‘I remember that,’ said Eustace. ‘Good idea. Hossidges.’
‘You remember the young son of Ralph Harenc coming here while I took custody of my grand-daughters, took them away to Rouen? Do you remember that?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘And then what?’
‘You tell me.’
‘For some reason that has not yet been explained to me, you saw fit to put the boy’s eyes out and return him to his father.’
Juliana gasped. She went deathly white. The terrible news robbed her of speech, and she leant on the table for support.
‘I did that?’ asked Eustace, stupidly.
‘Yes, you did.’
Eustace pulled himself together. Pissed as he was, he could see some kind of danger looming.
‘He was plotting,’ he shouted. ‘You ask Amaury de Montfort. Harenc was planning to take over my castle of Pont-Saint-Pierre. He was raising a substantial force. He broke the agreement. Was I to stand by and do nothing?’
‘You are wrong, Eustace. For much of the time, I was at Ivry myself. There was no plot. You should have come over. You cannot trust Amaury. He is a serpent. He pours poison in the ear.’
From what I had seen of de Montfort, the Duke’s verdict on the man was accurate, even verging on the benign.
‘I have always seen him as an honest fellow.’
‘He has tricked you into making a terrible mistake.’
‘I put out the boy’s eyes. So what? People are popping eyes out all the time.’
‘You must see it puts me in a difficult position, Eustace.’
‘The man’s only a castellan. He’s not even a vicomte, he’s a Harenc – plenty of those in the sea. Something fishy about him…’
‘Stop it!’ Juliana had sprung up and was looking at her father with a kind of hopeless fury. ‘What is it … you propose to do?’ she asked him, eyes flashing and fists clenched.
They were peas in a pod, those two.
‘You must realise,’ the Duke said slowly and carefully, still speaking to Eustace who sat there, red-faced, alternately blustering and somnolent, ‘that you have put me in an impossible position. You have harmed a hostage who was in your keeping. His father, my castellan at Ivry, has complained in the strongest possible terms. By all the laws of hostage, you are in the wrong and you leave me no choice.’
‘No! Don’t say it,’ Juliana said, very loudly. ‘Don’t … you … say … it. Don’t say it.’
She pushed a little wrinkle of her golden hair away from her eyes – a habit of hers – eyes that were dangerously full.
‘I shall have to give up your two daughters to the Castellan to do with them as he wishes.’
‘No,’ Juliana shouted at him. ‘No. You cannot do it.’
The Duke was plainly not comfortable, but he was resolute.
‘I think you will find I can. If I fail in this, which is my duty, all Normandy will see that I do not uphold justice and the law. That is the very point on which my brother Robert foundered. When he was Duke he could not keep control. Laws were broken and the perpetrators went unpunished. Local wars broke out. The whole country was in turmoil. The poor starved and the peaceful were beaten. Fire, rape, pillage and disease walked the land. Finally I was urged by the Church to come and bring order. I defeated Robert in battle on just this issue. Now do you see why I have to do it?’
‘And what do you think the Castellan will do to them?’
The Duke, for such a choleric man, had gone very pale.
‘He will do as the situation requires.’
‘And what will that be?’
‘He will do as he thinks fit.’
‘These are your grand-daughters, your own flesh and blood. They are innocent in all this. This hostage business was your idea, yours and his…’
She cast a disgusted look at her husband who was slumped, red-faced, drooling slightly, in his chair. The Duke stood up.
‘They will be blinded. It will ruin their lives. It will destroy them. Please, Father. I beg you…’
She fell on her knees, something I never thought to see her do, clasping at her father.
The Duke was moved, I could see it, but there was steel in the man.
‘You cannot do this …’ she cried. ‘I won’t let you. It is too terrible … You won’t send them? Say you won’t send them.’
The whole castle seemed to be in the hall now, not a sound among them. The Duke tried to free himself from her clasp by walking away but she followed him on her knees. Finally, he forced her hands apart and was free. She fell to the floor, sobbing. The Duke motioned to his marshal, and walked with him to the door, turning to speak to his daughter before he strode out. He looked like death.
‘It is too late. Your daughters have already gone. I took them.’
We all stood stunned, the silence only broken by the sobbing of the Comtesse on the floor. Finally, I approached the prostrate form and raised her up a little.
‘Leave me,’ she said.
Dark-haired Alice appeared and stood on Juliana’s other side. She had returned with the Duke.
‘Let us take you to your chamber, my lady,’ she said.
Juliana was a proud girl. For the first time, she appeared to notice the crowd gathered in the hall. She nodded agreement and rose slowly to her feet. Alice and I supported her as we crossed the hall and started to mount the stairs. Eustace, however, wasn’t quite finished. Now the Duke had gone, he recovered some self-esteem, though God knows where he had found it.
‘That’s right, Latiner,’ he called. ‘And when you’ve finished with my wife, I’m sending you to bring my daughters home…’
There was some laughter in the hall from a few of his lackeys – though not as much as the Comte would have liked – and a growing murmur of comment as we turned the corner at the top of the stairs and made our way across the landing. I was wise enough not to intrude on Juliana’s grief that night.
XLII
In the morning, she was up early, beating at my door to wake me up and commanding me to ride with her and Alice to Ivry.
I tried to reason with her: it was not a good idea; her father would be there; nothing good could come of it; she would only debase herself; it was not fitting; she would make an exhibition of herself; the story would get out. I said I could not bear to see her rejected – which I was convinced she would be. She cared for none of it. So Alice and I rode with her on that bonny April day, almost exactly a year since I had come to Breteuil.
I told her this, hoping stupidly to strike some conversation from her. She had ridden five miles in dead silence, and then at last she spoke of Breteuil.
‘It is a pity you ever came to that benighted place,’ she said. ‘And you must leave as soon as we return.’
I felt deeply wounded by this, but there was nothing I could say. I looked at Alice and Alice looked at me. There was sympathy in her eyes. After twenty miles of almost continuous silence, we arrived at the gatehouse of Ivry Castle at sundown. The curtain wall seemed endless; the castle itself vast, proud and hostile. The Caen stone, in the setting sun, glowed with truculence.
The journey normally required an overnight stop, but Juliana had driven us to the point of exhaustion. The horses could scarcely lift another hoof. Of course, Juliana was the first to dismount, and we obediently followed suit while the beasts started cropping the grass. Approaching the massive gates, we beat at them until a porter let us in. He looked at us with disfavour. Evidently the fate of young Master Harenc had aroused considerable resentment around here. No surprise about that.
‘The Comtesse of Breteuil wishes audience with the Castellan Harenc,’ I told him.
He bowed stiffly and left. After half an hour or so, the porter returned.
‘The Castellan regrets that he is detained.’
‘Detained? He cannot be detained. I will give him detained,’ Juliana cried, and ran past the porter into the bailey
We followed as best we could. Juliana arrived at the drawbr
idge, which was hastily pulled up, and screamed at the castle.
‘Come out, Harenc. Come out and speak to me. Are you too weak to parley with a woman? Come out, I say.’
I tried to reason with her.
‘He has had his son blinded. You cannot show him you have no pity, no sorrow for what has happened.’
She seemed to take something of this on board.
‘I am sorry for what has happened, truly sorry,’ she cried. ‘It was none of my doing. I will do anything … anything to make amends.’
The drawbridge slowly descended and the man Harenc emerged in chain-mail, crossed the moat, and stood in front of her as she knelt before him. I thought I could discern from the man’s demeanour that whatever he was planning to do, he had not done yet.
‘What will you do?’ he asked her, sternly. ‘What can you do? Can you make a blind boy see?’
‘I will do anything … everything … if you would just give me back my daughters, safe and sound. Where are they? Bring them to me.’
She shouted their names.
‘Marie! Pippi!’
‘What will you do?’ asked the man, coldly. ‘Can you turn back time? That would be of interest.’
She could not contain the question that now burst from her.
‘Have you done it? Have you put their eyes out?’ she asked.
‘The Duke has brought them here,’ he replied, ‘for me to do as I see fit.’
‘I will give you land … I will get a divorce and be your wife … mistress … you can have me, Castellan…’
She rose to her feet and ran her hands down her body, caressing her breasts.
‘See? Am I not beautiful? You can do anything … anything you like…’
If the man did not know how much her offer had cost her, I certainly did.
He turned to walk back, and she tried to catch at him, throwing herself forward to hold on to his feet. He pushed her off roughly as her father had done, and she fell to the ground, weeping piteously. Alice and I ran to pick her up and comfort her.
‘If ever I see you again, Castellan,’ I shouted, ‘I will kill you.’
He turned. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘you will be executed.’
I must say, even at that awful moment with Juliana humiliated in my arms, I was impressed. The man, like the Duke, believed in the rule of law.
Slowly, haltingly, we removed ourselves from the bailey of Ivry. No help was offered, nor would have been accepted. It was too late to return to Breteuil, so we took shelter at the sign of the Wheatsheaf in the town. We ate little and in silence, Juliana not at all. We slept in our clothes in an enormous bed in the only room left at the inn. The return journey to Breteuil is something I prefer to forget.
It takes an enormous act of will for a proud woman to humiliate herself deliberately, and I was impressed with Juliana as perhaps never before; but humiliation of the loved one does something inexorable to a lover, and it is not for the good. I felt physically sick.
All the while, my heart bled for the two little girls who were prisoners of the iron man, Castellan of Ivry. All we could do was wait for news.
XLIII
I could not talk to Juliana. She was in a world of anguish of her own. She would not eat, she could not sleep. My stomach felt as though I had eaten the leaden weight of a plumb-line. I had to go out, into the woods and fields. I walked distractedly for miles with no clear memory of where I had been.
Three days later, we had a new arrival at the castle – a tall, elderly, gaunt, kindly-looking priest called Father Geoffrey who had been a chaplain at Breteuil previously, but had gone into retreat at Lisieux Abbey, probably because he could take no more of Eustace. The Bishop of Évreux, our friend, had suggested him as a temporary replacement for My Door is Always Open. The Comte was in no state to make any decision, so Alice, acting for Juliana, had agreed that we should ask him over, and he had immediately answered the call. News of our distress had spread, and it was good to know that we still had those who wished us well.
From the frail look of Father Geoffrey, he would not be staying long. However, a sane and kindly addition to the castle’s complement was a welcome arrival indeed. He took over the Chaplain’s room, settled himself in and, a couple of days after his arrival, asked me to come and speak with him.
Father Geoffrey told me that he had been talking in private to the Comtesse, and offering her comfort. She had made her confession to him. This, I confess in my turn, made me nervous. I had the feeling that she might have mentioned my name in her distress among the litany of her sins. However, the old man did not appear to be viewing me with hostility, even though his next job was to give me the most dreadful commission.
Speaking for the Comte and Comtesse, he said, he must ask me to fetch the Lady Philippine and the Lady Marie from Ivry. Word had arrived that the Castellan was expecting us. I told the Chaplain that I was aware of the situation and must do as he asked, though it was a service I could not relish.
Normally, of course, it would have been the father who fulfilled such a painful duty, but Eustace was still in no condition to do anything. Whether Juliana had spoken to him privately, or the Duke had sent him some secret message, or the Chaplain had given him some godly stick, I did not know, but the stuffing seemed to have been knocked out of the man. He was inert, apathetic – and he was not even drinking quite as much. Perhaps the enormity of what he had done was finally sinking in. Whatever the reason, he kept to his room and gave me no instructions. Juliana was clearly not going to come; she was ill. Distraught and weakened by grief, she had come down with a fever that had settled on her chest.
I was given six knights and a couple of grooms to lead the ponies the girls would ride on, and God knows they would need leading. It was the most thankless and miserable task of my life, but I would have it no other way. If the girls were to come home like this, they needed someone who loved them. The old nurse was not up to it. Their mother was ill, and their father, the very instrument of their ruin. I reflected bitterly that Eustace would doubtless have been more careful of a son and not run him into such danger, humiliation and pain. At any rate, it was clear the Duke would not wish him to go. It was my duty, and I must admit that I did not feel up to it.
I was able to say goodbye to Juliana before I set off. She lay on her bed, helpless with the fever. Alice sat beside her, sponging her forehead and wiping her brow.
‘Who … who is it?’ Juliana asked her.
‘It is Bertold come to say goodbye,’ Alice told her.
‘Goodbye?’ Juliana looked startled and raised her head a little
I thought it better not to mention the girls. Maybe the fever, merciful at least in this, would have driven it from her mind.
‘I am going away for a couple of days. I will be back,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she fell back.
I kissed her cheek. It burned like a turn-spit.
‘Get well, dearest Juliana,’ I said. ‘I want to see you better when I get back.’
‘I want to die,’ she said, and I thought of Ovid and of the Sibyl hanging in the basket at Cumae, taunted by the boys, tormented by Apollo, unable to expire.
Juliana had not forgotten her girls. How could she?
‘No, you don’t,’ I told her and turned away though it broke my heart to see her so.
‘Look after her,’ I told Alice, though the girl’s devotion was plain to see.
‘And you too, Bertold, look after yourself,’ Alice said. ‘It will not be easy. I will pray for you.’
For some reason, perhaps rashly, I leant down and kissed her on the cheek. It was cool and very slightly fragrant. She turned her face – she told me later that it was completely without thinking, and I am certain she spoke truly – and kissed me on the lips. We looked at each other for a moment, and then I broke off in some confusion and left the sickroom, heading down the stairs and out into the bailey where the men and the horses were waiting.
‘All ready, sir,’ said the grizzled Mar
shal, my friend from the melee.
‘Are you coming?’ I asked in some surprise.
I had always classed him as one of those who, though naturally friendly, was resolutely Eustace’s military man, and considered me as some kind of clerical milkweed.
‘I am for the house, sir, whatever may befall.’
‘I shall be glad of your company on this occasion.’
‘I thought I should come with you in case there’s trouble. You never know with that lot at Ivry.’
‘You’ve had trouble before?’
‘Oh yes. They’re a rough lot, tricky too.’
‘There won’t be any trouble,’ I said. ‘The Duke will be there.’
‘Some say the Duke is the trouble. At any rate, I’ll warrant the little girls will be pleased to see us…’
He saw the look on my face.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said.
‘It is not going to be easy,’ I said.
‘Aye. I have daughters of my own. Who would have thought he could do that?’
I did not know if he was referring to Eustace, the Castellan Ralph or the Duke himself, or all three of them.
The Marshal and I led the little procession out through the gatehouse and into the town. Some of the townsfolk, going about their business, paused to watch us ride through. I thought I could detect sympathy in some of the faces. Many of the castle servants lived there, others were closely involved in supplying it, and life was closely bound up with it for good or ill.
We turned onto the road to Damville which lay some ten miles to the east, aiming to spend the night at St André which was another ten miles further on.
We rode along, companionably enough, but mostly in silence, our thoughts keeping us busy. The jingling of the harness, the song of the birds in the hedges, the smell of wood smoke, the barking of distant dogs and the measured strokes of an axe somewhere not far off as we passed – country noises speaking of peace and order – contrasted starkly, it seemed to me, with the purpose of our journey. When I thought of my little friends Marie and Pippi in pain and darkness, with their lives in pieces, and their mother’s happiness destroyed, I could not help slipping into a profound dejection.
The White Ship Page 20
