The Passionate Brood (8 page)

“And
he
won’t put himself out much to help you.”

They stood smiling at each other, jostled by the shifting crowd, until the memory of his errand drove them apart “A message from
Normandy
?”
repeated Richard, bestirring himself as soon as he was told, and following Blondel out into the dark courtyard. “It must be from my brother Henry.”

Yvette rose at dawn to darn Blondel’s hooded cape. The nuns of Fontevrault had taught her to sew exquisitely. All the same, she had barely finished by the time Berengaria had begun to dress for the final day of the tournament. And Berengaria was almost as fussy about her colour scheme as Richard had been about his clothes the day before.

“I look hideous in this gold surcoat!” she declared, flinging the costly thing across the ladies’ bower.

“But the Queen had it made specially. She said for anyone dark and pale—”

“I am not pale,” snapped Berengaria.

It was true enough. There were roses in her cheeks that morning. So patient Yvette brought out the blue brocade.

“Not that. I hate it!”

“But only yesterday morning you said—”

“Yesterday is not to-day. Besides, it needs a fastening. I suppose you spent the time mending that page’s hood?”

What with unaccustomed late hours and her mistress’s rare displeasure, poor Yvette was near to tears. “I did it in my own time, Madam,” she said.

“Oh, I know. I’m sorry, Yvette.” On her way to the window Berengaria stooped to kiss the girl. She could see the people of Pamplona flocking to the lists and little puffy white clouds drifting lazily across the blue sky. It was a long time since she had felt so excited about a tournament. “After all, I think I’ll wear the white again,” she decided.

Her youngest lady fetched it joyfully. “I’m so glad. I love you in that. And everybody said yesterday they had never seen you look so lovely.”

Berengaria picked up her mirror to make sure. Exile, dowries, marriages—what did they all matter? They were a long way off. Whereas here was to-day—and to-morrow and to-morrow. “I must look my best for the final bout,” she explained, dividing her attention between mirror and window like the luckless Lady of Shalott. “Look, the people are taking up their places already, and the grooms are bringing out some of the horses. Your Anglo-Norman page is down there, with that roan of Sholto’s. I’m so glad someone remembered about it. And Nando is leading a pack horse. I wonder what that is for.”

“Someone going away perhaps,” suggested Yvette, down on the floor with her mouth full of pins.

“Not just before the best joust of all, surely!”

“I do hope the Duke of Aquitaine will win again!”

“You little traitor!” laughed Berengaria. “Why, only the day before yesterday you were backing my cousin.”

“Blondel says there is only one better all-round sportsman in England. He is very handsome, don’t you think, Madam?”

“Very,” said Berengaria, smoothing a delicate eyebrow.

“And his voice—” Yvette gave a tweak here and there to the white samite.

“Dios mio!” laughed Berengaria, pirouetting for a final inspection. “I’m afraid it might beguile a girl into all kinds of foolishness.”

“And then, of course, his hair—like pale gold!”

“Pale gold? But it is almost red!” Yvette sat back on her heels to stare and Berengaria, red with confusion herself, put down her mirror with a bang. “Oh, go and finish your mending, do!” she ordered, realizing that they had each been thinking of a different man.

“It’s finished, Madam. Blondel said he wanted it this morning,” said Yvette, stifling her mischievous laughter. She jumped up to take a swift peep from the window. “Do you think I might take it down to him?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” smiled Berengaria indulgently. “I shall have to wait here in any case until Isabella and Henrietta come back from the garden with the fresh rosebuds for my wreath.”

Left alone, she turned back to the window, humming a half-remembered tune. Raymond was down there, punctual as usual, standing in the middle of an animated group discussing some last minute alteration with the Marshall. She could see Yvette run past him with scarcely a glance, making for the patch of shadow where Blondel and Nando were holding the horses. The tall roan was stamping impatiently for her rider and Berengaria found herself sharing the same impatience. Any minute now he would come out into the courtyard, striding with that long, soft tread of his, beckoning arrogantly for his page. “Give me your heart before you go—” sang Berengaria, realizing suddenly what tune she had been humming all morning, and stopping abruptly at the sound of hurrying footsteps on the stairs. “Well, Isabella,” she called over her shoulder, “have you stripped all my best bushes?”

There was no answer—only that long, soft tread behind her. She turned swiftly, with tumultuously beating heart. “Richard! What are you doing here?” she cried; for rarely did any man less nearly related than Raymond find his way to the room she shared with her women. But, taken off her guard like that, there was no mistaking the joy in her voice.

He came straight to her, taking both her hands in his. “I had to find you,” he said urgently. His face was set and white beneath the southern tan, and she noticed that he wore a plain and serviceable riding cloak. “Where is your armour?” she stammered. “Are you not going to tilt?”

He hardly seemed to hear her. “I had to come here,” he reiterated. “They meant to be kind down there. But they talked and talked. And all the time I was planning how I could see you before I go.”

“Go!” she echoed, all those sunny to-morrows drifting out of sight like the little puffy, white clouds. When he let go her hands she felt weak and empty.

He began padding back and forth. “It’s about Henry,” he said, in a stunned sort of way. “You remember what I said jokingly about murdering him? I little thought then…God forgive me! That was only last night, wasn’t it? And after I left you I heard that he is dead.”

“Dead! Oh, Richard, how terrible!” She stood desolately in the middle of the room, crucifying herself with his hurt as some women can—imagining how she would be feeling had it been
her
brother who was dead. Presently she said gently,” I am so sorry—so grievously sorry. Can you tell me about it?”

He stood looking down at the gay pageantry of Pamplona. Competitors and crowd, officials and servants—all the supernumeraries who were to have formed a frame for the uncertain issue of his fight. The medley of their voices came up to him, far off and shrill like the shouting of children playing on the seashore. Tents and trappings and gowns were so many gaudy blotches against the sombre background of his thoughts. He hated them because he no longer had any part in them. “Henry had gone to Normandy to raise some money for our crusade,” he was saying woodenly. “It seems he caught some sort of fever…Anyway, he will never come crusading now.”

Sensing her dumb participation, he turned with a reassuring smile. He was never one to unload his burdens on to any woman’s love. “Oh, you needn’t be too sorry for me! Anyone will tell you we quarrelled like curs. Aquitaine and Poitou have been laid waste by our disputes over patrimony. But he was one of us. Cleverer than I, of course—and much more fit to rule. And a good fighter, God rest his soul!” He crossed himself, standing quiet for a moment in prayer or thought.

Berengaria yearned over his bright; bent head. “Why must you go immediately?” she asked.

“Because of my lands,” he said crisply.

He was so oddly compounded of sentiment and common sense that she found herself saying with an almost motherly smile, “They won’t run away.”

“No. But they can be given away.”

“At least wait until after the tournament.”

He shook his head obstinately. “King Sancho has excused me, and your cousin understands. By the time I get back my father will probably have had John crowned.”

She had never seen that harshness on his face before. It made him look older and square-jawed and somehow frightening. “But your own father, Richard! Surely you can trust him?”

Probably she pictured him as some genial counterpart of her own parents. She had never known a harsh word. She had never seen disillusionment widening with the swinging inward of a bedroom door. Ah, well, he couldn’t tell her about that…Better she should think him unnatural, grasping…“I never wanted to be King of England,” he said slowly. “But now—don’t you see the difference it makes?”

“I see that you are now a very important person,” she said soberly.

He beat palm with fist, staring at her as if the whole of life were opening up before him. “Important enough to make it possible!” he cried.

Berengaria was too honest to pretend to misunderstand him; but, woman-like, she wanted confirmation. “To make what possible?” she asked.

He seized her hands impulsively, drawing her towards him. “To keep our private lives. To have happiness, love, ecstasy—like any common craftsman. We’re both young, and you’re so beautiful. Can’t you see that I am hungry with love for you, Berengaria?”

“So soon?” she whispered laughingly.

“Almost since I first saw you, I suppose—with your soft skin and your roses. Oh, I know I can’t expect you to care like that about me—in a day, or a few hours. But at least I could save you from marrying a lustful beast like de Barre or some senile old death’s-head like Sicily.”

He was so impetuous that in order to think she freed herself and turned away. “Oh, Richard, don’t torture us both!”

“Then you
could
care?”

She answered him obliquely. “There is always Ann.”

For him there would always be just two kinds of woman. The wanton, behind closed doors, and the soft-eyed saint bending above him with giving hands. Ann’s laughter had done that to him. And even Berengaria would never be able to give him back belief in any imperfect, household mate between.

“Ann be damned!” he stormed. “Nothing will make me marry her now.”

“But what about your father and Philip?”

It was true that his father might no longer force him to marry Ann, but he would probably do his utmost to prevent a union with Navarre. But with Berengaria caring—and he could swear she did—Richard’s natural optimism knew no bounds. “By God’s throat, I’ll bribe Philip somehow!” he cried, and took her in his arms.

He had so little time and no legal claim—nothing but passion with which to bind her. Briefly, fiercely, against the dividing years, he kissed her. Instead of international pledges and discussions about dowries, he held her against his heart and felt her unresisting body his. In that quiet room he staked an impossible claim against the diplomatic scheming of all Europe. Raging against leaving her, he knew that unless he was acknowledged heir to England he would not be considered important enough to get her. He hoped desperately that she would wait until his despotic father gave up some of the power. Had he been more experienced, he would have known that the very incompleteness of this hour might hold her. When other suitors came she would make comparisons. She would remember his unfinished kisses and care only that his hands were tender and his young mouth hard.

“They are coming back with my roses,” she whispered at last. “They mustn’t find you here.”

“If only I were free to begin negotiations with your father before I go! But I am afraid Philip will be still more tenacious of me as a brother-in-law now.”

“I will talk to my father. You know how kind he is. I will beg him at least to let me wait—”

Reluctantly, Richard released her and drew on his leather gauntlets. “It may mean years. You know I’m pledged for this next crusade?” He took a turn across the room, tramping unheedingly across her scattered finery and coming back to take her shoulders in his gloved hands. “Listen, sweet. If ever I sent for you would you have the courage to come?”

“Come where?”

“God knows! England, Cahors—the Holy Land, perhaps?”

She smiled through her tears. “You know it isn’t my kind of courage—but I expect I should.”

“You are wonderful! I suppose a man oughtn’t to think of dragging the woman he loves about the world like that? You’re so little, and you hate the sight of blood.”

She met his searching gaze with assurance. “When a man hands a woman back her dreams she does not count the material cost.”

“It may be harder than you think,” said Richard, with rare prescience. He took her in his arms again, but their kisses were tormented by the sharp edge of parting. “Sholto will send me news of you,” he said. “And I shall always wear your favour against my heart.”

Because he was going she had to tell him what she had really thought about his fight. “I was so eaten with pride in you I think God must be punishing me now. I even made up a name for you.” Standing on tiptoe she reached up and said it against his lips. “Richard Cœur de Lion.”

He laughed and held her close, trying to curb his strength so that he should not hurt her. “It is a fine name—Cœur de Lion,” he said, without a thought for how it might echo and re-echo through the years.

Dover was a proud town in the Spring of eleven ninety. The royal leopards flew from the new castle on her white cliffs, and the pride of England’s navy rode the blue waters of her bay. Not merely the converted fishing fleet levied from each of the Cinque Ports in case of invasion, but twin-masted war galleys with castles for the bowmen built fore and aft, and the broad, red cross of Christendom flaming across their sails. For Richard Cœur de Lion had succeeded his father as King of England and was off on his crusade at last.

Dover was a busy town, too. There were soldiers carrying dunnage to the waiting ships, mettlesome horses being coaxed down the slipway, and sailors drinking and singing wherever the sign of a bush proclaimed that alewives brewed. Down the narrow, salt-tanged streets swaggered knights and pages from all parts of England. The harbour was thronged with laughing harlots and weeping wives.

And it looked as if Dover would soon be a very impoverished town, for Richard himself was in the Reeve Hall collecting money for the crusade. People kept passing in and out of the wide door. They went in laden with this world’s goods and came out light with exultation about the world to come. He was persuading all men to the cause of his sincerity, and robbing the women of all but chastity by his charm.

In his late twenties Richard was in his prime. He had lost the first slenderness of youth, but nothing of its enthusiasm. His body was fit and strong as any blacksmith’s. During the six months he had been king he had, of necessity, acquired poise. Not the easy grace of his brother, Henry, perhaps; but a grave, considered courtesy which made a decent enough cloak for his incurable impetuosity.

“And is the new King such a fine figure of a man as they say?” the women, leaning from their windows in Reeve Hall Street, wanted to know.

A painted hussy prinking her way between the houses looked up and laughed. “For myself, I’d as soon sleep with one of those stern stone statues at Canterbury,” she shouted brazenly. “But did you see Prince John?”

They did not deign to answer her but craned their necks, with the half-envious curiosity of honest women, to see how she was snapped up by a roystering group of sailors at the corner of the market square. “Aye, I saw him, and I hope he won’t stay long!” sighed one of them who had four growing daughters.

“The King’s foster-brother is inside there,” announced the local miller, emerging from the Reeve Hall. “I told him I’d ’a been able to bring more’n two pieces o’ siller if most folks weren’t compelled to cart their corn to Canterbury ’stead of grinding local. ‘Just to put money into the church mills,’ I ses; and he promised to see the thieving old Abbot about it.”

A hook-nosed cobbler looked up from the open front of his shop. “They say this Robin saved some of the Jews the Londoners beat up at the Coronation.”

“He was always kind to us when he came to the assizes with King Henry,” remembered an old market woman.

Anxiety wiped the excitement from their patient faces. “If Robin sails too, what shall we do?” they asked each other, thinking of the jocund Prince John and the long, hard winter.

Since his father’s death Richard had been quite glad to have John around, and even Robin—who hated this begging business—had had to admit that John had managed it quite successfully.

“Suppose we just sit here and nobody brings anything?” he had objected, knowing how his fellow Saxons loathed foreign wars.

“Then I shall disguise my page as a converted Moslem and make him bring one of the crown jewels—just to get the thing started,” said John. “They’ll turn out like sheep.”

“Playing up to mass hysteria!” Robin had grunted.

“And would you say that women get this mass what-is-it worse than men?”

“Probably.”

“Then what a blessing Richard is that rare aphrodisiac—a bachelor king!’’

Robin had laughed and given in. “Not much scope for him with you about!” he had pointed out, trying not to wince as John tried on his brother’s crown.

So there they all were in the bare Saxon hall. Richard himself, resplendent in his new crusading outfit, sitting in the shire reeve’s chair. Robin making an inventory of the gifts people brought because he was the only one of them who could wrestle with accountancy. John perched conversationally on the edge of the fast-filling coffer, and Blondel—now an efficient young squire—ushering in the important and helping out the poor. And sometimes, Richard felt, the spirit of his brother Henry trying to get back to them now that the great day of adventure was at hand. The veil between them wore so thin at times that he felt he would only have to turn his head to see him lounging somewhere in the shadows and to hear his pleasant, lazy voice saying, “Not so bad, Dickon…But
I
ought to be leading this expedition, you know…Did you manage to get rid of that trollop, Ann? And was there good sport in Navarre?”

And all the time a stream of people passed through and had to be thanked. Monks from Canterbury and parish priests with their altar plate, well-to-do shopkeepers with their money bags and family parties come to Dover to see the King. The local miller had parted with his two pieces of silver, and the fletcher’s Norman wife had bounced in with her second best jewels. Coming in from the sunlit street, she had stumbled; and Richard himself—glad of an excuse to stretch his legs—had helped her to rise. “Madam, your generosity has helped to launch another Christian ship,” he said, his spacious gesture towards the masts just visible above the harbour wall making her feel herself a shareholder in their enterprise.

He was so exciting, so virile, seen close to like that. And yet there was no woman in his life. Officially, of course. But it was ridiculous to suppose him celibate…her erotic thoughts wandered on…It was gracious of him to come down to the town, but it would have been interesting to have seen inside the castle. She wished she had brought some of her best jewels. Her husband, the fletcher, was doing well out of the holy war, and her plump fingers began fidgeting with the new necklace he had just given her.

“I’m sure so white a throat needs no adornment,” whispered the King’s attractive young brother at the psychological moment. And before she knew it the pearls were in the coffer, and the polite young squire was bowing her out.

“How much are they worth?” enquired Richard crisply, before her simpering face was well out of sight.

John was already testing them with strong, white teeth. “A hundred shillings, at least. And she’d have given you her ears as well if you’d asked for them. You know, Richard, some of these middle-aged women are so consumed with curiosity about your private life that you ought to let them look over your bedroom at a shilling a time.”

“They are welcome to if it would bring in a bit more,” laughed Richard.

“Or how about paying less for your arrows?” suggested Robin, who had been turning up her husband’s exorbitant charges in the shire reeve’s account books.

They became aware that Blondel was gesticulating with urgent whispers from the doorway. “That reluctant knight I told you about, Sir, who wants to get out of his vows. Crossing the street now…”

“With a rich miniver coat and an invalid’s litter,” supplemented John, leaning backwards so that he could see.

Robin consulted the mighty tome before him. “Dugorge was the name. Sir Gawaine Dugorge. He’s down here in Doomsday as having hogged the lands of at least three Saxon thanes.”

“Then he should be good for four or five hundred,” assessed Richard.

Sir Gawaine was fat and florid and made great play with a staff and his squire’s arm. Richard greeted him with an assumption of hearty good comradeship, enquiring after his wound; and the embarrassed knight, who had never been to war, had to admit that he suffered merely from the gout.

“Now our old nurse makes a very potent compress of neatsfoot and liverwort for that—” began the irrepressible John. And the four of them listened with covert amusement while the poor eraven explained just how bad his gout had become of late.

“I know. I know. Since seeing my ships actually ready to set sail,” laughed Richard contemptuously. “I’ve noticed they
do
have that effect on some people’s ailments. Well, well, in the circumstances we might persuade our good bishop to remit your holy vows. For a consideration, of course. Now, let me see—the loss of such a valiant companion-in-arms might be estimated at four hundred shillings, should you say, John?”

“Make it five hundred,’’ urged John promptly.

The man’s florid complexion faded to an unhealthy putty colour. “But, Sirs, I am a comparatively poor man! “

“Not half so poor as those three thanes you robbed, I’ll warrant!” said Robin, poking the knight’s flabby paunch with a fresh quill he was cutting.

“But five hundred! It is hard—”

“So are the plains of Palestine—very hard,” remarked Richard, dismissing him curtly as two old ploughmen brought a few groats wrapped carefully in an earth-stained cloth. He leaned forward to take it in his own hands, making it seem precious by the gesture. Because they had never in their lives been out of Kent, he pulled a map across his knees and traced for them the way he meant to sail. They forgot the toil that had bent their backs in the service of the soil. Their fine, gnarled faces looked up worshipfully into his. And Robin, standing by, pictured what the lives of such men would be during the hard, lawless winters ahead.

Richard was even trying to sell his parklands. “Have a notice about them put up at the harbour where these prosperous foreign merchants berth, Blondel,” he ordered, getting up to stretch himself when the last of the public had gone. “And you, John, can’t you hunt up a few more rich Jews?”

“It’s the only sport I can give you points at!” grinned John, gathering up his modish riding cloak obligingly. But out in the sunshine with one foot in the stirrup he called back to his brother, “Don’t forget, Richard—I’m playing for castles. You promised me Nottingham and Marlborough.”

“All right, Lackland. Good hunting!” agreed Richard indulgently; and went to the door to watch the two young men ride up the street—a pleasant-looking pair, the one capable-looking and soberly dressed, the other ruddy and debonair. He saw John turn to catch the eye of a pretty girl sitting on the steps of a house opposite the cobbler’s and heard Blondel’s quick laughter as her mother pulled her inside and slammed the door.

“Has this crusading fever left you
no
conscience, Richard?” asked Robin, with a smile.

Richard came back to the coffer and, digging a hand deep into its contents, let a cascade of coins run idly through his fingers. “I would sell London if I could find a buyer,” he admitted. London, for him, held fewer memories than Rouen or Cahors.

“A little hard—on London!” murmured Robin.

Richard glanced back at the harbour with the eyes of a visionary and the calculating mind of a commissary. “Somehow each of those ships must carry at least forty horses, and provisions for a year. I’m not taking any chances of starving in a hostile country as they did last time.”

Briskly, his foster-brother laid before him some parchments. “Well, here are your sailing orders for each captain.”

“Good. I’ll sign them.”

“Rather ruthless, aren’t they?” Leaning over his shoulder, Robin indicated a clause in which it was laid down that any man who disobeyed an order should be thrown overboard.

But Richard sealed them firmly. “Good generalship necessitates occasional imperviousness to individual pain,” he argued. “To my way of thinking, the man who hasn’t courage enough to burden his conscience with occasional ruthlessness has no right to rule.”

“And those of us who aren’t called upon to bear the burden need not add to it the weight of criticism,” apologised Robin handsomely.

Richard locked the great chest and sat down on it, calling for drinks. “It’s funny, after sitting at side tables in other men’s halls, to have Philip deferring to my military judgment instead of patronising me; and to see the way that young time server, John, follows me about!”

“As long as you realise that he
is
a time-server,” warned Robin. “Your father never did, and so his defection from himself to you at the end nearly broke his heart.” He came and sat down at the other end of the coffer and a page set wine between them. “What are you going to do about Ann?” he asked. “Why don’t you tell Philip straight out you won’t marry the girl?”

“Can’t afford to now he’s king and we’re starting off on this crusade together,” said Richard. “But guess where that wonderful mother of mine went off to so quietly last month.”

“Everybody’s been wondering about that—just as you’d been able to make her life so much pleasanter.”

“To Navarre!” said Richard, lifting his tankard and smiling happily at the rich redness of the wine, so that it sounded like a toast as well as an answer.

“Navarre!” echoed Robin, with satisfying surprise. “Still finessing at seventy!”

“She is going to bring Berengaria to Brindisi.” Richard quaffed off his wine and, reaching for the map that was never far from his hand these days, began tracing a route to the south of Italy. “I shall have to contrive to meet them there on my way to Syria.”

Robin sat hugging his knee and staring at Richard’s absorbed, bent head. Such extravagant moments always left him a little breathless. He, too, had his dreams but—with the patience of a peasant—he accepted his limitations. It had been so in love. Instead of clamouring for a girl out of his reach, he had striven for self-mastery. Whereas Richard kicked aside obstacles with the godlike impatience of his breed, widening their everyday horizon to a panorama of romance. “And what about King Sancho?” he asked.

“Oh, he is all in favour of it now I have England. And, as you know, Philip would sell his soul for money. If only I were not so damnably hard up just now I might bribe him about Ann.”

“But didn’t your father leave a pretty useful reserve in the vaults at Winchester?”

Richard nodded towards a convoy of arms and provisions rumbling down to the quay. “I’ve had to put every penny of it into that sort of thing,” he explained.