V

After my meeting with Juliana, Comtesse de Breteuil, by the curtain wall, I lived in a ferment of anxiety to see her again. My experience of women might have been slim, but instinct is everything, and sometimes you know that you have met the right person, one of the people in the world who carries a special secret only you can understand.

The feasting at the castle went on for days during which I glimpsed her several more times. I even spoke to her when I happened to brush past her in hall, formally and with a low voice as befitted my station, but there was no opportunity to rekindle the candour of our conversation by the castle wall. Perhaps it was best forgotten. There were many cautionary tales concerning young men who entertained thoughts of love towards high-born women, and they all ended disastrously.

Once Easter was over, the cellarman (my stepfather) began with all his customary charmlessness to instruct me in the mysteries of the wine trade which, I have to say, he knew backwards: the different types of wine, the best way to store the barrels, how to tell a bad wine from a good one (my untutored taste was for the sweeter wines like Malvasia), how long to keep a good one, what kind of bottle to use, how to veil flavour and add taste with herbs and how to mask a bad wine with spices, how much to pay and when to buy, how to account for every drop of wine drunk in the castle …

I liked wine but found little opportunity to drink much of it. Small instructive sips were all the old red-nose would allow. He guarded his barrels jealously, sometimes even sleeping down in the fragrant vaults. I think it was because of this tendency that the Comte was able to steal into the nuptial bed.

I have to confess that my stepfather was a sound teacher. If I had had six months of his tuition instead of several weeks I would have been able to take his place when he journeyed in October to the vineyards of Anjou – and give a good account of myself with my tally of wine out and in when he returned. I had already devised a way of using the Arabic numbers that was far quicker than the cumbersome method the old man used. In his tight-fisted and begrudging way he was almost grateful for my work, but I was careful to copy everything I wrote into the old tally system of notches on a stick. I was not going to give up my secret numbers and my nought yet.

However, my future in the wine trade was not to be. I was crossing the castle bailey one day, a couple of weeks after Easter, feeling sorry for myself because the excitements were over, the mood in the castle was flat, and I was in love. The Prince had already returned to his father, and the Comtesse Juliana and her husband had gone back to the castle of Breteuil. I was crossing, as I say, like a lovesick lamprey, when I felt a terrific blow between the shoulders. I staggered and nearly dropped the small firkin I was carrying. Brother Paul had taught me that it is dangerous to strike in that place unless it is in battle, for it can incapacitate a man.

‘Ha!’

It was my father, the Comte, smiling like an alchemist’s crocodile.

‘What are you doing carrying wine, boy?’

‘Helping the cellarer, sir.’

‘Is this what we educated you for? Did you learn Latin to carry wine?’

‘No, sir.’

‘My wife’s sister, the Comtesse de Breteuil, wants you to tutor her two girls. Is that rather more your métier, do you think?’

My heart leapt, this was the summit of all my wishes, something I had not even dared hope for, but I had to be careful not to show excitement or gratification. These things were so easily stamped upon.

‘I should think so, sir.’

I adjusted my face to resignation. A thought had struck me.

‘Sir?’

‘Try not to waste my time. I have a great deal on my mind.’

All he had on his mind was humping one of the laundrywomen – sturdy girls like the one who was William the Conqueror’s mother. Word was that my father’s Comtesse wouldn’t have him near the bedroom.

The favourite pastimes for a baron like my father were whoring, hunting and soldiering. Father enjoyed the hunt but wasn’t much of a one for soldiering, although occasionally he had to send a few knights with some Percheron cavalry to march with Duke Henry for his various struggles. The Duke was always struggling with someone – the King of France, for instance – and on the whole he seemed to win. Then again, at other times, he seemed to lose. He had friends and, then again, he had many enemies (including his brother, the previous Duke, a hopeless case, whom he had fought and imprisoned for life).

I became aware that my father was waiting for me to say something.

‘Your wife’s sister, sir?’ I asked, feigning stupidity.

‘The Comtesse de Breteuil. Try not to be as simple as you look. She met you and formed a good impression of you, God knows how, when she was here for the Prince’s feast. She is the Comtesse de Breteuil. Saddle up. Take a horse but not one of the big ones. That nag you brought from the abbey will do. Pack some decent clothes if you have any, and take the road to Verneuil and then on to Breteuil itself. Play it right and you may come back a better man.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘Don’t disappoint me now. She is not to be crossed.’

I was beside myself with joy. The beautiful Comtesse had asked for me. Of course, I was young in those days and easily excited. My arrogance at that time still takes my breath away.

‘I will do my best not to cross her, my lord. Nothing shall stand in the way.’

His face softened momentarily. Perhaps he was remembering my mother. Anyway, he threw me a purse with some silver in it.

‘Don’t spend it all on women, boy. It was your father’s little weakness, but he could afford it.’

It was the first time he had ever referred to his paternity, and I was too surprised to speak, but before I could recover myself he had turned and was gone.

Before I left, I looked for the pretty Comtesse, my stepmother, to say goodbye to her out of courtesy, but she could not be found. Probably she was hiding in a quiet corner of the castle, not easy to locate, thinking about her prince. I had always found the cheese-house another good place for a quiet cuddle, but it was scullion’s stuff and not suitable for the king’s daughter, although I did look in there too because I thought Matilde might have a message for her sister Juliana.

Juliana. A lovely name, don’t you think? A lady’s name. One not to be trifled with and smacking of Imperial Rome, about which I had learned at the monastery. Brother Paul had managed to find copies of Ovid and Virgil and even Horace and Livy in the library. And Sallust’s History of Rome, mustn’t forget Sallust, he said, and Suetonius. I had steeped myself in the grandeur of the eternal city and the foibles of its inhabitants. There was nothing they could not teach us about treachery, brutality, glory, honour and the game of love.

When I told the cellarer, my stepfather, of the Comte’s command, though he could not very well argue with it, he was considerably put out. I did not explain that, ever since I had come back to the castle, I had been intent on leaving it again. A world was out there full of new things, new ideas coming up from the Pays d’Oc, things I wanted to see. Now, though I would actually be going twenty miles to the north-east, it was a start; anywhere away from Mortagne seemed like a gate to the south.

As I was saddling up Blackberry, my little black nag – who greeted me with a whicker and a wag of the head as if to say ‘What? More trouble?’ – two people in succession came to see me off. The first was my half-brother Robert, who suggested that I had been sent away because no one wanted me around.

‘Be sure not to come back too soon, if at all,’ he said, and slunk off towards the kitchen (where they would give him cakes because he was the lord’s son) before I could kick his arse.

The second was the Comtesse Matilda with one of her maids, who was instructed to stand a little apart from us.

‘You are going to Breteuil?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Tell my sister, the Comtesse, how much I miss her. I feel quite dead without my family. Will you tell her that? She will understand.’

I understood, too, having seen something of her particular involvement with her family. I felt a little mouse of sympathy, scuttling away somewhere at the back of my mind, for my oaf of a father who could not know about her unsisterly interest in the prince. She held out her hand, and I kissed it.

Every window in the castle seemed to have someone watching as I pricked out on Blackberry towards the gatehouse and the road to adventure …