Ann of Cambray (49 page)

‘See, my lords of England and France,’ he said, ‘how he fights already. How he bats out with his hands. Harry of England, will you fight your father for the crown so soon?’ 

‘Henry, my lord,’ Eleanor the Queen spoke still calmly, although more loudly than was her custom, ‘take care. He is but flesh and blood, being a month old. And fragile at that.’ At her gesture, the nurse came back timidly and took the child into her care, easing it into safety with a sigh. Henry paced up and down, talking at first of the child, its size, its strength, his pleasure in his son. He made no mention of that older child, the little William, still asleep in his cradle. Nor did Eleanor remind him. Perhaps they both knew him of little concern now that there was a healthy second son. But a coldness troubled me, that they could be so resolved, so sure.

Presently the king began to speak of his journey through the north of his new kingdom, of his attacks against two of his northern enemies. I did not know that both men had been with Raoul at Dover before King Stephen’s death, and their names were new to me: the Earl of Norfolk was one, William of Aumale the other. The earl’s title he had reconfirmed to win his loyalty; William of Aumale’s castle at Scarborough he had seized after a siege. I listened to these details avidly, almost stepping forward in my eagerness at the tortuous account of attack and counterattack. It sounded much as I had thought: the king would not let troublemakers rest undisturbed. But he had not killed them out-of-hand, either. In that there was hope.

He was speaking now of some battle plan before the walls of Scarborough castle in Yorkshire, a strong-built castle it was, hard to take, and he picked up a wooden casket that held the queen’s toiletries to serve as model of the keep, opening and shutting its hinged cover as he talked.

The queen’s maids had finished dressing her hair and she needed the combs the casket held. ‘My lord,’ she said, still in the same placid voice, ‘be kind enough to give me the box before you shatter the clasp full off.’

He dropped it with a crash upon the table as if it stung him. At a movement from the queen, I came forward to take it from him, but he kept his hand upon the lid and stared at me. He had clear grey eyes, set in a face that was mottled with cold and freckled even in the winter. But there was fixation about his gaze that made my legs turn weak as water. ‘Lionlike’, they call him; there was something far off and predatory about his look, something untamed and fierce that lay behind the clear grey eyes.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘present us, madame.’

She named me, Ann, of the honour of Cambray; although I heard my name, I could not have stirred had not Cecile jammed her fingers in my spine to make me curtsy, slow and careful, keeping one hand on the bed rail for support.

‘Well,’ he said again, softly, talking to me now, ‘I have heard that name I think. Where is this Cambray of yours,
demoiselle, 
that I should remember it?’

I felt my voice huskier than usual, as if the words came strangely to my tongue, like words I did not know.

‘Well,’ he said for the third time, ‘I thought as much. I can tell it in the way you speak. You have that Celtic way of singing. We were once neighbours along these western marches.’

‘Indeed, my lord King,’ I said, startled.

‘I spent much of my childhood with my uncle there,’ he said, ‘under his tutelage at Bristol. I remember Falk of Cambray. A thorn he was in our sides and to Celts as well.’

I said proudly, ‘Falk of Cambray was my father, sire. It was his office to hold the border firm.’

‘Maybe,’ the king said impatiently. ‘I do not question that. Speak on, that I may hear your voice again. It is a long time since I heard that western lilt. Many of my uncle’s men talked in that way. Little men they were, with their clothes cobbled to their backs, and stank like a stable midden. But their voices would charm you from the grave. Now how did it go?’ He hummed to himself. (Strange, I thought, watching him, he looks and smells little better.) Yet at last he summoned up memory to mutter some lines in the old tongue, so ill spoken and distorted that I could scarce stop myself from smiling. I think he meant to pay a compliment, but since he had used the word for ‘harlot’ when I suspected he meant something more polite, the effect was quite the reverse of courtly gallantry.

‘How goes it, then?’ he said, seeing my expression change. I repeated the phrase as I thought he must have intended.

‘You see,’ he said, turning to the queen, ‘how well I have remembered it? I have not been there since my uncle died.’ The queen was laughing also. ‘It is something, no doubt, that no honest maid should hear. My lord, here is a challenge. If you can master that strange speech, I do not give up hope for you. You yet shall speak the language of the south with me. Langue d’oc should not come so hard.’

Her words had a strange impact. They were still calm, and she gave no sign of knowing how he looked, how he had spoken to me. Yet she must have known. And what she said must have had some effect on him, seeming to recall him to where he was, what he had been about to say.

He slapped the casket down upon the table so I could rescue it, turned on his heel, and began his pacing back and forth,
prowled
would be more apt term, so much again like Raoul that I was startled by it.

Suddenly he spoke to me. ‘Those grey horses in our courtyard eating their weight in gold. Whose are they?’

I had forgotten them, but, of course, they had been cared for in the royal stables whilst we had been here at Bermondsey.

‘Mine, my lord.’

‘Of course,’ he said slapping his thigh, ‘the greys of Cambray. They were well known, too. I thought as much . . .’ His voice trailed off.

‘They came as gift,’ I said hesitatingly. He spun round at me on hearing that.

‘Gift,’ he said. ‘For whom? And on whose . . .’

‘You speak overmuch of gift and gift giving, my lord.’ Eleanor spoke smoothly. She had risen herself after this last exchange, had allowed her maids to wrap her in her furred cloak, had let her long hair hang in soft folds down her back. ‘I have given you a gift, my lord. It seems to please you. What have you brought me in return?’

Henry wheeled to face her; the rest of his sentence died unuttered. His face lit up, and like a boy he tugged at the inside of his dirty tunic, scattering handfuls of paper scraps and straws upon the floor. When he pulled forth his hand, it was weighted with a heavy object that clattered as he swung it to and fro.

‘Jesu, that I should forget,’ he said. ‘Lady Queen, pardon me. You see how remiss I am, and yet this hunk of metal has been so heavy that I scarce can walk with it. Lord Aumale was so grieved to have missed our crowning, he sends you this to make amends.’

Eleanor came over to where he stood and he handed her—a fortune. It was a heavy gold collar, worked with precious stones of old and curious design, no doubt a family heirloom that the king had ‘persuaded’ Aumale to give him.

Looted
would be a better word, I thought, fascinated by it as all the court was. Eleanor held it up high, setting the lights dancing from the stones. Suddenly that glittering bauble made his words, which before had seemed so harmless, take on another meaning, as if the weight he spoke of could be measured in death and blood. And what would have been the ending of that sentence Eleanor had cut short, ‘A gift on whose behalf?’

I felt the impossibility of what I wanted like a dark burden that I could not shift, could not put down, but that would end in burying me, too.

The king and queen were close together now, side by side, she examining the intricate tracery with care, he watching her half-anxious, half-pleased. Presently she turned to him and laughed, her hoarse laugh, and thanked him for his thoughtfulness.

‘Come, Hal,’ she said, ‘put it on yourself.’

He took it from her and with clumsy fingers lifted her hair to close the clasp about her white neck. His breath came quicker then, and his eyes took on the predatory look I had sensed in them before. She held her hair steady with one hand while with the other she made that regal gesture of dismissal.

One by one, we curtsied and left the chamber, even the courtiers drawing back. The guards slammed the heavy doors closed, and stood with their backs to them, gazing outward with their usual stern look. Behind the doors, we heard the queen laugh again. A random thought crossed my mind, that having watched a royal birthing, we were about to witness a royal mating, too. For there was no doubt what Henry had in mind. You could sense it in the way he breathed and looked, like a stallion closing upon a mare. Yet who could tell what the queen thought.

As I went out into the hallway, still bemused by all that had happened in so short a time, conflicting thoughts aroused in me, a hand caught at my long sleeve. It was Sir Gautier, standing apart from the crush by a small window. He looked tired and, like his king, dirty, with half the mud of England plastered on his clothes. But he had not lost his alert, shrewd look.

‘Well, Lady Ann,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I see you are well bestowed here. And you look well, blooming like the English spring they keep promising us.’

His knowing eyes that took in everything passed their searching look across my face, moved openly up and down my gown until I felt half-naked.

‘And you have grown bold yourself,’ I said, almost crossly, disturbed by these openly amorous looks that seemed to be the Angevin custom. ‘I trust your mission was successful. How many men have you murdered this time?’

He put his hand across his face. ‘Lady Ann, has not a two months’ stay at court taught you to hold your tongue? You have heard what the king had to say. What you hint at is treason. I merely say how fair you look, that you seem to have won high favour, and you rend me as with your nails. Take compliments more graciously.’

‘How shall I take anything when I am fretted to death,’ I cried.

He stroked his beard in the way I remembered.

‘I hoped,’ he said, ‘that having found a place here with the queen, you would have had the chance to forget all your past troubles. Both your enemies are dead. The king will declare you his royal ward.’

‘And who will befriend my bastard child?’ I hissed. ‘Who know me in my unwed state? You said yourself they will mock me in the streets . . .’

He passed a hand over his face again, as if for weariness. He was more tired than I had thought at first. He swayed upon his feet. I remembered, against my will, how he had said that to ride after Henry was an endless hunt, each day another cast, another chase, to track him down.

‘I think you should rest yourself, my lord,’ I said, feeling my antagonism towards him wane. ‘The last time we spoke, you showed concern for me. Now feel I equal concern for you.’

He said ruefully, ‘I could sleep a week. I am not as resilient as a twenty-one-year-old. But there will be time for that hereafter. Ann, without sparking all your rage anew, let me tell you I find you well and happy here at court. You look, if I may say so, beautiful, more beautiful than I had thought. Renier says the courtiers would be falling over themselves to woo you, if you but gave them leave. But it is as if you see them not, think not of them.’

I said, ‘I have no time to waste on them. There is still too much to be done.’

He watched the other men, milling and wheeling farther off, swirling still around the queen’s closed door.

He said abruptly, almost as if not speaking to me, ‘I have done what I could. The king thinks Raoul of Sedgemont dead. I think him so myself.’

‘He lives, he lives,’ I cried, panic sweeping all dark before my eyes.

‘What man could survive those wounds?’ he said. ‘I do not say that to grieve you. It would be better that he were dead. Then would the past be buried with him.’

‘You wish him dead,’ I cried.

He said, ‘I have no wish of my own in the case. But you should ponder this. I knew how you left Sedgemont to seek him out the night before our departure. Ask me not why I have not acted on this knowledge. Know rather that I kept a promise I made you. I told Henry all I saw at Sedgemont, not what I guess at, and he thinks Raoul may not have lived.’ He turned his gaze full upon me. ‘I let him think that. Thus are his orders fulfilled. Thus, if Raoul lives, he is safe for the moment.’

He suddenly rested his head upon his arm as if to wipe away the sweat. ‘And now have you secret knowledge of me,’ he said softly, ‘that would kill me too if Henry knew it. This have I done for you. I have kept your secrets safe. I have not told Henry all I know about you, Ann of Cambray. That, too, means I betray the king. Why stare you at me so?’ he said angrily. ‘Are you so used to men that you can twist their thoughts from their duty so easily? I have long served these Angevins, will serve them still. Yet your accusations at Sedgemont touched me deeper than I thought. Else I would not be standing here, to put my life in your hands. I have told you I have kept clear of womenfolk. Yet, even to the queen have I sent word to make things easy for you. Stay here with her, with me. I would be willing to take you as you are.’

‘With another man’s son?’ I whispered, shaken by the intensity of his words.

‘It is not what a man would want,’ he said. He almost groaned. ‘Lady Ann, I would wed you even so, to give you and your child a name. It is an honourable one. I hold lands of the king in Anjou. I have come to care for you. Forget what is past. There is no future for you in that, no hope.’

It was strange admission, wrung from this cautious, close-mouthed man. I honoured him for it. I might even have pitied him.

‘I wish I could,’ I said. ‘I have promised to help Lord Raoul of Sedgemont, to restore his lands and title, so that he may give his name to his son.’

He managed a smile at that. ‘Diplomatic to the end,’ he said, ‘not even a courtly lie to give me room for hope. I deplore your manners as I admire your tenacity. Lady Ann, be warned, be warned. You cannot come between King Henry and his will. Only time will blunt the force of his anger so that he will live to regret it. There, that too I have said against my loyalty to him. But for all your wishing, for all that you have made me help you, we cannot turn Henry from his course. That is his right as king. That is his nature as Angevin. Send word to Raoul of Sedgemont: his best hope is flight. Stay you here at court with me. As my lady wife, I can protect you.’