‘I can only regret having to introduce myself in the midst of a family fracas,’ said the sober man. ‘I’m Father Bruno, Fallowdene’s new priest. Father Wenenc died in May, I’m sorry to say. Messire Ralph des Aix is a guest; I believe his family and yours were once acquainted.’
‘I see. My apologies,’ said Richard, ‘to both of you as I’m sure that being forced to witness someone else’s family fracas, as Father Bruno puts it, is most embarrassing. I should still like to know what it’s about. All right, Alice, all right, I’m home and in excellent health as you can see. Father Bruno?’
Bruno made a deprecating gesture. Seen clearly, as he came forward, he was tall and ascetic of feature, with a high, polished forehead and a pale face in which all the planes were smooth and hard as though the flesh were as firm as bone. His eyes were the very pale blue which looks as though a layer of water or clear glass overlies the iris. His crisp voice spoke correct English, but with a French accent. ‘It’s perhaps a trivial matter, though I think it less trivial than the Lady Wulfhild does. I had been here in the hall, sharing a light meal with your wife and mother and their guest, sir. On my way back to my house, I went into the church. It has had a new roof lately, slate instead of thatch. I wanted to make sure that the work was properly done with no light showing between the slates…’
‘I paid for the roof,’ declared Alice, raising her head from Richard’s shoulder. ‘With some money my father sent me. I respect the church.’
‘Yes, we know,’ said Wulfhild disagreeably. Disconcertingly, the dark young man, who with his olive skin and dark eyes was so unlike Bruno that he could have belonged to a different species, grinned. Then he caught Richard’s eye, looked apologetic and became serious again.
‘Well, and?’ said Richard impatiently.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Bruno, ‘that I found your little sister Sybil there in the church, sitting on the floor with some of the villeins’ children…
‘Six of them,’ said Alice, round-eyed with indignation, ‘and all boys.’
‘I thought it was the blasphemy that shocked you,’ snorted Wulfhild. ‘That isn’t blasphemy! And she’s only seven.’
‘Father Bruno?’ said Richard pointedly.
‘They were boys, yes, but at their age…’ Bruno dismissed this aspect with a shrug. ‘The real point, sir, is that your sister was telling her playmates a story. I paused for a moment, unseen, and overheard some of it. It was an old legend of the Wild Hunt, a most unsuitable story for telling in a church. But that isn’t all. Sybil was drawing pictures to illustrate her tale, drawing on the stone floor with a knob of chalk. When I went over to speak to the children, I saw the pictures. Some of them were most improper.’
‘Horses mating,’ Wulfhild informed him. ‘She’s seen it, this summer. Hammerfoot.’ They had decided, last winter, that since the stallion Hammerfoot was retired from active service, they should breed from him. Richard had invested in some brood mares. ‘So,’ Wulfhild said with scorn, ‘she wove it into the story and made a picture with chalk. How terrible! I wonder the sky doesn’t fall in.’
‘It was in a church. I thought it moderately undesirable,’ said Bruno quietly. ‘I spoke sternly to all the children and then sent them home. I shall see their parents later. I brought Sybil back here and your wife met us, sir. I explained what had happened. Perhaps I was at fault and should have told the child’s mother first but the lady Alice asked me directly. My answer upset her and she spoke sharply to Sybil. Then the lady Wulfhild came in and the child ran to her pouring it all out and within moments the ladies were quarrelling.’
‘So I heard,’ said Richard dryly. Everyone in the hall was gazing at him expectantly, as if awaiting a judgement from Solomon. ‘We’re just back from a war,’ he said abruptly and put Alice gently back from him. ‘We’re all safe. But we need food, drink, washing water, fresh clothes. I suggest that in honour of our safe return, you all declare a truce. Father Bruno, I’m sure you’re a conscientious confessor but for the moment I ask you to forget your priestly functions and simply stay to dine. Sybil, I’m sure you’ve made everyone justly angry but you’re forgiven this time. And now,’ said Richard, ‘I should like to be properly introduced to my other guest, Messire Ralph des Aix.’ He moved firmly towards the nearest settle. Behind him, his companions had come into the hall and were being joyously greeted by the womenfolk. ‘Editha,’ said Richard, ‘bring out the elderberry wine. Sit here, Messire Ralph, and tell me who you are.’
‘My father knew your grandfather, I believe,’ said Ralph, coming obediently forward. ‘I had hoped to find your grandfather still alive, in fact. Your mother remembers my father’s name but I don’t know if you know it. Have you ever heard of Peter Longshanks?’
‘Oh yes, I remember Longshanks. I visited Normandy once. I was there with your grandfather and Longshanks was there too. This boy has a look of him,’ Wulfhild said. Richard, making no pretence about it, had said he wanted to speak privately to his mother and walked her, regardless of her lameness, out of the hall and out of earshot of the rest. ‘He’s not so long in the leg as Longshanks was and he’s dark, but there’s a facial resemblance. He’s been here for three weeks. Just rode in out of nowhere and said his father had wanted news of Brand of Fallowdene, had never forgotten him, and he thought perhaps Brand would like to know that. Longshanks died this year, it seems. I’m sorry about that,’ Wulfhild said. ‘They’re mostly dead now, all the folk I knew when I was young.’
Richard nodded. His mother, however, said: ‘You nod your head wisely but you can’t know what it’s like. I grew up in the old Confessor’s time. It was a different world. I served in great houses that have been wiped out. There’s times I feel as if I’m living in a foreign land, here on my own manor! I’d like to welcome this boy, Ralph, for old time’s sake. But…’
‘But?’ Richard raised his eyebrows. ‘Is there something amiss with him, then?’
‘That’s the trouble.’ Wulfhild frowned and tapped her stick. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him, that I can see. He’s lent a hand round the farm and we’ve been glad of it; I fancy he’s ambitious but I’d call that a virtue; I think he’s got a kind heart. He’s taught some of the lads to make bows and shafts and given Sybil a ride on his horse once or twice. But there’s something about him that I can’t make out and I don’t like it. Alice says the same and for once,’ said Wulfhild sourly, ‘just for once, I agree with Alice.’
‘And I call it nonsense,’ said Richard roundly. He had taken to the young guest, responding, had he known it, to Longshanks’ son as Brand of Fallowdene had once res-ponded to Longshanks. He too had sensed a kindliness in Ralph, and something else, the presence of abilities he could respect. Ralph was modest in his bearing, but he moved and spoke, nevertheless, like a young man who knew what he was good for.
Wulfhild did not answer him. He said: ‘Dinner ought to be ready by now. We’ll go back. I expect you’ll all want to hear my story. I don’t suppose the news has got here yet, about what happened to Bishop Odo.’
There were undercurrents at the table, tensions between his wife and his mother, a tendency to impertinence on the part of Sybil. But over the wine and the hot capons and fresh bread, Richard controlled the conversation with the competence born of finding that he could control soldiers, and talked of the surrender of Rochester and King Rufus’ not unnatural desire to hang all the malcontents – ‘he felt it, being betrayed by his own uncle. To bolt into Rochester like that after pretending to make peace, that was outrageous. The barons talked him out of actually hanging Odo.’ He laughed. ‘We were treated to one of the toughest of them quoting Holy Writ in the effort to make the king be more forgiving. Something about King David having spared someone who’d cursed him. They all value family solidarity.’ He eyed his own family reprovingly as he said that. Alice went slightly pink but compressed her mouth. ‘The king,’ Richard went on smoothly, ‘quoted a story back at them, of a time when David didn’t forgive an enemy. He said he’d
spent his boyhood in a monastery and two could play at the quotations game. But in the end he agreed to safe conduct out of the country for Odo and his garrison, only he made them march out of Rochester to the sound of his trumpets.’
Father Bruno nodded approvingly. ‘That seems to me a proper and correct decision. I’ve heard rumours about the king that I can’t like but in this matter he seems to have behaved well.’
‘Are the other rumours true?’ Wulfhild asked her son, and Ralph des Aix, obviously intrigued, said: ‘What rumours?’
‘That he’s reluctant to marry because he can’t marry a man?’ said Richard, answering his mother, ‘ I don’t know.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Sybil, who had been quelled into silence earlier in the meal, was now seized with a disastrous desire for education. ‘What does it mean – because he can’t marry another man? He can’t get babies on another man, can he? Even women can’t get babies sometimes.’
‘You see?’ said Alice furiously. Her eyes had gone hard and shiny. She sprang to her feet. ‘That’s what she’s like. Unnatural, unchildlike, saucy. I want to go to bed.’ She fled from the hall. Richard half came to his feet but she brushed past him unheeding. Wulfhild imperturbably took another piece of bread. ‘You’ve married a fool, my son, but we shall all have to make the best of it,’ she observed with her mouth full.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It wasn’t the welcome I wanted to give you.’
‘It wasn’t the welcome I’d hoped to get, either. There, there, it wasn’t your fault, or not all yours, anyhow.’ Her distress at his anger had touched him. He stroked his wife’s hair.
‘You don’t know what these months have been like!’ There was no considering tch between sentences now. ‘I was terrified for you, day and night, and your mother gave me no peace. Nothing pleased her. The only thing that would please her would be if I had a baby but I lost the baby and she won’t let me forget it. She keeps saying she had Sybil when most women are past childbearing so why can I not manage it when I’m so young? She flaunts Sybil at me and Sybil makes use of it. She knows she can be as naughty and rude as she likes and your mother’ll take her part. And it’s bad for her, what will she grow up like? She’s seven already and she runs wild with the villeins’ children. She’s completely out of hand. She hardly knows her catechism, though she can tell pagan stories that no Christian child should even hear! Your mother tells them to her sometimes and she’ll talk anyone else into telling them that can. She’s supposed to be going to marry that boy from Little Dene. They’re a decent, well-conducted household, for all that Sir Brian’s wife is dead. What good will Sybil be to them, if she goes on as she is?’
‘Hush, darling, hush.’
Forget the quarrel, forget the sore places where hot chain links have rubbed through onto sweaty skin, forget the stench of burnt farmsteads, the buzzing of flies round the wounds of the casualties, the reek of Rochester when they entered it. He was home and despite his tiredness, his hungry body wanted his wife. He wanted peace in his home too. He was fond of his little sister but if she was causing dissension between Alice and his mother, then away with her, to perdition or a nunnery. Her education probably did need attention and no naughty child was going to do this to his Alice.
‘It’s time,’ he said to his mother next day, ‘that Sybil joined her sister at Withysham. She needs proper training. In seven years she’ll be ready for marriage. Also, I think it would be best if she were not in this house. No, Mother, this is my idea, not Alice’s. Leave Alice alone if you please. You want us to have a child, I believe. Well, how do you expect her to breed if you torment her? You were eager enough once to keep a dog from worrying breeding ewes. Do you think Alice has fewer feelings than a sheep?’
‘It will break Sybil’s heart to be sent away. Fallowdene is everything to her. She’s like me,’ said Wulfhild, for whom the manor had been the heart of the universe ever since she came there first at the age of twenty. Richard, looking at her, suddenly saw her as Alice no doubt did, a lame, shawled peasant woman, features hardening with age and chin growing whiskery, the horizons of her life narrowed to Fallowdene valley. As if she had read his mind, Wulfhild said: ‘Your wife thinks I’m an ignorant old peasant that shouldn’t be called lady, no matter that my husband was a knight. But I’m not ignorant. There are things I know.’
‘Yes, there are. But you still look on Fallowdene as the beginning and end of everything and you think Sybil’s the same. But she’s a child, she’ll adapt. She ought to see something outside the valley before she marries, and get a bit of ladylike gloss to her, too.’
‘Airs, I take it you mean,’ said Wulfhild sullenly. ‘Like Alice.’
‘That’s enough. Sybil goes as soon as I can arrange it and there’s no more to be said. No, Mother, I’m not discussing it any more. How are my new plants doing? Have you been to see?’
‘No,’ said Wulfhild sullenly. ‘And how long is that young man des Aix going to stay on this manor? He came to see your grandfather, didn’t he? Well, your grandfather’s in his grave. So he’s lost his errand. Time he was on his way.’
‘It’s time I was on my way,’ said Ralph, without prompting. ‘I’ve been glad of your hospitality here, Sir Richard…’
‘You can leave off the sir.’
‘Thank you. But we’re not equals, or not yet. Perhaps one day.’ Ralph, who had fallen in with his host as they were both going towards the stable, stopped and glanced back at the shaggy bulk of the hall. ‘I like your home. One day I should like to have such a hall, such lands myself. But first I’ve got to make my way.’
‘You’d be welcome to stay here as one of my household.’
‘Your womenfolk don’t like me.’
‘My womenfolk,’ said Richard, ‘will do as they’re told.’ Ralph shook his head. ‘Forgive me. But if I stayed here as your man-at-arms – I am speaking very frankly now – what chances of advancement would I have? I need a wealthy lord. Do you understand? I’m a trained huntsman, that’s my trade. If I could find a post in some big household – I was trained by Helias of La Fleche; that’s a big place, it should be a recommendation of sorts – I think I might find the chances I seek. I’d like to think of you as my friend, and of Fallowdene as a place I could come back to, to visit, a sort of home. Your wife and mother might not mind me so much on that basis.’
‘They don’t really mind you now. They don’t know you well yet.’
Ralph, with the toe of his boot, doodled a triangle in the earth of the yard. ‘I doubt if that would make much difference. Richard…’
‘Yes?’
‘This isn’t my business. Please don’t think me dis-courteous. But I hear you are proposing to send your sister away.’
‘Sybil? Yes. Well, it’s time she went to get some schooling. A few years in an abbey is a good thing for a girl and we’re lucky. The abbess of Withysham is her aunt. It won’t cost us much.’
‘But she’s upset about it, isn’t she? Sybil, I mean. I feel rather sorry for her and a little bit responsible.’
‘Responsible? Why should you feel that?’
‘She got into trouble for repeating a story about the Wild Huntsman. I’m afraid I told her that story.’
‘Did you?’ Richard was not disposed to take this seriously. ‘Being a huntsman yourself, I suppose you’d hear all the legends of your own trade. She still didn’t have to repeat it in a church, or be impertinent to my wife at dinner, in front of the whole household. There’s no need for you to feel responsible. Or sorry for her. She’ll soon settle down at the abbey. About this business of finding a wealthy lord for you. I understand what you mean. I haven’t taken it amiss. My own overlord, de Warenne – it’s the younger de Warenne now, since his father was killed – there might be an opening there. I can take you to see him and we can find out if you like.’
‘Would you?’
‘Certainly,’ said Richard heartily. ‘With the utmost pleasure. You’d rather do that than go back to Helias of La F
leche?’
‘It was a good house, but there were no opportunities there within the next ten years, that I could see.’
‘Then,’ said Richard, ‘we will try de Warenne.’ They walked on, towards the stable.
They tried to represent the sojourn at Withysham as an adventure and a privilege. But Sybil knew she was going into exile and retributive supervision and she displayed such terror at the thought of leaving the valley to go away beyond the great barebacked downs which had been the boundaries of her world, that Richard almost wavered at the last minute, and Wulfhild said: ‘I told you so!’ in accents of enormous satisfaction.
But Alice said: ‘Give in now and we’ll be giving in for ever,’ and Richard after all refused to change his mind. Sybil wept, pleaded and finally screamed. They could do nothing with her and in the end left her to scream herself into exhaustion and surrender. Ralph, the bystander, was sorrier for her than ever. He hid his feelings from Richard, for their friendship’s sake, but was less careful with the women, whom he felt were making the child a pretext for quarrelling. They sensed his disapproval and returned it. He was relieved when he and Richard left to ride to Chichester, to meet de Warenne.
In Fallowdene village too, there was sympathy for Sybil. ‘Poor little thing, sent away like that. Come back as mincing and dainty as young madam in the hall, she will. Whatever made the master pick on that one?’
‘She’s embroidering lovely new hangings for the hall,’ Gunnor said defensively, on hearing this. Alice’s gift for weaving and stitchery had infuriated Gunnor at first but things were changing. Alice had proved willing to impart her skills and had also shown Gunnor how to make an ointment to keep her hands smooth for fine sewing. Pink faced, buxom Gunnor and slender, pale Alice had now struck up the beginnings of an alliance. ‘She’ll be all right. Master’ll change whatever in her wants changing, given time. He’s got sense.’
King of the Wood Page 15
