Epic Historial Collection (111 page)

“We still have it—”

“Sell it.”

“How can I? It's Richard's.”

“For God's sake, who the hell bought it?” Ellen said angrily. “Did Richard work hard for years building up a wool business? Did Richard negotiate with greedy peasants and hard-nosed Flemish buyers? Did Richard collect the wool and store it and set up a market stall and sell it? Don't tell me it's Richard's horse!”

“He would be so angry—”

“Good. Let's hope he gets angry enough to do some work for the first time in his life.”

Aliena opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. Ellen was right. Richard had always relied on her for everything. While he had been fighting for his patrimony she had been obliged to support him. But now he was not fighting for anything. He had no further claim on her.

She imagined meeting Jack again. She visualized his face, smiling at her. They would kiss. She felt a stir of pleasure in her loins. She realized she was getting damp down there at the mere thought of him. She felt embarrassed.

Ellen said: “Traveling is hazardous, of course.”

Aliena smiled. “That's one thing I'm not worried about. I've been traveling since I was seventeen years old. I can take care of myself.”

“Anyway, there will be hundreds of people on the road to Compostela. You can join with a large pilgrim band. You won't have to travel alone.”

Aliena sighed. “You know, if I didn't have Baby I think I'd do it.”

“It's because of Baby that you must,” Ellen said. “He needs a father.”

Aliena had not looked at it that way: she had been thinking of the journey as purely selfish. Now she saw that the baby needed Jack as much as she did. In her obsession with the day-to-day care of the baby she had not thought about his future. Suddenly it seemed terribly unfair that he should grow up not knowing the brilliant, unique, adorable genius who was his father.

She realized she was talking herself into going, and she felt a thrill of apprehension.

A snag occurred to her. “I couldn't take the baby to Compostela.”

Ellen shrugged. “He won't know the difference between Spain and England. But you don't have to take him.”

“What else could I do?”

“Leave him with me. I'll feed him on goat's milk and wild honey.”

Aliena shook her head. “I couldn't bear to be parted from him. I love him too much.”

“If you love him,” Ellen said, “go and find his father.”

II

Aliena found a ship at Wareham. When she had crossed to France as a girl, with her father, they had gone in one of the Norman warships. These were long, narrow vessels whose sides curved up to a high, sharp point at front and back. They had rows of oars along each side and a square leather sail. The ship that was to take her to Normandy now was similar to those warships, but wider at the waist, and deeper, to take cargo. It had come from Bordeaux, and she had watched the barefoot sailors unload great casks of wine destined for the cellars of the wealthy.

Aliena knew she should leave her baby but she was heartbroken about it. Every time she looked at him she rehearsed all the arguments and decided again that she ought to go; and it made no difference: she did not want to part from him.

Ellen had come to Wareham with her. Here Aliena had joined up with two monks from Glastonbury Abbey who were going to visit their property in Normandy. Three other people would be passengers on the ship: a young squire who had spent four years with an English relative and was returning to his parents in Toulouse, and two young masons who had heard that wages were higher and girls were prettier on the other side of the water. On the morning they were to sail, they all waited in the alehouse while the crew loaded the ship with heavy ingots of Cornish tin. The masons drank several pots of ale but did not appear to get drunk. Aliena hugged the baby and cried silently.

At last the ship was ready to leave. The sturdy gray mare Aliena had bought in Shiring had never seen the sea, and refused to go up the gangplank. However, the squire and the masons collaborated enthusiastically and eventually got the horse on board.

Aliena was blinded by tears as she gave her baby to Ellen. Ellen took the baby, but she said: “You can't do this. I was wrong to suggest it.”

Aliena cried even more. “But there's Jack,” she sobbed. “I can't live without Jack, I know I can't. I must look for him.”

“Oh, yes,” Ellen said. “I'm not suggesting you abandon the trip. But you can't leave your baby behind. Take him with you.”

Aliena was flooded with gratitude and cried all the more. “Do you really think it will be all right?”

“He's been as happy as could be, all the way here, riding with you. The rest of the trip will only be more of the same. And he doesn't much like goat's milk.”

The captain of the vessel said: “Come on, ladies, the tide's on the turn.”

Aliena took the baby back and kissed Ellen. “Thank you. I'm so happy.”

“Good luck,” Ellen said.

Aliena turned and ran up the gangplank onto the ship.

They left immediately. Aliena waved until Ellen was a dot on the quay. As they rowed out of Poole Harbour it began to rain. There was no shelter up above, so Aliena sat in the bottom, with the horses and the cargo. The partial decking on which the oarsmen sat above her head did not completely protect her from the weather, but she was able to keep the baby dry inside her cloak. The motion of the ship seemed to agree with him, and he went to sleep. When darkness fell, and the ship anchored, Aliena joined the monks in their prayers. Afterward she dozed fitfully, sitting upright with the baby in her arms.

They landed at Barfleur the next day and Aliena found lodgings in the nearest town, Cherbourg. She spent another day going around the town, speaking to innkeepers and builders, asking if they recalled a young English mason with flaming red hair. Nobody did. There were lots of redheaded Normans, so they might not have noticed him. Or he might have crossed to a different port.

Aliena had not realistically expected to find traces of Jack so soon, but nevertheless she was disheartened. On the following day she set off, heading south. She traveled with a seller of knives and his cheerful fat wife and four children. They moved quite slowly, and Aliena was happy to keep to their pace and conserve her horse's strength, for it had to carry her a long way. Despite the protection of traveling with a family she kept her sharp, long-bladed knife strapped up her left sleeve. She did not look rich: her clothes were warm but not fancy, and her horse was sturdy rather than spirited. She was careful to keep a few coins handy in a purse, and never show anyone the heavy money belt strapped around her waist underneath her tunic. She fed the baby discreetly, not letting strange men see her breasts.

That night she was immensely cheered by a splendid stroke of luck. They stopped at a tiny village called Lessay, and there Aliena met a monk who vividly remembered a young English mason who had been fascinated by the revolutionary new rib-vaulting in the abbey church. Aliena was exultant. The monk even remembered Jack saying he had landed at Honfleur, which explained why there was no trace of him at Cherbourg. Although it was a year ago, the man talked volubly about Jack, and had obviously been charmed by him. Aliena was thrilled to be talking to someone who had seen him. It was confirmation that she was on the right trail.

Eventually she left the monk and lay down to sleep on the floor of the abbey guesthouse. As she drifted off she hugged the baby tight and whispered into his tiny pink ear: “We're going to find your Daddy.”

 

The baby fell ill at Tours.

The city was wealthy and dirty and crowded. Rats ran in packs around the huge grain stores beside the river Loire. It was full of pilgrims. Tours was a traditional starting point for the pilgrimage to Compostela. In addition, the feast day of Saint Martin, the first bishop of Tours, was imminent, and many had come to the abbey church to visit his tomb. Martin was famous for having cut his cloak in two and given half to a naked beggar. Because of the feast, the inns and lodging houses of Tours were packed. Aliena was obliged to take what she could, and she stayed in a ramshackle dockside tavern run by two elderly sisters who were too old and frail to keep the place clean.

At first she did not spend much time at her lodgings. With her baby in her arms she explored the streets, asking after Jack. She soon realized the city was so constantly full of visitors that the innkeepers could not even remember their guests of the week before last, so there was no point in asking them about someone who might have been here a year ago. However, she stopped at every building site to ask if they had employed a young English mason with red hair called Jack. Nobody had.

She was disappointed. She had not heard anything of him since Lessay. If he had stuck to his plan of going to Compostela he would almost certainly have come to Tours. She began to fear that he might have changed his mind.

She went to the church of Saint Martin, as everyone did; and there she saw a team of builders engaged on extensive repair work. She sought out the master builder, a small, bad-tempered man with thinning hair, and asked if he had employed an English mason.

“I never employ the English,” he said abruptly, before she had finished her sentence. “English masons are no good.”

“This one is
very
good,” she said. “And he speaks good French, so you might not have known he's English. He has red hair—”

“No, never seen him,” the master said rudely, and turned away.

Aliena went back to her lodgings somewhat depressed. To be treated nastily for no reason at all was very dispiriting.

That night she suffered a stomach upset and got no sleep at all. The next day she felt too ill to go out, and spent all day lying in bed in the tavern, with the stink of the river coming in at the window and the smells of spilled wine and cooking oil seeping up the stairs. On the following morning the baby was ill.

He woke her with his crying. It was not his usual lusty, demanding squall, but a thin, weak, sorry complaint. He had the same upset stomach Aliena had, but he was also feverish. His normally alert blue eyes were shut tight in distress, and his tiny hands were clenched into fists. His skin was flushed and blotchy.

He had never been ill before, and Aliena did not know what to do.

She gave him her breast. He sucked thirstily for a while, then cried again, then sucked again. The milk went straight through him, and seemed to give him no comfort.

There was a pleasant young chambermaid working at the tavern, and Aliena asked her to go to the abbey and buy holy water. She considered sending for a doctor, but they always wanted to bleed people, and she could not believe that it would help Baby to be bled.

The maid returned with her mother, who burned a bunch of dried herbs in an iron bowl. They gave off an acrid smoke that seemed to absorb the bad smells of the place. “The baby will be thirsty—give him the breast as often as he wants it,” she said. “Have plenty to drink yourself, so that you have enough milk. That's all you can do.”

“Will he be all right?” Aliena said anxiously.

The woman looked sympathetic. “I don't know, dear. When they're so small you can't tell. Usually they survive things like this. Sometimes they don't. Is he your first?”

“Yes.”

“Just remember that you can always have more.”

Aliena thought: But this is Jack's baby, and I've lost Jack. She kept her thoughts to herself, thanked the woman, and paid her for the herbs.

When they had gone she diluted the holy water with ordinary water, dipped a rag in it, and cooled the baby's head.

He seemed to get worse as the day wore on. Aliena gave him her breast when he cried, sang to him when he lay awake, and cooled him with holy water when he slept. He suckled continually but fitfully. Fortunately she had plenty of milk—she always had. She herself was still ill and kept going with dry bread and watered wine. As the hours went by she came to hate the room she was in, with its bare flyblown walls, rough plank floor, ill-fitting door and mean little window. It had precisely four items of furniture: the rickety bed, a three-legged stool, a clothes pole, and a floor-standing candlestick with three prongs but only one candle.

When darkness fell the maid came and lit the candle. She looked at the baby, who was lying on the bed, waving his arms and legs and grizzling plaintively. “Poor little thing,” she said. “He doesn't understand why he feels so bad.”

Aliena moved from the stool to the bed, but she kept the candle burning, so that she could see the baby. Through the night they both dozed fitfully. Toward dawn the baby's breathing became shallow, and he stopped crying and moving.

Aliena began to cry silently. She had lost Jack's trail, and her baby was going to die here, at a house full of strangers in a city far from home. There would never be another Jack and she would never have another baby. Perhaps she would die too. That might be for the best.

At daybreak she blew out the candle and fell into an exhausted sleep.