The White Ship

by Nicholas Salaman

  ‘Indeed, I worked at the Abbey of Saint-Sulpice,’ I told him. ‘I was taught by an old Jewish brother who had learnt his art from the Arabs. The abbey was not of course a business, but we were there to make what money seemed fair, and then to spend it on good and holy works.’

  I didn’t actually say that I had worked on the Arabic numeral system at the abbey, but I caused him to believe that I had. Indeed, I was so convinced of its efficacy, I almost convinced myself that we had done so. I remember saying to Saul at one point, before he cautioned discretion, that the system he showed me was too good to keep in a monastery.

  The butcher, at any rate, was impressed.

  ‘They’re clever, the Arabians, so I’ve heard,’ said the butcher, ‘even if they do let the beasts bleed their blood out, and they don’t eat pigs. The pig, to my mind, is the usefullest beast. Very affectionate and curious, and makes a lovely sausage.’

  Haimo seemed reassured by my experience, organised a table and chair for me, and a cupboard to keep the records, and agreed that I should start next day at a weekly rate that I thought almost princely.

  I walked back towards the house, bursting with my good news. At least Alice and I could pay for ourselves in this huge town. I was told that there were at least forty thousand people living in Rouen, a number so vast you could hardly imagine them all in one place – which indeed they seemed to be whenever you walked the streets.

  Eliphas reappeared and led me to an alehouse, The Old Barge. The girl behind the bar seemed to know him – as everyone did – and directed us to a table in the courtyard.

  ‘Anything to eat, masters?’ she asked. ‘Got a lovely brawn or pig’s head if you fancy.’

  ‘We’ll just drink our ale for a while, Yvonne, thank you.’

  ‘What do they do in Rouen?’ I asked him. ‘Apart from fish and meat…’

  ‘They send wine and wheat to England and they get tin and wool back. They make clothes, and lace. They go to church if they have to – which they mostly do. They drink. They dance. They fuck. They prefer the Duke to King Louis because he gives them what he makes them believe is an easier time with fewer taxes. They like my shows so they are people of good taste. The women like to dress well and walk in the main street on Sundays. That is about it, really. The river is their raison d’être. It defines the place. There is something a little spooky about it, if you ask me – the town, I mean. It feels very old and there are funny little corners where you could disappear if you weren’t careful. Tables can walk and chairs can run in Rouen, and not only when your back is turned.’

  ‘And dishes run away with spoons,’ I suggested.

  Eliphas did not look put out, but I apologized, thinking I had gone too far. I knew he did not say these things lightly, for magic was his profession.

  ‘Indeed,’ he told me. ‘Much stranger things than that have happened here.’

  ‘We shall be careful,’ I said. ‘What about the Duke? Will he be looking for us?’

  ‘Not at the moment, anyway. He has more pressing things to do. The word is, Juliana and Eustace are of a common mind at least for the moment – their enemy is the Duke. Mutual hatred has done what love could never do. It has brought them together. What she is doing, I know not.’

  ‘She will not be idle long,’ I said. ‘She will be hatching something.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ he continued, ‘Comte Eustace joined forces with Richer de l’Aigle and they plundered and burnt houses at Verneusses. But the Duke’s general, Ralph the Red, saw them off. Meanwhile, the Duke is looking to make peace with a rather more powerful enemy. He is concluding arrangements with the Comte of Anjou for the marriage of his own son, Prince William, to Anjou’s daughter.’

  My mind quickened at that. The last time I had seen Prince William he was screwing his half-sister; but I wasn’t going to say anything about that, even among friends. It was the sort of thing that could cost you your head, or worse.

  ‘Anjou has caused a lot of trouble for Henry,’ I said. ‘The wedding is going to happen in a couple of months or so, and it’ll mean another of the Duke’s problems is taken care of. And once Anjou’s on board, a lot of the smaller ones will come too. Of course, Fat King Louis is not best pleased and keeps nibbling at the borders and making little feints and stabs like a bad swordsman, but there’s nothing much he can do.’

  ‘What is the girl’s name?’ I asked him.

  ‘Matilda, like every other girl in Normandy.’

  Eliphas finished his ale, rose to his feet and held out a hand.

  ‘And now,’ he said. ‘I must leave for Caen where I have an entertainment to organise. They have their annual Ascension Fair, and they want a play about Daedalus who people thought was a god along with Icarus his son. God ends the play by showing that only He can make his son rise up to heaven – but even the son must plunge to Hell before he can do it.’

  ‘I should like to see that,’ I said.

  ‘And so you shall one day, but for now you must go home and see to your beautiful Alice who is a special girl. She has the mark of grace and you must take care of her.’

  I promised him that I would. There was no chance of seeing Juliana again and having my boat of fidelity rocked once more. How lucky I was to have known and been known by these two women!

  ‘If you have been invited to the Prince’s wedding to Matilda of Anjou at Lisieux, you may catch my entertainment afterwards in the château. I have not been instructed yet but I am sure to be.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Oh, jokes and tricks and playing with fire. They like that in Normandy.’

  I thanked him for all his help, for introducing me to Haimo the butcher of Rouen and finding us a home. I wondered whether to offer him money, but I decided against it and I was glad I did. What he said next convinced me.

  ‘There is a kind of destiny about you, Bertold, whether you know it or not. Remember that. You cannot help yourself or turn aside. The cards will fall as they do because they have fallen already. I always like to help Destiny if I can. She can be curiously grateful. Look after yourself – and Alice, especially Alice.’

  What kind of man was this who seemed to know everything? You may well ask, and I ask it too, after everything that has happened. Where did he come from?

  ‘This is the place for news,’ he continued, ‘it all comes here from wagoners, travellers, soldiers, and folk like me. Listen in, and be careful.’

  He turned, moved out through the tavern and passed through the crowd like melting butter. I waved as he went though he did not see me, and I felt all at once bereft as though I had lost a trusted friend and guide, although come to think of it I hardly knew the fellow. He knew me, however, and I had found that comforting. Now I was alone again and had to make my own way. For a moment or two I felt the town to be an unfriendly place, full of cantering tables, galloping tallboys, and lumpen citizens.

  I was not cast down for long, though. The sun shone, the crowd was good-humoured that morning, I had a job, and a beautiful girl was waiting for me at home. What was more, I had the curious feeling that I was in the right place at the right time, doing what I should be doing.

  I walked home along the river, the late afternoon sun bouncing about on the water while the men unloading wool at the docks cursed its heat as it squeezed them dry as lemons. I reached home to find no Berthe in the house, a smell of thyme and nutmeg in the kitchen, and Alice lying on our bed completely naked in the heat of the afternoon, trying to catch the faintest breeze from the window.

  She hastily covered herself when I entered the room, and I apologized for so rudely entering.

  ‘It wasn’t rude,’ she said, still covered, ‘and I should not cover myself when you enter. It was just an instinct of castle and manor-house life. I want you to see me naked. This is our paradise up here. I have nothing to hide.’

  ‘Eliphas was right,’ I said. ‘You are full of surprises and wonders. He has gone to Caen and sends his special goodbye to you. You seem to be h
igh in his good books – as you are in mine.’

  ‘Stop making speeches,’ she said, uncovering herself again, ‘and take your clothes off.’

  There seemed no reason not to, and indeed there were urgent arguments that I should. We lay for a little while together, feeling the heat disturbing the air – it passed for breeze. And then I began with her hand. The hand was cool, and I felt it with mine that was hotter. I ran my finger over it, tracing the shape of it, the fingers, pressing my hand upon it, turning the hand over so that it lay palm upwards, pressing the palm, pinching the fingers and kneading the mound that lay beneath the thumb. It doesn’t sound much, but I tell you it excited the hell out of me. We spoke not a word. And then I began to run my hand up her arm to one of the anterooms of secrecy, the inside of her elbow. I kissed the place as though it were the final secret. It was fragrant, slightly salty. She was breathing a little more quickly now, and trembling slightly.

  Alice, naked, smelt of milk and walnuts and wild honey, not the domestic kind.

  I ran my fingers very lightly up towards that other private place, the curve where her arm joined her body. I followed my fingers with my mouth. Under her arm, the hair was very fine and light, which I took to be an indication of other things below, exciting for that reason. I explored that hidden place as though it were the most amorous region which laymen could only dream about.

  My hand pursued its exploration and next it traced the line of her collar-bone and up towards her neck, which I kissed and felt her start and give a little sound as I burrowed softly and puckered at the skin. Her mouth was open and her breathing was quicker now.

  My hand started the journey south. This had all been overture. It encountered the first slope of her breast, a gentle swelling under milk-white skin, very slightly veined. It drifted round, to the side, and under, and the hand which followed the finger, held the breast as if it were a dove. Then the finger touched the centre which transformed at my intrusion into a dark berry of flesh which made her gasp, and I gasped with her. My other hand now followed and they held these gifts with the reverence of Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar (if that is not blasphemous, which it is), squeezing and toying with the fruit as if they would pick it. Solemn things which turn a beggar into a king.

  My mouth could no longer be denied its turn, and I sucked at her breast as we bartered pleasure and discovery in the strange commerce of love. And now my hand continued the path down, finding first a little concave buttonhole which occasioned a diversion, more soft skin below that and finally the fine, dark, silky hair again which I had met at the top of her arm. Then I felt my finger slide not just outside the girl, but into Alice, and I clutched at her and bent down and kissed her, drinking in the love of her, sweeter than roses, and kissing her on the mouth at last with the taste of all three mouths upon us. And even as we did that, I was within her, pushing, riding, until with a weird shriek which Eliphas could have used for one of his demonic shows, the thing was done and we were joined together for ever, or at least as long as we were allowed. No, I do not mean that condition in which women have some kind of convulsion and seize the man’s member while he is still inside her with a grip like a vice. That was not Alice’s way. I meant that she and I were indissolubly each other’s. I was young, I was callow, I was selfish, I was puffed up, I had a high opinion of myself, in short I was a bastard – but all of that was excused and moderated and mitigated because we loved each other.

  We lay there, looking at each other, looking at the ceiling, saying nothing, feeling everything. I thought then, as I think now, that each time you make love to a different woman it is like making love for the first time unless you are a fool and then it is the same again and again and again like fucking in hell. I had never made love to Juliana like that. With Juliana it was worship – which is to say a Eucharist though I blaspheme to write it – but with Alice it was a love between equals.

  An idea came into my head which I wondered whether to express to her.

  ‘Did you ever lie with Juliana?’ I asked.

  She looked at me, and smiled.

  I was quickened once again, more if possible, than ever.

  Finally there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Are you all right? Anything you need?’

  It was Berthe back from her errands. Alice and I looked at each other.

  ‘Perfectly all right, thank you,’ we said together, not meaning to speak in unison.

  We giggled and Berthe laughed.

  ‘Supper will be ready in about an hour. Come down when you like.’

  I don’t think I had ever been – or ever would be – happier.

  Well, not since I first slept with Juliana. But that was different, as I say.

  LVII

  The next weeks and months passed in happiness with Alice in the house of Berthe, and with hard work with Haimo in the butcher’s shop and yard. I was learning the butchery trade, a necessity for any accountant in that business, for if you have no experience of the trade you can never understand the finer points of making a profit. I am glad to say that Master Haimo found me a willing pupil and, more and more, a creator of ideas to improve the flow of cash.

  There were certain obstacles to smooth running. Chief of which was the credit that he had allowed to build up when dealing with the comtes and the Duke’s generals and their stewards, and most of all with the Duke himself.

  The aristocrats could never be bothered to deal with affairs that they thought below their dignity – although they consumed money as happily as anyone, and they shat and fucked and ate and drank and fed their ambitions as well as any common man or serf. The stewards who were often siphoning money into their own pockets were only too happy to let the accounting drift – and in the past it had become a tradition with Haimo’s clients since his accounts were in such a pickle. As for the Duke, he was the worst of the lot, but one had to tread carefully with him. A word and all that trade and commission and prestige could pass to a rival butcher, and it would not just be the Duke’s business that was lost, but that of all the nobs and bobs that liked to travel in his wake.

  I taught the men in the shop and the buyers in the field, as well as those who received the beasts in the big shed at the back where the slaughtering took place – indeed all of the employees of Haimo who indented, sold or purchased – the basic 0 to 10 number of the Arabic numerology. Each had his slates on which he marked his trade, and at the end of the day I received them all, checked them over, and entered them in my ledger of vellum.

  Some of the staff were too idle or truculent to learn the new method, none more so than a big bovine brute called Luc, who I suspected had a little trade going of his own and who refused to adapt to the new regime. I spoke to Haimo about him, and he indicated that he too had had his doubts about the man.

  ‘You are going to have to leave if you won’t learn what all the others have found not too difficult,’ I told Luc.

  ‘We did all right before you came,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and you nearly drove poor Haimo into debt,’ I told him.

  ‘You come from nowhere and start telling us what to do. It ain’t right,’ he said.

  ‘It is right, if you are doing wrong,’ I replied.

  His face darkened. He was a lout and no doubt he could be dangerous. Indeed I had a moment of unease when I thought of how precarious our situation in Rouen was, as strangers quite possibly sought by the Duke’s spies, but there was no turning back. I told him that his job with Haimo was over.

  ‘You’re going to regret this,’ he said. ‘You see if you don’t.’

  ‘You want a fight, then? I’ll wrestle with you if you like. We can fight it out in the street.’

  I was quite happy to do it for, though he was a little bigger than me, he did not look like a fit man – too many visits propping up the ale-house.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to fight you now. But you watch your back. I won’t be far behind.’

  ‘The coward’s way! If I see you th
ere,’ I said, ‘I’ll throw you into the river.’

  We glared at each other and he skulked out. I gave it little thought, being used to looking after myself, though there were odd moments when I thought I was being followed as I went back home to Alice late at night, after sitting up over the accounts. But in a town like Rouen there are always latecomers, drinkers and lovers scuttling about their various businesses.

  We were happy in those days. It wasn’t our home but we were together. The one thing I could not entirely get used to was the butchery business itself. I was brought up in the country where they kill for food, and it is no small business to feed a castle of some hundred or more people. But at Mortagne, or indeed Breteuil, the killing was done to feed people whom I knew, a sort of domestic necessity, and it would happen on certain days and seasons of the year and then it would be over: regrettable for the animal, perhaps, but it meant juicy stews and steaks and sausages – not to mention hams, faggots, brains, liver, lights and chitterlings – for us. And the meat days were punctuated by fish on Fridays and quite possibly on Mondays and Wednesdays too. In Haimo’s yard, it was meat every day, all day. It smelt of blood. You could taste it in the air when the soldiers came by and they were hungry. (Killing people does seem good for the appetite.)

  No one butchered better in Rouen than Haimo; and his shop was a masterpiece of presentation. I wondered if Eliphas had helped him in this matter and asked Haimo if it was so and he replied that indeed it was. Eliphas knows how to show, how to catch the eye and make the fingers itch to part with silver pennies whether on a stage-set or a shop-front. He could pull a rabbit out of a hat, a canary out of a soldier’s nose, a snake out of a jerkin, an angel out of heaven or a great contrefilet of beef ready for the Mayor’s cook Agathe (than whom none is more subtle and exquisite at the spit or, come to that, at spitting). After all this killing, and totting it up and noting it down, and walking round the premises to see that no one was snitching a little bit of meat without permission – there were some fourteen men working for us, more if you counted the drovers and the fodder-men who looked after beasts if they had to be kept at the yard overnight (the place made the animals nervous so we tried to avoid that, but it sometimes had to be) – at the end of the day, I would come home exhausted and ready for a pint of wine and a good supper. Anything but giblets.