The little chapel shone new and white in the sunlight. Still panting lightly from her climb, she tip-toed to the open door and peered in. As her eyes grew accustomed to the cool gloom, she could make out the figure of a monk moving about the sanctuary and Richard kneeling very tall and still before the altar. He held his two-handed sword like a cross before him, and the lighted candles made a soft, blurred radiance behind his bowed head. It was like the paintings of new young Christian knights keeping vigil, which had so much impressed Saladin that he wanted to have his nephew admitted to their order of chivalry. Even Ida’s pagan soul was awed by such humble reverence in the most famous of them all.
She went back to the place where Richard’s horse was tethered and threw herself down on the warm earth, reviewing her new world through a miniature forest of stiffly curled fronds of young bracken. “This will be the first time I have seen him alone since we set foot in this horrible country,” she thought. “It’s been nothing but cheering crowds and a lot of silly ceremony and his everlasting family. But here, under these gold spangled branches, I will make him remember that it was I—and not his romantic queen—who sweltered and scratched for weeks in that loathsome inn so as to welcome him from prison. He was glad enough to have me that first night he was free!”
To her hot impatience it seemed a long time before the horse beside her pricked his ears and whinnied. Ida sat up. She could hear the harsh grating of spurs on the stone aisle. Richard had to bend his head to pass beneath the low spandrel of the door, and the action matched his mood. She saw him stand there for a moment or two, blinking at the light. Remembering that his sword was still in his hand, he sheathed it with unwonted gentleness and strode to the edge of the hill. He stood there, bare-headed and newly shriven. The sandy plateau dropped away sharply at his feet and all the South of England seemed spread before him in the morning sunlight. Fold upon fold, the wooded hills of Surrey merged into the blue distance of the Sussex weald. The bare Downs were a smudge of purple on the horizon. And somewhere beyond their bulwarks lapped the sparkling sea. Richard expanded strong lungs in exultation, straining his gaze to the utmost limits of his land. How could men breathe, he wondered, who did not live upon an island?
The panorama looked so much like a map that he began trying to pick out places he knew. There was a gap in the faint outline of the Downs that he imagined might be Pevensey, where his ancestor had landed—or Hastings, where the Normans had fought for it. How the Saxons must have hated them! For the first time he knew how it would feel to be a Saxon, and how his father had worked to mend that hatred. Somewhere farther east, he supposed, would be the busy ports of Winchelsea and Rye—and Sandwich, the gateway to his dukedoms on the Continent. And snugly inland, almost at his foot it seemed, the market towns of Worth and Reigate, and somewhere in the middle of the blue distance the manor of Horsted de Cahaignes where Blondel’s people lived. He said each name over carefully, trying to pronounce them as John did with no trace of foreign accent on the R’s. He always remembered with embarrassment landing from Aquitaine and asking the way to Arundel, and how the Sussex farmers had stared as dumbly as their sheep because he had called it “Hirondelle.”
But he had said his first prayers in Saxon at Hodierna’s knee. And this was his kingdom, and every castle from Arundel to Alnwick was his. The little English may trees blossomed pink and white around him, and down in the valley the young tops of the oaks were tipped with gold. His foot pressed fragrance from a clump of wild thyme and a lark rose singing to the blue. And when the lark had flown out of sight the clear notes of a hunting horn brought back memories of other Spring mornings. Richard turned and looked down on the tops of the beeches that made a soft mantle for the tower of Shere church and the miller’s pond, and suddenly he felt Robin to be very close. It was as if the spirit of England breathed upon him as it had done in boyhood. It could not hold him as it held Johanna and John, but in that moment it mastered him. His mind was empty of ambition. “If only people didn’t keep perstering me with what wants doing in the duchies!” he muttered, realising how happy a smaller—or less restless—man might be with just this little, sea-girt land. For the moment he had had a surfeit of war. “By the good heart of God, I’ll stay here till my next crusade!” he promised himself. “I’ll send Blondel back for Berengaria. And if only I can find Robin we three will go round seeing that these people get decent living conditions, humane game laws, and all the other things my father wanted.”
He laughed aloud at the idea and Ida, who had not dared to interrupt his exalted mood, got up and crossed the laced shadow cast by the birch trees. Unobserved, she watched the changing expressions of his face. Would he turn presently, laughing boisterously at her persistence, and kiss her with the careless arrogance she loved? Would he lift her on to his horse as if she were an amusing child, or take her offered womanhood with that half-grudging urgency for which she must always plot and tempt? Gazing at him, hungry for him, the warm-blooded Greek girl tortured herself remembering how his eyes smouldered when he looked down at Berengaria and how the hard lines of his mouth curved into a maddening, secret tenderness. How, even in some crowded room, he would sometimes draw his breath sharply at her touch so that men could not help seeing how utterly his body was hers. Hers—Berengaria’s. Everything was Berengaria’s. His body and his conquests and his name. The right to sit beside him at banquets and to walk unquestioned into the austere little cell of a room that was usually his bedroom in these grim northern castles. Everything but the proud joy of bearing his son. She, the ignored captive, had seen to that. She laughed cruelly, remembering how she had held aloft the dead Saracen’s head and how the poor exquisite Queen had shuddered at the sight.
Ida became aware that she was being watched from the chapel doorway, but it would take more than a disapproving old monk to shame her. With a gesture of defiance she shook back her windswept curls and ran to Richard, calling him by some soft Greek love name. He turned with surprise, his mind still bemused with plans for the future and memories from the past.
She weaved her fingers in the fastening of his cloak. “You won this onyx clasp in single combat with that fierce emir at Arsouf, didn’t you?” she murmured. “And you value it almost as much as my father’s horse? Or the Crescent you tore from the Citadel that day you and Count Raymond galloped almost alone into Jaffa?” She told over his conquests and hummed the wicked little dance tune the native drums were playing that night in Acre. She pressed her warm young body against his until their shadows merged. But the pulsing music of the East had ceased to be a fire in his blood, and the scent of young may trees was more potent than the perfume of her enticing hands. He looked down at her blindly and detached them in a preoccupied sort of way, pushing her from him as if she were no more than any pestering whore. “I thought you’d gone hawking with John,” he said.
“That was only an excuse,” said Ida. “I had to see you alone.”
Had she been content to remain a child in his eyes, she would have retained his indulgent affection. As it was, though Acre and Triffels would stand for great events in his life, she herself was only an incident. “Get back to the Castle,” he ordered. “And don’t dare to deceive my mother like that again!”
His indifference was more convincing than any anger or harsh words. It shattered her self-fed dreams so that even her envy of the Queen fell to pieces. For the first time she regretted her craven father’s defeat. For months she had been dramatising herself as a romantic beauty destined to go on indefinitely moving through the colourful excitement that surrounded Richard’s life; and now, quite suddenly, she was made to realise that the best thing that was likely to happen to her was the ordinary humdrum marriage of which Queen Eleanor had spoken. It would be arranged for her and it would set the confines of her life. In the tragic youthfulness of her passion she saw no possibility of second-best, no hope of compensations. Her little bangled wrists slid slowly from his shoulders—slid slowly down over his unresponsive heart. Never again w
ould its strong beats quicken for her. This cold country, with its white cliffs and bracing winds, had beaten her. Ida Comnenos turned, sobbing like a wild thing, and ran shoeless down the hill.
Seeing her go, the old monk offered up a deo gratias. He had been the late King’s confessor and knew that most of the stories about Plantagenet morals were true, but he often wished a censorious world could see some of their temptations! Presently, Richard went back to him. It was evident that he had already forgotten the girl. “Even if an outlaw came here, you would give him sanctuary and say nothing, wouldn’t you, Father Christopher?” he asked.
The monk started in surprise. “Of course, my son.”
Richard began tracing some of the crosses that batches of pilgrims had cut in the stone of the lintel. “Nevertheless, if ever my brother Robin should come—will you send word to me?” he asked, with averted eyes. The words came awkwardly because it was the first time for years he had spoken of Robin to anyone except Berengaria.
Father Christopher glanced anxiously over his shoulder in the direction of Shere. He wasn’t sure how Richard really felt about Robin. “Why should you suppose that he might come here?” he asked non-committally.
But Richard could think of no adequate reason. “I just felt him near—that’s all,” he said.
Father Christopher folded his finely veined hands in the wide sleeves of his habit, “Those whom we love are always near—when we remember them before God,” he said, beginning to understand the reason for this royal visit.
But Richard did not want that kind of comfort. He wrenched off the emir’s treasured clasp and dropped it impulsively into the alms box—but not for Becket’s soul. “Pray constantly that I may see him again!” he entreated without subterfuge.
A sigh of relief escaped the man of peace. He stroked the spandrel carving of which he was so inordinately proud. “All these chapels are, in a manner of speaking, monuments to the Angevin temper and the misery it has caused,” he said, with a twinkle in his kind old eyes. “Maybe, my son, God will not grant you your heart’s desire until you have mended yours.”
“That I shall never do,” laughed Richard ruefully. “But pray at least that I may know before I die that Robin has forgiven me, and I vow I will stay and mend this country!”
Father Christopher looked at him with the understanding of one who had seen the splendour of Becket, the perfidy of Ann, the homeliness of Hodierna, and the incomparable friendship of her son. “At Matins, at Nones, and at Vespers I will pray,” he promised. But he sighed as he watched the man these influences had made go plunging down the hill side on his great, sure horse. He had heard so many Plantagenet vows!
Chapter Thirty-Two
When John’s head falconer sounded his horn, it was to round up the hawking party by the mill pond at Shere. After the exhilaration of the first hour’s sport they had begun to straggle badly, relapsing into desultory conversation and enjoyment of the May morning. There was so much to talk about. Johanna and John rode over Merrow Down exchanging stories of the crusade with all the latest gossip from London and Oxford.
“And you never see anything of Hodierna now?” enquired Johanna, purposely lagging behind their companions as they made the descent into Shere.
John watched his sister put her horse at a gate and envied her her hands. “Mother wanted her to keep the Tower room in comfort, but she preferred to share Robin’s hand-to-mouth sort of existence. She came back once—a few months ago with some sort of message from him, I believe.”
“Then our mother must know where he is.” As he made no answer, Johanna crowded against him in the narrowness of the miller’s rutty lane. “Do you know?” she insisted.
John was forced to shrug a denial although he had tried hard enough to find out. “All over England, I should think!” he muttered resentfully.
“What on earth do you mean?” demanded Johanna. But John had caught sight of the miller’s daughter milking her goats in a little field at the back of the house. A flaxen girl in a blue gown who had had the bad taste to elude him for weeks. He turned aside at once and trotted across the field to speak to her.
Johanna reined in her horse to wait for him, letting the rest of the party go on. It was a lovely place in which to wait. The woods sloped down steeply on either side, and just below her the mill pond lay like a green jewel, mirroring the trees, with the assembling hawking party making a fringe of shifting colour along the mossy greenness of the bank. For the first time Johanna noticed that Ida was not among them, but she couldn’t be bothered to go down just then and make enquiries about her. It was amusing to watch her brother conducting his amours among the goats. He cut a fine figure in scolloped scarlet, making his sturdy grey plunge and rear dramatically as he cut off the girl’s virtuous break for the back door of her home. Johanna laughed outright when the great dappled creature, chafed beyond endurance, lashed a hoof at the bucket, surrounding them both in a frothing stream of milk.
But in spite of her spontaneous laughter, she was sore at heart. For the first time she and Raymond had quarrelled and it had been all her fault. The remembrance of it had nagged beneath the morning’s gaiety, and she was glad of a few moments’ quiet to sort out what had happened. First there had been that solemn sheriff of his arriving unexpectedly last night with endless business to discuss and sheaves of documents to sign, spoiling the first evening of their home-coming. And this morning, not only had Raymond been too busy to come hawking, but he must needs spoil her own sport by reminding her of what the Roman doctors had said. All the time she was dressing he had been urging her to ride gently, to ride side saddle like other married women, so that at the last minute she had thrown her new Turkish trousers into a corner and called angrily to her woman to bring the oldest dress she could find. “You don’t care how dull a time I have as long as I can produce an heir, do you?” she had raged, struggling into the old green velvet she had had at Oxford. “It’s all you men think of!”
Johanna remembered with compunction how, instead of shaking her as she deserved, her husband had sent the tire-woman away and fastened the gown himself. How he had taken her face between strong, square hands and said, “It’s you I think about always—you lovely, vital thing! Of course my people want me to have sons. But if I were to lose you—” And he had turned away because he couldn’t put into words what the loss of her would mean.
Because the old green velvet had brought back a dozen precious memories she had shrugged herself out of his arms and told him not to be old-fashioned and intense. And because he was a man and not a foot-mat he had grown angry then and told her straight out, “I’ve spent the last six months on your crazy family and if I don’t bring my bride home soon the people of Toulouse will believe you’re pock marked!” They had quarrelled violently, and she had been abominably rude. “I’m not a brood mare to be bartered from one country to another,” she had flung back at him. “And I’ll not go back to Toulouse the moment I’ve come home, just because that sour-faced sheriff of yours says your negligible little province wants seeing to!” And she had picked up her gloves and banged the bedroom door behind her so that the clang of it must have startled the prisoners down in the dungeons.
And now the sun was shining and the lovely pool she had wanted to show him was a green jewel silent and mysterious with the reflection of many trees. But the silence was broken, and she was roused from her reverie by the urgency of thundering hoofs. She turned to see John pounding across the tender shooting corn in hot pursuit of the miller’s daughter. The chase may have begun in fun, but as he made a grab at her flying flaxen hair the hooded bird on his wrist impeded his progress, squawking and beating its fierce wings in his face so that he lost his temper completely. The girl screamed, stumbled, and lost a shoe. The party at the water’s edge turned to stare, tittering or aghast according to their kind. But John scattered friends and falconers to left and right, riding her down as if she were a panting deer.
“Don’t be a fool, John!” shouted Johanna,
knowing the depth of the deceivingly transparent water beneath the banked up mill dam. One summer, when they had stayed at Guildford Castle, Robin and her elder brothers had taught her to swim there. But in all probability this mill girl couldn’t swim, and in any case the frightened horse might drown them both. She saw young Langton step forward, a tall, white-clad figure among the kaleidoscope of colours, to catch at the scolloped crimson rein. But John only swerved, blaspheming. His mind was fuddled with the fumes of anger. “By God, I will ride the little white idiot down, and to-night I will teach her to defy me!” he thought. The mounting madness made him blind and deaf to shame. His vision was limited to the frustrations that unleashed his brainstorm. “I am John Lackland,” chanted the crazy voices of his breed. “Son of a red-headed Angevin, thrown to the kill-joy priests, cheated of my birthright by proud elder brothers, and I will take what I want—now and always—to make up for it!” The plaything he wanted danced before his brain, just out of his reach, like Richard’s sparkling crown. And just as Robin’s crisp words used to spoil his play-acting whenever he tried on the crown, so a sharp stab of pain brought him back to his senses now. An arrow skimmed low across the water and stuck quivering in his wrist. It came from nowhere and changed everything.
A moment ago it had seemed that John and his quarry must go headlong over the bank. But his reins went slack. With a roar of rage he felt the great horse rear and slide to a standstill within a foot of the water, its dappled grey neck sickeningly bespattered with his own over-heated blood. For the first time he became aware of men shouting and of women’s screams and of a sky darkened by the whirring flight of frightened hawks.
Passionate Brood Page 29
