Paul Doherty - The Cup of Ghosts

Speech does not comfort me,

I am in harmony with war,

Nor do I hold or believe any other religion.

Casales, who accompanied Sandewic and myself, seethed with humiliation at not being able to participate. He laughingly mocked my criticisms but Sandewic looped his arm through mine and nodded.

‘I’ve seen enough of battle!’ he remarked as we walked away, gesturing with his head. ‘It is nothing like that.’

By then it was the end of January, and the feasting and revelry were beginning to pall whilst the tournaments and tourneys had already led to the deaths of four young knights killed in a furious melee, a supposedly friendly joust between the courts of England and France.

‘It is time we were gone,’ Sandewic growled as we took off our cloaks in the buttery, warming our hands before the fire after our icy walk back from the tourney field. ‘The pot is beginning to bubble and the scum rises to coat it all,’ he added. ‘We should go before any real mischief is done.’

‘Nonsense,’ Casales objected, gesturing at Rossaleti, who was busy at the table transcribing household lists. ‘We have enough provisions whilst never again will the courts of England and France meet.’

‘I don’t like weddings or nuptials. They harvest bitter memories for me,’ Rossaleti intoned mournfully. Without any invitation the clerk threw down the quill pen and began to describe his own early days as a Benedictine novice and how he realised that he was not fit to take solemn vows. He talked about his marriage and the tragic death of his beloved wife, speaking so wistfully that he stirred the memories of others. Casales described his wedding day and the death of his wife in childbirth, and the long arduous years since. Sandewic nodded sympathetically but lightened the mood by describing his own marriage of many years, its humour and companionship, though he grew sad with sorrow over his wife’s death and his frequent quarrels with his children. I sensed the deep sadness of these men who, in the words of Sandewic, had become ‘priests of politic’, giving up their own lives in the service of their king.

Our mood was lightened by Baquelle’s arrival. Sandewic winked at me and put a finger to his lips, for Sir John needed little encouragement to sermonise us on his all-important marriage to the sister, as he kept telling us, of the most powerful wool merchant in England. The little knight, cheery-faced from the cold, was full of what he’d seen and who he’d talked to, determined on delivering a lengthy sermon about the different courts which had assembled. Sandewic ordered a cask of Bordeaux to be broached and cut Baquelle off in full flow by declaring that we were sitting as if visited by the Three Summoners of Doom: Sickness, Old Age and Death. He filled our cups with the heady claret, ordered Rossaleti to fetch his dulcimer and told us not to be faux et semblant at such a joyous time but to revel and carol with the best. Rossaleti brought his dulcimer in and Sandewic broke into a bawdy song about a knight, his lady and a cuckolding friar whose testicles the knight vowed he would enshrine in a hog’s turd. Sandewic had a powerful voice, as did Casales, and both roared out the filthy but very comic song as Rossaleti tried to pluck music on the dulcimer. Sandewic taught me the words and made me join in the singing till tears of laughter bubbled in my eyes. A warm, amicable afternoon to spite the hailing sleet and numbing drizzle outside, yet it is curious, isn’t it, looking back, how every torchlight creates its own host of shadows?

On 2 February we celebrated the Feast of the Circumcision of the Christ Child. I crowded into the great cathedral of Notre Dame, standing between the baptismal font and the devil’s door through which Satan left every time a child was baptised. By craning my neck I could glimpse the great ones gathered in the choir stalls, but because of the heavy rood screen all I caught were flashes of colour. I composed myself to watch the ceremonial entry into the church of a young mother and her child seated on an ass in commemoration of the Virgin and Child coming out of Egypt. A choir carolled the well-known hymn ‘Orientis Partibus Advenitavit Asinus, Pulcher et Fortis’: ‘From the Eastern lands comes the donkey, beautiful and brave, well-fitted to bear his burden. Up donkey and sing.’ The subsequent mass, a vibrant, noisy assembly, marked the end of all the celebrations. During this the congregation imitated the braying of a donkey at the usual liturgical responses, as if both court and crowd were eager to seize this opportunity to offset the pompous, solemn liturgies of the previous days. Afterwards the great ones dined in the hall of the Maison du Roi.

In the evening, as darkness fell, Isabella returned to our lodgings escorted by a retinue of squires and pages with flaring torches and surrounded by a gaggle of leading noblewomen. These gathered in the courtyard as the princess dismounted from her palfrey. They crowded round her, wishing her well, leading her into the hallway. Isabella, pale with tiredness, stood with a false smile. When they had all departed, she grasped my hand and allowed me to lead her up to the bedchamber. She had the door bolted and locked, kicked off the heavy brocade slippers, loosened the ties and bows of her gowns, and left them lying on the floor. Then she picked up a coverlet from the bed, wrapped it round herself and crouched like a scullery wench before the brazier, warming her fingers. I gave her warm ale mixed with hops to soothe her and she grasped the goblet, drinking greedily before turning to me.

‘You will ask?’

‘You need not answer.’

‘Edward of England is kind and gentle, a courteous, chivalric knight.’ Isabella laughed. ‘He says he loves me and asked to see me naked. He showed me what he called bed wrestling and the troubadours prettify as lovemaking. Afterwards he entered me and hurt me; sometimes he liked to mount me as a stallion does a mare. Then he held me in his arms and kissed me.’ She spoke in a dry, flat tone, not hurt or wounded; the physical aspects of her first nuptials Isabella dismissed with a mere shrug.

‘Edward has moods, Mathilde. He never forgets an injury. He can be as attentive as a lovelorn squire but then he’ll sit staring into nothing, lips moving as if talking to himself. Mathilde,’ Isabella moved to face me fully, ‘I wonder if my husband Edward of England is slightly fey.’ She blinked, licked her lips and smiled brilliantly. ‘He hates my father. He detests the very sight of him, claiming that his own father and Philip of France richly deserved each other. When I told him I felt no different, Edward roared with laughter and hugged me tight. I told him about you, Mathilde.’ She put her goblet down and grasped my hand. ‘But not all about you. He said you are most welcome, his house will be yours, adding that we shall all plot against Philip. He loves that, Mathilde, to mock, to turn the world on its head. During the mass this morning he led the braying, laughing out loud like a schoolboy released from his horn book.’

‘And the Lord Gaveston?’

Isabella wound together a few loose threads on the coverlet.

‘They are as one, Mathilde! Edward says Gaveston is his brother, his father, his sister and his mother.’

‘And his lover?’

Isabella shook her head, not denying it, more bemused and bewildered.

‘We shall see,’ she breathed. ‘We shall see.’

‘And the deaths of Pourte and Wenlok?’

‘Edward remained tight-lipped about those.’ She pulled the coverlet closer. ‘He did not seem pleased about either man, muttering that both had supported his marriage to me or, rather, the French marriage,’ she smiled, ‘as well as the arrest of the Templars, but opposed the advancement of Lord Gaveston. Did you know, Mathilde, Casales, Sandewic and Baquelle have the same mind on these matters? Edward still trusts them but does not like their views.’ Isabella stared into the fiery coals. ‘In the end Edward of England,’ she whispered, ‘could be a goat, a donkey, even a pig and I’d still dance on my back for him!’ She glared fiercely at me. ‘I am free, Mathilde, we are leaving! Now is our winter; soon the spring will come and I’ll sow the seeds for the future. We’ll watch them grow in summer and rejoice at harvest time!