Part III
Dover
Chapter Eleven
Dover was a proud town in the Spring of eleven ninety. The royal leopards flew from the new castle on her white cliffs, and the pride of England’s navy rode the blue waters of her bay. Not merely the converted fishing fleet levied from each of the Cinque Ports in case of invasion, but twin-masted war galleys with castles for the bowmen built fore and aft, and the broad, red cross of Christendom flaming across their sails. For Richard Cœur de Lion had succeeded his father as King of England and was off on his crusade at last.
Dover was a busy town, too. There were soldiers carrying dunnage to the waiting ships, mettlesome horses being coaxed down the slipway, and sailors drinking and singing wherever the sign of a bush proclaimed that alewives brewed. Down the narrow, salt-tanged streets swaggered knights and pages from all parts of England. The harbour was thronged with laughing harlots and weeping wives.
And it looked as if Dover would soon be a very impoverished town, for Richard himself was in the Reeve Hall collecting money for the crusade. People kept passing in and out of the wide door. They went in laden with this world’s goods and came out light with exultation about the world to come. He was persuading all men to the cause of his sincerity, and robbing the women of all but chastity by his charm.
In his late twenties Richard was in his prime. He had lost the first slenderness of youth, but nothing of its enthusiasm. His body was fit and strong as any blacksmith’s. During the six months he had been king he had, of necessity, acquired poise. Not the easy grace of his brother, Henry, perhaps; but a grave, considered courtesy which made a decent enough cloak for his incurable impetuosity.
“And is the new King such a fine figure of a man as they say?” the women, leaning from their windows in Reeve Hall Street, wanted to know.
A painted hussy prinking her way between the houses looked up and laughed. “For myself, I’d as soon sleep with one of those stern stone statues at Canterbury,” she shouted brazenly. “But did you see Prince John?”
They did not deign to answer her but craned their necks, with the half-envious curiosity of honest women, to see how she was snapped up by a roystering group of sailors at the corner of the market square. “Aye, I saw him, and I hope he won’t stay long!” sighed one of them who had four growing daughters.
“The King’s foster-brother is inside there,” announced the local miller, emerging from the Reeve Hall. “I told him I’d ’a been able to bring more’n two pieces o’ siller if most folks weren’t compelled to cart their corn to Canterbury ’stead of grinding local. ‘Just to put money into the church mills,’ I ses; and he promised to see the thieving old Abbot about it.”
A hook-nosed cobbler looked up from the open front of his shop. “They say this Robin saved some of the Jews the Londoners beat up at the Coronation.”
“He was always kind to us when he came to the assizes with King Henry,” remembered an old market woman.
Anxiety wiped the excitement from their patient faces. “If Robin sails too, what shall we do?” they asked each other, thinking of the jocund Prince John and the long, hard winter.
Since his father’s death Richard had been quite glad to have John around, and even Robin—who hated this begging business—had had to admit that John had managed it quite successfully.
“Suppose we just sit here and nobody brings anything?” he had objected, knowing how his fellow Saxons loathed foreign wars.
“Then I shall disguise my page as a converted Moslem and make him bring one of the crown jewels—just to get the thing started,” said John. “They’ll turn out like sheep.”
“Playing up to mass hysteria!” Robin had grunted.
“And would you say that women get this mass what-is-it worse than men?”
“Probably.”
“Then what a blessing Richard is that rare aphrodisiac—a bachelor king!’’
Robin had laughed and given in. “Not much scope for him with you about!” he had pointed out, trying not to wince as John tried on his brother’s crown.
So there they all were in the bare Saxon hall. Richard himself, resplendent in his new crusading outfit, sitting in the shire reeve’s chair. Robin making an inventory of the gifts people brought because he was the only one of them who could wrestle with accountancy. John perched conversationally on the edge of the fast-filling coffer, and Blondel—now an efficient young squire—ushering in the important and helping out the poor. And sometimes, Richard felt, the spirit of his brother Henry trying to get back to them now that the great day of adventure was at hand. The veil between them wore so thin at times that he felt he would only have to turn his head to see him lounging somewhere in the shadows and to hear his pleasant, lazy voice saying, “Not so bad, Dickon…But I ought to be leading this expedition, you know…Did you manage to get rid of that trollop, Ann? And was there good sport in Navarre?”
And all the time a stream of people passed through and had to be thanked. Monks from Canterbury and parish priests with their altar plate, well-to-do shopkeepers with their money bags and family parties come to Dover to see the King. The local miller had parted with his two pieces of silver, and the fletcher’s Norman wife had bounced in with her second best jewels. Coming in from the sunlit street, she had stumbled; and Richard himself—glad of an excuse to stretch his legs—had helped her to rise. “Madam, your generosity has helped to launch another Christian ship,” he said, his spacious gesture towards the masts just visible above the harbour wall making her feel herself a shareholder in their enterprise.
He was so exciting, so virile, seen close to like that. And yet there was no woman in his life. Officially, of course. But it was ridiculous to suppose him celibate…her erotic thoughts wandered on…It was gracious of him to come down to the town, but it would have been interesting to have seen inside the castle. She wished she had brought some of her best jewels. Her husband, the fletcher, was doing well out of the holy war, and her plump fingers began fidgeting with the new necklace he had just given her.
“I’m sure so white a throat needs no adornment,” whispered the King’s attractive young brother at the psychological moment. And before she knew it the pearls were in the coffer, and the polite young squire was bowing her out.
“How much are they worth?” enquired Richard crisply, before her simpering face was well out of sight.
John was already testing them with strong, white teeth. “A hundred shillings, at least. And she’d have given you her ears as well if you’d asked for them. You know, Richard, some of these middle-aged women are so consumed with curiosity about your private life that you ought to let them look over your bedroom at a shilling a time.”
“They are welcome to if it would bring in a bit more,” laughed Richard.
“Or how about paying less for your arrows?” suggested Robin, who had been turning up her husband’s exorbitant charges in the shire reeve’s account books.
They became aware that Blondel was gesticulating with urgent whispers from the doorway. “That reluctant knight I told you about, Sir, who wants to get out of his vows. Crossing the street now…”
“With a rich miniver coat and an invalid’s litter,” supplemented John, leaning backwards so that he could see.
Robin consulted the mighty tome before him. “Dugorge was the name. Sir Gawaine Dugorge. He’s down here in Doomsday as having hogged the lands of at least three Saxon thanes.”
“Then he should be good for four or five hundred,” assessed Richard.
Sir Gawaine was fat and florid and made great play with a staff and his squire’s arm. Richard greeted him with an assumption of hearty good comradeship, enquiring after his wound; and the embarrassed knight, who had never been to war, had to admit that he suffered merely from the gout.
“Now our old nurse makes a very potent compress of neatsfoot and liverwort for that—” began the irrepressible John. And the four of them listened with covert amusement while the poor eraven explained just ho
w bad his gout had become of late.
“I know. I know. Since seeing my ships actually ready to set sail,” laughed Richard contemptuously. “I’ve noticed they do have that effect on some people’s ailments. Well, well, in the circumstances we might persuade our good bishop to remit your holy vows. For a consideration, of course. Now, let me see—the loss of such a valiant companion-in-arms might be estimated at four hundred shillings, should you say, John?”
“Make it five hundred,’’ urged John promptly.
The man’s florid complexion faded to an unhealthy putty colour. “But, Sirs, I am a comparatively poor man! “
“Not half so poor as those three thanes you robbed, I’ll warrant!” said Robin, poking the knight’s flabby paunch with a fresh quill he was cutting.
“But five hundred! It is hard—”
“So are the plains of Palestine—very hard,” remarked Richard, dismissing him curtly as two old ploughmen brought a few groats wrapped carefully in an earth-stained cloth. He leaned forward to take it in his own hands, making it seem precious by the gesture. Because they had never in their lives been out of Kent, he pulled a map across his knees and traced for them the way he meant to sail. They forgot the toil that had bent their backs in the service of the soil. Their fine, gnarled faces looked up worshipfully into his. And Robin, standing by, pictured what the lives of such men would be during the hard, lawless winters ahead.
Richard was even trying to sell his parklands. “Have a notice about them put up at the harbour where these prosperous foreign merchants berth, Blondel,” he ordered, getting up to stretch himself when the last of the public had gone. “And you, John, can’t you hunt up a few more rich Jews?”
“It’s the only sport I can give you points at!” grinned John, gathering up his modish riding cloak obligingly. But out in the sunshine with one foot in the stirrup he called back to his brother, “Don’t forget, Richard—I’m playing for castles. You promised me Nottingham and Marlborough.”
“All right, Lackland. Good hunting!” agreed Richard indulgently; and went to the door to watch the two young men ride up the street—a pleasant-looking pair, the one capable-looking and soberly dressed, the other ruddy and debonair. He saw John turn to catch the eye of a pretty girl sitting on the steps of a house opposite the cobbler’s and heard Blondel’s quick laughter as her mother pulled her inside and slammed the door.
“Has this crusading fever left you no conscience, Richard?” asked Robin, with a smile.
Richard came back to the coffer and, digging a hand deep into its contents, let a cascade of coins run idly through his fingers. “I would sell London if I could find a buyer,” he admitted. London, for him, held fewer memories than Rouen or Cahors.
“A little hard—on London!” murmured Robin.
Richard glanced back at the harbour with the eyes of a visionary and the calculating mind of a commissary. “Somehow each of those ships must carry at least forty horses, and provisions for a year. I’m not taking any chances of starving in a hostile country as they did last time.”
Briskly, his foster-brother laid before him some parchments. “Well, here are your sailing orders for each captain.”
“Good. I’ll sign them.”
“Rather ruthless, aren’t they?” Leaning over his shoulder, Robin indicated a clause in which it was laid down that any man who disobeyed an order should be thrown overboard.
But Richard sealed them firmly. “Good generalship necessitates occasional imperviousness to individual pain,” he argued. “To my way of thinking, the man who hasn’t courage enough to burden his conscience with occasional ruthlessness has no right to rule.”
“And those of us who aren’t called upon to bear the burden need not add to it the weight of criticism,” apologised Robin handsomely.
Richard locked the great chest and sat down on it, calling for drinks. “It’s funny, after sitting at side tables in other men’s halls, to have Philip deferring to my military judgment instead of patronising me; and to see the way that young time server, John, follows me about!”
“As long as you realise that he is a time-server,” warned Robin. “Your father never did, and so his defection from himself to you at the end nearly broke his heart.” He came and sat down at the other end of the coffer and a page set wine between them. “What are you going to do about Ann?” he asked. “Why don’t you tell Philip straight out you won’t marry the girl?”
“Can’t afford to now he’s king and we’re starting off on this crusade together,” said Richard. “But guess where that wonderful mother of mine went off to so quietly last month.”
“Everybody’s been wondering about that—just as you’d been able to make her life so much pleasanter.”
“To Navarre!” said Richard, lifting his tankard and smiling happily at the rich redness of the wine, so that it sounded like a toast as well as an answer.
“Navarre!” echoed Robin, with satisfying surprise. “Still finessing at seventy!”
“She is going to bring Berengaria to Brindisi.” Richard quaffed off his wine and, reaching for the map that was never far from his hand these days, began tracing a route to the south of Italy. “I shall have to contrive to meet them there on my way to Syria.”
Robin sat hugging his knee and staring at Richard’s absorbed, bent head. Such extravagant moments always left him a little breathless. He, too, had his dreams but—with the patience of a peasant—he accepted his limitations. It had been so in love. Instead of clamouring for a girl out of his reach, he had striven for self-mastery. Whereas Richard kicked aside obstacles with the godlike impatience of his breed, widening their everyday horizon to a panorama of romance. “And what about King Sancho?” he asked.
“Oh, he is all in favour of it now I have England. And, as you know, Philip would sell his soul for money. If only I were not so damnably hard up just now I might bribe him about Ann.”
“But didn’t your father leave a pretty useful reserve in the vaults at Winchester?”
Richard nodded towards a convoy of arms and provisions rumbling down to the quay. “I’ve had to put every penny of it into that sort of thing,” he explained.
Having so often acted as confidential scribe, Robin had in some matters been more in King Henry’s confidence than his own sons. Because he knew just how many pennies there had been and for what wise improvements they had been saved, he felt that those fine, insatiable ships were robbing England. He kicked at the coffer beneath him with an aggressive heel. “I believe John, in one of his more inspired moments, suggested that you could buy off the King of France with some of this?”
Richard sprang from the chest as if he had been stung. “Does he take me for a Judas, blast him? God’s money—given sometimes in spite of grim necessity! You saw those two old men just now. Does he suppose I’d touch it if I were starving?”
Robin began rolling up the map; absently, as if he were trying to tidy his thoughts at the same time. “Yet we all know there are plenty of self-seeking humbugs in this,” he said, slowly. “People out for notoriety, and bored barons who want to dodge a lot of dull routine duties at home.”
“And, unfortunately, I must use them. But to me it’s all real. The loyal comradeship—the thrill of adventure. Choosing the job I’m best at, if you like. But there’s something more to it than that. A sort of dedication of one’s strength, I suppose…” Richard laughed self-consciously. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at dissecting my soul!”
“That’s one of the things I love best about you.”
The page who was serving them had gone to his dinner, and Richard lingered to refill their tankards. “I never could talk to Henry about it,” he said. “Of course, he was just as eager to go. But I never quite knew what he believed. To be a man’s friend one must walk more familiarly about his mind.”
“Can even the keys of friendship give so much freedom?” debated Robin doubtfully.
“Assuredly,” answered Richard. “Why, I can even appreciate your
cursed independence about a title. At least it proves there are some men who can’t be bought.”
Robin flung a melodramatic arm, tankard and all, about his shoulders. “Why, Richard, your new state is saddening you already with horrible suspicions! Or were you just thinking of Ann’s accommodating brother?”
“No. Just that however much other men may flatter me you will always be at hand to call me a f-fool!” said Richard, spluttering over his wine with the force of the impact.
“Not that you will ever listen!” laughed Robin.
“No. But I shall always know that you are right.”
Hearing a commotion in the street, they turned in time to see John slide from his horse before the open doorway. “I’ve just rounded up my hundred and fiftieth Jew,” he announced from the sunny pavement. “At a castle a hundred that means Nottingham and half the battlements of Marlborough. Bring him along, you fellows!”
Because he was a Jew, Richard did not bother with any formality. “What’s he worth?” he asked, going to the window seat to pick up a little model ship he had been making for young Arthur of Brittany, his dead brother Geoffrey’s boy.
“A small fortune as a goldsmith and half as much again by usury, no doubt,” answered John.
“Half of it will help to victual my ships,” said Richard, squinting along the tiny hull to make sure it was straight.
To their surprise the goldsmith answered up in his own defence. “Most of the money I have lent has been to impecunious knights wanting to fit themselves out for your Crusade,” he said. “And if you take half my profits it will ruin my business.”
“It may save your worthless skin,” taunted John. He had helped himself to a drink and would have thrown the dregs in the man’s face had not Robin shot out a hand and spoiled his aim. “At least this man works for his keep, and harsh handling can’t cow him,” he pointed out. “Must he be less generously treated than that lily-livered old humbug with his expedient gout?” He interfered so seldom that the men-at-arms withdrew their grimy fingers from the goldsmith’s yellow robe immediately.
Passionate Brood Page 9
