The Passionate Brood (7 page)

The banquet, as Raymond had prophesied, was interminable. At any rate, it seemed so to Richard. Being only a second son, he was placed at one of the side tables between Henrietta and a fat bishop; whereas Raymond of Toulouse sat at the family table with the principal guests. Not only was he Berengaria’s cousin but his province adjoined Navarre. Richard found it tantalizing to hear their laughter and not be able to join in their jokes. His own conversation in Spanish was as limited as Blondel’s, so he was glad when the servants began clearing the tables. “What is this game they are preparing to play?” he asked Henrietta, when King Sancho had risen and the trestles were set against the wall.

“‘Hoodman Blind,’” answered Henrietta, explaining it in dumb show. “You know. The one where all the men wear a capuchin back to front and have to catch a girl. I’m sure to get caught with a dress that rustles like this.”

But Richard did not avail himself of the hint. He borrowed Blondel’s capuchin, cut two holes in it and managed to steer a tolerably straight course through groping men and shrieking girls to the window recess where Berengaria sat talking with Raymond.

“My quarry, I think!” he interrupted in a muffled voice, seizing her wrist.

“Really, Richard!” laughed Berengaria.

“A little too swift to be plausible, my friend!” accused Raymond, releasing him from the hood and poking two searching fingers through the holes.

“Don’t tear it any more, Toulouse,” besought Richard, smoothing his ruffled hair. “I borrowed it from my page.”

“That nice boy with the long lashes?” asked Yvette, who was standing beside them.

“I can’t say I’ve noticed his eyelashes, but he seems pretty capable.”

“I must mend it for him,” she promised, rescuing the thing from Raymond.

“Do you always cheat at games?” asked Berengaria.

“I had to get away from a repulsive bishop and a girl who giggled.”

“I have to put up with her all day,” said Berengaria. “
And
with this incurable chatterbox. She has nearly exhausted me talking about your fight.”

Face to face with her new hero, Yvette became covered with confusion. “At least she speaks very good Norman,” commended Richard.

“She went to school in Normandy. What was the name of the place, Yvette?”

“Fontevrault, Madam.”

“Fontevrault!” repeated Richard. “Where the nuns grow such beautiful roses, and the Abbess is a delightful old aunt of mine with hands like a carved ivory saint. Were you happy there?”

“Oh, yes. You sound as if you knew it well. Have you been there often?”

“Never in my life, Yvette,” he said, smiling at her eagerness. “But I shall one day.”

“How do you know, Sir?”

“Because we Plantagenets are all buried there.”

“Of course, I remember. Rows of richly carved tombs with a lovely chantry—”

“Then I hope you won’t go for a long time!” Berengaria shivered involuntarily, in spite of the heat. “These games get so frightfully rough and noisy,” she added, seeing de Barre’s bulk approaching them through the crowded hall. “Shall we go outside until the dancing begins?”

“Aquitaine wants to know if you grow flowers on the battlements,” said Raymond, batting the eyelid nearest to Richard.

“We might, if it wasn’t for the Captain of the Guard,” laughed Berengaria. “But I have a rose garden under the chapel wall. Would you care to see it?”

“Anything connected with roses, after this morning!” declared Richard. “And perhaps while we are out there you could show me that horse you promised to lend me for to-morrow?”

Berengaria spread palms that appealed expressively to high Heaven. “How
English
! Did you hear, Raymond? A girl offers to show him a rose garden and all he is interested in is a horse!”

“Well, show it to him. Then I can tell your mother quite truthfully that you are looking after the comfort of one of her guests,” said Raymond, preparing to head off the advancing de Barre with an irritating enquiry after his wound.

***

It was cool and peaceful in Berengaria’s rose garden. The chanting of Compline mingled pleasantly with the evensong of birds. A westering sun reddened the housetops of Pamplona and made the tents and banners set up round the lists look all aflame.

“I felt such a fool down there this morning,” said Richard, producing her crumpled rose bud from his wallet. “Why did you throw me this?”

“For the hospitality of Navarre,” said Berengaria, sitting down on a low wall.

“I had hoped it was because you liked me.” Like the rest of men who had done well, he was in the mood for fighting his battle over again. “Anyhow, it made all the difference,” he said, pacing up and down before her. “What with a hostile crowd.”

“Not hostile. They just didn’t know you.”

“Well, they got to know me before the finish. After I winded him they veered right round, didn’t they? I suppose it
was
a pretty good fight to watch.”

Berengaria did not rise to his boyish bragging. Probably she had to listen to a surfeit of it at tournament time.

“Didn’t you enjoy watching it?” he insisted.

“No. I hated it. Your poor horse—”

“Oh, I see. You would sooner it had been I?”

But Berengaria was bad at hurting people, even when they deserved it. “How can you be so stupid? The humiliating fact is,” she confessed, with a conciliating hand on his arm. “I hate the sight of blood.”

He stared down at her in surprise. “But you bound up my wrist.”

“I know. One has to be bigger than one’s dislikes.”

“Even without a cheering crowd? Unilluminated sort of courage. Like Robin’s. Mine is a cheaper sort.”

“Who is Robin?”

“My foster brother. You are rather like him. You do the same sort of things—not because you want to.”

“Want to! A woman has to forget the things she wants to do if she has the misfortune to be born a king’s daughter.” Berengaria spoke bitterly, looking back at the lighted windows of her stately home. A slim, horned moon rode in silver serenity between two turrets and a young soldier with a lute chose that moment to begin serenading one of the maid servants in impassioned Spanish. “The people have stolen our private lives,” went on Berengaria, with low vehemence. “Now, while we are living them—and afterwards when they hand us down to posterity neatly labelled with the verdict of popular prejudice. Oh, I know they enjoy staring at us, poor things. But we have to pay for their cheers with ceremonial weariness and for our picturesque lives with miserable marriages!”

“That’s what poor Johanna says.”

“She was still struggling with Latin verbs when Sholto was in England. But he said she was like a flame. I see now what he meant.”

“He probably meant she was an undisciplined young hoyden. Hawking and deer hunting aren’t enough for her. She wants to do everything that we do. I verily believe she would go to war if our parents would allow it. You should see her in a borrowed suit of John’s trying to stick a boar!”

“Surely your father doesn’t let her?”

“He is away from home a good bit. But he nearly caught her once when riding past us on his way back from some musty law court or other, ‘Who’s that new blond page over there?’ he asked. Robin pretended she was his. He had the presence of mind to clout her over the ear and send her back for a brace of birds. So she got away with it without a beating.”

“Robin sounds a dear! I hear Johanna is to marry the King of Sicily. How she will miss you all!”

“She will probably have sailed by the time I get back. It will be dreary without her. Even the scullions adore her.” He roused himself from the gloomy prospect to chase a little lizard from the vicinity of Berengaria’s foot. “Have they chosen a husband for
you
yet?”

“They are still haggling about my dowry as if it were of more importance than my disposition.”

“Who is the lucky man who will get both?”

“I don’t know yet. Does it matter very much?” She looked away towards the Pyrenees, outlined against a last pale streak of sunset. “Just the name of some politically desirable state for which I must desecrate my most sacred dreams!”

“Suppose it were some man you could care for?” suggested Richard. Having a sister of his own, he realised how unfair life could be for a girl.

But Berengaria was not to be comforted. “Suppose that moon up there were to fall!” she scoffed.

“But there must be some ordinary, decent princes about,” he urged. “Fellows like Sholto or—or myself, for instance.”

“Modest, aren’t you?” laughed Berengaria. “And anyhow Philip of France won’t let you dodge his sister, and my father wouldn’t hear of a husband for me who wasn’t at least
heir
to a throne.”

“I could go home and murder Henry,” he offered obligingly.

Berengaria’s pansy brown eyes were mocking him again. “It’s just sweet of you, Richard. But I’m afraid you’d make a very bad murderer.”

“What! Didn’t I show you this morning that I can strike?”

“Yes. But you’d probably strike in the middle of some market place and then tell the world how beautifully you’d done it.”

“You
do
seem to have summed me up rather well!” he laughed ruefully.

“So well that I even know you entertain your
special
friends with songs you have composed yourself.” She leaned over the garden wall and beckoned to the disappointed serenader. “If you want your wench to get some time off after the party, Cervantes,” she bargained, “come here and lend us your lute!”

The love-lorn young man came eagerly.

“I’ll wring Sholto’s neck for this!” muttered Richard, red to the ears. But she pushed the lute into his unwilling hands. “You owe me a song for the rose,” she insisted.

“In gratitude for that I would have spared you the pain of my voice,” he grumbled. But there was nothing else for it and, however unworthy the song, he knew there really wasn’t anything wrong with his voice. In his nervousness, the few elegant ballads in his repertoire eluded him, so after plucking uncertainly at the strings for a few moments he plunged full-throatedly into some doggerel that had become a guardroom favourite at home.

Give me a sword of shining steel,

A camp fire and a song,

And I will strew with Saracens

The plains of Ascalon.”

Give me a horse and—”

“But that’s all about war!” interrupted Berengaria, both hands clapped to her ears.

Richard stopped, affronted, the lute swinging from his hand. “Of course. Of what else should a fellow sing?” he demanded.

Berengaria uncovered her ears and began picking delicately at some moss in a crevice of the wall. “Men
have
sung about me,” she said, smiling up at him from beneath dangerously curled lashes.

“Oh, you mean love songs? I never tried to make any.” He ambled about among her roses, twanging the long suffering instrument uncomfortably. Out of the tail of his eye he could see its ardent owner grinning, and it riled him that such a slip of a girl could tease him so. “Very well, how is this?” he asked, brightening with sudden inspiration. He came back and struck an attitude beside her, burlesquing the Spanish lover. To the same old guardroom tune he sang,

Give me a lute and I will show

How kind your small hands are!

Give me your heart before I go

Dear lady of Navarre!”

Berengaria sprang up, clapping her hands delightedly. “Not so bad, Richard! Not so bad! It seems you are learning quite a lot in Pamplona.”

Richard said nothing. Somehow the mockery had faded out of the last two lines of his parody. He knew that he
was
learning something new—the best thing in life probably—something he had scarcely believed in. Something so elusive and beautiful that a man could go on working and fooling for years without experiencing the thrill of it. Until one day some woman smiled at him so that, without touching her, he could feel her taking possession of him, body and soul. And then all his conceits and infidelities would be jettisoned, leaving only humility and desire…

“Don’t stand there dreaming!” badgered Berengaria, with the cruelty of unawareness. “Give the man back his lute and come and show me if you can dance as well as you sing.”

He knew very well that anything more than friendship between them was forbidden, impossible. He must make this growing attraction stop now before she, too, got hurt. “I told you—I dance very badly,” he said gruffly.

But she caught at his resisting arm. “I’ll try to bear it with that unilluminated courage of mine!” she promised gaily. She had forgotten all about her headache, and he had forgotten his horse.

They danced until de Barre glowered and the King called her to partner a proud prince of Aragon. “Afterwards perhaps?” whispered Richard, letting her go.

“There are so many important people!” she sighed.

If he had had any sense he would have abandoned hope and responded to Henrietta’s roving eye. But what had first love and a Spanish summer night to do with common sense? And what Plantagenet, having held perfection in his arms, could cure himself with second best? He was still mooning after her from a window embrasure when his page came looking for him with an urgent message.

“The Duke of Aquitaine—where is he?” he was asking right and left as he pushed his way through the crowded hall.

Either people did not know or he did not understand what they told him until a girl said in Norman, “Over there, by that window. Glaring at every man who speaks to my princess.”

Blondel resented the implication that his master, who had scored in the lists, could be a wallflower at a party. “Nonsense!” he said. “Half these man-snatching Spanish women would give their girdles to dance with him!”

“I am a Spanish woman myself,” said Yvette, drawing up her five foot nothing of offended dignity.

“But you speak Norman. And what are you doing with my hood?”

“I was going to mend it.”

For the first time he really looked at her. A flaxen girl with blue eyes and a dimple, rather like the thanes’ daughters with whom so many Normans intermarried at home—only much more animated. “That is exceedingly kind of you,” he said. “And I’m sorry if I was rude. It’s pretty harassing looking alter an impetuous man in a strange country and I don’t know anyone yet, except the Count of Toulouse’s fat page.”