Ann of Cambray (32 page)

‘Oh God,’ I prayed, ‘that it be not a trap to catch them.’

Were they still there, or were they already tiptoeing down the steps, swords held loosely, daggers in their other hands, crouched to increase impetus? The empty room above had given them all the confidence they needed. It was one less place to fight for; surprise, and surprise alone, would help them take the rest. But I prayed in that endless wait, almost mindlessly. When the first shock of the attack rang out, it was like a beacon flare against the night sky. I could not bear to stay where I was, but slid down into the empty room, stumbling and tripping to the narrow staircase. I could hear the sounds now, that mixture you must pray never to hear, the strike of weapon against weapon, the duller thud of a butcher blow, the shouts, cut short, of men taken unawares, Raoul’s voice singing out his battle cry. It was the struggle in the village square again. I turned to the other openings that overlooked the main courtyard, registering surprise even then that I could see through them without having to drag a stool into place. The yard had already sprung to life, torches flared, and more lights came to make it bright as day. I could see the thin line of black figures racing for the ropes and bars that held the gates. Run and turn, hack and parry. There was a great cry as someone swarmed upon the battlement above and began to slash at the ropes. The gate fell outward with a crash that shook. Then there was a familiar drumming as mounted men appeared at the gates, horses stamping and snorting, men shouting to their friends, pouring into the stone courtyard, then hooves sending sparks. I knew how few they were, but in that confined space they seemed an army. The air was lighter now, blue grey instead of black. Men ran and slashed with less purpose. Already groups of them had huddled in a circle against the wall, their weapons dropped at their feet. The shouts and screaming dragged into silence and I heard Raoul’s voice cry hold.

I was still clinging to the window frame, still listening to those last dreadful cries, when they came to fetch me, two of my comrades, handing me down the stairs into the Great Hall with such courtesy as if I had never put foot outside a ladies’ solar before. How had they gone so quietly down these treacherous steps? I had forgotten how steep and narrow they were. My first thought when I saw the Great Hall of Cambray again was how small it seemed; my second, that it had been used as a stable or barn, it was so begrimed and foul. My third, which should have been first, how quickly the work had been finished. Most of the bodies had already been dragged aside. A man lay moaning under an upturned table; a few others, all Sedgemont men, nursed their wounds dazedly. Raoul himself seemed unhurt. He stood upon the dais where my father’s chair used to be and beside him, grinning openly, stood Dylan. Even as I watched, a group of half-dressed, unarmed men came stumbling into the room, driven up the stairs by the Sedgemont men from the courtyard beneath. Lord Raoul turned to greet me. Well, we looked as rough and filthy as those other poor souls, our clothes stained and torn, our faces as white and tired. There was another scurry, a stamp of feet upon the stairs, another scarecrow group tumbling into light, lurching and gawking. I hardly knew what to make of them at first. Their faces were puffed and grey, overgrown with hair like that of an animal let out from some den, until they came close and hailed Dylan. Then suddenly their features came into focus: the men I remembered, or half-remembered, although they all then remembered me, this remnant of my father’s guard who had been left at Cambray and lost it. They came crowding round, tears staining their wasted cheeks, dropping to their knees upon the flea-ridden rushes to call my name. It should have done my heart good to hear ‘Cambray’ again, yet I felt no triumph, no pleasure, as I moved among these men, urging them to their feet, letting them touch me like men half-blind. I have seen prisoners since who looked worse than they did, but none who regained their freedom with such relief, shut away this long, still bitter at the trick that had robbed them of liberty and dignity at the same time. I turned from them at last to find Lord Raoul still watching me. Was not this what I had always told him, ‘Bring me home, and my people will know me.’ How now would he deal with them, with us?

‘Well, Ann of Cambray,’ he said, his voice neutral, ‘how will you bid us welcome?’

Despite myself, I knew I showed dismay. I knew what was due, of course: there should have been servants to bear him wine, spiced and hot, and fresh water for washing, clean linen for him and his men, food on tables, serfs to take his horse and gear, fires to burn, the plate upon the sideboards burnished.

He laughed at my expression. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘as you stand amazed, we’ll fend for ourselves.’

‘There may be stores, my lord,’ I said, collecting my wits, recalling what I had learned from the Lady Mildred at Sedgemont, although her hospitality was often pinched and miserly. ‘And wine, there should be wine from my father’s day.’

‘If they’ve not drunk it all.’ He gestured to the Celtic prisoners, crouching now against the wall.

‘What shall we do with them, my lord?’ It was Dylan, indicating them with his thumb. ‘Chuck them over the cliff?’ There was a cry of agreement at that, from Cambray men loudest of all. I looked at them, then back at Lord Raoul, then back to the Celts again. Their leader had been killed at the first assault. His horn goblet still rolled underfoot where people walked. A son who might have succeeded him barely lived. The others were a poor and rabid lot, ‘scum’, as my uncle had called them, making their little bid for power, caught off guard in their flush of success. Yet we had heard them laughing as we had climbed up through the castle walls.

‘They’d show no mercy to you,’ one Cambray man called out, ‘as they showed none to us. Death, they deserve.’ Hate made his eyes bright, yet it was his stupidity that had let these men in so long ago. They, themselves, seemed to shrink back against the wall, squatting like whipped curs. No cry for mercy, not even a flicker of hope came from them.

‘My lord,’ I said to Raoul before he could speak. ‘Can we not use them? We need men to restore the damage, till the fields, harvest. Guarded, could not they work for us?’

There was a murmur in the Hall at my words. I thought someone called, ‘Death’, again.

‘No,’ I said suddenly. ‘No. Let there be an end. We have had enough of death and killing.’

‘You make first claim to your victor’s spoils,’ Raoul said.

‘I make no such claim,’ I said, blushing. ‘The victory is yours. I shall plead but woman’s weakness, that there has been enough killing. I want no more deaths on my conscience.’

‘Here is a new idea,’ he said. ‘I thought Cambray worth a Mass or two.’

‘Not for the souls of my friends,’ I cried out, all the pent-up sadness and anxiety bursting forth. ‘Not for all that has been seen and done. Not for Giles’s death.’

‘Nor did I ever think to hear you say that,’ he said, suddenly sober. ‘Why, lady, this newfound delicacy does you honour. Take these men to your liking. Certainly they are more use alive than dead.’

‘Well, then,’ I said hesitatingly, for I was not used to giving such orders. ‘Let them first help with the wounded, then clean what they have befouled.’

‘To your charge then.’ He picked up the sword that lay unsheathed before him.

I heard him echo my command to separate the wounded from the whole, to bind the prisoners that they could work, to make space for the horses, clean out the debris from the stables, and bring fodder, for the Celts had kept no mounts of their own. He, with others of his guard, would ride forth from Cambray to view the surrounding countryside, rout out the villagers if any remained in hiding nearby, and hunt again for food. I was left in the Great Hall with a few men to attend me and the wounded to care for.

Those I could help I did, cleansing and binding as best I could, for there were no herbs, no drugs; the Celts had taken everything like maggots that pick bones clean. I cared for their wounded last of all. They lay, for the most part, as if impervious to pain, even the young son who was most grievous hurt. When all of them had settled into the small antechambers that lay within the thick walls of the Hall, it was broad daylight. Lord Raoul and his patrols had already ridden out, the gates had been shut tight upon them, and guards had been set on the walls. When the Sedgemont men had made their inspection and caught food enough, they would return. Now was there time for me to set things to rights to greet them.

But there was one thing first that must be done. The little niche we call a chapel has been much enlarged since then. I doubt if you would have known it for what it was, since this passion for church building has sent us all into a flurry of flaring beams and elaborate traceries and rich-covered altars. But you would recognize, as I did not, the three simple slabs that lie in the old part, three stone slabs set into a stone floor. As I did not, I say. When I had been there last, there was but one, with my mother’s Celtic name engraved upon it, nothing more, as if that said all. When I had been there last, my father sat where now I stood, his sword drawn across his knees and his eyes blank and unseeing. Talisin lay wrapped in his cloak, his own sword stretched above it. And I had crept in unwillingly, to tug at my father’s arms and bid him speak to me. I, who had, by living, destroyed what he loved most; who, in begging, reminded him of what he next had lost. I knelt now on the floor and smoothed the stones, delicately at first, then more passionately, to clear away the dirt and leaves that covered them, until I could see for myself the names and titles engraved on the two newer ones. How could they be as grey, look as worn, as that first one? How could ten years have aged them all the same? I knelt and smoothed the stones as if I could smooth away the years, as if time had never been, as if in a moment I would hear them striding up the stairway from the lower court, taking the steps as they used at a bound, their hounds leaping before them, their voices making the servants run to do their will. Talisin of Cambray, Falk of Cambray, your castle is free again, your deaths avenged. Where are you gone that you share not in the triumph? Where are your spirits flown that I cannot find you? I knelt and smoothed the stones, touching the names again and again until, for weariness, I fell asleep on my knees.

When I awoke, stiff and numb, the light had already faded. For a moment, forgetting where I was, I thought myself a child.

Then time came running back and I remembered. There was no noise, only the murmur of the wounded men, the soft shuffle of the prisoners about their tasks, the clank of the guard outside. Soon, then, the patrols would return. I had thought to have all ready on their return. That thought jarred me out of melancholy. Yet I tell you, poet, those whom we have loved live on in our prayers and thoughts. The love that I, an unwanted child, poured out upon those dead grey stones will keep them timeless . . . and in the quietness that surrounds us now, I have but to close my eyes and those who lie there come towards me, alive and whole.

When I went back to the Hall, I was startled to see how fast the day had gone. While I had slept, the work of Cambray had progressed. Dylan was sitting on the dais steps, overseeing things there. He looked tired and the wound in his arm had bled again. I retied the bandages while he grumbled at the disrepair he found on all sides: stables like a midden piled high with refuse, storerooms stripped bare and used as prisons, not fit for entering in, his old comrades reduced to shakes and agues by entombment there.

‘Cheer yourself, old friend,’ I said. ‘You have done well as it is.’

For he had found somewhere the great carved table and chair to set there in place, although the rest of the hall was bare, as if the Celts had burned all the other furnishings or hacked them up for pleasure.

He shook his head. ‘They are but wild beasts,’ he said, eyeing the prisoners who, with chains about their legs, came shuffling to and fro, sweeping the debris out of the Hall and bringing fresh logs to light the fires. ‘They have no care of those things a man should need.’ Yet he was partly Celt and so was I.

‘Patience,’ I said. ‘We shall teach them our ways in time.’

Giving orders that water should be readied, I went up the stairs to the women’s quarters. Here, too, the rubbish had been swept away, and the great frame of the bed dragged clear, although, in truth, no one had ever slept there to my knowledge. Gwendyth had used it for a storage space, setting our own small trestle beds beneath. My mother’s loom had also been put together, although the work it had always held had vanished, and two small wooden chests, which I had previously noticed, had been put in place against the wall. The stone door that led to the rock tunnel had been closed and a great beam set across it to prevent its being reopened from without. And there was an equally strong beam placed across the new-hung door that blocked the stairway to the Hall. I rummaged in the chests, which seemed filled with loot of various sorts, and came upon clean linen and shirts that I thought might do for Lord Raoul and his men. At the bottom stuck under rags and shards, was a folded dress that looked familiar, and when I shook it out, the dried herbs and flowers fell to the ground, giving off their faint fragrance that I remembered. This gown had been my mother’s. Cut in the old style, threaded with ribbons that had lost their lustre, it fitted me and was not too moth-ravished to wear.

By then two pages had come sweating and grumbling up the narrow stairs with a bucket of water. I closed the new door and bathed, drying myself afterwards with some shreds of linen. On impulse, I took my father’s ring from the little bag where I had carried it since that evening in the convent fields, and although it was too big, I slipped it on my finger. I had to grasp my hand tight so it would not slide off. Yet my mother’s dress, saved all these years in some place that perhaps Gwendyth alone had known, fitted as if made for me. Made ready then as best I could, I sat upon the edge of the great bed and waited until I heard the sounds of arrival, cheerful sounds of men and horses and hounds, sounds that must have been sadly lacking here these past years. Then I rose and went down the stairs.