Hawks of Sedgemont

by Mary Lide

  Taliesin’s men, those loyal men who had fought that day for her, yea, and died for her, growled, but Taliesin hushed them. His mouth tightened in a line, the skin stretched thin along the fine cheekbones; you suddenly saw what he would be like in old age, when determination had hardened and deepened. She had not even noticed the state he was in, he and his men; exhausted, wounded, I doubt if they had the energy left for one more charge; their horses weary, carrying double burdens most of them, a pitiful remnant, with all of Henry’s army searching for them. He would not dispute with her. But I sensed his thoughts. “Think that of me,” he seemed to say, “then I am not worth the ground you walk upon, and you, less to me, to put such shame upon my name.”

  He swung himself upon his black horse, gathered up the reins, and wearily lifted his arm for the forward march. On we rode, deeper and deeper into those great woods, the hunting preserves of the dukes of Normandy, where now the Normans were hunting us.

  I could not have thought Normandy so wide, nor our pace so fast. Out of the five men left, Taliesin posted one ahead to act as scout; another dropped behind to keep rear watch. But Henry’s men knew these forests, too, and would follow us. A group of horsemen, even a small group, cannot ride through woodlands and hide their tracks, although we kept to no fixed path and seemed to wind by instinct ever deeper and deeper among these endless trees. Knowing all this, aware of the danger he was in, hampered by his “prisoners” (whom, if my lady had been able to think at all, she would have realized he would have long since abandoned if we were, in truth, his captives), Taliesin now began to show some of the skills that had made his rise so fast among the Breton lords. Turn by turn with his men, he rode ahead, rode behind; wherever he could, taking advantage of the natural lie of the land to push forward; wherever he could, following the course of water beds, running water being a good way to throw hounds and huntsmen off the scent. Once we skirted around some sort of farm; a second time, having come too far south, we doubled back to avoid a village, surrounded by thick thorn hedge, just as the dogs inside began to bark alarm. And perhaps another two, three, hours passed before he again drew rein.

  We were still within the forest, the Norman love of hunting that made them leave so much land untilled coming to our aid. The twilight had settled, thick and heavy, the air close and hot, as if all the tension of the day were gathered overhead in a great and heavy knot hanging above us. We had readied a small glade, where there was a ruin of a hut, not one used by the charcoal burners, for they make more comfortable dwelling although their work is hard. This was a woodcutter’s shelter, its roof of branches half torn off, its wooden walls gaping, little shelter here, and no defense. But we could go no farther, and that Taliesin recognized.

  Inside, under the tumbled roof, there was a dry patch where we could set down the injured man, and in the clearing a small stream from which one of Taliesin’s men scooped water in his helmet to bring us. Lady Olwen, seeming to recover somewhat, I thought, less numb with shock, bathed Hue’s face and tried to keep him warm, for now he shivered constantly. I remembered how his brother, Robert, had shivered long ago, and thought to myself that fate had certainly repaid him in full.

  Myself, although stiff and sore, a mass of bruises, I finally went outside. The two men left on watch barred the way, polite but firm. Their horses were tethered at the edge of the clearing; they themselves, although still full armed, were busy sharpening up their swords, dulled by the morning’s work. “Save you, masters,’’ I whispered at them, through parched lips, “what place is this? Where are the rest of you gone?” For it was clear to me at once that they were left here alone.

  They nodded in their laconic way toward the stream where I could wash. “No farther,” they warned, “guards beyond.” I would not have gone anywhere in any case, but I did not believe them, no sign of anyone, nothing but the dark, ominous woods, green and heavy, stretching for miles. Then I began to wonder where Prince Taliesin was, where the pursuit, where even we were, lost in this maze. Away in the distance there came a sudden rumble, and a swirl of air set the leaves all aquiver, set my own pulses racing, the thickness of the day settling again like a heavy cloak.

  Hearing that far-off sound the guards sprang to their feet; one threw back his head and sniffed at the air, like a deer that scents out danger, threat. And again we heard it, growing closer, the foretaste of a summer storm. They beat each other on the backs, those two men, eyes suddenly bright; they straightened themselves, went to their work with new energy. “A storm, boy,” one explained, as if to an idiot, as if that word “storm” said all.

  “By Saint David,” the other cried, “our prince was right. It comes in good time.” And in time it came, bursting on us in its fury, ripping through the trees, snapping them back and forth like twigs, turning the stream to a quagmire, pouring down upon us the gathered anguish of the day. For a while I stood out in it to let the rain beat upon me and wash me clean. What is the wrath of man compared with the wrath of God? Only afterward I realized, as those men had done from the start, that this storm would save us. Nothing else could have done. All Taliesin’s hunting skills, all his fighting ones, could not have prevented Henry’s men from finding us, they were so fast in pursuit, following every sign we left. The storm washed our traces away, as if we had never existed, drowned every sign of us as if, in truth, we had been drowned. And saved the prince.

  For, knowing how close the enemy was, how fresh mounted, how wild with desire to wipe their humiliation out in blood, the prince had doubled back to the best possible place for defense, he and three men, to make their last stand, to buy us a few more hours’ grace. The storm caught him, but it also caught Henry’s knights, in the open, unprepared, such sheets of lightning, such cloudbursts that they faltered and would not go on.

  Most of them turned tail, forced to walk or swim to the nearest settlement and wait out the storm there, then slink home to Falaise. The few, those of Henry’s own household guard, who hung on grimly, were cut down by Taliesin. Easily caught, blinded by rain, buried in the mud, their honor trampled to bloody shreds, a bitter ending they made, too. God, I think, gave us that storm to save us and save the prince. Yet even now as I give thanks for such mercies, I also pray for the souls of those men whose deaths achieved our gain.

  In all other things, though, God was not so gracious. Inside the hut we tried to drag Lord Hue to a safer place, out of the cold. The rain blew in through the ruined walls and roof, and the thick cloaks were not much use, soon heavy and sodden through. Taliesin’s men helped us, rigging up a kind of shelter with wet sticks over which they spread their own cloaks, against an inside wall, and while we three huddled within, they crouched patiently outside. But Celts are used to rain. They began to talk in broken whispers, and I sensed in them a hope that had not been there an hour before. I had a memory of them around their campfires at Cambray, how they had seemed prepared to sit and watch forever until their master bid them move. So now they waited for their master’s return. There is a story told among the borderlands that in a battle with the Normans a young Welsh prince was killed. His hound, faithful to him, sought him out among the dead, stood on guard, would let no one approach, until in the end death came for him, too. Both were buried in one grave and a marker set above, in remembrance of loyalty. Faithful like that hound, those Celts waited out the storm. And when at last they heard the sound of approaching hooves, they snatched for their weapons and stood prepared, not questioning anyone or fearing anything.

  It was Prince Taliesin and his three men, bowed with weariness, scarce able to dismount alone. Their gear was wet, their saddles slippery with mud and slime, the reins black with it, all their trappings so smeared that it would have been hard to tell what color they were originally; only their swords were still sharp and bright. Whatever new wounds they had, they had been washed clean by the driving rain. They took care of their horses first, each man his own; on a forced march no time for ceremony. Somewhere along the way they had found grain for fodd
ering, and there was plenty of grass. On the far side of our shelter they stripped themselves, rubbed themselves dry with handfuls of hay, patched up each other’s cuts, pouring over them some sort of liquid that smelled vile but of which they drank gratefully what was left. Later, when the dark was full come, they gathered wood flakes, leaves, a bit of bark, to coax a fire out of the damp, to dry their gear, and hunkered around it, wrapped in their horse blankets, cleaning their soldier’s weapons with precise strokes. Under cover of our shelter I watched them carefully. They spoke in Welsh, of course, and strange, even in this dreadful place (what shelter this for an earl’s son, an earl’s daughter, what shelter for a page who had grown used to finer things?), their voices had more about them of home than any of the fine places or people I had seen. They spoke in fits and starts, as do men who have gone beyond weariness, of strange, unrelated things, unimportant ones, as if this day had not seen them best the greatest king in Christendom, as if in the final count, it is only small, homey things that matter at all. And now they began to speak of their dead friends in matter-of-fact tones; of one’s skill with a harp, of the other’s love of a certain food, as if, even in this, they had no time for mourning. Yet one thing they did that struck me hard. They could not give their comrade, nor our one man, decent burial, had had to leave them where they fell, but they had brought with them their swords. These now they stuck into the ground so that the hilts made two crosses in a row. And in their talk I at once began to detect their puzzlement and their concern at how this morning’s events had been arranged and who, in truth, lay behind the plan.

  On the other side of that flimsy shelter, I say, we lay, trying to sleep, without food—for there was none—without comfort—an earth floor that was both damp and hard—with straw for pillows, and a saddle to lean against. But when I tried to tell my lady what I had heard, she pursed up her lips and would not listen, or could not, still numb, bewildered by shock. Too tired to argue, I would have slept myself, had not she, now in turn, begun to speak. So on one side I heard what Prince Taliesin thought, as he talked with his men, and on our side of the curtain I heard my lady, as she told me what she had seen and heard. It was like hearing and seeing the same thing twice. God forgive Henry for his cruelty, God forgive his queen. And God pity my little mistress who had to be the witness of their schemes.

  She said suddenly, quietly, so I had to strain to catch what she said, words pouring from her like those sheets of rain, “I saw him die. I held him in my arms until he died, in the mud, like a dog. I held Gervaise’s head, I tell you, and heard his last testament.” She suddenly gave a cry like the one her mother had made. “I did not expect him to die,” she whispered. “I turned aside his love; I did not want him to die of it.” Most of what she told me then I have told you before, how she had had to wait there and watch, bound and gagged, so that even her mouth was stopped from crying out, even her eyes were dry. She saw how Gervaise rode against the prince, how he threw himself on the prince’s sword, how he fell from his horse. She heard how the king offered her life for his royal one, and how he told Taliesin to take the prisoners the prince had sworn to have. But when her guards were hauled aside, free to ride off with the king, when the prince had slashed her thongs, I did not know that she had slid from her saddle and gone forward among the carnage of that place to where Gervaise had fallen.

  “He was not yet dead,” she cried. “Although hurt so grievously, he knew me. He tried to smile the way he used.” The tears, unshed then, now coursed down her cheeks. “I sat beside him,” she said, “and heard him speak. Do dying men speak lies?” She cried passionately, “Would he lie before God? He told me that Taliesin had made a treaty with the king, to leave Falaise in return for hostages. Gervaise was to be one, Hue and I the other two. But, warned by the queen, Gervaise was to be freed in time to rescue me. One of the guards was in her pay and had so agreed. The king’s presence almost destroyed her plan.” She looked at me, her eyes too large for her white face. “That is why Gervaise rode against the prince,” she said simply, “that is why he died, to save me, who had promised to wed with him, I who made him first begin his love.” She sat on the ground and picked at the dried blood smears on her skirts. “I am stained with Gervaise’s blood,” she cried. “What will wash away that guilt?”

  I remembered what she had said at Cambray, many lifetimes away: We are at the start of some enterprise that will destroy us all. I remembered what her brother Robert thought: Quarrels should not stretch so far to shadow our Hues. But vengeance lay around us, puddled like the aftermath of that storm. I had no words to comfort her, nor, like Taliesin himself, words to argue against hers. I knew her wrong, but she must find out the truth for herself. Would a dying man lie? It was the queen’s lies that spoke through him.

  So we were stranded, far from any expectation of help; no one knowing where we were; only enemies to ring us round; the prince’s own hopes destroyed, save that of his own personal one, and what worth it, to fight against a faithless king? His men scattered or dead, his quest over, for what? To be dishonored in the lady’s eyes? I grieved for her; I grieved for him. But there are some things even a bard cannot do. Their differences had to be resolved by them. Somehow Gervaise’s love and death had to be atoned.

  On his side of the division the prince was speaking more forcefully now, without rancor, although what he said might have embittered many men. For he was speaking again of his dead comrade. “He was of my father’s bodyguard,” he said soberly, “like you. We were lent to each other, you to guard me, I to guard you, until either death parted us or we returned. Death hitherto has passed us by. It lay in wait for us today. Tomorrow it may lie in wait for the rest of us. I should have killed that king like an unclean beast. I would have done so, had he not held at his mercy the lady and her brother, unknown to us. I could not kill them to kill him.”

  They nodded, no regret, no bitterness in them either. “So since this lady and her brother and their page are now our charge,” he went on, “we cannot abandon them. Henry will not let them go. He may not seek us out immediately, and while we stay here, I think we may be safe. But he will be waiting for us. How shall we break out? I ask you, friends, companions all, what you advise. Your lives, as well as theirs, are at stake.” Each man then present spoke in turn, not deferring to his lord but openly, as becomes free men. One pointed out that the Paris road east, back to Prince Henry, which Hue must favor if he could speak, would be impossible for them, the royal lands in any case forbidden them and all of Normandy to ride across. (And in truth I should add that Prince Henry never tried to help Hue.) Another wished to go north, to cross from the Channel ports, but he, too,, was argued down, the Channel being the one place the king would watch like a hawk. That left but south and west. South, then, to Sieux.

  “Suppose,” the third man said (and I must tell you that I never learned their names, these men who to the outside world kept a distance and a silence, as unyielding as their shield wall), “suppose we sit here, or rot here more like,” and he poked the dismal fire with a boot, trying to dry it out, “until the Earl of Sieux comes looking for us?”

  “Impossible.” His companion’s answer was direct. “Those men of Sieux, God rest their souls, they ride upon a task impossible. They will never reach Sieux alive; and even if they do, Henry would never let them leave again. Sieux will be the first place Henry will look for us.”

  Since for clarity it should be known what happened to Sieux, I will tell you that Taliesin’s men spoke truth. They never reached the castle, those two brave men of ours, each trying to find a different route back. Dead they were, caught somewhere by some hostile force, robbed of their armor, horse, and gear, left to rot in some ditch, part of the unknown casualties of war. As for the castle, contrary to all his old vows, Henry marched against it. When Henry’s men arrived, they found it bolted close, for all that its lord still lay abed. They say Henry sent his feudal levies to besiege Sieux, not mercenaries, whom he could not trust, but men he could rel
y upon to hold a siege. And they say that when those troops arrived, it was the Lady Ann herself who came out upon the battlements to answer them.

  Their captain was amazed. Keeping careful distance, out of bow shot, this officer rephrased the king’s message for more delicate ears. His request, then, politely stated in more courteous terms than usually Henry used, asked for the king’s prisoners to be given up, or, failing that, for Henry’s troops to be allowed in to prepare a welcome for them.

  Realizing at once that we must be still at large, the Lady Ann answered him like a man. “I speak for the Count of Sieux,” she cried. She wore a mail coat like a knight and had pushed her hair inside a coif. She would have carried a sword had there been one she could lift easily. She spoke so loudly that even her seneschal, Dillon the swordmaster, who knew her of old, was startled that so slight a figure could command such strength. “Tell Henry, your king, as once my husband did, that not one stick, one stone, one life, shall he have at Sieux. We shall not proceed against him, loyal to our feudal oath and his, but tell your king he will never claim another inch of land from us. Make one move, and we smite him body and soul to hell.’’