The Archer's Lady

We were riding through a pinewood forest, the canopy of which shaded us from the warmth early in the after noon sun. Although it was not exactly cold, it was quite cool and darker than the open road. The pine needles underfoot muffle the sounds of iron shoes on stone road. It occurs to me that it could be very dark through here when we return in the early evening, providing some incentive for us to leave as early as possible or decency allows us to take leave of a powerful host. The servant accompanying us has gone on ahead 200 paces while Lady Elinor and I had exchanged conversations, giving us our privacy as servants ever must allow. The pine woods remind me of my father's speaking of the great Scotch pines which thickly cover the moors and hills in the North.

"You are very quiet, Robin, has my counting up of my fluidity in tongues stunned ye once more into one of your long silences?"

"Nay, Madam, I was only thinking of where I might seek to travel after the coming winter and I had a sudden fancy to ply my wares in the North, maybe as far as the Kingdom of Alba in Scotland, maybe even beyond in the wild Highlands."

"I fear you will find few and poor archery tourneys in the North, Robin, the population is still harrowed from the wilds of the North and with all the sheep they have sitting upon their front doors they have little need of a bow for hunting!"

"Perhaps you are right." I smile at the thought of flocks queueing up for skinning and quartering for the cookpot, "It was but an idle thought."

"My mother could have told ye that the Scots prefer to fight face to face with sword and sgian dubh."

"Aye, no doubt she would have, had I asked."

"So, what did you ask of my mother upon your visit?"

"You mean when I visited her this spring?"

"Aye, exactly then, when you gave her solace as she waited to pass from this earth while I could not be traced anywhere to be summoned to her deathbed."

"Nothing," I reply, "I asked for nothing but her company and pay my respects as I tarried between tourneys, as I was half a week early for the one held at Biggleswade. The timing of my call so close to her end was naught but one of chance."

"So why call on my mother, you met only the once afore and Pitstone is a quiet village and well away from the busiest roads and ways."

"I was nearby and wanted to pay my respects to the good lady, even though we were of the briefest of acquaintance. I felt honour bound to call upon her as I was passing quite close and scarce knew when I would ever pass her way again. And by good fortune I was able to comfort her in her days of fever which racked her so severely that we both feared for her life."

"So, Robin," she smiles, "my mother had made an impression upon you, even though she was in Oaklea but a day or two some four years since?"

"Your mother is a noble gentlewoman, full of interesting counsel and a charming person too." I reply, "It was no onerous duty, such as our present trip."

"So you enjoyed your brief sojourn with Lady Pitstone despite her illness?"

"Aye, I did and glad I was to see her recover her spirits so well even if my visit was a once and only time. She reminded me much of my sister, the Lady Alwen. Your mother is an honest and steadfast woman, who stood up for her rights as a proud and chaste widow against a King who wished to pursue his favours and, through showing her mettle, won a King's respect and heart, no small feat, especially with a king who is as irresistible a force as we ken your father to be. She had long earned my respect, and she's a person I feel privileged to have known and glad I had been of some small service in comfort while she was alone and at her lowest ebb."

"And so you grew to like my mother, as a person during your reacquaintance?"

"Aye, I did."

"She liked you, too. She had told me several times even before last Spring that you and your father are the finest men she had met and that was before she knew you had just been knighted in the Noble Order of the Black Knights."

"I know not what to say." I reply. I should have known that there be no secrets between father and daughter, especially when the daughter is nosier than the Queen of All Cats.

"It is an honour to be invited to join such a select order, your King's personal knights, Robin. You should be proud and display your new coat of arms to your family at least. I thought you had no secrets from them?"

"It is not a secret, Lady Elinor, it is only that I haven't yet found the words to tell them."

"Why is it hard to tell them such good news of your honour?"

"Because ... because I feel as unlike any knight as I can be. My father owns that he is a reluctant knight, but he is a natural leader, whose considered decisions make sense and those in his charge follow his commands because they know he is right and are certain that they have a better purpose and tread a safer path with him than without."

"You are younger and less experienced than your father, Robin, true, but among your peers you stand out well enough and the experience you lack will follow in time," the Lady comments, "So why did you tell my mother of your elevation to knighthood?"

"So you have heard of my confession to your mother? She said she saw little of you beyond once a twelve-month and despaired of living long enough to see any grandchildren through her only daughter."

"I found out she had been so ill and close to her deathbed but three weeks ago when I visited her and also heard that you made sure she didn't suffer her illness alone. She is almost fully well now and just as stubborn as ever! She would tell me nothing of your visit other than that you came when she needed you and without you she would have slipped away forgotten and unnoticed. She was ever so dramatic in her exchanges with me! A servant told me that she overheard you tell Mother of your knighthood and I confronted my father by letter, who had also told me naught of it until I took my father to task. It took me from then unto the London tourney to follow your tracks and catch up with you."

"So your mother had not passed when you saw her?"

"No, she pretended to feint away, knowing if she lingered any longer you would miss your next tourney. Then after you left she said she felt better. When I saw her she was as hearty as ever she was and spoke much of you and what she thought of you with deep affection. I then resolved to find you."

"Well, you found me, my Lady, and I am here adoing thy bidding once more as if we are but children again. It is as if the last near four years have melted away as if they had never existed and I am once again your,obedient servant to drag from place to place with little comprehension of my real purpose hither or thither."

"You were already strayed far from your home county, first Buckinghamshire, then London City, so my bidding you to follow me as errand knight to stranger climes shouldn't disturb your balance too much, I hope ... Sir Robert of Oaklea."

"Don't call me that, I beseech you, Lady, it has such a hollow sound to my ears." I stop myself from saying that even from lips well practised in turning lies to truth, my elevation above the common esquire still rings false to me.

"I will call you knight, then, only when we are together alone on this journey of ours," she smiles. "One which, it appears, may reach its terminalia at my father's palace in Rouen."

"If so, then with a fair wind our course has but a few more days to run, my Lady, with my first and probably only visit to Henry's Court in Rouen."

"It will not be my first visit there. My first was memorable in meeting the Queen Matilda, my dear Aunt Edith, who became a second mother to me. I missed her final days, I was in the Dutch lowlands when I received news of her sudden death."

"You must be constant on the move. I am sure all my journeys, planned by me or following at your behest, pale into morning mist compared to your constant movements."

"Sometimes, I wish I could just settle into a quiet comfortable home to call my own, like Sir William and Lady Alwen," she muses, "Do you still live with your parents?"

"No, I have taken a room at the inn, Alwen's old quarters, once upon a time the room of my birth mother, Alwen's mother, it is more convenient for my workshop and they look after me well enough there. When I am travelling, they can let the room out to visitors if they are busy."

"I sometimes forget how complicated your family life should be in your relationships but you live so comfortable within. If only mine fit me like a glove too... So, do they get busy at your inn?"

"Aye, all the time," I smile from the memory, "l oft find I have to fetch my wardrobe on a well trod path from the lofts upon my return at the end of summer. A wearisome occupation that I have to bear for my otherwise general convenience. But you mentioned on our ride through East London and Marsh Wall that you had taken a trip to Scotland on a mission for your father, the King?"

"Aye. I did..." she falls silent as if reluctant to explain. Perhaps, I think, this was the root of her quarrel with the King?

All I can hear is the muffled clip clops of the horses' iron-shod feet upon the loose pine needles over the smooth roadstone. I give the Lady leave to her thoughts; I know not what her thoughts are working through, perhaps her task was too secret for a humble archer like me to comprehend. The servant continues to ride ahead of us. She turns her lovely head to mine.

"My mission to Scotland and the seat of the Kingdom of Alba at Dunfermline, was to arrange a possible marriage between a prince of Scotland, King David's only son, and a ... princess of England."

"That makes sense," say I, "your sister Matilda is young and would therefore one day be a Queen again, uniting the thrones of England and Scotland under a strong King and Queen, along with the Principality of Wales would mean the borders of a Kingdom such United would only be the sea that is all around us."

"My sister Maudie has turned my father down of all opportunities of marriage, Robin. She still has her eye on being Queen of Italy as the succession, brought about by the sudden death at such a young age of the Holy Roman Emperor, with no heir in place. She does not want to rule herself out as she could be Empress again about whom, many could rally, popular she be among the Italians, she says."

"Aye, that could also be a strong possibility. So who is the other princess that your father had in mind ...?"

"Me. My father fully intended annulling my marriage and making me a belated princess at last by declaring in Court the legality of my birth under English Common Law, a contract signed and sealed by his own hand long before my conception and birth, and then marrying me to Prince Henry of the Kingdom of Alba."

"But he is what, about nine years old?"

"Ten. He cannot legally marry under the laws of Scotland until he be 14. Matilda would have baulked at the very idea of marrying such a boy twelve or thirteen years our junior, but the King is desperate for an heir to both the throne of England and the Duchy of Normandy. He is already in his late fifties and four years of marriage has brought forth no fruit at all, despite their constant bedchamber efforts. He fears the end of the House of the Conqueror."

"But a betrothal followed by marriage to a boy of ten now, means that you will be in your mid-thirties by the time an heir could be born, putting Henry into his mid-sixties at the birth, and mid-eighties by the time the heir could reign in his own right. Henry is a very fit man for his age but no man even if he live that long could hold off all challenges to this kingdom without a fit heir to fight his battles."

"Aye, Robin, true. But aside from your misgivings, do you have no comment regarding my part in this proposed fabrication of royal heirs?"

"Naught but sympathy for your broken heart, Lady Elinor, if that is what it comes to," I say carefully, "honour and duty have dues to be paid, with a King's influence upon the Archbishops some reason of annulment can, I'm sure, be found or cleverly created to settle your fate, of that I have little doubt. While I have an open mind about our creation and recognise that heathens and Christians all seem to muddle along on their own well enough, whether they have a church to attend or not, the solutions for a King without an heir are simple, he must choose an heir from within his family who will find acceptance among the barons and earls who hold the power to protect or reject them ... and we all know who that be."

"Aye. His nephew and my cousin William Cato. You know by now that he was responsible for the revolt that led to the deaths in Oaklea near four years ago?"

"Aye, that was the conclusion we reached at the time. But he is the next highest ranking prince in the royal family, the grandson of the Conqueror, and he has the quiet support of many barons who consider Henry's treatment of his brother Robert was unjust."

"My Uncle Robert is mad, Robin, he can never be set free as it is his mind that is in chains of his illness. My father does not want his ... affliction ... his madness ... generally known."

"Yet you tell me, my Lady."

"If you can keep your new knighthood from all who know you, who are closest to you or otherwise, I think you can be trusted with this information, known only to the family and a few trusted servants. My uncle Robert doesn't recognise anyone he once knew at all anymore, his mind has gone and he was already going mad when my father captured him years ago. My father believes that the defeat finally tipped him over the top into absolute lunacy. He is being cared for and is safe from harm, even self harm as he has tried to throw himself from the battlements at Pevensey Castle several times. If Robert was ever released, he would be used as a puppet for as long as he was useful to a cause, even if it is that of his son's, and then murdered as soon his brief utility was used up. And my father cannot warm to Robert's son William Clito, he is a narcissist and unable to keep his own counsel. We all believe he would make a very bad King."

She pauses for a moment, her horse slowed almost to a stop. Looking behind us she sees no-one upon this lonely forest road, in fact we have passed few people on this road. Ahead, the servant rides on oblivious, now some 300 paces ahead.

"So, what do you really think about my marriage to Gervaise being annulled, Robin?"

Oh, damnation! What do I say here? What are my true feelings? Well, on the one hand it hardly matters whether she stays married to Gervaise or marries another mate not of her choosing in order to breed a future king. If she is freed from her vowels to marry someone of King Henry's choice, maybe this Prince Henry of the Clan Malcolm, son of King David, although Elinor is Henry's child through a Scottish Lady, first married to a mercenary soldier, there can be no close sanguinity to bar her from the match; England may be well fit by such a marriage in the long term, if the Scottish throne were not so full of murderous cousins who want to be king. David is a strong leader, who may well have claims himself upon the English throne, should the Norman royal line die out with Henry. I know from talks with my father that David feels the old English Dukedom of Northumberland should be brought back into the Scottish nation.

If, after her marriage is annulled, and I know not what grounds could be found after a marriage of ten years or more, only if she was free in choosing her next mate, would there be any hint of hope for my chances. Even then, I am sure that I would be her very last choice for a noblewoman used to fine clothing and an income equal to a Count's. I would have the slimmest of chances, but to me she is the only woman I would wish to marry and she holds my heart in her soft hands. But she has never declared any affection for me, other than my usefulness in doing her bidding in the name of chivalry. So, where do the Lady's wishes herself lie?

"Before I give my opinion on such a momentous act of disunion as annulment of a marriage, would I be permitted to know the grounds, whether they be rightful in law or at the whim of a powerful King for the convenience of none but he?"

By now we fully stop in the middle of the road, and from the corner of my eye I see that the servant has taken notice that we are stopped and turns his horse around and starts his horse cantering slowly back towards us. I imagine he thinks one of our horses has thrown a shoe.

"Of course, you should have all the information at hand, Robin, before you consider the options. I was only hoping to keep myself protected from exposure, but if I am to be honest with anyone, I should certain be honest with thee."

She pauses again, tapping her pommel with her fingertips as she thinks, while the servant draws nearer. I hold my hand out.

"Hold Valter, we are fine. We will be under way again in a couple of minutes."

The Lady smiles, and turns towards the uncomprehending servant, speaking to him in the half Dutch, half French Fleming tongue that they speak hereabouts. He grins and wheels his horse around and walks his horse back the way they came in the direction of the hunting lodge, which cannot now be far away. The Lady turns back to face me.

"Dear Robin, this is more private knowledge that you need to keep to yourself, I beg of you, but I think you have an enormous capacity to hold your counsel and be careful and wise about what you hear, say and do. Gervaise appears to be a man, a man among men, a warrior deceptively stronger beyond his short stature and affected manner. He is a practised heavy drinker and an astute user of people and is persuasive of tongue, oh so persuasive. But he is not a man who is comfortable within the private company of women, even one he has total power over as her legal husband. He is one who would not normally take a wife except when directed to take me when the King offered me to him, upon the recommendation of both the King's eldest daughter and the Holy Roman Emperor himself. Gervaise is more than twenty years older than I, Robin, and well set in his ways of bachelorhood longer than was comfortable even at the time of our wedding, if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean"

"I'm not sure..."

"Robin, the reason why my marriage can easily be annulled is because Gervaise has never found himself able to consummate our marriage in the traditional manner between husband and wife, in fact he gave up even trying within a week into our supposed nuptials as he feels unable to do so and is physically sick even when thinking about attempting to mate with a woman, not just me, but any woman."

"You have never?..." I find it hard to find words to say upon the matter of her ... intercourse with her husband. I am completely speechless.

"I have been married nearly eleven years, wed when I was but 12 years old. I met Gervaise at the German Court two years earlier but only as a casual acquaintance, he was one of many courtiers, I was never ever attracted to him. My father insisted that I accompany my sister Maudie as she went to marry the Emperor Henry and become the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. She is but four months older than I and had been betrothed to Henry V since she was but six years old. Our father thought we should go together as we would find more in common with each other than poor Maudie would find on her own or else fall prey to the bullying of Henry V's servants."

"That must've been daunting for two young girls."

"Maudie coped better than I, she is haughty and regal. She and I had known each other for about four years, had even shared the same bedchamber for the last two of those years and were receiving the same schooling in history of royal genealogy, geography of the world, mathematics, reading and writing, as well as poetry, singing, playing stringed instruments, needlework and art. Also, I had the trust and love of my dear Aunt Edith, Maudie's sweet mother."