Gifts of the Queen (2 page)

The mist had blown clear somewhat in this high place, and wisps floated and ebbed about the crooked stones. Against one of these, a figure knelt or leaned perhaps, so wrapped up it was hard to tell, but I felt a rush, I cannot say of fear, but of some emotion else that at once made my blood run chill, yet set the hair at the nape of my neck starting up.

'Turn away, turn away,' the captain of the guard mouthed at me. He was usually a cheerful man with a joke for everyone, taller than the rest and broad-shouldered, my favorite when my brother was gone. I thought him the bravest man I knew, yet his face had paled with fear. He made vague gestures to haul me back yet did not dare come closer to the stones. The figure stirred and raised her head, the many wraps and shawls fell wide, and I saw her face. I do not remember if she were young or old, or what she was, it was her eyes that held my gaze. Deep, dark they were, dark-lashed, and full of strange things. Behind me now I heard the men hiss for dread, and again the captain tried to spur his horse between me and the stones. It would not budge and reared, almost falling back upon itself.

'Nay, come you on, little mistress,' the woman said, and her voice, although soft, was clear and strong. She stretched out her hand, and I saw her arms were shapely and white as a young woman's might have been. But her hair was gray and blew in long strands across her face.

I was ever forward as a child. Being left so much on my own had given me a sort of assurance, outspokenness if you will, that well-reared maidens would not dare to show. Ignoring the whispers and the cries, I heeled my pony toward her. It says something for the little creature's courage too that I could hold him to my will, for I felt him tremble with the strain and his head hung low.

'Now, mistress,' she said, when I approached her, 'you do not fear me?'

'I am not afraid,' I told her stoutly, lied, 'not with six men of my father's guard to back me.'

She nodded her head to where they milled about the gap in the stones. 'Not one, I think,' she said, 'would have the heart to pull a sword in this place.' And I thought she smiled. Then she rose up and stood by my horse's side. I felt him tremble again as she stroked his rough mane, then presently grow still as her white hand smoothed and smoothed between his ears and down his soft flanks.

‘And so, Ann of Cambray,' she said to me, 'you have been hunting on the moors. What is it that you hunt so freely without asking leave of me?'

'it is my father's land,' I said, 'but I will show you all the same.'

'And before your Norman father, Falk,' she said, 'who owned the land then?' She took the little hunting pouch that I had tied in proper fashion behind on the saddle and pulled open the strings. Inside were two hares that I had brought down with my sling, and a bird, a partridge, that had flown up from the heather beneath our feet. She smoothed its ruffled feathers with her long slender fingers, and as I watched, I thought I had never seen fingers so long, so smooth, nor yet feathers so clearly mottled, green and brown. And as each feather fell back into place, I felt a comfort steal over me, a sense of ease, as if I had known her for a long time.

"Who are you?' I asked her then, curious and excited at once, as if at something I knew but could not place. 'Are you one of the Saxon vagabonds?' (For so I had heard my father name those who, since the Normans had taken their lands, roamed homeless, finding shelter where they could.)

'Do I look like a Saxon?' she said. 'Or still more a vagabond? This is my home, before ever Saxon or Norman came ravaging.' She moved slightly as she spoke and beneath her outer wraps, I caught the glimpse of some fine silk, dark and glittering, like the sky on a cloudy night when the ragged storm clouds part and let moonlight through. And it came to me that, although at first she had spoken in the Norman-French we all use now, her last words were in Celt, the language that I spoke in preference to any other tongue.

'Then you are Celt,' I said. 'Are you one of their wise women, a Celtic witch, to tell the future from the past?'

'One day, Ann of Cambray,' she said, 'men will put that name on you, call you witch. Tell me then if you like to be so called. But if I am Celt, then we are kin. Your mother was Efa, high lady of that race, who died when you were born. As to the future, is it not made out of the past, out of the present now, that all men could foretell it if they would? But you have used that word 'future,' not I. If you would know what it is, what will you give me to tell it you?'

'It takes no wisdom,' I said in my blunt way, 'to know who I am. With me are the men of my father. Lord Falk; and for all your claims, this is his land, and he is a Norman lord to own it. As for what I have been doing, why I have just shown what I have hunted. And tonight, no doubt that is what we will eat.'

She almost smiled once more.

'You speak as freely as a boy,' she said. 'Ann of Cambray you will rue your tongue one day. But you also speak as a child. A long life lies ahead of you. Many and many are the paths and byways you must pick and choose. Are you not curious to know where they lead or what the end may hold for you?'

Put like that, her questions intrigued me. Nor did I like to be called a child, thinking myself already old enough to know my own mind.

'What else can you tell me?' I bargained.

'What will you give me?' she countered. 'Something to tempt the brightness forth.'

I leaned forward on the saddle prow, crossed my arms as I had seen my father do and considered her. There was a power in those large dark eyes, a look on that white oval face framed in gray hair, that fascinated me.

'I have a cross of gold,' I said at last, 'hung on a thick chain of gold. My godparent gave it me upon my birth. . .'

She made a sign of disagreement when I spoke of the cross, but nodded at a mention of the chain.

'Although your birth was a sad one,' she said, 'yet give me now the chain, that something good will come from it.'

I almost laughed back at her. Anyone would know that such a gift was not for everyday wear.

'It is locked in a chest at Cambray,' I told her, 'but I will get the key and bring it you tomorrow if you will tell me where.'

'No, no,' she said, her voice sunk low again, 'tomorrow will be too late.'

She stayed motionless so long that I thought she had forgotten me. Then, at last, she moved more abruptly than before, startling the little horse which had almost fallen asleep where he stood.

‘So be it,' she said. 'But I will tell you what I can. A long life will you have, Ann of Cambray, but not a safe one.
Fa
r from us and far again, over the distant sea shall you go. But however far you wander, you will come back to Cambray at last and do us a service greater than you know.' Again, she was silent.

‘That is not so much,' I said to hide my discomfort, for her words made strange impression upon me, although I might not then have understood all they hinted at, ‘to be worth a golden chain. Even the peddlers in the village tell more than that.'

‘What do they tell?' she asked, quick to test my lie.

I flushed a little, for in truth, I had never spoken to them, only heard the castle servants talk.

‘Well,' I said hesitatingly, 'who to wed, what he will be like, if he will be a great lord.'

‘Aye,' she said almost absent-mindedly, 'a great lord indeed. High above you shall you look for a husband. But landless, landless, he shall be before you wed.'

‘And will he love me?' I said, not liking the sound of landless, which was disgrace, remembering other things the castle wenches spoke of carelessly before me, so that I yeaned parts of it, 'will he love me true?'

Love,' she said, 'If you will speak of love, why then,—many men will you have in your life to ride into your dreams. Some will love you, some will desire you, and some will use love to do you harm. And one you will love but fear he does not love you. And because of the hatred of three men you shall do us a service so great, we shall throw off the Norman yoke. But what follows after will not depend on you.'

Her list of—prophecies, I suppose I should now call them, daunted me. I would not let her know it. I threw back my head and squared my shoulders under the woolen cloak. The mist had condensed upon it in great drops, even the reins were black and slippery with wet and the rain had beaded upon her hair.

'And is there no more than this?' I asked, although my voice trembled despite myself.

'Only this,' she said, and for the first time, there was anger, cold and stern, in her voice. 'Death and grief are within your power. Use your hold on them carefully. Beware the malice of womenfolk.'

'And is there no hope anywhere?' I cried, afraid of something I could not see, but glimpsed at darkly, far-off.

She said, 'Men will lay down their lives for you. Be comforted. They will do so willingly. Trust the impulse of your own heart. And one day, you shall come safely home.'

The men at the entrance to the stone cried out, or perhaps now I was suddenly able to hear them.

'Comeback, Lady Ann, come back,'I heard their captain shout.

'That one,' she said and she pointed to him on his gray horse. 'Come back, he says. Long will he wish it for himself.'

'And shall I bring you the golden chain?' I said, nudging my pony away from her, for the coldness in her voice was like ice. 'Tomorrow, if you will tell me where.'

'No,' she said, 'you will not bring it to me although one day I shall claim it. But not tomorrow nor tomorrow's morrow will you come up here again.'

The captain had forced his horse through the gap at last, and lashing it, reached over the side to grasp my bridle with his other hand. With whip and spur, he forced the frightened beast, almost dragging me underfoot.

'This is no place for you,' he cried, his Norman voice a trumpet blast. 'Away from this ring of death.'

'It is you who have spoken the word,' she said, standing up very tall. 'And on your lips is death recorded, not on mine.'

As she spoke, the animals stopped their struggle, turned meekly to one side. We jostled through the gap in the stones; the other men, as if freed from whatever had held them there, swung round, roweling their horses down the narrow path, moving into a gallop on the level ground.

I shouted the words, 'Tomorrow then?' over my shoulder, but the mist had come down, the circle of stones was hidden, everything blurred and faded away.

We came to the open fields, the village beneath the castle walls, in a thunder of hooves, fear driving at our heels. Well, she spoke the truth in this. I never went up there the next day. On the morrow's morning was my brother dead; murdered, if the correct name be given, and within two days my father, Falk of Cambray, had followed him; of grief and loss he died. I left Cambray of sea and moors and came to the castle of Sedgemont, as ward to my overlord. Lord Raoul, who but a boy himself, had recently inherited those lands from his grandfather. The handsome captain of the guard was lost in one of those many battles far away and never ever came back to Cambray. And many weary years passed until I returned.

And it was true that since that meeting my life had not been an easy one. My brother and father had died; even my castle of Cambray had been lost when a Celtic force had taken it, and other enemies had coveted it too and tried to kill me for my little lands. And true it was that many men had died for me. That they did so willingly had not made their deaths easier for me to bear. And although I had never thought to marry with an earl, Lord Raoul was indeed a great lord, lord of many lands and titles when I knew him first, but landless when finally we were wed, a month ago at the English court. For after my father's death, those wars, those civil wars I have spoken of, had fallen on us in all their fury. Not one part of England had been free of them, not my lands at Cambray, nor Raoul's at Sedgemont. And Raoul, who had sworn to support one claimant to the throne, who had fought loyally to the end for King Stephen, not even Raoul had escaped the enmity of that other claimant, Henry of Anjou, who on Stephen's death, had at last gained his heart's desire and been crowned king himself.

What put it in my mind this last day of our journey south, the thirty-eighth day (I know, I had kept count, scratching each morning a fresh mark on the saddle flap), what made me think now of the lady of the moors? More than ten years had passed since she had appeared to me, and I had hidden memory of her as a dream is hidden, so deeply buried I had never thought of her again, as if grief and death had supplanted her. And yet I had never forgotten her either, and on remembering I must remember the occasion complete, the cold wind, the smell of peat, the chink of bridle chain, the rivulets of mist. Who knows what God puts into our minds to make us recall this thing, then that. We are but part of a vast plan whose beginning and end are never known. I can tell you only that now we were riding along the river's bank toward Sieux and all the mist of the spring evening curled about our horses' feet. We splashed through the reed beds, startling flocks of geese and ducks that broke away across the wide expanse of open water where the river had widened into a lake. A month or more had we been already on our journey here, a long hard month since we had set sail from the little southern English port and crossed the sea and come to France; more than a month since I had been wed at the court of this new English king, Henry, second of his name. More than a month since my new husband, Lord Raoul, Earl of Sedgemont, Count of Sieux, had brought me here to France, to his own lands now restored to him.

I looked ahead of me where Lord Raoul rode. Only a few knights accompanied us, on this our last day's journey south to Sieux. From time to time, Raoul turned painfully, for riding was not easy for him these days, and looked back where I, my two squires, and a rear guard rode in single file. He was simply dressed, this great lord, no sign of rank, a leather jerkin, no rich rings, no golden chains, no furs. His hair, silver-gold, grown longer on our journey here, tossed freely in the wind. And his right arm, sword arm, wounded arm, was still strapped tightly to his side. But when he smiled as he now did, his eyes of Norman gray turned blue-green like the sea, and the laugh lines fanned out. God knows that he was tired and thin, but he did not look so fine-drawn, if I can use that expression for a man so full of energy, as on his wedding day when he had outfaced King Henry in his court. You would not know, on looking at him today, what cruel wrongs had been done to him.