Ann of Cambray Read Free

and whistling at the entrance. The castle guards straightened and saluted against the walls. Then stable serfs sprang to the horses’ heads; the commander of my father’s men swung himself stiffly out of the saddle; the commander of the watch at Sedgemont began to walk as stiffly and proudly towards him. I realised then that this was the end of the journey, begun in so much sadness and haste, out of darkness into light.
    The courtyard was large, twice as big, three times, as that at Cambray. The walls towered above us; I could not see the battlements, nor guess the size of the keep, whose wide stone steps ran down into the yard. But I took it all in, in gulps, as a child does who has been shut up too long, lurching across half a country. And for all its size, this was something I recognised, girl-child though I was—the heartland of a Norman castle, its working centre where its men are garrisoned, its blacksmiths and armourers hammer, where its serfs and peasants and animals bed down together. The acrid smell of the torches, the hiss of resin, the shouts and bustle of armed men, the snorting of horses and the clink of their harness—these were things I knew as well as any boy. They made me feel at home, and I remember even now how my heart gave a strange surge of expectation and fear. Curious and eager, I leaned out farther, half like to fall out altogether, to watch all that happened: the salute and greeting between the two captains, the slow tread of an elderly gentleman coming down the stairs from the Great Hall, the snapping to attention as he passed (surely that was the earl, I thought, knowing no better), the stir and excitement that our arrival had caused. I might have slipped right out in truth, for all Gwendyth’s tuggings, had not a young boy put out his hand to steady me, enabling Gwendyth to pull me back. I glared at them both.
    ‘Beg pardon, my lady.’ The boy backed in alarm, his clipped speech sounding strange to my ears, which was used to our softer western tongue.
    ‘Hist, hist, my lamb,’ said Gwendyth, hauling the curtains into place, trying to straighten my dishevelled hair, which hung red and lank with heat, and arranging my torn travelling robe. ‘Forbear now, hush now.’
    I paid no heed to her grumbles, and would have been out of the litter in a flash had she given me a chance, which she did not. It was light at the end of a long darkness, after confusion and death.
    ‘Let be,’ I cried to her in our native tongue. ‘Did you see their armour? Even the guards wear byrnies of mail. And did you see their surcoats and their shields? They have pictures onthem, gold and red, was it birds?’ Itried to break free again.
    'And their horses? They were bigger than ours, but not as good as my father’s greys . . . How big is the castle, think you? Is that the earl himself who comes to greet us?’
    ‘Lady Ann,’ she said, hushing me, although there was no one there who would have understood our Celtic speech, ‘we have not come all this way to go tumbling about in the mire with the common soldiers. Look you, how far we have come, cooped up like hens for market (the only word of complaint she let drop), ‘and weather to rot men’s bones, God save us. You can bide awhile longer in patience, as is becoming. For we are here to seek refuge with your new liege lord and suzerain, Lord Raoul; the old earl being dead, God save his soul. Nor would it be meet for your overlord to come to seek you out, he being a great lord, and you his vassal and ward. That will be his seneschal, or chief officer, that elderly knight upon the stairs. Lord Raoul, being young and unwed, is seldom here at Sedgemont. And you must remember now, Lady Ann, that we must speak as the others do, so all may understand us. And not run behind the men-at-arms and stable boys as permitted by your brother, God rest his soul. And that you are heiress to all the lands of your father in Cambray,