Girl In A Red Tunic

by Alys Clare

  The gifts with which Father will present his wife and children (and the most senior of the household servants) will be splendid; they always are. He may well bring Helewise some parchment and a new stylus, or a beautifully written sacred text produced by the monks. He will undoubtedly bring her a length of yellow French silk, because she asked him to and he never lets her down.

  Helewise’s dancing is interrupted by the arrival in the bedchamber of her nurse, Elena. Elena is dark-haired and dark-eyed and has the perpetually tanned skin that suggests she has ancestry from the south. Whatever the truth of the matter, Elena tells her own version: that her grandfather went off to fight in the First Crusade and brought back a slave girl from Antioch. Helewise, enchanted by this story as a child, now has her doubts as to its veracity but loves Elena nonetheless. Elena is wise and at times too perceptive for the children – especially the girls – whom she has had in her charge since they were born; Helewise and Aeleis frequently accuse her of having good friends in the spirit world who keep her informed, for how else would she know what is happening out of her sight and away from her keen ears? Elena is also skilled in herb lore and has been of service as nurse and healer to the Swansfords on so many occasions that they have all lost count.

  ‘Hurry up, my girl!’ Elena says as she bustles into the room with Helewise’s bluebell-coloured gown carried carefully in her arms. ‘Your father’s nearly here and he has brought a friend with him. You’re to go down when your mother calls you and make a nice curtsy to the man.’

  ‘Is he old?’ Helewise is struggling out of her everyday linen over-gown – a little grubby around the hem and with a blotch on the bosom where she spilt her barley water – and her words are muffled.

  ‘Old enough,’ Elena replies unhelpfully. ‘Now let me look at this under-gown.’ She pauses to drag the fine linen shift down and straighten it; Helewise is full-figured and the garment is a little tight over her firm and rounded breasts. ‘I ought to let this out again,’ Elena mutters, ‘but there’s no time now, it’ll have to do. Come, let’s see what the blue looks like.’ She drapes the silk over Helewise’s head – it smells faintly of lavender; Elena is skilled in the care of fine clothing – and pushes her arms up over her head so that she can fasten the laces down each side of the gown. ‘There!’ she exclaims as she ties the last bow. ‘I’ll tidy your hair’ – she smacks Helewise’s hands away and skilfully twirls the reddish-blonde hair into long braids and attractive curls that frame Helewise’s flushed face – ‘and I reckon you’re done.’

  Helewise stands still under Elena’s scrutiny. ‘Will I pass inspection?’ she asks with a grin.

  ‘Aye.’ Elena gives a satisfied nod. ‘That you will.’

  Helewise waits impatiently for her mother’s summons. When at last it comes she makes her way through the upper chambers of Swansford – it is a very big house – and descends down the narrow, curving stair that leads into the huge hall. Her father is standing by the long table in front of the hearth and there is another, older man with him. Both are in the act of drinking a toast to one another, as if in celebration of business satisfactorily concluded. Her father would no doubt tell Helewise what that business was if she asked. Nothing, in fact, is further from her mind, because she is quite captivated by the tall, broad-shouldered and handsome man who stands at her father’s side.

  He is older than her father, considerably so; his face bears strong character lines but these lines give the impression that they all radiate upwards, suggesting that they have been formed from a lifetime of laughter. His eyes are brilliant blue. His mouth is wide and when, as now, he smiles, it is to reveal good strong teeth, the eye teeth long and sharp like a wolf’s. He is dressed in a dark blue tunic richly decorated with gold braid and his head of long, thick, white hair is uncovered.

  She walks towards the two men. She approaches her father first and receives his kiss and his loving embrace. Smiling up at him, she whispers, ‘I’m glad you’re home!’ Then her father gently disentangles himself and, twisting her round, says, ‘Helewise, you must greet our guest.’ Turning to the tall man, he says, ‘Benedict, may I present my elder daughter Helewise. Sweetheart, this is Sir Benedict Warin.’

  Helewise turns to him and makes a low and graceful curtsy, one hand laid on her breast as she bends low and modestly casts down her eyes. She feels his strong fingers take hold of her other hand and he raises her up. She lifts her head and meets his blue eyes. He is smiling at her as delightedly as if her presence has just made the sun come out, and she cannot help but respond.

  ‘You and Emma have produced a beauty,’ he says to Ralf. ‘Why did you not warn me that, before ever I entered your hall, I should put a guard on my heart?’

  He is joking, she knows full well; she is used to this kind of light talk. She laughs and he turns back to look at her again. ‘You think I speak in jest?’ he murmurs and, at this sudden low tone, something seems to stir deep within her, something that she has half-felt in her dreams and which she knows, without being quite sure why, is something dark and secret ...

  Ralf is apparently unaware of this subtle exchange but his wife is not; Emma Swansford has been watching from the doorway and now she comes gliding across the shiny flagstones of the hall floor, moving with her trademark grace, her arms extended in greeting as she says, with apparently unmitigated delight, ‘Benedict, my dear! How very good it is to see you again!’

  Good manners demand that Benedict withdraw his fascinated eyes from young Helewise’s breasts and turn them upon his hostess. Graciously he embraces Emma, kissing her on both cheeks and exclaiming that, for all that it is a year or more since he has seen her, she does not look one single day older. Helewise, watching the ease with which this fascinating man turns his charm from her to her mother, feels a quick stab of resentment but soon it passes. Once out of the beam of his eyes she can see that he is in fact quite elderly and she wonders what the attraction was.

  In that brief time she has learned a valuable lesson about a man’s powers of seduction. And, indeed, about how quickly a man who loves women can flit from one to the next.

  In due course Emma leads them all to the meal table. They are joined by Aeleis, face and hair still damp and cheeks still red from Elena’s vigorous washing, laced into a gown at which she keeps pulling, as if it does not feel comfortable. The conversation ranges over many subjects and Helewise and her sister are regularly invited to join in. Benedict, seated opposite to Helewise, frequently glances her way although she tries not to meet his eyes. He is, she thinks, rather like a hot-blooded horse: exciting but potentially rather dangerous.

  The meal ends. The girls are dismissed and Aeleis hurries to take off her gown and dress herself in her old house gown (Elena will not permit her to wear her usual boys’ clothes when there is a guest in the house) and she returns to whatever she was doing in the stables. Helewise wanders off and goes up to her room. She is thinking.

  Some time later her mother comes to find her. She sits down beside Helewise on the long wooden bench and takes her daughter’s hand in both of hers.

  ‘Benedict Warin,’ Emma says without preamble, ‘is what is known as a womaniser. Do you know what that means, Helewise?’

  ‘I can guess,’ she replies.

  Emma smiles. When she does so, Helewise thinks she is still the most beautiful woman in the land. ‘What did he say to you?’ she asks.

  ‘That he should have put a guard on his heart before he met me.’

  Emma nods sagely as if this were no more that she had expected. ‘I see.’ She studies her daughter. ‘And you were flattered, of course?’

  ‘I was while he held my eyes,’ Helewise admits. ‘But then you came over and he looked exactly the same when he gazed at you, and I realised that it was just something he does, rather as Father would slap a good friend on the back or make a specially deep bow to a woman he respected.’

  Emma squeezes Helewise’s hand. ‘Good girl,’ she says approvingly. ‘You are wise beyond your y
ears, daughter.’ She studies her, taking in the grey eyes, the smile, the strong shoulders and the deepening bosom. ‘Although in truth,’ she adds, half to herself, ‘the sum of your years is adding up almost without my noticing it.’

  But Helewise wants to hear more about Benedict Warin. ‘He likes women, Mother? Sir Benedict?’

  Emma hesitates as if she is pondering the wisdom of discussing with her young daughter the ways of such a man. But then, perhaps reasoning that Helewise is on the cusp of womanhood and ought to know what the world is really like, she starts to speak. ‘He does, Helewise. And women like him too, for he is a well-favoured man, despite his limp; did you remark it, daughter?’

  ‘His limp? Er—’ Helewise thinks back. ‘No, I do not believe that I did, but in truth I did not see him move more than a few paces. How did he come by it?’

  ‘He fell from his horse’s saddle but one foot remained lodged in the stirrup so that he was dragged when the horse bolted. They say that it was only the swift intervention of his companion that saved Benedict’s life. But that is beside the present point.’ Emma tightens her grip on her daughter’s hand and, eyes fixed to Helewise’s, says urgently, ‘Helewise, Benedict likes women too well for his own good. He was married to a fine woman whose name was Blanche. She was lovely, talented and skilled in the womanly arts. Most men would have been more than satisfied and, moreover, considered themselves lucky to have won such a goodly soul to be their wife, particularly when Blanche gave birth to a son. But there were troubles in that household.’ Emma shakes her head sadly and slowly. ‘It is said that Benedict did not lose his – er, his adventurous spirit. He travelled widely as a youth and fought for his King in faraway places where many knights, I am afraid to say, consider that bedding as many women as they possibly can is as much a part of their task as slaughtering the King’s enemies.’ She sighs. ‘Marriage calmed Benedict for perhaps five or six years or, at least, if he was engaging in – er, in his philandering ways, then he hid it from his wife. Then when his son was still a babe in arms, he took off on his travels. There was always an excuse – to see this man or that, to seek out some man of influence who would advance the Warins, to visit some former comrade who had fallen on bad times. But always, always, there was a woman at the bottom of it and invariably she ended up in Benedict’s bed.’

  Helewise, thinking of her own father and of his devotion to his home, hearth and family, says, ‘But what of his children? Did he not want to be with them?’

  ‘Child, not children. Blanche gave him but the one son. It was rumoured that she became barren after that.’

  ‘Became barren?’ Helewise does not understand. ‘I have heard of women being barren, but not of becoming so. How can that be?’

  Again Emma hesitates. But this daughter of hers is ripe for marriage and there is no reason to keep such things from her. ‘As you say, Helewise, it is quite common for a wife to be unable to produce children and that would seem to be God’s will and there is little point in demanding to know why.’ She looks sad for a moment, then, perhaps thinking of the ease with which she has conceived and borne her own four children, a sort of thankfulness fills her lovely face. ‘But sometimes a woman gives birth to one child and then it is as if her womb sours and will not bear fruit again. Perhaps the experience of the first birth has been traumatic; perhaps there has been damage to the woman’s fruitful parts. Sometimes it happens for no apparent reason. But, believe me, daughter, it does happen.’

  ‘Poor Blanche,’ Helewise murmurs. ‘To go on hoping that another baby might bring her wandering husband back to her and yet to be constantly disappointed must have been hard.’

  ‘It broke her heart,’ Emma says quietly. ‘Or so they say, and I see no reason to doubt it.’

  ‘Yet you and Father welcome Sir Benedict to our home!’ Helewise is indignant.

  ‘It is your father’s choice to invite him and we must accept it. That is how it is,’ Emma says firmly. ‘What a man does in his own hall is his own business and nobody else’s. Your father and Benedict have been friends for a long time and it is not for us to query their friendship.’ She fixes her daughter with a frown. ‘And I do not want you to breathe one word of this conversation to anybody else,’ she commands.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Helewise, that is my wish,’ her mother says. ‘Do as I say.’

  She lets go of Helewise’s hand and stands up, graceful as ever. Then, relenting, she smiles down on her daughter. ‘There is so much for you to learn,’ she says kindly. ‘Remember that I am always here and that it is I who am the rightful recipient of your questions. I am always prepared to talk over any matter that puzzles you.’ A new urgency enters her eyes and, leaning closer to Helewise, she says, ‘I want you to be a good wife, my sweet. Your father and I love you dearly and we wish you to make a fine match, as all parents wish for their daughters. But in our case we also want you to be happy.’

  Moved, for her mother is rarely so outspoken, Helewise stands up and gives Emma a hug, which, after an initial slight resistance, is then lovingly returned.

  As Emma turns and, with another smile, walks away through the doorway, Helewise reflects that she is now taller than her mother.

  She obeys Emma’s dictates and speaks to hardly anybody about this new and fascinating knowledge of men, women, wives, mothers and the business of marriage. The exception is Elena, but Helewise reasons that she has always talked over everything with Elena and that her mother must know this and accept it. Anyway, even if she does not, Helewise cannot help herself. And she learns a very great deal more from her nurse than she has done from her mother.

  Elena has a wide circle of friends, relations and acquaint ances spread throughout the knightly classes of Sussex and Kent. She hears far more gossip than her mistress and she is able to tell Helewise all about Benedict Warin’s women. She also supplies some fascinating facts about how women have babies and the things that can go wrong to prevent conception or the birth of a living, healthy child. Elena tells Helewise almost too much about this mysterious and fascinating subject and Helewise has to work quite hard to rid her mind of images of naked and terrifyingly bulging women screaming and straining in childbed, or being forced to lie with some demanding and son-hungry husband over and over again long after desire has gone. From some undisclosed source, Elena seems to know exactly how the body is put together and she shares this knowledge with Helewise. Before she has come anywhere near seeing a human male organ, Helewise has been told exactly what it looks like and what it does when aroused.

  Helewise absorbs this knowledge and thinks about it. She understands now that human beings are much like any other animal in their breeding habits and, with a shock, realises that her own parents must have engaged in activity similar to that of the hound on the bitch in season or the big horses out in the paddock who cover the brood mares and insert those huge members into their bodies. She is inclined to be horrified; childhood is, after all, not that far behind her. But her fast-awakening womanhood comes to her aid and something in her – perhaps the same something that responded to the sexual demand in Benedict Warin’s eyes – tells her that this is right, this is how it is and how it will be for her.

  She finds, after a while, that she is not afraid.

  Elena has let slip that this son of Sir Benedict’s is a very handsome man. Helewise wonders why nobody has told her this interesting fact before. And she also finds herself wondering – rather too often for comfort – what it will be like to meet Benedict Warin’s son and whether or not she will take his fancy. Or, even more important, whether he will take hers.

  She has absolutely no doubt that she is going to meet him. It is just a matter of time ...

  Chapter 14

  She does not have to wait very long to find out what she thinks of Sir Benedict’s son.

  It is one of those uniquely English spring days when April feels like midsummer. Helewise has told her mother that she is going out to collect young nettles for Elena’s hair to
nic; she has told Elena that she is expected to exercise her mother’s palfrey. Neither her nurse nor her mother has in fact asked Helewise to do anything but, since she cannot seem to sit still and very much needs some time on her own, she has inferred to each of the two women who order her days that the other has sent her out on an errand. To ease her conscience, she rides out on her mother’s fine-boned bay mare and gets her hands and wrists stung picking a basket of nettles for Elena.

  She rides to her favourite spot: a small pebbled beach in the bend of a shallow stream that comes down off a low hill to disappear into woodland. The stream just here runs between a shoulder-high bank on one side and an ancient willow on the other and, once she is under the high bank with the palfrey tethered beneath the willow, Helewise believes herself to be hidden away in her own private place.

  For some time she sits on the sun-warmed stones of the little beach, occasionally picking up a stone and flipping it across the water. The stream runs too swiftly to make the stones bounce more than once or twice, but then she spots a place under the bank where the water is deep, dark and apparently motionless. She does better here and makes a stone bounce three times.

  She feels ... she tries to analyse it. Stirred up, is the best she can come up with. Were she to have asked practical, down-to-earth Elena, the nurse would have said, ‘You’ve turned into a woman, my girl, and your blood’s up! It’s spring and you’re as lusty as every other fertile creature on God’s good earth!’ But, even without Elena’s wise words, Helewise has a fair idea of what is the matter with her. She knows about what men and women do together and, even though she is a virgin, she feels a powerful, mysterious hunger inside her that she does not quite know how she is to assuage.

  She picks up another stone. Skims it. It gives one feeble bounce and she mutters a word that she heard the stable boy use.