Epic Historial Collection (32 page)

At the end of the afternoon, when it became too dark to work, all the busy people gravitated to the great hall of the keep. Rushlights were lit and the fire was built higher, and all the dogs came in from the cold. Some of the men and women took boards and trestles from a stack at the side of the room and set up tables in the shape of the letter T, then ranged chairs along the top of the T and benches down the sides. Jack had never seen people working together in large numbers, and he was struck by how much they enjoyed it. They smiled and laughed as they lifted the heavy boards, calling “Hup!” and “To me, to me,” and “Down easy, now.” Jack envied their camaraderie, and wondered whether he might share it one day.

After a while everyone sat on the benches. One of the castle servants distributed big wooden bowls and wooden spoons, counting aloud as he gave them out; then he went around again and put a thick slice of stale brown bread in the bottom of each bowl. Another servant brought wooden cups and filled them with ale from a series of big jugs. Jack and Martha and Alfred, all sitting together at the bottom end of the T, got a cup of ale each, so there was nothing to fight over. Jack picked up his cup, but his mother told him to wait for a moment.

When the ale had been poured the hall went quiet. Jack waited, fascinated as always, to see what would happen next. After a moment Earl Bartholomew appeared on the staircase that led down from his bedroom. He came down into the hall, followed by Matthew Steward, three or four other well-dressed men, a boy, and the most beautiful creature Jack had ever set eyes upon.

It was a girl or a woman, he was not sure which. She was dressed in white, and her tunic had amazing flared sleeves which trailed on the ground behind her as she glided down the stairs. Her hair was a mass of dark curls tumbling around her face, and she had dark, dark eyes. Jack realized that this was what the
chansons
meant when they referred to a beautiful princess in a castle. No wonder the knights all wept when the princess died.

When she reached the foot of the stairs Jack saw that she was quite young, just a few years older than himself; but she held her head high and walked to the head of the table like a queen. She sat down beside Earl Bartholomew.

“Who is she?” Jack whispered.

Martha replied: “She must be the earl's daughter.”

“What's her name?”

Martha shrugged, but a dirty-faced girl sitting next to Jack said: “She's called Aliena. She's wonderful.”

The earl raised his cup to Aliena, then looked slowly all around the table, and drank. That was the signal everyone had been waiting for. They all followed suit, raising their cups before drinking.

The supper was brought in huge steaming cauldrons. The earl was served first; then his daughter, the boy, and the men with them at the head of the table; then everyone else helped themselves. It was salt fish in a spicy stew. Jack filled his bowl and ate it all, then ate the bread trencher at the bottom of the bowl, soaked with oily soup. In between mouthfuls he watched Aliena, riveted by everything she did, from the dainty way she speared bits of fish on the end of her knife and delicately put them between her white teeth, to the commanding voice in which she called servants and gave them orders. They all seemed to like her. They came quickly when she called, smiled when she spoke, and hurried to do her bidding. The young men around the table looked at her a lot, Jack observed, and some of them showed off when they thought she was looking their way. But she was concerned mainly with the older men with her father, making sure they had enough bread and wine, asking them questions and listening attentively to their answers. Jack wondered what it would be like to have a beautiful princess speak to you, then look at you with big dark eyes while you replied.

After supper there was music. Two men and a woman played tunes with sheep bells, a drum, and pipes made from the bones of animals and birds. The earl closed his eyes and seemed to become lost in the music, but Jack did not like the haunting, melancholy tunes they played. He preferred the cheerful songs his mother sang. The other people in the hall seemed to feel the same way, for they fidgeted and shuffled, and there was a general sense of relief when the music ended.

Jack was hoping to get a closer look at Aliena, but to his disappointment she left the room after the music, and went up the stairs. She must have her own bedroom on the top floor, he realized.

The children and some of the adults played chess and nine-men's morris to while away the evening, and the more industrious people made belts, caps, socks, gloves, bowls, whistles, dice, shovels and horsewhips. Jack played several games of chess, winning them all; but a man-at-arms was angry at being defeated by a child and after that Jack's mother made him stop playing. He moved around the hall, listening to the different conversations. Some people talked sensibly, he found, about the fields and the animals, or about bishops and kings, while others only teased one another, and boasted, and told funny stories. He found them all equally intriguing.

Eventually the rushlights burned down, the earl retired, and the other sixty or seventy people wrapped their cloaks around them and lay down on the straw-covered floor to sleep.

As usual, his mother and Tom lay down together, under Tom's big cloak, and she hugged him the way she used to hug Jack when he was small. He watched enviously. He could hear them talking quietly, and his mother gave a low, intimate laugh. After a while their bodies began to move rhythmically under the cloak. The first time he had seen them do this, Jack had been terribly worried, thinking that whatever it was, it must hurt; but they kissed one another while they were doing it, and although sometimes his mother moaned, he could tell it was a moan of pleasure. He was reluctant to ask her about it, he was not sure why. Now, however, as the fire burned lower, he saw another couple doing the same sort of thing, and he was forced to conclude that it must be normal. It was just another mystery, he thought, and soon after that he fell asleep.

 

The children were awake early in the morning, but breakfast could not be served until mass had been said, and mass could not be said until the earl got up, so they had to wait. An early-rising servant conscripted them to bring in firewood for the day. The adults started to wake as the cold morning air came in through the door. When the children had finished bringing in the wood, they met Aliena.

She came down the stairs, as she had last night, but now she looked different. She wore a short tunic and felt boots. Her massed curls were tied back with a ribbon, showing the graceful line of her jaw, her small ears and her white neck. Her big dark eyes, which had seemed grave and adult last night, now sparkled with fun, and she was smiling. She was followed by the boy who had sat at the head of the table with her and the earl last night. He looked a year or two older than Jack, but he was not full-grown like Alfred. He looked curiously at Jack, Martha and Alfred, but it was the girl who spoke. “Who are you?” she said.

Alfred replied. “My father is the stonemason who's going to repair this castle. I'm Alfred. My sister's name is Martha. That's Jack.”

When she came close Jack could smell lavender, and he was awestruck. How could a person smell of flowers?

“How old are you?” she said to Alfred.

“Fourteen.” Alfred was also overawed by her, Jack could tell. After a moment Alfred blurted: “How old are you?”

“Fifteen. Do you want something to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”

They all followed her out of the hall and down the steps. Alfred said: “But they don't serve breakfast before mass.”

“They do what I tell them,” Aliena said with a toss of her head.

She led them across the bridge to the lower compound and told them to wait outside the kitchen while she went in. Martha whispered to Jack: “Isn't she pretty?” He nodded dumbly. A few moments later Aliena came out with a pot of beer and a loaf of wheat bread. She broke the bread into hunks and handed it out, then she passed the pot around.

After a while Martha said shyly: “Where's your mother?”

“My mother died,” Aliena said briskly.

“Aren't you sad?” Martha said.

“I was, but it was a long time ago.” She indicated the boy beside her with a jerk of her head. “Richard can't even remember it.”

Richard must be her brother, Jack concluded.

“My mother's dead, too,” Martha said, and tears came to her eyes.

“When did she die?” Aliena asked.

“Last week.”

Aliena did not seem much moved by Martha's tears, Jack observed; unless she was being matter-of-fact to hide her own grief. She said abruptly: “Well, who's that woman with you, then?”

Jack said eagerly: “That's
my
mother.” He was thrilled to have something to say to her.

She turned to him as if seeing him for the first time. “Well, where's
your
father?”

“I haven't got one,” he said. He felt excited just to have her looking at him.

“Did he die, too?”

“No,” Jack said. “I never had a father.”

There was a moment of silence, then Aliena, Richard and Alfred all burst out laughing. Jack was puzzled, and looked blankly at them; and their laughter increased, until he began to feel mortified. What was so funny about never having had a father? Even Martha was smiling, her tears forgotten.

Alfred said in a jeering tone: “Where did you come from, then, if you didn't have a father?”

“From my mother—all young things come from their mothers,” Jack said, mystified. “What have fathers got to do with it?”

They all laughed even more. Richard jumped up and down with glee, pointing a mocking finger at Jack. Alfred said to Aliena: “He doesn't know anything—we found him in the forest.”

Jack's cheeks burned with shame. He had been so happy to be talking to Aliena, and now she thought he was a complete fool, a forest ignoramus; and the worst of it was he still did not know what he had said wrong. He wanted to cry, and that made it worse. The bread stuck in his throat and he could not swallow. He looked at Aliena, her lovely face alive with amusement, and he could not stand it, so he threw his bread on the ground and walked away.

Not caring where he went, he walked until he came to the bank of the castle wall, and scrambled up the steep slope to the top. There he sat down on the cold earth, looking outward, feeling sorry for himself, hating Alfred and Richard and even Martha and Aliena. Princesses were heartless, he decided.

The bell rang for mass. Religious services were yet another mystery to him. Speaking a language that was neither English nor French, the priests sang and talked to statues, to pictures, and even to beings that were completely invisible. Jack's mother avoided going to services whenever she could. As the inhabitants of the castle made their way to the chapel, Jack scooted over the top of the wall and sat out of sight on the far side.

The castle was surrounded by flat, bare fields, with woodland in the distance. Two early visitors were walking across the level ground toward the castle. The sky was full of low gray cloud. Jack wondered if it might snow.

Two more early visitors appeared within Jack's view. These two were on horseback. They rode rapidly to the castle, overtaking the first pair. They walked their horses across the wooden bridge to the gatehouse. All four visitors would have to wait until after mass before they could get on with whatever business brought them here, for everyone attended the service except for the sentries on duty.

A sudden voice close by made Jack jump. “So there you are.” It was his mother. He turned to her, and she saw immediately that he was upset. “What's the matter?”

He wanted to take comfort from her, but he hardened his heart and said: “Did I have a father?”

“Yes,” she said. “Everyone has a father.” She knelt beside him.

He turned his face away. His humiliation had been her fault, for not telling him about his father. “What happened to him?”

“He died.”

“When I was small?”

“Before you were born.”

“How could he be my father, if he died before I was born?”

“Babies grow from a seed. The seed comes out of a man's prick and is planted in a woman's cunny. Then the seed grows into a baby in her belly, and when it's ready it comes out.”

Jack was silent for a moment, digesting this information. He had a suspicion that it was connected with what they did in the night. “Is Tom going to plant a seed in you?” he said.

“Maybe.”

“Then you'll have a new baby.”

She nodded. “A brother for you. Would you like that?”

“I don't care,” he said. “Tom has taken you away from me already. A brother wouldn't make any difference.”

She put her arm around him and hugged him. “Nobody will ever take me away from you,” she said.

That made him feel a bit better.

They sat together for a while, then she said: “It's cold here. Let's go and sit by the fire until breakfast.”