The White Ship

by Nicholas Salaman

  ‘Come inside, your forehead is bleeding,’ I urged her again. ‘Have you had breakfast yet? You must eat.’

  ‘It would choke me.’

  ‘The Marshal offered me a job,’ I told her, as we walked on.

  She looked at me incredulously.

  ‘You’re not going to take it? One of Eustace’s knights? You could never do that. And, if you did, he would see to it that you were the first to be killed in battle.’

  ‘Not before I slid a knife between his fat ribs.’

  She gave a mirthless smile. I could see her considering the idea.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you are not going to be a soldier. I see you on a ship, but not as a sailor. I see you as … a merchant. Learn to be a merchant, Latiner, one of the new money men. You can do anything with money. Buy land and people. Lend it to the Duke and become a comte. Then you can marry me and the girls can come with us and be happy.’

  She looked almost joyful for a moment, and then her face fell again.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Too much has happened. Let us talk later about it. I must go to the girls now and help them dress.’

  ‘Their nurse can surely do that for you,’ I said, foolishly.

  I simply wanted her to stay, but she rounded on me.

  ‘They will want their mother,’ she blazed. ‘And I will want them. Nothing will separate us now.’

  XLVI

  She was wrong about that, as it happened.

  The castle returned to a semblance of normality. The staff were somewhat diminished as the usual retinue had gone with the Comte to Pacy. I was glad to note that the Marshal still remained with us, though it was inevitable that he too would be called.

  I tried teaching the girls a little Latin, and reading them extracts in French from Ovid, little stories of the more repeatable kind from his Metamorphoses, and tales of ancient Rome, but I could see their hearts were not in it. They were thinking of something else. They were very polite and tried to be attentive, and it made my heart bleed. I read them other stories and made some up, and then there were fairy tales that my mother used to tell.

  They liked those and their little blind piglet faces lit up in a way, but it was like talking to people who were moving on. They were already on the way. They did not complain, in fact they conducted themselves with the greatest dignity, so much so that it worried me.

  I tried them on their ponies again which they had used to love, but that was not any good. They were just jogging around in the dark and getting nowhere. I took them to the herb garden where they could smell growing things, although it was late for the pungency of summer. They sniffed with their poor little noses, but some of the power of smell seemed to have gone too. They held my hands tightly and walked sedately on either side of me, or stood together, hands entwined.

  In the castle, they took to explorations on their own, quite dangerously, when the old nurse dozed off. They fell down some steps on one occasion, quite a short flight, and told no one about it but me. They said I was not to tell anyone, it was their adventure. They had so little to amuse them that I did not have the heart to sneak on them.

  I tried to interest them in music, getting one of the castle musicians, an old man from the Pays d’Oc, to play to them on his rebec and show them how it was done. They listened politely, but the exercise did not catch fire. They liked the sound but not the instruction.

  I did not like to tell Juliana of my concern because I feared it would drive her further into despair. The very sight of her daughters brought on such a self-loathing in her now that it might have been better for her to stay away, but of course they needed her. I did mention to the Marshal that the guards should keep their eyes open for the girls on their strange little adventures around the place, holding the walls and feeling with their feet for the next step. When I was in charge of them, I kept a strict eye on them both which of course they did not notice – unless I happened to stop them tripping over a chair – but I could not do so all the time, nor could the old nurse herself. There were other girls, under-nurses who shared the duty.

  ‘It is unnatural,’ I said to Alice, who came to see me sometimes in my little room, or whom I met in a shack where hay was kept near the curtain wall where we could talk. I had not forgotten her kiss, and I began to love Alice, though in a different manner, a different key, from the way I felt about Juliana. Juliana was the adored, Alice was the friend. Juliana was the unattainable whom I somehow managed at times to attain; my coinage was worth less than hers. Alice and I lived in the same country, on equal terms. I had to be at my best with Juliana. With Alice, I could be myself.

  Juliana had found Alice and liked the look of her. Perhaps it was the difference between them that attracted her. Alice was as dark as Juliana was fair. Alice was a sea-witch, with very white skin and luminous large eyes which kept sailors from the rocks … or not.

  ‘It is not unnatural that the girls should want to explore their home,’ she said. ‘They knew it well when they could see, now they have to discover it all over again.’

  ‘They seem to be intent on something.’

  ‘They are intent on not falling over.’

  I left it at that. Something about them troubled me; but of course everything about them troubled me. They had been such charming little girls. Now they did not want to share who they were. They did not want to come down to the hall, for instance. I could understand that; who wants to be gawped at by scullions and pantlers? But still it made their solitary life more solitary if they would not even eat one meal with the household.

  The melancholy quality, which you sometimes feel in spring when the year seems to be going somewhere that you’re not, made the girls’ predicament seem all the worse to me. They sat by themselves whispering to each other, intent little pig princesses. Do not mistake me: my heart bled for them.

  The half-emptied castle seemed to echo with whispers. Most of the musicians had gone, along with the dwarf-jester Serlo the Stupid, who made Eustace roar with laughter because he was even more stupid than Eustace himself. I almost missed Serlo, what with the cold and the echoes and Juliana preoccupied. I wanted his stupid jokes and his tumbling and tripping and his dreadful songs out of tune as he accompanied himself on a little toy vielle, ‘my little veely’ he called it.

  ‘Like to feel my veely?’ he would call to the ladies, and it was rumoured he had quite a number of pretty women feeling him all over.

  It just shows you what a pretty pass we had got to, that I wanted the tiresome man back.

  The wind had gone round to the north, and the castle was cold. I know quite a lot about cold places having been in that monastery for seven years. And at the castle of Mortagne, my father was not one to waste wood. It takes a hundred years to grow a decent oak, and a day to burn it, he used to say. The east wind would catch Mortagne and make its stones so cold even the gargoyles on the chapel would weep.

  But this cold at Breteuil was something different. It was a bitter, damp, arse-clenching cold, coming off the expanse of water that lay around. Lovely in summer, fog-infested in autumn, an ice-field in winter, and a wind-catcher in spring – the cold wreathed into the chinks and crannies of the castle, so that you could hear the very stones shiver in their places.

  It was at this time that Juliana sent a message to her father, proposing that he should come for a little peace-making with her and her daughters. The message took the form of a letter which she insisted I myself (in spite of the bad terms on which I had parted from her father) should deliver to Ivry where Henry had made his base. He was engaged in some head-banging among the eastern marches of Normandy, keeping an eye on Évreux where de Montfort was still causing trouble, and Louis-baiting, with his soldiers rattling their lances under the battlement of certain castles and marching through towns which Louis doubtless thought were loyal to him.

  ‘Bring him back with you, if you can,’ Juliana told me. ‘I shall be ready to receive him.’

  I truly thought that she had subdued her materna
l rage, had forgotten her thoughts of terrible revenge, and meant to seek rapprochement. How little I knew that magnificent creature! I assured her I would do my best.

  I rode over quickly, glad of the action, and also glad because it would give me the chance of renewed acquaintanceship with the barmaid Yvette at St André, a pretty redhead who had smiled at me last time and let me kiss her before breakfast. I had needed cheering up on that sad journey, and sometimes sorrow, especially other people’s, kindles a kind of desperate and regrettable lightness in the lover as if one is throwing off a cloud and behaving badly seems a kind of exorcism. That was how it was with me, and I record it with shame. This time it went even better with Yvette after supper, until a burly wagoner who thought he had a better claim started to call me names and push me about. I took him in one of those wrestling moves that Brother Paul had taught me and threw him down the stairs. It did not go down well with his friends – or the landlord. The result was that I had to sleep in the stables. Happily, Yvette brought me breakfast, let me kiss her again and allowed me a second course, so it was later than I meant when I took the road again, passing the wagoner on my way out of town who threw an apple at my head and made Blackberry (none the worse for her ride with Alice) shy and skitter sideways.

  I started out feeling pretty good that morning because it was almost May, the sun had come up and the fog rolled away like smoke from a burning town, only it wasn’t a burning town which made me feel even better. And then I thought of the little girls who wouldn’t be feeling good at all, and I felt wretched because I had betrayed them as well as Juliana.

  By the time I reached Ivry, my bonhomie was a distant memory. Castles were built to inspire dread and Ivry was the archetype; foreboding hung around it like its resident crows. I beat at the massive gate and there was no answer. I beat again, and still nothing. I beat a third time and a surly shout could be discerned through the huge oak frame.

  ‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’

  Finally the bolts were drawn and the door opened, revealing a blear-eyed rogue wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his leather jerkin. It was the same rascal porter we had noted before. He liked to keep people waiting.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I thought it was the Duke’s messenger. If I had known it was you, I wouldn’t have hurried.’

  I wasn’t going to be riled, though. I had strict instructions to be graceful and obliging.

  ‘You can’t come in,’ he continued. ‘Instructions of the Castellan.’

  ‘I have a message for the Duke from his daughter, the Comtesse de Breteuil.’

  I showed him the letter I had brought.

  ‘They don’t want nothing to do with you lot.’

  ‘That is surely for the Duke to say. Take the letter, please.’

  He looked at the scroll as if it might bite him.

  ‘I dunno about this,’ he said.

  I knew the trick, and handed him some money. The Marshal had told me I would find it useful.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

  I handed over the second purse and the man seemed to cheer up fractionally.

  ‘You can’t come in,’ he told me again. ‘Not to the castle.’

  ‘I don’t want to come in. I just want the Duke’s reply.’

  ‘Wait here,’ he said, admitting me to the gatekeeper’s lodge which smelt bad, but at least it was warm.

  The porter trudged off and I studied the view of the castle through the porter’s window. It was a huge place, and in better order than Breteuil. The men who moved about the bailey had a certain air about them, and I thought the Castellan must deserve his high regard in the Duke’s eyes if he could keep the place looking so chipper. I waited comfortably enough for half an hour, but then I grew impatient, and walked out into the bailey to have a look around.

  The marshalsea and stables were well-maintained and clean, and the horses seemed to be in good order. I stroked a couple of the big Percheron beasts from home, told them I was from the same place, and finally moved on to the armoury when a voice called on me to stop.

  It belonged to the Castellan who had appeared from nowhere.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked. ‘Come to spy, have you? We have a place for spies here. Men! Take him away.’

  Before I could protest, two burly soldiers had pinned my arms and, while I feebly protested my innocence, started dragging me towards the castle.

  I had heard about the dungeons of Ivry, and what I had heard did not endear them to me. There was a children’s story about them. Once you got in, you never got out.

  ‘The Duke’s business,’ I told them. ‘That is why I am here. Your porter has just gone to the hall to deliver it. I need a reply.’

  ‘Brought your sword with you?’ he asked.

  The Castellan walked beside me as I was half-lifted, half-hauled to the steps of the hall, and then dragged up them. The hall was empty. Where the porter had gone, God alone knew. Soon I was being man handled down some more steps, this time to the dungeons.

  They smelt bad, I can tell you. I would rather have the porter’s lodge aroma a thousand times. These dungeons smelt of despair and pain. They smelt of hopelessness and cruelty. They were cold as death and clammy as the grave. The soldiers clamped shackles on my feet. A gaoler from one of the lower reaches of hell, bearing a lamp, appeared through an open doorway. The soldiers took their leave and tramped back up the stairs. I heard the door shut somewhere above me. The sound seemed to seal any hope I might have had of leaving this place.

  ‘This way, my lord,’ the gaoler said, as if reading my thoughts, ‘I think we can make you comfortable here. How many nights was you thinking of staying?’

  ‘There’s been a mistake,’ I told him. ‘I gave the gatekeeper a letter for the Duke from his daughter. She would like a reply.’

  The gaoler opened a door and thrust me inside. I fell on the floor, rather heavily. It is not easy to walk with shackles on, believe me.

  ‘A likely tale,’ said the gaoler, shining the lamp upon me. ‘No, what you really wanted was to sample the hospitality of the Ivry dungeons. They are legendary. In a recent survey commissioned by none other than the Duke himself we came top for sheer dungeon quality. And now you have achieved your wish. Our beds are especially singled out for praise…’

  He pointed to some dirty straw in the corner.

  ‘And for food and drink there is nothing to compare with our stale bread and foul water. If you wish for anything further, do not hesitate to call. This is the key to your quarters. Do not worry about losing it because …’ and here he let himself out, locking the iron grill after him, ‘…because I am throwing it away.’

  With that, rather theatrically, he did so. I heard it tinkle away into an obscure corner and then I was alone. I was filled with a sort of incredulous alarm. This was absurd, unfair, but yet there was no law against it. I was in the keeping of the Duke. It was said that Henry kept his brother, the previous Duke, in similar circumstances. He was quite a man, our Henry.

  I spent the rest of the day considering my fate and shouting for the gaoler. Neither activity led to any noticeable result. I had no way of marking the passage of time since my cell admitted no light. My stomach was my best clock and it began to tell me in no uncertain terms that it was dinner time. After a seeming eternity, the sound of shambling footsteps announced the approach of the gaoler, bearing a hunk of bread and a pitcher of water. The bread was, as promised, stale and the water was as cold as the Castellan’s charity, but it was better than nothing. I ate and drank and, there being nothing better to do, I lay down on the straw in the corner, thanking God that I had brought a heavy cloak with me against the early morning chill at Breteuil, and addressed myself to sleep.

  It seemed that I had only slept for half an hour when the gaoler appeared again bearing another crust and more cold water.

  ‘Your early morning call, sir.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Brought you breakfast in bed,’ h
e continued.

  The thought crossed my mind that he was playing a trick on me and it was the middle of the night, but I had no option but to go along with him.

  ‘I expect you would like a pen and ink and some parchment,’ he said, ‘so you can write home and tell them what a lovely time you are having. But they would be no good to you in the dark.’

  ‘Well, bring me a light,’ I said, rather too testily.

  ‘There you have the problem,’ he said. ‘You’ve put your finger on it. Shortage of candles. King Louis, he’s bought up all the candles so the Duke has to entertain his guests in the dark. That’s the long and the short of it, sir, a typical Capet ruse. So I am afraid for the moment you will just have to twiddle your thumbs and listen to the music of the spheres which you can hear in this room of yours, if you listen hard enough, and many have come to do just that. Or wank yourself silly, another all-time favourite. But don’t let it get out of hand…’

  Another old chestnut. With that, he closed the door with a bang, and I was once more left with my crust and my jug – which I proceeded to knock over – and my thoughts, which were even darker than the prevailing black. Another infinitude passed as darkness chased its shadow round the day.

  Half an age later, I judged it must be mid-afternoon, I heard different steps approaching. Fitter, more purposeful, steps that were used to having their own way.

  ‘Come on, man, I do believe you have gout,’ I could hear their owner say to the gaoler who rolled along behind.

  ‘Gout, sir? No, sir?’

  ‘You’ve been nipping across to the cellars and swigging my wine, you old devil. You’ve been feasting on pheasant and numbles. Come on, let’s look at your big toe.’

  ‘Oh no, sir, I wouldn’t do that, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’ll blow your head off, sir.’