Authors: Norah Lofts
I chiefly remembered the serious, earnest way in which Blanche had sat by my fire and advised me about the administration of L’Espan. Berengaria’s memory reached back to a time when they had both been small shy girls bidden on some occasion into impressive company and Blanche had taken the younger sister’s hand and led her forward.
‘I remember her hand was cold and not quite steady but it comforted me and she marched forward like a soldier,’ Berengaria said, and wept.
‘If she had been less brave she would have broken the journey. There are times when courage can be a disadvantage to a woman,’ I said.
‘St. Petronella,’ Berengaria said, and stopped.
And I thought it was better to talk about St. Petronella than to go on weeping, so I took up the theme. ‘Blanche certainly asked for a lusty boy—and I’ve never seen a more promising baby. We can’t blame St. Petronella. Thousands of women die every year in childbirth, even at the normal time.’
‘St. Petronella is harsh. She saw through Blanche too. Blanche was twenty-nine, Anna. Years past the age to have a first baby. But she asked for him and I suppose you could say her wish was granted. But it was a cheat, all the same.’
‘It gave Blanche seven months of great happiness,’ I ventured.
‘Yes, I suppose so. I hope so. But it does seem such a pity.’
For a moment it seemed to me that everything I looked at, everything in the world, seemed such a pity.
‘You’ll stay with me for a little while now, won’t you, Anna? This siege goes on and on. Stay and spend Easter with me. They’ll call a truce for the holy days and perhaps Richard will ride over.’
But Richard had taken his last ride.
Sometime during the previous week he had succeeded in forcing the outer defences of the castle but from an inner wall someone had taken deliberate aim at him and shot an arrow into his shoulder. No vital part had been touched, no great amount of blood lost; and although the arrowhead had broken off in the wound and the surgeon had made a clumsy job of cutting it out, Richard insisted upon treating it as a mere scratch and tried to keep as secret as possible the fact that he had been wounded at all. He had forbidden that the Queen—or anyone else who did not know—should be told. For two days he had gone about his business of directing the siege, which now promised to be quickly and suecessfully ended, and had managed to conceal the agony of the mangled wound. Then it had inflamed and he fell into fever and had been obliged to keep to his bed. Now he was out of his mind and raving and his chaplain, Theobald, and Marcadie, the captain of his Flemish troops, had decided to take matters into their own hands and had sent for Berengaria and for Escel who was in Brittany.
The news struck Berengaria into a dumb somnambulant state.
When she had said, ‘You will come with me, Anna?’ she did not speak again until we were far on our way, riding through the mild early April day; then she said, ‘They say death always strikes thrice.’
When we arrived she slipped down from her horse before anyone had time to aid her, shook out her skirts and, covered with dust as she was and with her hair falling loose about her shoulders, went straight to his bedside and there remained, replacing the covers as he thrust them off, smoothing back the tangled, sweat-soaked hair, ministering to his insatiable thirst and sometimes, in quiet moments, holding his hand.
He did not know her. He lay propped on the pillows, staring straight ahead at the wall of the tent. His face was grey except for a patch of dusky crimson that looked as if it had been painted on each high cheekbone. His lips were cracked and blackened and, save for short intervals when his eyes closed and he seemed to doze for a moment, a constant stream of words flowed over them.
Chiefly he talked of Jerusalem. Sometimes he was actually storming the city, issuing vast stirring orders in a voice that was little more than a whisper; sometimes he was making preparations, reeling off lists of stores and equipment that had been consumed or abandoned or destroyed years ago, calling for men who had long been quiet in their graves.
‘Go on, here I stand, aim straight at me, I’ll not dodge. Nothing can touch me until I have taken Jerusalem. Shining in the sun, just beyond the hills; but not to be looked at. I shall never look at it until the moment when I lead my army against it.
‘Walter is a better man than Longchamp but he can’t wring out the money as that ferret could. Anyway, England is milked dry. The golden treasure of Châlus should provide two hundred horses. You know, Raife, without horses there is no hope; if they’d left me the horses I would have risked it despite all.
‘Water! Water! I’ve said a thousand times that they are to go round every hour. Every hour!
‘But in the first place, I can’t feed them. Hard on three thousand of them. I need my stores for the men who are coming to Jerusalem. Ask Leopold then, maybe he’ll spare some of his sausages. Certainly not, Escel is using them on sores; a crazy notion but by God’s footstool, it works. Then kill the lot. Chop off their heads. Now we can go forward. Help; help for the Holy Sepulchre! Will you make way there? I promised to lay Philip’s trinket to rest there. A present from Judas. Like the grey horse. When next I come I shall bring spare horses, hundreds of them. It irks me to see knights with armour dismounted, trundling about like little castles on legs, helpless, useless. And always thirsty; I know, everybody is thirsty, this is a thirsty land. They speak of it flowing with milk and honey, both bad things when you’re thirsty: milk I never could stomach and honey is best when made into mead as my barbarian English make it. Water is best, Blondel, mark my words; that stuff you guzzle will rot out your guts. For myself, I’d as soon drink horse’s piss. If only we could find that well; it was clearly marked on the map… Water!’
Then she would hold the cup to his lips again.
It went on all through the night and the next day. The April sun beat on the canvas and the inside of the tent grew warm and stuffy. The stench of corruption crept about.
Escel arrived, carefully bearing a dish full of what looked to me like blue mould. He drove us from the bedside and I led Berengaria away, saying, ‘This is the time for you to eat and drink and be strong.’ She swallowed what I offered. I tried to make her raise her feet and rest them on a stool, for from long sitting in one position her legs and ankles had swollen until great rolls of puffy flesh hung over the tops of her shoes. But she went back and waited by the tent door until Escel emerged.
He was weeping.
‘They delayed sending for me too long. And the surgeon was a clumsy butcher. He should have his own right hand cut off so that he never mangles another man!’ He stumbled away, wiping his face on his sleeve.
There was another day and another night. I crept in and out. Berengaria kept her place by the bed. The low slurred voice had ceased its talk and Richard lay quiet with closed eyes.
The chaplain, with the wine and the wafer in readiness, hovered, waiting for the brief consciousness which often comes just before the end.
It came with the light of a beautiful morning full of bird song. Just such a morning as the one at L’Espan when Berengaria had ridden out to join Richard.
I was there, having carried Berengaria a strong hot posset and I was persuading her to drink it.
Richard opened his eyes. They were no longer prominent and overbright, no longer blue but dark and dull and sunken. And conscious.
He looked at us. With weary recognition. For a moment he did not speak. Nor did we, though Berengaria leaned forward so that he could see her more easily. Then he said:
‘My mother… I have much to say—to my mother.’
‘She is on her way,’ Berengaria said, whether with or without truth I could not know. ‘But I am here, Richard. I could tell—her—anything you wish her to be told.’
The voice which, though slurred and weak, had run so glib in delirium now came slow and difficult.
‘Tell her then—it must be John—not Arthur. If Constance had let me have him—I could have trained him, child as he is—but an untrained child—straight from his mother’s skirts—could never—stand against John Iscariot and Philip Iscariot… John, you understand, John.’
‘I understand, Richard.’
Theobald, with the single-mindedness of all good priests, now moved forward and said, ‘My lord…’
With a flash of the old fire Richard said, ‘All in good time. Let us dispose of this world first. Fetch me Marcadie—and the fellow who cut out the arrow that struck me… Is that Anna Apieta skulking in the shadow?’
I stepped forward. He closed his eyes as I approached and lay mustering his strength. Without looking at me, still with closed eyes, he said.
‘She trusts you—and rightly. You are strong—competent. John will cheat her—the tin dues… Look after her. You can reckon and write.’ He drew a gasping breath. ‘If more women were like you…’
It flashed through my mind that I could reckon and write because I could never fulfil a woman’s functions—and because a man more enlightened than other men had chosen to set me free.
It was nothing to my credit that I could be entrusted to deal with the dues from tin mines; any woman who at fourteen years of age had been put in charge of her own estate and revenues would have been, as he called it, strong and competent.
But he was dying and this was no time for such thoughts. I said solemnly:
‘Richard, I promise you that I will look after her and see justice done.’
Then and only then did he turn his eyes to Berengaria and say, ‘I have been an ill husband to you, my lady—and you so beautiful and kind. But God makes us, you know, and He did not make me—a lover of women—it was not my choice.’
‘Oh, my lord,’ Berengaria said. And at that moment Theobald came hurrying back, followed by Marcadie who pushed before him and then aside into a corner a tall young man with yellow hair whose hands ware bound behind with a cord. And creeping behind them came the clumsy surgeon.
Richard closed his eyes again and breathed hard.
‘This fellow first.’ He opened his eyes and looked at the cringing surgeon. ‘Always remember, you did the best you could. I set out to take Jerusalem but I boggled it. You tried to cut the arrow out of me—you see! If you are to blame for the small thing… I want you to take ten crowns from my purse and settle your mind and God speed you in all you do. Marcadie!’
‘I am here, my lord,’ said the Flemish captain, striding forward and brutally pushing the surgeon aside.
‘You have the fellow who shot me?’
‘He is here, my lord.’ He set a big brown hand between the shoulders of the young man and jerked him forward. ‘Your name?’ Richard asked in a failing voice.
‘Bertrand de Gourdon,’ said the man, loudly, defiantly.
‘And did I ever do you any ill?’
‘You did, sire. Both my father and my brother died at your hand.’
‘Meet and just,’ Richard murmured. ‘I just wanted to know. Call quits, eh? Marcadie, I know I said—we’d hang—the whole—garrison. But let this fellow go free. And now, Theobald…’
The priest, calm, sure in his office, moved forward. Berengaria dropped heavily to her knees by the side of the bed and I joined her.
Outside in the camp Marcadie slowly and methodically flayed Bertrand de Gourdon before he hanged him side by side with the rest of the garrison.
The looters searched the castle for the golden treasure and found nothing.
Richard died. The April sun went down in splendour behind the thickly budded trees and through the dusk the birds sang of spring.
XVIII
For once the superstition which Berengaria had mentioned was justified. Death struck his third blow while the tears for Richard were still wet on our faces.
It had been easier than I had expected to get Berengaria from the deathbed; she stood up obediently and would have let herself be led away but her feet were now too swollen to allow walking and men had to carry her to the tent which had been made ready for our reception. There she lay on the bed, crying but without tumult or bitterness. She was mourning the man whom, despite everything, she had loved, weeping for the tall red-haired young knight of the Spring Tournament.
We heard a commotion outside, the sound of some cavalcade arriving, and Berengaria rose on her elbow.
‘Anna, that is Eleanor. Bring her straight to me. It is important that I give her his message before they start inventing things he said.’
Once again I thought how far they erred who called her a stupid woman; and I thought that, properly treated and trusted, she would have made a good queen.
Outside in the dusk was a little knot of men on jaded horses and in the middle of them a woman, hooded and cloaked.
As I pushed through the men who had gathered around the group I heard one say, ‘Madam, he is dead. He died within the hour.’
I saw the woman’s hands go not to her heart or her mouth, as is customary on the hearing of ill news, but to her belly. She swayed as she sat there on the horse. Hands reached to help her down and as she gave herself to them her hood slipped back and I saw that it was not Eleanor but her daughter Joanna.
The Albigenses had risen against her husband Raymond and she had left him, fighting for his life, and despite a well advanced pregnancy had ridden to ask Richard to come to the aid of his brother-in-law.
The shock of the news killed her. We got her under cover; we did all we could—even Escel did his best to deal with a matter outside his scope, for miscarriages and the like were generally deemed to be beneath the notice of a serious physician—but no efforts were availing and she died next day. She had asked to be buried beside her best-beloved brother and we laid them together in the Abbey of Fontevrault, though Richard’s heart, in accordance with a request he had made before he set out for Jerusalem, was taken to Rouen, his favourite city and the one which he had always regarded as his capital.
When that was done, Berengaria said to me:
‘Now it is all over. You and I are alone together once more.’ She laid her hand on my arm. ‘Now that I look back, Anna, it seems that you and I have always been alone, really.’
I looked back, too, and saw that there was some truth in that rather sweeping statement. Together and alone we had planned and plotted for Richard; together and alone we had waited for him; together and alone we had watched his passing.
But even as I laid my hand over hers which clasped my arm the treacherous thought went through my mind like a snake. We might live for another twenty, thirty years, alone together, entangled in a web of tapestry wool! Eyes on the page, ear cocked for the patient little sigh. The racking of the brain to bring to birth some comment or remark on a subject doomed to premature demise. Always before there had been a little hope of delivery—hope that Richard would marry her, hope that Richard would return, hope that Richard would send for her. But now—twenty, thirty years of tapestry stitching and boredom. Long before that I should be praying for death to free me.
And from the women at L’Espan I had heard many stories of arrangements hastily entered into immediately after a bereavement. Pity could be a trap too.
L’Espan—where there were now seven women, most of them fond of tapestry work; where we had been making plans for a new well sunk in that underground forecourt…