‘My father died soon after,’ Marie-Anne said. ‘He grew thinner and thinner until there was almost nothing left of him. By the end, I could have picked him up with one hand. And it wasn’t long until my mother followed him. I think she died of loneliness; I mean that I think she willed herself to die, to be with him. She had always said she could not bear to be parted from him. And I pray they are together now in Heaven.’
I mumbled something about my being sure of it. A rabbit darted from under our horses’ hooves and away into the woodland and we took a minute or two to control the startled mounts. Then Marie-Anne picked up her story again.
‘The day after my father’s death, while the whole household was in mourning, a local knight called Roger of Bakewell came to pay his respects. After my father had been laid to rest in the churchyard, Sir Roger took me aside and tried to kiss me; his breath smelled of onions. When I refused, he told me that he would marry me, that he had made an arrangement with my father and paid him half a pound of silver to seal the bargain for my hand. I was shocked, but I believed he spoke the truth. My father might well have done such a thing. He would have considered it the right thing to do, to ensure that I had a strong husband to protect me and safeguard the earldom.
‘But, you know Alan, from that day on I never spoke to the man Roger ever again. In fact, for ever afterwards he always tried his hardest to avoid me. Once, in Nottingham, after I had become a royal ward, I bumped into him in the market place. He was mounted and I was afoot. The minute he saw me, he wheeled his horse and galloped - literally galloped - through the market throng to get away from me. The brief glimpse that I had of his face showed me that he was terrified. Terrified of me.
‘Of course, I discovered later that Robin had paid him a visit. And he had taken big John Nailor with him. The story goes that they broke into his castle at night, broke into his bedchamber, and while John stood over the man with his great axe, Robin made him eat half a pound of silver, a hundred and twenty silver pennies, one penny at a time. Robin explained to Sir Roger, very quietly and reasonably, that he had now been repaid the money he was owed for my hand, and that if he ever tried to press his suit with me again, there would be very unpleasant consequences. “She is under my protection,” he told Sir Roger. “And anyone who troubles her will feel my displeasure.”’
I still was laughing at the image of a proud knight being forced to eat a big bag of metal, when Marie-Anne said: ‘It can make for a lonely existence, though, being under Robin’s protection. Men are wary even of speaking to me. And that is why I am so enjoying talking to you, my handsome bodyguard.’ She smiled at me. I stopped laughing and imagined I could feel a cold wind blowing on my neck. I wondered what Robin would do to me if he knew some of the thoughts I had had about Marie-Anne.
She seemed to be reading my mind. ‘I am promised to Robin,’ she said, ‘and my heart will always belong to him. But that doesn’t mean you and I can’t be good friends.’
I gave her a sickly smile. Hugh had been right the day of the great feast when he wept into his wine. Love could, quite often, mean pain for someone.
Chapter Thirteen
Although it loomed over the city like a great stone fist, Winchester Castle looked wonderful to me. I have never been quite so glad to see a symbol of Norman power in my life. I had grown up in and around Nottingham town but I had never been
inside
its castle - indeed, had I entered it, I’d have been terrified, as being inside that fortress meant facing torture and death for a thief such as me. But, as our mud-splattered, blue-nosed party approached Winchester on the Andover road, I realised how much I had changed in the year I had been with Robin’s band. I caught a first glimpse of the castle as we topped a small rise, and I merely thought: ‘Praise be to God: hot food, hot water to wash in, and a chance to put on some dry clothes.’
Then my eye was drawn to the soaring majesty of the city’s long cathedral, famous for housing the holy shrine of St Swithin, the saint who brings the rain - and I scowled. It had taken us more than a week to travel the two hundred or so miles from Robin’s Caves to Winchester, and it had hardly stopped raining since we set out. The roads had become quagmires, mere channels of mud through which the horses had picked their way with their hooves sucked down by the sludge at every step. Wherever possible we rode off the road, on the verges which were higher and less muddy, or on open fields. But it was easy to get lost and the Gascon men-at-arms were uncomfortable when we left the highway. So we splashed through mud for most of the way, stopping at manors and farms held by friends of Robin and Marie-Anne or at religious houses at night where the monks would give us a slim meal, a doubtful look and a cot in the dormitory to sleep in. Every morning, though, we awoke at grey dawn and rode out again into the ever-falling rain.
Marie-Anne, God bless her, had remained cheerful for the whole journey and while I was huddled in my cloak, cursing the rain that ran down my neck and shivering as the wind blew against my sodden hose, she told stories to Goody and described the wonderful time we would have at Winchester; the parties, the games, the mock ‘courts of love’, which Queen Eleanor had introduced from her native Aquitaine, in which poets and troubadours would compete by performing their love poetry. The songs were judged by Eleanor and her ladies-in-waiting and the winner awarded a kiss. Bernard pricked up his ears at the sound of this. He had been sullen and quiet for most of the journey, wrapped, like me, in damp woollen misery, but when Marie-Anne mentioned these ‘courts of love’ he seemed transformed and asked her endless questions. What sort of songs did the Queen like? How far could a musician go, politically, in the satirical
sirvantes
? Were her ladies-in-waiting pretty? When he had at last finished pestering her, he was a different man.
‘It seems we are going somewhere that is quite civilised,’ he said to me, almost cheerfully. ‘And now we will have some proper music. You’d better pull up your hose and start practising that fancy flute, Alan. You’ll be expected to perform at some point and I do not want you to disgrace me in front of the Queen.’ He smirked at me and began to sing; the song, one of his favourite
cansos
in French, was muffled by his soaking hood and almost completely drowned out by the hiss of the rain as it drove down into the mud around us.
We entered the city of Winchester through the north gate, and were briefly challenged by the guard but, when the Gascon captain shouted ‘Comptess Lock-ess-lee’, the big wooden barrier was swung open and we trotted through and into the busy streets of the city. The city seemed to be more crowded than Nottingham; the houses huddling closer together, the streets narrower, meaner. The other thing that struck me most forcibly after a week travelling in the countryside was the smell. The city reeked of a thousand foul odours: of shit and rotting meat, of decaying rubbish and human sweat. I covered my nose and mouth with my damp sleeve; and then just ahead of me a householder hurled a chamber-pot of piss from a window into the street. It narrowly missed the rump of Bernard’s horse and he turned and snarled at the woman in French and she hurriedly apologised and slammed her shutters. The contents of the chamber-pot joined the trickle of foul slurry that oozed down the centre of the street and we steered our horses to the side of the road to avoid that noisome stream, picking our way around piles of rotting refuse, dead dogs and filthy beggars, crouching in their rags in doorways and crying for alms. Rats scurried away from our horses’ hooves and I thought longingly of Sherwood and the wild, clean woodland.
We clattered over the drawbridge of the castle at about noon and into a great courtyard, where we were greeted by servants who took our horses and ushered us into the wing of the castle that housed Queen Eleanor and her retinue. I was shocked at the great size of the place; just the courtyard was three times the size of the hall at Thangbrand’s and many doorways led off from it to a maze of chambers and corridors, lesser halls and, of course, the great hall where Queen Eleanor would dine with the constable of the castle, and her nominal captor, Sir Ralph FitzStephen. In truth, Eleanor was not as confined as closely as she had been in previous years, when she had been totally cut off from the outside world, and denied any company save for her maid Amaria. In fact, at one time, Eleanor’s quarters had been so spartan that she and Amaria had had to share a bed. Now, although the King still kept her closely guarded for fear that she would encourage support for their son Duke Richard, with whom he was at war in France, she was permitted all the comforts that she was entitled to by her rank, including a sizable retinue.
However, the King was old and sick, and worn out by the years of constant warfare with his sons over their inheritances. When he died, and some whispered that it might be soon, Richard would become king and his beloved mother Eleanor would be an even more powerful woman. So Ralph FitzStephen stepped lightly around his royal prisoner and while she was not allowed to leave the castle, he turned a blind eye to the frequent messengers she dispatched to and received from France and Aquitaine.
Of course, I knew none of this at the time. I was in awe of the huge stone building that we had just entered and bewildered by the number of rooms that made up the royal apartments. Most people in England lived in one room, mother, father, children, and their livestock all in one small smoky space a few yards long; at Winchester there were more rooms than I had ever seen under one roof, with high ceilings and the walls hung with tapestries or painted with dramatic scenes of the chase or images from the Bible or pictures of the Virgin Mary. We were informed by the servants that the Queen was resting, but that the bathhouse would be ready in no time at all and that there were fresh clothes and food laid out in a chamber that had been set aside for Bernard and me. Goody had been swept up by the women of the household and taken away, and Marie-Anne had disappeared off to her own apartments, but we were all to meet up at dusk. So Bernard and I stripped off our sodden travelling clothes and made our way to the bath house. There, in great padded wooden tubs filled with steaming water, by the side of a roaring fire, we let the pains of the journey dissolve. It felt wonderful: servants in relays brought jugs of boiling water and topped up the bath, while another scrubbed my fast-thawing back. Bernard seemed to be burning with excitement despite his weariness; he was singing to himself almost constantly, clearly composing something, a love song, I believe, and muttering ‘No, no, no . . . Ah, but how about . . .’ I tried to listen to his new song but in no time I drifted off to sleep in the warm water.
We were summoned to the royal presence that evening. Washed, brushed and dressed in clean tunic and hose of rich green silk, courtesy of Marie-Anne, we were ushered into the lesser hall that Eleanor used as her private meeting place. It was still a large room, with dressed stone walls, brightly painted with what I guessed were scenes of famous landscapes from Aquitaine, and a high arched wooden ceiling. Though it was spring, two large braziers burned in the centre of the room making it pleasantly warm, and about a score of men and women, beautifully dressed, stood around the hall drinking wine, laughing and talking to each other. We entered the room, Marie-Anne leading a clean and well-brushed Goody by the hand, with Bernard and myself following. Bernard looked like a royal prince; while I had slept away the afternoon, he had found a barber in the castle and his hair, now glossy and clean, had been trimmed to a neat bowl shape; his face was shaven and he had even found time to weave coloured ribbons of red and yellow into the seams of his green silk tunic, giving him a merry, festive air. He smelled of rose oil and some other heady spice. He was the cockerel once again, bright and shiny and happy. He stood straighter, he looked totally at home in this huge and daunting castle; I suspected that he was even sober. In comparison, I felt dowdy, provincial and nervous and I was glad he had asked me to carry his vielle, which had been polished until it shone like a mirror; it gave me something to hide behind.
As we entered the hall, the crowd parted to reveal a great chair at the far end of the room, in which sat an elderly woman in a splendid golden satin gown embroidered with jewels and pearls. She must have been in her mid-sixties, an age far greater than most people achieve, nearly ten years older than I am now, but her face was lean, alert, and barely lined, and her eyes were bright as a sparrow’s under an ornate white horned headdress bound with golden wire. She was Eleanor, she was the Queen, and I realised with a shock that despite her advanced age, she was still beautiful.
She smiled when she saw Marie-Anne and stood up and beckoned her forward. ‘Welcome home, my child,’ she said in French. She had a warm voice, with a deep smoky burr that gave it a pleasant sensual quality. Marie-Anne curtseyed prettily and then moved forward to embrace her. Eleanor took Marie-Anne’s chin in her left hand and stared intently into her eyes. ‘So you have returned from that den of thieves intact?’ she said. Marie-Anne seemed to blush, and replied: ‘Yes, your highness, as you see, I am quite unharmed.’
‘Hmmm. And how is that dreadful Odo boy?’ she asked.
‘He is well, highness,’ Marie-Anne replied, ‘and he sends you his respectful greetings and this gift.’ At this she handed over a heavy gold ring adorned with a great emerald, the size of a quail’s egg. Eleanor took it, in an already much-beringed hand, and turned it to catch the light from a torch burning in a becket set into the wall. Then she laughed: a dark, intimate chuckle.
‘He is a terrible fellow; I gave this ring personally to the Bishop of Hereford as a parting gift the year before last.’ She sounded that raspy deep laugh again. ‘He really is naughty . . . but amusing, very amusing! No wonder you are so in love with the rascal.’
Then she turned to look at us. ‘And you have brought some friends with you, how delightful . . .’