Gifts of the Queen (34 page)

Walter was already backing his horse against the southern wall. He lashed the beast's sides until it kicked and flailed, and its great hooves tore out clods of clay and dirt. Again and again he backed, using his shield rim to smash at the wooden door-frame, until at last he broke through, he and his horse, half in, half out. The wall was reduced to a shell against which Master Edward and his men, steady as veterans, thrust their shoulders. But inside the room were veterans too, four men who had been forewarned and had chance to take up their own weapons before the masons could rush in. And they, in turn, were desperate men. Even as I watched, a sword blade flicked out, caught Walter as he pushed himself off his horse.

From where I stood, I had but partial view and that was blocked by Master Edward and his men. Dodging through the yard took me but a second, but by then our men had broken down the wall into the little room. It was small, almost too small to draw a sword, and here the masons should have had an advantage, their knives being that much shorter and easier to hold. But swords wielded by skilled men could keep them back. Only Walter, on his own feet now, could match with the swordsmen there. And he, although he tried to cover our men, was more intent on moving to where the woman stood against the outside wall. It was Alyse de Vergay; I recognized first her pale eyes, now almost bulging with alarm. But she was desperate also, and in her hand, she held a knife. She stood between the door and a kind of alcove where my son lay asleep. Not asleep, I thought, desperate with fright myself, not with this noise, this confusion, breaking around him. But he did not move, lay on his back, motionless yet not dead. If dead, why would she threaten him with a knife, her own face a twisted mask, a thing to chill thought with?

Walter was on his feet, but his arms and legs were crisscrossed with blood where the men inside had hacked out at him, his face streaked red where her knife point had flicked his forehead.

'Stand back, squire,' she said, 'or give me safe conduct to leave with him.'

Walter could stand, but only just, he swayed upon his feet, yet his voice was calm. He spoke to her almost soothingly. 'Come, mistress,' he said, 'give me Lord Robert and go free. Why should you harm a child?'

'Lord, is it?' she sneered, watching his sword with unwavering eye; she was nimble on her feet for her size, the long ride seeming not to have daunted her. Except for her torn and stained dress, the knife, she might have been the Alyse de Vergay who outspoke me when first we came to France. Yet there was a wildness in her speech, as if it ran without her control. 'Lord,' she spat. 'A guttersnipe, he was doomed before his birth. No,' as Walter moved, step by cautious step, 'he belongs to us; his name was writ that day at Saint Purnace. He should have never have escaped us there. He should have been another's child or not born at all.'

Walter said, spitting blood, 'Why have you tried to kill him before? Why try now? Your words make no sense.' He attempted a smile. Behind his back. Master Edward had come between him and those de Boissert swords, was trying, with his fellow masons, to trap the swordsmen against some rickety stairs that led to a hayloft.

'Look, lady,' Walter's voice was patient, a gleaner in the fields, a watcher by a cider press. 'Lady,' he repeated the word to gratify her pride, 'your guards are overrun, your men outside dead or captured, you alone, what chance for you? What gain for you, what profit, why kill, to your own greater harm?'

'He lies,' one of the de Boissert swordsmen cried, his voice the louder that Walter's was quiet, 'what force backs him, only city scum.' And with a soldier's dislike of city folk, he tried to drive past Master Edward's knife, and was beaten back.

But, 'Liars all,' she repeated, 'they promised me much to come to Sieux. What did I get, sent off like a servant wench? The rightful mistress of Sieux would grant me more than that.'

'Stand firm,' the swordsman next encouraged her. 'Do not yield. Remember what reward if we do what was asked . . .'

'Reward is not necessary for me,' she said, edging round; she stood within a knife's edge of my son, 'what I do, I do without reward. But I have friends, powerful friends, they'll help me. You lie, Sir Squire, like all at Sieux who put on airs to impress, jumped up like weeds.'

Her men made another rush, but Walter did not even turn round, a trusting man was he to let a friend guard his back in such a place. To her, he made his next appeal. 'Give up your knife, repent. My lord will be merciful.'

'Merciful,' she almost screamed the word, 'what mercy then at Boissert Field? Overlord dead, my father in his death swoon, my brothers disarmed and disgraced.' She made a feint with the knife to make my heart stand still, but still could not quite reach. 'Rather,' she said, 'come you away with me. My friends will treat you handsomely. And take the child with us; dead or alive, Count Raoul shall pay. A ransom will cripple him, make me an heiress worth the marrying. That shall be my just reward. You are young. Sir Squire,' and now she smiled a caricature of a smile, both arch and grotesque.

Perhaps she guessed what his reaction was, or, perhaps, in the clever way half-demented people have to guess at truths, she became more cunning, her speech slurred as if she spoke at random, to distract. But I sensed a deeper purpose underneath.

'You think me old. But, had my mistress been the lady here, then should I too have married to my rank. Lord Raoul owes me some recompense. This ensures I get it.'

He said simply, 'My loyalty is already sworn. I serve Count Raoul and his lady wife.'

I think the mention of my name drove her on, or perhaps it was the coupling of both names, or even nothing that he said, simply the workings of her own mind.

'My loyalty is fixed longer than yours,' she cried, 'to her who should have had this place, to her who should have this as son. Shut in a nunnery, that living death, what hopes for her or me? I act for her, her mouthpiece, her right arm.'

'Lady,' Walter made one last attempt; he spoke to reason with her, 'it was not she who was put aside; she and her father themselves broke the marriage vow. The Lady Ann is good and kind . . .'

And should she have it all?' she cried, malice and envy creaking out, 'let that Celtic whore who took my lady's place know what it is like to live with death. If our lives are done with, so be hers.'

Quicker than seems possible for one so built, she jerked rack the covers from my son, thrust down at him with her knife. There was no time to stop the blow, no other way. Walter leapt too, one great leap, threw himself across the child, thrusting up with his sword as she thrust down. There was a long intake of breath; they fell together, rolled upon the floor, a crash, a thud that reverberates in my ears until the world's end.

Master Edward ran to push her off, dead she was, her mouth agape upon those last cruel words. Do
not put a curse on me.

Her curse is with me until my death.

Walter still lived, his eyes closed, a froth of red about those lips that smiled so readily. I wiped his face clean, pushed back his hair. I suppose about me swordsmen still raged, I suppose the last de Boissert men fought on and were killed. After a while, someone handed me the child, a bundle he seemed of fragile bones, yet alive. But he neither woke nor slept, his face as gray as unwashed wool, his eyes purple shadowed, his mouth stained blue from whatever drug she had given him. She had coaxed him to eat perhaps, that early hour while my village women slept, then took him forth, carried him to where a horse, and further on, other horsemen had waited her. His shallow breaths kept time with Walter's, a bitter smell upon his lips, a dose of some plant to quiet him. I held him on my lap, and Walter's head was in my arms, but I could not weep for them. And when they gave me back the ring, I strung it round my neck, a weight like lead.

Walter's eyes opened once, those warm west country eyes now lustreless. He tried to smile. 'So am I cured of French women in the end,' he said. A spasm caught him, he bit it back, never spoke to me again. I think he thought he was in his home, for he called for his brothers there, bid them saddle a horse. I held his hand, I willed him to think of it, to be in the western hills and smell the heather on the moors, and feel the western wind beating up the Channel coast. And I stayed with him, until his spirit rode away. And Master Edward came and pried my hand loose.

Well, he died, and all those de Boissert men, and she who died with them. Three masons were dead, one of our French guard, killed by a random blow as they stormed the hut, and Master Edward's nephew wounded in his arm which never grew straight again. And other wounded who had to be cared for. All dead, maimed; that my son should live ... So we took up our dead and wounded, piled the other corpses, set the huts ablaze. They say the flames could be seen from Saint Purnace, and no man now dares go near that black and scorched patch of ground.

As for her, who had murdered twice, and poisoned, 'Hang her body up,' I said, 'that she should have a murderer's end.' Well, that too is something to regret, but it was so done. Yet sometimes I think of her and wonder what was loyalty to her, who claimed it as her excuse, and what was the bond between her and that Isobelle that she should sell her soul for her. We made a cradle for the child, his breathing still irregular, his flesh wracked with fever spells so that it seemed he would shiver his joints apart. We departed hence, silently, no joy in us. And the ring about my neck was worn for remembrance.

At the river fords we met, Lord Raoul, his men, more men from Sieux, and we, with our sad and heavy load. Lord Raoul's face was weary, drawn, his men bone tired. He sat on his horse as if turned to ice. I do not think he knew what he said, his thoughts so fixed on this one thing that even I for a while was put aside.

'Save him. Ann, he must be saved.' And he took his son into his arms, carried him before him to Sieux. I remembered the way Walter had held him, Walter of the gentle ways who had many younger brothers and a large and thriving family. And I remembered how Raoul had always been alone, mother and father dead before he could have known them, his grandfather faraway in England. A lonely child he must have been, not used to children, not used to sons. He could not bear to lose this one, his firstborn.

At the castle gates, another sober group waited us, my women bathed in tears and our castle guard, the loyal Dillon and the men left in his charge, almost speechless for grief. As we passed into the courtyard, we trampled over the place where Robert had been born. The new walls were clearly visible. I remembered what Master Edward had promised: that before Robert was grown, they would stand to their full height. I almost thought now that promise would never be kept; I almost thought that the second Robert would follow the first, be lost before he could grow to boyhood. Yet I could not despair. We had already suffered too much to have despair destroy us. We took the child and laid him before the fire in the tower room. All night long my women waited with me. But we did not wait alone; Raoul joined us. He was wearier than I had ever seen him, plastered in mud. He had not changed his clothes for a week. I do not think he had slept or broken fast. He came in quietly for so large a man; he had not even removed his mail coat and his spurs grated over the wooden floors for all that he trod with care. He stood and watched us as we tried to bring the child's fever down, using damp cloths steeped in herbs. Presently, without a word, he went away, and I thought, if I thought anything, he could not bear to watch. But he returned; he and Dillon had been to the river's edge, in the dark, and hauled up buckets of water, cold and fresh, with its hint of ice. We scooped out the weed, Dillon and I, the day we had so scooped weed before forgotten then, although we laughed at it afterward, and I wetted the cloths and placed them on Robert's body that lay motionless, as if its vitality had burned away.

Raoul helped me. All night long, he worked with me, and sometimes our fingers crossed and touched over our child.
Flesh of my flesh.
So that night Raoul labored to give his child new life, so that night did Raoul woman's work.

And sometimes when I dozed, for moments perhaps at a time, so weary now myself I scarce could stand, Raoul kept vigil in my place. And when the child's fever at last began to break, and he tossed and cried, it was Raoul who held him. Raoul's broad hand with its long fingers could span the child's chest, and the skin was brown against the whiteness of the child's skin, but you saw the father in the child's face; you saw the child in his father's eyes. There are times when words get in the way. I knew without Raoul's telling me what his thoughts were that night. I knew what they must have been as he rode back; I knew, I had known them myself. He knew without my speaking of such things all of my guilt and regret at having gone to Poitiers. I sensed his, at having outfaced Henry in such fashion. Well, it is not only conspiracy that makes tangled nets, so do we live our lives, who knows how the ends ravel out. I think Lord Ademar had expressed it well: a sort of fate drives us on and holds us together despite ourselves. That night, without speech, without explanation, was the bond between Raoul and me tightened another notch. And when the dawn at last came and I knew the child was still alive, and the women dragged back the sacking that hid the window slits, we heard, faintly, that tap-tap-tapping of the masons on the castle walls. In their dour, uncompromising way, they too were already at their work. I looked at Raoul and thought. Thank God for you to back me this night.

He took my hands in his, those large strong hands, and turned mine over, as if examining them. Then he drew me to the window where he could see beyond the busy courtyard toward the cliff, the lake and the hills. He said, suddenly, abruptly, 'Ann, I have seen you sitting on the ground, digging up the stones of Sieux to make its walls. I have seen you twice stand as firm as rock when our enemies would have overwhelmed us. And now, today, you have given me back my son. Look about you,
ma mie.
 
Here is Sieux spread before you, the Sieux you have helped rebuild. I told you you would be countess here one day in your own right. No lady more deserves that name.' And he kissed me on the lips, the kiss of love, before all men.