The White Cross (7 page)

My Lord of Warenne winks his one good eye at Hugh de Bernay. ‘Not if we send our best knights off on some wild gander’s chase across the sea, and keep none back to hold his lands for him while Richard’s busy lopping heathen heads in Outremer!’

CHAPTER FOUR

It was not the first feast I’d attended in the fortress but certainly the best. The Earl’s cooks had excelled themselves to honour the archbishop. There were so many succulent roast meats brought steaming from the kitchens we hardly knew what we were eating. God only knows how many different dishes were carried down the boards – the carcases of oxen and wild boar, poultry on their spits and small birds seethed in milk, herons, plovers, gulls and even starlings. A swan in all its feathers in a pond of bright green pastry was borne through the hall to loud applause. A goose with the head of a sucking pig sewn onto it was set before the Countess as a jest. And later there were mounds of oysters, pears in honey, brightly coloured jellies moulded in the shapes of animals and castles, each course announced with a great trumpet fanfare.

Not that I was in any kind of frame to do them justice. For if I ate enough to sink a barge, I’d drunk enough to float a merchantman. And as I drank my separate aches became a single pain.

With my chin propped on my fist I watched the candle flames dance in the ale. In my unfocussed eyes the banqueters about me, shovelling the food and soaking in the drink as fast as they could go, appeared as figures in a dream, as noble as the knights of Camelot – the very cream, the very peak of civilized existence. And yet to me unreal. The banquet and the tourney, even the poor fellow I had killed, seemed none of them quite real.

As for my honour… ‘De Bernay saved my life and wears the crown, but what of that?’ I asked my friend Sir Mark for whom I felt a sudden warm affection.

‘The crown’s a ring of laurel leaves, that’s all, and by tomorrow will be wilted. And what’s so special I should like to know about a prize that’s no more than a useless bunch of feathers and a lump of rock? Jesus Mary, that’s what I call special over there.’

I belched and patted Mark’s hard thigh, pointing tipsily at the high table. ‘That little maid in blue, d’ye see, the damsel with the face of a church Madonna sitting up as grand as any? She’s to be my wife, d’ye hear – MY wife, that’s the best of it. My wife and never Bernay’s!’

I think that’s what I said, but can’t be sure because it was the last thing I recall before the laughing faces at the tables began to blur and merge into long banners of pink flesh – before the clamour of the lower hall receded into silence, and in a shower of oyster shells I toppled backwards off the bench.

The thing is that he’s not about to dance or even stand unaided, propped up against against the serving screen with all the other drunkards. One of them has vomited disgustingly all down his tunic – not a pleasant sight! – the rest oblivious, including my Sir Garon.

Now that they’ve cleared the boards My Lady Isabel’s retired. So has Maman, and they’ve had the trestles set against the wall for dancing. The hall’s suffocating, reeks of smoke and sweat and onion farts – and God, I’m feeling…

Well, ready for some exercise, that’s certain!

The figured dance is boisterous as ever. Twelve couples, with as ever far more girls than men – red-faced and laughing – weaving patterns, swirling fabric, changing partners with each stanza. The minstrel plays to banish melancholy. So he says – an unattractive little man with lantern jaw and large misshapen joints. Yet no one can deny his talent on the lute or think his clear voice aught but beautiful.

At the coming of spring season

Trees to leaf require no reason.

Fowls of the air in company

Their different songs then sweetly sing,

And that which lords most long to see

‘Tis only ladies who can bring!

As often as they sing of war men sing of love; of one thing or the other in a chanson (well, usually it’s love).

Another circle round again, still clapping hands – and cooler with the neck of my blue gown unfastened. Swoop and sway and circle round. My girdle-tassel’s jumping like a live thing.

I noticed him again while they were lighting the fresh candles, no longer crowned with laurels as he moved out onto the floor – noticed him and knew we must touch hands…

A prickly branch on a may tree

Is how my love doth seem to me…

In spite of his exertions, despite the fact that like the rest he’s had a deal too much to drink, you’d have to say he’s agile – sleek as a wet weasel.

‘So here we have the lady who’s so unimpressed by champions that she refuses to regard them.’

‘You flatter yourself Sir as worthy of regard.’

‘When all I meant to do was flatter your attractions. But tell me, are you still resolved to be so cruel?’

His eyes are bloodshot and his voice is dolorous. But naturally he’s teasing, these older men say anything they like…

I wish he wouldn’t smirk like that. It makes it hard to be severe.

In the night-time stiff and frozen,

In the wild wind tossed and blowing,

‘I wouldn’t call it cruelty Sir, but preference for another.’

Until in sun her blossoms open;

Beneath her petals something showing!

We finish on the final turn, but ’though we stand apart our shadows go on dancing in the torchlight, vis-a-vis.

He is so close that I can smell his sweat, look straight into the forest of black hair between the neck bands of his tunic. It’s strange, but when you’ve had a little wine yourself you seem to see things differently…

Look down – black hair. Look up – exciting eyes as dark and deep as lakewater (and why is it that dark men, dark unpleasant men, are so often and so much more interesting than fair and pleasant ones?)

A moth with yellow underwings has settled on his shoulder.

‘What, preference for the fledgeling youth? But isn’t it enough that you have vowed to marry him?’ he’s asking. ‘Don’t tell me the young beanstick’s to your taste as well? You haven’t heard perhaps that he’s a small, a very small…’

‘Small what?’

‘A small to near invisible appreciation of the female sex.’

He’s smiling at me, laughing in my face.

But now I’m telling him my duty’s to Sir Garon, as his should be to Lady Constance.

‘You devastate me. But if you will recall it’s taste we’re talking of. Not poxy duty, ma petite.’

The moth has risen from his shoulder, is fluttering above our heads. His voice is slurred. He’s taking pains to form his words (but curious to hear him call me by the name that Maman uses).

‘And when it comes to taste, I should point out that there are few things more exciting in a woman than a pair of soft pink lips.’ (Laughing again quite horridly.) ‘We men see paradise between them, did you know?’ (And bulging where men bulge when they are stirred; a gross thing that he makes no effort to conceal.)

‘Bend over then and show me.’

Detestable! Atrocious! Simply hateful! (His mouth so close it’s tickling my ear.)

‘You are unseemly Sir, disgusting!’

‘Absolutely.’ He agrees.

Oh God it is so hot in here! I’m boiling, scarlet to the hairline!

But look outraged (I hope I do) and turn your back on him, and lift your chin.

Now walk away.

I see a man reflected in the water. I almost can now that I’ve found the way to do it.

At low tide the River Ouse lay deep between its banks, escorted to the sea by ducks and dragonflies and swallows catching gnats. I saw him mirrored in it, first upside-down against a scape of hills and roofs and coloured banners, then right-side-up above his own reflection. It’s how I see him now.

‘Brothers in Christ, the Kingdom of Jerusalem is on her knees!’ I see the old archbishop standing in a herring boat moored to the further bank, the violet stole that’s meant to be Christ’s yoke around his scrawny neck.

Some minor jousts, with wrestling and falconry, cock fights and shooting at the butts had been planned for the day. But Raoul needed time to heal and so did I. My mouth was foul, my head ached like the devil, and the soft turds I’d woken to expel at cockcrow smelled obnoxious. Three of Hugh’s and one of my own captives from the tourney had already paid their ransoms and departed. But four were left for us to entertain, and by the time Archbishop Baldwin left his Manor for the river, we’d had enough of trying to amuse them.

‘Come lads, let’s see him cast his net across the Ouse,’ Hugh said when the archbishop’s criers reached the camp. ‘Let’s watch him work a miracle and land men in place of salmon.’

So down we went, all eight of us, Sir Hugh and I with both our squires and four remaining captives including giant Sir Wolstan.

I went in hope of clearing my thick head and forcing my stiff muscles into action.

‘For near a century our Christian kings have ruled in Palestine. But now they battle for their very lives,’ the old man shouted from the far side of the river. ‘At Hattin near the Sea of Galilee His armies have been cruelly slaughtered. The bodies of our warrior monks, our Templars and Hospitallers, are strewn across the land where Christ’s feet trod. The holy relic of the True Cross has been taken, and from the port of Tyre a black-sailed mourning ship has brought us news that Saracens, the followers of Satan’s Prophet, lair in the Holy City!’

‘Sarcens!’ Jos swatted at the gnats that plagued the Lewes shore. ‘Ninety nine of every hundred Sarsens want bolts shot through ‘em front to back.’

He wrinkled his freckled nose and grinned. ‘And after that if it were left to me I’d go an’ shoot some more.’

But through my fuddled mind flashed images of Christ’s own patrimony, of Outremer, the wondrous land the old knights spoke of when they pointed at the severed hands and strings of Sarsen ears they’d brought back from croisade and hung as trophies on the barrack walls.

‘Urbs Jerusalem beata! Jerusalem the blessed has been ravaged by the hosts of Satan – by Saladin the Antichrist, the beast incarnate!’

The archbishop’s thin voice was straining with the effort. ‘The Holy City’s brave defenders, all are slain, her women violated before its altars, her children put to the sword. Dogs lap our Christian blood! Oh Lord that we should live to see Your Sepulchre used as a stable for the horses of accursed infidels, Thy Holy Cross dragged down, befouled with their excrement!’

‘How graceless of them,’ Hugh remarked, ‘to disrespect a Roman instrument of torture.’

Behind us we could hear applause for some feat of archery or combat on the meads. But no one paid it heed.

‘Shame! For shame!’ a voice cried from the crowd. ‘Death to the Antichrist!’ another, and sensing a response the old archbishop yelled the louder.

‘Hearken to the word of God. His judgement stands as high as mountains, deep as oceans, sharper than the sharpest sword! I tell you that in God’s judgement we are undeserving, brothers. You may be sure He never would have suffered our defeat by infidels except to prove to us the folly of our sins.’

For a moment the old man was silent, shaken by the force of his own words. Then he began again so suddenly that half a dozen seagulls flapped from their roosts on masts and mooring posts with wild cries of alarm.

‘The Christian prince who by the grace of God I am to crown next month in Westminster, has taken up the cross himself and pledged to save Jerusalem,’ he shouted hoarsely, then told us that the kings of France and Sicily were also pledged. The German Emperor was already on the march with at his back a force of twenty thousand men. And even as he spoke I saw them rising from the river, an Emperor and three wise kings with principal among them the shining prince to whom I’d sworn an oath of fealty.

The picture in my mind was glorious. I saw the promise of adventure, conquest, Syrian gold, exotic eastern women. I saw the holy city of Jerusalem as a kind of paradise on earth, with pure white churches, strutting peacocks, raiments of bright silk – and streets of gold if all we heard was true. But principally I saw myself with sword upraised beneath the banner of King Richard, the greatest hero of our time!

‘A knight who isn’t skilled in arms can count for nothing in this world, remember that. It is your destiny to fight.’ My father’s voice rang in my ears.

But how? How must I do it, Father?

‘Delay no longer. For love of God take up the cross and join us in this just and holy war to liberate Jerusalem and regain the True Cross of Our Lord,’ Archbishop Baldwin shouted from his boat. ‘Follow in the steps of Christ’s apostles if need be at the cost of your own lives. Join us in the greatest cause the world has known. The Pope himself offers remission of your sins and promises salvation to all embarking on croisade.’

Sir Wolstan gave a mighty fart. ‘Pass us the wineskin, will ye Haddertun,’ he begged, ‘before the godwit talks us sober.’

For months the plans for the croisade had been discussed in every castle ward and marketplace and tavern in the land. For two years past our manors of Haddertun and Meresfeld had paid an annual tithe towards the enterprise.

And dear Lord, of what account are games of war and victor’s crowns, I thought,
when THIS is how a real man earns salvation?