To Sleep No More Page 4

  The porter who took his horse looked startled.

  ‘My Lord! You were not expected. All are sleeping. I must wake the scullions to prepare food.’

  ‘No, no. Some fruit and wine in my chamber is all I require. Has Wevere gone to bed?’

  ‘Long since, my Lord. Shall I wake him for you?’

  As Stratford strode up the great staircase he shook his head again.

  ‘Let no one be disturbed on my account. I shall retire immediately. If you will bring the food at once.’

  The man bowed, withdrawing towards the buttery. But, having watched him go, the archbishop, instead of turning off to his own apartments climbed a stone spiral staircase to the floor above. Here he turned right and, walking through the huge and beautiful solar — situated directly above his bedchamber and occupying the whole of the palace’s upper and southern storey — came to a series of smaller rooms. At the second of these he stopped, put his ear to the door and, after a moment or two, gently pushed it open.

  The fitful moonlight, blotted out every few seconds by the bustling clouds, fell through the long window on to a small bed that stood inside and on to the face of the occupant. Stratford stood there silently, staring at the dark thatch of hair and pale features, and then he took a step forward. Impassively, he regarded the man who lay in an untroubled sleep.

  The face at which Stratford looked could have been put together by a humorous god, for it had a snub nose, lips that — even at rest — seemed to be smiling, a sweep of thick black lashes curving down to the white cheek below. And the hands, one of which lay curled upon the pillow, were also comic. Small and broad, with short blunt fingers, they looked fit only to labour at the soil. But, nonetheless, despite his shortcomings, there was an air of fineness about the sleeper, showing that no ordinary villein slept here so peacefully in the presence of the primate of all England.

  The moon disappeared totally and in the darkness the man, at last sensing a presence, began to whimper.

  ‘Colin, don’t be afraid,’ said Stratford quietly. ‘You are not being attacked, it is only John.’

  ‘John? Why are you here? Wevere said you were in Canterbury and I was to be quiet.’

  ‘Did he now? Is he unkind to you?’

  ‘No, he likes me. And plays with me often. And he dances when I play the gittern.’

  The moon flirted for a second and then came out in full. And in the rush of silver Colin sat up in bed. The archbishop looked at the tragicomic face and smiled. He had never made up his mind from the day of Colin’s birth to this moment whether he loved or hated his simpleton brother. But now he only answered softly, ‘I have brought you some pastries. No, don’t get out of bed. You can have them in the morning.’

  Colin hugged his knees with joy and then, spontaneously, kissed his brother’s hand.

  ‘You are so kind to me,’ he said.

  Stratford turned towards the window, his blank face for once twitching with emotion. Almost every day he wished Colin would contract some fatal illness and end the charade of his life. And, equally, almost every day the younger man would do something so sweet and innocent that the very thought of his death made the primate reel with guilt.

  For here was a situation that the great and powerful archbishop could not control. For some reason that nobody understood — unless it was that their mother had been too old to give birth at forty years of age — Colin’s mental age had remained that of a boy of eight, while his body developed into that of a man. Yet there was nothing in that childish nature of harm or spite. The truth was he was not quite mad yet neither was he sane. He was merely simple. A little boy encased in the shell of a man of thirty.

  The archbishop turned back into the room.

  ‘Go to sleep, Colin. I shall see you tomorrow after my morning prayers.’

  ‘Can I pray with you?’

  ‘No. You must remain secret as you always do. Just because we are away from London and Canterbury does not mean that you may show yourself.’

  Colin’s smiling mouth trembled slightly.

  ‘Have I been naughty, John. Are you angry?’

  Stratford, swinging wildly between revulsion and remorse, put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  ‘I will become so if you do not go back to sleep. Wevere will bring you to me when I am not busy.’ He turned in the doorway. ‘You are sure he is kind to you?’

  Colin, snuggling into his pillow, said, ‘Yes, quite sure. In fact I like it in the stone palace. I do hope we remain a long time.’

  The archbishop did not answer but closed the door behind him as the moonlight faded into darkness.

  *

  That same night, less than three miles away at Sharndene, nobody except Piers — who had announced himself thoroughly bored with the entire situation — was yet abed. For upstairs Oriel was crying. And not crying quietly or circumspectly but, for one who was normally so gentle, sobbing with such a high desperate note that it could be heard even in the hall. So great was the sound that the servants had not taken their customary sleeping places around the hearth but huddled in groups behind the screens of the serving area.

  In their place, Margaret, a mutinous look upon her ugly face, sat before the fire, holding her hands out to the flames and glaring at Robert, who was studiously whittling a piece of wood and trying to ignore her.

  After what seemed an eternity she said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ Robert did not look up.

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. What have you decided?’

  Her husband continued to carve the wood as if there was nothing else of importance in the world. Margaret glared all the more, her heart thumping with emotion. In the few hours since Oriel had been informed of Juliana’s offer, there had been a tremendous change in Margaret’s attitude. The daughter of whom she had always been jealous had, for the first time in her life, become a figure of pathos. Beautiful, vivid Oriel had crumpled like a rag doll.

  ‘Oh don’t make me,’ she had cried, dropping to her knees and clutching her mother’s skirts like an infant. ‘He is so horrible, so covered with blemishes. I would rather be in my grave than married to him. Oh help me Mother, please.’

  ‘But he has offered for you,’ Robert had put in sharply.

  ‘No!’ Oriel’s voice had held a note of hysteria. ‘He has never even looked at me. Why, he loves Piers more than he does me.’

  Something in this remark had started thoughts going through Margaret’s mind and then, looking at Oriel’s face, all red and swollen and blotchy with weeping, she had felt the first stirrings of compassion. This had been followed, when she had put her arms round her daughter, with a great surge of love, almost as much as she felt for Hamon, in fact. It would seem that Oriel must be ugly in order to arouse her mother’s affection.

  But Margaret had not pursued this twisted path, merely glad for once that envy was not eating up her heart and resolving on the spot that Oriel should not be forced into marriage against her wishes. Margaret had then stuck out her bottom lip, put on her most intractable expression, and treated Robert to an icy stare.

  Now she said, ‘Are you going to answer me?’

  Her husband looked up at last, though his fingers still went on working the knife over the wood.

  ‘It is a very good offer,’ he said.

  ‘Is that all you can think about?’

  She was blazing with fury.

  ‘Margaret ...’

  Robert’s voice held a warning note but his wife went on undeterred. ‘You know as well as I do that you despise Juliana. Yet you would consider selling your only daughter to her. Yes, I said selling. Nothing else but money would make you even consider allying the houses of Sharndene and Mouleshale.’

  Robert looked as furious as she did, his wiry frame beginning to tremble slightly.

  ‘Margaret, you go too far!’

  ‘I do not go far enough! Robert, you have seen the girl. She is distraught. It would be monstrous to force her into this alliance.’ Her to
ne became a little more placatory and she went on, ‘Your father allowed you to choose. Surely that must soften your heart.’

  ‘My father gave me the choice of two women: you or Anne de Winter. Your dowries were equal therefore it did not matter to him. That was the only freedom I had.’

  Quite without bidding, tears sprang into Margaret’s eyes. ‘What a terrible thing to say. I had always believed you picked me because you had feelings for me.’

  Robert looked contrite. ‘I did, I did. All I am saying is that I was not allowed to act precisely as I wanted.’

  He was making things much worse and was aware of it. He changed his tone. ‘Margaret, do not look at me like that. You know I picked you because of your elegance. Why, Anne de Winter was a hay truss beside you.’ Dropping on one knee before his wife, he planted a kiss on the end of her nose.

  Mollified, Margaret said, ‘But Robert, what of Oriel? Please consider carefully.’

  ‘I shall, sweetheart, I shall. But look at it from my point of view — this is the best offer we shall ever have for her.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I believe there is something strange about it. Our daughter says that James is a better friend to Piers than he is to her.’

  Robert’s head came up sharply and he gave Margaret a penetrating look. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Nothing. I am merely repeating what she said.’

  Robert made no reply, sinking his chin into his hand and staring into the fire, only the distant murmur of the servants’ voices and Oriel’s muffled sobs breaking the silence. In the corners of the huge room the shadows seemed to deepen as the flames leapt in response to a falling log, and somewhere in that dusk one of Robert’s hounds scratched and sighed. From the floor the smell of new sweet rushes wafted up to combine with wood smoke. If it had not been for the subject under discussion the room would have held a warm and glowing harmony.

  Sensing the atmosphere was calming, Margaret spoke no more and it was some while before Robert said, ‘You are right, of course. James has no thought of Oriel at all. This is either some political move of Juliana’s or ...’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or there is something here we do not, as yet, understand.’

  Margaret stood up. ‘Then you have decided against it?’

  Robert nodded his head slowly.

  ‘Will you tell Oriel or shall I?’ Her voice was matter-of-fact, hiding her feelings.

  ‘We must both do it. Joan,’ he called, ‘go and bring Mistress Oriel to me.’

  A little spiderlike servant scuttled from behind the screens and through the hall’s dark shadows to the stairs beyond. As she disappeared from sight, Robert said quietly, ‘You shall not be too soft with Oriel, wife. It is not right she should feel she has defied her parents. I shall make it clear that this is the last time she plays such a trick.’

  Margaret said, ‘Yes, Robert,’ but inside her heart thudded; she had got her way, Oriel was to be saved from James.

  And the smile on her mother’s face must have told the girl everything for she rushed across the hall and flung herself into Margaret’s arms, sobbing all the harder with relief.

  Robert said sternly, ‘Oriel, I have decided not to accept James’s offer. It has been made clear to me by your behaviour and that of your mother that this match is quite unacceptable to you both. As you well know many fathers would have ignored this, but I believe in Christian mercy.’ He paused importantly, then went on, ‘In deference to your mother, therefore, the matter will be pursued no further.’

  He was nearly sent flying as Oriel hurled herself at him, rubbing her wet eyes against his hard, cold check.

  ‘Listen, my girl,’ he went on. ‘I warn you that I will not stand for this again. Next time a match is offered it will be your duty to accept. Is that completely clear?’

  ‘Yes, Father. I will take anyone gladly. Nobody else in the whole world can be as horrible as James. I promise this will never happen again.’

  ‘No,’ said Robert. ‘It won’t. You can be sure of that.’

  *

  As the household of Sharndene finally settled down to sleep, Isabel de Bayndenn — tenant of Sir Godfrey Waleis and keeper of the house of Bayndenn in the absence of Sir Godfrey and his son John, at their other estates — woke in the darkness. She had dreamed that her first husband, years older than she and long since dead, had stood at the end of her bed and wagged a reproving and skeletal finger. Then he had shaken his head and vanished.

  Terrified, Isabel had struggled to consciousness to escape him and peered fearfully into the ink-black corners of her chamber, wondering if he had come back from the dead to stare, mean-mouthed, at Adam, her second husband, and to mock Isabel for her foolishness in marrying him. For foolish had been the word whispered when Isabel had bought Adam Guilot, a twenty-four-year-old villein belonging to Godfrey Waleis, and taken him for her husband six months later.

  Looking down at him now, in the first faint light of dawn, Isabel smiled. He was utterly beautiful, golden looking, with not an ounce of fat on his handsome frame. He was also nearly thirty years younger than she and Isabel had done the most challenging thing of her life in marrying him. Still, time had not used her unkindly. Her body, which had never borne a child, was as perfect as it had been forty years ago. High in the breast, slim of the waist, lean at the hip, she could still turn the head of any man she rode past.

  But her beautiful black locks were a different matter. Here she helped nature — or so she thought. Every morning, without fail, and before the servants were about, she would rise before daybreak and jump naked into the River Rother. Once in, she would draw breath and submerge her head for as long as she could. Repeating this ritual a dozen times, she would emerge and wash her face in the morning dew. She was convinced that this performance was the secret of her eternally youthful hair and skin. But of these things she never spoke to anyone.

  Now Isabel, feeling the fresh winds of March whistling through the crucks — the curved wooden beams round which the timber house was constructed — thought that today might be too chilly for her ablutions, though in midwinter she had been known to break the ice rather than go without her youth-giving bathe. Nonetheless, she swung her bare feet out on to the stone floor. Instant cold sent her scurrying for her clothes and then, only stopping to pull a wimple and soft hat round her head, she proceeded, with a loving backward look towards Adam, out into the early dawn.

  From where she stood she could see for miles along the valley. Eastwards and to her left, the first wild threads of pink suffused the mint-hued woodland, while before her rich green pasture sloped downward towards the gurgling river and onto the south, where the far side of the vale rose majestically in a great wood-covered slope. As always, Isabel caught her breath. She had been born and raised in the weathered house behind her but she would never, could never, quite get used to that irresistible view.

  Her horse, through force of habit, started to wend its way towards the river and Isabel sat aloft, her face turned to the sunrise, her breath taking in the ice-crisp sharpness of the air. The morning was very cold indeed and her nostrils smarted with the sheer exhilaration of it all: the sun, the freshness, the incomparable vista.

  But once at the riverside she lost some of her enthusiasm. The water was glacial; clear and icy and rushing along as if it were late. Very bravely, Isabel threw her garments onto a hawthorn but donned rapidly in their place a spare gardecorps. Then she jumped in and began her head dipping only to find, much to her chagrin, that she was not alone. In the far distance, and coming from the direction of Sharndene, she could see two figures on horseback.

  Before they were able to realise her presence, Isabel had clambered out and clothed herself. But then instead of hailing them, for she could see by now that it was Robert and Piers de Sharndene, she stepped behind a great oak tree and watched, unobserved.

  There was something menacing in the approaching couple’s manner and Isabel wanted to escape but was forced to remain behind the oakt
ree, knowing that if she moved she would be noticed immediately.

  ‘... suspected all along ...’

  Robert’s voice drifted towards her on the still air, only part of his sentences being audible.

  ‘... fathered an apple of Sodom. Get off, you ...’

  Horrified she saw that Master Sharndene had thumped his fist into Piers’s stomach, knocking the young man from his horse.

  ‘Get up ... knock you down again.’

  Robert Sharndene had obviously brought his son out of general earshot to give him a sound thrashing. And this he proceeded to do, for Isabel could hear a great leather strap biting into the hapless Piers again and again.

  ‘No ... no ... Father, please.’

  ‘You can get out ... London ... give you horses ... make a man ...’

  ‘Yes ... yes ... please stop!’

  Grunting, Robert finally lowered his arm and stood looking at the weeping figure on the ground. Then with a curse he swung round, mounted his horse and headed off towards Maghefeld, leaving Piers gasping and bleeding.

  Isabel stood stock still, wondering what she ought to do. To tend the wretch was the Christian answer but, on the other hand, to intervene in a family quarrel — and one of such vast proportions — was venturing into dangerous territory indeed.

  After a few fraught moments, Isabel decided on the path of discretion. Quietly mounting her horse she walked it silently back up the wooded slope towards Bayndenn.

  All the world was up early that morning, or so she thought, for a cheerful whistle drew her attention to Nicholas le Mist relieving himself behind a tree. Isabel lowered her gaze modestly but the little man, quite unabashed, called her name and waved to her with his free hand. Isabel gave him a reproving stare which only made him grin the more, his small gappy teeth resembling the crags of a rock-strewn ravine.