Ann of Cambray (17 page)

In his excitement of reliving that time, he called me by name as he used to do, before awkwardness had made us formal with each other. He chatted freely then, explaining how he and Geoffrey had been chosen to go with Lord Raoul, how they had washed and shaved in haste, tipping cold river water over their heads, how somewhere, from the remnants of their supply train, pages had dug out three fine shirts, and new red surcoats embroidered in gold thread by the Lady Mildred for such an occasion. Then, mounted and armed, they had forded the stream and ridden to the king’s pavilion on the eastern bank.

‘Did you stay outside?’

‘No, although it would have been better if I had. My lord’s black brute kicked a fence apart and took three men to hold him. No, Geoffrey and I stood within, with the other squires at the door, and held our lord’s cloak and sword. There were many great lords; richly dressed they were for war, not like us who had crammed our finery over the wear and tear of a year’s campaign.’

‘And King Stephen?’

‘A kingly man, tall, grey faced, quiet. They said that he had fallen not once but thrice from his horse as he came towards Wallingford, but even I ride better than that. Lord Raoul said aloud, although under his breath so only we heard, “Dear God, but he has aged.” Yet they greeted each other affectionately. Not a word did Lord Raoul say then or again about the mishap at Malmesbury.’

‘And the meeting?’

‘Quiet at first, each great lord standing to give his thoughts. Or rather, not so much thoughts as fears. I could not follow all their reasoning but it seemed to me they were reluctant to speak out what was in their hearts. The king sat apart and chewed his nails. Until Lord Raoul stepped forward.’

‘And his advice?’

‘My lady, he spoke quietly too. I cannot explain all the arguments he used, but Geoffrey told me later. To sum up, he said to the king and his court, “Either you must fight Henry of Anjou and destroy him, Army to army, or, if need be, man to man. Call out your champion and let there be combat between him in your name and Henry for the settlement of this quarrel. Or if not war, then peace.”

‘Did the others agree?’

‘At first, some cried for a champion. Some said it would be Lord Raoul himself. Then all took up the same cry. Those who had shifted and shuffled most loudly of all, to make a peace. Except the king’s son, Prince Eustace, a tall stout man, who shouted it was treason to persuade the king against his will. My lord outfaced him. Lady Ann, he was a greater lord in his worn clothes with the red and scarlet draped over than the prince in his furs and jewels.

“‘The king’s will is his own,” Lord Raoul said. “But no man, not even a king, can rule without the help of his friends. For this reason are we summoned here. Look round, my lords of England. We have slashed stripes across this broad land like pieces of raw flesh that will never be healed while this war lingers on. What will be left for any king to rule if we do not halt it now.”

‘Then the king himself stood up and said, “My lords, barons, princes, I have heard your speech and it comforts me, that despite all these troubles I have loyal friends. If there cannot be a decisive battle, and you all fear there cannot be, then there must be peace.” So a treaty was made.’

‘Were you at the peace treaty then?’

‘It did not happen right away. And we had already gone before the signing. But look, Lady Ann.’ He pulled from beneath his sleeve a gold piece sewn up in a small purse. ‘While we were leaving, the king came to us and thanked us for our pains, a most gracious lord he is, and gave both Geoffrey and me a gift.’ He turned the coin over and over, the first he had ever owned, and a king had given it to him.

‘But the treaty. There was peace?’

‘Not at first.’ Giles spoke reluctantly. ‘If the barons and their knights were for it, the mercenaries were not. Nor the prince either. It seems in his anger he rode off and began to sack lands in Cambridgeshire, and waste the whole region around. But it was the mercenaries who caused the most trouble. For if they could not fight, how would they get their pleasure or reward?’

‘But the treaty was signed?’

‘I do not know, lady. We were not there.’

‘Not there? But Raoul had counselled it? Saw he not the king again?’

‘My lady, yes. But it was a private meeting. I was not witness to it.’

I knew he was not telling me the truth of that, but nothing I said could make him reveal what else he knew. I found out about that later. All he would tell me was that the king had ordered Lord Raoul and his men back to the border, there to win a treaty with the Celts so that all the plans they made would not come undone by a surprise attack from the west. So back they trailed, and camped along the border again. But to tell how that happened, I must now return to my first arrival at the convent, Lord Raoul’s ‘safe place’ in the hills.

A wild bird cannot fit itself to captivity as can one bred in a cage. Had I lived at Cambray, my father would have sent me to such a place. He used to say that maids who were convent bred made the best wives, but that was because he thought them tractable. I came too late to such a life, with thoughts and ideas already formed. And this was not the soft and gentle rule that the ladies of Sedgemont had enjoyed. There were no other ladies there, no one to talk to, for the nuns lived by the strict rule of silence, even at mealtimes. Save for one little half-witted boy, whom they kept to tend their herds and whom I befriended with scraps of bread thrown over into the outer courtyard where he lived, I had no speech with anyone. And he was too shy or too stupid to reply. I heard no news, saw no one, was so shut off that whether Henry of Anjou had landed or not, I did not know, and had no way of knowing.

As a guest there, I should have lived apart from their rules. At first, the new prioress and her nuns seemed anxious to please, showing, if truth be told, more deference than any had at Sedgemont, speaking with honeyed words when they did speak, which made me uncomfortable. But suddenly, without warning, these obsequious ways changed. The gardens where I had been allowed to walk were closed to me. The little room where I lodged comfortably, if not in luxury, was replaced by one of their cells. The goods and possessions that I had managed to bring with me disappeared, save for Giles’s little dagger, which I had had the foresight to bury in the garden. My clothes even were exchanged for the long habit of unwashed, undyed wool, which gives their order its name of ‘White’. And rougher fabric to irritate the skin does not exist. Instead then of walking at leisure, I must work with the rest of them in their fields, must attend their constant services, must keep silence and fast as they did . .. Well, such things I could bear. I did not mind the loss of luxury; I was not used to it as great ladies are; I could live on bread and water again. Nor did the hard work trouble me. I could almost enjoy putting plants in place and helping them to grow. Are not the herb gardens at Cambray famous still? And prayer. Have we not all need of prayers to see us through this world? If youth minds the loss of sleep, the long watches in the night, well, then was there the time I have spoken of, to think on and to pray for the souls of those I had loved, and who in shocking-wise suddenly had seemed as if new-killed. And for those who still lived, I could remember them. Comrades, friends, old companions, Giles, Dylan, Geoffrey . . . and most of all to think on Lord Raoul. But to be forced to these things—work, prayer, contemplation, poverty, obedience, chastity—the laws of these holy orders are known to us all now. And if you do not know them, praise God you do not.

Peace, you bid me again, that I not anger the Holy Church. I do not concern myself with the Church, and all these quarrels between Crown and Church that have plagued this land are beyond my understanding. But to make a nun of me . . . Poor I was already, none poorer, obedient perforce to Lord Raoul’s will, and chaste perhaps against my own. But I had not been sent here to be shut away forever. When next you write of despair, name it imprisonment without cause or escape.

I know now that it is against their strictest rule to force someone into religious life. I know now that first there is a long trial or apprenticeship as novice. But who is to distinguish between force and persuasion? I had no choice. By subtle means at first, then openly, was I shown the path of salvation until, with close-cropped hair, undyed robe, silence, and prayer, I could have been taken for any other there. Except I would not take the vow.

That was not easily done, to stand against them. God never had such zealous workers on His behalf as these. It is a logic I have never understood, that to be a soldier in the holy wars you may kill your enemy to save his soul. But I am stubborn as you know, and that may have saved mine.

Then came a day when all was made clear. At first, it seemed like all the other days that since the summer months had merged into one. Why do I remember it so well—because of what the lady prioress said, what she did? Because it was the first time that I sensed the hopelessness of my case, as one senses decay? Or because, as it happened, it was also the last time? The day had begun early, before dawn. I had been summoned to the prioress’s room after the morning prayers. I was still dazed with sleep, drugged with the fume of incense and the drone of voices. Hunger gnawed. Her words beat like the flies that buzzed in the warm autumn air.

‘I was sent here for safety’s keeping,’ I said at last, as I had said often before. ‘Nothing more.’

‘Safe from what?’ she said shrewdly, eyeing me askance from under her fine-arched brows. ‘Was it to be safe perhaps from sin? Did you not ask for a man to marry you? Who was your lover? They say it was one of Sedgemont’s groomsmen. Was that the sin for which your lord sent you here?’

I would have argued with her, but she was too full of words for me, who had once used them myself as weapons.

‘Or is it the Lord of Sedgemont who was the danger? Is not he young and vigorous? Did not you try to overthrow him with your body before his men?’

She had never dared say that before. I wondered almost idly who had been the talebearer. None had spoken of it in my presence until now.

‘Or have you thought,’ she said, pressing close, ‘that he may intend to keep you here forever? Locked up, that no one should know where you are? But should you count yourself among the blessed, free of all wordly ties, then could you bestow your lands as you wished, freely to God’s House. Naked and poor would you make a worthy bride.’

Had I been quicker, I would have pondered that ‘naked and poor’. Ladies of rank are not expected to come empty-handed to holy orders. ‘Naked and poor’ would have little to recommend it. But it was what she had said first that struck hardest. And she sensed that at once.

‘For, Sister,’ she said, calling me that name although I was no kith or kin of hers, ‘is it not also true that having asked for a man, you refused the one who offered? And he was no stable groom, he. What makes you set yourself so high that you may pick and choose among the great lords of the land?’

She rattled off the names of women in the holy works who had defied their earthly lords to their eternal damnation. I have told you before I had little skill with books, but I have hated learning the more since she used it against me.

‘I do not choose to wed at all,’ I said, when silence became painful.

‘So. Then earthly marriage is not to your liking. And if Lord Raoul of Sedgemont will not let you go, but means to pen you here all your life, why cavil at becoming a Bride of Christ? Is it not pride puffed up to think that you, a silly maid, can know better than those who are set to rule and guide you? Did you think to defy the Lord of Sedgemont and not anger him?’

‘He did not send me here to make a nun of me!’ I cried at last, fear making me speak it aloud.

She looked at me again, searching, pitying.

‘And if he did?’ she said, pressing hard. ‘How would you know? Or how prevent it?’

And again, she said later, ‘They say your mother had converse with the devil, that she could foresee the future plain and clear. Is not that the devil’s work? And did she see what would bring her joy?’

And then later again, each time upon the hour did she return . . .

‘And did you not shout against the friends of Lord Raoul, in his own Hall, that all should think you had visions too? Would you be held in league with the Prince of Darkness? Those who consort with him are burnt for it, on earth here as in hell hereafter.’

And again.

‘Have you thought of the burning?’ Her eyes dark and fierce, pressing on the nerve of fear. ‘Dare you think of it? Put your hand then upon this flame.’ And she held out a taper, faint and wan in her bleak room where even in the morning all seemed dark.

‘See how your flesh shrinks back. But that was but a moment’s pain. Imagine it for eternity.’

And then again, when neither candle flame nor whip could make me speak.

‘Imagine eternity. Then is every second as a year, every hour a torment without cease. But those who are among the saved, God’s children, shall await the Second Coming with joy. As a Bride of Christ, would you be named among the blessed. You should be on your knees, you child of death, to give thanks to God, that thus you can at one time be saved from sin and from the Lord of Sedgemont’s doom.’

I turned aside, hunching my shoulders against the blows, hiding my scorched fingers in the folds of my gown. I knew she lied in many things, but there was such a mixture of truth and lie, and both so intertwined, that it would have taken a clearer head than mine to have sorted them out. But one thing she did not know. The mention of my mother, that unknown woman I knew so little of, gave me an extra kind of endurance that she herself must have had—the courage that perhaps Lord Raoul had spoken of when he had said one need not fight the less because the cause is lost—well, even if my cause was lost, I still would not give way.

Yet later that same day, when I was working in the field, my courage ran not so high. My back was stiff where the lash had fallen; and although I could have been glad for the open air and the keen cool smell and taste of autumn, yet they weighed upon me. Almost a year ago, Lord Raoul had returned to Sedgemont, and we had hunted the great boar through the forests there. A year gone by then. And what had become of him, I thought, and of his little band of men, of Giles and Geoffrey and the others who had ridden out of Sedgemont, that they should have forgotten me? And for the first time I wondered what would happen if they all should die upon some far-off battlefield, God forbid, for who then would I have to remember, and who would then remember me? But someone had not forgotten me, and then, suddenly, horribly, all the rest was made clear.