The Sixth Surrender

Mathea wrinkled her nose in disappointment and kicked her pony into a trot. Juliana let her mare amble after the child. They had departed from Fontevraud at the beginning of May, three weeks before the marriage of Aliénor of Aquitaine’s granddaughter, fifteen-year-old Blanche of Castile, to King Philip’s son. The marriage was intended to bring about rapprochement between her uncle John and the French king. Juliana thought about that marriage, also willed by the queen-duchess, knowing that the distant events bore directly on her own marriage. That knowledge sparked a small hope in her.

She twisted her wedding ring. It was too small and had hurt her knuckle when he forced it on. What she needed was a way of removing Lasalle from her life forever. He might think that this marriage had dropped Tillières and Rivefort into his hands, but its location on the Norman march made the viscounty vulnerable to the changing vagaries of French and Norman fortunes.

While Paulette remained secluded in her cart, Mathea rode up and down the plodding convoy on a gentle chestnut mare, introducing herself to Lasalle’s murderous routa and dashing off to examine rotting corpses on crossroads’ gibbets with unabashed curiosity. The sight of those chained wretches was not what had filled Juliana with abject terror. It was her anticipation of the nightfall of that first day—a fear that turned out to be groundless. If Guérin de Lasalle had spent that night with a woman, that woman was not Juliana. His decision spoke either of his aversion to her or of his desire not to shock their company. Looking about her, she concluded that the latter was unlikely.

Lasalle’s men traveled under a swallow-tailed standard, its blue dye faded and its tails frayed. Lasalle appeared to have chosen as his own the banner of Saint Martin, a Roman soldier who had transformed his life when he gave half of his cloak to the Beggar Christ. Under his colors Lasalle had gathered a polyglot assembly of skilled cutthroats—some Brabançons, half a dozen Aragonese and Gascons, sundry men-at-arms of various origins, and several young men who appeared to be runaway serfs.

The man in charge of Lasalle’s cutthroats was a balding, red-faced Rhinelander by the name of Kadolt, who walked with a limp and sounded unintelligible to everyone but the routiers. The others in the company were knighted—Jehan de Vaudreuil, a black-eyed, sober-looking man Lasalle had brought as his marriage witness to the chapel steps; Rannulf de Brissard; Hugon de Metz; someone called Saez; and a couple of others, most of the men older than their master. From the looks of them, the knights did not harbor any more chivalrous impulses than he did. With the squires, grooms, and servants, including several loose women who came along as laundresses, their company numbered nearly six dozen souls, not to mention the carts, saddle and warhorses, and pack mules.

And so here they were, one happy family: herself, Mathea and Paulette, and Mistress Hermine, a short, stout, motherly nurse provided by the Countess de Nevers along with two plain, good-natured maidservants for the girls, who had reconciled themselves to being handed off to another alien household with the equanimity of those who know they live on charity. Juliana had immediately liked Mistress Hermine, a decisive woman of two score and ten with cornflower-blue eyes that had seen much and were surprised by little, dressed in a spotless fustian gown and unimpeachably white wimple.

With the roofs of Fontevraud behind them, Juliana found herself retreating behind a wall of her own making. Mistress Hermine did not mind. She settled herself among the pillows, trunks, and trundles, pulled out her spindle, and set about distracting Juliana. Hermine told that she had been nurse to the Countess de Nevers’s daughter, Valentine, that she had delivered the girl into this world and seen her through her brief marriage, and that she had remained with the countess after Valentine had entered a cloister.

“My good lady told me that I was all she had of Valentine,” Hermine chattered over the drone of the wheels, “but she said that I would be more useful to you, my lady, knowing how you are, with no family to look after you, no woman’s ear to tell your troubles. So I said to myself, there is another poor lamb who needs old Hermine, and so here I am, as long as you need me, my lady.”

Hermine’s simple kindness hurt. Juliana lowered her head to Hermine’s lap and cried, from helplessness and fear and from the dreadful, crushing loneliness she had thought she would leave behind when she rejoined the world. Patting her young mistress’s shoulder, Hermine made soothing noises until there were no more tears left.

After three days of hiding in the cart, her stomach so knotted that she could hardly force down a mouthful, Juliana decided that she had to face her fears. Hermine urged her to drink some of her raisin wine, but the heavy, sweet taste did not appeal to Juliana. She would rather face Lasalle sober. If I don’t, she told herself as she climbed out of the cart one morning, I may as well take the veil. Still, she could not bring herself to approach Lasalle, and so she smiled tentatively at one of the servants and asked if there was a palfrey to be had.

The man bowed and called her Madame, and a few moments later a dappel-gray mare was brought by a friendly groom of about sixteen, who introduced the mare as Rosamond and himself as Donat. He told Juliana that he had given up the life of a student for far more exciting prospects in the service of my lord Lasalle.

As she listened to Donat, a tide of panic nearly overwhelmed her. Surely they were all looking at her, at her nun’s hair hidden under her wimple, her crooked nose, her gown whose lacing only emphasized her ungenerous figure, her propensity to stammer when anxious, and her conventual manner of lowering her eyes. Her distress must have been obvious to Donat, who assumed the solicitous attitude of an older brother. “Don’t mind these men, my lady; they are not as bad as that. Not even Kadolt, not with a platter of sausages in front of him.”

Juliana hid her smile behind her hand and was about to ask Donat about his adventures when a snorting sorrel rounsey bore down on them, foam from its bit spattering her gown. She jumped back to flatten herself against the cart wheel. The mud-splattered, ill-tempered rider sat back in the saddle, his hand to his hip.

She closed her fists against her skirts. Lasalle addressed Kadolt with more circumspection than he offered Juliana de Charnais. At first she had thought that his voice would be a disadvantage to someone commanding a potentially fractious force, but she soon discovered that he kept it low deliberately, to compel those around him to pay heed. Now he was using the same tactic on her.

There, he had said it, the truth of the words steeped in sarcasm. She had to hold her breath to keep back a scream. One did not challenge a man who held dominion over one’s life. She belonged to Guérin de Lasalle, along with the fishponds and the buttery. He knew it, and spurred his horse past her.

Juliana exhaled. To hide her mortification, she asked Paulette to accompany them, but the girl declined. Paulette was as sedate as her sister was brash, her figure rounding into a perfection of feminine loveliness, her skin without flaw, eyelashes demure, heavy braids of blond hair reaching to her waist. At fourteen, Paulette possessed a composure nothing seemed to disturb, born of resignation or natural passivity.

Oh Mary, how could she be these girls’ mother, adviser, and confidant, when she needed such herself? And there was something else that terrified her: The queen must have known that Juliana could not protect her wards from their guardian any more than she could protect herself. Juliana crossed herself. Thankfully, Lasalle did not pay attention to any of them, other than occasionally sending his squire, Aumary, to ascertain that they had not fallen out of the carts and drowned in the mud.

Aumary de Beaudricourt appeared to be about Donat’s age, with dark brown hair, a pleasing, somewhat melancholy face, and soft brown eyes. Although he had not yet reached his full height, he had begun to acquire the breadth of shoulder and leanness of haunch of his kind. He held his master in high esteem and tried to emulate his demeanor, but lost out to his natural gentleness and civility. Juliana noticed that Aumary did not mind inquiring about the welfare of the occupants of the carts, especially the one carrying Paulette and Mathea.

And so, with Donat accompanying them, Juliana and Mathea rode past strips of fields sprouted with winter grain, across dandelion-dotted meadows that reverberated with choirs of bees. Spring sun had transformed the world into a green-and-yellow blaze of tender leaves and bursts of pink apple blossoms. And sometimes, when Juliana looked about her, despite her fears and aching limbs, she felt joyfully happy.