Authors: Norah Lofts
I called Blanco out of his kennel and allowed him to carry me across to the King’s apartment, that bleak, austere apartment which nevertheless I regarded as a privilege to enter, so highly did Father rate the privacy it afforded. Only state matters with some element of secrecy in them or family affairs were discussed in that room; it had an unused air which combined with its bare stone walls and floor and its severe furnishing to make it cheerless and forbidding.
When I first entered I could see Father kneeling at the farther end of the room. His back was to me and his head was lowered. Berengaria I could not see at all. I had a momentary ridiculous idea that, having exhausted himself by argument, he had taken to prayer and had sent for me to pray with him. Then, hobbling forward, I saw the reason for his posture. Berengaria lay stretched on the floor and he, on his knees, was bending over her. Then I thought that she had fainted; she had spent herself by argument and either genuinely or tactically swooned. It went through my mind how timely, how convenient, how useful women’s swooning fits could be.
A second afterwards I saw the reality. All the bosom of Berengaria’s new white gown and the ends of her gauzy wimple were dabbled with blood; and Father, with the end of his long-hanging sleeve, was wiping away the blood which flowed in a steady stream from a long thin wound in her neck.
He had heard my arrival and turned his face to me. It was quite distraught and a horrible grey-green in colour. ‘Oh, my God, Anna,’ he said. ‘Look at this—’
I thought she had provoked him too far and he had struck her with a knife in his hand. On the table stood a dish of russet-skinned winter apples and one apple, half peeled, lay near the table’s edge.
I enjoy stories of violence but in real life I shrink from it. And to blood I have an aversion; I don’t like the sound of the word or the look of it when it is written. The idea of Father, in a moment of rage, drawing blood on his Berengaria, his favourite and his most beloved, made me feel quite sick.
Berengaria lay there looking like a beautiful white victim of some old ritual sacrifice and Father’s hands were like a butcher’s. I said in a very thin, shaky voice:
‘Shall I send for Ahbeg?’
‘I did. As soon as it happened. He should be here by now. Oh, my God, she’ll die. Send again, Anna, or go yourself. I’ll kill the old devil if he doesn’t hurry.’ He whipped his other sleeve round his hand and renewed his mopping.
By that time I had had a chance to notice that the blood, though messy and nasty, was not pumping out in the bright red flood that pours from a fatal wound. And as I stumbled to the door I said so. I had got the door open and was shouting to the pages, who were housed a little way down the passage, when I saw the dancing light of a lantern on the curve of the wall and heard the sound of brisk steps and shuffling ones. In a moment Ahbeg, accompanied by a page, rounded the corner.
‘He’s here,’ I said over my shoulder.
Ahbeg had one hand on the page’s arm and his other fumbling at the wall.
‘Don’t let anybody else in,’ Father said. So at the door I dismissed the page, offering my own arm to the old man, and led him inside the room. He peered about blindly, distrustfully.
‘The King sent for me,’ he said in a high quavering voice. ‘Where is he? What is the matter?’
I realised that he was almost blind. He was older and thinner and much dirtier than when he had come into the bower to set the bone in Blondel’s ankle.
‘Oh, thank God you’ve come,’ Father said. ‘It’s my girl. I was telling her something—for her own good—and she up with a knife and cut her throat. Here, Ahbeg, here. Look…’ Ahbeg was peering about like a bat. Father took him roughly by the arm and dragged him across to where Berengaria lay.
‘Bring a candle and hold it steady,’ the old man said. He bent over stiffly and looked at Berengaria between narrowed lids.
‘Nothing to make a fuss about. A very trivial wound. No more than a cut finger.’ I heard Father drew in a great gusty breath of relief.
‘Cut throat indeed,’ Ahbeg said grumblingly. ‘A mere scratch on the neck. And I can’t get down on my knees nowadays. Lift her up. Isn’t there a table or a settle or something?’
He peered about.
Father, with some of the ghastly colour gone from his face, lifted Berengaria and laid her on the table and I took the only cushion that was in the room and placed it under her head. By that time the steady red stream, unstaunched, was flowing over her shoulders.
Ahbeg dipped into the ragged, bulky
aumônière
which he wore on his girdle and brought out a needle and thread which he handed to me.
‘Thread that for me,’ he said. ‘Small things baffle me nowadays. Bigger things I see very well, and where wounds are concerned I have eyes in my fingers. Sire, do not concern yourself. I’m an old man and I never knew any female creature to deal herself a fatal blow yet. They do sometimes jump into water and then scream for help and sometimes they swallow poison—that is fatal. But no woman ever yet knifed herself successfully. Nor ever will.’ I handed him the threaded needle which he took without acknowledgment.
He turned to the table, gathered the soiled wimple into a handful and wiped away some of the blood. Then, as dispassionately as though he were stitching a rent in a piece of cloth, he sewed the edges of the wound together. I felt sick again but somehow I could not avert my eyes. He was so quick and so expert.
And Berengaria never stirred. I flinched and shuddered each time the needle went home and Father, at the far end of the room, walked about, saying, ‘My God, my God!’
Ahbeg made eight stitches and cast off—a tapestry term. Then he fumbled again in his pouch and finally produced a small linen bag from which he took a pinch of grey powder.
‘Hold your hand,’ he said to me. I did so and he placed the grey powder in my palm. Then he closed his
aumônière
, carefully putting the little linen and the needle and thread into it first.
‘Hold your hand,’ he said again, and as I did so he spat into my palm. It was horrible. I almost screamed. With the forefinger of his right hand he mixed the grey powder and the spittle into a paste, using my hand as though it were a utensil. And the paste he then smeared over the wound and over the stitches. A little blood was seeping through and before he had done my palm was something utterly repulsive, Berengaria’s blood, Ahbeg’s spittle… and what was the grey powder, I wondered… dried, pulverised toad?
‘Now there will be no pain and no festering,’ he said, wiping his own fingers on the rose damascened gown of his patient. ‘Make no attempt to wake her. The swoon will pass into sleep and that will mend the shock. The wound itself is nothing. I would not have wasted the good thread on any but the princess.’
‘Ahbeg,’ Father said, suddenly turning from his pacing and his calling upon God, ‘I want no word of this to get about.’
‘Am I a hen to cackle in the yard?’ Ahbeg asked, and went shuffling to the door. There he turned. ‘When she wakes she will be thirsty—give her anything save wine. Water; milk, broth, anything. Good night to you, sire.’ I might not have been present.
‘Good night, Ahbeg—and thank you,’ Father said.
He came and stood by me at the end of the table where Berengaria lay like a dead girl with the blood already turning rusty-red on her gown and on her flesh and the grey-green paste smeared across her neck as though the wound had festered.
‘Well,’ Father said, ‘that’s something off my mind. I’ve never known Ahbeg to be wrong. But what are we to do now? What are we going to say to the rest of them? Fernando and the archbishop are expecting an answer; I promised them an answer tomorrow morning. I was just talking to her, I’d have you know, Anna. Just talking. Not raging or upbraiding, though she was being as obstinate as the devil. I was peeling her an apple—that will show you—and she took the knife out of my hand, Anna, while I was peeling her an apple. My dear, this has been a shock for you too! Perhaps I should—I’m afraid I just thought, Anna and Ahbeg. It is at such moments that one knows upon whom one relies. There now, I’ll get you some wine, Anna…’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that I would like to wash my hand. What with the spit and the blood—somehow I want to hold it well away from me and, what with one thing and another, I feel like a crab.’
He rushed to the corner where his basin and ewer stood behind a plain canvas screen and brought me the basin of water and a clean linen towel. When I had washed I felt better, more in command of myself. Father took back the basin and, casting a look at where Berengaria lay, still like a dead girl, said:
‘It would be a fine story, wouldn’t it, for Fernando to take back to his brother—that the princess knifed herself rather than marry him! And how should
I
look? Like a fiend who bullied his daughter into mortal sin—I, the most patient, indulgent father in all Christendom. I swear to you, Anna, I was talking to her most reasonably, saying much the same as I said to you the other day.’
He looked at me helplessly. And I remembered all he had done for me. Even the ten gold pieces I had given Blondel were
his
bounty. So I sat and thought and enjoyed the pleasant sensation of a scheme, cunning, complete in every detail, sliding into the mind as smoothly and neatly as a hand slides into a glove.
‘We must say that Berengaria was taken ill while she was with you and that you sent for Ahbeg, who said it might be plague. That will cause a scare; but you and I have been badly scared this night and who are the rest that they should escape a little scaring? Plague comes suddenly and the buboes form in the neck and the groin and the armpits. And plague keeps everyone at a distance. Even the archbishop and the archduke will gladly take leave of Pamplona. After a few days we will discover that Ahbeg was mistaken and that the lump in her neck was an abscess which he lanced in the hope that a clean line would be less unsightly than the ragged hole left by the natural breaking. That, sire, will set a new fashion when the story gets about, and every woman with an abscess will run straight to a surgeon. Meanwhile it will be natural enough that I, having been already exposed to danger, take charge of the sickroom. How does that sound to you?’
Father looked at me as though I had just performed a double somersault before his eyes.
‘By our Lady,’ he said, ‘you have a nimble mind.’
‘In your service, sire. And now it would be as well if you left us and went to spread the story and ordered another couch and some blankets and pillows. I shall need two pages in constant attendance and Ahbeg should come in twice a day.’
‘If you manage this, Anna, I’ll give you anything you wish.’
I was most oddly reminded of a morning very long ago when I was on one of my jaunts to the market and had bought some cherries at a stall and, turning, saw behind me a little urchin who had been fishing for tadpoles and held an iron basin full of them in his hand. I gave him a handful of cherries and with a quite heavenly smile he dived his hand into the basin and brought out one of the little black wriggling things and offered it to me.
‘My dear father,’ I said, ‘you have already given me so much. This is my chance to do something for you. Go now and talk loudly about the danger of plague. Tell the archduke and the archbishop that the princess is suddenly stricken down and if you see the slightest doubt in their faces ask them if they would like to see her… And, sire, keep Mathilde out; she would see through it in a moment.’
He looked relieved, glad to be told what to do. Then he turned to the table where Berengaria lay and his expression changed to one of most dismal bewilderment.
‘What in God’s name made her do it? I wasn’t threatening her, Anna; I wasn’t even shouting, just talking to her reasonably.’ He bent and stared at the unconscious face. ‘Do you believe what Ahbeg said about sleep? Shouldn’t we try to rouse her? Burnt feathers, I’ve seen them used to revive women. And wine. Do you think we could get a little wine between her teeth?’ It was the first time I had ever heard him express a doubt about Ahbeg’s infallibility or suggest doing anything counter to the old man’s advice.
‘I think it would be better to do exactly as we were told,’ I said. ‘You go and arrange for the bedding and the attendance and explain to our visitors.’
Still he hesitated. ‘I as good as promised them their answer tomorrow morning.’
‘The circumstances justify a little procrastination, I think.’ I smiled at him. ‘Anyway, refusals are always more easily made from a distance. Let them get home and then write.’
‘Well, I at least have had my answer!’ He looked down at his daughter again, yearning, remorseful and yet with puzzled impatience. As he moved away there was a little clinking sound, and he stooped and picked up the slender silver knife. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have my answer.’ Holding it in his hand; shaking his head a little, he went out.
I had an idea that we had heard the last of Isaac of Cyprus.
XIV
I spent the next six days in circumstances that taught me something about solitary confinement and something of what it feels like to be a leper. No one entered the room save Ahbeg and I found myself passionately looking forward to his visits though he, violently disapproving of the whole thing, was surly and rude and lamentably lacking in interest in his patient. Relays of couples of pages were always in attendance but they were all frightened out of their wits and would step backwards along the passage as soon as I opened the door of the sickroom and would often, with pretended eagerness, go darting away before I had finished asking for what I wanted.
On the first day and the second Father, devoured by anxiety, did look round the door and make inquiries; then some officious court busybody chided him for taking undue risks and thenceforward, to preserve appearances, he stayed away.
And Berengaria, as soon as she was conscious, began to cry; and cried and cried almost continually.
‘Why didn’t you let me die? I wanted to die.’ She must have said those words to me a hundred times.
The wound, as Ahbeg had promised, did not fester; she had no fever but I would rather have nursed six people through veritable plague. She wouldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep and she cried and cried.