Gifts of the Queen (29 page)

'We spoke of different sorts of love just now,' she said to her courtiers, 'and I will put a conundrum to you. Suppose now, a lady loves a lord, and wants to be married to him, and he, high above her in rank, would not stoop to wed with her. Is love possible in such a case?'

I knew she spoke of Raoul and me, was vexed that she should discuss our lives and surprised and hurt that she should openly speak of something I felt best hid. The other lords there took her question seriously, began to debate as if in a Council of State, if love made public is love, if love based on shame can be so called, if marriage and love are contradictions in terms . . . Seriously they spoke and she heard them in all seriousness. If this be their courts of love, I thought, poor Walter is well out of them. And I thought too, as they argued on, how much nonsense they spoke. There are many types of loving and love, but I shut my lips tight upon my thoughts. Let them speak; I would be dumb. And this, I think, was wise, and perhaps, in time, she would have let me slip away; but something happened to rekindle her wrath.

One of the younger men, fair-haired and bold, had been watching me. 'This lady is too quiet,' he said. 'As she is young and most beautiful, what says she to our discourse?' I saw the queen frown, but he went on, 'Tell me lady, whose name is unknown to me, do you think men can be faithful to womenkind, or more to the point, they to men?'

There was a burst of applause as if he had said a witty thing, but the queen was not pleased.

'Lord Thouars,' she said, 'as she is young, she has not the experience we other ladies have.'

But he persisted, speaking to me. 'And, lady,' he now said, 'like other maids are your thoughts filled with thoughts of us, how to make us your slaves?' And he smiled and rubbed his hand across his lips.

'As for making men her slaves,' the queen snapped, 'ask her to tell you the truth of Boissert Field. We heard she besotted my brother-in-law, that he preferred her to all women else.'

They all laughed at that, but she had not meant to jest.

'And, Lord Ademar,' she said, turning to the older lord, a tall dark-haired man he was, with hooded eyes and hawk-like nose, who came sauntering to her side as she spoke to him, 'inform, if you please, the Count of Toulouse, that we have found that most rare prize, a virtuous wife.'

A third time they laughed, as if all things were for laughing at, as if they mocked at ones which pain.

He said, and a strange way of speaking he had, new to me, which marked him, if nothing else did, as a man from the Spanish borderlands. 'Then the lady is as virtuous as she seems gentle; her lord must be a lucky man.'

Afterwards, I thought he spoke to be kind, to keep the peace, but again his words did not please the queen.

'Pooh,' she said. 'My grandsire used to say to his friend, the old Count of Toulouse, grandfather to the present count, that no woman's virtue was safe long. He told a story how a vassal boasted to him once of his wife's chastity. Chaste and fair is she, the poor fool bragged. Disguised as a beggar, deaf and dumb, Duke William came to her, found her with her ladies in their bower. They, amazed by his infirmities, let him in, tested him to see if he spoke the truth . . .'

She began to hum beneath her breath:

How much I tupped them you shall hear
A hundred eighty-eight times or near 
So that I almost stripped my gear. . .

And they all laughed, including Lord Ademar.

‘The lady is not used to such bawdy songs,' he maintained. 'She blushes for our wantonness,’ and he smiled at me, a handsome amorous man himself.

'Pooh,' said the Queen again, 'I hear my brother-in-law charmed her as well. Is not Lord Geoffrey charming?' she asked, fixing her eyes above my head.

I had known before how clever she could be; she argued with learned men for sport, could quote Latin texts and debate church doctrine with cardinals, as she had done when she found reasons to annul her marriage with Louis of France. She would wind me up in words.

'Did not he tempt you? I heard he took back the ring I gave you once as pledge. He gave it first to me, you know. And how long did his vow to me last? As long as it took me to ride from there to here, so long it took him to find another woman to bed, so long shall his vow last to you. Sweet-tongued is my sweet brother-in-law, but double forked. And my ring,' she said, when the laughter that followed had died down, 'gave you it away as all things else I gave?'

'No,' I said. 'I have it here.' And I pulled at the chain where it hung about my neck.

She looked at it, her expression by turns thoughtful and something else, malicious perhaps. 'And would you swear on Holy Book,' she insisted, 'that you wear it in remembrance of me? Would you swear that loyalty, like love, is meant to last? I sent you it to keep your husband safe at home, not to let him go abroad to hinder me. Would you swear your loyalty to him? I hear he was found another woman and you have quarreled because of it.'

I said, for I had grown mulish myself, determined not to be the butt of their foolish jibes, and disappointed that the meaning of her message that had puzzled me was so simple after all. (I had thought she meant to keep
him
safe, not to 
save
her; it was
his
safety I had cared about.) I said the worst sort of thing, 'I keep this ring, and wear it, in memory of past friends in the hope that they should also remember me. My womenfolk who guard my son know it as mine. I use it to send them word, I wear it about my neck, next to my heart, that all men should know whose gift it was. I never thought to see it lost or given away, nor did I look to have its value made a mockery of.' An unwise speech, better to have kept silent, for they were reduced to silence after it, shifting uneasily, not looking at me. No one rebukes a royal queen, and I had spoken too much in my blunt way. Even Lord Ademar looked grave. And too late I saw the trap I made myself, made it for her to use.

'Fool,' Queen Eleanor said for the third time, 'give it here. It was not meant for you. Better to have done with you at Saint Purnace as de Boissert hoped.' A silence followed, again too long. In it were many things I had heard others say, but dared not think myself.
Put no trust in royal promises, nor royal courts. Her friends are powerful and she uses them . . . What her part is better you do not know.
They hammered at my heart until I beat them down, worse to me than the idea of treason.

She saw the way my thoughts ran and laughed at them, a high laugh without mirth, that mocked at me and mocked herself. You will never be sure, that laugh said, what I knew, or if I had a part in that attack. But I have the power to order men; men follow me, I command them to my will. And I shall always have that power.

'Fool,' she repeated the word, reached out and snatched the chain. It caught about my neck and cut the skin before the links broke. A trickle of blood started out, but she already had the ring in her grasp. 'And would you swear,' she said, 'your women would obey you if you sent them this? Then are they more loyal to you than you were to me. When my daughter was born, did you come? Then is this bauble a symbol greater than all the weight of those promises you once made. And you, Lord Ademar, you are foresworn. You vowed to honor me when I was wed. Now you swear as much to Henry in my place.' She swung the ring to and fro on its broken chain. She said to her lords, who looked at her, consternation in their eyes, 'I shall keep my lands intact for my sons. You are my vassals, whom Henry steals away. You think to make your peace with him at my expense. One day you shall make your peace with our heirs. That prince you saw just now is but the first of many princes of my house. Deal with us as you would be dealt with by him when he is grown.'

The lords leapt to their feet, the air of repose, their languidness, quite gone. Lord Ademar stepped forward formally.

'Lady Queen,' he said, 'Who first is Duchess of Aquitaine, loyal are we, your vassals assembled here, who have honored our oath to you since you inherited, since you, a little maid, were carried off to Louis's court. And loyal to you throughout that time, and loyal now to you and your son.'

Formally he spoke; they all muttered words to the same effect. Perhaps their protestations gave her strength, perhaps she needed their support to feel secure, perhaps, simply, she wanted to test her control over them, for she suddenly laughed, one moment to the next seeming to change, confusing them. But ever had she been willful, perverse; now there was a wildness to her as if she challenged fate, or God.

'Solemn-faced,' she cried, 'stiff-mouthed. This is no law court and far, thanks be, from Henry's court where such words are sworn.'

They smiled at that, but nervously, shifting from foot to foot. Later, no doubt, they would be afraid that they had said too much, should Henry, in turn, hear of it. But, ‘This is a court of love,' she next cried, 'where we shall teach you how to love. As for this symbol that the Lady Ann so admires, well, take it who can, to keep in memory.'

She was still dangling the ring by its chain, just above my head. I reached for it. She dropped the chain in my hand, threw the ring high into the air. It glittered and sparkled as it fell. Lords and ladies began to scrabble for it, pushing past. Upon the ground they crawled, the women rucking their clothes about their waists; their white legs stuck out, their skirts flew up; the men prodded and peered, mounted on them like so many dogs. Over they rolled, locked together, children playing on a grassy bank, and the queen rocked herself back and forth with mirth.

'Go to, go to,' she said, noticing me, giving me a hard push, 'it was yours once, make a bid for it. So much for fine words if you will not soil your dainty hands.'

Now, I must have taken note of all here said and done, how else could I remember it? But I stood as if dazed. So I think a wounded man feels not the pain, only a numbness, cold as death.

When I was a child brought first to Sedgemont, I played with the other children there a game of blindman's buff; I had hated it, the way they pushed and screamed, the way they pried. Now, in the same way, these many years afterward, the knowing faces stared, the same hard hands came out. Scarce knowing what I did or thought, I began to run along those gravel paths, between the high hedges, laughter welling up behind me as I fled. Without pause I ran, the gravel spurting beneath my feet, crisscrossing along those alleyways until, coming to a full stop, a stitch in my side, my breathing labored, my heart heavy with grief, I realized I was lost. I could not even have told you which direction I had gone, nor even cared, no buildings in sight, a maze of smaller paths on every side, and, in the distance, the outer walls. I made my way toward them for lack of anywhere else. They were tall, crenellated in the latest style, but deserted, too. I walked along them until I came to an iron gate, left ajar. There was a horse tied outside it in the open parkland beyond, tethered to a tree. Seeing it, I was reminded somehow of Saint Purnace, and once more overcome, I began to run back the way I had come. Blinded by the sun in this more open part, blinded more like by foolish tears, tears that only a broken illusion can cause, I ran headlong into someone on the path.

'Well met. Lady Ann,' said Geoffrey Plantagenet. He caught me to steady me. 'You run as if ten thousand devils were chasing you. See how your heart beats.' He held his hand over mine, against my breast where indeed my heart pounded so I could scarcely speak. 'And blood,' he traced with one finger the line of splattered red where the chain had cut, across the neck bone, along the shoulder of my gown. I snatched myself away, as if he stung. He said, 'When you run, your skin glows, like a lamp which I once saw. The monks who own it in Le Mans swear it came from far away, further than the Holy Land; and when you light it, the flame burns through like a light in a crystal sphere. I am come this instant to see the queen, to visit with her and my nephew for a while. God smiles on me to find you here.'

All this was flattery, openly given, yet even then I could not rebuke him as I should; even then, seeing him again, I could not accept what was said of him. He walked beside me, matching his paces to mine, keeping to the grass verge to deaden the sound of his spurs. In similar fashion to the other lords I had seen, he was dressed for hunting, but more exquisitely, aping his nephew with ermine for a royal house at neck and wrist and a velvet cap, same as the prince's smaller one, set at an angle above his curls. And when he took my hand to lead me along, the many rings he wore flashed like the one the queen had thrown into the air.

I said the first thing that came to mind. 'I wish that you had kept that ring to mate it with the one you have; I wish that you had never given it to the queen, or she to me, ill fortune on it.'

He stopped still, his eyes boring hard, and would not move until I told him all. Not all, I have never told all to anyone before this, so strange, so unnatural, so depraved a tale if those be not too strong words. Nor did I know if I saw too much, guessed too much. But even in telling what I did, I said more than I should. Much more. As a child, I had run from my tormentors and had Lord Raoul rescue me. Small thanks I gave him for his pains. But this was not Sedgemont, I not a child, and this man was the one whom all the world warned against. To show him weakness merely gave him room to move to his greater gain, as now he did.

'By all the saints in Christendom,' he said, 'who look after knights bachelor, I did not think it would be so easy to find you. They have been at their tricks, I see. They would not, were I near by.'

'How did you know I was here?' I asked.

'Why your noble lord told me so,' he said. Now that was an obvious lie, and somehow such a stupid, silly thing steadied me. He was angry when I told him so, angry to have given himself away, to have thrown aside an advantage which surprise and fright might have given him. But the mention of Raoul's name for me was a candle on a dark night.

Then Geoffrey laughed, pushed his cap to the back of his head, began to whistle beneath his breath. How easily they all laughed, I thought, at life, at death, dishonor, fear, ideas other men must weigh and think about.