Gifts of the Queen (4 page)

He had ignored the words, concentrated rather on my way of speaking them. He had ever been quick to catch hypocrisy.

'Now, by the Mass,' said he, 'that is a fair speech, as fair as any courtier at Henry's court. Well said indeed. Is that how your honey tongue sweetened Henry's plan for me and persuaded him to give you as my bride? Henry had not a wedding in mind before I came to London. Was it your Celtic charms, your long red hair, or your smile, which you have yet to show me today, that made him decide to give me the fairest maid in the land? Was that why the queen loaded our baggage train with gifts for you, so my men and I must lug them along?'

As he spoke, his left arm was already stealing about my waist, under cover of the cloak. It embarrassed me that here, with all eyes watching us, he should show such familiarities. And yet, too, I thought how his men had named him long ago—Two-Handed Raoul, not only because he could fight with left hand as well as right, but also because he could hold a woman in either arm. He had wed me, it was true, because King Henry had bade him to, and for that other reason still hid from the world. But I did not like to hear him jest of these things, and I had hid my pregnancy for so long for fear of Henry's rage that I could not even now bring myself easily to speak of it. When I did not answer, he shrugged, a habitual gesture that must have caused him pain.

Come, come, your answers used to give me better sport,' was all he said. 'Do not pretend to have turned prude like those maids of yours. If maids they be, which I doubt, being Norman ladies at a king's court. What shall I do to make you smile? What if I tell you that we are close to Sieux?'

I caught my breath. Here then was the explanation for the excitement I had sensed. Perhaps he took my silence for concern. Although I had tried never to let word of distress fall in his hearing, yet in truth this month had not been easy for me.

He fumbled with his left hand beneath his tunic and pulled out a roll of parchment which he spread between us on the straw. It was some kind of chart. I had never seen its like, with thin blue lines for rivers, green for forests, small rounded hills whose names were written in fine cramped letters of red. I cannot read, but he could show me where our journey led.

'Past these hills, marked so, along the river where it widens into a lake, then round the cliff point. Here stand the towers of Sieux.' He marked the spot with his nail, midway down the page.

My first thought was that the chart looked so small, my whole hand could cover it. He may have sensed what I thought, for he put his hand over mine and, for a moment, I felt the roughness of his palm, the long strong fingers that could be gentle when he wished. The strength of that left hand was warm and comforting.

'Not so small,' he said, and his eyes were gray, his head close to my own, 'that this does not show all the kingdom of France. Here be the lands of the French king, Louis himself, which we have skirted round, and here are those of King Henry of England, his lands in Normandy, Anjou and Maine, which he inherited when his father died. And here is Aquitaine which he acquired when he married with his duchess, Eleanor, who now is England's queen. And here is Sieux set betwixt and between. A gateway are we, like that gate behind my back, to let men through from north or south.'

But I scarce heard his words, looked where his thumbnail rested. Suddenly, it was only Sieux that looked small, a nail's breadth, surrounded on all sides by enemies.

He must have sensed my shudder of dismay.

'No danger now,' he said. 'They would have attacked before this. They will not dare march against me on my own lands within sight and sound of my own castle guard at Sieux. But a few more days and our journey will be done. Unless,' he was rolling up the parchment as he spoke, 'unless you think to ride on alone with me and some of my men. Without the burden of the slower foot soldiers, the baggage carts, and your womenfolk, we could reach Sieux tonight. You would not miss your womenfolk this once? God's wounds, they wail like waterspouts upon the hour, with every day a fresh downpour.' He smiled again. 'I cannot say a bath would come amiss, nor yet a dry bed, nor yet a wife to share it with.'

He rubbed his sound hand across his face. He usually wore no beard, but water and time for shaving had become luxuries. His jerkin and woolen cloak, like mine, were mud-stained and travel-worn. But when he smiled, a glint shone beneath the weariness.

I said with some asperity, to hide the thoughts that leapt in me, 'I am used, as you know, to care for myself. I have no need of women servants.'

'I know well,' he said with a grin, 'how you manage on your own. But you will not mind?'

His second asking unnerved me. I was not yet used to such courtesies. It was not until he repeated it a third time that I understood what prompted his concern.

We shall ride over rough paths. You will promise me,' and again his hand was back about my waist, 'that you will not come to harm. I would not have your son dropped untimely on his head. But one day more and you shall come safely home.'

His arm had tightened about my waist. It was not so thick yet, nor so slender as he would have remembered it. I stiffened at his words and against my will, the blushes flared. I did not want that knowledge aired abroad, certainly not to my ladies for their gossiping. Besides I could have laughed at him. He should know the child was not due yet.

When I did not answer, he shrugged in his way, bid his pages spread a path of straw for me to walk on, and turned to his men to give command: this one was to ride with him, this one to stay, the baggage carts, those cumbersome, great wooden carts that bogged to their axles in mud at every turn, were to go another route, longer but easier. I left him bareheaded in the drizzle and hurried up the stairs to the hostile little room. My ladies were in sour mood, nothing new for them, and their spokeswoman. Mistress Alyse de Vergay, to give her full name as she preferred, an older, ill-satisfied woman, ill-favored, ill-tongued, was already advancing. Flaxen plaits a-swing, mouth screwed up tight, her beringed fingers were outstretched to tick off grievances as she numbered them.

‘Last night,' she said, as she had said each day; I scurried into my clothes by myself, knowing her words by heart, grateful for distraction which would prevent her helping me. 'Last night we slept on straw flea-ridden.'

She rolled up her silk sleeve to show me the marks on her plump white skin. 'And made do with stale bread and mutton, rank enough for villein's fare. We are used to our own feather beds, carried before us and aired each day.

Bolsters of goose-down we need, and fur wraps against this cold. I did not think to travel like vagabonds without a stitch to our backs.'

'Ermine fur,' breathed one of the others, peeping over her shoulder. But even I knew that to be a sign of nobility 'Why cannot the baggage train be unstrapped for us each night? Why cannot we find place to stay as our rank demands? Why cannot. . .' and so forth and so on, Alyse de Vergay's voice shrilled. When my squire brought word that Lord Raoul awaited me, a new outbreak of her yapping sent me running for the yard.

'We are not used to such unseemly haste,' she screamed behind me and the others muttered it, like chorus, to echo her words. 'It is not fitting for a lady to ride alone. We are not used to such country ways. And you, you are not used to lady's wants. You are new-wed and should be advised by us; you are not Norman born and do not know our customs nor our needs.'

I waited grimly in the stable yard while my squires brought up my mount, a palfry, quiet enough for a woman more than five months gone with child. Such chaperons as the Norman ladies would drive me wild, and certainly make me regret such resolutions for discretion and obedience to my lord's wishes, as I had vowed on our wedding day. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the squires heave Mistress Alyse upon her horse. She was plump with long fair hair and cornflower blue eyes that stared out in a round white face. I had seen such eyes once before, the stare if not the color, in a wall-eyed horse that my father had killed for madness sake. Her fat buttocks swathed in blue silk caught the saddle rim with a jolt. I glimpsed the flicker of a grin run through the men. They had felt the rough edge of her tongue often enough. They disliked her, I knew, as much as I did. I edged my horse out of her sight to avoid a further deluge of distress. Neither she nor any of the other women would willingly keep up with us. You would think it was hardship enough for them to ride at all—litters they wanted, and men to haul them over the roughest parts, although I think in general Alyse de Vergay complained for effect. I had seen her ride fast when there was need. However, I was not even sure I could endure a hard ride myself. But to reach Sieux safely would be worth the pain. And for Lord Raoul to return there, restored to lands and castle and titles, that would be a satisfaction for him. I did not intend to hinder him. Today I knit up my skirts about my knees and rode astride as troopers do, for all my women's clacking at the sight.

‘Mount, man, mount,' Lord Raoul roared at one knight who had misfortune to have got off his horse for some private last minute talk with a local wench.

The standard-bearer unfurled the flag, the gold hawks floated behind on their field of red. We thundered out of the gateway, the last man still scrambling into his high-backed saddle as we went. My squires and I were swept up in the midst. The local women sighed and waved their kerchiefs at us, the most noble group ever to have graced their little world, although we did not look so fine for all our titles and rank. (Most lusty, too, I suspect. Our men were not so weary that they would not have sought out some companionship at the day's end). My own women glowered, but I was free of them, could ride as once, long ago, I had ridden with men.

So that is how I came to be riding alone with Lord Raoul and a few chosen knights, and that is how we came in the evening mists to the river at Sieux. The paths had been rough, but not too difficult, even for me who was with child, for I had been used to horses since I could walk and today I had good cause for pleasure in such a ride. We had come through those hills that he had shown me on the chart, unnamed hills that only a man bred among them could have known, and although he rode fast (the baggage train could never have lumbered up and down those rocks), yet often today he paused to point out some narrow stream or stand of trees that served as landmarks on the way.

Never before had he time for that. And seeing him now suddenly eager as a boy, with a boy's enthusiasm for where he was, I realized the strain he had been living with, long before our marriage day, long before King Stephen's death. For although Raoul had served King Stephen well, fought for him loyally. King Stephen had not always kept faith with Raoul, and at the end, had betrayed Raoul to Henry's revenge. Once I had asked Raoul what he would do if the civil wars should cease, thinking that he would say he hoped they would never end, for he was young then and had been chosen as King Stephen's champion, an honour to which all young knights might aspire. I had surprised him into revealing what was in his mind. 'Why, I should go back to France,' he had said, 'back to my home at Sieux. Today, many times, perhaps unconsciously, he had revealed this same desire. And when he reined back the black stallion into step with my palfry to explain where we were, to show me how he had once climbed a cliff, and, caught by a landslide, been trapped on a ledge, or retell how, under that large stand of beech trees, he had flushed his first deer, I caught again that sense of anticipation and excitement which had set this day apart.

When we paused for a hasty meal of bread and wine, 'Praise God,' I heard one man say, 'tonight we drink the wines of Sieux. This tastes like horse's piss.' And he spat more in sorrow than anger—well, as I have explained, if any men deserved tonight to rest at ease, these men did.

While they ate, Raoul took me by the hand and led me to another outcrop of rock. From its top, I could see clearly what that chart had showed, the rounded hills behind us, the valley below, the distant thread of a river, silver-blue among the green.

'There is the river of Sieux,’ Raoul said. 'Westward, it flows to the Atlantic Sea; eastward, it widens into a lake. And beyond the lake stands the castle of Sieux. The land before you is all Sieux land.'

Those words had a strange impact upon me. I almost closed my eyes. He betrayed such unconscious pride when he spoke. And suddenly what had been a nail's breadth on the chart widened out into reality; real river, real meadows, real trees, a real castle where I must learn to live and conduct myself as its fitting mistress. That thought was a frightening one and for the first time my ladies' jeers hit hard. I was not used to such land or such wealth. I did not know how to be countess of so much. Perhaps Raoul guessed something of my thoughts; he was a generous man, loyal to his friends, more so than any man that I have ever known. Surely he would remember that, although I might not be used to Norman ways, nor be an heiress like that lady he could have wed, yet I had stood by him when he was outlawed by the king; I had gone to plead for his life; I had not failed him as a friend.

‘The castle of Sieux is old,' he was explaining, 'strong-built. Its towers are famous, like two tall masts on a pointed prow above the cliff face. Its main hall is all of fifty feet, of stone, but its rafters are of oak, dark and old. They say the timbers came from a Viking boat. When my ancestors rowed here, upriver from the open sea, they made their first fort where they had beached their long -ship. And when they built a stone keep to take the place of their wooden fort they used those same wood beams to roof their hall. Those Viking lords were thrifty men, wasting nothing, taking all.'

His words conjured up a day when that quiet landscape below had been rent by war and death. So might yet Henry's men come after us. He clasped his good hand on my shoulder.

‘That was centuries ago,' he said, comforting. 'And Henry's men too are long since gone. You must not fear Henry, Ann. There is a rhyme that all know here. Remember it when you feel afraid.'