‘Why, Sir John,’ said Eleanor archly, ‘you don’t sound as if you approve. Last winter I swear I had frostbite in at least nine of my toes, and that in spite of sleeping in flannel so thick the Pope himself would have been impressed by my rectitude. Would you begrudge me what little comfort is left to my declining years?’
He smiled at that, but wouldn’t answer; and shortly afterwards the generator began to chuff and an element glowed brightly at the foot of Her Ladyship’s bed, frightening the wits out of a chambermaid who ran to the Serjeant of the Pantry with a tale that the stones themselves were burning, grinning at her with scarlet mouths.
The same day Eleanor received a visit from a Captain of the Guild of Signallers. They sent runners from the outer barbican and she changed hastily, receiving him in the Great Hall with her seneschal and several gentlemen of the castle in attendance. A man of such status commanded great respect in the old times and Eleanor loved the Guild with all her heart though they had never been and never would be subjects of hers. The respect was mutual; for who else, on the occasion of Robert’s fortieth birthday, would have been taken to the Semaphore and let to spell her father’s name with her own hands, on the levers only Guildsmen were allowed to move?
The Captain came in stolidly, a grizzled man in worn green leather with the silver brassard and crossed lanyards of his rank displayed in place. His eyes took in the electric light with which the place was flooded, but he made no comment. He came straight to the point, speaking bluntly as was the way for the Guild; for when kings watched their semaphores as eagerly as commoners they had never found a use for fancy words.
‘My Lady,’ he said. ‘His Eminence the Archbishop of Londinium took horse today for Purbeck, bringing with him a force of some seventy men, hoping to take you unprepared and make you yield your hall and your demesnes to John.’
She went pale, but a red anger spot glowed on each cheek. ‘How can you know this, Captain?’ she asked coolly. ‘London is well over a day away, and the towers have been quiet. Had it been reported, I would have been told.’
He shifted his feet where he stood with legs apart on the carpeting of the dais. ‘The Guild fears no man,’ he said finally. ‘Our messages are for all who can to read. But there are times, and this is one of them, when words are best not given to the grids. Then there are other, swifter means.’
There was a hush at that, for he meant necromancy; and that was not a subject to be lightly, bandied, even in the free air of Eleanor’s hall. The seneschal alone understood his meaning fully; and to him the Signaller bowed, recognising a knowledge greater and more ancient than his own. Eleanor caught the look that passed between them and shivered; then she recovered herself and tossed her head.
‘Well, Captain,’ she said, ‘our gratitude is deep. How deep, only you can know. If you have nothing to add to what you’ve told me, can I give you wine? My Hall would be honoured.’
He bowed again, accepting the gesture; and few enough there were who could have offered it, for the Guildsmen didn’t come often into the houses of the uninitiated, even the great of the land.
She roused out some two score of her liege-folk and armed them, and when His Eminence came in sight of Corfe towers the semaphores had already informed him of the state of things inside. He quartered his men in the village and came on with an escort of half a dozen, making a great show of the peacefulness of his intentions. They were conducted through the outer gate by a conspicuously well-armed guard and taken to the Great Hall, where they were told the Lady Eleanor would receive them. So she did; but not for over an hour, and the great man was fuming and striding the carpet well before that. She hung back in her room, seeing to the last details of her makeup and dress; she had previously sent for her seneschal and asked him to attend her.
‘Sir John,’ she said, adjusting a tiny coronet on her hair, ‘I’m afraid this is going to be a difficult meeting from every point of view. I don’t suppose for a moment Charles knows anything about all this, which makes His Eminence’s behaviour suspicious in the extreme; but I can hardly accuse an archbishop of attempted treason. Apart from that he’s obviously come to demand something I can’t give him, or rather something that I - ouch - that I refuse to for what seem to me to be excellent reasons. Yet he’s made such an exhibition of his quiet intentions that anything I say is bound to look churlish. I wish the King would stick up for himself a bit more; it’s all very well people calling him Charles the Good and pelting him with rose petals every time he rides through Londinium, but what it all comes down to is he’s very clever at sitting on the fence placating everybody. I’m getting so tired of strangers lording it over England, even if it is heresy to say so.’
The seneschal thought carefully before he spoke. ‘His Eminence is certainly a crafty talker if what I’ve heard is right,’ he said at length. ‘And it’s also true that you’re not in much of a position for bargaining. But I don’t think you can be too hard on Charles, my Lady; he’s got a difficult enough job keeping this mess of Angles and Scots and so-called Normans out of trouble and satisfying Rome at the same time.’
She looked at him very straight, sucking at her lower lip with her teeth. It was a trick he hadn’t seen for many years; her mother used to do it, when she was angry or upset. ‘If we fought, Sir John,’ she said, ‘if all of us just straightforwardly rebelled, what would our chances be?’
He spread his hands. ‘Against the Blue? The Blue is like the blue of Ocean, Lady; endlessly it runs, from here to China for all I know. Nobody fights the sea.’
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘you’re not much of a help…’
She angled her mirror, tweaked carefully at an eyebrow hair that had got itself out of line. ‘I don’t know at all,’ she said tiredly. ‘Give me a sick dog or a cat, or even Master Gwilliam’s old jalopy down there in the yard with its carburettor bunged up again, and I know where I stand; I’d have a go at putting things right even if I didn’t make much of a job of it. But churchmen, and high churchmen at that, put shivers up my back. Maybe they think with my father gone they can bully me easier than some of our great barons; but I’m certain now we’ve made our stand we shall have to keep to it or we shall finish up worse off than ever; they’re sure to impose some sort of fine for defying them in the first place.’
She rose, satisfied at last that her appearance couldn’t be bettered; but at the door of the chamber she balanced suddenly on one leg, spat on her fingers and dragged a stocking seam straight. She looked up at the seneschal, with his fair round head and the odd features that looked now just as they had looked when she was a child. ‘Sir John,’ she said softly. ‘You who see all and say so very little… would my father have behaved like this?’
He waited. Then, ‘He would; were his people involved, and his own good name.’
‘Then you will follow me?’
‘I was your father’s man,’ he said. ‘And I am yours, my Lady.’
She shivered. ‘Sir John,’ she said, ‘keep very close…’ She ducked under the lintel and clittered down the steps to meet the delegation.
His Eminence was friendly, to a point jovial; until it came to the matter of the unpaid tribute. ‘You must realise my child,’ said Londinium roundly, taking a turn up the hall and back, ‘Pope John, your spiritual father and the ruler of the known world, isn’t a man you can dismiss so readily or whose favours or displeasure can be taken lightly. Now I…’