He spread his hands. ‘I’m merely a messenger and an advisor. What you say to me or I to you may be of no account. But once a word travels beyond these walls, and that it must if my duty’s to be done, then you and all your people will suffer; for John will crack this little place like an egg. His will must be obeyed, all over the world.’
He walked back to Eleanor. ‘You’re very young,’ he said genially, ‘and I can’t help feeling towards you perhaps as your father might, if he were alive to counsel you.’ His fingers lingered on her arm; and Eleanor, perhaps from sheer nervousness, raised an eyebrow. Under the circumstances, it was an unfortunate gesture. His Eminence reddened and constrained his temper with an effort.
‘Find this tribute,’ he said. ‘Levy it somehow, make it up any way you choose; but get it, and send it. Do it inside the week and you can still catch the last of the ships for France. But if you delay and the weather worsens, if your merchantmen are lost or stray into out-of-the-way ports with your grain, then with the spring I promise you John will reach out to punish. And rightly too, for the half of all you own belongs to him. You hold your place, as you know very well, by his good will alone.’
‘I hold my place,’ said Eleanor icily, ‘by the favour of my liege-lord Charles; and that you know, My Lord, as well as I. My father promised loyalty at his knee, kissing his hand according to the ancient way. I too, until I am released, will follow him. And no other, sir…’
There was a quietness, in which the clacking of the Challow tower could be clearly heard. Londinium seemed to swell, puffing himself up beneath his fur-trimmed robes much in the manner of a frog. ‘Your liege-lord,’ he said, and he obviously found it hard to keep from shouting, ‘has ordered you to send that grain. So you flout both Pope and King…’
‘I cannot send what I do not own,’ said Eleanor patiently. ‘What grain I do have to spare must be released to my people, or there will be famine in the land by Christmas. What will John have, a countryside of corpses to testify his strength?’
The churchman glared, but would say no more; and she withdrew, leaving affairs thus unhappily in the balance.
Matters came to a head in the evening, when dinner was prepared for the delegation in the Great Hall. The place was made cheerful by the light of many lamps and candles, and servants stood by with bundles of spares beneath their arms to replace the dips as they burned down in the sconces. Her Ladyship would have used the electric light, but at the last moment the seneschal had prevailed against such rashness; His Eminence would never have sat at meat beneath such open evidence of heresy. The exhausted globes with their delicate filaments of carbon had been withdrawn into the roof, the wall switches were hidden by drapes, and there was no visible sign of Eleanor’s disaffection. She sat on the dais, in the chair her father used to occupy; the seneschal was on her right, her Captain of Artillery to her left. Opposite her were the churchmen and such of the military as had been allowed inside the gates.
All went well until His Eminence touched sympathetically on the early death of Her Ladyship’s mother. The Captain choked and converted the sound hastily into a cough; all the household knew that that was Eleanor’s sorest point. She had drunk more than was good for her, again out of nervousness; and she rose instantly to the bait.
‘This, My Lord, is very interesting,’ she said. ‘For had a surgeon been allowed to help my mother, perhaps she would still be with us now. I’ve read you Romans were once more daring than you are now; for the great Caesar himself was born by cutting his mother’s womb, yet now you deem the trick heinous to God -’
‘My Lady -’
‘Also I have heard,’ said Eleanor, hiccupping slightly, ‘that airs may be distilled, the breathing of which quietens the body and the brain, so that one awakes from a mighty pain as from a sleep; yet Pope Paul I think it was disowned them, saying the pain was sent from God to be a reminder of sacred duty here on earth. Also that acids sprayed into the air will kill the very essence of disease; yet doctors work on us with unwashed hands. Are we to learn from this, it is better to die of holiness than live in heresy?’
His Eminence rose bridling. ‘Heresy,’ he began, ‘exists in many forms in each and every one of us; in you, my Lady, perhaps most of all. And were it not for the charity of Pope John -’
‘Charity?’ interrupted Eleanor bitterly. ‘Your duty here is scarce concerned with that. It seems to me, My Lord, the Church is fast forgetting the meaning of the word; for I would rather sell the drapes out of my house, were I Pope John, than starve my subjects in a foreign isle, unlettered idiots though they well might be.’
Londinium of course could scarcely be expected to stomach such a double-barrelled insult; as well as a direct attack upon his ruler and the Church it was a slight against his own person as one of the very idiots to whom Eleanor had likened the English. He banged the table, red in the face with rage; but before his harangue was well enough started the household’s Signaller-Page ran in with his pad, tore off the top sheet and handed it to his mistress. She stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, lips forming the words it bore; then she passed it to the seneschal.
‘My Lord,’ she said, ‘you must be seated, and spare your breath awhile. This message just arrived; I want it read to everybody in the hall.’
The archbishop’s eyes went automatically to the windows, curtained against the night; he knew as well as the others present that only matters of the greatest importance would induce the Guild to light torches on its signal arms.
The seneschal rose, bowing slightly to the dignitaries. ‘My Lords,’ he said, ‘as earnest of his support for us here in the West, Charles today despatched tribute doubling the amount we owe to Rome. Moreover he confirms the Lady Eleanor in her governorship of the isle and its demesnes; and in further witness of his trust in her sends to Corfe from his arsenal at Woolwich the great gun Growler in company of a platoon of his own men. Also from Isca the culverin Prince of Peace; the demicannon Loyalty, and shot and powder for him -’
The words were lost in an outbreak of applause from the lower tables; men shouted and banged their cups and glasses on the wood. The seneschal raised his hand. ‘Also,’ he said, eyes twinkling, ‘His Majesty requests His Eminence of Londinium, wherever he might be, to attend him at his earliest convenience to confer on matters of State.’
The archbishop opened his mouth and closed it abruptly again. Eleanor leaned back wiping her face and feeling reprieved from death. ‘He did know,’ she whispered to the seneschal under cover of the din. ‘And look, we’ve made him stand. Who knows, perhaps the next time he will fight…’
Two of the guns duly arrived; but the demicannon fell into a marsh while making the crossing into the island and the best efforts of the soldiers failed to lift it, giving rise in later times to the saying that Loyalty was lost east of Luckford Lakes.
After the guns arrived Eleanor breathed easier for a time; for though the armament was little more than a token its effect on the spirits of the household was considerable. Also the castle was recognised to be one of the most impregnable in the country; Her Ladyship spoke of that one cold evening a month after the discomfiture of the churchmen. She was pacing the second bailey, muffled in a cloak against the chilling wind from the sea; she paused by Growler, still limbered up as they had brought him in, and ran her fingers along the rough iron of his breech. Her seneschal stopped at her elbow.