The White Ship

by Nicholas Salaman

  And then Juliana said something which convinced me that she carried those powers of the English wicce which she had spoken of.

  ‘I know what you’re up to, Alice.’

  ‘Me, my lady. I am not up to anything.’

  ‘In that case I know you better than you know yourself. If you want to stay in the castle with me, I advise you to stop.’

  ‘I am curious, my lady, that is all. I was taught by the Holy Sisters to be inquisitive. I would like to learn about spices and about everything in this castle.’

  ‘That is all very well, Alice, and very good up to a point. But you know what happened to the cat in the story, don’t you?’

  ‘The cat, my lady?’

  ‘It was so keen to see the bottom of the well, that in the end it fell down it. Or maybe it was pushed.’

  The girl, for all her bravery, turned pale. There was no mistaking Juliana’s threat, and I began to see my beloved in a new light. There was something of her father in her, people said, and indeed it had revealed itself now to Alice – and to me – as a streak of ruthlessness. It would not do to cross her, or I would find myself in a far less agreeable place than the wine cellars of the Comte de Perche. It increased my respect for Juliana, but I have always found that fear driveth out love. So it was that, from this day, my passion seemed to slacken a little. Lust is a different matter. We bastards know all about that; it sings to a different note on Pan’s pipe, and is woefully hard to expunge. Please don’t think too hardly of me. One has to make one’s way in the world.

  XXXI

  Henry, King of England and Duke of Normandy, arrived at the castle in the afternoon a few days later, the fourth of February, with a flourish of trumpets and a compact force of men at arms, the King’s own guard. They looked very spruce and grimly efficient. It had been a dry week, and their horses looked cleaner than most of the Comte’s men.

  Juliana had ordered the servants to tidy themselves up and wash under the pump, and had made them wear their best tunics, and even Eustace had agreed to take off his chain-mail and wear a passable tunic with his hose. His man had been ordered to comb the Comte’s beard and generally cut and trim where necessary.

  When Henry entered the hall we were all lined up for him. He paused in the doorway and surveyed the scene as a king should, hands on his hips and his head thrown back. I was eager to study him in the flesh and – having heard so much of his troubles and the machinations of his enemies – I felt I understood something of the tension that he lived with: the necessity of a finding an equilibrium in Normandy without which the place would degenerate into ruin and anarchy. That was the duty of the ruler of a turbulent kingdom full of restless barons with private armies – to strive endlessly to find the fair, middle course, and punish those who strayed from it. All very well to describe what you had to do, but still very hard to do it.

  As I looked for the first time at this bright, hard, brave, clever man, father of the woman I loved, I found there was indeed a quality in him that I respected and felt sympathy for.

  Henry cut a fine figure physically. He was around average height, with a good strong nose and mouth, his chin and upper lip concealed under a beard of thick, dark-brown hair with a reddish tinge to it, his head covered with a good thatch of the same. His black eyes were alert, needle-sharp, always on the move. It was an intelligent face, severe; not kind but, I thought, fair and just.

  ‘Ha,’ he exclaimed on seeing Juliana, ‘my favourite daughter.’

  ‘Now, Father,’ she smiled as she curtseyed and came forward to kiss him, ‘you say that to all your daughters.’

  ‘You are quite right,’ he smiled back, ‘but to you I am not lying.’

  ‘But you never lie, Father. I am not even sure that a king can. Just as he cannot commit treason.’

  The Duke was amused, and tilted his head as if in agreement. Then he spotted Eustace looming like the unhappy giant he was.

  ‘No more, I am sure, than our friend the Comte de Breteuil could.’

  Eustace, of course, completely missed the hint of irony with which this was said. He knelt awkwardly, almost perfunctorily, and mumbled a few words of ritual greetings to his lord before Juliana led her father into the hall, introducing him to the Marshal, one or two of the senior knights and the steward, and then to his grand-daughters whom he kissed and made much of.

  ‘So you are Marie?’ he said to the eldest. ‘You know what they call me? Beauclerc. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘Beau means handsome…’

  ‘Yes,’ Pippi burst in, ‘and clerk means you speak Latin.’

  ‘And we can speak Latin too,’ said Marie. ‘Amo, amas, amat…’

  ‘Amumus, amutis, amunt,’ finished Pippi triumphantly.

  I was somewhat mortified that they had not chosen a more distinguished way of showing their aptitude in Latin, but the excitement of the occasion had no doubt got the better of them.

  ‘Well,’ said their grandfather, ‘you are very learned and will soon be talking to abbots and archbishops and writing letters to the Pope.’

  ‘And you must meet our guest Roger,’ said Marie, presenting Roger to him.

  ‘He is the son of Ralph Harenc, your castellan at Ivry,’ said Juliana.

  ‘Of course. Greetings to you, Roger.’

  He held out his hand and the little boy knelt and kissed it. The Castellan, his father, now stepped forward.

  ‘And to you too, Castellan Harenc,’ he said.

  The Castellan did as his son had done. This seemed to satisfy the Duke. Little Marie and Pippi now took me by the hand and led me forward. I could not resist.

  ‘This is Master Fitzrotroot,’ Marie told her grandfather.

  ‘He is a Latiner and he is our tutor,’ said Pippi.

  I fell to my knees before the Duke, it seemed the right thing to do, and so it turned out. He took my hand and raised me up.

  ‘So. You are a son of my son-in-law the Comte de Perche.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  ‘So. We are almost related. Please do not tell my daughter the Comtesse de Perche what I have said about the Lady Juliana being my favourite daughter!’

  His eyes twinkled as he spoke.

  ‘I understand, sire.’

  ‘Good. You are a Latiner, are you?’

  ‘Yes, sire. I learned the language at the Abbey of Saint-Sulpice.’

  ‘A fine place. I have visited the abbey, and granted them lands. What else did you learn there?’

  I remembered his visit, which happened just after I arrived at the place, though he clearly did not remember me, and why should he? I had been a shivering novice missing my mother.

  ‘Music, sire. Singing.’

  ‘Yes, they are good at that.’

  ‘Some medicine, learnt from one of their brothers who had learnt from the Arabs. And also some of the new mathematics.’

  ‘So you are a man of parts. My daughter has chosen well. We must have better knowledge of you in future. Medicine, eh? Mathematics? These are useful things.’

  At that point, Eustace burst in. He could not endure to be ignored, though his idea of being the centre of attention was to get drunk, horse around, utter the Breteuil battle-cry which was ‘Osbern’, touch up a wench, and belch or fart without looking up at the ceiling (which, as you know, is the polite thing to do).

  ‘Come and be seated, my lord Duke,’ he cried. ‘We have some fine Rhenish wine in and nobody pours it better than my wife, your daughter.’

  ‘Surely you have a butler to do that, Breteuil, do you not?’

  ‘It is a custom here when there is a visitor of note. Go, Juliana, fetch the wine,’ he commanded her as if she were a servant.

  It was typical of the man to wish to show his superiority over his wife, but he obviously did not know his Duke very well.

  ‘Stop. By the death of our Lord, sir, I do not wish my daughter to serve me wine. I would consider it a discourtesy if she did. Please allow me to be the arbiter o
f that. But, yes, I will drink a little wine with you.’

  He laid a light emphasis on the word little. I looked at him with new respect. He had obviously done his homework on his son-in-law. They said the Duke was interested in everything that went on in Normandy, that he had people reporting to him, indeed that he had spies everywhere. I began to wonder who his spy was here. I even began to think it might have been the dark-haired Alice. She was hovering around in the hall even now. Sometimes one can suspect everyone.

  ‘We have much to talk about,’ the Duke said to Eustace as they sat down. ‘I cannot stay long. There are outbreaks of disorder everywhere. Robert de Bellême and his son Talvas plot endlessly, and that man de Montfort stirs up trouble wherever he can find it. King Louis of France can’t wait to nibble away at my duchy, and some of my barons swing around more readily than the wheels of a haycart. But they do not know their man. I will see to them all, believe me, but I do need you on my side.’

  ‘You can trust me, sire. I am your daughter’s husband.’

  ‘I know that, Breteuil. But I did hear that the creature de Montfort was sniffing around here. Tell me that is not true.’

  Here Juliana broke in.

  ‘It is true, Father. But …’

  ‘But we sent him packing,’ Eustace broke in.

  The butler now served the wine, and it was excellent. The King drank like a man who was thirsty, and asked for water if it was good. I was now sitting further up the table near the Duke since even Eustace could not very well demote a Latiner who was in some way related to the royal visitor.

  ‘We can talk over our meal later,’ said Eustace. ‘We ate at twelve, but will sit down again at six o’clock if that will suit you.’

  ‘It will suit me well,’ said the Duke. ‘We have only one meal a day now, apart from breakfast. It was an idea of my good friend Robert, Comte de Meulan. Two meals wastes too much time when you are campaigning.’

  Eustace’s face fell – he liked his two meals a day – but still, there was dinner to look forward to. This prompted another thought that lobbed like a trebuchet’s missile over the battlements of his mind and landed with a thud in his parched seat of reason.

  ‘Would it not be better to discuss our differences in a private room?’ he suggested. ‘We don’t want the whole rabble to get involved.’

  ‘I hardly think your knights and your steward, to say nothing of my daughter, would take kindly to being called a rabble, Comte.’

  ‘I meant those whose business it is not, my lord.’

  ‘On the contrary, our business is everybody’s business. They live here. Your interests are their interests. You are their lord. No, let us discuss the matter of my …’ the Duke corrected himself with even more than his usual tact …‘the castle of Ivry … over a table laden with your excellent food and drink. Justice should always be seen to be done, not stitched up by clever men in secret rooms. We shall feel more contented and altogether more benign when we are eating. Besides, I have always believed that the process of chewing in some way encourages the mental processes.’

  I could see that Juliana, who had been uncharacteristically withdrawn (her father had that effect on her), approved of this plan.

  ‘Very well,’ muttered Eustace. ‘If that is your wish, sire.’

  ‘It is indeed. And now I am sure my knights and I would like a little time to prepare ourselves for your hospitality.’

  So the Duke went to the quarters that had been arranged for him. He had ridden hard that day and no doubt was glad of an hour or two to wash, rest and reflect on the difficult discussion ahead with the feckless Comte. The fact was that the Duke especially liked the château at Ivry and had placed his trusted castellan Harenc, one of his best captains, there as a mark of his esteem. At the same time, he needed to be able to rely on his daughter and her husband, or at least rely on his ability to put the squeeze on them, and at the moment he could not quite do that. I imagined the Duke stared at himself in the glass his man had brought, washing his face and hands, and hating being caught again in such a situation. It was hard being a king-duke (even though it would be harder still not to be) and he could surely be excused for having, at times, a temper that exploded like a Greek fire bomb. He must try to see that it did not happen tonight.

  XXXII

  The dinner that evening was to become famous at Breteuil among the pages, squires and knights, and the servants who served and stood in attendance – famous for the lavishness of the entertainment and for the sight of Comte Eustace trying to contain his temper until it swelled him up like a great red pumpkin. It all started well. Eustace had given in to his wife’s requests for a show, and the place was full of colour and delightful odours. The rushes had been changed and the floor under them swept and scraped and swept again. Tunics, mantles and hose were bright with yellows and reds, magentas, purples and greens. Eustace wore a clean linen coif decorated with feathers and buttons and tied by strings under his great chin, which made him look like a booby. Juliana wore a gorgeous dress of wonderful green whose colour seemed to have been plucked fresh from the forest.

  The whole castle smelt of good food.

  The feast started with a course of fish – removes of carp and pike, boiled and stuffed with ingenious spices and served with curious sauces, scallops, eels and lampreys of which the Duke was known to be especially fond.

  While this was being brought on, served and eaten, a group of musicians with harp, oliphant and four lyras started to make sweet music in the gallery, above the increasing din of the party.

  The feast progressed to swan, duck, and capons stuffed with larks’ tongues, and vegetables: new carrots and cabbage and leeks from the castle gardens. This was followed by a remove of venison and wild boar from the Comte’s forests, you know the sort of thing, and then a great roast baron of beef which the Duke especially praised for its tenderness.

  ‘If only some of my barons were as tender as this, how easy my life would be,’ he remarked to Ralph Harenc who sat near him, though he meant it to be heard by Eustace as well. There was hearty laughter in which Eustace joined though he did not quite catch the joke. However, it encouraged him, now that the feast was well under way, to raise the topic which was nearest to his heart and upon which this whole occasion was contrived.

  ‘How think you, my lord, perhaps we can now talk about …’ he began, but the Duke cut him short.

  ‘I can predict the future. Did you know that?’ he spread out his arms, addressing the top table.

  ‘Tell us,’ the top table shouted.

  ‘I know what the Comte Eustace here is going to say next.’

  ‘What is he going to say next?’

  The duke turned to Eustace and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Then, as if pulled by wires, they both spoke at once:

  ‘Ivry.’

  The top table erupted with laughter. Eustace laughed too although I could see that he wondered if he had been made to look a fool. He decided he had, which made him enraged with the Duke. It was too bad to be made to look a fool in his own hall.

  ‘Yes, Ivry,’ he went on. ‘The castle is, by rights, mine. It belonged to the great William de Breteuil, my grandfather.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Duke, ‘who bestowed it upon William?’

  ‘Why – the Duke of Normandy?’

  ‘Precisely. That is why, when your uncle died, I decided to take it back. It was, and is, useful to me.’

  ‘But a gift is a gift. It is not a loan.’

  ‘Everything in Normandy belongs to me. I am the Duke. If I decide, on someone’s death, to take back what is mine, that is … what I can do. The castle was granted to your cousin by my brother Duke Robert. When the Church and certain barons called on me, I took issue with my brother and defeated him in battle because he had let Normandy run to ruin. And part of the ruin, so far as I was concerned, was letting a castle like Ivry go from my possession when it was evidently so strategically important. So I took it back. It was all part of my plan
to make Normandy secure again.’

  ‘The castle is mine – mine, I tell you.’

  Eustace was drunk by now, and angry. Juliana leant across and put a hand on his arm as if to restrain him, advising caution, but he shrugged her off.

  ‘By the death of our Lord,’ exclaimed the Duke, ‘you had better be careful with your words, Comte Eustace. We were going to discuss the issue at dinner, not fight over it, or I would have brought my sword.’

  Eustace saw he had gone too far. He was after all the host and there are obligations in such matters, leaving aside the fact that he was talking to his liege lord.

  ‘Could there not be an agreement at least to look into our claim further?’ Juliana suggested.

  ‘Amaury thought it should be ours,’ grumbled Eustace.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Duke, ‘and a nasty little silver-tongue he is. He thought he could make trouble between us and then steal in and pick it for himself. He too has a claim to Ivry as good as yours, if not better. To Breteuil as well.’

  The Duke paused meaningfully. I knew, of course, as Juliana had already told me, that Eustace was an illegitimate son of the old Comte de Breteuil and not a direct claimant to the title.

  ‘I think what we need is a guarantee of honest dealing on both sides, Comte Eustace,’ the Duke continued. ‘You guarantee your support for my campaigns in Normandy and I will give close thought to rewarding you, one of my trusted captains, with one of the castles that you crave.’

  ‘What guarantee would that be, Father?’ asked Juliana.

  ‘Well, let me see … What would be appropriate in these circumstances?’

  The Duke stroked his luxuriant, dark-red beard.

  The game seemed to be running away from Eustace. He had felt sure that the castle would be his by the time the croustardes came in – and they were coming in now, along with the fruits and the marchpane and the pastry cooks’ pièce de résistance – an entire pastry castle filled with raisin soldiers, ladies of honeyed almonds, and horses made of marzipan drawing little carts full of sweetmeats across a drawbridge of burnt caramel.