Gifts of the Queen (6 page)

Raoul had sent some men upon the walls to tear down the chains and carry away the things that hung within until a priest could be found to give them decent burial; a sad slow business that, that made us all in pity or in anger cross ourselves. Others rode back to the villages we had passed earlier in the day and returned with food and provisions, and best of all, with some of the villagers from Sieux itself.

They had not fled as lesser folk might have done, but locked themselves stoutly in their homes to see what manner of men we were. Their spokesman, a burly, bearded fellow with a limp, was swift to welcome Lord Raoul's return, loud in his condemnation of King Henry's men, those Angevins, whose attacks he had endured before. For they had not spared the village either, had looted and burned what they could, had rioted as soldiers will when there is no real work for them to do, had taken the village girls for their sport.

As for the castle, there had survived at least one man from the attack. He had crawled into the river reaches to die and been rescued and hidden by the villagers, to their credit and greater peril. They brought him in a litter, still not recovered from the spear thrusts that had laid him low, and he wept, tears rolling slowly down his cracked cheeks, when he told how Henry and his men had breached the wall. He made no attempt to wipe away his grief, but explained in slow, painful words how the Angevins had come upon them, surrounded them a whole long month. Inside the castle were thirty or so men, trained and ready, veterans all, who, although not discounting the danger, had expected to survive it, for the Angevins had several times tried to capture Sieux and had never before succeeded . These guards then, having food and water in plenty, were not unduly alarmed. All they had to do was keep watch and wait.

But perhaps there were too few of them, or perhaps, having come to know the castle, the Angevin army had had time to reassess its strengths and weaknesses. They had mined one of the walls by night, stealthily, under cover of noise and singing from their camp. They could not work by day, there being no natural way to shield their digging, but had taken pains to hide all their workings underground. The place was a blind angle not easily overseen from the castle walls. With sappers then the Angevins had uncovered the foundations, lit fires to heat the rock to bursting and, thus blowing away part of the surrounding wall, had made a gap large enough for them to pour through.

We could not hold them, my lord,' the wounded man said—more than once he repeated it as if the saying gave him comfort. 'What can thirty do against a hundred? With Henry at their head, they overran us even before we could gain the keep. Most of us died then, praise God. Better to die with sword in hand than strung up like beef.'

He was silent after that, face turned away, eyes closed, and Lord Raoul sat by his side for a long time. It was the village spokesman who finished the tale, explaining how, having won the castle he had long coveted, Henry left for England, and how, having passed a year within the keep, the remaining Angevin soldiers suddenly, this past autumn, had begun to tear down the walls. They summoned up all manner of lawless men, vagrants, outlaws, to do the work, the remnants of whom we had just surprised. The villagers had refused, or rather, since peasants have no say in what they will or will not do if they have no just lord to speak for them, had worked so slowly, so bungled the task, that the Angevins had despaired of finishing it. And then, when the walls were almost down, they had dragged out the castle guard.

'A deed most foul,' the villager said, 'most foul to slaughter men who had done no wrong, save fight for what was their sworn lord's right. Those murderers got no cry for mercy though.' He sighed and spat. 'Defiance at the end. Our priest stood there at the furthest part where all could see him.' He indicated a place with his thumb, on the far side of the ravine. 'He read the prayers for the dead and shrived each one, until he was silenced too with an arrow in his throat. Traitors, they named our men, traitors to Henry of Anjou, who now is Henry of Normandy, and King of England.' He spat again. One man called out before they threw him over that there was no lord here but he who was rightly Count of Sieux. And so, my lord, we are glad to have you back where you belong. Although they killed some of us for their pleasure and stole what they could find, they did not get all the harvest grain. We keep it hidden, as well you know; each year, we store some in a secret place for such emergency as this. We have tilled what we could. There will be a harvest, not much, but enough. As for the vines,' he shrugged, the gesture so like the one his lord often made that I almost remarked upon it, 'it will take time for them to grow back. But with you here, you'll give us time.'

This then was better news than could be hoped. When Cambray had been taken by the Celts, the villagers had run away, everything had become overgrown, farmland turned to waste. On the other hand, at Cambray we had had shelter and defense, and we had not the thought of dead comrades, hanged for spite.

It was a subdued meal we made, no jests, no songs, each man deep in his own thoughts. Soon there was silence, except for the customary sounds of camp and watch. Raoul and I shared a small space against an inner pile of stone. The grass that grew there was dry and the stone still held some heat. We had spread cloaks about us as much for privacy as warmth and lay there sleepless. Raoul said little. Now he was stretched upon his back, his shoulder against his saddle, one hand clasped behind his head. The weather had cleared as I hoped, a moon had come up, bigger and clearer than any I had seen. In its light, his face had taken on a shuttered look, remote, closed off. It was a look I remembered—it hid his thoughts from all the world. And I remembered too how, in these past years, he had given lands and youth, all he had, in loyalty to a king who had not kept faith with him. He was twenty-six years old, not old but not so young as he had been when first he served King Stephen. In the course of the years between, he had suffered exile, beggary, imprisonment, and had risked death. The only thing left to him untouched was honor. And loyalty, which, having pledged its word, he would not go back on. I thought, in all things else, his wife should at east be a consolation to him. Yet there are men who do not welcome help from women and he was such a one. And he had been forced to marry me. It would be difficult to break through his guard. Yet it must be tried.

I said, 'My lord, this is a grief to you.'

He gritted out, through clenched teeth as if the words stung, 'I did not bring you here for this.'

I could understand that. What man cares to seem helpless, unable to defend his family, friends? He had suffered great loss before. Could not I fill the void for him?

'At least we have each other,' I ventured. 'For me, it is not as before, not knowing where you were, whether you were still alive.'

He did not answer. I thought that I must goad him into speech, else his silence would drown us.

'Sieux can be rebuilt,' I said.

Silence.

'It must be rebuilt,' I cried. 'Castles have been taken and destroyed. And rebuilt. Friends have died and been avenged.'

Then he did turn to me, the moonlight glinting in his eyes.

'And how,' he said, his voice ominously low, 'shall we do it? "Must" is a hard word, lady wife.'

There are ways.' Yet his expression frightened me. If he did not think it could be done, no man could. But he had at least replied. That gave me hope.

I said, 'I do not think it will be easy. Who ever thought a castle could be built overnight?'

'It can be overthrown in one,' he said.

'There must be men to build it up once more.'

'Again, that "must," ' he said. 'There are no "musts" here lady. You prate as if a child. Soldiers, peasants, cannot build up walls. Men are paid to do it, stoneworkers masons, skilled about their craft. Or your siege masters—there are your best builders of all.'

'Where are there such builders?' I interrupted him.

'In the towns,' he said, 'there you would find them.'

'Then go to the towns,' I said. 'Bid them take work here. Are there not quarries among the cliffs where stone can be found?'

At that, he did laugh, a sharp, short sound, as if mocking at himself. 'Aye,' he said, 'there are quarries here no doubt, although overgrown. We have not had need of stone at Sieux these many years. And masons in the town, also no doubt, who, if they will spare the time from their chapel building, could build a castle for me here. But you did not heed me. There are men to do it, but they must be paid.'

'Paid?' I said, the idea new to me. 'How paid?'

'With coin,' he said almost impatiently, 'gold or silver, they care not which. They are townfolk,' he said, as if that said it all. When still I did not understand, he added, 'Men who have their own laws and customs, who live outside the feudal ones. They need no overlord to act for them; they have their own guilds to protect them and select a master to speak for them. And they hire themselves out for pay, having no duties else, no overlord. To "bid" them come here as you suggest, to order it, stands outside possibility. Even if I brought them here as prisoners, I could not get them to work. And to hire them . . . have you forgot how little I have left?'

At that, I was silent in my turn. I had know of it, of course, have I not just said he had been beggared by these wars. But knowing does not always mean understanding. I had come from a small fief, but even I had felt the lack of revenues when Cambray had been captured early on.

I tried to remember how the accounts of Cambray were kept. Dylan, the seneschal, would have them in his charge. Upon a certain day in the autumn months, at his command, a man who could read and number would unroll the great scroll where the records were kept, would read out each serf's name, have him pay his dues, work and goods in return for protection. That is the feudal law, the feudal way. So many sacks of grain, of flour already milled, so many heads of sheep or cattle, so many hours of work in field or barn or castle guard, in return for a lord's watch and ward. But when peasants cannot work the fields, when the harvest is not planted or reaped, when the cattle is lost or stolen, what revenues should a lord get? The wars that had stripped my little estate of all its wealth had stripped Sedgemont likewise. Moreover, Raoul had freed many of his men at Sedgemont. Knowing that Henry would brand him as traitor, he had wished to spare his men the same fate. It must rub deeply that he could not have spared his men at Sieux. But, in any case, most of his wordly goods had gone to provide for those who would have been destitute without him. The rest Henry had taken or had demanded as relief or tax when he had restored Raoul to his lands and given him title of earl. A relief unfairly levied, the tax having been paid already when Raoul had first inherited upon his grandfather's death.

‘How little I have left,' he said. I had not really known what that meant. I was used to so little myself, I had not thought that a lord might feel the need so keenly. What lord, however low, who does not carry his purse openly to scatter alms to the poor? What lord, however low, who does not like to ride out with his men well equipped, his horses sound and matching, his armor blazing with his colors? Some lords would squeeze more from the peasant; force their payments, but Raoul was not the man, nor I the woman, to steal more than our rightful share. And, I thought, my Norman ladies were at least right in this, and I the fool not to have minded for him, that we rode out like out-casts and lodged like paupers. And I thought as well, but even so, there must be some way.

Perhaps he was thinking it, too. For at last he said slowly. There is one hope.'

He turned toward me on his sound side. The moor caught his eyes again, how they gleamed, and a new timbre was in his voice. I felt resolution flooding through him. He said, The baggage train. Tomorrow, or the day after it will come. There's our gold.'

I must have stared at him, because he laughed, amusement creeping back as he spoke.

He said, 'In the town, there are men who would barter for coin what I could sell: saddles, spare armor, horses.' He smiled, 'Iron spurs serve as well as gold, plain saddles as well as fancy ones. What we can sell at their fair we will.'

'But Raoul,' I almost hesitated to say it, what knight is there who does not wear his golden spurs, what squire so humble that he does not hope to keep his second horse? But I would not mention that, rather I hoped to keep him talking to raise his spirits and so raise mine.

'And those builders, which ones are best?' I asked.

He said, 'It is true about the siege masters. I meant it for a jest, but it is true the best castle builders in Normandy have been the men who knew how best to tear them down. Geoffrey of Anjou, this Henry's father, was one, my grandfather, Raymond, who built Sedgemont, another. And your father, Falk, who built Cambray. Think, how was Cambray built?'

Again I stared at him. 'Of stone,' I said at last.

'Yes, yes,' he said almost impatiently, 'but in what manner?'

He pulled himself to his feet, clumsily, limped to the fire and thrust a torch into the embers to make them flare up, bright as day. The men who had been on watch turned to look at us, black silhouettes against the silver sky, then moved on, recognizing who we were. But what Raoul had to say was for all his men.

‘Look here,' he was saying, 'here and here.'

With a sweep of the torch that illuminated the litter of stones, he went to where the larger ones had been tumbled down and stuck the torch between the cracks.

‘And where,' he said, 'Hell's teeth, think, where did Falk get the stones along that benighted borderland? Where could he find men to quarry stone or shape and fit it?'

‘He found the stones,' I said, almost stupidly, 'there was a fortress built before, he took the stones from that.'

‘Yes,' he said, 'so he used stones that had been used before. Roman stones a thousand years old. Now look here, and here.'

The rest of his men, who had been sleeping, or lying as we had been, brooding and remembering, were stirring now, coming toward us. Like us, they had bedded where they could, stripped down to shirt or tunic for comfort's sake. Their tired faces with the stubble of beards show suddenly intent and watchful in the harsh light.