Shield of Three Lions (69 page)
Read Shield of Three Lions Online
Authors: Pamela Kaufman
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Middle Eastern, #Historical, #British & Irish, #British, #Genre Fiction, #Historical Fiction
Rage at Richard overwhelmed my immediate concern.
“He
said that of
me?
How dare he! If you could have seen him weeping when he discovered the truth! Seen how he almost killed me! He thought you put me up to fooling him! Did he tell you that as well?”
“Boot I didna knaw …”
Now I was so angry that I no longer cared what happened. “Even so, suppose I had been the king’s lover. You took doxies night and day, aye, right under my nose so that at times I had no place to bed. But did I ever accuse you?”
“Boot I’m a man!”
“We were brothers! Took an oath to let the other do as he pleased in love.”
“We couldna be brothers whan ye were a girl.”
“Why not? So I lost one bulge and gained two others, my character is the same! My mind! My heart! Alex is Alix, I am I!”
“And both Alex and Alix be a fool, say I, yif ye think the placement of bulges doesna matter. Men air not the same and therefore our behavior canna be the same. I have such desires ye canna dream of.” He almost choked, leaned his forehead to the wall.
I recalled my boiling liver in Paris but thought it best not to argue the point.
“So because I’m female, I’m besmirched by love. Is that what you mean?”
For a moment he was struck dumb, then tried to reply in his strangled voice. “Yif ye
loved
King Richard, I canna make complaint, I grant ye.”
I turned away from him, agitated. Gruoth’s plaintive song rose and I sought a message in its throbbing notes.
Then, behind me, Enoch spoke again, his question tinged with dread. “Tell me soothly Alix.
Did ye love Richard?”
I took a long deep breath.
“Not in
that way
,” I answered with absolute conviction. There was no time now to explain exactly what I’d felt, but I kenned that my future happiness depended upon persuading Enoch of my innocence. “He wore sweet woodruff as my father did, even looked like my father, and after the Rhône he said he was willing to be my parent. I clung to him because I couldn’t bear to lose another father.”
“Boot ye could bear to lose a brother. When ye did lose the king, ye didna cum to me; ye tried to escape me forever.”
“Only because I knew you were following me,” came words deep from inner recesses. “I knew you’d sought passage on Philip’s ship.”
“Ye knew I followed, aye, but ye ran wi’ all yer might.” His inexorable logic followed.
More and more affrighted by his power of argument, I became foolhardy. “You blithering idiot, I would never try to get away permanently. We fought a game of bones between us from the first hour we met, as you well know, but underneath I never wanted to win the roll. Why do you think I almost died when I thought you drowned? Why did I seek you in panic if I woke and found you gone? You know I never want to lose you! Haven’t I just offered to be a boy forever if you’ll stay? Please!”
There was a long silence. Gruoth no longer sang; only wind snarled in the courtyard below.
“Ye’re mast cunning when ye need me, Alix. Ye have a strong bent fer survival. How do I knaw that ye want me fer myself and not fer my skills in running Wanthwaite?”
“I want you for yourself, Enoch.” I took a deep breath and prepared
to use my last weapon. “I swear on our treasure buried in the fruit cellar.”
He stood still as a stone. Hadn’t he heard me? Or understood? My heart thumped in panic.
“Nay Alix,” he said at last, his voice muffled. “That no longer be the treasure I crave.”
Now I was suffocated by fear.
“I have nothing more to give. Except myself.”
I saw his teeth gleam in a sudden smile.
“Air ye still offering yerself as a boy?”
My lips trembled so it was hard to answer. “Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter. Whichever you prefer.”
His hand reached forth, caught a strand of my hair and wound it on his finger. “Don’t ye knaw?”
“Mmmm, no.” I could barely speak.
“Did ye ne’er notice how oft I suggested we bed doon early in Acre? I couldna wait to put my arms around ye.”
“I didn’t think …”
“Or how I found excuse to kiss yer bonny face when we greeted, when we said farewell, when angry or glad?”
“Maybe I did …”
“Waesucks, I was worriet sick that I might have caught the king’s complaint.” His hand went to my shoulder, pulled me forward a step. “Alix, yif I stay, ye mun be my wife. Do ye ken my meaning?”
Don’t think too hard, just do it. “Aye, aye,” I breathed.
“And I willna sleep on the floor again.” His voice was thick as velvet, and close.
My heart pounded in panic, victory, I know not what. Everything was moving so fast. Was this what I’d planned?
“I under—stand …”
“Alix, I love thee.”
The words hung like jewels.
“I love thee!”
He snuffed out the candle and I fell or was pulled into his arms.
“Would never leave thee, never. Or my heart would breist.”
I felt his heart drum against my cheek.
“Have yearned for thee night and day, canna bear one more instant …”
“Love,” I echoed faintly.
He pulled at himself and great shadowy birds flew in the rafters.
“Want you, love you …”
“Love,” I repeated giddily.
Then his lips were on mine, strange in their devouring passion, and ’twas hard to remember how well I knew him. Everything throbbed and thrummed around us and I couldn’t think at all. Then he picked me up in strong possessive arms, so like and unlike former times, and I tried to recall other instances so I wouldn’t be frightened but somehow couldn’t for this moment was too strong, and I thought I must swoon.
He laid me on the bed where I quaked with cold and fear. Now I learned that the flying birds had been his clothes and, gently, he began to remove mine.
“Don’t tremble, little love, for I adore thee soothly would never hurt thee. Ah, my dearworth gem, wi’ lips swater than any spice, swater than dews that donk the dunes …”
And I was warmed by his body which fit mine so perfectly and his kisses grew deeper, deeper, and an inner glow warmed me as well and all I knew was the contact between us, the center of everything.
“Oh, Alix, Alix,
there
…”
We were locked together, riding on Dere Street again, galloping harder and harder as the tangled trees whizzed above us and we panted in the effort to get where we were going, pounding, and I was suffused with wondrous joy as we came closer, closer and closer …
Fermented honey bubbles exploded all through me and I lay suspended in spreading sweetness.
I LOST ALL TRACK OF THE WORLD. Our bodies wearied, quickly revived, felt exhilaration after exhilaration such as I’d never imagined. We were cooing doves, busy bees, curious cats; we mixed sweet confession with bawdy laughter and seering ecstasy. And I was happy, aye, so happy I couldn’t bear my own joy. To think that we were wed!
That this would go on forever! Why had no one ever told me? Fortune’s Wheel whirled like a dervish.
Once, in a quiet moment while Enoch slept, I thought on Richard. I had denied him to Enoch, even as Judas had his Lord, and I sent a quiet prayer for forgiveness around the hostile globe to the king, wherever he might be. I pictured him lying under the flapping canvas of his pavilion in the winter rains, his body wrapped in cold steel instead of flesh-and-blood arms, and I pitied him with all my heart. ’Twas vain and toty for an insignificant lass to feel compassion for a great king, I knew, but for one brief period I had been privy to his heart and in some odd manner knew him better than anyone. Soothly he was the
enfant perdu par excellence
, lost from the cradle onward in a grim world of hatred, venomous rivalries and chilling rejection. By comparison, how fortunate I had been. Although I had lost those dearest to me, my father, mother, Maisry their love still resided here as long as I drew breath. And I saw in a great awesome revelation that even my present glorious love with Enoch had built on all those former loves, including my first intense passion for Richard. No, no love should ever be denied, nor could it die even if it were not to be consummated;
therefore, Richard, forgive me.
No sooner had I thought the words than the fur robe at the arched window billowed inward, bringing with it a breeze warm as springtime, redolent of blossoms, and a shimmering silver miasma floated across the room, then hovered directly over me. In awe, I recognized a stirring and knew that my soul had been restored. I was encapsulated in total silence, lost all sense of time or space, caught in a sweet peace I’d not felt since my father rode forth many years ago. Instantly I understood that my parents were now ready to depart for Heaven, had come to bid me final farewell, but without sadness, for we were connected by a cord of love which stretched forward and backward to all eternity.
I burrowed my face close to Enoch’s strong beating heart: and I was home at last.
My first published work was a short essay called “Why I Like to Read,” submitted by my third-grade teacher to
Scholastic magazine.
Since that time I have read so much, absorbed so many tales, legends and histories that I cannot, with any authority, separate what is original in my work and what is a pastiche of digested lore. So to all those fantasies that became a part of me, and to the people who recounted them, I am deeply grateful.At a more conscious level, I would like to give special recognition to a selected few of the many works that stimulated and informed my imagination during the writing of
Shield of Three Lions.
In the first chapter of Susan Brownmiller’s
Against Our Will
there was a brief description of the medieval rape laws. I pursued her references, read further on my own and finally discovered the seminal work for me:
Tractabus de legibus
by Ranulf de Glanvill, written in the twelfth century of Henry II. Of the many useful biographies, I should mention
Richard the Lion Heart
by Kate Norgate,
Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings
by Amy Kelly and
England Without Richard
by J. T. Appleby Histories of the Third Crusade were kept by the royal historians and commentaries were written by their Arab counterparts; I was particularly influenced by
The Crusade of Richard Lion-Heart
by Ambroise and translated from the Old French by Merton Jerome Herbert. The fine books on the medieval background are endless in number but the most important is
Daily Living in the Twelfth Century
by Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. The author loosely translates one of the most informative works written during the period,
De nominibus utensilium
by Alexander Neckham. Neckham, milk-brother to Richard I, had a vigorous curiosity which he applied to every aspect of life. He traveled
from Oxford to Paris where he studied, then returned to serve in the Plantagenet Court. Even writers of his own day quote him extensively. Ultimately of course, literature itself was my best source. The period comes to life in the poignant lyrics, bawdy drinking songs, troubadour poetry and the works of Chaucer and William Dunbar.I also visited the locations of the novel. I lived in Northern England, made rambling forays across the border, talked to Cumberland “roughs” to learn their folklore; I went to Paris, Chinon, Poitiers, Marseilles, Italy and Greece, where the old Norman Empire has left its traces.
Many of my friends, colleagues and family contributed to the book both directly and indirectly: My departments at Californian Lutheran College and Santa Monica College granted me leave of absence to get the work under way; Dr. Alfred E. Longuiel, Professor of English at U.C.L.A., guided me through Chaucerian literature; then Dr. C. Warren Hollister, Professor of Medieval History at the University of California at Santa Barbara, suggested portions of the Northumberland sequence; Historian Bruce Coy read the military sections; Dorothy Seligman, Gabriel Coy, and Damiana Chavez made further valuable contributions. When the manuscript was almost finished, my agents, Richard Curtis and Susan Cohen, supplied the necessary enthusiasm and expertise to get it a proper reading. Finally, I had the great good fortune to work with a perceptive, sensitive editor in Lisa Healy.
However, it was my husband Charles A. Kaufman who provided indispensable assistance. Not only did he urge me to write and make it possible for me to do so, but he gave generously of his own professional skills to guide me through the inchoate world of writing. An author himself, he knew when to support, when to criticize, when to tell me to risk. For his patience, his intelligence, his loving tenacity, there are no words to express my gratitude to Charlie.
