My uncle wipes the gravy from his mouth with a napkin.
‘Wales is a dangerous place. Many die violently. It’s impossible to bring all the perpetrators to justice.’
Afterwards, I’ll always wonder what that signified. Did my uncle connive in his own brother’s destruction? I could believe it. Wales is a dangerous place; many die violently. It would be easy to arrange one more death — and the men who killed my father spoke French, not Welsh.
From Windsor, we follow the Thames upriver to Wallingford, then strike west. It takes three days, but it’s a pleasant journey. There are frosts at night, but at dawn they dissolve into spring mists. The sun shines from a creamy April sky and makes the world mellow gold. Up on the hills, the trees are in bud. I’ve never seen a country more at peace with itself.
The Beauchamps live in a fortified manor house in a broad valley west of Wantage. It’s a handsome house that, like its owners, has sprawled away from its original military purpose over the past decades. Handsome outbuildings and new wings almost completely obscure the stout fortress at its centre. A mound still lifts up the tower, but it seems less formidable when surrounded by terraced vegetable gardens. Its builder once diverted the river for a moat, but the current generation have constructed weirs and dykes to make fishponds.
That evening, we dine on carp and trout, stuffed with raisins from the local vineyards. Walter Beauchamp doesn’t need to impress us much: the marriage benefits Guy more than him. Ada is his youngest daughter, and he could always send her to an abbey if needs be. But he sets out the table in his great hall and brings in his household to entertain us. In the gallery, a minstrel plucks his psaltery.
I have no place at the table. I stand in the folds of the heavy fabrics which line the wall, like a green man half buried in foliage. Every so often, I emerge to refill Gornemant’s cup, or recharge his plate. Otherwise, I listen and observe, always learning.
As a result, I’m probably the first man in the hall to notice Guy’s bride. Her father has waited to unveil her until the first two courses are under our belts, until wine has softened our eyes. While servants clear dishes, I glimpse a flash behind a curtained doorway, a head peeping round to see the men who’ve come for her. All I can make out in the gloom is the gleam of precious stones, the pearls she wears in her hair and the gems at her throat. At least, I think that’s all I see. Later, she’ll tell me that I stared straight into her eyes without realising it.
The psaltery falls silent. The men at the table look up as Guy’s bride makes her entrance. She carries a silver dish in front of her, humble as a servant, but she’s beautiful, noble and richly attired. Two squires escort her. Beauchamp has them carrying candelabras, ostensibly replenishing the lights at the table, in fact casting a shimmering nimbus around their mistress. The candles make her skin as soft as ivory, her hair like gold leaf, her jewels a bright constellation.
I’m transfixed. The moment she enters the hall, it seems to me that the room grows so bright that the candles and the fire lose their brilliance, like stars washed away in the sunrise. I feel like the knights and wanderers in my mother’s stories, encountering their wayward damsels and enchantresses. I’m gripped by magic.
At the end of the table, Gornemant’s reaction is more businesslike. The stars haven’t dimmed for him. He examines her with clear-eyed purpose, like a cook appraising a doe brought in from the hunt. Will she do? Will she please Guy? Was she worth surrendering the Berkshire estates for?
She puts down the grail-dish she’s carrying and curtsies. A poached lamprey swims in its own juices in the silver platter. Her father’s steward carves it and serves the portions on whole flatbreads, while Gornemant asks her a few trivial questions. She answers demurely, her eyes downcast. So as not to stare, I make myself watch the other knights. They can’t believe Guy’s luck. Even if she looked like a horse, he’d have taken her just for the land. As it is …
Ada Beauchamp curtsies and retreats. The candles stay, but the light goes with her. On the pretext of fetching more wine, I follow. I find her in a courtyard, leaning against the wall with her head tipped back to the stars. Her breath makes small clouds in the chill night. Through the kitchen window I can see the cooks preparing a sugared cake in the shape of a boar, Guy’s emblem. But here, we’re alone.
‘When you’re the lady of Hautfort, you’ll have servants to bring the fish.’
She laughs. ‘My father says that men like to know a woman can serve.’
Her voice is deeper than I expected, mellow. She looks at me as if she expects me to say something, but every word I ever knew has suddenly flown out of my head.
She says, ‘How long have you served Guy de Hautfort?’
‘Six years.’
‘What sort of man is he?’
I want to talk about her, not Guy. ‘Fair.’
She’s looking at me intently. For a moment I think she’s disappointed, then I realise she wants to hear more. She wants reassurance, to know that she isn’t being led across the sea to some ogre.
‘He’s a good man.’ Maybe. ‘Kind and gentle-hearted.’ Less plausible. ‘Handsome.’
She smiles. I wonder if she’s seen through my lies. ‘And his son?’
She holds my gaze. I try to think of something to say about Jocelin, any benevolent lie, but I can’t. Her eyes seem to dare me to speak the truth.
‘He’s a pig.’
That makes her laugh. I’m glad I said it; it forges a bond between us.
‘I’m Peter.’
‘Ada.’
Now that I’m close, I can see that her hair doesn’t really shimmer like the sun. It’s a trick: she’s braided it with thread-of-gold. Absent-mindedly, she pulls out a strand. She winces; she’s pricked herself on one of the pins holding her braid in place. A drop of blood beads on her fingertip. She presses the finger between her lips and sucks out the blood. I watch her mouth and tremble: a revelation. I don’t have much experience of women, beyond a scullery girl who lets me unlace her bodice and touch her breasts in Guy’s woodshed. Only now do I understand how the men in my mother’s tales felt, why they risked all for the love of a lady.
‘I should go,’ she says. ‘My mother will want to hear everything.’ She gives me an earnest smile. ‘Thank you for introducing yourself. It’s nice to know there’ll be at least one friendly face in Hautfort.’
‘More than one, for sure,’ I mumble.
I watch her disappear into the lighted doorway. The enchantress has vanished: I’m the forlorn knight alone on the hillside. I remember her sucking her finger, the ruby lips and the luminous skin.
She’s pricked me — and I know that instant the wound will never heal.
XIII
‘I’ve found something.’
Ellie cupped her hand over the phone. She was standing by the bandstand in the Place d’Armes, scanning the crowd for any sign of a man in a white raincoat. For the past ten days she’d confined herself to the data room and her hotel room, growing fat on room service and running up an exorbitant bill on bad movies. She didn’t even dare go to the bar, for fear Lechowski would be lurking there.
‘Talhouett have a Romanian subsidiary which might have some pretty huge liabilities. I only found it by chance: there’s nothing in the accounts. One of their directors resigned in protest at the way they were handling it. For some reason a copy of his letter made it into the personnel file.’
‘Have the others seen this?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Not judging by the collection of dried-out Post-it notes which had fluttered out like dead leaves when she opened the file.
‘Can you remove the letter?’