‘Will you and your men take some refreshment? Some wine? Or water from our well, which is good?’
‘That would be kind. My men are thirsty and we have to go north now to speak with Baldwin of Flanders who has thought fit to come into Normandy with his army.’
Wine and good well-water were brought, and the seated knights drank thirstily. Juliana and Amaury continued their conversation. I recalled having once heard my father at Mortagne speak about the de Montfort family, whose head was the Duke of Brittany. They were prolific. ‘Never trust a de Montfort,’ he told me, ‘they spread like mould on an apple-rack.’
‘So what was it you wanted to tell my husband?’ asked Juliana.
I hovered around, trying to look useful, in case she needed support, though she was more than capable of dealing with this fellow. Having seen his men refreshed, he took a cup of wine, swept his eyes round the hall, and at last settled his eyes on me, with scarcely veiled condescension.
‘Who is this?’ he asked, as if I were a species of beetle.
‘My daughters’ tutor, Bertold,’ Juliana told him. ‘He is the son of the Comte de Perche.’
‘Indeed?’
I could see him wanting to say ‘and who is his mother?’ but he was just a little nervous of Juliana’s response, which was sensible of him. She did not tolerate that kind of rudeness.
‘What is Baldwin thinking of?’ demanded Juliana. ‘He is surely wasting his time.’
‘There are some who think your father rules unjustly – not of course that I would be of their party. But you must know it is true. They have spoken to Baldwin of their dissatisfaction.’
‘In that case, why are you going to speak with him?’ she asked.
‘To dissuade him, of course. I hear he is in league with King Louis and means no good to our Duke.’
‘He who sups with the devil needs a long spoon. Have a care, Amaury, or you will be caught up in affairs that do you no good.’
‘Oh, I shall, Comtesse. And now I must be on my way. Perhaps I shall meet your husband as he comes from Rouen…’
‘How did you know he had gone that way? You are well informed, Amaury.’
‘Indeed, I try to be. They say that knowledge is power.’
‘So what was it you wanted to tell my husband?’ asked Juliana.
‘It will keep, dear lady.’
‘It is warm for the time of year. I trust it will not go off.’
He laughed, unamused, and she laughed back at him. I tried a little laugh too, but she shot a look at me that said don’t be so bloody stupid.
He bowed, summoned his men, and they were off towards the marshalsea where their horses were tethered.
‘God, what a shit that man is!’ Juliana exclaimed.
As I was the only person in the vicinity, I assumed she was talking to me. It was the first thing she had said to me since we had lain together in the wardrobe, and I was happy.
I would have followed her upstairs as she went. I was burning to have converse with her, to ask what she was thinking, to know that she had forgiven me for taking advantage of her moment of weakness or whatever it was she was holding against me, but now was not a good time. She did not want to speak. She knew the castle and its people better than I; perhaps something was up. I desperately wanted to talk to her, though, to tell her about the girl with dark eyes who seemed to me to have something of the night about her – though, here again, there were limits as to what I could say. I could hardly tell Juliana that I had dreamt I had been visited by one of her ladies, the very night after I had declared my passion and made love to the mistress. It would have been rude as well as impolitic. After all, I comforted myself, it had only been only a dream; although Saul had sometimes suggested that dreams are the truth and what we consciously think is error.
As I walked up and down in the bailey that evening, brooding on these events, I did not notice a dark figure waiting near the postern gate until I had practically stumbled on his shoe. I saw him then well enough: a man with a pale face, fleshy lips and hard little eyes, only a few years older than myself. It was the sly, whey-faced Chaplain, Crispin de Laval – another Breton – who had said grace before dinner that afternoon.
‘What is on your mind, my son?’ he said. ‘You seem troubled.’
‘Not troubled,’ I told him, ‘just exhausted in my mind. There has been so much to take in for a newcomer.’
‘Yes, indeed. You have previously been in an abbey, I understand.’
‘In an abbey and then at my father’s château at Breteuil.’
I did not want him to think I was fresh out of school.
‘I too was at a monastery as a boy. We must get together and talk about it. Perhaps I can encourage you to join the priesthood yourself. It seems a pity to waste your good learning.’
‘I am not wasting my learning if I am teaching.’
‘Quite so. But anyway, we must meet and talk about the old days. There is much that I miss about them. The camaraderie. The closeness with some of the Brothers. Do you know what I mean?’
He was very close to me now, almost brushing me with his hand, frisking it down my doublet. His weird breath was all over me. I knew exactly what he meant.
‘No, no.’ I said hurriedly, ‘I’ve left all that behind.’
It was the wrong thing to say, and he got quite the wrong idea.
‘Tell me more,’ he cried. ‘What secrets have you left behind that trouble you so much? Come to my study after Matins tomorrow. The Comte is very particular about attendance, and likes to see my Book. My door is always open.’
‘Thank you, Father. So kind.’
‘I feel we are going to be good friends.’
It was an uncomfortable thought.
The word around hall when I asked next morning was that the Comte was not in the least interested in the Chaplain’s Book. The Chaplain, I learned, was famous for having little favourites among the pages who served as his spies. It was said that he reported to the Archbishop of Rouen who reported to the Pope’s legate, Cardinal Cuno (a right little cuno, it was said, always sticking his nose in and causing trouble), who reported to the Pope who reported to God.
The Chaplain’s door was always open but it shut pretty quick when he got you inside. He liked Malvasia wine and blond boys who liked Malvasia wine.
XV
Days passed and turned into weeks in that slippery way they have. The Comte came back, tossed some pots, and went away again.
My lessons with the girls were going well. They were bright and had aptitude for learning. Marie was a little more serious as so often happens with elder daughters, the younger more skittish, but both of them were delightful, and I loved them as much for themselves as for their mother.
It was by no means all lessons. We played Blind Man’s Buff with the nurse and Juliana, and Are You There, Chanticlere?, that game where you blindfold someone who is called Mr Bones and give him a rolled-up ‘stick’ of cloth, and the ‘victim’ has to lie face down on the floor. Mr Bones says ‘Are you there, Chanticlere? And the victim has to crow like a cock and then roll sideways, left or right, up or down, without moving his or her hips. Then Mr Bones strikes and, if he doesn’t hit the victim on the head, Mr Bones becomes the next victim. This game was a great success. I taught them to play hide and seek and, in quieter moments, chess and draughts and fiddlesticks.
What fun we had when the Comte was away and Juliana was running the house! She was talking to me more now and had apologised for our indiscretion. It had shocked her, she told me, as had her feelings after it. This was why she had avoided me in those early days. She had decided that it must never happen again, it was far too dangerous, but that we could still be friends.
Of course it was not what I wanted to hear, but I understood life (to say women would have been arrogant) well enough to think this might not be her final word on the subject. I knew myself and Ovid well enough to know that once I had tasted the spring of knowledge, I had to drink deeper. But I co
uld wait. It seemed to me then that we had all the time in the world, and I told myself what Catullus used to say, that a pleasure deferred is a pleasure increased.
She loved me, I was sure of it. I walked, bouncing on air, as if I had inflated bladders under my feet.
The Comte was away longer than expected, as it happened. Juliana said he had probably found a small war. I hoped I could take her to the greenwood the night before May Day to go a-maying, to make our bed in the forest and bring home green boughs with the girls and boys in the morning. But it was not possible. It was too soon, there were too many people watching, she said (proving indeed that my intimations were right). We were able to snatch a little bit of May madness in the wardrobe when they were all away though. Even the girl Alice with her big grey eyes and dark hair didn’t notice. At any rate, she didn’t let on that she had. That girl was a portent of something waiting to happen, but at least it was waiting not happening, and when you are young the happening is the thing that matters, in spite of what Catullus says. The present is like a siege projectile shattering into fragments of possibility as it hits the walls of the future, but I didn’t know that then or, if I did know, I did not care. To be honest, I don’t think Juliana cared either.
‘Perfect love doth not cast out fear,’ Brother Paul told me once, ‘it just numbs it like an infusion of poppy.’
And then came the news that the English Queen, Matilda – the Duke’s wife and Juliana’s stepmother – had died.
XVI
The death had happened a few days back, in England. Matilda’s real name was Edith but the Normans couldn’t pronounce it so she was called Queen Matilda. Being descended from the old English kings, Edith Matilda was the sister of the King of Scotland as well, and an altogether important person.
Eustace, who happened to be plotting nearby, returned to Breteuil on hearing the news. There was immediately some question as to whether Eustace and Juliana were expected to go over to London for the funeral. The Queen certainly deserved due honour. She had done her duty by providing Henry with a son as well as a daughter, and he had trusted her enough to make her Regent in England when he was away in Normandy. He might even have loved her. But the news we received in Breteuil – news from my father in Mortagne, swiftly confirmed by the landlord of The Bear in town – was that the Duke preferred not to go back to England: the situation in Normandy was grave enough for his continued presence to be necessary.
The morning after his return to Breteuil, the Comte was making a hearty breakfast of capon’s leg, bread and ale, even though he had been carried out insensible the night before. He cursed the Queen roundly for being a nuisance and interfering with his political alliances and declared that he, at any rate, was not going to England, a miserable country at the best of times.
‘That will hardly upset her since she did not know you,’ said Juliana. ‘Nor will it upset the Duke since he is not going either. As for myself, much though it dismays me to agree with you, I feel it is an English affair, and I must be a Norman now.’
‘She was a good lady and endowed monasteries, I understand,’ said the Chaplain, always looking round corners and nicknamed (I discovered from my neighbour at table) Snooping Jesus. Luckily, it was said, he had very large feet so you could see the feet coming before the rest of him appeared.
‘I shall pray for her,’ said Juliana.
‘Oh no, Comtesse. We must have a Mass. It would be an insult not to. Imagine what would happen if word reached the Duke that we had insulted his dead wife by not having a Mass. Brickbats would fly, Comtesse. I personally know the Archbishop of Rouen.’
‘Very well, Father Crispin. If you insist. A Mass it shall be.’
‘I do not insist, Comtesse. The Queen’s bones cry out for it.’
They get these orotund phrases from the Apocrypha.
The Comte himself, though never at his best at breakfast, saw the Queen’s death as an excuse for making trouble for the Duke once again. His next step, he decided – after sending a rambling letter of condolence to the Duke – was to arrange a series of consultations with his dubious friends, most of them disaffected enemies of the Duke, chief of whom was of course Amaury de Montfort, with whom he could plot further mischief.
We had the Mass in the château’s chapel, a cold thin place with a high ceiling and hard seats. The boys from the town sang as best they could, but their best was not good enough. In fact, one of them was so bad that I saw him coming out of the Chaplain’s room later quite red in the face.
Several days later, we saw the Comte clatter off with the knights of his bodyguard, this time in the direction of Évreux where de Montfort had various interests.
XVII
The hours passed happily when Eustace was away. May was graduating into June and Juliana was happy. The château worked properly, there was no discord, and indeed there was love.
There was something of fire about that girl. She was a Scorpio, I discovered – an Egyptian, versed in these things, came one day and read her fortune. She was tenacious and dangerous to cross – a water sign – but she had a strong Taurus in her character, which made her sensual and beautiful, and her moon was in Leo which was where the fire came in. The man was doubtless skilful enough, but I knew all these things from the first, though not to call them by the right names. I was a raw youth before I met Juliana, but she cooked my rawness and made me comestible. I never quite knew what I did for her because she was clever enough to keep it secret. She kept me simmering away at the back of the fire, until suddenly she was hungry, and she moved me back to the flame. I was content just to be near her and I believe that she loved me too, but she (I mean we) had to be careful. One indiscretion and all could be lost. There was no end to the list of punishments and humiliations that a wronged husband could mete out. It fairly curled the sphincter to think of them.
Over the past few weeks I had instituted a regime of lessons for the girls which was not too onerous but which included an hour or two of Latin every day. I intended that they should enjoy their Latin and not dread it as I had in the monastery. I began by teaching it as a Roman child would learn it – with words rather than declensions. ‘Milk’, ‘bread’, ‘meat’, ‘fish’, ‘water’, then adding adjectives and only then starting on declension. The verbs would follow in due course. It was not the academic way I learned it – but I had learned declensions and conjugations slowly and painfully. My new way appeared to work; the girls really seemed to be interested. They were so proud of themselves when they could ask for ‘panis’ and ‘aqua’ at table, impressing the knights and squires with their learning.
Saint-Sulpice had given me other useful skills beyond Latin, however. Medicine was one of them and illustration was another. Both of these came in very useful with the girls, since they were boisterous little things – endlessly falling over and cutting themselves – and they also loved drawing and painting, Marie especially.
Beyond these, there was a further art that the monastery at Saint-Sulpice had been famous for – its teaching of music and the making of it. I managed to borrow a little psaltery from one of the castle’s musicians, a small harp-like instrument on which I started to give the girls lessons. Music was Pippi’s especial forte.
They were both good at singing, and had a good ear. I taught them some of the new songs called caroles that were coming out of Provence, and songs for little ones that my mother used to sing, and a May song for the merry month that was so nearly over.
Pippi, six years old, had a voice like a high recorder; sweet and high, it quite caught at the heart. Marie’s voice was just a little more alto, so they made a lovely duet together. Sometimes I would chime in with my tenor, and I swear people would have paid to hear us sing ‘Sweet sorrow fills my heart’ and ‘All the birds of the morning’.
‘Do you think people would pay to hear us?’ asked Pippi.
‘Without a doubt,’ I replied. ‘Such a beautiful sound was never heard in the whole of Normandy.’
I told them tha
t we should have travelled on the road with my friend Eliphas the Player, and we would have drawn the crowds in every town we stopped in, so sweet and high we would have been. We would have drawn the birds from the trees and the beasts from the forest like Orpheus, I told the girls, and they wanted to go out on the road that very day.
‘I think we would have to make preparations,’ I said. ‘The thing to do when people are going on their travels is to get a longish stick and a big wide handkerchief, put all the things you need to take in it, then gather up the corners of the handkerchief, tie them to the end of your stick, put it over your shoulder and there you are, ready to go.’
Then of course we had to go and cut the sticks and find handkerchiefs that were big enough to hold what they considered important, which meant large quantities of sweetmeats and a big shawl in case they were cold at night. Juliana came in while we were tying the bundles to our sticks and wanted to know what was going on.
‘We are going on the road,’ Marie told her, ‘to find Eliphant the Player, with Mr FitzR.’
‘And then we will sing to the people wherever we stop and they will come to his cart to hear us,’ chimed in Pippi.
‘And what have you got in your bundles?’ she asked, smiling.
‘We have sweetmeats and a warm shawl,’ said Marie.
‘That sounds very sensible. And what does Mr FitzR have in his?’
‘Sweetmeats,’ I replied.
‘And a warm cloak,’ added Pippi.
‘And I will take a sword in case of trouble,’ I added. ‘You never know in High Normandy.’
‘And where will you sleep when you are on the road?’ Juliana asked them. ‘When it gets dark and the wolves start to howl and the rain starts to fall?’
‘That will be a problem,’ said Pippi.
‘Mr FitzR will beat the wolves away,’ said Marie.
‘But even Mr FitzR, who is second to none in my regard, even Mr FitzR cannot keep the rain off two little girls on a soggy night.’
‘We want to go, we want to go,’ the girls shouted.
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