He tried to barter with her then, or beg his life; but she stared at him as if he spoke an unknown tongue. ‘Ask mercy of the wind,’ she said, almost wonderingly. ‘Beg to the rocks, or the great waves of the sea. Don’t come and whine to me…’ She turned aside to the seneschal. ‘Hang them,’ she said. ‘For treason, and for murder…’
‘My Lady-’
She screamed at him suddenly, stamping on the ground. ‘Hang them…’
Beside her a soldier sat a restless horse; she grabbed his jerkin and pulled, nearly tumbling him from the saddle. She was mounted and away before a hand could be raised, riding furiously across the heath, beating the neck of the animal with her fist. The seneschal followed her, leaving, the prisoners to their fate. She reined a mile from the castle, dropped to the ground, and ran to a knoll from where she could see her home spread out before her, the baileys and towers and the flanking hills clear in the bright air. She gripped the stirrup of the seneschal as he rode alongside, fingers twisting the stiff leather. If he’d hoped the wild ride would calm her he was disappointed. She was nearly too angry to speak; the syllables jerked out from her like the cracking of sheets of glass.
‘Sir John,’ she said, ‘before our people came, and took this land with blood at Santlache Field, that place was called a Gate. Is this not true?’
He said heavily, ‘Yes, my Lady.’
‘Why then,’ she said, ‘let it be so again. Go to my tenants in the Great Plain, and north as far as Sarum Town. Go west to Durnovaria, and east to the village on the Bourne. Tell them…’ She choked and steadied herself. ‘Tell them, they pay no tithes to Purbeck but in arms. Tell them that Gate is closed, and Eleanor holds the key…’
She tore at the seal on her finger. ‘Take my ring, and go…’
He gripped her shoulder and turned her, staring into her wild eyes. ‘Lady,’ he said deliberately, ‘this is war…’
She knocked his hand away, panting for breath. ‘Will you go,’ she fumed, ‘or shall I send another?…’
He said nothing else but touched heels to his horse and turned it; galloped north, trailing dust, along the Wareham Road. She mounted again and rode yelling into the valley, scattering the little chugging cars, sending them batwinging into the hedges; and though her soldiers raked their horses bloody, none could match her speed.
Messages were despatched at once to Charles in Londinium, but all the semaphores brought back was the news that the King had already sailed for the Americas. Sir Anthony’s stroke had been well timed; for though there were rumours the Guild could even get a message to the New World, by means no one could guess at, there was no known way of contacting a ship at sea. Meanwhile the Provost Marshall’s supporters were rampaging round the capital threatening death, destruction, and worse while Henry of Rye and Deal, under direct instructions from Rome, was hastily assembling his force. What Eleanor had predicted had to a large extent come true; all sorts of dogs were yapping in the absence of the King. The fact that the quarrel had originally come about as a result of what was now generally admitted to be an administrative error made the situation even more ironic.
Her Ladyship faced many problems down in Dorset. She could levy men from the districts round about, the commoners would flock to her banner soon enough; but a standing army must be fed and clothed and armed. For days the rage sustained her while she worked with her captains and house people drawing up the lists of what she would need. Money was clearly the first essential; and for that she rode north, to Durnovaria. What passed between her and her aged grandfather was never known; but for a solid week the crimson-dressed steamers toiled down to Corfe Gate, hauling in produce free. Flour and grain they brought and livestock, salted meat and preserves, shot and powder and wads and musket balls, rope and slow match, oil and kerosene and tar; chain hoists rumbled all night long, derricks powered by panting donkey engines swung load after load high into the keep. Eleanor had no idea what support might be forthcoming from the rest of the country and planned for the worst, packing her baileys with men and supplies. That was how Henry came to find the place so well prepared, and in such a lethal temper.
Eleanor called the seneschal to her room on the evening following the massacre. She was deadly pale, her eyes ringed with dark shadows; she waved him to a chair, sat awhile staring into the firelight and leaping shadows.
‘Well, Sir John,’ she said finally, ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking up a glorious phrase for the… thing that happened this morning. This is it. "I’ve blown a Roman gadfly off my walls." Don’t you think that’s very good?’
He didn’t answer, and she laughed and coughed.
‘It doesn’t help of course,’ she said. ‘All I can see still are those creatures in the ditch, and writhing on the path. Somehow beside that nothing else seems real. Not any more.’
He waited again, knowing there was no help in words.
‘I’ve expelled Father Sebastian,’ she said. ‘He told me there was no forgiving what I’d done, not if I walked barefoot to Rome itself. I told him he’d better leave; if there was no forgiveness he couldn’t be a comfort and he was only putting himself in mortal sin by staying I said I knew I was damned because I’d damned myself. I didn’t have to wait for any god to do it for me. That was the worst of all of course; I only said it to hurt him but I realised afterwards I meant it anyhow, I just wasn’t a Christian any more. I said if necessary I’d raise up a few old gods, Thunor and Wo-Tan perhaps or Balder instead of Christ; for he told me himself many years ago when I was still taking lessons at his knee that Balder was only an older form of Jesus and that there have been many bleeding gods.’
She poured wine for herself, unsteadily. ‘And then I spent the rest of the afternoon getting drunk. Or trying to. Aren’t you disgusted?’
He shook his head. He’d never criticised her, not in all her life: and this wasn’t the time to start.
She laughed again, and rubbed her face. ‘I need… something.’ she said. ‘Maybe punishment. If I ordered you to fetch a whip and beat me till I bled, would you do it?’ He shook his head, lips pursed.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t, would you… Anything else, but you wouldn’t have me hurt. I feel I want to… scream, or be sick, or something. Maybe both. John, when I’m excommunicated, what will our people do?’
He’d already considered his answer carefully. ‘Disavow Rome,’ he said. ‘It’s gone too far now for anybody to turn back. You’ll see that, my Lady.’
‘And the Pope?’
He thought again for a moment. ‘He’ll certainly act,’ he said, ‘and that quickly; but I can’t see him ferrying an army all the way from Italy just to put down one strongpoint. What he’s almost bound to do is instruct his people in Londinium to march against us in force; and I think too we’ll be seeing some of the Seigneurs from the Loire and the Low Countries coming over to see what they can pick up in the confusion. They’ve been wanting to stake out a few claims on English soil for years enough now, and they’ll certainly never get a better chance.’
‘I see,’ she said wearily. ‘What it comes down to is I’ve made a complete mess of things; with Charles out of the way as well I’ve played right into their hands. They’ll be flocking into England, with the Church’s full blessing, to put down armed revolt. What the end of that will be I just can’t imagine.’