The falcons eyes, p.12
The Falcon's Eyes, page 12
To my delight, I was able to escape Millicent’s surveillance while on these walks. Aiglantine would accompany me, as well as a young boy from the stables whom my husband had assigned to escort us. At first the boy—Hugo—kept so close behind us that Aiglantine and I could hardly speak freely together, but it happened that Hugo was an amiable sort and not unsusceptible to my own orders, especially if they were accompanied by an offer of sweetmeats and honey cakes produced from my pocket. Fueled by these treats—a bribe by any other name—he soon learned to maintain a distance from us as Aiglantine and I ambled ahead to joke and talk.
She had become much more than a servant to me by that time: she had become a trusted friend. I often wondered how her life would have been transformed if she had been born into other circumstances, or if she had been taught to read. Stories about my own childhood seemed to fascinate her. I told her about my grandfather—his library and the books he had lent me—about my brothers and our trip to Nîmes, and about Arnaut, whom I sorely missed.
Tell me more about him, she would say, as we ambled along. I told her how Arnaut had taken me to see the splendid arena in Nîmes, how we invented stories to pass the time, how we both loved adventure, how we disobeyed our parents and were punished for it. I told her that Gallien reminded me somewhat of Arnaut in not only in his looks—the freckled skin, the faraway yet intense look in his gray-blue eyes—but in his fascination for birds; and that it was partly for that reason that I wanted to help Gallien progress from stable hand to falcon keeper.
“He should be working in the mews, not in the stables,” I told her one day when, while returning from our walk, we glimpsed Gallien from afar, leading a horse into the stables. “That is what he loves. What he will do best.”
“And have you spoken with Lord de Meurtaigne about this, on Gallien’s behalf?”
“Yes, many times! Too many!” I laughed, kicking some pebbles in the path. “So many times that I think my lord is weary of it. About Gallien and the mews. He said to me only yesterday ‘Enough of this hounding from you!’ But he has been good-natured about it, and he has promised to heed me. To move Gallien into the mews very soon, perhaps even this season, before the hunt.”
EVENTUALLY I EVEN TOLD AIGLANTINE about the things I had bought from Bertuccio the trader; how I had hidden them in the wardrobe beneath some blankets; and how I feared my husband’s disapproval if he should discover them. Her eyes widened as I told her this—I could tell she thought I was quite reckless—but even so curiosity got the better of her, and when we returned later to the bedchamber, she asked me if I would show them to her.
We locked the door. I unearthed the helmet and the cross from the bottom of the trunk, and, after placing them in her hands, watched her eyes grow in wonderment as she turned them this way and that. Then I showed her my girlhood “secret treasures”—the bronze hand, the little vessel of frosty blue glass. Long before, I had invented stories about those treasures—where they had come from, who had worn them, how they had survived and made their way to me. She loved these tales and begged me to recount them while, at night, she brushed my hair and helped me prepare for bed, or in the afternoon, while she swept the floor and I sat by the window, embroidering.
The storytelling became a ritual between us, a way of transporting us to another world, just as it had when I was a girl, sharing tales with my brother. I do not know, looking back, who derived the most pleasure from it: Aiglantine, listening raptly, or myself, luxuriating in the labyrinth of my imagination.
From the most mundane objects to the most luxurious—all were fodder for me. I invented stories about the enameled griffins on the lock of my bedchamber door, for instance—I told her they had come from the shield of a Sicilian prince who had had them forged by a slave in Palermo before he, the prince, set off for the Holy Wars; but then he was killed by the Infidels, who wrenched the griffins from his shield, and sold them to a trader from Constantinople who dealt in such things. . . .
I made up an entire history of the Byzantine bracelets my husband had given me, though I had not yet worked up the courage to ask the one question that lurked in my mind whenever the cuffs were fastened on my wrists: whether they had once belonged to my husband’s late wife. It seemed safer to take refuge in invention, to pretend that they had come from a workshop that had crafted jewels for the wicked Empress Theodora; how she had worn them when she appeared at court, or even in bed, when she was intent on seduction. . . .
This story tantalized, even shocked, Aiglantine, though she continued to listen and ask questions even so. (“Is it true what they say—that Theodora had been a circus dancer, a whore?”) But then, many things I did seemed to scandalize her. I remember the day when I received a letter from my mother bristling with advice, and how I threw it into the fire, watching with spiteful delight as the flames devoured her hectoring words. Aiglantine, who adored her own mother, was horrified and thrust her hand into the fire to retrieve it.
“No,” I told her, pushing her arm away, “let it burn.”
THUS, VERY SLOWLY, PASSED THE summer of 1178—that summer of waiting and isolation, when I yearned for some freedom and for news of the outside world. I gleaned what I could from my husband after his journey to Troyes, and from the merchants and peddlers who passed through our land. Tell me, I would say, tell me what is happening beyond our castle, in other regions, and across the channel, in England. There were rumors that Joanna, Eleanor’s daughter and the wife of King William of Sicily, was with child—“As you are” the same visitor had said to me, as if this royal pregnancy conferred upon my own a sense of privilege.
It was not lost on my husband that I hung on every word of those who passed through. He would watch me intently while I questioned them and would notice how subdued I became after the guests departed.
One night, after a feast in honor of merchants from Bordeaux, he promised that one day I should accompany him to one of the great fairs in Champagne, near Troyes.
“Next year—next spring?”
“Yes,” came his response, sealed with a kiss. “When you are well recovered from the birth of our son.”
But if it is not a son? This was the question that haunted me.
At such moments I would think incessantly of the healer Bertuccio had told me about—the woman in the forest who could tell me whether I would have a son or a daughter. Anthusis was her name, he had said; yet he did not seem to know what she was, man or woman. Sometimes I would stare out the window or mount the parapet to look beyond, into the forest, trying to imagine where she lived. There were moments during my walks with Aiglantine when I would look down at the ground and see an undecipherable paw print and think—inexplicably—that this might be Anthusis’s; or when I would hear the sudden sharp thwacking sound of vultures in flight and wonder if they, soaring above us, could see her lair.
BY THE FEAST OF THE Assumption in mid-August, the heat had turned so stifling that all activity in the castle would cease, come afternoon. The smell of leather, and dung, and horse manure, and fetid straw suffocated all which, earlier in the summer, had been refreshing and pleasant—the scent of apple branches, honeysuckle, freshly cut grass. The kitchen had become an inferno. I would see the women emerge at noontime in the scorching sun, and watch as they wiped their brows and splashed their faces from a bucket of cloudy rainwater, which I had passed earlier that morning, noticing that it was crawling with dead beetles and dragonflies.
One such afternoon I came upon Agnes, the talkative kitchen maid, fanning herself by the well. Seeing me, she stood up at once, and curtseyed: “You should take care with this heat, my lady.”
“As you should, too,” came my reply as I wiped my brow and stooped to pick up a branch from the bundle on the ground. I began to fan myself, shielding my eyes from the sun.
She shrugged. “We are used to this weather, all of us in the kitchen. And before long, autumn will come, then winter. And when it is winter, we will look back on these days and wish God would send us some of this heat!” A hearty laugh as she continued to fan herself, stopping occasionally to swat a fly.
“It seems there is hardly a soul here today. Even Raoul is nowhere to be found.”
“I doubt that, my lady. You never know where he will turn up.” Another swat. “Raoul Three Eye we call him.” Then she seemed to catch herself. “But I reckon I should never have told you that, my lady!”
“Let us blame it on the heat and pretend you never told me,” I said cavalierly enough; and then, looking at her intently, I posed a question to which I already knew the answer: “Why that name—Three Eye?”
“Because nothing is lost on him. That is what Millicent and the others say.”
A succession of images flitted through my mind—Raoul, watching from afar; Raoul, with his soundless steps, surprising me that day when I was about to mount to the parapet. . . .
“He seems quite devoted to my lord, to my husband.”
“He always was. Always will be. He will always be ready to do Lord de Meurtaigne’s bidding, that is for sure.”
“And he has been here long?”
“Longer than all of us, my lady. Except Millicent, of course.” She broke off a stick from the bough and began to draw a circle in the ground. Then she looked up, her cheeks florid with heat, her perfect white teeth weirdly dainty against the broad expanse of flesh that made up her face. “The rest of us may come and go. But not Raoul. He’s as much part of all of this as that stone wall”—she made a gesture, with the stick—“or the big oak tree at the edge of the orchard. He would die for his lordship. And his lordship knows it, I warrant.”
“He does not seem unintelligent. I even venture”—here, thinking of the letter with the broken seal, I paused, weighing my words—“that he can read.”
“Why, that he can!” she exclaimed. “And well, at that. Or so I am told. The monks at Saint Florent taught him. There was a time when he thought he would enter service there, but even the monks must have paused at the thought of Raoul. But in the end, he left the Lord’s service and came to serve another lord. Ours here!” A ribald laugh.
“A fair exchange,” came my wry reply.
“Some would say.” She had taken out a small kitchen knife from her pocket and merrily began to whittle the stick.
Moments passed. The sun began to relent; a sudden breeze came up. I looked around the courtyard for a sign of life and then at the stables, beyond, hoping the wind would not cool her garrulousness.
“What of Gallien? My lord has spoken well of him. I think well of him, too.”
“What of him? He is not one of ours. He is a Saxon. Keeps to himself. They say he is wellborn, for a Saxon at least, but then his family was punished by the Normans. Harshly they say, and who would doubt it? All their land taken, and Gallien forced to make his own way, little more than a slave. I hear he’s angling to work in the mews.” Then, after letting out a yawn, “If I were him, I would tell him to be mindful of Ragnar, I would.”
“And why is that?”
“Why jealousy of course!” Her voice, lowering, took on a low confiding tone: “If you were Ragnar, would you want—” But then she stopped abruptly, for the baker had emerged from the kitchen and was calling for her sharply.
“I must return to my work, my lady.”
And at that she stood up, stretched both arms high above her head, gave a great sigh, and left, leaving me with the whittled stick.
Chapter 9
September’s welcome weather, cooling breezes and less strident light, a clear deep blue sky, for the north wind had swept away the detritus of the long searing summer. Boar had been sighted: the men would leave soon for the hunt, and for hawking, and the forest would swallow them up for long stretches.
My energy had returned. The bouts of nausea had ceased, and I had begun to daydream about the creature who stirred within me. A boy, hopefully—a strong, heroic boy who would know an unbounded life, who would excel at tournaments, who would woo ladies with graceful songs—a young man who would return from travels and soaring adventures to regale us with his stories.
And if a girl, I would force myself to imagine, only to find that here, for once, my imagination, like a magic potion depleted of power, would fail me.
The idea of the woman in the forest—the healer, the augurer—had come to obsess me. Did she exist or was this Bertuccio’s fabrication, a final deceitful salvo, meant only to disquiet me? And if she did live near our lands, did she really possess such powers?
And even if I could find her, and even if she could obliterate uncertainty, would it really be less daunting to know the future, or better to dwell in a cloud of unknowing?
I DID NOT FORGET WHAT Agnes had said about Ragnar and took care to avoid him when I could, all the while thinking of his devotion to my husband, and the suggestion that he would be jealous of Gallien if the latter were perceived as a favorite.
Yet I admit that part of me—the obdurate, willful part—had also taken this as a kind of challenge. If anything, I had redoubled my efforts to help Gallien, so determined was I that he should realize his dream: to work with the falcons, in the mews.
“Let him try, at least,” I entreated Gerard one day, as I met him in the stables one afternoon when he had returned from a ride to the village. “I know you will not regret it!”
“I wonder why this means so much to you, my darling,” he replied, his eyes scanning my face. “But if it pleases you, I shall consider it. I promise.” He smiled, taking me into his arms.
“That is a real promise, then?” I asked.
“Yes, yes!” he replied, with an exasperated laugh. Then: “But what will I get in return for this good deed?”
“I shall think of something.” I touched my finger to his lips.
“Good. I shall hold you to it. But not before you give me a kiss.”
LATE SEPTEMBER IN THE WANING hours of the afternoon, a deep golden light, the lengthening shadows of towers and turrets, and the surface of the moat turned greenish-black, mirrorlike and fathomless. My husband and his men had left to supervise the beginning of the harvest; Millicent had gone to the village.
Aiglantine and I were alone in my chamber; I sat by the window, embroidering a shirt for the baby while she, across the room, sorted my dresses. Many were now too small for me, and new ampler ones, no less luxurious than their predecessors, had recently been fashioned. Guests from Saint Jean d’Angély were to come for the hunt the following month, and I, as the lady of the household, must look my best. (“Your most splendid,” my husband had told me in a voice both loving and cautionary.)
Aiglantine looked almost beautiful that day, as if the veil of despondence had been lifted to reveal another radiant self. The expression of her eyes—those remarkable eyes, one blue, the other a gold-flecked brown—verged on the merry. Her ivory skin shone, her cheeks were rosy. I had given her some of my powder and had taught her how to conceal the purplish mark below her eye, so that it was nearly invisible. Only her hands, with their calluses and ragged bitten nails, hinted at the other despairing self I had sensed from our first meeting.
I watched as, one by one, she folded the discarded gowns and placed them in an oak chest scented with little cloth bundles of dried rosemary, pine needles, and lavender: there the layers of linen and silk would remain, souvenirs of the earliest months of my marriage, only to be resurrected the following year, when I would be a mother. With a twinge of guilt, I thought of Agnes’s story about Aiglantine and the scrap of silk, which my husband had denied her.
I sighed and resumed my sewing, secretly glad that Amélie and my mother were not there to criticize me and mock my embroidery, as they had my freckles, and much else. Then, suddenly, I pricked my finger on the needle, and cried out: a drop of blood spread upon the pristine linen, soiling the design of ivy I had embroidered.
“My lady!” cried Aiglantine, approaching me with a cloth napkin as I pressed the bleeding finger to my lip.
“It is nothing—a prick of the needle, that is all.”
“I do not think your mind is on your needlework today, my lady.”
“You know me well,” I replied with a smile, holding the hoop away as I surveyed my woeful handiwork. “I doubt I shall ever be skilled at this, no matter how hard I try. I can hear my mother’s voice as I stitch”—here, I imitated my mother’s shrill voice—“‘Isabelle, can you not do it properly for once?’ It seemed I never could. My sister was always the paragon of stitchery. ‘Isabelle,’ she would say”—here, I aped Amélie’s high, simpering voice—“‘how careless you are, Isabelle, how do you manage to make such a mess of your sewing?’ She would work for hours, bent over the hoop, producing masterpieces. But not I! I dreamed of walking outside in the meadows, or of listening to my grandfather read from his books. Anything but this.” Sighing, I took up the hoop again and made a wretched attempt to continue, but the blot of blood upon the fabric had ruined it for me: it seemed to stare at me reprovingly, like a sin that even confession could not erase.
I tossed the hoop on the bench, stood up, and looked out the window, my eyes fixed on the edge of the forest.
“Is it true—” I said slowly, still facing the window, away from Aiglantine, “that there is someone who lives in the forest, a healer, who can tell me whether it is a son or a daughter I carry?” I turned to face her. “The trader who came that day—Bertuccio, the Italian,” I continued, “it was he who told me about her. She lives in the forest, he said. Anthusis is her name. Surely someone here must know of this person,” I added impatiently.
“I do not know,” she murmured.
“Then you must ask for me, since I cannot. Find out where this woman dwells. She may be quite close, in which case I shall find a way to see her. And if far—well, that decides the matter, and I shall ask no more.”
