The White Cross (2 page)

Embarked now on his favourite topic, which is to say
himself
, Duke Richard laughs exposing large horse teeth. ‘They claim that I’ve the muscles of an ox, the balls of a ram and the courage of a Barbary lion!’

Ignoring Baldwin’s pained expression he gives his narrow shoulder-blade a bracing little shake. ‘So what d’ye think, Your Grace? Am I more likely to sung of in their ballads at the end of the croisade as
Dickard Ramsbollocks,
or
Richard the Confessor?

Or will it be
King Richard Lionhearted?
’ he offers as an afterthought.

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

‘Elise, you’re slumping, dear. Do try to sit up properly.’ Maman’s voice, as ever at my elbow with some fresh idea of how I might improve.

And do they all, all mothers, have to go on treating daughters as incapable until their teeth rot and their hair turns grey? As if we could forget the proper way to dress or talk, or walk or sit or ride or stand, or when to raise our eyes or lower them – as if they’d ever let us!

‘But if you must ride out without a veil you might at least set your cap straight, my love?’ Her fourth appeal on that worn topic from where she sits behind me pulling down her own straw hat to shade her eyes. ‘It’s, well it’s slovenly, Elise, as if you doubt your own importance.’ Beneath the brim her own pink face looks worried and exhausted.

‘My sister Garda says it’s quite the thing these days to wear the fillet tilted, Maman.’ (She doesn’t actually. But I’m sure the Blessed Virgin will forgive the little fib. I mean she’d have to be a little lively, wouldn’t she, to cope first with the Angel Gabriel then with a jealous Joseph?) I’m smiling helpfully at Maman on her palfrey, with one hand on the reins and the other feeling for my little pie-dish cap to make sure of its jaunty angle.

Behind the anxious parent, Hodierne on her mule has disapproval writ all over her grim face.

‘Making an object of yesself as usual.’ That’s how she’ll put it afterwards, I’d stake an oath. She can be very tiresome when she puts her mind to it, can Hod – although I’m glad that the old fusspot is to stay with me when I am married, because I’ve never known a time without my nurse in train, and wouldn’t want to try it.

But best for now to leave the crabstick to her scowls and keep my eyes on Countess Isabel’s closed litter five horses and two bearers up the line. Movement. Clomping hooves and tramping feet, the chinking sound of metal harness, wheels turning, timber creaking, hunched shoulders (and not just mine by any means); the sights and sounds of a great household on the move – ahead of us the winding road which in the end will bring us into Lewes. And Jésu, what a journey!

Did I say that out aloud?

We’ve been eleven hours now on the road from Reigate Castle, if you include the halts. Nesta, my little jennet mare, is pretty near as weary as I am myself, and is it any wonder if we slump? They say that life’s a journey of a kind, and if it is I’d say I am a fair bit down that road as well. Because at nineteen, as Maman never ceases to remind me, I’m older by five summers than she was when she married Father. (Not that even she could claim the thing to be my fault, with two sisters to be settled first.)

Oh God, I’m SO uncomfortable! My back aches like the plague. The insides of both my legs are raw, and if we don’t arrive at Lewes or some other stopping place in the next quarter-hour, there’ll be no help for it whatever Hoddie has to say. I’ll simply have to leave the line and hoist my skirts, up there somewhere behind the elder bushes.

Mon Dieu, just think of Maman’s face!

Below the track we have to follow, the River Ouse keeps company with us on our left hand – a breeze, the smell of mud, the sharp cry of a seagull. The moon looks like a threadbare linen patch on the pale fabric of the sky. Across the valley a huddle of daub cottages – stone church, a herringbone of fields, cattle in the meadows, geese on the shore… Are they a sign we’re nearly there? Will there be feather beds in Lewes, and hot bricks for our feet? Heavens, even thinking of them is a comfort!

Of all the castles in the barony, they say that Lewes is the one most favoured by the Earl and Countess de Warenne.

‘The place is on a hill with sewers which remarkably perform the function they’re designed for,’ the Countess Isabel is meant to have said of Lewes castle after she’d named the drains of Reigate the most abominably foul in England. Which I suppose means that we have to thank My Lady’s faith in sanitation for bringing us a full week earlier than planned to Sussex – and to my wedding vows.

We have the gift of a fine saddle in the cart that holds my wardrobe, to be given to my bridegroom when we meet. Blood marries land they say. I have the blood, he has the land – although in truth we haven’t all that much of either. On Maman’s side I am related to the Countess as a minor cousin several times removed. And if through Father I can claim descent from Aquitaine, it has to be confessed that he first came to England in the Old Queen’s train – not as her kinsman but her page!

As for Sir Garon de Stanville of Haddertun, the young man they are to glue me to, we’re told his property includes two Sussex manors held in his mother’s right, a stretch of marsh, some managed assarts, upland grazing for five hundred sheep and hunting rights in woodlands bordering the Wealden Forest. He has two small estates in other words. I have my blood-tie to the Warennes, and that’s all there is to it!

Matrimony is contractual, Maman says, a trade like any other.The base love of the flesh disorders sense, she says, and has no part in marriage. Women as a rule should save affection for their children, Maman says, and treat their husbands with respect. ‘We wives just have to make the best of what we find, or else we’re bound to be unhappy.’

Which might be good enough for Maman. But not for me, because I plan to be as fond a wife as any man has yet to wed – and make Sir Garon love me whether he intends to or no!

Holy Saint Mary, can you see how earnestly I mean that?

But are we here at last, and is this Lewes Fortress, looming like a crag above the trees? Thanks be to God, I think it is! Yes, there’s the blue and yellow chequer of Warenne flying bravely from the keep. I feel as if I’m flying with it, I am so excited!

The watch has spotted us and sounds his horn – a stir, a movement rippling along the line, a horseman stooping to My Lady’s litter… The curtains part – a gold-embroidered sleeve, and now the head of an indignant lapdog, yapping fit to shatter steel.

That was all four days ago, and I have to say I’ve never understood why people who’re incapable of affection even for their children can lavish it on frightful little dogs. The Countess sits at ease in her solarium, surrounded by her women and her pages. (I say at ease. But she’s bolt upright in her chair dressed gorgeously in gold brocade, with on her lap in pride of place a Maltese cur that looks like a dishevelled rat!)

Whenever people speak of Countess Isabel they mostly use respectful words like ‘dignified’ or ‘illustrious’, but never call her handsome. Her mouth is like a trap – pouched yellow eyes as hard as pebbles, big chin protruding from her wimple, big nose stuck in the air. That’s how she normally appears, yet here’s my plain and haughty lady playing with her lapdog, feeding the pampered creature sugar from a bowl, crooning at it in the way that mothers croon at babies – and looking, well very nearly human!

A woman with, as Hod would say less teeth than summers in her past, with royal blood in her veins from both sides of the Narrow Sea, My Lady Isabel was a princess by the age of twelve as wife to the son of King Stephen. Then married after he was dead to King Henry’s natural brother, Hamelin, she’s now the new King Richard’s aunt. As grand a dame as it is possible to be without a gold crown on your head!

When we reached Lewes Fortress My Lady barely had to nod to have her Flemish tapestries hung on the walls, her coffers and her presses stored, her costume changed, her every wish obeyed – whilst we poor lesser mortals stood for hours to wait for stabling, for porters and for quarters to be found; travel-stained and travel-weary, longing for our beds.

Now four days on, I’m washed and brushed and combed and drenched in rosewater, laced breathlessly into my best blue gown. And waiting still.

I wonder if I’m brave enough to catch My Lady’s eye and step out from the window? Ten measured steps, soft-footed with the maidenly decorum I’ve rehearsed – a flutter of surprise amongst the demoiselles, Maman’s bleat of protest. But I’m unannounced, the courtesies are unobserved. My Lady’s hand’s stops in mid-fondle, distainful eyes consider me from crown to toe, the rat-dog on her lap begins to tremble, crouches, springs dementedly to her defence!

Oh I don’t know, on second thoughts I’m probably best where I am.

I dreamt last night that I was still a child, curled up cosily between my sisters, Cecily and Garda. I even snuggled into Maman’s back, thinking it was Cessie’s – until I felt how soft and fat she’d suddenly become. And that was when I woke to voices in the castle ward, and rubbed my eyes and saw the lime-washed ceiling of the women’s dormitory – and then, mon Dieu, I knew the County Palatine of Lancaster, my father and my sisters were behind me never to be seen again this side of Paradise!

‘Be good, mon enfant. Be a credit to your line.’ That’s all my father had to say when I was parted from him.

That’s when my childhood ended.

My Lady’s solar is a pleasant sort of chamber with a good view of the inner ward. From where I’m sitting in the window I can watch them getting ready for the tournament tomorrow; a thing that no one’s seen in England since I was in my cradle. Smiths, fletchers, armourers spill from their workshops on the cobbles to watch the knights at exercise. (I’m sure their language must be shocking. But the wind’s against me, I can’t hear a word.) A ginger cat up on the roof above the forge is stalking a fat pigeon it’s no holy hope of catching…

‘My Lady Blanchefleur.’

Holy Saint Mary, no one’s called Maman anything but ‘Lady Blanche’ for years! The bird bobs twice – explosions of grey feathers as it flies. The cat’s pretending that it never wanted pigeon dinner in the first place, stays on the roof to wash its bottom, one leg in the air. But inside, Maman is already half way to My Lady’s chair – dumpy, pink about the gills despite the powder, rustling and bustling in her stiff bokeram, collecting rushes in the hem of her long skirts. So eager to oblige she practically scuttles to the curtsey and wobbles coming up.

‘I take it that your daughter is prepared and ripe for marriage, Lady Blanchefleur?’ the Countess wants to know. She doesn’t mention age and nor will Maman. But ‘ripe’ she says, as if I were some kind of fruit!

‘Indeed she is, My Lady, as she’ll be pleased to tell you for herself.’ It sounds like something she’s rehearsed.

An inclination of the noble chin and Maman dimples, looks straight at me; my signal to approach. The walk as I imagined it was quicker and more graceful. It seems to take an age! The Maltese dog’s asleep. My Lady waits with one hand on its neck, her gaze as yellow as a hawk’s. (You feel its power and her awareness of it, both.) I’ll swear she misses nothing as I curtsey, including what’s inside my head!

‘Yes, charming’ (‘passable’ is how she makes it sound), ‘and not too narrow in the girth for one of her low stature.’

The corners of My Lady’s mouth lift visibly within the white frame of her wimple – a measure of the smile she saves for dogs. ‘She should fare well in Sussex, with our favour and a groom who knows what he’s about.’

It’s true that I am far from tall, and Garda claims that no one could be beautiful with a short neck like mine (hers naturally is like a swan’s!). But what’s beauty when it comes to it? Pale skin, good eyes, fair hair, straight teeth and plenty of soft curves? Maman says men like as much soft flesh as they can get, in sucking pigs, in poultry and in wives. And although I’ve often asked the Everlasting God to make me better looking, it’s surprising what you can achieve with beanflour and boiled chamomile and veiling from the sun. And clothes of course. The dress I’ve chosen for today is pale sky-blue, the colour they call celestyne, twist-wrung to fall in fluted pleats from hip to toe; too elegant for words!

I wonder what the Countess meant by calling him a groom who knows what he’s about?

‘I mention him because Sir Garon is expected.’ My Lady’s eyes are on my face. ‘I’m told he’s on his way up from the camp to be presented.’

Which leaves me where? To thank her dutifully for her attention? To go? Or stand and wait? I’m opening my mouth – have been called a chatterbox for years, but just now can’t think what to say…

Thank heavens! Maman’s hand is on my arm to pull me down into a second curtsey. ‘My Lady, we are grateful for your favour.’ (Maman’s voice, not mine) ‘And with your leave will watch for the young man’s arrival from the window.’

And what a perfect prune I feel to be led there in silence like a filly on a halter!

The stone mullion of the window’s cold against my cheek. The ward below is crowded with horseflesh and men; the best they say, bred on the Earl’s estates in Normandie and Conisborough or else shipped in from Friesland (the horses, not the men) – great slug-haunched destriers without an ounce of grace between them.

A hit! The quintain must be made of iron from the loud noise it made. But see how quick the fellow was to duck the sandbag on its pole. And here’s another lancing for the painted Saracen – just like a boys’ game, taking turns.