Afton of Margate Castle

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  Calhoun snorted in impatience. “Have we not all suffered? Were the trials I endured at Warwick merely for sport?”

  Fulk waved his hand as if brushing away Calhoun’s protest. “God has been merciful to you, young knight, for you have not yet suffered. When you do, perchance you will see the world in which your lady dwells. Perhaps then you will find each other.”

  “And if we do not?”

  Fulk shrugged. “If your eyes are turned inward, young knight, you will see yourself. Then you will be alone as I am, with your faults and your fate.”

  Calhoun picked up a stick and stirred the fire impatiently. How like Fulk to wax philosophical after hearing Calhoun’s deepest secret! Calhoun could not find one bit of help or comfort in his words. “You continually upbraid me for my faults,” Calhoun remarked to his teacher. “I know my left hand is weak, for so you have proved to me time and again. I keep waiting for you to explain where my other faults lie, for I would banish them as easily as I vanquished my foes at Warwick. Where, noble Fulk, am I remiss?”

  His only answer was Fulk’s gentle snoring.

  ***

  Calhoun first noticed the knights in white tunics and bold red crosses at Belgrade. A company of the uniformed knights stood in a single line outside the city, and he felt their sharp eyes on his company as he approached.

  A husky knight held up his hand as they drew near, and Calhoun signaled his company to halt. “We do not recognize your colors or ensign,” the knight said, his words heavy with a French accent. “From where do you come, and what is your destination?”

  Fulk shifted in his saddle, but Calhoun put his hand out and took control, as was his right. “We bear the colors of Perceval, Earl of Margate, servant to King Henry of England,” he said. “We seek service in the Holy Land, to honor God and our king.”

  The knight nodded, without expression. “We are the holy knights Templar,” he answered, “perpetually vowed to aid the peace of pilgrims on the holy road and fight those who would disturb that peace. I am called Reynard.”

  “I am Calhoun, son of the Earl of Margate,” Calhoun answered. “Perhaps we will be able to wield our swords to preserve the same peace. I come with thirty dedicated knights and a host of people who wish safe passage to Jerusalem.”

  “So I see.” Reynard did not smile, but his eyes gleamed in approval. “We will offer you safe journey to Jerusalem. The Saracens will be at our backs as soon as we reach Constantinople, and the larger the company, the greater our chance for survival.”

  “We welcome your company,” Calhoun answered, nodding. “Once we have had our rest for the night.”

  ***

  They camped that night outside the walls of Belgrade. The place had an exotic air of intrigue about it. Calhoun breathed deeply. Even the atmosphere tasted different here--hot, dry, and scorching, even in the dark of night.

  He hesitantly approached a group of knights seated around a fire. They were all older than he, and more seasoned in battle, and for the first time he felt uncomfortably aware of his youth and his titled position. But the men parted wordlessly for him, leaving him a seat by the fire, and he crouched in the dirt without saying a word.

  Garwood, a gray-haired knight who had joined them in Vienna, squatted by the fire to tell a tale. He lazily poked at the burning coals with a green branch. “I was one of those who first took Jerusalem,” he said, his eyes shining in the firelight. “I have not seen a sight like it in the twenty-seven years since.”

  “Tell us,” another knight spoke up. Calhoun recognized Parnell, a French knight who had joined them in Budapest. “I have never met anyone who was there on that fateful day.”

  A strong emotion crossed Garwood’s face, and Calhoun could not tell what it was. Pride? Sorrow? Regret?

  “Forty thousand defended the city,” Garwood said, stirring the fire. “For days they hurled hot oil, stones, arrows, and Greek fire at us. Our priests led us to fast for three days, then we walked around the city, hoping the walls would fall down.”

  His eyes grew dark. “They did not. While the infidels in the Holy City jeered at us from the walls, we positioned three siege towers on Mount Zion. Fire and a rain of arrows fell upon us, but we pushed the towers against the wall and the next morning, the tower manned by Godfrey de Bouillon breached the wall.”

  “We tore into the city, which was rightfully won. We dragged men, women and children from their homes and killed them even as they cried for mercy. Many people swallowed their gold and jewels, and once we realized this, the corpses of the infidels were slit open to retrieve the treasure, for it had been promised to us.”

  “Every street and alley ran red, in some places the blood flowed so high it washed over our ankles. We were free to claim houses for ourselves, and I placed my shield on the door of a small house just outside what was known as the Temple Mount.”

  Garwood’s eyes closed, and he shook his head slowly. “But it was impossible to look upon the vast number of slain without horror,” he said, his voice quivering. “Everywhere lay the fragments of human bodies. But it was not the spectacle of the headless bodies strewn in all directions that roused horror in us after the day had passed--it was the sight of us, the victors, who dripped with blood from head to foot.”

  Not a knight dared to interrupt Garwood’s story, and all was silent for a few moments. When he had gained control of himself, Garwood spoke briskly: “We put it behind us. The few we had allowed to live as prisoners were made to clean the streets and burn the bodies. We dressed in fresh uniforms and walked barefoot in reverence to the Holy Sepulcher, where we prostrated ourselves upon the ground and thanked God for our victory.”

  He paused and stirred the fire again. “In the end, I could not stay. I left my house and returned to my lord’s castle in England and served him faithfully until last year when he died. Now I seek to go back and see what has become of the land bought with so great a price.”

  “May it be a land full of the mercy of God,” Calhoun spoke from his heart. “For surely we have brought the light of God to the land.”

  “If we have not, we shall!” Parnell said, striking his breast. “By all the saints, we shall!”

  Garwood looked down into the fire again. “I can only hope the land is better now than when I left it,” he answered.

  Twenty-three

  Hildegard tried to keep the frown from her face as she folded the bishop’s letter. She had been instructed to open the hostelry of the convent to a Lady Harriette, who requested refuge from Normandy. Lord Rainger, wrote the bishop, had died, and his brother had inherited the estate. The widowed Lady Harriette sought shelter within the confines of a nunnery, not to take vows, but to find a place of refuge from a hostile brother-in-law.

  Hildegard knew she had no choice but to welcome the lady, who would doubtless come with an entourage of ladies-in-waiting and servants. Her own nuns would be hard-pressed to care for these women, and Hildegard knew full well how the inclusion of women of the world affected women of the convent. She pursed her lips and began to write a letter in return.

  A tap on her door interrupted her thoughts, and Hildegard smiled, momentarily forgetting her troubles with the bishop. Only Agnelet tapped so gently, and Hildegard lightened her voice: “Come in, dear.”

  The little girl glided into the room with the motionless step of the nuns. She wore a white tunic and white veil, cut exactly like the nuns’ black habits. Hildegard thought black was not appropriate for a young girl. Such things should be reserved for the time when a child had recognized the presence of evil in the world, and thank God, Agnelet had not yet seen it.

  “Madame Hildegard,” Agnelet spoke clearly and distinctly, her eyes cast down at the ground, “our sister the Sacristan wishes to know if the chapel should be dusted today or tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow will do,” Hildegard said, smothering the smile that wanted to creep onto her lips. “Is there anything else, Agnelet?”

  “Madame Lona wishes to know if she has you
r permission to give five loaves to the poor today.”

  “She does.”

  Agnelet walked to Hildegard’s side and removed her dainty hands from beneath the short cape that served as her scapular. She climbed into Hildegard’s lap with the natural abandon of any four-year-old, then turned her dark eyes toward the abbess. With her tiny thumb she traced the sign of the cross on the band of cloth that covered Hildegard’s forehead, then sighed. “Grace and peace be unto you, Madame,” she said, falling weakly against Hildegard.

  Hildegard did not answer, but hugged the little girl tightly. For the child’s sake, she told her strict conscience, not for personal pleasure or fulfillment.

  Thus received, Agnelet struggled out of the nun’s grasp and skipped out the door. Hildegard stared after her for a moment, then pursed her lips again and picked up her pen to write the bishop.

  ***

  Lady Harriette arrived with her retinue, and Hildegard burned with secret anger when she discovered the situation was not at all as the bishop had described it. Lady Harriette was the widow of Rainger, but that noble lord had died ten years earlier. She was not choosing sanctuary in an English convent to escape a brother-in law, but obeying the wishes of King Henry, who had made the noble lady of Normandy his mistress.

  Hildegard fasted for three days to cleanse her soul of the bitter anger that threatened to poison her. Perhaps the bishop himself did not know the full extent of the situation, she surmised, and wasn’t her place to judge, for Christ loved the woman caught in adultery, did He not?

  But still she resented having to give shelter to the women from Normandy. The women of the world were not allowed in the nun’s private cloister, neither did they eat with the nuns, but they were free to use the chapel, the very heart of the convent. The sounds of their revelry in music and dance carried over even as the nuns recited their daily offices and prayers, and for the first time Hildegard felt that the world had entered mightily into the convent she guarded.

  “The three D’s,” she muttered one day as a lady’s maid dashed through the back of the chapel gleefully chasing an escaped pet. “Dances, dresses, and dogs. They are all of the devil.”

  The ladies brought plenty of all three. Hildegard noticed without pleasure that her nuns had already fallen prey to the rather womanly tendency to ape whatever was fashionable. More than one nun had already raised the headband that was supposed to come down to the eyebrows, because the ladies from Normandy had high, wide foreheads. Why do we live in a mirrorless world when my nuns gaze daily at women of the world? Hildegard fretted in prayer. Viewing these women feeds vanity more than any mirror.

  In recreation, Dame Ula had actually suggested that they wear tunics of a “more soothing color, blue, perhaps?” and Lona asked for permission to keep a puppy in the cloister.

  “We are here for one purpose,” Hildegard reminded her nuns. “To raise prayers and praise to God on behalf of ourselves and the people we serve. We are not called to be fashionable or in the world, but we have left it and its pleasure behind.” She cast reproving eyes upon Lona. “We do not keep pets.”

  Ula raised her eyes from her sewing. “The ladies, Madame Abbess, have asked why we keep the child Agnelet. One asked if she was our pet.”

  Hildegard took a deep breath. “Agnelet is a child of God,” she answered smoothly. “And just as Saint Agnes dedicated herself to Christ, so we have dedicated Agnelet. She is certainly not a pet.”

  “That is how I replied,” Ula answered, not looking up from her work.

  “And from this day on,” Hildegard said, as if she had been considering the matter for some time, when in fact, she had just made the decision, “let Agnelet be kept from the women in the hostelry. She shall be as one of us, confined to the cloister.”

  A bell rang at the convent gate, and a young novice hurried to answer the summons. When she returned, her arms were burdened with two turkeys, which Hildegard noted and motioned for the novice to send to the kitchen.

  Hildegard kept her face smooth and expressionless as she continued to work in the recreation, but her thoughts were troubled. Such gifts had been coming regularly since Lady Harriette’s installation at the nunnery, and Hildegard worried that accepting them violated her vows of poverty and obedience. She knew, of course, that the food and other gifts were compensation from the king for accepting his mistress, and she grudgingly received them, for the year had been hard and the tithes and offerings of the villagers had been few. A drought had hurt all the villagers, and the nuns’ own garden had yielded little to augment their store of provisions.

  Though it rankled her soul to receive these gifts, Father Odoric had told her to quiet her fears and receive them as the provision of God Himself. So Hildegard bore all in silence.

  ***

  Hildegard unburdened her heart to the bishop, though, when he came for his regular visit to oversee the operation of the nunnery. During these annual visits, each nun sat with the bishop in private and made complaints not allowed in the fabric of every day life. Hildegard relished the occasion and complained freely about Lady Harriette and the worldly pleasures she brought into the cloister.

  “Her ladies wear gowns with low necks and costly furs,” Hildegard said in a calm voice as the bishop’s scribe transcribed every word. “They procure dog, monkeys, rabbits, and birds, which all too often escape into the chapel and distract our worship. Moreover, it is the reason that she is here that concerns me most. The church supports the holy institution of marriage, and yet this woman is not the king’s wife. She is quite proud of her calling as his mistress.”

  The bishop pressed his lips together and lay his finger upon his nose as if he were thinking. Madame Hildegard waved her hands. “Apart from this situation, all is well here. We strive to remember that we are dead to the world and alive to God. We seek in all things to give Him praise and prayer.”

  The bishop paused until he was sure she had finished speaking, then he folded his arms. “I have spoken to each of your nuns, Madame, and find that the more mature nuns share in your concerns. They, too, worry about the worldliness of your paying visitors, and have prayed that God would send a messenger to call Lady Harriette and her retinue away.”

  His hand circled the crucifix that hung from his neck. “But, Madame Hildegard, is it possible God has sent Lady Harriette to you as an exercise in the heavenly virtues of patience, forbearance, and true charity? Might you lead these women by your virtuous and holy example? Who knows but that they will amend their ways, and even consider a vocation of the religious life as a result of their stay here.”

  Hildegard controlled the muscles in her face so the bishop would not see how her heart rebelled at his words. She had tried to show charity. Indeed, had she not borne their foolishness with a serene and gracious air as her Holy Rule demanded?

  The bishop leaned forward and lowered his voice so that his scribe would not hear. “We are not in a position to give affront to the king. He has recently levied a scutage against the clergy in England, and this new taxation is being appealed even now. If we protest his actions on so personal a matter, he might see fit to raise our rate of taxation.”

  The bishop leaned back and resumed speaking normally, and Hildegard knew the matter was closed. She would be hostess to Henry’s mistress for as long as the king saw fit.

  “Your sisters also speak of your harshness,” the bishop went on. “Two or three described your nature as ‘scolding.’”

  “I rebuke them when necessary,” Hildegard said, stiffening in her chair.

  “Another sister mentioned the appearance of favoritism. She said you bear an obvious love for the child called Agnelet.”

  The river of emotion in Hildegard’s heart burst its strict boundary; tears sprang to her eyes. How could it be? She had made every effort to assign Agnelet’s care to several nuns, and she had forcibly stifled every maternal instinct that threatened to elevate her love for the child above love for Christ.

  “I love her, as do we all
,” Hildegard said, her voice quivering. “I love all the souls placed within my care with the tender love of Christ.”

  “What is to be done with the child?” the bishop asked, his dark eyes piercing Hildegard’s calm. “What place does a four-year-old child have in a nunnery? More than that,” the bishop went on delicately, “she has no father to give her a dowry, and whether she is married to a man or to Christ, what bride goes empty handed to her marriage feast?”

  Hildegard folded her hands beneath her scapular knotted her hands into fists. “She may reside in the nunnery as a servant, and a companion to the nuns. She is most useful, and will grow to be even more so.”

  “Can you not return her to some family in the village?”

  “No.” Hildegard shook her head resolutely. “The mark on Agnelet’s face would invite speculation and fear. Father Odoric agrees with me; to send Agnelet to the village would be a mistake.”

  The bishop nodded slowly and brought his hands together as if for prayer. “Then I shall abide by your wisdom. On my next visit here, we shall see what good or evil has come of this decision, and we pray that only good will come from it.”

  He traced the sign of the cross in the air before her, and Hildegard breathed a gentle sigh of relief.

  ***

  Madame Lienor was chosen to serve as Hildegard’s chaplain for the coming year, and though she still did not speak, Hildegard found the girl to be thorough, well-educated, and an excellent worker. One afternoon, after dictating several letters, Hildegard paused and looked carefully at the young nun who assisted her. Maturity had been kind to Lienor. Her skin sparkled clear and smooth, her spare figure complimented her height, and her manners had been refined by the austere training of the Holy Rule. She had bushy black brows that spoke eloquently in place of her words, and her forehead, Hildegard noted with approval, was modestly concealed by the veil and headbands she had never attempted to raise.

  “I read an interesting comment from a fellow nun the other day,” Hildegard remarked, picking up a letter from the abbess at a neighboring convent. “I’d like to know your opinion, Madame Lienor.”