The Passionate Brood (6 page)

“Not so bad!” decided Henry, when his brother had conscientiously mastered the steps. He winked at Johanna as he laid down the lute. “Now I come to think of it, didn’t Sholto say his sister Berengaria was quite a little beauty?”

Richard let go of Johanna’s hand as if she had the plague. “God help me!” he exclaimed. “Shall I have to dance with
her
?”

King Sancho of Navarre’s tournaments were famous throughout the civilised world. His hospitality was so lavish and the standard of tilting so high that all the most celebrated champions in Europe angled for invitations. Competitors with feudal responsibilities in cold climates were only too glad to take an annual holiday at his sunny southern court. At his laden board they met everybody who mattered; and such was the enthusiasm of the Spanish populace, the blaze of heraldry, and the stir of trumpets in his lists that even seasoned warriors could recapture something of the din and stir of battle at Pamplona.

It was fun for their womenfolk as well. Most of them were related by marriage, which made plenty of matter for a good gossip and, while lending half an ear to their husbands’ everlasting sports talk, they could note what kind of wimples were being worn in Paris or Milan.

Probably the only woman who was bored was Berengaria. She was tired of being Queen of Beauty and having to crown the victors. Of course, she had only to look in the metal of her mirror to know that she was beautiful; but then, being Sancho’s only daughter, she supposed that she would have been chosen had she been as ugly as a witch. Her flower-decked pavilion always looked down upon the same scene. The tiltyard thronged with people. The townsfolk crowded round the barriers of the oblong lists, leaving a gap at either end for the competitors, whose tents stretched like a field of gaily striped mushrooms to the castle walls. The groups of men-at-arms looking down from the battlements.

The guests were much the same this year as last. The same banners floated from the King’s stand, the same kind of rose garlands decorated her own. Her ladies had been making them for days, and she was weary of the sight of them. Berengaria loved roses best in a garden, and hated the way Isabella and Henrietta crushed them with eager elbows as they leaned over the balcony, showing off their bright new gowns.

All the forenoon she had sat opposite to her parents, smiling at the victors and saying the right thing to important guests as they strolled past between bouts. And now the heat and clamour had given her a headache. The herald’s shrill trumpeting had become an agony. She still listened politely each time the Marshal called the names of fresh combatants, but once all eyes were upon them in the lists she took the opportunity of moving farther into the shadow of the awning and surreptitiously reading an illuminated book of poems.

“Why don’t you watch, Madam?” asked her youngest lady, to whom it was like all the minstrels’ tales come true.

“Because I hate the sight of blood, Yvette,” confided Berengaria. Not for worlds would she have had Isabella and Henrietta overhear confession of such weakness. From the front of the pavilion scraps of their conversation drifted back like a thin dissonance through the deep harmony of the words she was reading.

“That scarred knight with the black plume fought all through the last Crusade. I asked him if the Saracen girls were really so beautiful—”

“Look, Henrietta, there goes my handsome Sicilian! How he kissed me last night!”

Their voices were drowned by a fresh fanfare. This time even the booming voice of the Marshal was inaudible through the cheering of the crowd. A knight spurred across the lists, making sparks fly as he pulled his charger to its haunches before the King. Without looking up, Berengaria knew it must be William de Barre, back from the Holy Land. De Barre, making a spectacular entrance. How she loathed the man! A proud, hard-bitten champion, who went from one tournament to another winning all the prizes.

“What do you suppose he does with them all?” Yvette was asking.

“Distributes them among his women!” Isabella told her succinctly.

At least, thought Berengaria, there is one prize he will never win. Although of bastard blood, he had had the temerity to ask for her in marriage, and it said much for her father’s tolerance that he was still invited to compete. She wished that Raymond of Toulouse or someone could unhorse him. “How uninterestingly alike they all look in their armour!” she yawned. “This is the last bout before dinner, isn’t it, Henrietta?”

“Yes, Madam. And if Sir William de Barre wins he will meet Count Raymond tomorrow in the final bout.”

“Of course he will win,” said Berengaria. “There is never anything new in these tournaments.”

“There is a new foreign knight, Madam,” reported Isabella, over her shoulder.

“He’s riding in now. On such a sorry charger!” laughed Henrietta.

Yvette turned eagerly to look. “He is so tall!”

“And awkward,” scoffed Isabella.

“And red-headed,” added Henrietta. “And instead of a proper heraldic device there’s just a silly sprig of broom stuck in the helmet his page is handing up to him.”

Berengaria put down her book. “If he wears broom he must be my brother’s friend, Richard Plantagenet. I hear he arrived late last night from England.”

“That is the odd shaped island where they have fogs, isn’t it?” asked Yvette, staring inquisitively at his back. “Is it true that all the men there have tails?”

The older girls’ laughter covered her with confusion. Berengaria laughed too; but then she always took the trouble to explain. “Of course not, child! That’s only some silly legend left over from the Dark Ages. These Plantagenets are Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine as well as kings of England, and their mother was once Queen of France. So you see, this young man’s elder brother will be quite an important person one day.”

“Well, nobody seems to know this one now,” remarked Isabella, pertly.

Yvette leaned over the balcony. “He looks quite embarrassed,” she murmured compassionately. Having come straight to court from her convent school she could sympathize with his embarrassment.

“Throw him your new Damascus girdle, Isabella!” giggled Henrietta.

“And have it trampled in the dust!” Isabella was not the sort of wench to back a loser. She fastened the jewelled thing more securely about shapely hips that had snared a rich Sicilian. “What chance has a raw young man like that against
real
crusaders?”

Berengaria sprang up. Indignation always had the power to override her gentle diffidence. “Is that the kind of hospitality Navarre shows to strangers?” she demanded. “How do you know he may not some day fight Saladin as well as any of them?”

By stretching out a hand she could almost have touched his shoulder. He sat his horse quietly just below her pavilion, watching his adversary’s impressive showmanship. For days he had been horribly sea-sick in a single-masted galley. His arrival had been spoiled by disappointment at finding his friend, young Sholto, away; and he had not yet had time to get to know anyone else. Unfamiliar surroundings and the babel of an incomprehensible tongue confused him. “Just my luck to arrive late and get drawn against their champion in my first round!” he thought, remembering his prophecy to Johanna.

The crowd loved the way the veteran crusader loosened an experienced arm in a series of clever practice thrusts and made his mighty stallion rear and stamp to show off his fine horsemanship. Certainly, man and horse together were an impressive sight. The last word in armour with ringed mail from thigh to toe, scolloped saddle trappings of crimson leather, and a gorgeously plumed ceremonial heaume held by an obsequious squire. In the hurry of his expulsion from England poor Richard had brought no heaume at all—just a plain, tight-fitting battle helmet, a steel haubert considerably dented in the frequent wrangles for his heritage, and one slender stripling of a page.

All the same, the King of Navarre’s daughter, who had been brought up to love fair play, plucked a pink rose bud from the wreath she wore and, in full view of her father’s subjects, threw it deliberately—not to the seasoned warrior—but to the unknown competitor. It struck with a soft plop against his clean-shaven cheek, and he turned angrily, quieting his startled horse.

“He is quite handsome!” exclaimed Isabella, and the others laughed at the chagrin in her voice.

“I threw it for Sholto’s sake,” explained Berengaria, in case they might think that she too had noticed the fact.

Richard stared up at her with little gallantry. It was his first big tournament. Queens of Beauty, he had always supposed, were heartless and vain like the lady in the minstrel’s ballad who threw her glove among the lions. Probably those giggling girls leaning over the balcony were out to make a fool of him because they knew he hadn’t a dog’s chance. Young Blondel, quick to cover his discourtesy, saved the blossom from an impatient hoof and handed it up to him.

Trumpets blared and de Barre bellowed a challenge. With a vicious spur he urged his stallion to the attack. And still the tall Norman stared rather incredulously at the dusty petals in his mailed palm.

“Oh, hurry, hurry!” breathed Berengaria.

Richard looked up then and grinned reassuringly. So it was true. Someone wanted him to win. The slender rose girl with the kind eyes who looked as if she had walked straight out of the lovely Provencal legends his mother used to tell. He leaned to Blondel for his shield, and the Spanish sunshine glinted on the gold leopards snarling across its blood-red surface. Like a lean, crouching leopard himself, he balanced his lance to get some favourite grip, then clapped down his vizor and charged.

Towards him in a cloud of dust thundered his man. Even to Richard’s optimistic mind it looked as if such a mountain of steel and muscle must mow him down. “God help me not to disappoint that rose girl!” he prayed, swerving in time to take a glancing blow that, at full force, would have felled an ox. The force of it shook his confidence. This was the real thing. “Just because I’m supposed to be pretty good at home—” he thought, picturing his pride humbled in the dust before all this assembly of international sportsmen. King Sancho’s shout of “Well saved!” helped to steady him.

As he wheeled his horse, Richard overheard a critic by the barrier say, “Hopelessly outclassed in weight and experience, of course, but he has youth and speed…” Acting on the hint, he used both to forestall by the fraction of a second each cunning ruse of his opponent. The Frenchman no longer fought contemptuously. In the second encounter he paid Richard the compliment of fighting furiously. He had seen a favour flung by a girl whose high birth had put her out of his own reach, and he was out to kill.

But Richard’s eyes had gone light with the lust of battle, his brain cold as ice. He settled closer in the saddle to enjoy the one kind of game at which he was master. The spectators began to shout wildly each time he dodged death, but he was no longer conscious of them. Concentration had come back to him. His whole world was whittled down to one arena where two horsemen wheeled and thrust. Yet, fantastically enough, part of his mind was back in England where he had practised these very strokes beside the placid Thames. If only he could believe himself back there, delivering them as coolly and unhurriedly as he had then, he felt that he might win. It was Robin’s voice—a thin, controlling memory—that gave him patience and precision now. “Wait, man—wait! Any fool can strike. It’s choosing the moment that counts.” And then Robin himself—part of the placid river and the sturdy oaks—showing him that clever counter-thrust. “Let the other fellow go all out. And
now
—when he has over-ridden himself—”

In each encounter Richard’s timing was perfect. The intoxication of success was upon him. He felt the crowd with him at last. A lovely crowd, appreciative of all the finer points, and generous in praise. His famous adversary was tiring. Past the peak of his prime and a gross liver, de Barre must have realised that he could not stay another round against such fitness. He came on like a maddened bull, blind with rage. Now—now was the moment. Richard stood in the stirrups and drove his lance home with all his strength.

Berengaria covered her face with her hands. She could not bear the sight of blood. She heard a crescendo of hoof beats, the crash of steel and splintering wood. A sibilant intake of breath passed like the rustle of stiff ripe corn across the crowd. The silence that followed was split by a man shouting hoarsely, “My God, de Barre is in the dust!”

“Only his armour saved him!” chanted the delirious crowd.

“The lance broke against it with such force that it slid down and pierced the Plantagenet’s own horse,” moaned Yvette, in a sick, shuddering heap at Berengaria’s feet.

Seasoned crusaders leapt to their feet and women wept hysterically. Lusty men-at-arms cheered and countrymen threw their capuchins in the air. When Berengaria dared to look, the great, invincible de Barre was lying in the middle of the tiltyard. His heaume had fallen off, its fine plumes matted in a stream of blood flowing from the belly of his opponent’s horse. As he rolled on to his back the muscles of his bull neck bulged obscenely from the restriction of the gorget that had saved him. And standing over him was the tall Plantagenet, swinging a great two-handed sword. He had pulled it from the vanquished Frenchman’s scabbard. Mercifully for de Barre, King Sancho’s baton clattered into the lists before the point had time to reach his throat. Richard lowered it reluctantly. It was just the kind of sword he had been coveting, and would make a good souvenir of a splendid fight.

After the spectacular bout in which the great de Barre was brought low all was clamour and confusion. People shouted and took up their bets and jumped the barriers. Heralds and judges vied with each other in proclaiming names and achievements of the morning’s victors. A whole army of grooms seemed to spring into the lists, and quite important people helped to lift the vanquished champion from the ground. “Just as well I didn’t finish him off!” thought Richard. “But no man ought to have a neck like that.” Now, just why had he hated it so? Something to do with a girl…He was still leaning on the tall sword feeling oddly tired when he became aware of a pleasant, stocky young man who was wringing his hand and wishing him luck in the next bout.

“I am glad it will not be until to-morrow!” panted Richard. “Do you know this Raymond of Toulouse I have to tilt against next?”

“Quite well.”

“Is he anything like this one?” Richard waved a vague hand in the direction of the group gathered round his late opponent.

“God forbid!” The words, were said with such amused friendliness that Richard laid aside all defensive pretence. “What I mean is, have I a chance?” he asked simply.

“I’d say it ought to be a pretty good fight,” laughed the young man. “You see, I
am
Toulouse.”

Involuntarily, Richard shot out a hand. “Splendid!” he cried, and would have liked to stay and talk. But a squire was already at his elbow, respectfully summoning him to the King. He could see the Queen’s women, like a bright parterre of multi-coloured flowers, beckoning to him with their handkerchiefs. The sweets of victory awaited him. But first he stooped to gentle his dying horse. “You carried me well, old friend,” he whispered. At sound of his voice the poor beast whinnied pitifully, and he bade Blondel have it put out of pain.

Elation was tinged with gaucherie as he approached the royal stand. But a new world was opening before him. A world in which he was somebody, apart from his title. A world full of friends. Richard rose to their approval with youthful flamboyance and, to his relief, found that most of them spoke Norman-French. Men stretched across each other’s shoulders to grip his sword-hand, and women threw him flowers. “Where did you learn that counter-thrust?” asked the jovial king, and Richard found himself telling them about his small military successes in Aquitaine and about Robin’s prowess in England. Friendship with Philip of France might be a profitable business proposition, he reflected, but a few words of praise from Sancho of Navarre set the seal on a sportsman’s record.

“Time to collect your laurels, mon brave!” Toulouse reminded him. Friendly hands pushed him towards the Princess’s pavilion. He took the short wooden steps at a bound and stood smiling down at her. “I cannot reach. You will have to bend down,” she reminded him, under cover of the cheering.

“I am already at your feet,” swore Richard, dropping to one knee. “Without your rose I’m sure I couldn’t have tackled that blustering son of Mars!”

From beneath demurely lowered lashes, her brown eyes laughed down at him. “Why, I thought you were sent here to learn pretty speeches!”

“I suppose some busybody had to tell you that!” he muttered, hating his father for the humiliation.

Berengaria was quick to set him at ease. “I assure you that no one outside the family knows the King of England was—displeased. A pity he did not see you just now. He would have been very proud. I wish you good luck against the Count of Toulouse.”

“I shall need it, Madam,” he said, as he rose to face the cheering crowd. “Unfortunately, I shall also need a horse.”

They spoke to each other formally, going through the ceremonial motions required of them; but the cheering was gradually dying down. The eventful morning was over. The royal party began to drift back towards the private apartments for a meal and the noonday siesta. Berengaria should have followed them, but she made a gesture of dismissal to her ladies. “Go and get the head groom to ransack the stables for the best mount he can find for the Duke of Aquitaine. I fancy my brother’s roan mare might be up to his weight. And fetch our visitor a cooling drink, Yvette.”

Left alone among the flowers and the banners, they turned to each other in smiling relief, formality falling from them like a discarded cloak.

“So you are Berengaria?”

“And you are Richard?”

“I’ve heard quite a lot about you.”

“When Sholto came back from England he nearly drove me insane with the repetition of your name.”

“I know, for instance, that you adore dancing and that you fell shamelessly in love with the Archbishop of Rheims when you were six—”

“And I know that you are always inventing hideous war machines, and that when you were twelve you created a vast hue and cry by shutting your small brother up in a dungeon, and then going out hawking and forgetting all about him.”

“He was supposed to be a captured Saracen, and anyhow he has a morbid interest in dungeons,” laughed Richard. Shopkeepers and housewives were hurrying home through the barbican to their affairs in the town and a group of children and holiday-makers were gathered round a travelling puppet show by the gate. Berengaria drew him to the wide wooden rail of the balcony beside her, and Yvette brought him a drink. Laying aside his laurels and helmet, he pulled off a gauntlet and stretched his long legs at ease. “To the Queen of Beauty!” he said, lifting the goblet.

“You were wounded!” cried Berengaria, seeing a long red gash on his uncovered wrist.

“Oh, that!” He examined it with mild interest. It was the first time he had noticed it. “Must have been a splinter from the broken lance.”

“But there’s blood.”

“My page will bind it up presently,” he assured her carelessly.

“But afterwards is no good.”‘

He did not want to waste time now fussing about bandages, but Berengaria insisted, “Fetch me some water and a napkin, Yvette,” she ordered; and when they were brought she firmly overcame her aversion, cleansing and binding the gash as carefully as if it had been some deep seated wound. Richard watched her ministrations with amusement. He was not accustomed to being fussed over by women. “One of these days, Richard Plantagenet, “ she warned, between anxious pullings and twistings, “you will leave a wound too long—and it will fester. And then perhaps—you will die.” Her dark head was close against his breast and, looking up to meet his amused grin, she became aware that her preoccupation had landed her almost in his arms. At such close quarters he was disturbingly attractive. “Oughtn’t we to be joining the others now?” she said hurriedly.

Except for grooms rubbing down the horses and the people gathered round the puppet show, the outer bailey was deserted. Even Yvette was half way to the drawbridge that divided it from the inner bailey—a charming, childish figure carefully balancing a basin. But Richard was exceedingly comfortable where he was. “All I need now is rest and quiet—and pleasant companionship,” he bluffed gravely.

“But you said yourself it was only a scratch.” She tried to pull him to his feet, but he only imprisoned her little hands and sat there, laughing. “Oh, Richard, we
must
go!” she urged. “My parents will be wondering—Look, here’s Raymond coming for me.”

They could see him crossing the drawbridge. He paused to question Yvette, who pointed back in their direction. Berengaria picked up her beautiful white dress and ran to meet him; and Richard had perforce to stride along beside her, wondering why he had ever liked the man.

“Is my mother angry?” she panted, pink cheeked.

“Livid!” teased Raymond. “But seriously, my dear, you ought to come in and rest.”

“I will,” she promised meekly.

“There is sure to be an interminable banquet, and then all the music and dancing.”

Their air of friendly intimacy drove Richard to an unprecedented expedient. “Will you dance with me to-night, Berengaria?” he asked abruptly. “I’m afraid I dance very badly.” Henry and Johanna would have given their ears to hear him.

“As you may remember, I dance rather well,” the Count reminded her.

“I will remind Henrietta about it,” laughed Berengaria. “For myself, I prefer a beginner with the saving grace of modesty.”

The two men stood side by side to watch her go. When she had waved from the bridge Raymond noticed the bandage. “What’s the damage?” he asked. “Nothing bad enough to keep you out of the final, I hope?”

“Lord, no! But Berengaria insisted upon binding it,” bragged the morning’s victor.

“She would, bless her!”

“Do you infer that she makes a habit of binding up men’s wounds?” enquired Richard, stiffly.

Raymond tried not to smile. “I wouldn’t say that. But she’s ridiculously tender-hearted with people whom she
likes
.” He disarmed Richard’s scowl with a humorous shrug. “Like the rest of you, I am her slave,” he explained. “But I also happen to be her cousin. So you needn’t murder me
outside
the lists.”

Richard felt a graceless fool. He grunted an apology and hailed Blondel from the direction of the stables. “He’s been seeing about my poor beast,” he explained. “I’ll be getting my mail off and have a wash.”

“Come and use my tent,” invited Raymond. “It’s bad luck for you Sholto being away.”

Richard was only too glad to accept the invitation as the Keep was packed with visitors.

“There were a good many things I should have been glad to ask him this morning,” smiled Richard, as they strolled through the lists to the tents at the far end. “For instance, why do all the men who’ve been crusading wear a sort of white surcoat over their armour?”

“Because of the sun out there. The steel gets unbearably hot. Haven’t you been here before?”

“No. The place amazes me. It’s all so different from how we live.” He looked at the sentries slouching in the shade and noted that the drawbridge was obsolete. “I keep wondering what they’d do if they were besieged,” he said. “Do you suppose they grow flowers on the battlements?”

“Not quite,” smiled Raymond. “But you must remember they haven’t had a war down here for years. That’s why they are all so delightfully civilized. The King has time to see that you don’t really kill de Barre, and Berengaria reads books.”

In his cousin Sholto’s absence, the Count of Toulouse was roped in for a variety of hospitable duties. “Hi, there, Nando!” he shouted into the interior of his tent, before hurrying off on some other social errand. “Wake up and fetch the Duke of Aquitaine some water.”

Nando was fat and the well was in the Keep. He didn’t see why the Duke’s own energetic page shouldn’t get it, but Blondel was already on his knees struggling with leather thongs. Besides being unbearably set up about his master’s victory, he had the soul of a budding poet and understood that any man to whom a beautiful girl throws roses wants to meet her at dinner looking his best. He seized the filled ewer from the sulky young Spaniard and poured its contents over his master’s naked body, then requisitioned for him one of their host’s clean shirts and set Nando to polishing the Plantagenet leopards. And all the time Richard—usually the soul of good-natured indifference where clothes were concerned—cursed and fidgeted and fussed. “These cloth chausses are too clumsy to the leg…I need another shave…Nobody wears a nose piece to his helmet nowadays. Take the damn thing off. I’ll go bareheaded…”

“What a pig to work for!” remarked Nando, when at last they had cleaned him up and sent him forth fit to feast with ladies. Had either of them understood more than six words of the other’s language it would probably have started a Toulouse versus Plantagenet fight before the final.