The Passionate Brood (27 page)

She weaved her fingers in the fastening of his cloak. “You won this onyx clasp in single combat with that fierce emir at Arsouf, didn’t you?” she murmured. “And you value it almost as much as my father’s horse? Or the Crescent you tore from the Citadel that day you and Count Raymond galloped almost alone into Jaffa?” She told over his conquests and hummed the wicked little dance tune the native drums were playing that night in Acre. She pressed her warm young body against his until their shadows merged. But the pulsing music of the East had ceased to be a fire in his blood, and the scent of young may trees was more potent than the perfume of her enticing hands. He looked down at her blindly and detached them in a preoccupied sort of way, pushing her from him as if she were no more than any pestering whore. “I thought you’d gone hawking with John,” he said.

“That was only an excuse,” said Ida. “I had to see you alone.”

Had she been content to remain a child in his eyes, she would have retained his indulgent affection. As it was, though Acre and Triffels would stand for great events in his life, she herself was only an incident. “Get back to the Castle,” he ordered. “And don’t dare to deceive my mother like that again!”

His indifference was more convincing than any anger or harsh words. It shattered her self-fed dreams so that even her envy of the Queen fell to pieces. For the first time she regretted her craven father’s defeat. For months she had been dramatising herself as a romantic beauty destined to go on indefinitely moving through the colourful excitement that surrounded Richard’s life; and now, quite suddenly, she was made to realise that the best thing that was likely to happen to her was the ordinary humdrum marriage of which Queen Eleanor had spoken. It would be arranged for her and it would set the confines of her life. In the tragic youthfulness of her passion she saw no possibility of second-best, no hope of compensations. Her little bangled wrists slid slowly from his shoulders—slid slowly down over his unresponsive heart. Never again would its strong beats quicken for her. This cold country, with its white cliffs and bracing winds, had beaten her. Ida Comnenos turned, sobbing like a wild thing, and ran shoeless down the hill.

Seeing her go, the old monk offered up a
deo gratias.
He had been the late King’s confessor and knew that most of the stories about Plantagenet morals were true, but he often wished a censorious world could see some of their temptations! Presently, Richard went back to him. It was evident that he had already forgotten the girl. “Even if an outlaw came here, you would give him sanctuary and say nothing, wouldn’t you, Father Christopher?” he asked.

The monk started in surprise. “Of course, my son.”

Richard began tracing some of the crosses that batches of pilgrims had cut in the stone of the lintel. “Nevertheless, if ever my brother Robin should come—will you send word to me?” he asked, with averted eyes. The words came awkwardly because it was the first time for years he had spoken of Robin to anyone except Berengaria.

Father Christopher glanced anxiously over his shoulder in the direction of Shere. He wasn’t sure how Richard really felt about Robin. “Why should you suppose that he might come here?” he asked non-committally.

But Richard could think of no adequate reason. “I just felt him near—that’s all,” he said.

Father Christopher folded his finely veined hands in the wide sleeves of his habit, “Those whom we love are always near—when we remember them before God,” he said, beginning to understand the reason for this royal visit.

But Richard did not want that kind of comfort. He wrenched off the emir’s treasured clasp and dropped it impulsively into the alms box—but not for Becket’s soul. “Pray constantly that I may see him again!” he entreated without subterfuge.

A sigh of relief escaped the man of peace. He stroked the spandrel carving of which he was so inordinately proud. “All these chapels are, in a manner of speaking, monuments to the Angevin temper and the misery it has caused,” he said, with a twinkle in his kind old eyes. “Maybe, my son, God will not grant you your heart’s desire until you have mended yours.”

“That I shall never do,” laughed Richard ruefully. “But pray at least that I may know before I die that Robin has forgiven me, and I vow I will stay and mend this country!”

Father Christopher looked at him with the understanding of one who had seen the splendour of Becket, the perfidy of Ann, the homeliness of Hodierna, and the incomparable friendship of her son. “At Matins, at Nones, and at Vespers I will pray,” he promised. But he sighed as he watched the man these influences had made go plunging down the hill side on his great, sure horse. He had heard so many Plantagenet vows!

When John’s head falconer sounded his horn, it was to round up the hawking party by the mill pond at Shere. After the exhilaration of the first hour’s sport they had begun to straggle badly, relapsing into desultory conversation and enjoyment of the May morning. There was so much to talk about. Johanna and John rode over Merrow Down exchanging stories of the crusade with all the latest gossip from London and Oxford.

“And you never see anything of Hodierna now?” enquired Johanna, purposely lagging behind their companions as they made the descent into Shere.

John watched his sister put her horse at a gate and envied her her hands. “Mother wanted her to keep the Tower room in comfort, but she preferred to share Robin’s hand-to-mouth sort of existence. She came back once—a few months ago with some sort of message from him, I believe.”

“Then our mother must know where he is.” As he made no answer, Johanna crowded against him in the narrowness of the miller’s rutty lane. “Do
you
know?” she insisted.

John was forced to shrug a denial although he had tried hard enough to find out. “All over England, I should think!” he muttered resentfully.

“What on earth do you mean?” demanded Johanna. But John had caught sight of the miller’s daughter milking her goats in a little field at the back of the house. A flaxen girl in a blue gown who had had the bad taste to elude him for weeks. He turned aside at once and trotted across the field to speak to her.

Johanna reined in her horse to wait for him, letting the rest of the party go on. It was a lovely place in which to wait. The woods sloped down steeply on either side, and just below her the mill pond lay like a green jewel, mirroring the trees, with the assembling hawking party making a fringe of shifting colour along the mossy greenness of the bank. For the first time Johanna noticed that Ida was not among them, but she couldn’t be bothered to go down just then and make enquiries about her. It was amusing to watch her brother conducting his amours among the goats. He cut a fine figure in scolloped scarlet, making his sturdy grey plunge and rear dramatically as he cut off the girl’s virtuous break for the back door of her home. Johanna laughed outright when the great dappled creature, chafed beyond endurance, lashed a hoof at the bucket, surrounding them both in a frothing stream of milk.

But in spite of her spontaneous laughter, she was sore at heart. For the first time she and Raymond had quarrelled and it had been all her fault. The remembrance of it had nagged beneath the morning’s gaiety, and she was glad of a few moments’ quiet to sort out what had happened. First there had been that solemn sheriff of his arriving unexpectedly last night with endless business to discuss and sheaves of documents to sign, spoiling the first evening of their home-coming. And this morning, not only had Raymond been too busy to come hawking, but he must needs spoil her own sport by reminding her of what the Roman doctors had said. All the time she was dressing he had been urging her to ride gently, to ride side saddle like other married women, so that at the last minute she had thrown her new Turkish trousers into a corner and called angrily to her woman to bring the oldest dress she could find. “You don’t care how dull a time I have as long as I can produce an heir, do you?” she had raged, struggling into the old green velvet she had had at Oxford. “It’s all you men think of!”

Johanna remembered with compunction how, instead of shaking her as she deserved, her husband had sent the tire-woman away and fastened the gown himself. How he had taken her face between strong, square hands and said, “It’s you I think about always—you lovely, vital thing! Of course my people want me to have sons. But if I were to lose you—” And he had turned away because he couldn’t put into words what the loss of her would mean.

Because the old green velvet had brought back a dozen precious memories she had shrugged herself out of his arms and told him not to be old-fashioned and intense. And because he was a man and not a foot-mat he had grown angry then and told her straight out, “I’ve spent the last six months on your crazy family and if I don’t bring my bride home soon the people of Toulouse will believe you’re pock marked!” They had quarrelled violently, and she had been abominably rude. “I’m not a brood mare to be bartered from one country to another,” she had flung back at him. “And I’ll
not
go back to Toulouse the moment I’ve come home, just because that sour-faced sheriff of yours says your negligible little province wants seeing to!” And she had picked up her gloves and banged the bedroom door behind her so that the clang of it must have startled the prisoners down in the dungeons.

And now the sun was shining and the lovely pool she had wanted to show him was a green jewel silent and mysterious with the reflection of many trees. But the silence was broken, and she was roused from her reverie by the urgency of thundering hoofs. She turned to see John pounding across the tender shooting corn in hot pursuit of the miller’s daughter. The chase may have begun in fun, but as he made a grab at her flying flaxen hair the hooded bird on his wrist impeded his progress, squawking and beating its fierce wings in his face so that he lost his temper completely. The girl screamed, stumbled, and lost a shoe. The party at the water’s edge turned to stare, tittering or aghast according to their kind. But John scattered friends and falconers to left and right, riding her down as if she were a panting deer.

“Don’t be a fool, John!” shouted Johanna, knowing the depth of the deceivingly transparent water beneath the banked up mill dam. One summer, when they had stayed at Guildford Castle, Robin and her elder brothers had taught her to swim there. But in all probability this mill girl couldn’t swim, and in any case the frightened horse might drown them both. She saw young Langton step forward, a tall, white-clad figure among the kaleidoscope of colours, to catch at the scolloped crimson rein. But John only swerved, blaspheming. His mind was fuddled with the fumes of anger. “By God, I will ride the little white idiot down, and to-night I will teach her to defy me!” he thought. The mounting madness made him blind and deaf to shame. His vision was limited to the frustrations that unleashed his brainstorm. “I am John Lackland,” chanted the crazy voices of his breed. “Son of a red-headed Angevin, thrown to the kill-joy priests, cheated of my birthright by proud elder brothers, and I will take what I want—now and always—to make up for it!” The plaything he wanted danced before his brain, just out of his reach, like Richard’s sparkling crown. And just as Robin’s crisp words used to spoil his play-acting whenever he tried on the crown, so a sharp stab of pain brought him back to his senses now. An arrow skimmed low across the water and stuck quivering in his wrist. It came from nowhere and changed everything.

A moment ago it had seemed that John and his quarry must go headlong over the bank. But his reins went slack. With a roar of rage he felt the great horse rear and slide to a standstill within a foot of the water, its dappled grey neck sickeningly bespattered with his own over-heated blood. For the first time he became aware of men shouting and of women’s screams and of a sky darkened by the whirring flight of frightened hawks.

Johanna had not moved from her vantage point at the end of the lane. Her indignant pity rose for the fainting girl. She saw a couple of falconers rush forward to drag her from the danger of the grey’s stamping hoofs and lay their limp blue burden among the forget-me-nots and rushes, and was glad when Langton lifted her tenderly against his knee, cupping up some water in his own scholarly hand to revive her. When the other women began crowding round her brother and tearing up their veils for bandages, she felt no urge to help. He had got what he was asking for, making a wild beast show of himself like that! They’d all of them tempers, of course, but her other brothers had never been brutish. By the way some of the servants were crossing themselves, she knew they believed the mysterious arrow to be a judgment straight from God, and without caring much where it came from she felt with disgust that the May morning looked less lovely because John lived in it. “We all tolerate him because he’s amusing,” she told herself. “But Raymond was right. We ought to take him more seriously.” The white-faced girl was carried past her to the house. The miller’s wife came to the door. Johanna watched Langton cross the field to speak to her. “Though Heaven knows,” she thought, “how he can explain the incident!”

The hawking party was remounting and preparing to go home. They had forgotten all about their wagers on John’s gerfalcon but, as usual, he had given them something better to talk about. He rode homewards up the rutty lane, sheepish and sullen, in the midst of them. His left arm was in a sling made from the scented veil of an adoring baroness, and a page was leading his horse. He avoided looking at Johanna. Possibly they both remembered how she had once rated him for torturing a mere dove. Or maybe they both had begun to think the same thing about the arrow.

The woods resounded with shouts as the servants made a great show of beating them for the invisible archer. But once John’s back was turned they soon gave it up. Shere woods were known to be infested with men wanted by the corrupt courts of justice and men who had lost their tongues by John’s orders because they knew too much, and anyone who wore his livery had good reason to avoid them.

“The horrid felon might have killed him!” some of the women had cried. And the polite fallacy had been left unchallenged. But the men knew well enough that a marksman who could pierce a rider’s wrist at three hundred yards could easily have found his heart had he wished.

“Outlaw or no outlaw, the King himself couldn’t have bettered the shot!” a hoary old falconer was saying to his mates as they gathered up the last of the morning’s kill.

They moved off up the lane, and Johanna was left to stare across the deserted mill pond to the rising ground on the other side. Great king beeches rose there like giants from a dense undergrowth of lesser trees. Suddenly she knew as well as John who must have pulled that bow. “Have any of you seen the Cypriot princess lately?” she called casually after her brother’s men, and when they would have turned back she said, “Never mind. I will wait for her.” They thought it natural enough that she, who was so kind even to the grooms and chambermaids, should wait for a foreign visitor. And John, she knew, would be in no hurry to ask for her.

As soon as the men were out of sight she set her horse at the plank bridge that spanned the mill race, taking the path round the pond and plunging into the woods they had just been searching. Almost directly the sound of their voices died away and the grassy hunting rides lay deep and still as if no one had ever been there. Johanna tied her horse to a young oak and pushed her way through the undergrowth until she came to an unexpected clearing. Here were the tallest beeches of all, with primroses nestling at their feet and great shafts of misty sunlight piercing their golden solemnity. At her approach a herd of fallow deer rose on slender legs, gazed at her with brown, reproachful eyes, and bounded off. But one lame doe, after an abortive effort to hobble after them, was left behind. Someone had made a rough splint for her leg with two smoothly whittled twigs and a bit of green cloth. Johanna bent down to look at it and smiled. In the private chase of a prince who trained his hawks to pick out the deer’s eyes, surely only a crazy reformer would bother about binding up their knees. Cursing the encumbrance of green velvet, Johanna picked up her skirt and began running among the trees. Her heavy plaits came unbound, and she could feel the soft wind in her hair. And as she ran she found herself calling, with delicious excitement, “Robin! Robin! Where are you?” just as she used to do on the battlements at home.

He let her find him under one of the beeches, his bow still in his hand. He stood so still that the faded leather of his jerkin and the violet shadows and the smooth grey-green of the trunk seemed one. She remembered feeling how that quality of stillness used to make the restless movements of her family look cheap. But his face was warm with vitality, his eyes a laughing welcome. “It must have been your smile and not the torches that lighted Oxford Castle,” she panted inconsequently, “and all the days of my youth!”

She went straight into his arms, and he held her and kissed the russet of her hair. “It is like the shining beech leaves in autumn!” he teased. But even in that moment he held her as he always had—shielding her from all that was ugly and turbulent in her family, and from his own desires. “My little Johanna!” he said, although the hair he kissed was almost on a level with his lips. “It was a thousand times sweet of you to come!”

She laughed and cried against the faded jerkin and presently drew herself out of his arms to look again at his beloved face. Holding on to his arms, as if at any moment he might vanish, she scrutinised and learned each line of it. “Rough living agrees with you,” she decided. “You’ve changed much less than Richard.”

“It’s a pretty good life, after all,” he said. “And you don’t look a bit like a sophisticated woman who has had two husbands!”

In her joy at finding him Johanna had forgotten both of them. She flushed warmly and withdrew her possessive hands. To keep them safely occupied she began picking the bits of bramble from her dress. “Funny I should wear this to-day…”

“You were always loveliest in velvet,” he assured her. “And I always think of you in green…”

She looked up, well pleased. “And I you,” she said. “But yours is all patched!” There were tears in her eyes for that. She remembered how he had moved becomingly at stately banquets and talked with brilliant men like Becket, and how much her father had thought of him. Johanna’s rare tears moved him so that he shook her in self-defence. “Uncurable tenderheart! My mother loves to mend them,” he laughed. “Remember how she was always going to make Dickon that shirt that was proof against poisoned arrows? And how she made your wedding dress? And how you enslaved Blondel in this one?”

They laughed unsteadily, with the tenderness that wraps the irretrievable past. The thick woods closed them in, setting them apart from all that might come after. And part of Johanna’s heart was crying forlornly, “We are quite alone—and he let me go!” He rolled over a log with his foot, and she sat down on it among the primrose roots. “Were you enslaved too?” she asked. She had to know.