Pavane (22 page)

They heard of his coming from the telegraphs. It was a fine summer day when he crossed with his retinue into Purbeck Isle. They were still closely invested; in fact the besiegers had launched a heavy attack, their first for many months, and in the confusion he arrived almost unheralded. The first they knew was when the guns in the valley fell silent. A strange silence it was too, a breathing hush in which one could hear the wind soughing over the heathland. They saw his banners in the village, the horses and the siege train winding across the heath, and the seneschal hurried to find his mistress. She was in the second bailey; they had the culverin mounted beside the Butavant tower and were playing him at the men trying to climb the slope below. Eleanor was dirty with smoke and a little bloody, for one of her people had been hurt by the fire from an harquebus and she had helped bind the wound. She straightened when she saw the seneschal, his grave features and bearing. He nodded quietly, confirming what she had already seen in his face. 'My Lady,' he said simply. 'Your King is here...' She had no time to change or make any preparations, for the royal party was already in sight of the lower ward. She ran on her own, down across the sloping bailey to the gate, the seneschal pacing a distance behind. Nobody else moved, not the gunners, not the bowmen and snipers lining the walls. She stopped by Growler, still standing where he had stood from the first, and leaned on his barrel. Before her were the tossing banners and the armour, the horses champing their bits and dancing from the smell of powder, the waiting soldiers with their guns and swords. He rode forward alone, disdaining protection. He saw the gatehouse towers, stained now by smoke and scarred by shot, the portcullis sunk into the ground where it had fallen over a year before and not moved since. He stared a long time at Eleanor, standing fists clenched by the gun; then he reached forward, rattled his whip against the bars in front of him and gestured once with the stock of it. Up... She waited, the hair blowing round her face; then she nodded tight-lipped to the people above. A pause; and the chains creaked, the counterweights swung in their carved channels. The gate groaned and lifted, tearing aside the rank grass that had seeded round its foot. He rode forward, ducking his head beneath the iron as it climbed up into the stone; they heard the hooves of his horse on the hard ground inside. He dismounted, going to Eleanor; and only then did the cheering spread, through the village and the soldiers and the ranks of people on the walls, up and away to the tower of the Great Keep. So the place yielded, to its liege-lord and to no other.

She spoke to the seneschal once more before she left her home. It was early dawn, the sky pale and grey-blue, the mist lying cloud-thick on the heathland promising a sweltering day. She sat her horse stiffly, back straight, and stared round her. Down across the baileys to where the guns stood limbered by the outer gate; across the parched, spoiled grass, over the lines of neat crosses where the dead were buried inside the walls they had helped defend. Above her the great donjon-face loomed, pale in the new light, empty and desolate and waiting. Below her, fifty yards away, the King of all England sat surrounded by his soldiers. He looked stooped and prematurely old; exhausted by months of campaigning, of haggling and manoeuvring and bartering, fighting desperate men who knew they stood to lose at best their homes and living, at worst their lives. He had won, if it could be called a victory; the boiling land was quiet again. The question they asked Eleanor, he had answered for himself. She beckoned quietly to the seneschal, leaned from her horse. 'Old One,' she said. 'You who served my father so well, and me... Make my Signs the hawk and the rose. The flower to sink her roots into the soil, the bird to taste the wind...' He bowed, accepting the strange charge. 'Lady,' he said, 'we shall meet again. Yet it shall be as you wish.' She saluted him once, raising a hand; then shook the reins of the horse and turned it, clattered down the steep way. Out under the towers of the Martyr's Gate to the great lower bailey. The soldiers fell in behind her, harness jangling; the party moved through the outer barbican to the village street beyond, and never once did she look back. There was a trial, of sorts. A life was involved; she understood this distantly. These pompous, bewigged gentlemen, these gloomy corridors and halls of law, meant little to her. Sentence was commuted, by the express wish of King Charles. She was imprisoned in the White Tower, lay there many years. Reality ceased to trouble her. She wove garlands of fresh spring flowers, the piling of clouds across a Dorset sky. There were great changes afoot in England; this too she realised, dimly. One by one, the castles came down. Their walls and battlements, their towers and barbicans, the ramparts and the high allures. Their baileys were breached, opened to the wind. Charles the Good, who thought first of his people; this was his price, for warring Holy Rome. The sappers sweated, carving out their mines, packing round the wooden props with straw. At Corfe, a noise on the hill. A thudding, roaring; the bounding of huge blocks into the stream. A seismic growling, high shaking rise of dust into the clean air. Death of a giant. From Charles Eleanor got an open door, the sleepiness of a sentry. A horse at the postern, these things can be arranged. Money was provided, and advice. She ignored both. She flew back to what had been her home. The seneschal found her, he alone of all her people. She had taken the dress and patterned nylons of a serving wench, but he knew her for his mistress.

On a dull October day many years after the last of the castles had rumbled into ruin, two men walked quietly through the streets of a little West Country town. There was something in their movements both urgent and secretive; they strode quickly, glancing round from time to time as if to make sure that they were not observed. They turned under the archway of an inn yard and crossed the cobbles beyond. Beneath the arch strands of dead creeper swayed; a scatter of rain, driven on the gusting wind, lashed their faces. The strangers tapped at the door, were admitted; the door was fastened behind them with a scrape of chains. Beyond was a passageway, almost pitch dark in what was left of the afternoon light, and a flight of stairs. They climbed silently. There was a landing, a door at the end; they stopped in front of it and knocked, softly at first then more imperiously. The woman who opened to them held a wrap loosely across her throat; her hair, still long, coiled brownly round her shoulders. 'John,' she said, 'I didn't expect -' She stopped, staring; and her hand slowly tightened on the scarf. She swallowed, closed her eyes; then, 'Who do you seek?' She asked the question flatly, as if drained of all emotion. The taller of the visitors answered quietly. 'The Lady Eleanor...' 'There's no such person,' she said. 'Not here...' She made as if to close the door but they pushed her aside, edging into the room. She made no further move to stop them; instead she turned and walked to the one small window, stood with her head down and her hands gripping the back of a chair. 'How did you find me?' she said. There was no answer; and she turned to face them where they stood with feet apart on the bare boards of the room. A long pause; then she tried to laugh. The sound came out choked, like a little cough. 'Have you come to arrest me?' she said. 'After all this time?' The tall man shook his head slowly. 'M'Lady,' he said, 'we have no warrant...' Another wait, while the wind skirled round the eaves of the building, flung a salvo of rain spots at the windowpanes. She shook her head and pulled at her lip with her teeth. Touched her stomach, and her throat. Her hands were pale in the gloom, like white butterflies. 'But don't you see,' she said. 'You can't... do what you've come to do. Not now. Don't you see that? There aren't any... words to tell you why, if you can't see..." Silence. 'It doesn't seem... possible,' she said. She half laughed again. 'In times to come,' she said, 'when people read of this, they won't believe. They never will believe...' She crossed the room, stood with her back turned to them. They heard liquid splash into a glass, the little sound as the rim chattered against her teeth. 'I'm behaving better than I thought I would,' she said, 'but not as well as I hoped. It's a terrible thing, being afraid. It's like an illness; like wanting to fall down, and not being able to faint. You see you never get used to it. You live with it and live with it and every day it's worse; and one day it's the worst of all. I thought, when it... happened, I wouldn't be afraid. But I was wrong...' She went to the window again. The stranger moved forward; but softly, so the old boards didn't creak. She stood looking down into the inn yard, and he could see her shaking. 'I never thought,' she said, 'that it would be raining. It's the details like that you can't ever imagine. I didn't want it to be raining.' She set the glass down carefully. 'One never quite believes in Last Great Thoughts,' she said. 'But it seems at the end one's able to see so very clearly. I'm remembering now how many times I've prayed for death. When I've been lonely, and frightened, in the night. I've really done that. But now I can see what a wonderful thing life is. How every breath is... precious.' The man at the door moved impatiently; but the other raised his hand. Eleanor half turned, showing them the sheen of tears on her cheek. 'It's absurd of course,' she said. 'It's no use pleading with you. But you see I'm so very weak. I swore never to plead, not even if I got the chance. I'm doing it, all the same. But not for... myself. Not for me.' She drew a slow, ragged breath. 'I won't go on my knees though,' she said. 'I've got enough sense left not to do that.' She turned back to the window. 'I'm trying to remember I've had a good life,' she said. 'Far better than I deserved. I've known love; it was very rich and strange. And there was a time once when I... owned all the land I could see. I could go to my... high tower, and look out to the hills and far off to the sea; and it was all mine, every yard of it. Every blade of grass. And people would come running when I called, and wait on me and do whatever I wanted doing. I loved them, very much; and I think some of them loved me... And some were hurt, and some were killed, and the rest were blown away by the wind...' 'M'Lady,' said the stranger gruffly. 'This is far from our will...' 'Yes,' she said. 'But your God is such an angry God, isn't he? Far angrier than mine.' She swallowed, and crossed her clenched fists slowly in front of her breasts. 'I'm... damned,' she said. 'But I pity you. May He have mercy on your souls...' The man at the door swallowed, licking his mouth. The other half turned, face contorted as if in pain; moved his hand slightly, felt the thin-bladed knife slide down into the palm.

John Faulkner climbed the stairs slowly, set down the basket he was carrying outside the door. Tapped quietly, then again; waited, starting to frown. Eased lightly at the catch, and pushed the door ajar. At first he didn't see her, sitting in the high-backed chair; then his eyes dilated. He ran forward, tried to take her hands. She kept them pressed to her side; and he saw the blood marks on the floor, the scuffs of red where she'd dragged herself along. She turned her head listlessly, face a paper mask. 'This too,' she whispered. 'This too, from Charles...' She lifted her hands then, showed him in the gloom the brightness of the palms. He stayed kneeling, breath hissing between his teeth; and when he raised his head his face was totally changed. 'Who did this, Lady?' he asked her huskily. 'When next they cross the heath, then we must know...' She saw the blazing start at the backs of the strange eyes and reached for his wrist, slowly and with pain. 'No, John,' she said. 'The Old Way is dead. Vengeance is... mine, saith the Lord...' She pushed her head against the back of the chair, parting her lips; blood showed between her teeth. 'Get... horses,' she said. 'Horses... Quickly, John, please...' He stood a moment staring down; then he ran to do her bidding. The two horses moved slowly, in the first chill light of dawn. Round them the wind yapped and shrilled, plucking at the cloaks of their riders. Eleanor sat hunched and frozen; it was the seneschal who reached across to rein her mount. He swung to the ground, supporting her as she leaned in the saddle. Before her, seeming miles off in the iron-grey light, loomed the two flanking hills; between them, where once had stood a hall, the bosses and nubs of stone, the teeth and pinnacles and shattered fingers thrust into the sky. Round them the rain squalls moved and the cloud, obscuring; and over all, ragged and stiff and robbed of colour, flapped the remnants of great flags. Flags of cobalt, and of gold. She panted, quick and agonised; and her fingers gripped his shoulder, digging at the flesh. 'There,' she said faintly. 'There, see... The Great Gate was broken; you told me, but I wouldn't hear...' She stared round her dully, at the half-seen vastness of the heath. 'This is the... place,' she said. 'No further. No more...' He picked her gently from the horse, wiped at the blood that had run and dried on neck and chin. Lifted her again and carried her to where bushes screened her from the wind. She cried out, arcing her body. Then again and once more, the sound piercing the wet air, soaring up to vanish in the great dull sky. The horses shuffled, flattening their ears. Champed their bits and snorted, returned to their cropping of grass. They browsed a long time; long after Eleanor had gasped again and stiffened, and was dead. A troop of royal cavalry came, late in the afternoon. They found blood on the grass, a woman with peace and pain both in her face. But the seneschal was gone.

CODA

From an official guide: Between Bourne Mouth and Swanage lies a wild tract of heathland. Bounded on the south by the Channel, on the east by Poole harbour, to the north by the curving River Frome, and to the west by Luckford Lakes, the Isle of Purbeck is crossed by a single line of hills. One pass, a geat or gut in the old tongue, carves through them to the sea; and in that pass once stood a massive stronghold. Nearly unapproachable, seldom invested and never reduced by arms, the castle was truly a gate; Corfe Gate, key to the entire southwest. The castle, from which the village takes its name, or rather the shell of what was once a mighty hall, tops the steep natural mound that overlooks the clustering of houses. The sides of the hill are overgrown now with bushes and saplings and some stoutish trees, while the brook that once comprised the wet ditch is quite shadowed over. It runs grey and silent between high banks, from the sides of which ferns drop wobbling tongues of green into the water. Access to the first of the triple baileys is by way of a stout bridge of stone, itself of considerable height and spanning the great ditch that runs round half the mound. Across the barbican once hung a single portcullis; the grooves of its passing may still be seen scored an arm's depth in the stone. Inside, across the sloping grass of the lowest ward, is the second outwork known incorrectly as the Martyr's Gate. Here it is claimed Elfrida stabbed Prince Edward, to secure for her own son Ethelred the throne of the land; only unfortunately for the legend neither keep nor baileys then existed, the hill being crowned at that time by a hunting lodge. The Martyr's Gate itself is split, it is said, by the mines of Pope John; one great tower has sunk from the path some dozen feet and slid a distance bodily down the hill, but its foundations still hold it firm. Above this inner gateway the ruins of the Great Keep rise a hundred feet and more, daunting with their massiveness and strength. Two walls only remain and a fraction of a third; a high and slender needle, worn by the rain but secure still in the splendid bonding of its stones. All the rest has fallen and lies scattered on the hill in chunks and masses, some of them twenty feet or more across and half as thick. The pathway winds between them, passing the remnants of the chapel and the great kitchens where oxen were once roasted whole for the many friends of the lords of the isle. Gaining the highest point the visitor sees the tower walls still reaching above, fretted with windows and galleries and the remnants of stairs; but no feet have walked them now for many years except the feet of birds... He'd come on the hoverferry from Bourne Mouth, landed at Studland in a booming shower of sand and flung spray. He was tall, slim-limbed and long-jawed, with dark blond hair cropped close to the skull. He wore tan trews and shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows; over one arm he carried a light waterproof jacket, on his back was a bulky canvas pack. His eyes were striking, a deep sea blue; they scanned the road ahead as he walked, it seemed anxiously. He saw the place suddenly, looming between the shoulders of two hills. He stopped as if startled, stood staring up at it, lips slightly parted and the breath hissing slow between his teeth. Then he walked on towards it. As he moved it seemed the shell or ruin grew, towering into the sky. He sucked his breath again, wincing against the brilliant sun. Sat on a grass bank noisy with insects, and smoked a cigarette. Nothing he'd read had quite prepared him for this. He saw a grey village, old and rambling, wavy roofs crusted with a vivid orange lichen. The houses seemed still to watch for the approach of danger; their windows were furtive and narrow, their doors set at a height above the paths the better to resist assault. Over them, monstrous, out of scale, loomed a ravaged face; the castle, a ragged-crowned skull, a thousand-year anger of stone. Brooding out across heath and sea, ancient, unappeasable. He walked again steadily. Somehow it seemed in spite of the shock of the huge image his mind was not wholly unprepared. As if the place fitted a niche already existing in his consciousness. But that was absurd. He reached the great grassy prow of the mound. The road wound by it, up into the village square. He followed it. Or rather he was borne without volition on some strange earth-tide of memory. A memory not of the brain, but of the blood and bones. He shook his head, half angry at himself, half amused. He asked himself, how could a man come home, to a place he'd never seen? He moved on slowly. Through broken archways, past spurs and shattered groins of stone, up to where he could feel again the fresh wind from the heath. Sat in the shadow of the Great Keep, feeling the stone cool against his flesh. From that height the reactors of Poole Power Station were visible, gleaming silver in the sun. Far out in the purplish haze of the sea white dots showed where the hovercraft boomed over the waters of the Channel. He became aware, by slow degrees, of the Mark. It hung there frozen on the stone, deep-carved, level nearly with his face. The voices of the tourists below seemed momentarily to fade; he moved forward to it in a cold dream. Touched the carving, fingers tracing over and again its smoothness. Big it was, a full yard across; the symbol, enigmatic and proud, the circle enclosing a crab-network of triangles and crossing lines. Over it the cloud shadows moved, birds flapped and cawed in the sky above; its outline echoed the shapes of the reactors, its configuration stirred deepest roots of memory. His lips moved, soundless; one hand went unconsciously to his throat, touched the thin gold chain, the medallion beneath his shirt. The symbol he had always worn, the tiny copy of the thing here on the wall. He climbed back slowly. Crossed the baileys to the lower gate, turned to see the castle watching down. He held the strangeness to himself. The symbol like a time-charm stirred depths of Self and memory, started strange vast images that shadowed away and were lost quicker than the mind could grasp. Brought coldness in their wake and a sadness, a sorrowing for things lost and unknown, gone beyond recalling. A group of local girls passed staring, eyes appraising and frank. He was unaware of them. He shivered slightly in the bright, hot sun. There was a churchyard. He eased aside the old gate that swung and creaked behind him. The place was overgrown, shaded by yews long since run to such a riot of branch and foliage he had to force his way beneath. There was an open space of tall grass; through it the shafts of crosses gleamed grey and smooth. Over it, above the housetops, the face of the castle loomed; the monorailers whispered by it through their cutting in the chalk, on their way to Studland and the sea. He sat a long while and smoked and watched. The voices of children came to him insect-small, half lost in the rustling as the wind swayed the great grasses with their tasselled purple heads. He gripped the medallion; the pulse thumped in his fingers till it seemed the thing throbbed there like a second tiny heart. Before he left the place he had seen again the Mark, peering like a chiselled eye from the pale square of a headstone. He drank beer in the big white inn built across the castle approach. Ate sandwiches and cheese and watched the tourists thronging the bars. He left when the place closed. The castle still waited, warm and vast in the sun. A little path ran down beside the mound. It led beneath arching bushes and trees, the coolness from the wet ditch rising alongside. Beyond the branches the flank of the motte was a tilted plain of sun-dried grass. He chose a path and began to climb. There were goats tethered; their bleating came to him softly, underlaid by the husky voices of the monorail. High on the mound, below the broken outer wall, was a hollow shaded by a clump of trees. Stonework jutted massively from the grass; he leaned his back against it, looking up through the dancing of the leaves. The great face peered above the hillside. This was the place, and this the time. He undid the pack he carried. Carefully, with lean, grass-coloured fingers. Hefted the thick packet, staring at the old seals. The Mark was stamped in the wax. He cracked the seals, smoothed out the stiff pages. He already half knew what he would see; the line on line of close-packed, neatly sloping writing, the hand he knew and remembered very well. He began to read. The pack of cigarettes lay unnoticed on the grass. From far off, along the Wareham Road, came the bumbling of traffic; endless and quiet, like the noise of bees. The new midsummer hum. The sun moved in the sky; the shadows of trees swayed and shifted, lengthening. Folk passed laughing on the path below; red-faced men and children, white-shirted boys, girls in bright frail dresses. He turned the pages slowly, pausing now and again to worry out an archaic spelling. The noise from the village, the bustling and voices, rose and fell and quietened; the tea-lawns emptied, pubs propped open their doors. He seemed poised outside of Time; for him ancient winds blew, ruffling the grass. The noise of old guns mumbled in the hills. The western sky became a burning copper shield. The ruins seemed now bird-tall, ghosts half lost in a harsh sandy-red pouring of light. The shadows crept in the valley, darkening with dusk, and the road was quiet. There was a final envelope. Again sealed. He opened it slowly, angling the paper to read.