The White Cross (60 page)

He measures out three spoonfuls of the dark green liquid labelled ‘hogbile’, is in the act of reaching for the hemlock jar, when the door opens quietly and a woman stoops to enter.

Physician and assistant both bow low. The Countess is alone, which is to say the least unusual, for she seldom takes two steps without a guard, a brace of pages or a maid hard on her heels.

She wears her dignity like an unyielding robe. ‘The boy may go,’ she says – and waiting only for the door to close behind him, comes directly to the point.

‘Your patient, Bonfil. What is his condition?’

‘My Lady, he’s unconscious; and for the present I judge it best to keep him so.’

‘But like to live? Or die?’

‘We could not save the hand. The damage to the bone and tendon was too extensive; and when I cauterised the artery, there was no time to dull the pain of amputation. Many would have died of shock.’

‘But not this man?’ She purses her thin lips.

‘His nature is predominantly sanguine, My Lady. Such people can surprise us if they’re given time to make new blood,’ the physician offers cautiously. ‘We’ve set a pallet for Sir Hugh where it is warm beside the hog-spit in the kitchens, and in a day or two may move him to the Priory hospital. If he survives.’

‘I doubt he’ll manage that.’ The Countess picks up a small steel knife and sets it down again. She sniffs the pan of hogbile with distaste. ‘This potion is for him?’

‘Indeed, My Lady; a fresh mixture of the soporific dwale he has already taken.’

‘And these are its components?’ She lifts a jar. ‘
Pape
? What is this?’

‘An abbreviation for
papaver somniferum
; an opiate, My Lady, extracted from the poppy.’

‘Henbell?’ She points. ‘Is that the same as henbane?’

‘It is, My Lady, a decoction from the juice of Stinking Nightshade.’

‘A poison then?’

‘It may be, if given in too large a dose. I advocate but three salt spoons in a volume of exactly seven times that measure; then after boiling no more than two spoons of the mixture stirred into a potel of good red wine.’

‘If more than that is taken?’

‘’T’would certainly prove fatal.’

‘I see.’ The Countess of Warenne looks thoughtful.

‘I wonder, Bonfil, what a man of your experience would make of the belief the people have in Sussex, that if a stone’s turned over outside a physician’s door and a living creature’s found beneath, it is a sign his patient will survive. If not, that he will die.’

‘’Tis but a local supersition, Lady, nothing more.’

Bonfil is unexpectedly reminded of a caged wildcat he once saw at a fair at Woodstock, with narrow golden eyes like Countess Isabel’s as she regards him.

‘Nonetheless. There is a fallen flint outside your door, and when I thought to turn it, I found nought beneath but a small worm – which took me but a moment to obliterate.’

My Lady lifts her skirt, to show her physician the destructive possibilities of a large velvet slipper. ‘I think we must agree,’ she says emphatically, ‘it is unlikely, even undesirable, that your patient should survive to see another dawn.’

Her words are for Bonfil alone. No one beyond the closed door hears, or could repeat them in the future. She nods. Bonfil who is her man and owes his living to her, bows in acquiescence.

The Countess leaves the chamber. With the aplomb of a seasoned traveller she approaches her waiting litter, lowers her silk upholstered rear-end into a flurry of excited dogs, and gives the order to depart.

In Reigate the next morning she repeats the exercise. To meet the Earl her husband at the port of Rochester two days later on the feast day of Saint Ethelwald. To join him for King Richard’s royal progress into London, and leave the pages of this story.

Which means in retrospect that three days earlier, at much the time My Lady left from Reigate castle, Sir Hugh’s unhanded body was jolted down from Lewes Fortress to the Cluniac brothers of the Priory – not in a hot and feverish condition for bedding in their hospital. But cold and stiff for its interment in the cemetery behind their cloister.

Before I woke just now, I dreamt I was in Palestine, striding down the causeway into Tyre. The sun was shining on the white gates of the city with crushed shells sparkling in the lime-wash. And Raoul, my handsome Raoul – not as he was after three weeks at sea, but polished in the brilliant light. His coat like silk. His muscles bulging, gleaming in the sunlight.

No, not sunlight – it’s the moon. It’s moonlight whitening the wall and floor. I’ve thrown the covers off. The square shape of the window’s rimmed with light, stars winking in the vapours round the moon.

And where in Hades am I?

No colours in the room – pale stripes of beams. Grey patterns on the door… the door!

I know that door and where I am, outside it. (Elise on one side of the door, with me the wrong side on the other.)

When you wake with moonlight on your face, you’re either like to go stark, staring mad, my nurse Grazilda used to say. Or, if you are a woman, will conceive a child.

Or make one, if a man? She didn’t say. But I am rigid as a plank!

It’s no good, I can’t sleep. Not in this state. Not in this light. First foot, worst foot out of bed – ow-ouch! – still hurts. Where did I drop the robe? Bolt’s stiff as well, needs oil.

The moon’s not white, or silver or pale gold, but something of all three, its colour painted on the sky and every step of the stone stair. Outside, the scents of earth and straw and spring-growth fill the air. Where was I when the air was
‘
warm as blood’? Where was I when I thought that?

Night guard’s asleep and shouldn’t be. But here’s Elise’s little garden, its winged statue. Gaskin blossom floating in the darkness. The sweet perfume of gillyflowers… And here’s my Bruno, whimpering with excitement. A dog so desperate for adventure, so thoughtless and so foolish he should have been out there in Outremer, a Moslem or a Christian!

Gate’s shut. But I can lift the bar. ‘Quiet, Bruno, or I’ll shut you in.’

When I walked home in March, I found it hard to see the cart track through the trees from Beacon Hill. Since then we’ve chalked it from the manor, all the way to the church glebe. A white strip in the moonlight – narrowing to where the village houses cluster.

And how could I forget the welcome that I had there? Dame Martha with both hands wedged tight betwixt her arms and breasts to stop her hugging me to death – with Bruno nearly wagging off his tail! Even Ida when I told her what had befallen Albie – even John’s young brothers when I bent to kiss them as he’d asked, and told them why they’d never see his face again. They shamed me by their charity, who should have hated me for coming back alone. And yet they told me nothing of Elise. Left it to Kempe and old Dame Agnès to recount their versions of the story.

I ordered masses to be sung for Lady Constance and for those who’d died abroad, the least that I could offer to their kin. And took a horse when it was done, and galloped off to Lewes.

He rode beside my litter all the way from Lewes. I lay with Hamkin, held him tightly, kept the curtains closed.

‘See how attentive he is now,’ I told my little boy. ‘Now that he’s made his noble gesture at the cost of my good name!’

And when he came to me that night, I let him kiss me but did not return the kiss. I told him coldly that I knew my duty, was his prize and chattel for his use at any time he chose. Like all else that he owned. Like his horses, like his dogs!

‘There’s nothing new to me in being forced against my will,’ I said. ‘You had the chance to end it, but chose not to – and will never win from me a woman’s love while I remain dishonoured.’ (Which sounded rather too like something from a chanson, even to my own ears!)

‘I fought him for your honour, but could not have killed him, any more than I could force you now,’ he said. ‘And I can wait.’

There was a strength and purpose in his voice which was not there before. He hobbled off on his ridiculous sore foot, to leave us on our own; Hamkin in his cradle, with me in sole possession of the curtained bed. Then when I heard him later, snoring peacefully beyond the beam, I asked myself with something like a new sense of affront, if I was not still young enough to be appealing to a man? Or if the Sarasine had been so blindingly attractive, that by comparison an English woman must seem dull?

I waited for him the next night, just for a little while before I locked the chamber door.

After the duel was over and Guillaume called for the physician. When they had bound Hugh’s wrist and taken him away, I looked up to the solar window. To find it empty. She had gone.

The frogs are croaking in the mudsquelch. The nightingales are singing in the forest. Dozens of them, chirruping and chuckling to the moon – their notes like whip-cracks. Clear as silver. Sweet as syrup bubbled through a flute – I haven’t words to do them justice. On the quays at Marseille and in Acre, they sold the little birds in wicker cages – as if the magic of a night-song in the darkness of a wood could be captured in a cage hung from a beam. Or touch your heart in the same way. The moon’s reflected in the surface of the duckpond. Bruno is trying to drink it, making silver ripples with his snout…

Moonlight in Khadija’s garden. A petal floating in the pool – and air warm as blood! That’s where it was – in Acre in the garden. ‘Air as warm as blood.’

I told Elise about Khadija and her house and garden and her little girl, and how they died. I schooled myself to tell her calmly. But the tears still came.

As we turn up towards the barn, Bruno and I, our moon-shadows sweep round us like black-feathered birds.

Shadows, moving shadows. Hugh’s and mine.

He died in any case. We heard the news the day I told Elise about Khadija. Two women and two worlds, with only me between them. But when I tried the door that night, she had it locked and bolted.

The day we saw the first swallows return to Haddertun, I rode up through the forest to take stock of the Meresfeld Manor. My sister Edmay hardly knew how she should greet me – as a brother or her father’s killer?

But now we’ve sent her Hodierne, to mother her and state my case. We trust she’ll come to Haddertun in course of time – and when she does (she’s twelve now, near a woman), we should talk of marriage plans. When all is done we have to look ahead.

Hod spoke of him before she left. She’d have to wouldn’t she, to tell me my own business!

‘Ye won’t thank me for saying it, my lamb. But ’e’s a proper straw-yard bull, an’ no mistake.’

‘All right, I know you’re simply dying to explain,’ I answered wearily. ‘Go on then, tell me what you mean.’

‘Starved of company an’ full of spunk. There then!’ She nudged me with a bony shoulder. ‘What ye going to do about ’im now ye’re safe an’ that black varmint’s dead, is what I want to know? Lord save us! Set ’im loose? Is that yer plan? To find another cow to serve?’

We’ve spent the best part of our marriage separated. But now our paths run in the same direction. Or they should do.

If it is still too soon, it’s not too late to do some good, and spread some joy, and make the best of what we have to give? It’s not too late.

It wants an hour at least to sunrise. The downs look pearly, ghostly through the branches of the orchard. Nothing to them – nothing to compare with the great mountains I have crossed to reach them. Except that I was born here in their shadow – first heard the sound of sheep bells on their slopes. Clucket bells and upland grazing for the sheep, for thousands from Biella. So why not here at Haddertun and on the downs?

Oh god, I have to pee. Come on old faithful, here will do…

We’ll breed more sheep, that’s what we’ll do – produce as much wool as the Sussex looms can take…

What would she think if she could see what I was doing now? I shake the drips, can see the urine glitter in the grass. Bruno inspects, sniffs where I’ve peed and lifts his leg to add his signature to mine – a manuscript for creatures of the night to read.

What would she think if, like the Bérgé, she could look into my mind, to see a simple function of the flesh transform my fine ideas of weal and plenty into something far more basic? My robe’s still open to the air. I stand with cock in hand, face tilted to the moon. Feel younger than I’ve ever been – now horny as a unicorn. As ready and alive!

What drives the body of a man? What drives the moon across the sky?

‘Come in the stillness of the night; come soon, come soon and bring delight. Come now! OH, COME TONIGHT!’

That’s what my nurse, Grazilda used to sing, a charm to bring the faeries out.

And Bruno’s certain that I’m mad! Is it the moon? An old moon for a new beginning? Is it the spring, the month of May, that brings this rising feeling?

Is this the night I’ll tell her all that happened in the house at Acre? How it was, and how it changed me? Is this the night that every day I’ve lived has brought me to?

I must not, cannot break my word.

I’ve heard the story of the monk at Glastonbury who scrambled down into the open tomb of Arthur and his Queen and snatched a lock of Gwenevere’s fair hair where it lay on her stained brown skull. But snatched too greedily, to feel it crumble in his grasp.