‘But My Lady, don’t you see that you’ve encouraged him to think he has a case?’ I blurted when she told me what had passed – and earned myself a sharp rebuke for speaking out of turn.
‘The man is doing all we could expect of him.’ My Lady’s tone was cutting. ‘He oversees your husband’s manor in his absence, and has moreover paid the quarter ransom dues on both demesnes. Sir Hugh informs us that he’s willing in addition to repay Sir Garon’s croisade loan when it falls due at Michaelmas, and in the meantime offers you a home and status as his wife.’
‘But he raped me and abused me, and now intends to steal my child!’ I wailed.
‘Are you disputing that the boy is his?’
What could I do but shake my head. ‘Well then. I’ve told Sir Hugh that until My Lord’s at liberty to pass his judgement, he is forbidden to attempt to see you or the boy. For which security I would expect you to be grateful?’
My cue to curtsy. To thank My Lady humbly for her favour, and then remove my person and my problem from her presence.
But if we had been free of Hugh’s attentions for the eight months that passed since then, I knew why he’d come now. The Earl had not returned to Lewes in the autumn or in winter, but had travelled with the old Queen into Germany instead, to pay the Emperor the ransom he demanded for the King’s release. In Lent the Countess came south again to Lewes – only to hear that Eléonore and Richard, with the Earl in train, were already on their way back home to England.
I heard the rest on a visit to the Jews’ house with my little boy, to demonstrate to his admirers Hamkin’s newfound skill of walking, holding hands.
‘On Saturday your King and Queen made landfall, Lady, at the port of Sandwich,’ I was told by Jacob, who always had the latest news. ‘Next week they come to London, where My Lady of Warenne will join them for the King’s crown-wearing at Westminster.’
As soon as Jacob said it, I was as sure as if he’d written it for me on parchment that Sir Hugh would seize his chance before My Lady left the fortress to state his claim a second time.
But this time I was ready for him!
A pleasant scent of woodsmoke came to meet us through the solar door. The Countess in her chair, ringed by the usual group of ladies and attendants sat but a few feet from the brazier. A shaft of sunlight from an upper casement glittered on the pikes and hauberks of her standing guards. More people, vassals, members of the household, sat in the shadows of the shuttered window seat, where… How long ago now was it? Four years? Five – when I’d sat up in the window to see Sir Hugh ride in across the bailey . Dressed like Satan, all in red!
I took a breath and held it as I curtsied to the chair, a little awkwardly, with Hamkin kicking at my knees. The torch-flames wavered when they closed the door behind us, throwing light onto the man who stood before the Countess, cap in hand. Again he was dressed in a single colour. A wolf in fox’s clothing, tawny brown this time from head to foot.
All faces turned towards us as we entered.
‘So here we have the girl and child in question.’ My Lady of Warenne surveyed us with composure.
‘My son,’ Sir Hugh said levelly, devouring Hamkin with his eyes.
‘Which is the first point that we need to clarify. Lady Elise, will you state clearly before this company whether the child you hold was sired by Sir Hugh de Bernay here, as he asserts? Or by another?’ Countess Isabel commanded.
‘The child is mine, not his. He forced me to the act illegally and therefore has no claim.’ I was holding Ham too tightly and he began to whimper, struggling to be free.
‘By claiming that he forced you, you are in other words confirming his paternity.’
‘Which prompts the offer I’ve already made to make my amends by offering the child protection,’ Sir Hugh concluded.
I turned to hand the wriggling Hamkin back to Hod, while Thomas slipped away to join the servitors behind My Lady’s chair. The two boys grinned at one another. From where he stood between the guards, the pageboy moved the fingers of one hand in a tight little wave.
‘Tommie!’ Hamkin cried out through the silence, gurgling with laughter. Hod tutted at him and the Countess frowned. But I was ready, only waiting for the moment.
‘Now that we can assume the lady to be widowed, I will repeat my offer to legitimise our union with a bond of marriage.’ A bright edge of impatience to Hugh’s voice that he could not conceal.
‘Without clear proof of Sir Garon’s death, there could be no question of a marriage. Nor would I willingly allow the child to leave our care without a judgement from My Lord.’
The Countess shifted to rest her elbows on the arms of her carved chair. ‘But Sir Hugh, I have to tell you that this visit is most opportune.’ A strange expression crossed her face which it was hard to read. ‘There is a reason why I have allowed you to repeat your claim, Sir, at this time, which is…’
‘I wish to speak and I have a right to do so!’ I simply couldn’t wait for her to finish, not another moment!
‘I call on heaven and all here to witness that this man’s impugned my honour, slighted and abused me.’ My voice shook but I had to get it out, the idea I had fixed in mind since Lady Isabel herself convinced me that there was no other way. ‘In sight of all, I challenge Sir Hugh de Bernay to combat with my champion, to prove the justice of my claim for reparation!’
My Lady’s eyebrows disappeared into her wimple.
‘And who have you in mind, ma chère, to champion your cause?’ Sir Hugh was quick to fill the silence. ‘Some young contender in the garrison who’s pining for your favour? A youthful wizard with a sword and lance who’s spoiling for a fight?’
I had my mouth already open to reply. But he’d described Sir Berenger, the young brute I’d picked to challenge him, so pretty well entirely to the life – that just to answer, ‘Yes’ seemed far too lame.
‘If the lady seeks a champion, I am that man!’
I knew the voice – but not, in that first moment of surprise, the face. The beard had gone. His jaw looked narrower with loss of weight, the big-boned frame more angular. Something in the almost casual way he stepped out from the shadows by the window made him seem older, more assured. Then he was turning back to face me, and with a sudden jolt...
Oh dear God in heaven, I KNEW HIM!
We stand like players in a mummers’ pantomime, each with our role to play. I step out into the silence to speak my lines.
‘If the lady seeks a champion, I am that man.’
She stands stock still, mouth open, fists pressed into her skirts. If she had heard the Last Trump sound, she couldn’t have looked more surprised.
But she’s smaller than I thought, and plumper in her plain grey gown, has netted her long hair into a caul low on her neck, which suits her well. The sight of her is almost more than I can bear. And how could I have ever failed to understand Elise, with everything about her so obviously expressed? From the moment she came through the door, the stubborn lift of chin, the way she grasped the squirming child, the pitiful expression in her eyes – all spoke to me directly of her pain, her fear, the strength of her determination.
Another thing Khadija said:
‘
Be sure then when you meet that thou wilt bring her joy.’
But not this time at this first meeting, at another.
My part is written for this meeting and I must perform it. ‘Who better to restore her honour, than the man who risked it in the first place – the man who left her undefended?’
I jab a finger at my own hard chest. ‘I am the man who was her husband before the Kings’ Croisade; and would be again if she will have me.’
She’s closed her mouth. Her eyes are sparkling with tears. Behind her Hodierne’s smiling broadly – the child’s face the very image of his father’s, but for blond curls in place of Hugh’s dark pelt.
‘Behold the warrior returns and with his head attached.’
He almost manages to seem amused, his right hand resting on his left as if relaxed. Yet rigid – everything about him rigid, with two bright spots of colour on his cheekbones.
‘With peace broken out in Outremer, it would appear our prancing knight’s in want of a new quest,’ he’s saying. ‘The poor boy evidently needs someone else to kill.
‘We’ve missed you, Garon,’ he adds cynically, ‘if only for the entertainment.’
‘Enough!’ The Countess turns to face my wife. ‘You might ask, Lady, and with justice, why you were not informed of Sir Garon’s presence earlier. But I fear we had no time.’
For one so stately she sounds almost apologetic. ‘The one man had hardly crossed our threshold before the other was admitted at the gate.’
She drops something a page has brought her, into the mouth of the small creature on her lap. ‘I thought it only fair before his presence was revealed, to let your husband hear all that Sir Hugh had to relate, and witness your reaction.’
‘I understand, My Lady.’
She makes a second curtsey to the chair. But the question in her eyes is not for Countess Isabel, it is for me.
‘Now having heard us both, it would appear my husband’s willing to defend my cause in person?’
With all ears in the chamber flapping, all that is needed from me is a single word.
‘YES.’ I have agreed.
‘Sir Garon’s loyalty does him credit, but hardly solves the problem. These days judicial combats are outmoded and discouraged both by Church and State, and rightly so,’ the Lady Isabel continues smoothly. ‘We settle our disputes by means of evidence and judgement, not by brute force; and even if My Lord might be persuaded to consider combat as a remedy, he could not apply it to the forcing of a married woman, which is not held to be a criminal offence.’
‘Then can I ask, My Lady, what offences to a married woman may be decided by trial of arms, if such an action were to be allowed?’
‘Arson, theft or murder,’ the Countess of Warenne recites.
‘A man is a criminal, in other words, if he should steal a married woman’s necklace. But not when he throws her on her back and rapes her? In such a case she is no more entitled to redress than if she were a common whore?’
The dialogue is public, and all await My Lady’s next pronouncement. Elise and Hodierne, the tirewomen, the maids and nursemaids who attend the Countess every day – all the women have an interest.
‘I did not make the law, and I do not apply it. What’s more, in Lent I make a practice of avoiding any violent sport that sets a dog against a bull or bear, much less a man against a man.’
My Lady leaves a pause. But when she speaks again it’s in a musing tone of voice while she adjusts a ribbon round a lapdog’s scrawny neck. ‘On the other hand, what happens down there in the tiltyard can hardly be of my concern. If men decide to tilt against each other, or make a trial of skill and stamina on foot with quarterstaves and shields, as they do daily in their practice, I see no reason why I’d have to be involved.’
‘Not even if they fought in earnest,’ Elise enquires, ‘with short-swords for example?’
‘The soldiers in the outer ward choose their own weapons, make their own rules for encounters,’ the Countess tells her little dog.
‘In a judicial combat, it is the offended knight who makes the choice – and that calls to mind the choice you have yourself to make, Lady.’ She’s speaking now directly to Elise.
‘I leave for Rochester as soon as we have broken fast tomorrow, to join My Lord the Earl for the King’s progress into London. Which gives you until nightfall to decide whether you and your child will travel with my household in the morning, or leave the fortress under the protection of one or other of the gentlemen who stand before us.
‘It is your choice,’ My Lady Isabel concludes. ‘By my calculation you have approximately seven hours in which to make it.’
The Countess stonily forbade him to escort us to our chamber. But Garon came within the hour – and after I’d endured a suffocating embrace which all but crushed my bones, and he’d saluted Hod and tried to tempt out Hamkin from behind her skirts – we stood apart like wary strangers. To talk at first of everything except what mattered most.
Or rather he talked and I listened.
He didn’t fidget as he used to, or avoid my gaze, but told me frankly that the croisade had proved a huge mistake for him and everyone who’d gone. He said that Saracens are far less savages than we are – that we’d dealt monstrously with them in ways he’d not repeat. He told me how poor Joscelin had died, and Alberic and Bertram, and where he’d left John Hideman on the journey home. He claimed the years we’d been apart, the time he’d spent up in the mountains with the shepherds and their flocks, had made him question everything that he believed. He said that he’d been eager to convince me of the ways in which his life and mine could be improved, but was delayed from reaching me by sickness on his way through Burgundy – then by deep snow, and finally by storms in Normandie which hindered his sea crossing.
And he certainly HAD changed! That’s what I thought while he talked on and on about himself and his ideas. Then, after I had offered up a silent prayer for God to sharpen them a bit, and steered the conversation back to what Sir Hugh had done, and told him how I’d fled from Haddertun to the old moneylender’s house and later to the fortress – I was floored, totally, by Garon’s calm reaction!
The hasty young man I had married would have railed and shouted at the insult, paced about and knocked things over, cursed Sir Hugh and searched and failed to find the words to say how much he hated and despised him. But what did this new Garon, do when I had finished with my tale of woe? He told me that he UNDERSTOOD (as if he, or any man, could ever understand what women have to go through!). He said he’d heard the story first at Haddertun from Kempe, and again that morning from the Countess – and then went on to tell me to my face, that he believed all men to be capable of carnal violence. Even he himself!