by Norah Lofts
When my turn for brushing the hair came round I took it and I sedulously spent some moments in chat in order to get Berengaria into a good mood. Unfortunately she began to talk about Maria’s wedding which was now imminent and not, in the circumstances, the most cheerful of topics for the princess. However, I said several bright, silly, slightly malicious things and managed to make her laugh and then I said, ‘Berengaria, I have a favour to ask you.’
‘You’ve done me many,’ she said amiably. So I proceeded to tell her about my house and my wish to borrow Blondel. I made it sound a very temporary arrangement indeed.
‘Oh no,’ she said as soon as I finished speaking. ‘I can’t spare him. I told you why.’
‘But surely, just to go to Apieta—two days’ ride away. I only want to borrow him. He could come back at once if you needed him for anything.’
‘I want him to stay here. The world is full of architects and builders, Anna, proper ones. Get some of them to work on your house.’
I was so angered by her refusal that I almost snapped out that that wouldn’t get Blondel out of the bower and out of the reach of his enchantress; but such a remark would be fatal because it would render my next attempt suspect and I knew that if this failed I should make another and another. I should never rest now until I had removed him. But I hadn’t foregone hope of getting him to Apieta which would be the nicest way of removing him because then I should remain in touch with him and perhaps one day join him there. So I dug in my heels; I could be stubborn too.
I pleaded for a little while and then I realised that we were merely repeating ourselves, so I laid down the brush and said:
‘If you will be so selfish and unhelpful to me, Berengaria, next time Father wants to marry you off to somebody I shan’t say a cool sensible word for you. I did last time. Father takes quite a bit of notice of what I say.’ That wasn’t boasting; it was true.
‘About that you must please yourself, Anna. I shall either marry Richard or stay as I am and nothing you say or refrain from saying will make any difference.’
That angered me again. ‘I suppose you realise,’ I said hotly, ‘that I have but to open that door and shout what I know to make you the laughing-stock of Christendom.’
‘Oh, Anna,’ she said mildly, ‘if I could spare the boy I would and you know it and know why I can’t. What difference does a threat make?’
All at once I understood about martyrs—people about whom it had often puzzled me to read. Berengaria had in her the stuff of which martyrs are made; not necessarily great holiness or mysticism, just a boundless obstinacy. I could well imagine her in Nero’s Rome, saying, ‘I am a Christian, so what difference do the lions make?’ And no wonder martyrs were so often persecuted! By God, I would have liked to persecute Berengaria just then. I would have liked to beat her over the head with the hairbrush, take her by the shoulders and shake her till her teeth rattled. But I held onto the tail of my temper again and said:
‘Look, I promise that if you get yourself magicked into the oubliette I’ll fetch him back and give him a posy so that he can magic you out.’ I thought that might make her realise how silly the whole idea was.
‘Oh, I know. Put like that, it sounds ridiculous. But I feel so safe with him about. That dream was a warning and he did come and I did recognise him. And I feel that if there were a fire or a flood or anything like that he would be the one who would save me. And since that is so, I’d be a fool, wouldn’t I, to let him go off to Apieta to build a house which anybody else could do equally well?’
I could see that there was no moving her. To my immense chagrin I found tears of impotent fury filling my eyes.
‘Why, Anna,’ Berengaria said quite kindly, ‘why do you take this so hard? What can it matter who builds your house so long as it is built? Or why not build it here in Pamplona? Then he could attend to it.’
‘Suppose I say it’s my whim! You should understand that. Why should every whim of yours be pampered? I want my house to be in my own duchy and I want Blondel to build it. He’s clever and inventive; he could build well. But no, because you have a poppyhead dream he must stay here and wind wool, as though that were a proper occupation for a man.’
‘Blondel isn’t a man. He’s just a singing boy—’
At that I knew that I had better get out of the room before I said or did something regrettable.
Afterwards, when I was calm enough to think it over and not get blind with red rage at the memory of Berengaria’s voice saying, ‘Blondel isn’t a man,’ I realised that though I had been defeated the effort hadn’t been entirely wasted. I knew something now. I had been stupid not to think of it before. The way to get Blondel out of the bower was to find him an errand which could in some way be linked with that dream of hers. His only value to her was the fact that he had figured in her dream and if some errand could be twisted into seeming to fulfil that dream she would willingly send him off to the ends of the earth.
I set my wits to work to think of such an errand.
When I told him of my failure to ‘borrow’ him I could see that he was sorry and relieved. The moth which one catches in one’s sleeve and removes from the dangerous vicinity of the candle is probably grateful when it finds itself free, disenchanted in the cool dark, but it may be a little regretful, too.
VII
Christmas came and Father was home in time to keep the festival with us. Young Sancho was there, too, and Blanche came home from her convent. Outwardly it was a very merry time and we prolonged the revels until after Maria’s wedding. She wore the laced gown, about which I could see nothing very shocking, and the wedding itself was a very grand affair. Free food was served in the courtyard to the poor of Pamplona and inside the castle we all ate and drank far too much and those who could danced until they were tired. Blondel played in the hall and, secure amongst a crowd of people, I could look at him more closely than I dared in the bower and I noticed that he seldom took his eyes from Berengaria. I could guess his thoughts—they were my own. And Berengaria’s too!
When at last, with that odd mixture of the ceremonial and the bawdy which is the peculiar mark of weddings, the bride and groom had been locked into their chamber, Berengaria turned to me and said:
‘She cares nothing for him but they are bedded now.’ She spoke from the bitterness of her own heart but she spoke for me and for Blondel—for all poor unfortunate lovers the world over.
Immediately after the wedding Father left for his winter hunting at Grania. On the evening before he left he sent for me. The page who brought the message said that it was His Majesty’s special wish that Blanco should carry me across to his private apartment. It was humiliating but a mark of Father’s considerateness for after a light rain there had been a frost and the ground was slippery.
As soon as I was within Father’s own most private room, a curiously austere apartment, I could see that something was troubling him. And as soon as I was seated, with my feet to the fire and a beaker of wine to hand, very snug and comfortable, he told me what it was.
‘Look, Anna, I’m off to Grania in the morning and before I go I want to talk to you about Berengaria. I didn’t want to spoil her Christmas or the fun of the wedding but I’ve heard from Saturnino and I am sure now that there’s nothing to be hoped for. He’s an old, tried spy—though he’d hate the word—and in his Christmas letter he said that so far as he could see the betrothal was valid and unquestioned. He even went to the length of asking Henry of England about the matter but unfortunately, just as he broached the matter, Henry was taken with a fit. I’d never heard that he was subject to fits, had you? Apparently it is so. He fell to the floor and began to chew the rushes. So Saturnino retired and abandoned the inquiry. But he assures me that he pursued it in other quarters and that there is no hope.’
‘And did he connect the fit with his inquiry?’ I asked.
‘Why, no! It was just an unfortunate coincidence,’ Father said. But he fingered his beard and looked at me a little dubiousl
y. ‘Saturnino wrote as though it just happened most unluckily.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it all sounds very suspicious to me. You mention Princess Alys to Richard and he grabs a battle-axe and threatens to cleave you; you mention the same young woman to Henry and he falls down in a fit. I may connect the two charming incidents because I have a nasty, suspicious mind. Though what I suspect and what I could deduce from them, Father, it would puzzle me to tell you. However, that is neither here nor there. Am I to understand that you wish me to break this news—gently—to Berengaria?’
He nodded. ‘She’ll cry. And to tell you the truth, I cannot bear to see her cry.’ He looked at me a little doubtfully.
‘There’s something else I must tell you. Isaac Comnenus, Emperor of Cyprus, is suing for her hand. His emissaries will arrive presently. Do you think, Anna, that you could talk her into some sort of sense before they arrive?’ He poured himself some wine and drank it as though it were some horrid physic. ‘I don’t want her to be unhappy; I don’t want to force her into marriage. I have done, haven’t I, all that a man could do to get her the man she has a fancy for? And failed. And now, you realise, she is heading for her twentieth year, the loveliest princess in Christendom and not even betrothed. It’s fantastic. I don’t want to force her but I would like to see her married and settled, for if there’s one thing really pitiable and useless on this earth, it is an old maid.’
Having said that, he realised that he was talking to one who could never be anything else. He was as embarrassed as a ploughboy. I remembered his many kindnesses, his immense generosity to me and said hastily, ‘Sire, an old maid is one left over from the marriage market and since I never went to market it is a term that cannot apply to me. So use that, or any other term, without thought for my feelings, I beg you. One of the reasons I like to talk to you is that you ignore my shape and my sex and my age.’
‘Your shape, Anna,’ he said gravely, ‘is a reproach to me every day of my life. Had I been—’
‘A better man,’ I finished for him, ‘then I would never have drawn breath. Sire, I assure you that I am grateful, on the whole, for having been alive. The blame for my shape I lay entirely on my mother.’
And that was true.
I had the story once from Mathilde when she was drunk. My mother had been one of Queen Beatrice’s waiting ladies; not pretty, Mathilde said, but witty. You couldn’t be in her company for a moment without laughing. I could well imagine the sensitive, sentimental King, still young, still virile, meeting this laughing, witty lady as he came from the room where his loved mad Queen was confined and taking her—not out of love or lechery but as a refuge. She quickened; and the Queen being then so crazy that it seemed she must soon die, my mother was anxious to remain at court—not be overlooked or forgotten. So she had an iron corset made by a blacksmith.
Berengaria’s mother lived for another six years. Mine died in childbirth, having safely delivered my crooked carcase.
I understood her motive but she had never given me a thought; why should I be sentimental about her?
Towards my father who had given me security, rank and wealth I did feel kindly, so I now hastened to say:
‘But you didn’t send for me to talk about me and the past. Berengaria’s future is our concern. And I must warn you, sire, that she told me only the other day that she would marry Richard Plantagenet or nobody.’
‘Well, that’s just the sort of pigheaded remark I wish you to counter, Anna. Women understand one another; you’ll think of things to say to wean her mind away from this idea. When I talk to her I get angry and then she cries and we get no further. Make the idea of being Empress of Cyprus sound attractive; ask her if she has really thought what being unmarried will mean for her when Young Sancho brings his Queen to rule the roost here—talk about weddings. You know the sort of thing.’
In the privacy of my mind I thought that if he had set me to dismantle the castle’s Roman Gate towers with no other tool than my bodkin the task could hardly be more impossible. He had called Berengaria ‘an iron mule,’ but plainly he had no notion of the extent of her obstinacy. He wanted everything to be easy and pleasant; he wanted to go off to Grania and enjoy his hunting with a free mind and he wanted to come back to find an amenable daughter, converted by talk! Poor, unpractical Father!
‘And while you are on the subject, Anna, you might just hint to her that this time my mind really is made up. There comes a time when a man must see his duty and act on it. Nobody can say I have not been patient and indulgent; she went to stay with Lucia in Rome and had her pick of the Italian princelings; I took her with me to Toledo and Valladolid and she saw every eligible man in the peninsula. I’d have raised no protest if she’d chosen the poorest if I’d thought he’d make her happy. But no! She must needs take a sick girl’s fancy to this Plantagenet whom she saw only once and that at a distance; and I’ve gone to lengths no other father would have considered, pursuing the faintest hope. And that has wasted precious time. Now my mind is made up. My mind is made up, Anna. Tell her that from me.’
I knew he was blustering. And if Berengaria had been amenable and let me fulfil my plans for Blondel, this was the moment when I would have said two things. One, that to force his will on her now was unfair; if he had ever intended to choose a husband for her he should have done it long ago when she was a child without preferences. The other was that it was a tactical error even to mention Isaac of Cyprus while the disappointment over the Plantagenet was still raw in her mind. I could also have said, ‘What if she is almost twenty? She’s lovelier than ever. We have plenty of time.’ Father, who would always take the pleasant course if he could square it with his conscience, would have shuffled off the whole business and gone off to Grenia thinking that everything would work out well.
But, as I had threatened, I held my tongue.
Father, once started on the conventional course, plunged on:
‘There’s Blanche too. We’re riding as far as Garenta together tomorrow and I’m going to talk to her on the way. She is either going to be married or be a nun. I don’t mind which—she’s free to make her choice—but I’ll make clear to her that this hiver-hovering must end. Whoever Sancho finally picks on won’t want to find the place full of—’ He broke off, conscious of being on dangerous ground again.
His face of kindly concern said as clearly as possible: And then there’s you, Anna. Oh dear!
‘You know,’ I said, ‘it would make everything very much simpler if all fathers treated all their daughters as you have treated me! My future presents no problem. As soon as I can get the work in hand I am going to build myself a house in Apieta, just a small house, without defences, because the castle is so near. And I’m going to breed horses which will sell for fabulous sums of money. And I’m going to have a candlestand so arranged that I can read in bed and one room with a glass window. And an herb garden. And I hope, sire, that whenever you come to Apieta you will visit me and see how snug and comfortable I shall be—thanks to your generosity.’
As I expected, that pleased him enormously. We spoke for a little while about my house, and then again about Berengaria, and I promised to say to her all the things he wished me to say. Then suddenly he said:
‘Could you wear this, Anna? My fingers are thickening; Berengaria has plenty of trinkets and it wouldn’t be suitable for Blanche.’
He held out to me the great, dazzling diamond ring which the King of Sicily had given him in gratitude for his help in that campaign so long ago. The stone was as large as the nail on a man’s thumb and was set in a circle of smaller ones, the whole mounted in a frame of the fine pale gold of Kabistan. It was worth a king’s ransom—indeed that is what it was, for if the Sicilian forces had not had Father’s support the King of Sicily would have lost his throne that time, no doubt about that.
I looked at it covetously. With that in my possession I should be out of the reach of want for all time, whatever happened to Father, whatever happened to Apieta. In Venice where
the spice trade from the East was making princes of little merchants, in Rome where the competition in splendour between dignitaries of the Church had inflated prices to absurdity, I could sell that ring for a sum which would keep me in comfort for the rest of my life. Comfort? Splendour!
But something held me back from taking it. After all, he had two legitimate daughters and a son. I muttered and mumbled a few protests.
‘I’ve just decided to be master in my family,’ Father said. ‘Anna Apieta, hold out your hand!’ I did so, and he tried the ring, first on my middle finger and then, finding it too large there, on my thumb.
Thanking him, I found myself thinking that it was, in the final count, better to have a hold on a man’s conscience than on his heart.
VIII
Next morning Father, taking a tender leave of Berengaria, went off to his hunting and we were left to face that worst part of the winter with Christmas over and Easter still far ahead. Weeks of trying to keep warm; of too close contact about the hearth with a consequent fraying of tempers; of rheum in eyes and nose and limbs; of unappetising, oversalted, overspiced food.
In that season even to walk abroad on a chance-come clement day, well furred and shod and with a full stomach, was to be made miserable by the sight of ragged, blue-faced beggars. At no time is the difference between wealth and poverty so marked as in winter. And though perhaps no one would have guessed it, I was always particularly susceptible to the woes of the poor, especially those who were in any way infirm. There but for the grace of God and the King’s tender conscience go I!
