An Endless Exile

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3My betrothed was not a handsome man. Gangly to the point of gawkiness, his mousy hair already thinning, although I knew for a fact he was only nineteen years old, he stood hunched between his fixedly smiling parents. The unpleasing contours of his face were only emphasized by the general mottled redness of his complexion — to say nothing of the even less becoming hue of his puce, bulbous nose, above which rather weak, sullen eyes regarded me with a depressing mixture of desperation, dejection and straightforward dislike.

I didn’t blame him for that. I was not much of a bargain myself from a physical point of view. Besides being only twelve years old, plain and short, with the odd sort of pre-adolescent body that humorously manages to combine skinniness and lumpiness, I showed little promise of improvement.

On top of which, I had a cold.

“This,” beamed Gilbert de Ghent, the sleeves of his long, heavily embroidered tunic rustling expensively as he cast one arm around my intended, “is my son, Robert. Robert, make your bow to the fair lady Torfrida who has come to us all the way from my good friends in Flanders.”

Robert obediently bowed, a jerky, graceless motion that held neither courtesy nor respect. Even his dress, muddied and plain and short, and quite unadorned save for a rather grotesque, wrought silver buckle at his belt, spoke of neglect that amounted to insult. Obviously he had been among English Saxons too long.

He still was, for the yard in which I was met by this daunting threesome seemed to be teeming with young men engaged in wrestling or contests of arms or other manly sports, while several ladies watched from the edges, or from the great doorway of the low, sprawling house facing me.

The fair lady Torfrida, seeing nothing worthy of comment, sniffed with watery disdain.

Robert, surreptitiously pinched by his still smiling mother, forced himself to speak, muttering ungraciously, “I trust I find you well?”

Inevitably, I sneezed. I made it loud and enthusiastic, although I glared balefully at him over the top of my handkerchief.

“Do I look well?” I demanded.

There was a short silence while they all stared at me in blank dismay. Even without the cold, it must have been apparent that I didn’t look too well.

I sniffed again. Some of the young men, grubby and panting still with their exertions, and most of the observing women, were gazing in our direction. I expect it was the sneeze. I am good at sneezes.

The lady Matilda said smoothly, “You will be exhausted after your long journey.”

I did not answer at first, for a wink of startling golden hair, gleaming among the many paler heads around it, had caught my attention — probably because it was the brightest thing I had yet seen in this grey, dreary place. It belonged to a fair youth in a rough, sleeveless leather tunic with a sword belt slung over his broad shoulder. Wild, beardless and dirty-looking, with the barbarically long, tangled hair favoured by Saxons of a certain type, he was strolling among the combatants in the yard as if they were so many flowers in a field; and though it was hard to tell — for his eyes seemed to dart constantly and his whole body was somehow unstill — I thought he was looking mainly at us.

Then, abruptly, he dropped out of my view — felled, I perceived, by several other young men at once. The one at the top looked as dark as the victim was fair, but indescribably neater and cleaner. It crossed my mind that the golden youth was probably the sort who invited such unequal attacks. Or perhaps it was all part of their silly games. I didn’t care. I already disliked the entire country.

Looking away, I realized that the lady Matilda, still determinedly smiling, was holding out her arm, dripping at the wrists with fine, English lace, in the direction of the house. The invitation was obvious, but I made her say it.

“May I give you some refreshment in the hall? Or would you prefer to retire and rest before supper? Come, I shall take you myself.”

I glanced coldly at the men of the family. Robert, my betrothed, bowed again, jerkily. I ignored him. His father, a powerful, handsome man not yet forty, idly fingered the fine gold filigree brooch at his shoulder, and smiled. It was a distracted smile, as if he were thinking about something — or someone — else entirely. Why then was I so sure he disliked me? Apart, of course, from the fact that I had done nothing so far to be liked.

“I hope you don’t mind this rabble, by the way,” the lady said brightly, guiding me safely round a pair of worryingly inept young archers. “My husband encourages all the young men of the neighbourhood to practice sports and arms here — a sort of informal tourney. We do it several times a year, but I assure you it is not constant!”

“I have just been fortunate,” I said sardonically, stepping over a fallen wrestler in my path. “Again.”

She did not take me into the hall — the main house, long, large, single-storied, flimsily wooden — but as we skirted it, a sudden commotion above my head startled me into glancing up at the roof with extreme apprehension. Somebody was pulling himself up the thatch from the other side, throwing one bare, brown leg over the ridge of the roof, and perching there like a weather vane.

It was the same golden-haired youth I had last noticed vanishing under an apparently irresistible onslaught of fellow brutes.

The lady Matilda stopped. So did I. The boy on the roof, a little battered about the face, drew one deep, reviving breath, and grinned. It was an insolent, provoking sort of a grin, though there seemed to be genuine laughter there too, and it was aimed at someone below him on the far side of the hall.

“Oh no,” the lady uttered — involuntarily, I thought.

Then the youth said something I didn’t catch. It sounded deep and sharp, like a command, and immediately two dark boys near us — whom I hadn’t even noticed before — started throwing things at the roof. Or no, not at the roof, but to the youth astride it. Sticks, stones, tree-branches, hats, buckets, old bits of broken armour — it seemed they were not choosy — and all tossed up with blood-curdling, martial yells.

And the golden youth, catching most of them, at once began hurling them at some unseen foe, or foes, on the other side of the building. Sometimes he called out a name before he threw, as if giving an impudent warning. Once I heard him laugh, quick and clear and incongruously joyous.

All around us now, like some noisy nightmare, I could hear people cheering and laughing and shouting out advice. One or two others moved disgustedly away, some calling warnings to friends or to the agitated women on the fringes, but in the main, all over the yard, men were dropping their weapons and their opponents and running over to watch the fun. Or to join in.

And they said this was a civilized country. I didn’t understand how the lady Matilda could tolerate such behaviour.

Apparently she couldn’t. When I looked at her, her face was still turned upwards; but her eyes were closed, as though praying for strength. It made her human for the first time.

Ineffectual, but human.

“Where,” uttered the lady, opening her eyes at last, “is Gilbert?”

Looking about me, I saw no sign of him. Instead, I found two young women beside us, the smaller open-mouthed and scared looking, though her eyes still sparkled with some sort of delighted anticipation. Stupid, I judged. It was to the other maiden, tall, spotlessly clean, that Matilda spoke.

“Emma,” she said, and I remembered that Emma was the name of her eldest daughter. “Emma, fetch your father or we’ll have blood before supper...”

“You’ll have it any way now,” the tall girl returned, managing to convey both resignation and annoyance. “If you will invite him, you must expect trouble.”

“Well I could do without it today!” Matilda snapped. She wasn’t smiling any more. She hadn’t been for some time. “Will you fetch your father when I tell you? You shall meet Torfrida at supper. Come, my dear...”

I cast another glance at the roof. The opposition appeared to be fighting back to some purpose, for the golden youth now sat among a positive hail of missiles hurled from the far side of the hall, many of which struck their target. On the other hand, more men were climbing up to join him from our side, while others again ran in with fresh ammunition. Even as I watched, I saw the boy’s far leg jerk violently. The thud and the scream from the other side of the building, told me the rest — that he had just kicked some would-be interloper off the roof.

“Two in one blow!” he yelled triumphantly, confirming my prognosis. “One slitherer, one flyer!”

A rousing cheer went up from his own side. Behind me, I heard the smaller, sillier girl gurgling with laughter. “Isn’t he splendid?” she demanded, followed by a decided slap and an aggrieved, “Ouch!”

By quick thinking, I managed to turn my hysterical laughter into a sneeze. Hastily following the lady, I observed, “You appear to be hosting a battle.”

“Oh no, my dear, nothing less than a war,” Matilda said with suppressed savagery as a rock fell alarmingly close to us. I stepped over it, and paused.

“Do you want him down?” I offered. “This stone, scientifically aimed...”

“By whom?” she interrupted bitterly. “My husband or my son?”

I stared at her. “By me, of course.”

Matilda closed her mouth. Swiftly, before she could recover, I bent and took hold of the rock in both hands, lifting it and walking away almost in the same breath. It wasn’t easy, for the stone was heavy, and now that I had it, I was no longer quite so sure of my ability to bring the golden barbarian down. However, since that was of purely secondary importance to me, I kept going, ignoring her alarmed, “Torfrida! In God’s name, come out of there!”

By the time I was in among those who were trying to dislodge the boys on the roof — there were three of them up there now — I had planned my angles and my distance. Stolidly, I was ignoring the blunt objects that whizzed past my ears and flew over my head. Once in place, slightly aggrieved that no one but the lady Matilda seemed to be paying me any attention, I hefted the stone to my shoulder, and took aim.

Only then did the golden youth perceive me. Laughing aloud, he said something to the boys behind him, while still hurling sticks and a particularly nasty looking stone — fortunately not in my direction. At the same time, he appeared to be impudently offering me his yellow head as a target. Accepting with alacrity, I altered my aim slightly, and let my hand fall back to throw, but then, before I could, I was suddenly pulled unceremoniously aside and only just managed to avoid dropping the stone on my own foot.

* * * *

There was an ante-chamber with sweet-smelling rushes on the floor; small but furnished with several stools and a chest in the French style. Beyond it was a large chamber, full of beds. My step faltered. Was I to have no privacy, even at night? I didn’t know whether to scream or weep or wrestle my mother-in-law to the ground in what seemed to be the fashion of her adopted country.

In the end, I did none of these things, which was just as well, for my fate was really not quite so bad. She had given me a corner of my own, curtained off from the others by bright, heavy hangings. I even had a window.

“You will not mind the others,” the lady told me in a way that made me want to mind them very much. It was the first thing she had managed to bring herself to say to me since dragging me away from the battlefield. She was smiling again. “They are all young, like yourself, and well-born. Now I shall leave you — but I’ll send someone with a posset to make you feel better.”

“Please don’t trouble,” I said coldly, but she was already half way across the main chamber. I don’t think she even heard me.

I stood still, counting silently to twenty. Then, in the heavy silence — someone must have stopped the battle in the yard — I let my shoulders slump. Slowly, I unfastened my sable-lined cloak and dropped it on the bed. I hoped no one had seen me shaking. Now, remembering vividly the recent tedious hours at sea, spent mainly with my stuffed and runny nose pressed into my knees, and a few brief glimpses thereafter of endless grey skies and vast, dreary marshes beyond the river’s shores — to say nothing of the bumpy, lonely ride here after my people had abandoned me to the servants of my betrothed — I just felt cold.

I sat down on top of the cloak, and tried to think.

I hadn’t got very far when the hanging moved and a bright voice in the gap said, “Hallo! You must be Torfrida.”

I looked round to see a pretty girl just a year or so older than myself; she was smiling at me. Her hair was long, loose and gleamingly fair, confined only by a braided circlet of blue and red ribbon around her forehead. She wore a simple gown of fine, sky-blue wool — woven in Flanders, I rather thought, by the new processes which were making my father so wealthy — fastened with small, old-fashioned snake-shaped brooches at either shoulder. Between, she wore a string of pretty but inexpensive glass beads.

In her hands she held an ornate, silver cup. Without enthusiasm, I looked from it up to the girl’s open, merry face.

“So I must,” I agreed. “Who are you?”

“Lucy,” she said amiably. “Lucy of Bourne. One of the lady’s ladies — if you see what I mean!”

“I expect I can work it out. Given time and a sharp pen.” I sneezed again, accusingly. “Lucy is hardly an English name.”

“I was named after my lord’s — that is, the Earl of Mercia’s — grand-daughter, but the lady Matilda always calls me by the French form. I don’t mind — it distinguishes us! And anyway, my sister in Northumbria is English enough for both of us — Aethelthryth, after the saint of Ely. And her son is Siward, to please the Norsemen, I suppose, though I can’t see that any of that stuff matters. And I must say,” she added, coming further into my corner, “I am very glad that you speak Saxon, for my French is atrocious and I don’t have a word of Flemish. This is for you,” said the girl, as if she had suddenly remembered the cup in her hands. “To help your poor cold.”

“Thank you,” I said distantly, turning back towards the window. “Please leave it on the side.”

She did as I bade her, but the unspoken command — namely to take herself off and leave me alone — was obviously too subtle for her. Dropping familiarly on to the bed beside me, she said cosily, “So! How do you like your betrothed?”

“At a distance,” I said shortly. With luck it would get back to him, suitably embellished. However, instead of looking shocked, the girl only smiled.

“You must not mind Robert. He will have been nervous of meeting you. Really, he is very amiable and very gentle. You are lucky.”

I stared at her. “Then you marry him.”

She only grinned again, impishly, but in a way that disturbed her angelic beauty not at all. She reminded me of someone.

“I could do worse,” she acknowledged regretfully. “But I have other plans. So do my parents, more to the point! The lady said, by the way, that I should let you rest before supper — old people are always saying things like that. Do you want to rest?”

“Would you go away if I said I did?”

Rudeness, like subtlety, seemed to float right over her head. She said distractedly, “Of course, if you asked me to,” quickly followed by, “Are you missing your home? Or perhaps, like me, you’re just glad to escape parental restrictions!”

I turned away from her again, quickly, saying coldly, “I was never much restricted.” Until now...

“Lucky you! I was, quite horribly, I assure you! Life is much better now — although at times my parents are still too close for comfort. When we are here at Folkingham, the lady can complain of me too easily! Bourne, my father’s favourite hall, is only eight miles from here.”

Eight miles. What would I give for a mere eight miles? And eight years...

“Still, at least I need seldom be home-sick,” the strange girl comforted herself, belying her previous joy in her escape. “Nor, more importantly, need I listen to the perpetual quarrels of my father and brother!”

At that I did regard her with only slightly distracted fascination. “Your family can quarrel?” I had more or less given up trying to provoke one with her.

“Oh yes,” she said blithely. “Hereward, you see, is my brother.”

Lost but not yet despairing, I enquired, “Is that a matter for congratulation?”

And she laughed. “I hardly know! Certainly, it gets one noticed, but as for congratulation — well, you will have your own opinion by now. You must have seen him on your way across the yard.”

I looked at her. “One of the wrestling young men?” I hazarded, without much hope; there was a certain inevitability about all this.

“No,” she said apologetically. “The one on the roof. The first one on the roof.”