Succession (17 page)

They travelled first in a boat, then a carriage. Betsy clung to her most of the way, convinced that at any moment they would be killed and eaten, for the men of Wales were all cannibals, she said. Or shape-shifters, turning into wolves at night and howling at the moon. And there were some, she said, as they passed through a dark ravine overhung by rock, that didn’t change shape at all, but always had the bodies of men and the heads of dogs, and lived in little villages where the houses were like kennels, clustered together in a pack. And all day long they went about their work, scything and brewing and herding sheep, just like humans, only when you got up close you could see the fearful fangs and bristles, the long, lolloping tongues.

They passed through a forest, which stirred and moaned as the wind blew. Leaves rustled and black branches dripped overhead. When a fox barked, her nurse cried, ‘Save us!’, and at the call of the screech owl she clasped her hands round Margaret’s ears, and Margaret felt at once the thrill of fear and the assurance of God’s protection, for at that time she thought that the amount of time she spent in prayer bore a direct relationship to the amount of protection God would give. And so she took Betsy’s hands from her ears – they were very cold, and trembling – and told her not to worry, they would say their prayers together. And Jesus would protect them both.

On the other side of the forest there was a landscape of black slate, spindly trees made ghostly by cloud, and scraggy sheep perched on the crags. Then came the first settlements, a few huts clinging to the base of the mountains, and Betsy clapped her hands over Margaret’s eyes this time for fear that she would see the dog-headed men. But when she prised her nurse’s fingers open Margaret
could see only a muddy old woman bent almost double to the earth, and a younger man, bent forward similarly, carrying sticks.

The road was bumpy and uneven, and her nurse complained that all their bones would be broken. But even she stopped complaining when they saw the sea.

As soon as she laid eyes on it, Margaret understood how the land was haunted by the sea; a silent grey expanse, dissolving into sky. Between earth and sky there was a no-land of mist where the sun and moon glowed palely, exactly similar in size and luminosity. As they drew closer, she saw that the sea was not still, but like a great grey muscle, swelling and contracting around the earth, glistening and sleek. Then that it wasn’t grey, but shifting rapidly between one colour and another. As they veered off the coastal road, she twisted round in her seat as far as she could, trying to keep the sea in her eyes.

Now the landscape was windswept and treeless, with scattered farmsteads and strange black cattle, then there were trees once more, and a grey town spilling from the trees, and finally, jutting into an estuary, a tower of grey stone. It reared above the town and cast its shadow like a spine along the straggling streets. Trees clustered round the walls and great circular towers surmounted them.

Pembroke Castle. Here she would meet Edmund at last, and they would stay a little while until a new home was prepared.

It was no home, but a fortress. She knew immediately that she would not want to live here. Their carriage rose up a steep path to a massive gatehouse. A steward met them, and then the great gates opened, and there, beyond them, was an immense line of servants.

But it was Jasper who came out to greet them, stern, sallow-faced and gaunt. He welcomed them stiffly; Edmund wasn’t there, he said, but he would be back soon.

He was quelling riots in the surrounding hills and valleys. Some of the local people had organized themselves into armed gangs who lived in the hills, raiding cattle, setting fire to the lands of the English lords. But she was not to worry, he told her, seeing a shade of anxiety cross her face. The Welsh people loved Edmund and
were loyal to him. They looked to him to bring peace to their divided nation. Many sought his lordship and had flocked to his affinity. He was their one great hope, because Edmund’s father was Welsh, yet he was half-brother to the English king. And Jasper, too, of course. But already the bards were composing songs to Edmund; their golden-haired warrior, radiant as a shining shield, fleet as a stag or the wind’s breath.

Jasper smiled stiffly. His own hair was thinning and brown.

He had a note for her, from Edmund.

My own swete Lady Margrete
, it said.
Of your grete curteyse forgyve me my absence. I will cherish the moment that we may mete, by the grace of God …

She folded up the note, suppressing her feelings of dismay. Did she really have to stay here with Jasper?

Jasper was watching her with a quizzical expression on his face.

Was that when she first decided she did not like him?

She had to walk past the long line of servants, who looked at her with curiosity, pity or amusement. She was so small, their new mistress, looking younger, even, than her twelve years. She walked as tall as she could and stared into each of their faces until, in some cases at least, the amusement or pity disappeared.

There was food in the great hall – salmon stuffed with wild berries, a plate of eels – though Margaret hardly ate at all. And then they were shown to their rooms. Betsy had a separate, small room, with a truckle bed, though she soon abandoned it. ‘Not for my old bones,’ she said, and Margaret was glad not to be left alone. So she slept with her nurse, in the large oak bed.

And in the morning Jasper showed them round the castle. Spray blew up almost to the castle walls and the seagulls circled and cried against a sulphurous sky.

The great keep was five storeys high; you could see the whole county from its dome.

‘This tower and the walls make the castle impregnable,’ Jasper said. ‘We could withstand any siege for more than a year. Because of the keep and this other thing – I will show you.’

He took them down the stairs again to a vast cavern set deep in the rock beneath the castle, a shelter for cave-dwellers since the dawn of time.

‘No other fortress has this,’ he said, looking almost happy, or as happy as Jasper ever looked. ‘People say that on the eighth day, God’s finger pressed into the earth at this point, forming the cavern, and at the same time a great voice spoke, saying where the fortress of Pembroke was to be.’

Bones had been found there, and tools from ancient men, yet now it was used mainly for storage.

‘This is where we would take refuge under siege,’ he said, but Margaret shuddered at the thought of hiding in this dank and dripping place.

The steward of the castle lived in the gatehouse with his family, Jasper in his private mansion to one side. In the inner ward there was the chancery with its justices and clerks, and also a chapel and kitchens, workshops for carpenters and masons. There were stables and pens full of livestock, and a dovecote containing pigeons for winter meat. And a dungeon tower. Until recently there had been a man, John Whithorne, who was imprisoned in the dungeon at the bottom of the tower for seven years and more. He had lost the sight of both eyes and suffered other incurable ills. They could see the dungeon room through a grille, which would have been the only access of light to that prisoner. All those years he would have been close enough to the kitchens and halls to hear the noises of the castle, feasting and toil, and at the thought of it Margaret was stricken with a piercing sorrow, for she had not yet become hardened to the misery of the world.

They stayed in the castle for several days, waiting for Edmund. Each day Margaret and Betsy walked the walls, which were patrolled by guards, but there was little to do. It was not her own household and she could not give orders, or even familiarize herself with the working of it, though as they passed through the kitchens she watched people pounding herbs, or making soap from fat and lye, or scouring dishes with sand.

All the time she was building up a vision of Edmund in her mind: handsome, heroic, the subject of epic lays. He would take her from the castle, and her whole life would be transformed, though she did not know when, or how. But the consciousness of him followed her around; in her mind he was following her with his gaze.

Then one day she was reading her copy of Aesop’s fables in the garden, when a shadow fell across her, and she looked up and there was a tall man bending forward.

She could not see him properly because of the sun, yet she knew who he was. He dropped on to one knee before her, and her heart quickened. She looked round automatically for her nurse, who was beaming and making gestures that signalled to Margaret she should curtsy.

But she could not move. Edmund kissed her hand and there was a fluttering in her stomach.

‘My Lady of Richmond,’ he said. He was not exactly smiling, but there was a hint of a smile in his eyes. And still she couldn’t speak.

She didn’t know if he was as handsome or more handsome than she had imagined him. His features were thinner than she had imagined, his cheekbones higher, his hair not so much golden as light brown. He sat down beside her on the rock, stretching out one leg with a casual elegance.

‘Is that a good book?’ he asked her, and she stared down at it, disconcerted, then finally managed to speak.

‘It is a very good book,’ she said, ‘though not so good as
Tristan and Isolde
.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that a better book?’

She was comically earnest. ‘I think it is better in its composition,’ she said, ‘though it does not have the same philosophy.’

‘I see I shall marry a scholar,’ he said. Instantly, she felt a complicated pride, as though she had said the wrong thing. But he extended his hand and she rose and walked with him, and her nurse dropped into the deepest curtsy as they passed.

He asked her about her studies, and about the garden, and how she was adapting to the weather. Her answers were so constrained;
she could not believe that she could not remember all the conversations she had prepared for him, which were witty and fluent. She did not know how to ask him what he had been doing, or whether he would think that proper. She was conscious all the time of the great difference in their heights, but he acted, at least, as though he were oblivious of this.

In the great hall she sat at his right hand and Jasper at his left, and he behaved towards her as though she were his lady, presenting all the food to her from his own plate first, and sharing the goblet of wine.

Later, she thought that might have been the moment she fell in love with him: for his courtesy, for treating her as if she were truly his sweetheart, his lady-love.

But all his conversation was with Jasper. She listened to him telling his brother that some of the local lords were feuding and stealing one another’s cattle, that there were many tenancy disputes. She did not know whether she could say anything, or interrupt him while he talked.

After the meal everyone rose while he led her out of the hall. She was conscious all over again, now that everyone was watching, that she barely reached above his elbow, and she tried to walk taller. Then he kissed her hand and left her to her nurse once more, while he accompanied Jasper to his own suite of rooms in Jasper’s mansion.

Betsy could hardly contain her excitement as she helped her to undress: he was so tall, so handsome and so … 
knightly –
there was not a better knight in all of Christendom. She, too, did not like Jasper – taking up all of Edmund’s time in that tedious way.

‘He is just jealous that he can’t have you, my poppet,’ she said, brushing her hair, and went on to say how impressed Edmund was at her scholarship and learning. But Margaret frowned at herself in the bronze plate that was her mirror.

‘I wish –’ she said, and stopped.

‘What, my duckling?’

‘I wish I might be pretty.’

And Betsy exclaimed and clucked over her. She
was
pretty – what did she mean? She had pretty hazel eyes and fine bones. But Margaret looked with dissatisfaction at her hair, which was neither thick nor shiny, and would not grow, like Isolde’s, to cover her naked hips, but straggled to a halt just below her shoulders; and at her mouth, which was a thin line.

‘I am too small,’ she burst out eventually.

‘Oh, my pretty – my pretty sweet!’ cried Betsy, clasping her. ‘There is so much time left for growing! One day, my precious, one day you will be beautiful and tall – so beautiful that none of the bards will sing of Nesta any more.
You
will be the Helen of Wales!’

They were married at Lamphey Palace, where they were to live. Once again she wore a white satin dress stitched with seed pearls as token of her purity. Her nurse combed out her hair and dressed it as well as she could, threading into it a pearl net, and told her how pretty she was: no bride had ever been prettier. And Margaret looked, disbelieving, at her yellowish skin and indeterminate eyes.

But she would be beautiful one day.

She and Edmund stood together, Jasper on one side and Betsy on the other. Edmund looked very handsome in his doublet of peacock blue. They repeated the vows she had said once already, in a different chapel, to a little boy, and Edmund held her fingers lightly, and she shivered in the sun.

Afterwards there was a banquet for her new household, eel pie and a roasted kid with quail stuffed into its belly, and carrots carved into the shape of a swan. They sat in the gardens of their new home, which, with its big windows and its orchards, was as unlike Pembroke Castle as it was possible to be. And she danced three times with Edmund and once with Jasper, and her nurse said she danced very prettily. And this went on until late in the evening until she was tired and Edmund kissed the top of her head and told her she could go to bed. So she left with her nurse, and did not see who Edmund left with.

And in the morning, Edmund had gone again.

That was the pattern of their life together: long absences and sudden reappearance. She would wake up in her own room, the anticipation of seeing him lighting her whole day to a luminous sheen, then gradually the day would grow dull again as she realized he wasn’t there. Even when he was there she didn’t always see him, but sometimes she came on him unexpectedly, and then something in her unfurled and she walked taller. He would be in conversation with Jasper or his steward, but he was unfailingly good-humoured and courteous.