by Lisa Hilton
‘You look beautiful this evening, Sister.’ Pierre was waiting for me in the passage. He was too clever to let his triumph show in his face.
‘Thank you. I am grateful to you, Pierre.’
‘For a simple compliment? We are in Poitiers. Ought I not to make a trouvère verse on your complexion?’
‘For your patience, Brother. I have tried it sorely. It has taken me such an unforgivable time to know what I am.’
‘And what you shall be, Sister.’
‘Indeed. And what Henry will become, in his turn.’
Pierre gave an ugly smirk, the only moment in all that we had been through together when that perfect mask slipped. ‘With God’s help.’
I curled my own lips in a smile of contempt. ‘Quite. With God’s help.’
‘Come. We are on the king’s business, after all.’
*
Pierre had two horses saddled in the courtyard. He helped me to mount, then swung himself into the saddle and walked to the gatehouse. The guards bowed respectfully as the queen and the Lord de Joigny passed through. The night was cold and clear, the moon a Saracen scimitar above the city.
‘Is it far?’ he called as we turned onto the Paris road and pushed the horses to a trot, then a canter.
‘Our mother’s message said just a few miles. Along the river, until we come to the tower. They wait for us there.’ There had been no such message, but Pierre was so eager to believe it, it seemed a shame to disappoint him.
‘Then let us fly.’
I had not galloped a horse for so long, I wondered if my limbs had lost the memory of it, but my hands and legs were as sure as ever. The euphoria was the same too, the same reckless joy in speed and sinew, of sharp air in my lungs and the sweet warmth of horseflesh. Pierre rode well, of course, but I found I could match him and for a short time as we raced along abreast under the stars, I did feel once again that we flew, as one body, surging through the night. I even closed my eyes for a while, squeezing gently but allowing the horse to find his pace, and remembered Othon, and Tomas, and riding out with Arthur, and allowed the tears to fall from my tightened eyelids, a burning cold in the wind on my face, until the sadness left me and I bared my teeth in the darkness with a savage pleasure.
‘Here?’
I pulled myself awake from the daze of the gallop and drew hard on the rein. ‘I believe so.’ I had passed Pierre, who waited behind me on the road, the silhouette of a guard tower defined by the gleam of moonlight on his hair. ‘Forgive me!’ I laughed.
‘Come now.’
We walked the horses along a narrow path towards the tower, then dismounted and led them past the empty structure towards the riverbank. Ahead I could make out the glow of a fire. ‘This way.’
The place might have been the same hollow where I had first dreamed, or thought I dreamed, of the horned man. Fire, rock, water, moonlight. It might have been my mother who stepped from her cloak, her gown, her chemise, who unbound her hair so that its colour mingled with the flames that caught the red noose on her leg. And she who might have turned to her son, to my brother, and held up her arms so that the silver light caught the delicate veins in her wrists, as though to twine her lover through her blood and trawl him into her heart.
Somewhere behind the rock began the slow thud of a drum, and I began to move to its rhythm, curving my hips and raising my hands, inviting Pierre to dance.
‘But where?’ he whispered, his moon-paled face confused.
‘Come, Brother,’ I smiled. ‘Come, dance. They will be here. And He will be here too. Come.’
Pierre fumbled at his clothes, first unfastening his sword belt and letting it drop, then his surcoat, shirt, hose, until he was naked as I. As he stepped towards me, I watched the lean lines of muscle on his torso stir beneath the skin and caught the smell beneath his arms, musky and high. I embraced him, filling myself with the scent of him, then turned away, twisting my back and thighs against his body as we began to circle the fire. The drum beat faster, and we kept time, describing an orbit like the celestial bodies that circle the earth, around and around. I felt my own limbs prick with sweat, and glancing down, saw that Pierre was ready for me.
‘Now,’ I whispered. ‘We must summon Him now.’ I lay on the bare ground with my head towards the fire, and slowly parted my legs. When he was with me, I gripped my thighs tightly around his hips and rolled us over, so that I sat astride him, his face now illuminated by the flames. I began to move, pushing my weight down hard upon him and allowing my lips to part. It was the first time I had feigned pleasure with Pierre. The drumming had stilled, to a steady double beat, the twinned sound of our bodies moving together as I carried Pierre with me, and as his pleasure came upon him I saw a shadow over my shoulder and saw that Pierre had seen it too, his eyes rolling back in stupid ecstasy. I scrambled his body from mine and we turned once more together, prostrating ourselves before the horned man, who stood above us, the leather mask of his face descending into the hides that covered him, the antlered head gleaming like birch bark in the glow of the flames. The drum had ceased now. As we waited in silence, I threw a swift glance to the tumbled heap of Pierre’s clothes. How far? Ten yards, twelve? Pierre saw the movement of my head, and I wondered whether he knew what was to come, or whether he would die enraptured, in the presence of his god.
But he did not see Gilbert step out from behind the rock, or the long blade of the dagger behind his heart, nor, when he had fallen forward with a gasp no louder than the whistle of a candle, did he see the horned man pull off his hide face and stand staring over my nakedness.
‘Hand me my cloak,’ I asked the silk man. When I was covered, I stooped over my brother’s body, already cooling where it lay away from the flame. Gingerly, I closed his startled eyes.
‘It is as my mother wished,’ I intoned solemnly, for the benefit of my listeners. ‘A great sacrifice.’
The silk man began to sing, and Gilbert joined him, a high, quavering melody that hung in the air not unlike a psalm. I heard them out. I no longer scorned them. We served the same ends, they and I, and after all, our methods had not proved so very different, in the end. I did not even despise Gilbert, whose loyalty had been bought for a palmful of gold. As he hymned his dead master, I searched in my heart for remorse at all I had brought about, remorse, or pity, or fondness even, an echo of the shameful passion I had always felt in Pierre’s arms. But I was done with thought, with reflection. Thinking had almost destroyed me in body and in mind, and I wanted no more of it. The old way, the way of other creatures, did not know thought any more than it knew regret. It sought only its own existence, and if it failed, it gave up life, as Pierre had done. I could not hate him for what he had done to me any more than a squealing rabbit, tearing off its own limbs in the snare, could hate the hands that set the wire. Perhaps I even understood him. I had not had him killed for revenge any more than my mother had tormented me out of cruelty. It was simply the way the old ways worked, taking what they needed without thought or remorse. My boy would rule, and do so freely, the last and only difference between Pierre’s desires and my own. And then I saw that I had been thinking, after all, dreaming in the crackle of the fire and the night breeze, and that both men were staring expectantly at me. I stood straighter and stepped over my brother’s body to retrieve the rest of my garments.
‘Gilbert. You will bury him, as we agreed.’
‘Indeed, Majesty.’
I struggled to find a phrase that would sound suitably solemn and portentous. ‘You have done as my mother commanded, and I thank you. It is not for us to question a sacrifice.’ They nodded like a pair of monks at a Latin oration. I turned to the silk man. ‘And you. All is ready?’
‘As you wished, Majesty.’
‘Then we leave. You may leave those … things,’ I gestured towards his costume. ‘Come.’
As we turned away from the river, I looked back one last time at the father of my son. His hair still glowed, as Arthur’s had done, once. And now
they would be bone and worm together. I fingered my own loosened braid, and thought how quickly Pierre should have done the same, had he no longer needed me. Then the silk man untethered his horse and attempted awkwardly to mount. In the part of my mind that was not still there, but in the firelight, I recalled that one such as he would never have ridden a horse. Horses were for lords and knights. ‘Where is your cart?’ I asked him, as he eased himself gingerly into the saddle.
‘A little way down the road, Majesty. Not far.’
I unbuckled his rein and took it in my hand so that I could lead him, and began to walk us quietly along the road. The animals were skittish, I wondered if they had scented the blood. Gilbert would take both mounts. They would not be seen in Poitiers again.
In a while, a good long while, John would receive word that Pierre de Joigny had ridden for the Holy Land and gave over his lands to the English crown. Thus Henry would possess his father’s inheritance. And there were many knights who had died there, far away in the desert, fevered with wounds or plague, that lay in unmarked graves beside dusty mountain roads. Pierre would disappear, and only my mother might mourn him, should she choose. This was not a punishment for her, no. It was my acceptance of the ruthlessness of her own beliefs. Do hinds mourn when the wolf takes their fauns from them? Perhaps. But it was my own disappearance that concerned me now.
When we came to the clearing where the silk man had left his cart, I unlaced the red garter and tied it to a tree as a sign to Gilbert. Any country person passing would see it, and leave the horses alone. The silk man had bundled a feather bed among what remained of his wares, and as soon as I lay upon it, I fell into a dead sleep, even before he had untied the mule and set off, at last, for Lusignan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, I SAW ONLY THE MISTY blue of the spring sky above me. For a moment or two, I thought myself still on the ship that had brought us to the coast of Normandy, until I realized that the swaying around me was not the pull of the waves, but the slow, lurching tread of the silk man’s mule. A queen in a cart, I thought. What would Lady Maude think? And that made me smile, and I pushed the hair from my eyes and sat up to look around. We were moving slowly across a plain, dotted with clusters of trees, no house or village visible. ‘Where are we?’ I called to the silk man’s back.
‘We have come ten miles, I think, my lady. Still a great way to go.’
In the freshness of the morning air, it was as though the scene last night had never occurred. I swung my legs over the back of the cart and jogged along, eating an apple and a hunk of bread with honey, dangling my feet as merry as a peasant girl on a hay wagon. We had plenty of time, I thought. John himself would not miss me, and even if my women raised alarm, they would see that Pierre was gone and assume I was with my brother. It would be days before my absence would be questioned, and by then, I hoped, I should be safe at last. The strange, calm simplicity of my thoughts astonished me. Aside from the clothes I wore, I had brought two things with me from Poitiers: Lord Hugh’s serpent brooch, and my royal seal. I fumbled in the pocket of my gown for them, stroking them over and over like a rosary. The brooch would prove me, when we got to Lusignan, and the seal? With that, I could give commands.
We saw no living soul that day nor the next. As it grew dark, and the mule weary, we pulled the cart into the scrub at the roadside and made our beds, I above and the silk man on the ground below. I watched him prepare soup over a small charcoal burner, and then we lay down between heavy sacks of fabric, covered with canvas to protect them from the dew. I loved that wandering time, and though it was cold, and we were dirty, though our food was scarce and simple, and there was nothing to break up the monotony of the days save the passing of the landscape and the progress of the weak spring sun across the sky, all these things which had at Corfe seemed abominable privations had become joyful, as though this were a game. I gave no thought to what I had left behind, or indeed to what was before me, and when the silk man shyly poured a little of his watered wine on the roadside, or muttered one of his strange prayers, I did not turn away, but watched him pay his obeisance to the land through which we passed as a thing which was right, and which could be contained by no church, or no palace.
It was on the third day that the French king’s riders came. We had passed several villages by then, where the peasants came out to stare at the silk man’s cart, where I would conceal myself under the canvas until we had continued beyond their curious eyes. I had thought the silk man travelled only with cloths for fine ladies, and it surprised me to discover that he had also a sack of ribbons and kerchiefs, gaudy worthless things that the poor women handled and exclaimed over in the same manner as my maids in the castle. Sometimes I would have to lie for hours, scarcely breathing, as they made their choices and handed over the small coins they had saved against his coming. I thought it wise to conceal myself, in case John sent after me, but I had no real fear of these people; after my time at Corfe I was glad to hear them plucking a moment of brightness out of their dull, weary lives of fieldwork. But I noticed that in the towns we passed many of the cottages were shuttered, and several were burned, and when the women came forward to cheapen the silk man’s goods, the men waited in the doorways, with a scythe or an axe in their hands, watching. So as soon as I saw the French riders, I dived beneath the coverings and lay there trembling.
There were a dozen of them, mercenary troops from the north, un-liveried, leading a single loaded destrier with a ragged fleur-de-lys banner atop. Their harried French captain was as far gone in drink as the rest of them, reeling along the road with his sword catching ridiculously between his legs. We heard them before we saw them, and smelled them after that, roaring drunkenly, though it was barely noon. I could see nothing except the road between a chink in the slats of the cart, yet I knew that the silk man would be hunched down behind the mule, hoping to pass them quietly, and I knew that he would be stopped. I made myself as small and motionless as possible and began to mutter a silent prayer that they would not accost us. For a moment all was silent, except for the straining creak of the cart’s wheels beneath me, but then I heard their heavy, unsteady steps approach, and the protesting snort of the destrier as its halter was dragged towards the ditch at the roadside.
‘You! Hey, you! Where are you going, then?’
This close, I could smell the filth on them beneath the high stink of the wine. I could hear the relish in their thick voices, the eagerness for the release of violence. The silk man spoke up bravely, his voice low, but measured and clear.
‘I am a pedlar. Please to search my wares, if you wish, Captain. You will find nothing but women’s trinkets.’
‘Got anything to eat?’
‘I will be glad to share what I have with gentlemen in the service of the king of France.’ I heard a rustling, the silk man must be rummaging for our packet of bread and hard cheese – then a gasp.
‘Chew on that, you foreign swine!’
‘You’re no Frenchman!’
‘A spy, that’s what he is, a spy!’
Another gasp, and the sound of something falling, the mule began to jerk between the carts of the shaft, shaking the coverings over my head. More sounds, soft thuds, followed by grunts, which grew sharper, until they bloomed into screams, and then I knew that they would kill him, and me too if they found me. Even as this realization came to me, as slow and somehow unthreatening as the approach of terror in a dream, I felt what remained of the fabrics in the cart lighten over my body. Then, for a second, I was dazzled by the light of the sky across my exposed face, and then there was no time for thought, I was up and over the shoulders of the first of them before he had time to exclaim, my feet hit the hard mud of the road and I was flying.
Agnes’s voice came to me as I ran, speaking across the years. Light as a fox, fleet as a hare, strong as a horse. That was what the old faith believed. Later, when I considered my escape, which could in reality have taken no longer than a cloud’s journey across the sun,
it seemed not that Othon was with me, but that I became his spirit, the spirit I had rejoiced to feel in the rides at Lusignan and later, when I rode with Pierre to his end. How else could I have escaped those cruel men, whose blood was raised against any living thing in their path? I took my dear friend into me, and it was his strength, which had bled out beneath me at Mirebeau, which carried me back along the road, so fast that even the exclamations of the French mercenaries were lost to me, so fast that it was not until I veered off into the scrubland and collapsed beside a thicket of gorse that I felt the searing ache in my lungs and the fluttering of my heart, which beat so loud that I was certain they should hear it, and find me, but which my blood would not allow me to bend around myself and disguise. I would make tribute to the silk man, as was fitting, but my first prayer was not for his poor soul, but of gratitude to Othon, who had come to me in desperate need for the third and what I knew to be the final time.
I lay there among the thorns until twilight came, and lay on until the moon bloomed in the sky. I had not heard the mercenaries pass back along the road, they must have continued on their way as soon as they had finished with the silk man. When I rose, I winced and gasped with pain where the thorn spikes had pierced me, spitting on the hem of my robe and doing my best to clean the cuts, awkward with stiffness. I crept back to the road and set off the way I had run, keeping close to the ditch and the overhanging shadow of the trees. I had no doubt what I should find, and when eventually I came to the cart – I had flown indeed – it was only with a dull sigh of shock that I absorbed the huddled figure lying beneath the shafts. Even as I turned the body over I felt the heavy pull of death in it. I ran my hands over the silk man’s face, remembering it as he had removed the mask by moonlight, the night of Pierre’s death. Now his features were blotched with the shadows of bruises, a hideous creeping mould, and at the back of his skull I felt the wound that must have killed him, a deep slit from a dagger or a spur. My fingers came away wet and sticky, as though dipped in cooling jam, and though from the temperature of his skin and the blood I knew that he could not have lived long after I left him, his clothes, when I fumbled beneath them, still contained an eerie vestige of warmth. As I gingerly worked off his breeches, I could smell him in the clear air of the night – sweat and the thin ammoniac tang of urine, an ancient tinge of lavender from the gloves he donned to handle his fine silks, and that made him tender to me, so broken, so human.
