Ann of Cambray (46 page)

I watched him as he stood, a short man, not much taller than I, with almost forty years of service at a great lord’s court. I knew he lied about his ignorance of women, about his knowledge of me. But I did not think he lied when he said my secrets would be safe.

‘Then shall I wish you Godspeed, my lord,’ I said, holding out my hand to him. ‘Do you as much for me.’

He took my hand and bowed over it. I thought he said, ‘I wish your errand was any other than this.’ But he did not repeat it and that was the last time we spoke together before our ways parted.

I slept better that night, without dreams for the first time since we began. The next day, our road ran through more crowded parts, villages, larger and more prosperous than I had ever seen, well kept, trim, no signs here of desolation. I do not recall their names except that they were softer-sounding than our western ones, suggesting meadows and country lanes.

For the first time we saw other travellers on the road, and as we came to the river ford, their numbers seemed to grow so that our men were forced to beat a passage through, shouting the king’s name as they flailed about them with the flats of their swords. And so we came at last to the bank of the great river Thames, and had our first glimpse of the city of London spread before us.

I had heard of the river only in context of war, one army stationed on one side, one on the other; had imagined it some wide and terrible flood. It looked now more gentle than the river at Sedgemont or those mountain streams along the border, flowing sluggishly between banks lined with rush and reed, in places overflowed across the placid pasture lands that lay all about. There was no snow or ice here, only grey mist along the river’s edge, the same mist that concealed part of the view ahead. But I have never seen the outline of the city against its expanse of grey sky without an uplifting of heart, almost a dazzling of the eyes, at the stretch of its walls, its distant spires and towers. Three walls it has around it, seven gates, no less than one hundred and fifty church steeples. And every year, they say, it stretches out its fingers to enclose more of those gentle villages and placid meadows. It looked like a picture hung upon a curtain. I sat motionless upon my horse until it must have believed I slept, and thought I was come to my destination at last. Here was where our hopes would win or fail.

We parted company at the ford. Sir Gautier with half of the men rode north; Sir Renier turned southward with us. Sir Gautier and I had no speech again, yet he bade me farewell as courtiers do, prettily, meaning much or little. I could not tell what he thought. But we had to trust him, Raoul and I, although Raoul’s name had not been mentioned by him again; it had only hung there, silently. I could not tell if his silence would include Raoul; and if he spoke, what would he say?

We passed the ford without difficulty although the current underneath was stronger than it seemed. On the other side we found the reason for the crush, a fair of some sort, with booths and stalls set up, with gingerbread and sweetmeats and spiced goods hung on display.

‘Dear God,’ Cecile said, her eyes round with delight, ‘I have not seen such things in a hundred years.’

And even the Sedgemont men who had come this way before were not too proud to put off their haughty looks and stare as longingly.

Reluctantly we pushed our way past; starved had we been for such a show of luxury, and even Sir Renier and his men were silent, as if unable for once to make comparisons between what we saw and what they had known in Aquitaine.

Within the city gates, they cheered up, and Sir Renier took his duty as guide seriously. He showed us the massive Norman tower, called the White Tower, which the first Norman king had built along the riverbank to hold the conquered city, a cruel huge block of stone it looked, ominous in the grey light. I shuddered as we passed. Perhaps that was where they would have taken Raoul after all, and killed him within those thick walls that never let even screams out. He showed us the cathedral of the city, built even earlier, where that same Norman king was first crowned, where Henry and his queen had been crowned less than a month ago. And he took us past the winding streets, the crowded wharves, the docks and warehouses, to yet another wooden bridge that spanned the river and led to the south bank.

I had never heard such noise, such scurry, the sound of hundreds of people bustling to and fro on business of their own, all with the air of those who know where they are and what they are about. The colours and profusion of their clothes alone bewildered us. Bright greens, scarlet reds, russet browns, we swirled amid a gaudy patchwork, yet underfoot all was sodden and crushed and knee deep in rubbish. No wonder court people affect high-heeled shoes, I thought, to keep them above the dirt of their roads. No wonder they wear bright colours and scent themselves with unguents to hide the filth beneath. At Cambray we have middens or dung heaps to take the slops. Here, all is hurled from doors and windows into the gutters, blocked at this season into a foul and stinking mess. In summer the smell must be atrocious, I thought. And felt my stomach heave again at the idea.

Sir Renier chatted as we rode along. Then, for the first time, I heard explanation of those forts which line our western lands, for he told us that those same people, great soldiers, had also built London, and when you dig among the city streets, beneath the cobbles, you find similar-hewn stones that they had cut to make their fortifications there as elsewhere. And Aquitaine and Provence, he told us, were filled with mighty works made by these same men: towers, bridges, roads, and temples of great height and beauty. So, with his cheerful gossip lured he us along, until by nightfall we came to Bermondsey.

It was not the king’s usual residence. That was in that dreaded White Tower itself, where Raoul’s men whispered to me they had been before. But it had been stripped bare by Stephen’s mercenaries while he lay dying at Dover, and was not fit for living in. Nor did we go to Bermondsey ourselves, but lodged that first night in a small, dark place close to the river’s edge, with Sir Renier’s men on guard below, and three Sedgemont guards without our door. Now that we had finally arrived, I felt the tension of the journey greater than ever, although Cecile enjoyed the attentions paid us as important visitors. We had clean rooms, hot water, and time to rest and think, which we had not seemed to have done since I had left Cambray. But all my worries rose before me like solid walls of stone, as if I had to tear them down piecemeal. Perhaps I should have waited at Sedgemont until Raoul was well. Then could we both have fled away together, forgetting this England, all our claims here. But would he have let me go? Where would we have gone? And what would he have said knowing I was carrying a bastard child?

No bastard have I brought to my bed.

Then was he lucky perhaps in his women, more than he deserved.

An heir must have something to inherit.

What would our son have if we lost Cambray and Sedgemont?

What if I won him back his inheritance? Would some sense of duty make his child legitimate? Would he resent the blow to his pride?

‘My lady,’ Cecile said last, as I sat in the window ledge of our room, staring with unseeing eyes across the river where even now, in the small hours of the first watch, the bonfires still burned bright and the shouts of merrymakers echoed clear, ‘you must rest now if you are to meet the queen tomorrow.’

I shook my head. ‘I am too tired to sleep,’ I confessed, ‘too eaten up with doubt.’

She took my hand as she had held it at the trial at Sedgemont.

‘I will worry for you,’ she promised. ‘Lie down for a while. I will stitch your dress. It seems to have tightened about the waist, although you look more thin than before . . .’

We looked at each other, friend to friend.

‘What shall I do?’ I said.

There was no condemnation in her, only concern.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘that if you bind yourself as I have known maids do before, it will not show yet, perhaps not at all, until we have accomplished what we came here to do. Now rest. Then shall you put things before the queen so she, in turn, will tell the king and we can go back home. I do not like it here, Lady Ann. For all its luxury and riches, it seems strange to me. I shall fall silent or forget my place, or weep that I am not back at Sedgemont. Do you remember that autumn day in the woods, how you first talked of Cambray and how one day we should all go there? How you would help us, Geoffrey and me, so one day we should be wed and have children of our own? We never thought we would come this far.’

I lay with my eyes shut, listening to her voice as she worked. One day she and Geoffrey would marry, would people the world with smiling golden-haired children full of their good humour and calm.

Great lords do not have to seek out maids or wait for them.

When Raoul was restored to Sedgemont, far from my world at Cambray, would he still remember me?

‘And do you recall the great boar hunt,’ she was saying, ‘how we all wore our best clothes and rode the best horses? Do you remember how Geoffrey leapt the oak tree three times to make his horse show its paces? Even Lord Raoul cheered him on. And how Sir Brian’s cloak caught on a thorn and tore in two?’

In the morning, Sir Renier came early for us. We watched him pick his way in his dainty shoes across the piles of rubbish that lay outside the doorway. His clothes were a startling red—gone the more sober garments of our journey—he shone like a peacock in short cloak edged with squirrel fur and high-jewelled collar. It was not becoming against his sallow skin, yet he seemed proud of himself and preened before us. He made no comment upon the way we were dressed. I had fidgeted about that, for the first time having no wish to seem countrified, but I could tell from the way men’s heads turned, and they looked at us as we trailed through the streets, that our appearance did us credit. Or rather Cecile, who must have laboured the night through. Behind us strode my guard, still clad in their common workday clothes, but people made way for them nevertheless.

Bermondsey was not as large as I had expected, having been a monastery before being used by the royal court as a winter palace. In many ways it seemed little different from the household at Sedgemont. At all the gates and doors there were guards who stiffened to salute as we went by; but except that they wore blue, not red, they were little different from the Sedgemont guard. There was the same air of bustle and expectancy, the same messengers riding to and fro. And the same strong sense of vitality.

‘The queen is expecting you, Lady Ann,’ Sir Renier said. ‘I spoke with her ladies-in-waiting last night and again today. She will hold an audience at noon, so your chance to meet her comes then.’

‘What is she like?’ Cecile asked, chirping up behind me, where she helped hold up the train of my skirt. I would not have dared ask myself but listened to his answer eagerly. He was not helpful.

‘You will know her, mistress,’ he said severely. ‘Although she is like all other women, with eyes and tongue, no doubt.’

With that, we had to bide in patience as we took our place in a large, draughty room, crammed with a score of other petitioners, all rehearsing their grievances they hoped would be set to rights before the day was done.

‘Pooh,’ said Cecile, in the tone of voice she used to use at Sedgemont when Lady Mildred had said or done something to provoke us. ‘Geoffrey says all French women are ugly as sin. And the queen is already old. Yet the king must respect her wishes . . .’

But she took pains to whisper so she could not be heard. I watched the other men and women, who pushed and argued around us. They were not pleasant to be with, strident and heated they became, reacting to their woes. I should never raise my voice to compete with theirs. The room itself was sumptuously hung with rich tapestries upon the walls, and rugs upon the floors instead of rushes. But it had a cold uncared-for look, and when the wind blew, the tapestries flapped. Nor was it clean. And although the courtiers wore the same rich embroidered clothes as Sir Renier, I had the feeling that underneath, they were dirty, too.

Much has been written about Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, once Queen of France, now Queen of England. It might seem impertinent for me to add what I thought, who was to become her dear friend and companion. Yet I will tell you truly. It was not her beauty, or her stature, nor her fine delicate features, which all comment upon, that made impression on me then. Nor yet her speech, that danced with impatience when she was bored, which happened readily. Nor yet her logic, which could argue law and divinity with scholars of the Church or universities. Nor even her arrogance, which sits well on one who has, since childhood, been a queen, accustomed to obedience and respect. Nor her love of show and display, which, although a sin, is natural in one coming from the richest fief in France. None of these things that anyone will tell you about her and that I came, bit by bit, to know. It was simply this: she was great with child. Sir Gautier had told me of it, but I am not sure his words had sunk in then. But it came to me later how strange are the ways of the world, that I should have come to her to argue for a man’s life and honour, in affairs of men, and that she should have appeared to me, not in the guise of a ruler, sovereign, queen, but as a woman, like me, weary and near her term. It was the paleness of her face and the bone-aching weariness that I noticed and felt as if they were my own.

We had waited until almost the end. That was a mistake. I could tell from Sir Renier’s look. I should not have hung back until she was worn out with so much blather from the others.

‘So you are Ann of Cambray,’ she said at last. ‘I have heard talk of you.’ I would not have understood her had I not had practice with the French envoys on the way. She slurred her vowels and rolled her r’s much as they did.