Ann of Cambray (35 page)

He was silent, thinking of far-off things. His next words surprised me. ‘Lord Falk,’ he said, and as he spoke he played with my father’s ring, ‘Lord Falk was once a simple knight, was he not, without demesne, taking service among the lords of Normandy as he could find it, until he came to my grandfather at Sieux, a landless knight who came to fortune late?’

‘Aye,’ I said, ‘he never sought to hide it. Fate had nothing worse, he used to say, than to be a landless knight, for when old age had dulled your skill, then were you thrown at the world’s mercy. A landless knight has but two roads: to follow his lord in battle or to make a round of the tourneys in peace. In either case he hires out his skills at other men’s commands, and when those skills are gone, he too is ended.’

‘Or goes perhaps to the holy wars, where God will reward you if this world does not.’

‘You do not think of Outremer, across the distant seas?’ I said, suddenly anxious, for he had spoken of it before. He did not answer me but spoke again of Cambray.

‘And the lands he held here of my grandfather were dear to him?’

‘My lord,’ I said patiently, for he must have known it, ‘before your grandfather brought him to England as one of his household knights, he was already old as men are reckoned. He did not expect such graciousness even from the Earl of Sedgemont.’

‘And he was an honest man, a keeper of oaths?’

‘You have said so yourself,’ I said, puzzled. ‘All my men say so. I do not boast of it.’

‘You should,’ he cried, startling me. ‘A man without such honour is an empty husk. What if that loyalty, which brought my grandfather fame and made your father’s fortune, brings to me no fortune? I have wasted my patrimony in King Stephen’s wars, but I do not seek to break my oath to him. Nor do I complain or doubt. I speak but to give myself purpose.’

‘Purpose?’ I repeated stupidly.

‘Ann,’ he said, ‘I have not told you all the nature of this king. I have not fairly set him before you that you may know him better. I have not even told you how we first met. All men will testify to his charm, his grace then. He wore it as some men don costly chain about their necks. He had no false sense of position, he was not too proud to mix with his fellow men. We met in the mud, and he pulled me from it with his own hand.’

He mused awhile, remembering, no doubt. Then he roused himself to tell the story.

‘The battle was not my first; even in France, there was war enough, and I have told you how the Angevins had raided Sieux before. But I was raw then, untried, overeager. He saw how my horse was broached and I like to be pricked by a half-dozen spears. It was the second battle of Lincoln where he sought perhaps to make amends for the humiliation of the first, when he had been captured by the Empress Matilda. He and his squire, they straddled my body on foot, and when he had beaten the enemy back with his great war axe, he raised me and staunched the blood himself.’

He stretched out his arm. My father’s ring gleamed dully, but he was not looking at that. I saw the thick red scar that I had first noticed long ago, a scar that ran across his right wrist.

That all but cost me my life.

So that was the story of his wounding that gave him his nickname; that was how his life had been saved. That scar was as a band of steel then, a chain, to bind him to the man who had rescued him.

Blood oath he swore,
Dylan had said. It would not let him go.

He said, ‘Upon the battlefield, when I could speak again, I swore oath, blood oath to Stephen for my life. He was as young as a god then, Ann. Joyous he walked. Men ran to follow him, a man of honour who made that sour-faced Impress Matilda seem a harpy, intent to rend and harry the country she coveted. Did you know that when he, in turn, had the empress in his power, at Oxford, he let her go for courtesy? And when her son, this Henry, a half-wild boy, came back to England without consent it was Stephen who sent him gold to buy a passage back to France, as to a son? That was the sort of man I served . . .’

He mused awhile again. ‘Yet there was another side of him,’ he said abruptly. ‘His father, who was Count of Blois before him, led his men to the Holy Land. In a beleaguered castle there he left them, abandoned them to perish whilst he escaped, letting himself down from the walls in a basket. Stephen of Blois has lived with knowledge of his father’s shame, although the old count returned to the wars, driven there, they say, by his wife, that he might wipe out the disgrace by his death. The thought of it has haunted Stephen all his life; given him title of most chivalrous knight in its despite. And cursed him with the same weakness of will . . .’

He turned to me at last. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘he has summoned me back, although I angered him so when last we met. I thought we should not meet again.’

I could not hide how my bright thoughts dulled, joy spilling from my bones at his words.

‘Why?’ was all I said, but the how and wherefore rang like thunder in my head.

He said, as if to justify himself, ‘You have long known that I am Stephen’s man. My grandfather had the same knack I seem to have inherited: to quarrel with those we most admire, or rather, to tell them when they do not act as they should. But that does not change our loyalties. After the signing of the Treaty of Westminster, which I would not sign, I came back to the border because Stephen, in his rage, told me to waste my life away there. I would have achieved what even he thought impossible, obtained a treaty from the Celts, with your help, had not Maneth attacked.’

I said, ‘Stephen has not treated you well. Long is the list of grievances against him. Twice did he betray you in the war that you fought on his behalf.’

‘I do not complain,’ he said moodily. ‘If others speak of these things they speak out of turn.’

‘Giles told no tales,’ I said, ‘but I know as well as you, you would not have stayed so long here had there been hope of mending your cause with the king.’

‘I will not deny it,’ he said. He smiled. ‘Come, it is not so grave. Perhaps he has called me to make me earl at last.’ 

‘Earldom is a title he has bestowed on many men,’ I broke in. ‘It is an empty honour at best.’

‘I did but jest,’ he said quietly. ‘That is not the honour I speak of. Come, love, do not quarrel with me this last day. The king’s messenger came last night. Did not you hear him, hammering at the gates as if to wake the dead? We must prepare to leave as soon as he is ready, this noontide, if we can . . .’

‘So soon,’ I said, but my thoughts ran ahead, frightening me with their clarity. ‘You will leave me, Raoul, after all, although you know that Stephen has not been just or faithful to you. For such faithlessness will you abandon me and Cambray. And then what will become of us?’

How easily he slipped home the blade that ended hope, and how meekly I accepted its wound. The Lady Mildred herself could not have been more humble, more self-effacing, as I followed him down the steps to the courtyard where I could already see the horses being bridled, the saddlebags prepared. Then to the Hall, where we must sit and hear the messenger’s complaints until, overcome by his efforts, he fell into a doze over his flagon of ale. Then, whilst he slept, to ride out for one last look at Cambray. How shall I describe so bittersweet, so golden-grey a day? The long damp wheat shimmered at our passage; the tassels of oats and rye dropped under their own weight; Cambray shone rich with harvest about us. And all I saw was desolation, as he gave instructions for the care of this, the care of that.

He knew me well enough to sense what I was thinking, the more because I did not speak of it. And if I had, would not he have said, ‘It is the lot of women to have their men ride out to danger. It is the lot of men to be lured away from safety to war, else are they not men.’

Dispute that argument, if you can, poet. I cannot. Yet then I was still young, still hopeful. I knew he showed his concern by cheerfulness, refusing to turn to tragedy what time was left. I thought perhaps I could change his purpose if I made one last attempt, one other way. In that, too, I was mistaken. I should have kept quiet. Yet, if I had, how much else would have been changed.

The sun was already high when we returned. Then had I to go first to see about domestic affairs; for pride’s sake, we set a good table that day, although such feasting taxed our resources. But a king’s messenger must be honoured. And when I had seen all prepared to my liking, I slipped out from the castle and made my way down to the sands. The squires were waiting where they always used to wait, at the back of the dunes, so the horses could crop among the rough grasses growing there. They knuckled salute as I went by and turned back to their dicing. Even the guard who spun round on hearing me smiled and pointed with his sword blade which way I should go. I might have been a child again, so little did my presence concern them. But I had no childlike purpose in mind.

The sands were wide and empty at low tide, smooth except for footprints that went down to the sea beyond the rocks where the tide turns. Across the bay, the water shimmered and the breakers came creaming in. I could see Raoul far out among the waves. How long since I had sat like this, gathering piles of clothes at my feet, waiting for him to return? He came presently, running and stumbling through the shallows to stand before me.

I sat up with my cloak around my shoulders.

‘Take me with you,’ I said.

‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘It will not be for long.’ But I knew he lied.

‘Then stay here.’

‘Ann,’ he pleaded with me, ‘you have not understood what I must do. If your Celtic gifts had power to see ahead, you could foretell me all the future. If you cannot, I must not wait it here, like some caged bear.’

‘I see nothing,’ I said, ‘that does not include us both. What should I be or do after this, if you are not there as well?’

He said at last, ‘You have Cambray. Since I first knew you, that was what you yearned for. It is worth the keeping.’

How could I tell him that it was as nothing after all; thus do the gods make sport of us to turn our dearest wishes to dust.

‘Then go and be damned,’ I cried. ‘Find some highborn lady at your court. Forget us here.’

‘Ann,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘I have had high women and low, and have had enough of both. And of courts and courtiers as well. If I could stay, I would . . .’

‘I do not believe you,’ I cried. ‘Men are ever so, dishonest at the end.’

‘Dishonest,’ he said, angry now. ‘By all the saints, where is this honesty of women to be found? Was my betrothed in France so honest that when I first visited her, I surprised her with her lover? Bound I was to her as a boy, and yet would have kept my vows. But even thoughts of my land and wealth could not keep her lust still. And the Celtic woman of my camp, who betrayed us to the lords of Maneth . . . Ah, you knew of that?’

‘I knew.’

‘You never spoke to her.’

‘Nor you, my lord,’ I said. ‘But I do not hold her blameworthy. So shall I do if you forsake me. I count that honesty.’

He shook me hard so that my cloak fell off and all my nakedness was revealed cold to the wind that blew the fine sand in stinging gusts.

‘So you have come, like the rest,’ he said almost bitterly, ‘to use your charms. A siren to tempt me ... I thought for something more than that from you.’

‘Then am I no more than any other of your women,’ I said, 'that you have loved and left. Lord Raoul has had his sport of me, too: is that what I should think?’

He looked at me hard. Well, we have but one life and may pay for it through eternity, but it seemed to me that what life is and all its vigour, its essence, shone in him then. He was alive, from the salt-crusted curls to the long, lean body where the wind had turned old wounds blue against the brown flesh.

‘Do not forsake me, Raoul,’ I said, wiping my eyes where the wind stung.

‘I would not forsake you . . .’

‘Oh, God,’ he said, and there was misery in his voice. ‘Do not tempt me. Think instead that free of me, you can keep Cambray safe at least.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

He had turned aside again, staring out to sea with his sea-grey eyes.

‘Think,’ he said. ‘You can still hold Cambray of the next Lord of Sedgemont.’

As I tried to interrupt, he said, ‘What did you expect? We have had a little respite here, that is all. When Henry returns, he will have that vengeance you once warned me of. Think. If I can influence Stephen, I shall. But I live on borrowed time, free of me, you keep your lands, avoid my fate.’

‘Say it is not so, Raoul, say it will not be so.’

I clung to him then, trying to stop his mouth against such bleakness. I had goaded him into the truth; I wished that he had never spoken it. I should have kept quiet myself. What could I say except encompass him that he might drown in me, find there an end to whatever search for honour, hope, drove him on.

‘Or is it,’ he said, his mouth at my neck bone, ‘that you truly seek me out for passion’s sake, that you burn for it? I cry you pardon. I thought you wooed my lands and name . . .’

‘Do not jest now,’ I whispered. ‘We have such little time.’

He said, his mouth lower still, ‘Nice ladies at court are not so generous with their favours. Did once I call you skin and bone? You are flesh and heart and all that men could desire. Remember that I, Raoul of Sedgemont, say that. Ann, I am not Talisin. I cannot recreate the past for you. And all the future looks dark. But this present, this now, I have given you, as you have given it to me. Remember it.’

We fell upon the sands; we struggled with each other, part in love, part fear. Except once, before passion was spent, he raised himself upon his arms, forcing me to look at him, that I might take in his naked flesh and my own.

‘Now, now,’ he cried, every word a thrust, a plunge, that his self might burrow into mine, ‘this is now. Remember me so.’

I clung to him that his force might be passed on to me, an empty well that he would replenish, that there beside the sea, some spark of what we had been might live on, even when we were done. This was our parting, our farewell.

Afterwards we helped each other dress, wordless, brushed off the sand, wiped away stains of love. Then, separate, apart, we walked back up the beach, the wind already freshening. The sentry saluted, squires sprang to their feet, horses snorted and stamped. From the courtyard, I watched the bustle of departure as if it happened far away, in another time that concerned not me. Raoul waved off his pages impatiently as they fussed with the setting of the last straps. He strode across the yard, his mail swinging to his knees, his face framed by the steel coif that he wore beneath his helmet, already remote, gone a long way off.