Gifts of the Queen (36 page)

I did not ask then the last question that trembled on my tongue, but later I did, that night, 'And if Henry fights against the Celts, which side will you fight on?' It is a question that perhaps all women must ask who marry with their foes; perhaps my mother lived with it, who had wed an enemy to make a peace; but the thought tore me like a knife.

We were lodged in a simple place at Barfleur, close to the harbor for convenience, so that on still nights, we could hear the hiss of the waves as they washed against the pebbles and sand. The men were bedded down more noisily; some of them bivouacked along the pier, some sat and drank and sang those ribald songs that had amused us so at Sieux, and others stretched out upon their saddlebags while they played at dice, shook them, threw them to make a wager on the consequences of their king's plans, a king whose actions are but common soldier's jests. They were no jest to me.

'Ann,' Raoul said softly when I had asked directly in my too blunt way that makes me afterwards almost blush, 'I do not say that he
will
fight. He still speaks of treaty, negotiations, talks. But I sense his purpose. As warden, all the king's accounts must pass through me. I know the names, I keep the records, oversee his payments; by studying them, I can guess his intent. A third of England's knights is a goodly number of men. Not even in Stephen's time was such an army raised.'

'An army has one purpose,' I said, 'to fight.'

'Yes,' he said, 'but Henry has not commanded a feudal army in England before. He may not know its strength or its weaknesses. Yet I think myself that talk of parley is but a sop to appease the Welsh. No Angevin can parley without a spear to prick his enemy to heel.'

'But Raoul,' I cried, 'the Celts are not
your
enemy.'

He rolled over on his back, lay staring at the rafters. It was still light enough to see him and see his face. I was reminded suddenly of the way he looked that first night at Sieux, when we lay together in the ruins of his castle walls. A sad homecoming he had had then; I prayed that this would not be one.

He said, 'I can choose not to go and be called a coward, forfeit my lands, and rightly so, I think. I can refuse to go and pay this scutage Henry asked in the place of military service, a tax so high it will beggar Sedgemont a second time. Or I can go as is my duty and try to protect the peace. And that too I am sworn to do. When I was last at Sedgemont,' he said, and he spoke softer now, so that I had to strain to hear him. Our son slept near us on a small pallet bed, but that was not the reason why he spoke the way he did. 'When I was last at Sedgemont,' he said, I was wounded, close to death, my lands and titles forfeit. I had reason enough for thought. It is not often that a man is given life back when he thinks it lost, nor time to consider what he might do if it were restored. It seemed to me that God has made us as we are for some purpose of His own. We may not know its cause but so it is, and we must abide the consequence. Some He has created high, some low, and why each is born to his place in life, no man either has power to judge. I was born to high estate, to lands, to rank, to duties which I willingly accept. I vowed if I lived, I should not let them go. For good or evil, God made me master over many men, and as their overlord I must do right by them. He also made me vassal to a king. I shall obey the king in this, if I can. A feudal oath is not easily sworn, easily undone, even to a king I do not trust or like.'

He said, 'I may not be able to hold Henry back. High King of Wales is a title that would suit him well; he may like to add that to his list of names. But I think to attack the Celts will be a disaster for us. I will prevent it if I can.'

He said, 'Do not turn from me, Ann. God's wounds, I would not have gone to Poitiers if I had anticipated Henry's plans. If wrong I did, it was to make a right. There has been enough of strain between us; I would not have added another burden to your load. I would not embroil you in their schemes.'

He said, his voice husky now with desire, 'Do not deny me, Ann. I return to where I was robbed of health and name; I would create new life to take the place of the one I lost.'

He panted in my ear. ‘Thus, thus I spill my seed, thus I make our second heir.' In the moonlight, naked we lay, his need as burning as my own; in haste, intent and in my womb, a fire spread. That was the parting we made, that was the making of our second son.

We sailed the next day with the tide. He went on board one ship with his guard, his horses; Robert and I on a second; the others filled with men and supplies. We waved to him as the helmsman bent his long oar to take us out of the bay. Beyond the headland, the waves blew dark, and white caps showed, the green rounded cliffs, like dolphins' backs, rose and fell, and the great white sails came tumbling down with a crack. We set straight passage toward the English coast. But the wind that had been blowing north to give us a quick crossing now veered, blew us back again; for three days it blew so hard, no thunder, no rain, only wind, to drive us off our course. The ships were scattered and my ship rode out the storm alone, tossed this way and that. I remember thinking, when I could think of anything, I knew we should not boast of safety in these ships, and I was used to sea and boats.

There was no danger of our foundering at first, I suppose, as the White Ship had done; our vessel was stout-built and the captain competent. But the waves were so high and the seas so strong that even I thought every moment would be our last. Not so my son. He exulted in the wind and waves, would have capered about on deck if he could. I had a soldier tie him to a leash like a little dog so that he could not escape from the hold where we lay. So do we reveal our destinies I suppose, a soldier's son, born to a soldier's world, adventure, danger far away, his lot.

The third day out we sprang a leak, and then the mariners jested no more, worked in shifts, sailors and soldiers too (that is, those who were able to work, for many lay prostrate with sickness and fear) to bale the ship. It was an endless task, for we were heavy-laden and the scuppers were awash. It would have gone hard with us I think had there been any kind of rain, but only that contrary wind that still drove us before it east, then west, so that, at times, it seemed we had drifted back where we started from. Even the elements conspired to warn us if I had but read the signs. At last, taking down almost all the sails, we crept forward with the currents and tide, and after many days saw the English shore bob into view. Nor was it easy coming to land through the surf, although Robert leapt and jumped with joy. I myself, when finally we were tied beside the jetty of the small English port, I scarcely could bear to move, the houses and ground still heaved about me so, and the very pier stones seemed as pliable as wax.

The first news on shore was cheerful. Having escaped the worst of the wind, Raoul and his ships had already reached safety, although blown off course as we had been. He had landed with no mishap save the loss of several barrels of wine, and as planned, had waited for me. A short wait only, for he had been forced to go on, had left me messages and an escort. The man who brought this news and led the escort was one of my dearest friends; nothing else could have pleased me more. His name was Geoffrey too—Sir Geoffrey of Sedgemont—once Lord Raoul's squire, now his seneschal. His fair head, his good-natured smile, were the first things I made out clearly when I could focus on anything. Now, Sedgemont is the place where I had grown to womanhood, and although I had never counted it my real home (that is at Cambray, where I was born), yet, as the years passed, I cannot deny Sedgemont and all it contained had become as dear to me. And Sir Geoffrey, then a squire of Lord Raoul's guard, and his wife had been my true and trusted companions. A good seneschal had Lord Raoul found in him, although so young; and he answered patiently while I questioned him about his life, his marriage, his children, two of them, a third expected, like to him, he swore, fair-haired, blue-eyed. And I questioned him too on how wagged the world and all our friends whom I longed to see at Sedgemont. Imagine then my surprise, dismay if you will, when I learned the rest of his message, namely that we were not to go there ourselves, but, sending Robert to the care of his wife, were to follow Lord Raoul directly to Cambray. For Raoul, having gone to Sedgemont from the coast, as he had planned, to call up his feudal vassals and their knights, had had to leave at once, disturbed by fresh tidings that took him fast toward the mustering grounds on the salt flats outside Chester, where in early July Henry was to meet his English army.

'For all of England is up in arms,' Sir Geoffrey explained while I fretted at this sudden change of plans. The king, they say, is like a child with a new toy. When he was Count of Anjou, and came fighting here in England, he had no such army at his beck and call; he had to hire his troops, his mercenaries. And they, as I well recall, are the most untrustworthy of men, harder to control than a runaway horse, wreaking damage if they fight or not, more damage truly when they do not fight. A feudal army is the king's own tool.' By which outburst you gather how much he cared for his king. He smiled his young and sheepish grin. 'And so,' he said, 'Lord Raoul should be at Chester to make sure the king gives the right orders at the right time. For Lord Raoul hopes Henry will forget that a feudal army serves only for so many days, then has the right to go back home.' He grinned once more. 'Though, for my part,' he said, 'I'd not mind seeing Wales again.'

At the look I gave, 'I remember it from former days,' he said, 'when I was at Cambray. You had some Celtic prisoners there; I used to like to speak with them. I learned their language and have longed to have the chance to practice it.' He tried to recite the phrases he knew; dear life, what a jumble he made of them to make me laugh.

'But why Cambray?' I asked.

At first he said, 'You should ask your noble lord that question, lady, I cannot tell.' Then, relenting somewhat, for as I have said, he was good-natured, ever eager to please, one of the kindest men, 'Lady Ann, the king has a need for border castles, so they say, and a liking for empty ones. Lord Raoul has asked that you and I together keep an eye on yours. This king has more tricks to him than a peddler at a fair, as well I know; his envoys are ever at Sedgemont's gates with this demand or that, this question to be answered, this right upheld. And lawyers they say in London town, clever enough to steal a man's head without his knowing, let alone his lands.'

Behind his jesting, I sensed a real concern, which presently, as we rode along toward Cambray, a good week's ride away, I questioned him about. He answered readily enough.

It seems that, on arriving in England, Henry had called a royal council in the east, in Suffolk, without alerting Raoul that is; and taking advantage of a dispute between two lords he had claimed, and taken, all their castles in the eastern part. Now, when he had become king, he had exercised his prerogative to 'dismantle' castles that he maintained had been illegally built. This royal order had already proved a cause of concern to many of the nobles, some of the greatest in the land. To claim castles now in his own right, to take them over as royal land, was a new and dangerous device. I could see Raoul's wisdom in having Cambray under close guard.

'As for this king,' Geoffrey went on, 'he is different from Stephen, there's no doubt. I am not the man to judge these things, but a king who thinks to govern of his own, make his own laws, turn his noble lords aside, he has taken on a thankless task. His lawyers argue he will rule by law, yet he tried to ruin Sedgemont out of spite. One day, I think there will be a reckoning between king's law and lord's law if he drives headlong against our feudal rights. And if he drives headlong into Wales, as Lord Raoul believes he will, we'll all come to grief.'

He looked sideways in that west country way I had missed. 'But there is a thing I'd like to see,' he said. We were riding along through a forest track as he spoke, through that great forest that stretches almost to the borderlands, and he had taken his hawk upon his wrist, for there were many game birds in the open glades. It moved restlessly on his glove as if upon a perch, and spread its wings, although its eyes were still covered with a hood. Sir Geoffrey soothed it by blowing water in its mouth, and smoothed its ruffled plumage with his ungloved hand.

'Do you remember. Lady Ann,' he said, 'the hawk that Lord Raoul caught and tamed? She was a Welsh falcon, I swear. The mews at Sedgemont has been empty these many years, one blind gerfalcon, one half-blind falconer, the two pensioned off. I should like to restock it. They say that Welsh falcons are the best of their breed. My wish, if it were granted me, would be to ride into those high mountains I once caught a glimpse of and find out where those falcons nest. They say the king had a falcon once,' almost shyly he spoke, for a man does not often reveal his inner thoughts, 'he swore it could outfly any bird. He loosed it on a Welsh one, perched on a cliff, and it, untamed, rose higher than the king's, struck down and tore it all to bits. Such a hawk I should like to find and tame, if such a savage bird can be tamed.'

I thought, God forbid that be an omen for these times. And I said, 'Another thing to steal from us?'

'Not steal,' he said, his round face crumpled into concern, 'God's life, I meant not ill. By the Mass, I am no thief. But a wild thing is anyone's prey I think, nor does it belong to anyone, being free. It is not easy to climb into a wild bird's nest, easy enough if we had wings, but I should like to try. They say those rocky cliffs go into the clouds, but above the clouds there are still higher cliffs, and a man who climbs there feels one with the birds.' He blushed to the roots of his fair hair.

'Now rot my tongue,' he said. I have no wish to war nor steal upon the Celts, but I would see their lands again.'

'And if they fight,' I said, 'who will win?'

Again came that worried frown. 'Lady Ann,' he said, 'I cannot speak treason. Yet I think, like their hawks, those Welsh will fight the fiercer being free. They love their freedom and will die for it. Even in those Celtic prisoners I spoke of, I noted that. But Lord Raoul will prevail against the king. And we, no more unpleasant talk, we'll hunt awhile and you can see how this bird flies.' He loosed the lure, rode out merrily after her, as if we were hawking along the woodlands near Sedgemont. And so, presently, I rode after him, the June morning, for we were now well into June, like liquid gold, flowing round us in the sun. And so, with good cheer and company, he led the way toward Cambray.