Gifts of the Queen (46 page)

So Raoul and his two men came at last to the coast of France, south of the region called Brittany, and there they took horse, rode on, as companions, not earl and lord, or knight and squire, but three men, buying their way by feats of arms, sometimes biding in one place, sometimes journeying on, sometimes going on pilgrimage to one holy shrine only to hear of another one more holy still.

A good man was that Sir Piers who lived to see happier days, and good and true that faithful squire who saw the world end for him far from home; but death did not come for Lord Raoul, although there were those who said he sought it.

By now, a Yuletide had come and gone, and I remained at Prince Owain's court, cut off from Cambray, from Sedgemont, from Sieux, and all that was done in Henry's England. I cannot say I did not think of that time nor these places I had known and loved, nor of all my friends left there, most of all of my husband and my son. But I had learned to build a barricade around those thoughts and only let them out when I was alone.

And so it was in the New Year, in a week of snow and ice that brought the wolves howling round our gates, that blocked the mountain passes and froze birds as they flew through the air, then was my second son born. An easy birth and I cherished him, son of my grief, born out of time and place. And they called him Hue, spelt in the Celtic way, although a Norman name, which means ‘thought.' And so he was, a child thought about, although in no way an easy or thoughtful child. He was as loud as Robert had been quiet. Sometimes Lilian stopped her ears and claimed she had believed the devil driven out of Wales until he now seemed come back again in this strange guise. And a greedy child, who drained me dry, so full of vitality he seemed to have taken mine as well. His hair was red, like my own, red hair, red temper, that one day men should notice him. But his eyes were gray. And often when Dafydd came and sat with us and dangled the baby in a way that reminded me of Walter at Sieux, he and Lilian would plan the future of this little prince, or so they called him, to make me smile. Well, for all of us is the future begun the day of our birth; we make it as we move through life, so for him.

Thus was born my second son, a scant few months after the queen gave birth to him who in time should be a king. But my son Hue would be befriended by a king's son, who never became a king himself, and who would bring woe and death to his friends. And sometimes, when we were alone, I held the child so that my mouth was close to his ear, shell-shaped and perfect, so that I could whisper in it. Then I told him who his father was, a great and noble lord, and what high hopes Lord Raoul had had for his son, even if he did not yet know he was born.

'But he will return,' I told the child, not that a baby understands the words, but he does the sense. Hue knew everything I said to him; he drew it in like the air he breathed. 'Your father has gone far away because he has something he must do. No one knows in truth what he seeks, perhaps not even he himself, but he will when it faces him. Those who ride with him, and I myself, we believe he will never rest until his quest is finished. You would not want him here with us, incomplete, a man who feels his honor has been tarnished?'

Sometimes, when I spoke those thoughts aloud, a great sadness would overwhelm me that, unwittingly, I had been the cause of so much woe. The baby uncomprehendingly watched the tears fall. Grief was not his to know. But when I told him how his father rode with his men and how the fame of their progress spread until, sometimes, there was never a joust or tourney that, on learning Raoul was there, knights wouldn't come flocking for many miles to run a pass with him, when I spoke of these things I thought my son listened more intently than before.

'And so your father and his men wander,' I told Hue, like migrating birds, now here, now there, until there is no famous place, no holy shrine they have not visited, no pilgrimage they have not made. I do not know if they think of us. But I promise you, Hue of the Celts, your father will come for you one day. He will set you on his black horse and ride with you over the hills. Then shall you see beyond these lands, all of England, and France, all the world with him.'

So when I told him on a certain day it was time to return to Cambray, I did not have to explain to him why that day more than any other one, or why Cambray. I knew it to be so, and so did Hue, a feeling, a sensation hung in the air like the sound a harp makes before it is completely strung, a yearning far away, like the wind that blows across the moors.

'Raoul needs us there,' I told Hue as I wrapped him in his lace shawl, woven so fine like cobwebs, 'now is the day he will wish to come home himself.' And Hue felt it too, that bond as strong and irresistible as the sea tides.

It was not easy to leave this Celtic court. Prince Owain tried to dissuade me, and my friends wept. I did not wish to seem ungrateful for their kindnesses—I had never known such kind people before—but I had to go. So with many protestations of sadness then on their part and mine, with their wishes for my happiness, with auguries of good fortune, I took Hue, and in a cavalcade we came down the mountain pass and turned south. Dafydd and Lilian came with me. Before we reached the castle at Cambray, Dafydd drew me aside. He was riding his moorland horse, its long tail and mane blowing in the wind, and the bright March sun glinted on his hair.

'Lady Ann,' he said, after many starts, 'it is not too late to change your mind; turn back with me. Or, having come to Cambray, stay but a while, then come again to Owain's fort. You are as welcome there as flowers in spring. I should be waiting for you at the border pass.'

He put out his hand to cover mine, a small fine-boned hand he had for a warrior, strong and supple like steel. 'I should wait for you,' he repeated. 'If I feel myself part Norman, as well as Celt, you alone made me so, nothing else. If I had thoughts of staying at Cambray, it was because of you. I left Cambray for freedom but I also left because you were gone. Now I think God has given you back to me, lost in the mist that day.' He hesitated. 'Your husband has gone,' he said, 'and where, who knows. You cannot wear your youth away waiting for a shadow that may never become flesh.'

How should I explain that that shadow world was always real for me?

When I did not reply, 'Wait then, for the summer's end. I will send again in the autumn time,' he said. 'But if you need me, summon me. My men and I will come, although I swore never to trespass on Cambray lands.'

He hesitated long before he said, 'And if, in God's time, you should think of another man, remember Dafydd, son of Howel, to whom you gave life back long ago; give me chance of it again.'

A gentle man was Dafydd, too. But I could not give him what he wanted, and he could not give me my heart's wish. We made a parting there, for he would not be foresworn and come within the boundaries of my father's lands. He turned back to the high mountains, and Lilian and I rode southward toward the sea.

I had not seen Cambray since the day I had left it to plead for Raoul's life, knowing then I was with child, knowing that Raoul was marked for death by Henry's men. Little had changed at Cambray in these past years, the walls more gray, and the outer battlements battered by heavy storms. But the moors behind them were undisturbed, and the sea below the castle was as permanent as the sky above. Once I had wanted nothing more than to return to this small and simple castle at the far end of the Norman world, until that Norman world wanted it. But Henry, it seemed, had made no move against us after all, and tranquil had been the castle all this while. And tranquil came I back to live there and wait. In time, they brought young Robert to me from Sedgemont. Then had I both my sons in my care to my content. At each season, Dafydd sent messages, or sometimes I would ride out to the edge of the moors and meet him there.

But these were the outward things of my life. In my mind's eye I lived in Raoul's world, and what we waited for was the same. For I waited for love and so, I think, in the end did he. His love of me, his hatred of Henry were different sides of the same coin.
You will never know if he loves you.
Now far away, he avenged that love; he avenged that hate. And in my thoughts, I shared both with him. Well, this too is a tale that must be told and I not the one to do all the telling of it, a man's story this, of war and death as well as love. Let Lord Ademar speak of it, as he once told it me. Lord Ademar, who came to Poitiers to be with the king and tried to spare me the queen's wrath, and who lived to see his wager come true and to be a witness of it. It was a wager no man dared breathe aloud, that one day, Raoul would challenge Henry to combat. And still today no men talk of it; you will not find it written in the chronicles; silent they are upon such a thing, beyond their understanding. But so it was done, and so foretold.

Now, there are two other points which must also be said before we come to the last part of our tale. One is what King Henry did not do, the other what King Henry did. After Raoul had left in such a fashion as to send waves of scandal through the English court, Henry made no move against him. He never tried to take Sedgemont; he certainly never tried to take Cambray, although he had wanted it so badly, and his lawyers, ever greedy for more lands, tried to persuade him that now he had the right to seize both within the process of the law. Why he did not is not clear. But, as if to make the distinction plain, his standard-bearer, that other earl, Henry of Essex—who, you remember, had thrown down the king's flag and run away—for six years, Henry pursued him. At the end of that time, when the Earl of Essex might well have thought himself safe, Henry's wrath caught up with him. He was hauled before one of Henry's new courts on charge of cowardice and forced to answer for his treachery. He was defeated in a duel by a champion chosen by the king, left for dead, immured in a monastery, his lands forfeit. A monk he lived the rest of his days, in Reading Abbey, no slight thing to give up the world for honor's shame, yet never word of blame or complaint Henry dared let fall against Earl Raoul; and whether that was for guilt, having broken oath with me in such shameful wise, or whether for justice to the earl himself, I do not know. In any case, Lord Raoul's lands were not touched; he could have come back without constraint. And never Henry spoke of Basingwerk or his defeat, and all men avoided reference to it.

As to what Henry
did,
a restless wanderer too was he, criss-crossing the Channel like a man possessed. Having recovered of his wounds, having given up the Welsh campaign, seeming to have lost interest in it, he went back to France, tried to make peace with King Louis at last, tried to capture all of Brittany and veered from one place to the next as if pacing about a room, not a continent. Finally, he turned the full blaze of his attention on Toulouse. He had another score to settle there, an old one too, with Count Raymond, Lord Ademar's overlord. And it was there, now, that the two wanderers met. Henry had long held a grudge against Count Raymond of Toulouse, incensed by his failure to pay court at Poitiers. He chose now to move against Toulouse because, since he had not succeeded in having Count Raymond do fealty for his lands, he feared that the Count would try to make them independent of the Duchy of Aquitaine. Cleverly, Henry justified his attack by declaring, not that Count Raymond held lands without swearing homage, but rather that he had no right to them at all. Toulouse, he said, in fact, belonged to Queen Eleanor! Naturally enough, Count Raymond laughed this idea to scorn, so Henry began to raise a second army, a mighty one, bigger, they claimed, than any army raised in France since the holy wars, to use against him.

Lord Ademar described Henry's army thus: 'A mighty dust train, a serpent's trail, writhing its way along those hot and dusty roads, such a gathering of all of Henry's feudal host, packed out with mercenaries where he could squeeze them in, that the whole from head to start stretched many miles, not counting the baggage train. Lord Raoul spoke true when he said that Henry had found a new toy, a feudal army that, at his command, would march or stop, attack or besiege, as he gave the word. I was with Count Raymond in Toulouse itself, and the city teemed with rumor: how many miles the army marched each day, how many castles they took along the way, how many lords they forced to submit, how they skirmished through Perigord, seized Cahors, with its great Roman bridge, until, by and by, they were expected at our very gates.

'Count Raymond was a brave and stubborn man. "Let him come," I heard him say. "I can outface a Count of Anjou, a trumped up title and a jumped up man, not half the size of my estates." Bravado he had, to refuse to call Henry a king, to ignore such a danger coming at him; and in truth, things might have gone ill for us (I was in that city too and knew how ill-prepared we were to hold off such a besieging force), had not two things conspired to help us. One was the arrival of King Louis of France. Now Henry claimed King Louis had blessed his plans, knew of them, and welcomed them. Certainly, Louis knew of them—Henry had told all the world—but whether he agreed to them was another thing. For Louis's sister was married to Count Raymond, and although Louis had little liking for the Count, he did not want to see his sister and her sons dispossessed. Besides, he more than anyone else in France had had enough of Henry's whittling away at his lands.

Seldom does Louis decide anything (they say he spends all day determining what shirt to wear); but in this, for once he took the initiative, came quickly to the city before Henry reached it, and undertook to help us with our defense. The second source of help was Lord Raoul himself.'