It was clear that the prospect of the adventure had really taken hold.
‘We will go for a little walk with our bundles and see how it feels. They may be too heavy,’ I said. ‘It is essential to get everything in trim and properly sorted out.’
Juliana seemed to think that this was a good idea so, after an early meal, we put our sticks over our shoulders, I buckled on a sword, and we strode up to the gatehouse and I beat upon the stout oak with my stick, Juliana observing us from a discreet distance.
‘Open up,’ we shouted.
The old First Gatekeeper wheezed himself out of the lodge. I was happy to note that his surly colleague with whom I had crossed swords on my arrival at the château was not on duty that day.
‘Whassup?’
‘We are going to seek our fortunes, and beguile the world with the sweetness of our voices,’ I said.
‘Oh all right then, if m’lady says it’s all right. It’s a hard world out there,’ he said to the girls, who began to look slightly uncertain.
We marched out, turning to wave to Juliana, who waved back at us.
‘Isn’t Mummy coming too?’ asked Pippi.
‘No, silly, or it wouldn’t be an adventure,’ her elder sister told her.
We walked on. Soon we were passing down a close avenue of trees, and slowly the forest closed in on us.
‘Do you think we should sing like Orpheus to draw the beasts out?’ I asked.
The little girls looked dubious.
‘I think they might eat us instead,’ said Pippi. ‘We would be singing away with our top half sticking out of their mouths.’
‘They might be enchanted with our music,’ I said.
‘But what if they’re not?’ said Marie.
‘Good point,’ I said, ‘perhaps we should go back for now. I will send a message to Eliphas and see what he thinks.’
Just at the moment, who should come round the corner but a jingling-jangling body of knights with our old friend Eustace at the front.
‘Halt!’ he roared, and they all stopped and looked at me.
His wicked little black eyes bulged and looked ready to shoot out at me like vindictive olives.
‘You,’ he bellowed at me, ‘what are you doing with my daughters, fellow? Are you absconding with them? Are you taking them hostage? My God and by Saint Elmo’s beard, I believe you are. Arrest that man, sergeant.’
A large man leapt from his horse and advanced towards me, but my dear little Marie came to the rescue. She stood her ground and spoke to her father in a loud, clear voice.
‘No, Father, he is not taking us hostage. He is teaching us the way of the road and how hard it can be and how poor men fare upon it. We were about to turn back at the very moment you appeared. My mother has given us permission.’
She was a true grandchild of the Duke at that moment. Even her father looked startled. Pippi joined in.
‘That’s right, Father. We are not going to be a hot … a hot … a hotsage.’
Some of the men smiled, even those iron hearts.
‘Hmph. Oh. Very well,’ said Eustace to the girls. Turning to me, he said gruffly, ‘Take them back at once and teach them some Latin if that’s what you do. You are a Latiner, teach them Latin. You are not paid to tramp around the forest like a mad monk getting up to God knows what.’
And so he rode on, and I followed after with the girls, sick at heart for my part, because kill-joy had come back.
The little girls were going to sing their May song in hall at dinner time; they had practised really hard. But then Eustace spoilt it all. He became intoxicated with the decent wine that Juliana had made the butler get in, and didn’t want to hear his daughters. He declared he would hear it tomorrow. Now he wanted to talk about war and machination, and taking sides against the Duke whose vassal he was. De Montfort had got at him as we had feared.
‘Eustace sees himself as some kind of king-maker,’ Juliana told me when we met on the stairs later. ‘But he is in truth only a pawn to be moved by his friends and removed by his enemies. It would be sad if he weren’t such an ox.’
She never used ugly words about him because she was well brought up. That made the ‘ox’ sound really horrible. As of course he was.
There were scenes over the next few days. My little charges wept bitter tears at their father’s behaviour over the May song. Their mother became moody herself, living in a quiet fury against the oaf her husband. He was a sort of angry, ugly monster whom nobody liked, maybe not even he himself.
The only good to come out of it was that he was soon out on his conspiracy trail again.
XVIII
I have never much cared about political intrigue and even less about war. Knowing that the Comte found them fascinating, I rated them even lower. My only care was my passion for the Comtesse who was good enough to treat me kindly and very occasionally let me make love to her.
No, that sounds far too passive on my part. I was impatient, sometimes I sulked because I wanted all of her attention, I was prepared to face the worst and be found out in flagrante delicto with her, so that the Comte would know I had cuckolded him, and his wife and I could leave and live in happiness and poverty together. But of course that was ridiculous. The Duke, her father, would never allow it. She had children; disgrace was not an option. She pointed this out to me when I mentioned it one day as we walked in the bailey while the children played around us.
‘My father would have you poisoned, even if my husband did not. Or he would send someone to cut your throat one dark night on the way to the tavern. You must not even think that way. The only hope for us is that my husband will go too far, and he will be disgraced or imprisoned, or killed in some futile skirmish. But for the moment, we must be secret, always watching the corners and looking backwards, guarding our tongues … We have been lucky so far. A castle is no place to hide things.’
Lucky? I was in torment, a torment from which I could not bear to be separated. I wondered now whether she did really love me. She was a passionate woman and an ardent lover, and I was a convenient boy who happened to be around. She found me amusing. I gave her a new interest and perspective. I showed her how desirable she was, but what did she care about me?
Like a gauche boy, I raised these questions with her, and her eyes flashed. I saw a tear of anger on her cheek, and her lip trembled, and she turned away and said nothing to me for a week. In the castle there were eyes and ears everywhere, waiting to betray us, and I saw, to my shame, what a fool I had been and how I had underestimated my lovely Juliana. I was low and unworthy.
Since we could talk if we could not make love, I began to see Normandy and the Duke’s predicament in a new light. As Juliana explained it to me in our many conversations, the to and fro of baronial loyalty and disaffection started to make more sense. My journeys to The Bear in town were now undertaken more for information than refreshment. Each time I heard news that was in some way detrimental or adverse to the Duke I rejoiced, because it might take the Comte away from Breteuil again. And in that summer of 1118 there was plenty to feed the Comte’s feverish ambitions.
The Duke was encountering trouble from every side. Even Hugh de Gournay, who had been brought up by Henry, was rising against him. Henry had encouraged him to marry off his pretty sister to a trusted courtier, Nigel d’Aubigny. But this made de Gournay petulant, so he left the wedding party, killed a castellan loyal to the Duke, and gave the castle to a friend of his. I mean, how crass can you get? Normandy was full of people like that in those days. Brutish people to whom life was a knacker’s yard.
Of course it meant that Eustace was off again, and the castle was left free of the brooding presence. It was nearly midsummer and there had been not a drop of rain for three weeks. The farmers complained, but the town and castle had better things to think about.
We were gathering together for the midsummer pageant when almost anything went, and the château was supposed to roast an ox in the meadow outside the walls for the townsfolk to en
joy.
The steward wanted to conserve resources because of the wars (despite siphoning off much for himself) but the Comtesse gave him a dressing-down and told him not to be so miserable. Of course the ox should be roasted on Midsummer Night; the stars would fall from the heavens, the trees would leave the forest, if we did not celebrate. The Chaplain clasped his hands together unctuously and talked about heathen practices and dangerous beliefs in fairies and goodfellows, but Juliana pounced on him too and told him about the importance of not being serious about everything. The children were excited because there would be swings and booths and jugglers and three-legged races. Even better for me, three days earlier Baldwin, Count of Flanders had advanced further into Normandy with his army and thereby guaranteed that Eustace would not be at home.
I watched Juliana moving among these people like a swan among ducks, unaware in their ducky way of the enormous favour she was granting with her presence. She was born to command and yet she was at ease with the world. She made you feel easy even if you were a scullion or the lowest kind of scroyle. Only with the dishonest or the vile did she show her iron.
Juliana had hinted to me that on Midsummer Night, after the race round the lake and the tug of war and the ox-roast and the conjuring man and the fattest woman in the world and the fire-eater and the dancing to a consort of lyras, and after the little girls were safely in bed, watched over by their old nurse, we might be able to steal away to a little summerhouse beside the lake. She knew a way we could escape without being seen and then we could spend part of this most magical of nights together.
There was a breathless expectation about the great day, as much in the castle as the town. The ox had been killed, the great fire built, tents and stalls started to go up, people spoke of nothing else, and I thought of nothing but Juliana and what she had promised me.
XIX
There were no lessons when the day finally arrived. The little girls were on tiptoe, dizzy with excitement – and, I have to admit, so was I, for I had had no opportunity to be alone with Juliana for two weeks, which seemed to me like a lustrum, a decade, a quintillion, an aeon. I was obsessed with her, consumed, un-made and re-created. I seemed to have lost what it was I had thought myself to be.
It was a hot day. The little girls ran me, their mother, and the old nurse ragged, visiting all the stalls, trying the cakes, throwing the hoops, knocking down the skittles, peeping at the world’s fattest woman, and becoming hopelessly entangled in the three-legged race. Juliana was in great demand as a judge and arbiter. It was she who was asked to cut the first slice from the ox, and what a fine animal it was! It fed the town to a perfect and chin-dripping fullness, and darkness was well fallen before the little girls started to droop. I scooped them up and returned them to the castle, and the old nurse gave me a wigging for keeping them up so late.
‘It is true that it is late, Nanny,’ said Marie, ‘but it has been the best day ever and we didn’t want it to finish.’
‘It is true that it is late, Nanny … but …’ echoed Pippi, and then her eyes closed and she would have fallen if I had not caught her.
‘Dead on her feet,’ the old girl grumbled, and then she winked, ‘but, by Jesu, that ox was good. Steward says he never authorised it. Wash his mouth out with soap if he sneaks to the Comte. I’ll box his ears, so I will.’
I told Juliana about it when we met at last at the postern door. She was wearing a gauzy veil which partially hid her face above her summer dress. I was reminded once again of the dangers we faced if anyone saw us together.
‘The steward is a poisonous little rat. Let him do what he will,’ she said. ‘That ox was probably bought and fed with my dowry.’
She led me by the hand down to the dungeon, which of course she had emptied of prisoners. In truth, there were only two, both of whom had offended the Comte in some way or another.
‘Eustace is away and the mice will play,’ she said.
The gaoler was still at the feast, filling his knobbly face with beef dripping, and dancing grotesquely like a wodwo with anyone who would have him. The revels would continue until midnight and beyond. He would pass out in a tent and not wake up until somebody pissed on him.
Juliana led me down a passage in the very entrails of the castle to a door which looked, on cursory inspection, like part of the wall. It was locked but, conveniently, she carried a key. She opened the door and a long, low, damp, dark tunnel revealed itself.
‘This tunnel was ordered by the Earl FitzOsbern, grandfather of my husband, who built the castle. For whatever reason – some said fear, others said prudence, others still said love – he liked the idea of escaping from the place without anyone knowing.’
‘Sensible man,’ I said.
‘It stretches for fifty yards beyond the curtain wall to the shore of the lake.’
She produced a candle which she lit from the tallow lamp that provided the dungeon with its dim and eerie illumination.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘No time for faint hearts. And watch out for puddles.’
She pushed me forward, closing the door behind her and locking it.
‘We don’t want any followers tonight,’ she said.
She handed me the candle which I held aloft and, hand in hand, we made our way down that spooky little rat-hole, dodging the drips from the ceilings and the slime on the walls, until finally, just as I thought the tunnel must end in a rock fall, we came to another locked door which responded raspingly to the key that she held, and we were out.
We were in a low cave scooped out of the side of the hill on which the castle sat. I had never noticed it before. Juliana locked the passage door and placed the key on a ledge hidden from inquisitive eyes. There was a little rowing boat drawn up upon the slope with the name Perrine written on its stern, and two oars resting against the wall. I checked to make sure that we were alone, but everyone was still up at the roast and its aftermath.
‘So far so good,’ she said. ‘You know this is madness, don’t you?’
‘A divine madness, the Greeks would call it,’ I said, immediately regretting my stilted pedagoguery.
My desire was making me nervous.
‘I take it you can row.’
‘I learned on the lake when I was at the abbey,’ I told her, ‘helping with the fishing. Also on the Risle when we needed rushes.’
I pushed the boat down to the edge of the lapping water, handed her in to the stern seat, passed her the oars to be stowed on either side, and stepped lightly in to take up position on the sculler’s seat, facing her. There was a moment of precarious wobble as I did so, and she stifled a little cry of alarm.
The still surface of the lake shone like the newly polished armour of a prince. I dipped the oars in the water, and it was like paddling mercury.
‘We are floating on metal,’ I said.
She leant forward and kissed me.
‘Head straight across the lake,’ she told me. ‘There is a place to land by the little summerhouse.’
I had walked past it many times, but I had never thought I would see the place in such a circumstance. That paddle across the lake was like a journey beyond time. So closely did the still water reflect the stars, I had a fancy that we were rowing across the sky. Juliana’s eyes were fixed on me. I wished our journey could go on for ever.
But, yes, we arrived with a bump, and we climbed out of the boat and pulled it up near the wooden summerhouse with its tiny jetty.
‘Shall we stay here?’ I asked.
Decisions tonight rested with her.
‘No’, she said, ‘we will go to the house in the woods.’
I was not so sure of that. The woods were very dark and visibility was close. I had never ventured far into these woods. There was something about them that kept you out. Probably it was just the Comte’s gamekeeper, but you heard things that you could not see, and would not wish to. There was talk of wodwos, goodfellows and witches.
Juliana was confident enough. She knew the path, and I was gl
ad she did for it led us a merry dance hither and thither, until I thought we were retracing our steps. We must have walked a mile and more. Perhaps she did it to confuse me. Finally we arrived at a tumbledown cottage, lost in the forest, as the moon glimmered above the trees, and distant cries in the wood sounded half-human in that way they do. The thought crossed my mind that we would have the devil of a time getting back, but I pushed it away. Juliana knew where and how and what this evening. I knew for sure that I did not.
Another thought came, completely unbidden, that maybe she had done this – with someone else – before. It did not worry me. Why should it?
‘Hello,’ she called at the cottage door. ‘Mother Merle!’
There was an answering call from somewhere inside, and at length the door was opened by a pretty girl of seventeen or so. A cat with green eyes played around her legs.
‘Good evening, Madame,’ the girl said, curtseying charmingly. ‘Everything is ready for you.’
She showed us into the kitchen where a table was spread with meats and cheese and bread, and a flagon of wine.
‘You may leave us now, Merle,’ said Juliana.
‘The room is ready for you, Madame. Good night.’
‘Thank you, Merle. You have done well. Good night.’
The girl went out into a room at the back.
‘Eat,’ said Juliana, pointing at the table. And indeed I found I was hungry after our wanderings in the forest.
I poured some wine for us both – an excellent Burgundy of which my father the cellarer would no doubt have approved. I was still nervous. The strangeness of the evening made me feel as if I were an actor in one of Eliphas’s plays, but my apprehension began to leave me as we sat there. Was there something in the wine? Everything seemed to take on a dusky crimson shadowing. Things appeared to move more slowly and in a gliding motion which made me laugh.
I had never been so happy.
‘Come,’ said Juliana, and led me upstairs to a little room with a large bed.
She undressed so slowly that a disaster was nearly precipitated in my precipitous state. Just as slowly she undressed me so that we both stood there, in the moonlight, liquefying. I seemed to have become my penis.
The White Ship Page 10
