The Passionate Brood (31 page)

He patted her shoulder encouragingly, but without any sort of passion. “You are just worn out,” he said, remembering how many of his wounded she had comforted. It never had been easy for him to say he was sorry, but he began twisting the ruby ring on her wedding finger. He had had it made very hurriedly for her in Cyprus, so when he said, “I was fool enough to put a precious stone into a cheap setting,” she wasn’t sure if he was alluding to the ring or to herself. And, hearing someone singing outside, he got up almost immediately and strolled across the tent. She would never know how much or how little she had hurt him. “Come in, Blondel!” he called. “I want you to take the Queen and that home-sick little wife of yours to Fontevrault.”

Blondel needed no second bidding. He had hoped that his son would be born at Horsted de Cahaignes but clearly they would not be home in time, and this was certainly the next best plan. “Yvette will be delighted, Sir!” he said, gratefully.

“Let’s tell her,” suggested Berengaria.

They called to her through the covered way that had been made between the two tents, and she appeared with some of the Queen’s half-folded garments still in her hands. The briskness had gone from her step and her small, round face had the hushed look of a grave Madonna. Directly she heard the good news, she went to where Richard was standing and kissed his hand. “You have always been so good to me!” she exclaimed.

“How soon do you think you can be ready, little lady?” he asked. And when she answered ingenuously that everything was already packed he burst out laughing. It was such a complete give-away for Berengaria. “See how they’ve been plotting against us!” he said to Blondel. They were still laughing when the sniper on the battlements tried again. Yvette saw the arrow coming and screamed, but before Richard could screen her it had passed clean through her long, hanging sleeve. The next moment she was in her husband’s comforting arms and both men, who were used to working unconcernedly in a hail of arrows, were in a veritable fret of anxiety about one that had barely touched her.

“It’s that damned sniper again,” complained Blondel.

“Hasn’t anyone split his impudent carcass yet?” demanded Richard angrily. He strode outside and called to the sentry, “Here, Thomas, lend me your bow and I’ll do the job myself!”

“Not without your hauberk, Richard!” remonstrated Berengaria, who had begun gathering up a few favourite possessions to take to Fontevrault. But he waved it away and called back over his shoulder, “I’ll be back directly.” So Blondel unhooked his long, pointed shield from the tent pole and took it out to him instead, while the two women went to Yvette’s tent to finish their preparations for the journey.

All the time Richard was selecting a shaft from the quiver Thomas held for him, he was giving Blondel final instructions for their journey. “Have the horse brought round to the back of your own tent and get the women away as soon as possible. It’ll be cooler for them riding now. Take what money you want and go by easy stages because of Yvette.” He shot his left arm like a bolt through the leather loops inside his shield and tried Thomas’s bow rather absently against his cheek. “And be sure to take a safe escort for the Queen whether Mercadier can spare ’em or not.”

Blondel waited long enough to see the arrow fly. Men always did wait to see Richard shoot. It was one of those utterly satisfying sights, like a ship in full sail or a laden hay wain. But this time, although he got the range, the arrow went wide.

Thomas, the sentry, counted himself a lucky man. He was in for a private view of what promised to be one of the finest duels in marksmanship he had ever seen. Like most Englishman, he was no mean archer himself; but here were two protagonists right above his class who could pick each other off at three hundred yards and more. And it was his own bow that one of them was using. He’d always thought a lot of that bow but now, he reckoned, he’d be able to tell the whole village when he got home, “The King hisself used that there bit o’ yew!”

True, the King had muffed his first shot. “The target be high an’ the sun be low,” chuckled Thomas excusingly. Come to that, the bow wasn’t up to the tall Plantagenet’s height—but he was too fine a sportsman to mention the fact. He just waited with braced muscles and narrowed eyes for the riposte, and when it came he laughed and caught it on his shield. The arrow point struck the belly of one of his painted leopards and had he not judged the trajection so expertly it would certainly have pierced his own. “Good shot!” he yelled good-naturedly, for all the world as if he were at some friendly tournament. It was such a remarkably good shot and his opponent exposing himself so recklessly against the reddening sky that Richard stopped to wave his congratulations before turning away. “It would be a pity to finish such a first-class marksman,” he said, handing back the bow. “’Fraid my eye’s out to-day, Thomas, anyway.”

But Thomas hadn’t yet had his fill of excitement. Everyone else seemed to be either swarming excitedly round a fresh breach made by the battering rams or hurriedly cleaning themselves up to escort the Queen. “More like ’tis your heart that’s heavy, Sir,” he ventured, emboldened by their isolation. “There was no one like our Princess Johanna.”

Richard glared at him. He may have been touched by the man’s clumsy sympathy, but he preferred to keep his troubles to himself. He was half-way back to the tent when the abashed sentry suddenly sprang forward shouting, “Look out, Sir! He’s taking aim again.”

In spite of his forty-two years and increasing weight, Richard spun round with the instant reaction of a man used to carrying his life in his hand. He laughed in his ruddy beard because the impudent sniper had picked up a battered frying pan to use as a shield. It was the spectacular sort of thing he might have done himself when he was ten years younger. He was in time to shout “Good shot!” again—to wave and dodge behind his shield. But this time, in his enthusiasm for a fellow sportsman, he reversed the process—and dodged a fraction of a second too late. Just a fraction of a second. And the three golden leopards that had crouched and snarled at his enemies through so many bloody conflicts failed to protect him. The arrow pierced the careless opening of his shirt and drove down between the strong muscles of sunburnt neck and shoulder. It drove the grin on his lips into a grimace of agony. “He’s got me this time, the persistent dog!” he groaned.

But he wasn’t going to let the persistent dog know it—nor any of his less venturesome backers. For all Richard knew that cur Chalus himself might be up there skulking behind the battlements, bribing the man with his filthy gold to get Berengaria Plantagenet widowed. Richard turned on his heel and walked back to his tent as if nothing had happened.

The pride of that day was done for poor Thomas. He threw down his cherished bow and ran after the King. “For God’s sake, Sir, let me pull it out!” he entreated, without thought for the grave responsibility he offered to take. But Richard had caught sight of Berengaria at the back of their tent, so he said hurriedly, “Not now, my good fellow!”

Thomas’s crusading training held. Hadn’t the Hospitallers impressed upon them all never to leave an arrow embedded in their flesh? “But, Sir, it might be poisoned!” he protested, following at the King’s heels like a faithful dog. “Why won’t you let me pull it out?”

Richard shook him off; but in return for common-sense, which at any other time he would have commended, he vouchsafed a reasonable answer. “Because it will make a horrible mess, and the Queen hates the sight of blood. She will be gone almost directly, and we can see to it then.” The irony of it, he thought, that all these years she should have forced herself to bear such sights and the strain of it should have broken her just as his own turn came! Remembering how she had just said that she couldn’t endure the sight of another wounded soldier, he went and stood in the dimmest corner of the tent with his back to her. Under the linen of his shirt he could feel the blood trickling, warm and sluggish, from his left shoulder; but he reckoned that as long as he kept still she probably would not notice anything amiss.

“I’ve come to say ‘Good-bye,’ she announced. Already the prospect of a holiday had restored the old lilt to her voice. She seemed inordinately glad to be going. That hurt unreasonably…Because, of course, she didn’t know…He could hear her behind him raking over her dressing chest for some forgotten bit of finery. At Fontevrault it would be worth while making herself exquisite again. “Oh, won’t it be wonderful,” she laughed gaily, “to sit at a well-appointed table and not get the gravy spilt in one’s lap every time a catapult goes off!”

“Yes—wonderful,” agreed Richard, without enthusiasm. He wasn’t so sure about the trickle—his shirt felt sodden. He tried to cover the protruding arrow head with his left hand, pressing the lips of the wound together. It was agony; but he knew that if she guessed he had been hit she would stay. And he wanted so dreadfully to keep her that if she didn’t go quickly—now, while he had enough strength to be obstinate—he would let her stay. “Hadn’t you better be starting if you want to reach some decent sort of habitation before sundown?” he suggested irritably.

“Why on earth does he stand there like a dummy instead of taking me in his arms?” thought Berengaria. But after all, she had said things to him that were hard for a man to bear. She lingered, shamefaced and self-conscious, trying to think of something suitable to say. “You have made these two young things very happy, you know, Richard,” she told him. “Are you sure you can spare Blondel?”

“Perfectly,” agreed Richard, politely. Berengaria had so often heard him speak like that when he was trying to get rid of an importunate deputation that she was almost glad when he added with very human resentment, “It’s a good thing I can make
someone
happy!”

She went to him and pressed her cheek passionately against his right arm. “Darling, it was only because my nerves were torn to shreds—”

“I know,” he agreed at once. “You’ve always been good and beautiful and sweet.”

He spoke with such low intensity that she said laughingly, “You sound as if you were writing my epitaph!” Almost timidly she slid her palm down his sleeve until it touched his own. But he did not respond—he, whose body had always been like plucked harp strings to her caresses! He just squeezed her coaxing fingers and smiled down at her. “Good-bye, ’Garia. I hope the good nuns will spoil you unconscionably. I shall like to think of you—as I first saw you—sitting among the roses.” His voice sounded cheerful enough, but there was a note of finality in the words. So there was nothing for it but to go to Fontevrault uncomforted and unkissed. Berengaria turned away and gathered up her riding cloak. He might at least have offered to put it round her shoulders, she thought. He had a way of tucking her into it which made her feel precious. But he just stood there with his back to her, swaying irritatingly on his heels. She sighed and looked round the familiar interior. Now that she was going each separate furnishing called to her with the heart-break of homely habit. Even the horrible iron-spiked mace at which she used to shudder seemed part of Richard. It was unfair the way the very things she had hated now held her. She must ignore them. She had given years to her husband’s warmongering, and now it had broken her and she must go for a little while to rest mind and body in that blessed conventual peace, to forget all the ugly things she had seen, to be with women again and talk of the pleasant things that interested them. But she still lingered, fingering the little bunch of wild roses she had gathered behind the battlefield. “You’ll come to me at Fontevrault, won’t you, Richard?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“No more broken promises?” she insisted laughingly.

“No. Somehow or other—I will come.” There was a great weariness in Richard’s voice, but this time his promise carried conviction. Berengaria noticed how he passed a hand over his eyes and thought perhaps he too would be glad to be done with war. It would be lovely to have him there, unpreoccupied with affairs of war or state; for in spite of all the gardens and libraries of Fontevrault, the centre of the universe must be for her this faded tent until he came. Glancing down at their bed, her lips curled into a tender smile. She knew just what shape mound his long body would make under the huddled covers, sleeping this night alone; and she tossed the roses onto his pillow. They would be a message for him after she was gone, reminding him of a hundred sweetnesses they had shared.

Castle and meadow had gone black before Richard’s eyes, but he was still listening intently. As soon as he could hear the women’s voices and men scuffling with baggage in the other tent his rigid stance sagged—he snatched blindly at a trailing wimple to staunch the blood that would spurt as he removed the arrow. Without waiting to call Thomas he took a firm grip on the head of it and pulled upwards—but the shaft was widely barbed and grated excruciatingly against his collar-bone. He noticed that it was a squat thick phéon, made for use with a cross-bow and—as the experienced old soldier had suggested—it might be poisoned. Fear rose hot within him. He wrenched at it frantically and the arrow-head snapped off in his hand. Steadying himself by the tent pole, he stumbled to a chair.

When he regained consciousness the sweat of agony was clammy on his forehead and Thomas—his face sallow with fear—was leaning across him with a cup of wine. The warmth of the wine crept through Richard’s veins, reviving him. “It broke off flush with the flesh,” he said stupidly, looking down at the arrow-head in his hand. At first the words had no implication—he merely remarked on the fact objectively. Then his heartbeats quickened. He felt over the mouth of the wound with quick, exploring fingers and withdrew them only slightly reddened because the cavity was sealed by the broken shaft. He let Berengaria’s veil fall to the floor. “There’s nothing left to catch hold of now,” he muttered, and found himself searching Thomas’s face for corroboration of his own thoughts.

“Hadn’t I better send after Sir Blondel?” the man implored.

Richard recalled the brisk clip-clop of that departing cavalcade, his wife’s spontaneous laughter, and the relief of Blondel’s anxiety. Suppose the shock of being recalled by bad news were to kill Yvette’s baby—just as the brutalities of his warfare had brought abortion to Berengaria’s? His cruelties came crowding upon him like the swift recollections of a drowning man, and he wanted to keep his kindness intact. “No, no, not Blondel,” he decided. “But fetch the local doctor—I saw him about the camp just now. And Captain Mercadier. And don’t let them make any fuss…” It was damnable that this should happen just when they had no proper surgeon and there wasn’t a soul of his own about.

Mercadier was the next best thing. Mercadier, whom his father had made constable of Dover Castle and who had been his own right-hand man throughout the crusade. He came running into the tent now, his lean, chain-meshed legs ludicrously outstripping the doctor’s portly ones.

“They’ve got me this time, Mercadier!” said Richard. The black-jowled Gascon jerked a knife from his belt and cut away the shoulder of his surcoat without ceremony, his practised eye summing up Richard’s chances at a glance. “You asked for it, going out there without your mail!” was his laconic comment. He always looked fiercest on the rare occasions when he was moved. The fussy little local practitioner pushed between them. “Let me look,” he panted consequentially. And, having looked, kept repeating nervously, “Tch! Tch! A bad business. A bad business.”

Richard’s pallid face flushed with annoyance. “Damn you, I know it’s a bad business!” he broke out, trying to endure the man’s ineffectual probing. “But surely you can cut away the flesh and pull it out?”

The man was flustered at being sent for to such a famous patient. “It might mean severing an artery,” he objected dubiously.

“I’ve seen it done scores of times in Syria!” scoffed Mercadier impatiently.

“To the common soldier perhaps.”

“Meaning you haven’t nerve enough to give me the same chance?” growled Richard.

Mercadier said something under his breath about “our all being common soldiers here” and dipped his knife into a bucket of boiling water Thomas had brought. For a moment it looked as if he would take the matter into his own hands and botch up some sort of operation himself; but, seeing the medico’s hands dabbling delicately with bowls and herbs and pestle, he allowed himself to be overawed by the mysteries of the profession. At least the old busy-body was able to concoct a poppy extract to ease the pain. So he contented himself with saying to him brusquely, “There’s only one man can tell you if the arrow was poisoned or not, Old Cautious, and that’s the fellow who shot it.” And just then Thomas created a diversion. He had been alternately waiting on the doctor and hovering in the doorway in his capacity as sentry, and now had good news for the King. “Sir,” he called excitedly, “our fellows have widened that breach. Those French dogs are lowering their drawbridge at last and the portcullis is going up.”

The captain joined him at the entrance. “It’s true,” he confirmed. “Chalus has surrendered!”

The news had come so suddenly—and so narrowly too late. “If they’d only given in an hour sooner Berengaria and I might have been riding to Fontevrault—together,” thought Richard. Realising how his captain must be torn between conflicting duties, he made a feeble sign of dismissal. “And remember—every man’s head for this!”

Mercadier crossed himself surreptitiously. “It would be an evil thing to have on one’s conscience—” he muttered.

But Richard knew well enough that the ruthless old ruffian thought the order indecent only because it came from a man who might be going very quickly to his Maker. “I have had worse,” he remarked with a smile. “A whole neglected kingdom, for instance. So mop up every man of ’em, Mercadier! Except that sniper. Bring him here, will you?”

The little doctor was glad when the Gascon went. He didn’t want his shrewd eyes watching everything he did, nor his sharp tongue telling the world afterwards that he really wasn’t sure
what
to do. Bandages and a sleeping draught could do no harm, and the surgeons from Rouen would probably arrive before it was too late—providing the arrow wasn’t poisoned. So he got Thomas to help him support the King to bed.

“If the arrow is only barbed I will do my best,” he promised, in common humanity. “But if your sniper says it is poisoned—” He did not finish the sentence but began arranging some medical paraphernalia for the night.

Richard raised himself on his right elbow. His eyes held unmasked anxiety. “And if it
is
poisoned? Mind you, man, I want the truth.”

“If it
is
poisoned,” answered the doctor, without looking up from the bowl in which he was washing his hands, “it would only cause you much useless pain.” That much, at least, he was sure of.

Richard sank back against the pillows. He was glad when they brought the sniper and, with a great scuffling, threw him to the floor of the tent.

“Get up, chien d’un chien!” ordered Mercadier, kicking the prostrate figure with his mailed boot.

Chalus’s man rose slowly to his feet. His clothes were torn from his back and his face was bleeding. He had just seen every other man of his garrison killed, and Chalus’s wicked black head rolling into the moat like garbage; and he took it for granted that he himself had been singled out for a far worse fate. But he was still defiant.

Richard was surprised at his extreme youth. “What is your name?” he asked.

“Bertrand de Gourdon,” answered the young man, flinging back his disordered black hair.

“You are a very fine marksman, de Gourdon,” approved Richard, his voice quiet and steady as if he were presenting a tournament prize. “Was your arrow poisoned?”

For the first time the young man’s nerve failed. He looked round at the tense faces of his captors like a trapped animal and passed his tongue over his bruised lips before he could bring himself to speak. His eyes came back to Richard. “Yes,” he said distinctly, as if they two were alone.

Instantly, a dozen hands were at his throat, choking the life out of him. But the King himself stopped them. Above the blood beating in his eardrums, de Gourdon heard his voice as if from a long way off asking, “Tell me, de Gourdon, why were you so determined to kill me?”

De Gourdon had been brought up to picture him as a giant of cruelty and evil. He hadn’t expected to see an ordinarily good-looking man, human and likeable, suffering as uncomplainingly as anyone else.

“You killed my father and my brothers,” he said sulkily, “and I wanted to know if it is true what men say about you—”

“And what do they say?” asked Richard wearily. He had heard most of the fantastic rumours, and at the moment he almost wished some of them were true.

“That no mortal man can kill you because from the devil you came and to the devil you will return.”

Richard chuckled weakly at the horror-stricken faces around him. He knew that this bombastic youth had only said to his face what many of his own men half believed in their hearts. The legend provided a perennial source of badinage among his intimates, and he himself never tried to discourage it because he was shrewd enough to realise how it had helped to build up his military success. “If I were you, Mercadier,” he said, “I’d let the young cockerel go free. He might teach some of your archers to shoot straight.” And that was the nearest Richard ever came to reproaching them all for not picking off the sniper before their slackness cost him his life.

“Do you mean—go free—
to
live
?” asked de Gourdon in a croaking sort of whisper, which cracked and ran up an octave. Richard’s eyes were closed but the smooth auburn head nodded assent. Bertrand de Gourdon was very young—very emotional. He had been through a terrible ordeal. And now reaction brought him to his knees, sobbing hysterically against the bed. “Again and again I’ve tried to kill you,” he blurted out, between tearing sobs. “I’m helpless in your tent, and you make me a gift of life. Christ Himself must have taught you such generosity!”

Richard patted his shoulder tolerantly. His thoughts were back in Jaffa. “On the contrary,” he confessed drily, “I learned it from an infidel.”

De Gourdon got up and walked in a dazed sort of way to the doorway. The evening sunlight and the long purple shadows looked like a gift from Heaven. Because he had not hoped to see them again, he turned back to give thanks. “Life is so precious,” he muttered apologetically, “when one is young.”

“And when one is not so young!” murmured Richard. But no one heard him. They were busy hustling the sniper away to torture him. Mercadier made no attempt to interfere. He went back to his master’s bedside, concerned with no other man’s pain. When their eyes met the King’s were glazing over with weariness. “Good night, my friend,” he said, swallowing a sleeping-draught without protest.

“It is still afternoon,” said Mercadier gruffly.

“Is it?” murmured Richard listlessly. “But it’s getting dark—and cold. And I am tired.” He lay for a few moments with closed eyes, then roused himself sufficiently to look with something of his old fierceness at his inefficient doctor. “Oh, I know you’re supposed to stay with me because I’m a king and not a common soldier!” he jibed. “But I prefer to be quite alone. I’ve so little time—and so much—to remember.”

He turned on his right side and seemed to sleep almost at once. Mercadier went out without a word. There was the re-garrisoning of the castle to see to, and striking camp for home—even if it all seemed meaningless now. The doctor was only too glad to go. He had been fetched from the first bite of his supper and was hungry.

Thomas the sentry was hungry too. Officially, his hours of guard were over, but the whole camp was so disorganised that they had forgotten to relieve him. He could have appealed to the departing Captain, of course, but he hadn’t done so. Very soon now he would be back in his Kentish village and there would be years in which to sleep and eat. But there might not be many hours left in which to serve this famous Plantagenet. Home-spun as he was, he sensed the significance of the brief, high episode of history. So he lit a torch and stuck it in a sconce fixed to the middle tent pole where it vied with the departing daylight. When he had hung the King’s shield on the hook below it he fancied, in the fitful light, that the leopards had a shamed and sullen look.

Never in his life had old Thomas slept on anything grander than straw but, in spite of the intimate possessions of royalty around him, he felt in his untutored way that the place looked forlorn—the way his own hovel of a cottage looked when his wife was away from home. If only the Queen hadn’t gone—or Sir Blondel…Thomas glanced furtively towards the still figure on the bed and wondered if he too felt the tragedy of their departure. Awkwardly, embarrassed by his clumsy shoes, he began tidying the tent—picking up a chair the guards had knocked over, folding a garment here and putting away a crock there, the way he supposed a woman would. He hung up Richard’s jewelled belt and bundled away his bloodstained shirt, and when he came to the bed he caught sight of Berengaria’s posy half crushed beneath the patient’s ruffled head. And because the stems were sharp with thorns he leaned over to retrieve it. He was still holding its fragility between his hoary fingers and breathing hard with caution when he became aware that the King’s eyes were open, watching him. “It be just a few wilting rosebuds, Sir,” he explained hastily, with the peasant’s instinctive fear of being caught pilfering.

He was about to throw them away when the King stretched out a hand for it. “It smells of Navarre,” Thomas heard him say drowsily.

The stars were beginning to come out when the old man-at-arms went outside again. Everything was still and peaceful. No more battering and cursing and shouting. Only from inside the tent he could still hear the King’s voice. Rambling, he supposed. But Richard was remembering—with the rose buds pressed to his lips and the far-off perfume of Navarre in his nostrils.

He had more to remember than most men, and Life came back to him in vivid patches. The good warm smell of harness leather—and lances glittering in the sun. A girl’s warm, brown eyes and the first strength of manhood—all the intoxicating joy of untried life…“That hulk de Barre ought to have beaten me, but I was straining my heart out for her smile. And afterwards she touched my sweating flesh with her cool hands. ‘One day, Richard Plantagenet,’ she said, ‘you will leave a wound too long. And then—perhaps—you will die.’ And, by the living heart of God, she was right. But I didn’t mean to die yet. I haven’t finished living. I meant to go back—to England…”