Gifts of the Queen (12 page)

'Upon the very stones were you delivered,' the midwife told me and laughed in triumph at the memory. 'Lord Raoul brought you in a litter from the town. It was tied between two horses, a rough way to travel at best, and he had to ride fast to avoid attack, which he feared still might come. It was too fast for your needs. At the castle gates, his men spread their cloaks and laid you down. But you could not wait. The master mason, Edward his name, being the only older married man, he pulled forth the child. Well, children will be born, those soldiers have seen their hounds in whelp, their mares in foal, but round they stood like amazed sheep.

' "Out of my way," says I to them, "let me to my work, you've done harm enough." Lord Raoul sat upon the ground and held the baby on his knees. Quiet he was, his face all streaked with blood and sweat. He sat there like one amazed himself. Aye, that's the way of men. They can hack themselves to bits with their sharp swords and never feel the bite of it. But let them see a companion's wounds, a lady's distress, they flinch away like children fearing pain. So it was for your noble lord. I know he is no coward, yet I saw him weep for you. But to the other men there I said, “No need to look as if the world's end has come." I scolded them when I had the chance. "See what you do, you great lumpish knights, that women should bear the fruits of lust. There are two maids yet in the village, maids say I, well so they were once, who will give birth, too, within the year, and who's the father there. I'd like to know."

"Go to, you old besom," mutters one. "We be knights bachelor."

"More shame you," says I, "best marry then to get a son.”

"Married am I," Master Edwards says, the stone master, standing up. He flexes his strong arms. A goodly man he is if I say so, well bestowed. He smiles and smoothes his short black beard. "Six daughters have I had and at each of my homecomings, my wife hangs about my neck that I should have another chance at a son. But a son have we given you today, my lord Count, a son to be count here in his time. And when he has grown to half his height, God willing, his castle shall have grown to its full one." '

She smiled at the thought, showing toothless gums, took the baby and rocked him on her ample lap.

'Now there's a tide,' she said, 'in the blood of men as in the sea. When it ebbs out, out flow men's souls. Catch it at full flood, it will drown death. By nightfall, I knew the child would live. You, my lady, were another case. I thought the priest they'd brought from Saint Purnace Church would baptize your son and bury you.

' "How do you name this child?" he croaks out, expecting death to rain down on him from the skies as it had done for our priest here, poor blessed soul, shot arrow-full for comforting the men of Sieux. Well, God's will be done. They christened the child in haste, in the place where he was born. No ceremony, more's the disgrace; no great lords to support him, two knights to hold his little arms and legs, your squires propped up themselves at his head, unshriven, hot with battle rage, not even chance to wash off all the blood, a flick of holy water and it was done.

' "But how do you name him?" moans the priest a second time, eyes closed for fright.

' "Robert of Sieux," says Count Raoul. Up he heaved himself upon his feet. For the first time, he smiled. "Son of my flesh, heir of my house. So I name him before all men."

'So is he called, our darling boy, our little man. For all of his hard birthing, it is a just and fitting name.' Robert of Sieux, so had Raoul acknowledged him. I lay and savored it, for hours, perhaps days. I lost count of time. Thus is joy numbered, like golden beads upon a knotted chain, to run your fingers through one by one. I learned to tend my child as seldom ladies of rank do, I suckled him, saw to his wants. It pleased me. I felt we should not meet as strangers, he and I, whose lives had so been entwined. The least I could do was help him thrive, whose first breaths had been such bitter ones, whose feeble movements of arm and leg were a fight for handhold, foothold, upon this earth. And the second Robert of Sieux grew and prospered. Although sometimes seeing how he stared with his blue-gray eyes, I wondered if those months of secrecy had bred a caution into him, that he should hide what he truly thought. He seldom cried, but watched silently. Yet even in this peasant's hut, no princeling at a royal court could have been better served. The village children hung over him, a toy to play with, marvel at. Their mothers would have driven them off, but I bid them stay. At Cambray, I had been too much alone; I would not have my child want for friends, and every day one of them, an urchin not yet grown, round of eyes and face, mounted guard with wooden stick to chase off pigs and hens. The villagers too came freely in and out, with village gifts such as I remembered from Cambray, fruits still warm from the vine, green duck eggs, goat's cheese. And Lord Raoul himself came to visit us.

I had not realized how tall he was. His head seemed to brush the rafters and his shoulders rubbed against the cobwebs on the wall. He stood looking down at us for a long while. The baby stirred and mewed in its sleep, the sort of sounds babies make. A look of alarm crossed Raoul's face. I have seen such a look on a wolfhound eyeing its young, and my women, noticing him, hid their smiles behind their hands. I motioned to them to leave us alone. Yet even then, he did not speak for a long while, his eyes dark and full of thought. When he did, his voice was low, as it is when he reveals something that he holds deep within him, some private thought that it almost pains him to give it voice.

'My father's name was Robert,' he said. 'He died young, my mother and he within one night. I never knew him, poor soul, to die of fever far away from home before his life had begun. They say he spoke of Sieux in his last hours and remembered it amid the cold of that English winter in Sedgemont. Now a second Robert gives him a second chance to live. And you, you gave him that chance. You saved us. Without you, we would be dead. How shall I thank you for my life and for my son?'

I said, to make him smile, for his words touched me painfully, I almost wept for them, 'You see, my lord, it was not a girl child after all. You have not given me thanks for that.'

But he could not jest that day. Yet from that time he began often to come, joining us at the day's end when his work was done, sitting like any man on the hearthstone or, as the evenings continued warm, at the threshold, listening to my women's homely chat. But I could never get him to approach closer to his son, as if he feared in truth the child might break apart, until one day he brought a gift, too. I had gone to the cradle to straighten the coverlets and was startled to find a handful of nuts dropped at its foot, chestnuts they were, round and ripe.

'Mercy,' I said aloud. 'Who put these there?'

After a pause, 'I did,' said Raoul. He was leaning, in his way, against the doorjamb, looking in at us. I had not known he had come inside. 'For the child,' he added after another pause.

I had to laugh. 'But my lord, he has no teeth.' My women tittered in their way, behind their hands.

'I know that,' he began stiffly at first, 'I know a baby sucks at milk.' Then, relenting, 'For a plaything. All boys play with chestnuts; tie them on a string . . .' His voice trailed off.

I began to say, In another year, but stopped myself, put the nuts aside thoughtfully, came up to him and pulled his sleeve.

'You have never watched your baby fed,' I said to him softly. 'Why not stay.'

I sat down on the step in a natural way, had my women unwrap the baby and bring him. I put him to my breast, where, contentedly, he began to suck. Raoul looked at him for a while, then slowly, gently, reached a finger out to measure it against the baby's foot.

'How's long it is,' he said, almost echoing the midwife. 'If his legs stretch as much he'll top me by a head.' And he smiled himself.

Yet, although this first barricade was down, I still sensed a constraint in Raoul, a reserve that held him back. I began to notice how these days he had his right arm unstrapped and as he sat he stretched and flexed it, working the fingers open and shut, dropping and picking more of these same nuts which he kept in his sleeve for such a purpose.

I fight left-handed because I must. It is the strangeness that takes your opponent off his guard.

But what if this time that strangeness had not sufficed? Then should we all have been dead, too. Suppose soon, suppose next time, Raoul must meet his enemies in open fight and, suppose next time, he should falter in his stroke or not strike hard enough? And suppose, gauging his weakness, his enemies would know how to attack? Yet never a word spoke my lord of those enemies, and I had not the heart to question him. He came to us; he had named his son. There would be a time, I thought, for me to know what was in his mind even though now he hid it from me.

So the warm summer days continued, the harvest ripened, we were left in peace. And the tapping noise? When I was strong enough, I crept to the door, the old woman clucking behind me like one of her hens. Her hut stood central to the village of Sieux. Beyond it rose the castle mound, which that day hummed with activity. Workmen were busy everywhere, clattering up and down, their small horses dragging up white limestone from new-opened quarries in the cliff. Timber scaffolding edged the gate towers; there was a smell of raw sawdust. And everywhere the tap-tap-tapping upon wood and stone.

The masons were quiet men when they worked; I mean they seldom spoke, nor were they given to chat or song as many workmen are, presumably because they could not be heard above the noise their hammers made. Despite their reputation for being troublesome, they are noted for their seriousness, pay close attention to their work, and seldom stop once it is begun. As I came to know them, I liked to watch how they took the stones and measured them, fitted them to their secret design, hit and shaped with their square strong hands. I did not learn all this about them, of course, from that first look, and it was my squires who told me much about them afterwards. But the noise ... As long as we remained at Sieux, we looked for it. That tapping became our talisman, heard first thing at dawn, last thing at dusk. It became a part of our life at Sieux, and while it lasted, we could feel secure.

I have spoken of my squires—it was a long while before I saw either of them, and had almost not dared ask news of them. The evening they arrived at the hut door was one to praise God for, another of His gifts.

'I thought you dead.' My greeting to them was too blunt to be gracious, yet a fact. Any memory of how we had parted was not a happy one. Shyness made them as blunt at first.

'So thought we you,' they said.

They sat and played with the tawny fur of a hound puppy they had brought for my son's christening, admired the wooden horse Walter had carved while his gashed ribs healed. What thanks could be given to either of them, their wounds still stiff, Matt's arm still festering. The cuts should have been stitched, but no one had had time for that. So we sat on the lintel step, silently for a long while, the village women behind us busy with their weaving looms, the stone workers laboring in the last shreds of light, the knights on patrol soon to come riding in.
Men will die for you.
Praise God, not yet. Perhaps they had the same thoughts, for when Walter spoke, he reached across to touch my baby's cheek. The little Robert stirred but did not wake.

'So, my young lord,' Walter said. At a nod from me, he took up the child, wrapped in his shawls and linen cloths. A gentle way he had, my squire, wounded in our defense, a knighting promised him in the spring, almost a man, although he was perhaps two years my junior. Yet a third son of a small holding, as he now told us, in a family with many sons; a passel of younger brothers growing up behind, he had no hope of advancement in his father's lands. His western voice grew wistful when he spoke of home; he missed those little brothers more than he had even let be known and his hands were skilled, as if he were used to holding them. But the words he spoke were men's words, although he said them part in jest. 'So, Robert of Sieux,' he said, 'imagine now. When you are grown to my height, or more, your father being a tall man, my son perhaps shall serve you. Thus was my father vassal to your father's grandfather in his day. There's a thought worth thinking on. From father to son, to son, is our allegiance sworn. I saw you born, Robert of Sieux. I remember well the day of your birth. I shall be glad to honor you and swear to be your man.'

He put the child back in my arms. His voice was light, the voice of a young man whom death has passed by, whose future has brightened at last, who dares look ahead to fame and loyalty. The words had an older ring to them. They made me cold. Perhaps he sensed that, too; he was always quick to feel another's thoughts. He began to talk of this and that, as was his way to bridge an awkwardness.

Not so young Matt. A wounding had given him leave to speak where before, for modesty, he might have held his tongue. 'We thought you dead. Lady Ann,' he repeated. 'We thought you captured for certain sure.' His blue eyes shone. The look he gave Walter was one old comrades share, remembering a danger overcome.

But when I pressed them, 'What danger, what men?' (for it occurred to me they might tell me what Lord Raoul had not), they eyed each other, at first mute. I knew that look too, the one men use to keep their womenfolk in ignorance.

'Danger must be thought on,' I insisted, although instinctively I suppose I held the baby closer to my breast to shield him from more harm. Noting that gesture, Walter answered cautiously. He had pulled a scrap of wood from an inside pocket and had settled down with his whittling knife. Each flick of the knife on the wood made a point. I suddenly had the sense of what he might have been had fate not set him in the path of a knight; in other worlds there should have been a place for him, at once so practical and curious.

'First, Lady Ann,' he told me, 'those men were mercenaries hired by Norman lords. Secondly, they knew enough of our plans to surround Saint Purnace and bribe citizens to work for them before we reached the town. Thirdly, they wanted to retrieve the queen's gifts, or failing that, the gold those gifts would bring. The attack on you was an afterthought, although they would have harmed you if they could. And fourthly, their leader was well-known, a
routier
of the vilest kind who hires himself to many lords in Normandy, as pleases him.'