After dinner came the entertainment. A harpist performed a melancholy piece, before, to my delight, Eliphas my jongleur appeared. He told three good jokes (I only remember one – the worst – a story about the sieve who got a hernia through too much straining), and then performed a small piece about a cuckold and his wife, an idiot and a hangman, and a crocodile who stole ladies’ clothes, which had the hall in fits.
‘How glad I am to see you!’ I said to my friend afterwards when the Comte had been carried off to bed. ‘This is a strange, unhappy place – at least it was until you came along.’
He smiled. There was something elfin and elusive about him, as if at any moment he could disappear.
‘Even a good wife can’t manage a bad man,’ he said.
‘Can’t or won’t,’ I suggested. ‘That is the truth of it. She won’t because there are no thanks for it. In the end, the bastards get you down. And I’m a bastard so I should know.’
‘I think you are the sort of bastard she would like,’ he said. ‘But don’t go getting yourself into trouble. And let me know if you do.’
‘How would I do that?’
‘Go to the sign of The Bear in the town. The innkeeper is part of the brotherhood.’
‘The brotherhood?’
‘Innkeepers mostly. They just keep in touch with each other. Armies coming, sickness, bad men, strolling players …’ the man smiled. ‘You will remember that?’
‘The Bear.’
‘That’s the one. This is not a good place to be. I have to leave early in the morning. I do not normally do entertainments at Breteuil. I came to see how you were getting on.’
I was touched.
‘Thank you, Eliphas.’
‘The Comte should know that he is not clever enough to play politics and be disloyal, but he doesn’t. Look after yourself.’
‘I will.’
We clasped each other, and he was gone, out beyond the bailey to his pony and his cart. I was overcome with weariness. The hall was clearing now; the Comtesse had gone. I had been aware of fatigue for some time, it had been a day of considerable event, but I had been buoyed up by the sizzle of love in my veins. Now, all at once, my tiredness hit me and I could barely drag myself up the stairs to the top of the castle. I fell asleep against the stone wall in my little cupboard, smiling at the thought of the lady Juliana whom I knew in my young heedlessness to be mine.
I dreamt that I was awakened some time later (one of those funny dreams when you wake up but are still dreaming) – just how much later I could not tell – by an instinct that told me someone was watching me. I turned over and sat up in the darkness.
‘Who is it?’ I said, in some alarm.
‘I know what you did up there with my lady,’ said a voice I half recognised, not unfriendly. ‘I don’t expect you would like me to tell anyone, would you?’
‘Tell the Comtesse and see what she says,’ I replied, with some misgiving.
‘Oh no, that would never do. Much better to tell the Comte, and then we would be rid of you, lording it with your Latin and taking the Comtesse away from us. What would you give me not to tell?’
The words, though discomforting, were mitigated by the laughter in the voice. I recognised it now. It belonged to Alice, the dark-haired girl I had spoken with in the solar. She had had, I thought, an ironic, even mischievous look in those big, grey eyes. Everyone else in this castle seemed to be teeming with malice, but not this one.
‘I have little money,’ I said, ‘though you are welcome to that. But that’s not what you want, is it?’
‘Oh,’ she said, carelessly, ‘as for that … why don’t you give me what you were giving to the Comtesse? That would be much more valuable.’
‘Not now,’ I said, playing for time, although I must confess I felt a sudden disloyal lurch in my loins. ‘I am exhausted.’
‘Look at your face,’ she said. ‘Just testing.’
She lowered herself beside me, almost on top of me, and gave me a kiss on the mouth. Then she got up, straightened her shift, and turned to go.
‘Say nothing,’ she said, and slid off into the darkness. ‘I love you.’
At least, I thought I heard her say that. It was not real, of course, any of it. How could it be? I confess I felt a pang of disloyalty to the Comtesse, even though the whole thing had been a dream. There was no question that I had been put in a difficult position: one has a duty to a lady, even in a dream, to be gallant, loyal and hospitable; it is a rule of chivalry. One cannot, with honour, refuse a lady, even in a dream. And, of course, as a bastard, one must take what one can. Even in a dream.
In the morning, I believed that I had been visited by a succubus, but as old Saul used to say in the monastery, aren’t we all sometimes? But, yes, I did feel shame as well as excitement.
XIII
Next morning I witnessed for the first time a tendency in Eustace that I was to see many times in the two and half years or so I knew him. He could not leave well alone, nor evil either. He was always plotting. It was to him like the act of love that he had lost. News came with breakfast and, quite apart from what it did to Eustace, it served to put the succubus and other idle fancies out of my head. Indeed, it was of sufficient importance to cause a stir throughout the castle and set a hundred tongues wagging. I bent my ear to the general tattle and was soon rewarded.
The Comte d’Évreux, a powerful neighbour of the Breteuils, had died. It was unexpected – a sudden seizure – and he had died without any direct legitimate heir. His closest male relative was a known troublemaker, Amaury de Montfort. They were a fiery Breton family, the de Montforts, and Amaury was no exception. He had some property in Normandy but felt no loyalty to the Duke because he was a Breton. He had fought against Henry previously, and the consensus at the table was that no one could see why he should be rewarded with the title of Comte which was the Duke’s to give or remove. The rumour was that he was not going to be rewarded, and serve him right.
The general feeling was that this supposed slight was going to lead to a great deal of trouble but, if the rumour was correct, that the Duke had done the right thing in a difficult situation. Indeed, he was more or less obliged to do the right thing, having removed his brother from the dukedom for misrule and for not being fair and even-handed in all his dealings.
The rumour was shortly afterwards confirmed by a visit I made to The Bear. De Montfort was not to be the new Comte d’Évreux.
I learned from Juliana later that she loathed de Montfort. He was always egging Eustace on, and then had a habit of quietly disappearing when things got hot. She was happy that her father had slapped the man down.
Eustace turned the news of his neighbour’s demise and Amaury’s disappointment into his first move for making trouble for his father-in-law, Duke Henry. He immediately started planning a tour of inspection of his knights, soldiers and castles at Glos, Lire and Pont-Saint-Pierre. (In fact, he had only just returned from doing the same thing at his castle of Pacy.)
I began to sense that I was going to have to do some ingenious wriggling if I was not to be drafted into Eustace’s private army as an auxiliary squire. He had his eye on me, if only to thwart his wife.
I looked in vain for Juliana. I was eager to see her but nervous that she would have changed her mind about us and would be disgusted with me – and perhaps herself – for our abandoned lovemaking. Women can be funny like that, and I agree with them: we should be ashamed of ourselves, but that is half the fun.
In the end, I could risk being down in the hall or in the bailey no more. Eustace was on the prowl. The very wardrobe was not safe. The best place that morning was the solar, so I looked in upon the ladies who were all a-twitter. There was no sign of dark-haired Alice.
‘Oooh,’ they shrieked, ‘you shouldn’t come in here. Madame doesn’t let the Comte himself come in.’
‘Please,’ I implored, and they immediately softened, ‘the Comte is looking for me to join up as a squire for his wars, and I really don
’t want to serve him. I serve Madame.’
‘Serve?’ they shrieked again. ‘You can’t say that! Whatever next!’
‘I am her true knight,’ I told them, and they looked at me with some respect, and quietened down.
Just at that moment, what should I hear but the heavy tread and wheezing grunts of the Comte himself outside the solar door which stood ajar. He had decided to come and find me. He paused for a moment to catch his breath – more grunting and puffing ad libitum – and then burst open the door to stand on the threshold in his coat of mail like a bit-part player in the comedy of Hercules. Happily, by then I was crouching in the middle of a circle of ladies where they closed ranks around me, so that he could not see me, and began to sing something ridiculous. The Comte did not enter further, which showed that Juliana had taught him some respect.
‘Where is my wife?’ he shouted at the ladies.
They stopped singing, quailed and twittered.
‘Oh, my Lord, she is gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘She is gone with the nurse and the children.’
‘Gone where?’
‘To the farm to see the darling new lambs.’
‘Hnpphh,’ he snorted.
It was a most disagreeable noise.
‘And where is hic haec hoc?’
‘Who?’
‘The Latiner.’
‘Maybe he has gone with her.’
‘He has no right to go with her when there is a call to arms. I am sure I have seen him around.’
‘Oh, sweet Jesu. Is there a call to arms? Are we in danger?’
‘No of course you are not in danger. But he bloody well is if I catch him. He’s around somewhere.’
His piggy eyes narrowed.
‘Why are you all standing like that, huddled together?’
‘We are practising a carole to the spring which Madame has written? Would you care to hear it?’
‘No, I bloody well wouldn’t.’
‘I think I saw him heading towards the herb garden,’ said red-headed Angeline.
That set him off again for the stairs.
‘Get on with your caterwauling, then,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘But tell me if you see the bugger. We ride within the hour.’
When he had gone, they all screeched and tittered and called me hic haec hoc, and I thanked them for their presence of mind.
‘We are well practised,’ Angeline laughed.
‘Please do not think badly of me,’ I asked them. ‘I am as willing to draw my sword as the next man if the cause is just and the leader knows what he is doing.’
‘You need say no more,’ Angeline assured me. ‘That man is our lady’s bane.’
I stayed upstairs with them until the Comte was finally ready to leave, wondering in a lover’s panic whether Juliana would be constrained to join her appalling husband on his tour of inspection.
Happily, Alice told me there was no question of that. The Comtesse, who had returned to Breteuil the previous day, had only accompanied the Comte to Pacy to see a woman who was skilled in needlework about a much-loved tapestry repair. She normally held the fort during the Comte’s travels, using his absence as an opportunity to tidy the place up, undo his worst decisions, and instil some sense of order and discipline into steward, butler, pantler, cellarer, dispenser, fruiterer, poulterer, baker, brewer, slaughterer, and the huge retinue of mostly male servants – some in the castle, some from the town – whom Eustace seemed content to let fall into a state of slovenliness while he was around.
Alice was quite impassioned. All he used to care about, she said, was melees, war-making and the instruments of war: lances, swords, crossbows, quarrels, quintains, destriers, battering rams, trebuchets and siege engines. It had been whore-mongering too until he had had the accident. One could understand that, at least – that is what men did – but all that serious martial tendency had also faded. His great solace and delight these days – his fuel, his goad, his spur and his master – was brother-bottle, while he dabbled in politics and merely played at soldiering.
I thanked Alice for her help, opinions and advice. She was a clever and spirited girl, but she worried me a little. I wondered whether she was being too frank, and whether there might not be a snake in that grass: a lady who was not what she seemed, who would pass messages on.
They all looked perfectly charming, but I was not so young or so new to castle life as not to know that we cannot judge a traitor, especially a woman, by her looks. It is a mistake the painters make when depicting Judas. He is always made to look such an obvious traitor. I mean, you would never take someone who looked so underhand into your innermost circle, or invite him to your last supper. Judas, in reality, was a handsome man with an honest face, and you would trust him with anything, with your life. The one I wouldn’t trust would be a disciple who looked like a girl.
It was a relief when Eustace was yanked up onto his enormous charger and set off across the bailey with his forty knights. The castle seemed to exhale as he disappeared with his troop, riding out through the gatehouse and across the bridge that spanned a tributary of the Iton river, flanking the outer rim of the curtain wall. Away he went, clattering down the lake road away from the town towards Pont-Saint-Pierre and the route to Rouen, leaving the castle quiet again.
XIV
Juliana reappeared next day, neither studiously avoiding me, nor seeming anxious to pursue familiarity. I worshipped her discreetly. I saw that she was instantly busy, taking the place by the scruff of the neck, as Alice had foretold, and gingering up the servants. It was not the lady’s place to run the household: that was down to the chamberlain, the butler and finally the steward, who answered to the lord. Juliana’s money and her dowry all belonged to Eustace so she had no power beyond the force of her own will. Now (I like to think invigorated by my presence) she set about ordering new rushes for the floor and having the disgusting residue underneath the old ones swept, dug up, and removed. This was her first priority before she turned her attention to the kitchen.
It was clear that I was not going to see much of Juliana that day or the next. It was just as well, since my young pupils kept me busy and indeed exercised.
I tried to avoid the solar, and did not even notice whether the dark-haired Alice was present. At one point when I met Juliana on the stairs I spoke to her but she turned her head away as if she had been thinking deeply and was unaware of me. This threw me into a fit of pique, but I was sensible enough to recover.
It was almost impossible, anyway, for us to be alone together and there were as many spies as there were eyes in that place. It was her game, not mine. I had been favoured for an hour, but now I must wait to see what the next move might be, if there were to be one. I was not the first young man, I told myself, to be a Comtesse’s plaything. Meanwhile there was much for me to learn and do.
Ten days or so after the Comte’s departure, while I was in the kitchen garden with the girls, teaching them the names of herbs – for I had good training in that art from the abbey – an unexpected visitor appeared. Evidently he was a great man since he rode in with a party of his own knights. There is always a frisson when a man turns up unexpectedly with soldiers in tow, especially when the head of the house is absent, so I watched their progress with interest and some concern, motioning to the girls to keep out of sight.
As a couple of squires saw to the horses, tying them up near the stables, the leader of the troop strode across the bailey to the drawbridge, mounted the steps to the hall door and presented himself to the castle steward. He seemed very full of himself, and there was a swagger to his step. I led the girls by a postern door to the back stairway and put them in the charge of their nurse, somewhat to their annoyance. It was best to keep them out of harm’s way. I knew enough about the world to distrust strutting coxcombs with a troop of knights at their beck and call. The next thing that happens is they’re riding off with you as hostage, and laughing while you yell blue murder.
I nipped do
wn from the nursery and watched at a discreet distance as the steward announced the visitor to Juliana – who had come down the great stairs, not too hurriedly, to greet him – as the Lord Amaury de Montfort. Her face tightened slightly when she saw him. He had not wasted much time. There was ill omen about the man. He was dapper and dangerous.
He bowed low to her.
‘Your servant, Comtesse,’ he said. ‘Or may I call you cousin?’
‘Are we cousins?’ she asked.
‘Sooner or later everyone’s a cousin to the de Montforts,’ he said airily and, I could see Juliana thought, rather cheekily.
‘In that case I think Comtesse will be sufficient,’ she said, putting the little bugger in his place. ‘What brings you to Breteuil, sire? It is not often we have the pleasure.’
‘I am sure your lord would not like to hear you say that.’
‘You presume too much, sir.’
‘Is your lord at home?’
‘I fear not.’
‘When will he be back?’
‘Several days. Could be more.’
‘Ah.’
The man had an almost permanent smile on his face, but it was not a smile I liked. It spoke of duplicity. He was a good-looking man but with a very slightly rodent quality. Yes, he was a very handsome rat.
The White Ship Page 8
