XLVII

When I reached Breteuil next day, I found the place in turmoil. The two little girls had got themselves lost. People were scurrying about and Juliana was at her wits’ end.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded. ‘I suppose my father feasted you and made much of you and the Castellan let you ride his best horse and hit his dangling-iron, and a good time was had by all. Meanwhile, my daughters are missing and I am…’

She burst into tears and sank into my arms. Then she sprang rather sharply back.

‘Ooof,’ she said, ‘you smell worse than a jouster’s pommel.’

I had hardly had an opportunity to wash since I had been a guest of Castellan Harenc and the Duke, so I took her comment rather hard. And where had Juliana learned phrases like that?

‘Your father had me flung into his dungeons for two days,’ I told Juliana, ‘without any hope of getting out, and then he came and told me it was all a joke, but if I didn’t tell him what you are planning, he would put me back in the dungeon again forever. He can do that, can’t he? There’s no law against it.’

‘The bastard!’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Well, I was going to tell you what I’ve planned to do to my father, but now I won’t because you’ll pass it on next time they catch you.’

‘Maybe later?’

‘No.’

She was almost back to the old Juliana, I thought, yet it wasn’t the same; perhaps it was too soon.

‘What about the girls? Where are they?’ I asked.

‘They love playing hide and seek – and they are getting too good at it. This time, we’ve really lost them. I’m sure they’re all right, but we can’t find them. They love it when we lose them.’

I now saw the point of the girls’ determination to explore the castle by touch. They knew the place inside out. They knew something we didn’t.

‘I’ll find them,’ I said. ‘But first I’d better wash.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘First find the girls, then wash, and then you can claim the reward.’

‘What is the reward?’

‘Better wait and see. It has the pages very excited.’

She wore a gown in the new fashion that showed her ankles. It had been preached against in Paris, apparently. I took it as a sign that she might be recovering her spirit after the last few dreadful weeks, and I could even imagine tasting the joys again that had been so long withheld. I am afraid lust is no respecter of sorrow; indeed it is sometimes inflamed by it.

Anyway, first I had to find Marie and Pippi. All the obvious places had been searched, but where would be the best place for those who judged by touch? Somewhere in the dark, of course! Now, where was the darkest place in the castle? Memories of my own childhood came back. My stepfather, the cellarer, looking for me, calling my name when I didn’t want to run an errand for him. The cellars! That’s where they would be hiding, in an alcove, behind a barrel where nobody but a child could find them.

And that, indeed, was where they were; concealed behind a hogshead of ’07 Burgundy, and a very good choice they had made – an excellent year with a burst of berry fruits tickled with a hint of wild strawberry on a bed of sun-dried apricot, fresh nectarine and prune. My stepfather in Mortagne always prided himself on his taster’s vocabulary.

‘In the dark, we are the ones with eyes,’ Marie told me gravely.

‘We are like moles,’ said Pippi. ‘With our little snouts.’

It made me weep to see them so brave. I returned them to their mother who was quite overcome, hugged them both and scolded them at the same time for giving us all a fright. She gave me a look of such gratitude which I interpreted as love so all I could see was stars. But it was just gratitude after all because when I went to her chamber afterwards and hoped that we might retire to the wardrobe, whose wafts of spice I would ever afterwards associate with the act of love, she gently deflected my passion and spoke only of her sorrow and despair.

So it was then, suddenly, in an upper room, with my member half erect as it touched the golden thread of her gown, that I realised that this phase of my life – the Juliana time – was over, and that all her thoughts and care must now be for her daughters. I could no longer dream of being part of her body or her life; I was simply not important enough. It was a horrible moment, I can tell you.

However, it took only a few more days for me to understand that there was something more. It was not only a mother’s feelings for her grievously wronged daughters that had robbed me of Juliana, but something of which I should have taken note before. It was her hatred of her father (and perhaps by implication all men) that burned brighter and fiercer as the days went by – it was this inferno that overwhelmed our love. Love, unlike obsession, depends on some kind of input. Without that balm, the wound made by Cupid’s arrow dries up or turns black. Perfect hate driveth out love. Now I could only stand aside and watch – easy to say but harder to do, because there are days when resolution turns to jelly.

It did not take long for Juliana’s war with her father to move into more dangerous territory. Henry was a brave man. He was not a natural soldier and took the field as a last resort, but he was only once defeated and that was in some minor Norman skirmish. He fought against recalcitrant barons and people like Amaury de Montfort who was half-mad and liked nothing more than stirring trouble. He fought against potentates like the Comte of Poitou, who had strategic interests in furthering their territories, but he had never fought against anyone who hated him so sincerely as his daughter. He was a hard man but a rational one. He found it hard to understand why anyone should so let their emotions rule their judgment. He considered it a weakness. But it was his weakness not to take it into account, and it would nearly cost him his life.