, making new ones, measuring, arguing.

  ‘We need time to find which one,’ Raoul said, ‘some clue. We might search a week. A portal, perhaps, set in the rock face. Or supplies stored at the exit, a boat. . .’

  ‘I can tell you that, too,’ I said above their voices. ‘We keep, or always kept, a boat drawn up inside one of the caves. For fishing. Gwendyth and I used to go to it sometimes. We used to refill the water jugs from time to time . . .’ My voice trailed off as the impact of what I was saying dawned on me, too.

  Lord Raoul leaned back upon his heels and smiled at me.

  ‘Why, Lady Ann,’ he teased, ‘we’ve no need of thumbscrew and rack. You’d tell all you know as freely as the wind. I could have picked any brat at Cambray and asked him. They could all tell me what I need to know.’

  He sprang back into the saddle behind me, gathering reins and urging us forward. I could hear the other men talking among themselves as they followed us, one whistling as we went, another holding his reins between his teeth as he worked his sword back and forth in the scabbard. Still not sure what it meant, uncertain of hope, I suddenly let out one of Raoul’s soldier oaths.

  ‘What is it you are about then?’ I asked, and heard that ripple of amusement run through his men again.

  Raoul raised one eyebrow in protest. But all he said was, ‘Your father was wiser than I thought. The passage by which he planned his escape, if worst came to worst, may yet allow us entrance. We go to Cambray, Lady Ann. That is what we are about.’

  I had known he was going to say it, yet the words still took my breath away. I could almost smell, taste, feel, what I had so long hungered for. Then sense took over.

  ‘Is it safe?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps we should wait. ..’

  He let forth an oath more violent than my own, digging his spurs into his horse’s side until the animal almost reared up as if fresh from the stable, and I had to catch at him to avoid being tossed off.

  ‘By the Mass, lady,’ he said, ‘we have been waiting enough these past months. It is not a virtue that sits easily with me. Or my men. I think it was not so long ago you chided me for it also. We have done with waiting.’

  There was an answering murmur from the others.

  He slid forward again to speak into my ear. ‘You see they feel the same,’ he said. ‘It would be cruelty to deprive us now. They do not like being made to look foolish, either. And I have been but an indifferent keeper of you and your estates since you first came to Sedgemont. As you have long been telling me. I owe you this much.’

  ‘But, Raoul,’ I protested, speaking, because he was so close, into his hair. I could feel the warm breath on my face and the touch of his cheek as he answered me.

  ‘But, Raoul, I have a hasty tongue, as you know. I would not goad you and your men into further danger against your will.’

  He laughed softly, the sound trickling past. ‘I never thought to hear you say that much,’ he said. ‘All you have given us is the excuse to do what we wanted. Thanks to you for that.’

  He pulled the cloak up closer around my shoulders, taking advantage of the movement to put his hand beneath my chin, forcing my head to face his. I could feel the cold of his hand, the calluses upon the palm from rein and hilt, the long and surprisingly slender fingers, which traced the scars and bruises on my face.

  ‘If for nothing else,’ he said, ‘for those. I owe you that, ma mie. It is already decided.’

  ‘So easily,’ I was about to say, for I knew my surprise showed. ‘Your men know what to do?’

  He smiled again, and shook the rein to set us cantering. ‘It is not hard to decide,’ he said, ‘when hearts and minds are agreed. We know one another well by now, my men and I. I think we understand what is to be done. Doing is easier than explaining.’

  Behind him, the other horses also shook themselves into renewed vigour. The saddlebags slapped against the horses’ sides. The flag bearer broke out the standard of Sedgemont, and the gold hawks floated behind us freely in the breeze.

  His hands were tight around me now, warmer and steady under the cover of the cloak.

  ‘Guy of Maneth will not look to harm my ward again,’ he said. ‘Had Gilbert forced you to his desire, I’d have had him gelded before he died. Since he did not succeed . . .’

  ‘No, no, my lord,’ I protested, feeling the blushes start. ‘Indeed he did but try, to no avail.’

  ‘That, too, is good,’ he whispered in my ear again. ‘I had thought on saving that for myself . . .’

  We came to Cambray four days later at dusk. That ride is one of the memories of my life. I rode with them as friend, as equal; title, sex, age put aside for the moment. As comrades we lived together. I saw what Raoul meant about his men: when hearts and minds are acting as one, all things are easy. He and his men had lived as one for a long while now. And when we reached Cambray, there was not even need to rehearse what they would do. They knew it like a second skin, where to go, when, who was to lead, how. We dismounted far back from the castle itself. I could see it dimly through the darkness, above the outcrop of trees and bushes that seemed to have crept up about it. Those bushes, which my father would have had uprooted as they grew, served us now as cover from any watches on the castle walls, although, as Giles had remarked before, there seemed no one on guard. The village was deserted and overgrown. And Cambray itself might have been abandoned, an empty pile of stone and crag, not large, but impenetrable, like a rock face. It was strange to stare at it from below as if I were a stranger here. For all that I had seen it so often in my thoughts, it could have been any place, any menacing place that stood brooding in the darkness. I felt a shiver of apprehension run through me. This was not the homecoming I had envisioned. But also, this was not the time to voice my fears aloud.

  We had already divided into two groups: one, with their horses at hand, held ready as close to the castle wall as they could. When or if the others got inside, they would storm the main gates to help break them down. That would be their only chance of entrance. The other, smaller gates had already been so blocked up as to make attack there hopeless. And we could not attempt to scale the walls.

  The rest of us picked our way on foot across the base of the cliff. The tide was out, a faint white line of foam and a far-off sound of waves. They fell
like thunder, rolling closer, so that I was for hastening ahead, mindful of the way that we could be trapped against the rocks by the incoming tide. But Lord Raoul held me back. He had kept me with him this time, against his will, but, as he pointed out, almost as if arguing with himself, I knew the cave that they must find, and I alone knew the upper floor of the keep.

  ‘And since no other place seems safe,’ he said, and I knew from his expression that he, too, was remembering Giles, ‘best be under my eyes where I can guard you myself.’ But he had given me the best protection he could, an old mail coat that had belonged to a page killed too young in some skirmish. It was too long and heavy for comfort, but at least I could move in it and it came low enough about the hips to give some protection from a glancing blow. Armed with Giles’s little knife, I was as ready as Raoul could make me. But the rest of them had stripped down to leather coats and caps, their chain mail left behind with their horses. They wore soft leather boots, for fear that spurs and steel would make a sound upon the stone floors. In the darkness I fretted about that: I might be equipped, but they were not. And would I remember which cave? In the night all looked alike. Perhaps they had changed over the years; did not the sea eat away at rocks as at sand? What if the cliff had fallen or the cave entrance been blocked, or the passage, if there was one, been covered by fallen stones? We would be trapped then, inside, like rats, unable to get back out of our hole, and in the morning light our enemies would hunt us down, catching us between the cliffs and the sea.

  We passed two smaller entrances, black shadows against the greyness of the cliff. The one we wanted was the third, as I remembered. I used to sit outside sometimes while Gwendyth gathered seaweeds and shells for her potions and watch the sea otters that swam there in the spring. We splashed through the pools, now green and slippery with weed, the men cursing as they stumbled in the dark, no knightly task, this, to go a-wading in the wet and cold. The entrance was as I remembered it, narrow and black, like a slit, running back into the steep cliffs between two high piles of rock. You would have to go out on the open beach and crane upwards to see the castle wall above the cliff’s edge there. We waited inside the entrance until someone struck a flint against the rock and all the wet and dripping walls flared for an instant. I remembered then how the green weeds grew halfway up the walls, a warning that this was no place to be caught by the inrushing sea. We let the torchbearer move ahead as we slid farther inside, going in single file, moving slightly uphill until we came to the piles of broken logs and sticks upon the shingle that marked the high-water line. Beyond that, dry sand, still slanting uphill. If this was the right cave, we would come now to the little skiff that sometimes, on fine days, we would drag down to the water’s edge and float off into the bay. The torch picked out its shape sooner than I had expected, a light-frame boat more like a coracle or round Celtic boat, still spread with the skins we covered over it carefully after each use. Beyond it, the cave curved to the right, out of sight. We stopped then in silence, looking at the boat, the sound of the sea quite gone, only the sputter of resin and our own breathing to disturb us. Lord Raoul pulled back the skins. They fell apart at his touch, rotted through by ten years’ exposure and damp, but underneath, the wood had still kept its shape. The oars were still in place, the canvas sail and the water jars set in the prow of the boat. Seeing these things now with new intent, I began to hope. We had used the little boat for our pleasure, but why had it been kept there, and why else had we taken such pains to have it sea-ready, except in case of need? We skirted past it and began the next stage of the climb. I had never gone beyond this part before and it had always frightened me as a child to come so far. Usually I had waited outside for Gwendyth. Even by daylight this section of cave would have been dark. Yet the air still smelled fresh, although salty with the tang of the sea. The tunnel, I must call it that, went on, slanting uphill, room for two men abreast, the walls black about us. The last part was so steep we had to scrabble for hand as well as footholds among the boulders that were thickly strewn. I could not tell if they were newly fallen or had always been there; at least they were dry. I held back then, blocking the men who came behind me as I stood uncertainly. Raoul, who had clambered ahead, turned round. There seemed no end to the tunnel, the roof was lower now in the last few yards, the footing underneath changed to rock. We soon might be forced to crawl on hands and knees into the darkness.