Authors: Norah Lofts
Leaning over me, in the half-light of early morning, she looked strange, I thought, but my eyes were still full of sleep and I reflected that the emotions of the previous day were calculated to leave some mark. When the sun rose, however, and my fully wakened eyes looked at her in the bright light, I saw that the change in her was greater than I had thought; it was extraordinary, a little frightening.
In Acre I had often noticed the thing which had so impressed our grandfather—the curious invulnerable tranquillity in the eyes of the Saracen women. All but the very humblest—and some, even, of them—had had in infancy the same small operation which Ahbeg had performed upon Berengaria; consequently you might see a young Saracen woman clutching a dead child to her breast, rocking to and fro in a transport of misery and shedding tears from eyes as calm and untroubled as pansy flowers. But somewhere in the course of a lifetime a change must take place, for every old Saracen woman had eyes in which all the sorrowful wisdom of the world seemed to dwell. It was as though, I thought, all the expression of emotion which in youth was held back by the artificial barrier had suddenly come flooding in and taken possession.
Exactly the same thing had happened to Berengaria. Her eyes were still as blue and as beautiful as ever but they were vulnerable. They reflected her feelings as other women’s eyes did. The thought occurred to me that now she would find pretence less easy. Even her eyes had turned traitor.
Rouen was very empty and quiet; as Berengaria had said, everyone of importance had gone to meet the King. Almost alone save for servants, we settled down in the castle for another period of tedious waiting and when at last our backwater peace was broken it was in the worst possible manner. Richard had gone straight from Mentz to Amsterdam and there taken ship for England. They said that he was preceded by a terse warning message sent by Philip of France to John; ‘Take care, the devil is loose!’
So far as I was concerned the devil was loose that day in our apartment. I was mortally afraid that she would do herself an injury; she was so uncontrolled and I was neither heavy nor nimble enough to restrain her for long. ‘Don’t, don’t!’ I would cry as she beat her hands on the stone of the wall and I would hold her by the arm and be flung off as though I were a lap dog. After some hours, bruised and shaken and very near hysteria myself, I was thinking that I must slink away and seek help. She was mad and mad people must be restrained; one could understand the provocation and pity the sufferer but one couldn’t go on this way.
And then, as though conscious of my thought, she stopped in the middle of a screaming tirade and said:
‘Unless I take care I shall end like my mother. Anna, I will be calm. I’m sorry, Anna. I won’t be driven crazy. I will be calm.’ She came over and knelt beside me and put her head in my lap and burst into a storm of ordinary tears, the kind you administer to with little comforting pats and cluckings. Then she began to say things which, I suppose, had I been a woman of another sort, I should have found subtly flattering: ‘You’re all I have, Anna, my only friend, the only one who knows and understands everything. You’ll stay with me, won’t you? You won’t leave me. You’re all I have…’
But I could look down the long vista of days of being indispensable, of being bored and bonded; and I made as few promises as were compatible with the desire to comfort.
VII
My instinct had warned me rightly. I can still remember the very flavour of the time that followed. She shrank from all company but mine, so it seemed heartless to go out on my little expeditions and equally heartless to drag her with me. She had an idea that everyone looked at her with scorn or pity.
In the long evenings, evenings which would have sped lightly if I had been able to read undisturbed and unconscience-stricken, I was aware of her all the time. A sigh, a restless movement and I felt bound to lay aside my book and suggest some occupation. I tried to teach her chess, a game in which I took some pleasure, but although she tried she was so forgetful, so sweetly inattentive, that I found myself wanting to scream and throw the chessmen at her. I tried “nobbin,” a very exciting, very old English card game which I had learned in Acre. Unless you gambled on it, however, it was merely dull and since she couldn’t or wouldn’t attend to that either, I invariably won and was embarrassed.
She was so pathetically sweet and amiable, so anxious to please me if only I would put down my book.
‘Nobbin? Oh yes, Anna. Now tonight I’ll bet a mark on “Jack’s Astray.” But with every card for the wanted hand save one in her possession she would lose interest, let it pass, let it lie on the table under her nose. And I would win. There was no thrill, no pleasure, no interest in it for me.
Bored, bored, bored. Sometimes I wondered whether it was possible to die of boredom.
I made an infinite number of suggestions. I pointed out that a queen of England should be properly attended; some gay, accomplished waiting ladies would enliven our lives.
‘Yes, I suppose so. But, Anna, I don’t want anyone but you. They would giggle and talk and make mock of me behind my back. You understand; with you I don’t have to pretend or explain. Think how glad we were to be rid of Pila.’
I suggested that we go back to Navarre—just for a visit, I said craftily. If we did that Father would surely guess and some action might be taken with or without Berengaria’s consent. And at least there would be Father and Young Sancho to talk to. In Pamplona, too, in her own home, I should be justified in leaving her for short periods. Oh, how I longed walk out, to stand and stare; to listen to gossip at street corners and in front of booths.
‘But to go back to Navarre would be to admit failure. No married woman goes home to her father unless—’
‘Just for a visit,’ I argued.
‘Father would know. He would laugh at me and be sorry for me and most likely start something that would let all the world know.’
Most of our conversations came to such dead ends. Yet she was eager to talk. ‘Talk to me, Anna. Tell me something.’ And I would rack my brain for some fresh sturdy subject which would not, after two sentences, dwindle and fail in the arid soil of our lack of common interest.
Finally in despair I started her on a piece of tapestry. For short periods she would stitch away fairly content while I read. Then I would join her, set myself some impossible target of achievement and stitch away madly; and at least while we were both working, held together by our work, we could communicate in short disconnected sentences.
The wretched tapestry grew apace. And one evening I said idly; ‘What are we going to do with this when it is finished? It is too large for this room. Or for any in our apartment at Mans. We should have thought of that.’
‘I have thought of it, Anna. Not in connection with the tapestry—with us. One day if this state of things continues I think we should have an establishment of our own, don’t you agree?’
‘I always meant to have a house of my own,’ I said, and halted my needle. Here was a safe and fruitful subject. I began to tell her about the house I planned. The one spacious room with a glass window; the garden for herbs and flowers; the shelf for my books; the table where I could write; the candle sconce by the bed; the absence of troublesome stairs. It was so real to me that I could see it, could smell it as I talked.
‘It was to have been in Apieta and you wanted Blondel to help you with it,’ she said in a remembering voice and looking at me with great sorrowful eyes. ‘And I wouldn’t let him go!’ She dropped her needle, pushed the tapestry from her lap and began to stride up and down the room. ‘I’ve been paid out for that bit of selfishness, Anna, and for being so superstitious about my dream. Not that that was all wrong—the oubliette part was true enough; I’m in it now, God pity me! Pushed away, forgotten and all alone except for you, Anna. That’s irony, isn’t it? How you must want to laugh sometimes! Do you remember that evening just before we left Pamplona, when we quarrelled over Blondel? And you said, “Must you always have your way?’ My way. Think of that now, Anna, and laugh.”
‘There’s nothing to laugh at,’ I said as soothingly as possible, trying to forestall the tears and the hysteria which seemed to threaten. ‘Come along and sit down and tell me what to do next.’
She took no notice. ‘Look, Anna, I have no right to keep you here, spoiling all your plans and making you miserable. You go back to Apieta and build your house and live in it and be happy. Take Blondel with you—he’s no use to me any more. I’m not sure that I should ever be comfortable in his presence again.’
‘Easy enough to say “Take Blondel,”’ I said, speaking as lightly as I could. ‘I haven’t the slightest knowledge of his whereabouts even. He took his news straight to Rouen and I believe Eleanor sent him on to England, and after that—’ I spread my hands.
‘He went to Mentz, I suspect, to share in the triumphal procession. Eleanor on one hand, Blondel on the other! “But Your Majesty, didn’t you once in an absent-minded moment marry a wife?” “Oh yes, I forgot, I seem to have mislaid her somewhere!” Isn’t that a
pretty
situation?’
I heard the hysteria mounting in her voice again.
‘You know, I still don’t believe it.’ I hastened to say the first thing that came into my mind in an effort to fix her attention.
‘I should have thought this last dramatic piece of service would have proved it beyond all doubt.’
‘It doesn’t. I don’t believe that Blondel went to look for Richard because he was—infatuated with him. He did it because he was sorry for Eleanor. I know just when the idea was put into his mind. I put it there, I think, telling Eleanor that secret spying often found the answer which eluded direct questioning. If he had been—well, let’s use frank words—in love with Richard, the idea would have occurred to him and not waited to be engendered by Eleanor’s tears and a word from me. I don’t believe Blondel was ever anything but Richard’s minstrel.’
‘You are vehement,’ she said, turning and pausing to stare at me.
Be careful, I admonished myself; don’t betray anything at this late hour.
‘Am I? Maybe. But it seems to me that a thing of that kind is so easily said about a young man in Blondel’s position who happens to come into contact with a man of Richard’s sort and it isn’t a suspicion that should be
lightly
entertained.’
‘Not that it makes any difference to me
who
it is. But why don’t you believe that Blondel—’
‘I don’t know,’ I said rather feebly; ‘I just don’t. He isn’t like that.’
‘Would anyone think, to look at Richard?’ she interrupted bitterly.
‘The only thing I really have to go upon,’ I said, ‘is the way he wrote about Raife of Clermont and about Richard. And then he nursed Raife while Richard was in Damascus. It just doesn’t leave the impression—’
‘No, I always understood that these cases were riddled with jealousy. What I do not understand, Anna, and I wonder whether you do—’
Well, at least that got us through one more evening. Bedtime arrived unexpectedly and as I disrobed I thought it was typical of our whole odd relationship that our first really serious, almost impersonal discussion should be on such a subject!
A day or two later she startled me by saying, ‘Anna, I’ve been thinking about you and your house. Could we, perhaps, build one together? The way we live now is very undignified, to say the least. And the building would be interesting.’
‘Do you mean you would come to Apieta?’
Once or twice in the old days I had thought that, when Young Sancho married, if I had a house I might be expected to share it with Berengaria if she were still unwed—and the prospect had seemed to me most uninviting; but she had changed and circumstances had changed and I had changed. Now I seemed doomed to share her life and better at Apieta than anywhere else. Just the idea of going home, of having a place of my own, made my heart leap. Then, as I said the word “Apieta,” it fell again like stone. Blondel should have come to Apieta with me. We had indeed once gone there together and talked about where we would build. Just for one moment my old resentment against Berengaria blazed up again. She should not have dragged him on crusade with her and so compelled me to follow. We’d have been happy and snugly ensconced by this time and she would have been no worse off. Maybe God would have been kinder to her if she had been kinder to me. But that thought lasted only until I could recognise it and smother it.
‘Apieta?’ she said blankly. ‘Why, no, Anna. That would be as bad as going back to Father. I must stay here in Aquitaine. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t build a house here and be comfortable. We could have some little dogs, or perhaps a monkey, in a place of our own. And doves, Anna—a lot of white doves; they look so pretty and make such a pleasant sound on a summer’s day. And I think I should like to work in the herb garden. Do let’s do it, Anna.’
She looked at me and enthusiasm glowed on her face perhaps for the first time. It had always been so expressionless until the change came and since then it had generally worn a look of sorrow, discontent, disillusion.
L’Espan owes its existence to that look on her face. I simply had not the heart to wipe it out.
‘Building costs money,’ I said cautiously. ‘Labour in place like this would be very expensive. In Apieta every peasant owes me about two years’ labour in days I have not used. Here we must hire it all. And with all this castle building going on, stone and timber will be costly too. But,’ I said, seeing the light die out of her face, ‘that could be managed.’
‘I’ll ask Father,’ she said eagerly.
‘He’ll scarcely have recovered from your last demands,’ I said; ‘we’ll leave him until we reach the end of my resources.’ As I spoke I realised that I sounded as though I were already committed to the scheme. ‘Anyway, it will do no harm to talk about it.’
Happy to turn my back on that miserable tapestry, I got out my quill and my ink and started to draw. ‘This will be the solar with the window facing south, one door giving inwards and one opening on the garden. That will be draughty in winter. We’ll have a little porch—perhaps if we had some plants which needed shelter from the frost we could put them there for the winter and see a green leaf while all the trees outside are bare.’ I scratched away, happily busy.