The White Ship

by Nicholas Salaman

  The Duke laughed. Yes, it was he. I could hear him poking the gaoler in the ribs. He even chuckled. It is a disgusting sound to hear in a dungeon. It sounds like a life sentence.

  ‘You old devil,’ he said.

  The next thing I heard was the door being unlocked, and a bulky shadow showed itself against the lantern light.

  ‘Oh dear,’ boomed the now familiar voice, ‘what have we here, gaoler? A fish? It doesn’t smell too good.’

  ‘It’s a day and half old, sir. Imagine what it’ll be like in three years.’

  ‘Stand up and show yourself, Mr Pisces Latiner,’ the Duke commanded.

  ‘I must thank you for your hospitality, sir. I had no idea you had a jongleur looking after your cellars. He has kept me very well amused.’

  The Duke laughed, rather brutally, I thought.

  ‘You don’t fool me, Latiner. You were shitting your pants. You thought you were here for good, didn’t you? And you thought: what good will my Latin do me here? Or the pretty Comtesse’s favours…?’

  ‘It is true,’ I said, ‘that I was thinking of making a complaint to the Chamberlain about the quality of the bedrooms here. But after all, you only have an uncouth castellan to look after the décor, a man who is rather better at slitting children’s noses than matching the wall-hangings with the rugs…’

  I knew I had struck home because the amused smile vanished from the Duke’s face, and a look almost of shame flitted across it, quickly to be replaced by severity. I was indeed shit-scared now.

  ‘Well,’ replied the Duke, ‘you have a ready wit, Latiner, and no doubt the ladies will laugh at it, but I rather think it is going to get you into trouble one day, if it has not done so already. Don’t you know …’ and here he became really alarming and my knees nearly gave way, ‘don’t you know that I can keep you here, without trial or recourse to escape, for as long as you are alive and longer. No one will know what has happened to you, you will simply vanish like mist before the sun and you will cease ever to have been. That will be the beginning of the end of clever Mr Latiner when this door next shuts. So keep a simple tongue in your head and listen to me. If you give me false answers, I shall know you lie, and you will never leave here. The letter you have brought says my daughter wishes to make peace with me. Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Does she really mean that, or is there more?’

  This was difficult. Knowing Juliana, I suspected that there might be more, but she had not told me of it. I thought it best to tell him so. It seemed to please him.

  ‘So you suspect that there might be a trap?’

  ‘She is very upset, sire. As you might have been…’

  ‘I see. The Comte is at Pacy, I understand.’

  ‘I believe so, sire.’

  ‘So why does she stay at Breteuil?’

  ‘The girls apparently prefer it. And she is doing all she can to please them.’

  ‘And she cannot stand the sight of him?’

  ‘Yes, sire. That too.’

  ‘You are doing well, Latiner. I am almost minded to release you and send you back.’

  ‘That would be in the best traditions of Beauclerc, sire. It would be magnanimous and it would be well-considered.’

  The Duke smiled.

  ‘So you would be a courtier, Latiner?’

  ‘Oh no, sire, not I. Far too dangerous.’

  The Duke laughed.

  ‘Very well. We will let you go. Take his shackles off, gaoler.’

  The monster bent and released my feet from their prison, bowed and withdrew.

  ‘But I want you on my side,’ Henry continued. ‘If there is something I should know, you must find a way to tell me. Otherwise I shall have you back here quicker than a tart’s fart. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sire. And…’

  ‘Yes, boy?’

  ‘There’s just one thing, sire. Why did you put me down here in the first place?’

  ‘To teach you to have a care, boy. The Comte may be a fool, but it is not good manners to make a cuckold of your lord. My daughter is a strong woman. Make sure she doesn’t cut your balls off. Or get someone to do it for her. Tell her that I will be with her in four days’ time. I will not stay the night.’

  I told him I would do as he asked and thanked him for his advice, but he was already halfway up the steps and barely heard me. I collected my cloak from the straw, and was about to start climbing back up the stairs towards the daylight when I remembered I had something else to do. Seeing me pause, the gaoler waddled out of his cubbyhole to say goodbye.

  ‘Off so early? I’ll warrant you’ll be back. We’ll have your old room ready for you…’

  ‘You’ll be inside it next time I come here,’ I told him.

  ‘And we’ll have a fire lit for you … right up your arse …’ he replied, wheezing with laughter. I turned on him then.

  ‘Was it you?’ I asked. ‘Was it you who put the little girls’ eyes out and cut off the tips of their noses? Made them look like little pigs? Was it you, you shithead?’

  The man cringed back against his cubbyhole door.

  ‘Little girls?’ he whined. ‘What would I be wanting with little girls – apart from the usual. No … don’t do that…’

  I caught him in a wrestling feint and twisted his arm so hard I thought it would break. He screamed with the pain. It was music to my ears, like a melody my mother used to sing.

  ‘It was the Castellan Harenc. He always has to do the executions and eye-jobs and things. I just do the small stuff like thumbscrews and pilliwinks.’

  I picked him up and dumped him on the floor which jarred him a bit, and there I left it. There was no point in taking it further. Besides, he did have a sense of humour of a kind.

  When I reached the marshalsea, my horse was ready saddled and waiting for me. More good Beauclerc organisation, I thought, as I took the bridle from the page who held him. There was no sign of the Duke or his dark Castellan. I would leave the Castellan to another occasion. I rode off at a trot through the gate. There was a new porter on duty who saluted smartly, one of the Duke’s men, no doubt.

  If that was Ivry, the Duke was welcome to it. Never have I had more joy in leaving a place.

  XLVII

  When I reached Breteuil next day, I found the place in turmoil. The two little girls had got themselves lost. People were scurrying about and Juliana was at her wits’ end.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded. ‘I suppose my father feasted you and made much of you and the Castellan let you ride his best horse and hit his dangling-iron, and a good time was had by all. Meanwhile, my daughters are missing and I am…’

  She burst into tears and sank into my arms. Then she sprang rather sharply back.

  ‘Ooof,’ she said, ‘you smell worse than a jouster’s pommel.’

  I had hardly had an opportunity to wash since I had been a guest of Castellan Harenc and the Duke, so I took her comment rather hard. And where had Juliana learned phrases like that?

  ‘Your father had me flung into his dungeons for two days,’ I told Juliana, ‘without any hope of getting out, and then he came and told me it was all a joke, but if I didn’t tell him what you are planning, he would put me back in the dungeon again forever. He can do that, can’t he? There’s no law against it.’

  ‘The bastard!’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Well, I was going to tell you what I’ve planned to do to my father, but now I won’t because you’ll pass it on next time they catch you.’

  ‘Maybe later?’

  ‘No.’

  She was almost back to the old Juliana, I thought, yet it wasn’t the same; perhaps it was too soon.

  ‘What about the girls? Where are they?’ I asked.

  ‘They love playing hide and seek – and they are getting too good at it. This time, we’ve really lost them. I’m sure they’re all right, but we can’t find them. They love it when we lose them.’

  I now
saw the point of the girls’ determination to explore the castle by touch. They knew the place inside out. They knew something we didn’t.

  ‘I’ll find them,’ I said. ‘But first I’d better wash.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘First find the girls, then wash, and then you can claim the reward.’

  ‘What is the reward?’

  ‘Better wait and see. It has the pages very excited.’

  She wore a gown in the new fashion that showed her ankles. It had been preached against in Paris, apparently. I took it as a sign that she might be recovering her spirit after the last few dreadful weeks, and I could even imagine tasting the joys again that had been so long withheld. I am afraid lust is no respecter of sorrow; indeed it is sometimes inflamed by it.

  Anyway, first I had to find Marie and Pippi. All the obvious places had been searched, but where would be the best place for those who judged by touch? Somewhere in the dark, of course! Now, where was the darkest place in the castle? Memories of my own childhood came back. My stepfather, the cellarer, looking for me, calling my name when I didn’t want to run an errand for him. The cellars! That’s where they would be hiding, in an alcove, behind a barrel where nobody but a child could find them.

  And that, indeed, was where they were; concealed behind a hogshead of ’07 Burgundy, and a very good choice they had made – an excellent year with a burst of berry fruits tickled with a hint of wild strawberry on a bed of sun-dried apricot, fresh nectarine and prune. My stepfather in Mortagne always prided himself on his taster’s vocabulary.

  ‘In the dark, we are the ones with eyes,’ Marie told me gravely.

  ‘We are like moles,’ said Pippi. ‘With our little snouts.’

  It made me weep to see them so brave. I returned them to their mother who was quite overcome, hugged them both and scolded them at the same time for giving us all a fright. She gave me a look of such gratitude which I interpreted as love so all I could see was stars. But it was just gratitude after all because when I went to her chamber afterwards and hoped that we might retire to the wardrobe, whose wafts of spice I would ever afterwards associate with the act of love, she gently deflected my passion and spoke only of her sorrow and despair.

  So it was then, suddenly, in an upper room, with my member half erect as it touched the golden thread of her gown, that I realised that this phase of my life – the Juliana time – was over, and that all her thoughts and care must now be for her daughters. I could no longer dream of being part of her body or her life; I was simply not important enough. It was a horrible moment, I can tell you.

  However, it took only a few more days for me to understand that there was something more. It was not only a mother’s feelings for her grievously wronged daughters that had robbed me of Juliana, but something of which I should have taken note before. It was her hatred of her father (and perhaps by implication all men) that burned brighter and fiercer as the days went by – it was this inferno that overwhelmed our love. Love, unlike obsession, depends on some kind of input. Without that balm, the wound made by Cupid’s arrow dries up or turns black. Perfect hate driveth out love. Now I could only stand aside and watch – easy to say but harder to do, because there are days when resolution turns to jelly.

  It did not take long for Juliana’s war with her father to move into more dangerous territory. Henry was a brave man. He was not a natural soldier and took the field as a last resort, but he was only once defeated and that was in some minor Norman skirmish. He fought against recalcitrant barons and people like Amaury de Montfort who was half-mad and liked nothing more than stirring trouble. He fought against potentates like the Comte of Poitou, who had strategic interests in furthering their territories, but he had never fought against anyone who hated him so sincerely as his daughter. He was a hard man but a rational one. He found it hard to understand why anyone should so let their emotions rule their judgment. He considered it a weakness. But it was his weakness not to take it into account, and it would nearly cost him his life.

  XLVIII

  The Duke arrived three days later with a small retinue. It was raining heavily in a continuous downpour like the tears of God at human wickedness, and Henry was not in a good mood. Having opened the great gates to them, the porter asked Henry and his men to wait under the archway, where their horses steamed and chafed and the puddles spread, while he hurried across to tell the usher of the arrival of royalty.

  The Duke was an impatient man, and of course there was never enough time to do all the things in Normandy that had to be done so it added fire to his natural tendency. At any rate, after a brief delay, the Duke dismounted, giving his horse to a page to hold. Leaving his party to steam awhile under the arches, he strode off towards the hall as if he owned the place. When you are Duke of Normandy the whole place is yours, you can do what you like, and Henry did. He strode in today, as I say, and presented himself in his authority to the small gathering of knights who were still stationed at Breteuil and who were having their two o’clock dinner. This gathering included myself, for I had now been informally admitted by the Marshal to their company, so I was able to see the drama of the Duke’s coming as it unfolded.

  Henry had not thought to warn the castle of his hour of arrival or, if he had thought about it, he had dismissed the idea. So now the usher was in full agitation. He had only just finished talking to the gatekeeper, Lady Juliana needed to be warned and here was the Duke himself needing to be lodged comfortably in some state. He could not be received while a meal was in progress; there was another chamber designed expressly for this purpose, a long room entered through a doorway at the far end of the hall where a table was ready prepared, only lacking a comtesse to preside. Pages were now despatched in various directions to alert cook, butler, pantler, and of course the Comtesse herself, while others went to the gate to bring the Duke’s knights in to the hall.

  The Duke meanwhile, seeing a dinner in progress, and famously loving good food and drink – especially lampreys, and there were lampreys on the table (having but recently come into season) – stopped by one of the knights whom he flattered to recognise, sat down beside him, borrowed his knife, pronged a lamprey and wolfed it down with great satisfaction, taking a big draught of the wine from the fellow’s beaker. His dark mood was dissipating fast.

  ‘By the death of our Lord,’ cried the Duke, ‘this is as fine a welcome as a daughter could ever give to her father. I’ll have another of those, and another still. Bring me wine, good fellow…’

  ‘But sir,’ cried the usher, ‘we will serve you dinner with my lady in another chamber where you can talk at peace.’

  ‘Talk my lady’s talk? What kind of talk is that when I have these good fellows to speak with?’

  ‘Madame la Comtesse will be disappointed, sire. She especially asked to see you as soon as you arrived.’

  The Duke relented. He had come in peace, hoping to patch things up with his daughter who was a good-looking girl though she had a temper like a firecracker, and he had loved her mother even though she was mad English. It was of course regrettable about his grand-daughters, but it was the parents’ fault. He could not allow family matters – and she was after all only half family, being a bastard, not the same thing as his son Prince William or The Atheling as they called him in England – he could not allow family matters to usurp the place of politics and power. Families were for lesser mortals. Kings were about countries and, for your country the first thing you had to do was have a son. The second was to leave him something worth inheriting.

  While all this was no doubt turning over in the Duke’s mind, the acting steward (a decent little man called Gerard, standing in for the slimy Odo who had gone with Eustace to Pacy) came through the door of the far chamber, had a whispered conversation with the Marshal who in turn rose from his seat and spoke in the Duke’s ear. The Duke was about to help himself to another lamprey (I have never liked the fish, too rich and far too ugly, I do not like its sucking ways which remind me of certain people), but now,
casting it aside, he too rose to his feet.

  ‘We must do what the lady wants, eh?’ he said with matey condescension, and strode towards the inner room and the feast that had been prepared for him. I followed in his wake, thinking that I might be of some service, since I am half knight now, though I am still the Comtesse’s Latiner and of her household.

  The Duke pushed open the door and entered the chamber, and I entered with him. It was then that everything happened very quickly.

  I was able to take in a sight that to me was quite impossible. My brain refused to register it for a split second. Juliana was standing at the end of the room with a fully loaded crossbow.

  I had never properly understood up to that moment how completely her life had been broken when her daughters were mutilated – perhaps not being a mother I could never completely understand – but now, like a thunderclap, an awareness of her intention broke in upon me. Regardless of any consequence she was exacting her revenge.

  My overwhelming thought at this stage was that it must not happen. Do not ask me why. I had no great liking for Henry, Duke of Normandy, though I was beginning to respect him. I had loved those little girls and loved them still. I suppose it was instinct, the outcast bastard preserving the status quo because he can never belong to it, whatever it was I knew that the apple cart was about to be upset, and that only I could stop it.

  I had closed the door after me, understanding that Juliana would prefer it not to be a public spectacle when she spoke to her father for the first time since the terrible event. Only the Marshal was with me.

  I don’t think Henry saw his daughter at first. His eyes had gone to the table where the lampreys were. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Juliana take aim. She didn’t seem to be totally at ease with the weapon, but I could tell she was going to fire it. The Marshal was too far behind me to do anything. It was my call.

  At this stage, time – which had been spilling out so fast –went into slow motion as if it were running in treacle. My hand went up as if to halt her, but at the same time I flung myself on the Duke who went flying sideways with me on top of him. I could tell he was not well pleased. Then came the sound that will live with me all my life, the deadly thud of the crossbow releasing, and the almost simultaneous thwack of the bolt hitting something hard. A crossbow, shrewdly aimed, will penetrate an inch of steel armour. I could sense the vibration of the bolt and knew I must be hit though I could feel nothing.