Christine Lafarge had called it a chateau. Blanchard described it, wryly, as a chalet. In plain fact it was a castle. It rose from a fist of rock at the end of the ridge, half severed from the mountain’s arm by a narrow ravine. A wooden bridge was the only access: on every other side, the rock face dropped three hundred feet sheer to the valley below. The whitewashed walls stood almost invisible against the snow: the steep black roofs seemed to hover in the clouds.
All of which Ellie only saw later. For the moment, she had only the vaguest impression of high walls and lofty turrets looking down on her; attendants hurrying out of what had once been stables to take their bags; a butler bringing cups of steaming wine almost before they were out of the car. The sun shone through an arch in the western wall, reflecting on the snow to fill the courtyard with light.
A dark-suited servant led them into the house, up a spiral stair to a long corridor. It looked like a museum: spears and shields hung on the walls, side by side with the trophy heads of long-dead game. But behind the doors the rooms were warm, with thick carpets and heavy curtains and an enormous four-poster bed swagged with lace. Peering out of the window at the snowbound valley below, Ellie felt she’d landed in a fairy tale.
‘Do you like your room?’
Blanchard had appeared. For a second Ellie thought he’d stepped out of the tapestry on the wall, until she saw the door beside it leading to the adjoining bedroom. She put her arms around his waist and linked her hands behind his back.
‘Do we need two rooms?’
‘Sometimes it is good to have your own space.’ He leaned forward, burying her in his embrace. ‘But not too much.’
‘Michel is away tonight,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘We will have to amuse ourselves.’
Ellie nodded, happy. Over his shoulder, she saw a stuffed wolf’s head set over the doorway, its jaw open and its eyes staring down.
She closed her eyes.
XXII
I kneel in front of Guy. The stones on the floor are cold and hard against my knees. On the altar, a burnished sword gleams in the candlelight. The white linen shift is smooth against my skin. Gornemant has drilled the symbolism into us since the day I came to Normandy. White for purity, for the law of God you will defend.
White as naked skin in moonlight. In the depths of the night, when I should have been keeping my vigil, I crept through the castle to the storeroom by the orchard. Ada was waiting for me. It’s never warm enough to remove our clothes, but we pulled my tunic and her dress down to our waists to feel each other’s bodies, nothing between us. The room smelled of last year’s apples, sweet and cidery. The barrels were almost empty, but the ripeness lingered in the air.
When we’d made love, we lay on a piece of sackcloth on the floor. The moon shone through the grated window; shadows criss-crossed Ada’s back. I stroked her bare skin, breaking the shadow bars. I heard snuffles in the darkness — her crying. The tears made tracks down her cheeks, a silver cage. I wiped them off.
‘We’ll be all right,’ I whispered in her ear.
Gornemant steps around me and fastens a red cloak over my white shift. Red for the blood I will shed in the service of the Lord.
Ada shed blood last night. Just a scratch, a cut on her finger where the scab had torn off. As she fumbled with my tunic, a few spots smeared on the white wool. I panicked; in a few hours I’d be standing in the chapel, the entire household watching me. Ada crept to the kitchen and fetched vinegar, a rag. By the time she’d finished, the stain was little more than a watermark.
A narrow belt girds the shift around my hips. Gornemant says it’s to remind me to shun the sins of the flesh. I loosen it so it hangs lower, covering the worst of the stain. When the priest comes to the part of the oath where I swear myself to a life of purity, I hope he doesn’t look down.
You swear by almighty God to defend the church, your lord, and to protect the defenceless from the mighty.
I repeat the oath. Guy lifts the sword off the altar and holds it above my head while the priest says his blessing. For a second I see the image of Guy as he was in the copse that day, the hiss of air as the sword cut through the knight’s windpipe, the drip of blood falling on leaves. If he knew what I’ve done with Ada, he’d cut my throat right here in the chapel. Instead, he slides it into the scabbard and buckles it around my waist. I stand, so that Gornemant can fix my gilded spurs on to my boot.
My leggings are brown, brown for the dust that is every man’s destiny, proud or humble. I’m no stranger to dust and earth these days. Dust on the flagstones in the storerooms and cupboards; dust in the stable straw; damp soil under the rock where we first kissed. We are creatures of earth, and the gold rings or spurs we wear to flatter our nobility mean nothing but vanity. The spurs aren’t even mine, only borrowed for the day. Tomorrow they’ll be iron.
Guy swats my shoulder with the palm of his hand.
‘Receive this blow in remembrance of Him who ordained you and dubbed you.’
I don’t need to be taught the symbolism to know what it all means. It means I am a knight.
Gornemant suspects. Last week, he told me a long story about a Flemish count. One of his knights had been sleeping with the count’s wife: when the count discovered them together, he had his butchers beat the man raw, then held him upside-down in a latrine until he suffocated. Or choked on effluent — no one could tell afterwards. Gornemant gives me a heavy look. ‘A lord must be able to trust his knights in all things,’ he says, ‘as much as his own right arm.’
In the Bible it says, ‘If your right arm offends you, cut it off.’ We both know that.
I want Guy to be able to trust me. I want to honour my oaths. I thought that sleeping with Ada might be an ending, that possessing her body would cure my desire. Instead, it’s only made it worse. From the moment I met her, my love has been a wound. Now, a fever is spreading. The more often I have her, the more often I want her. Instead of being grateful for the times we have, hasty and snatched, I resent the times we’re apart. On the nights when I see Guy leave the hall to follow her to her room, I want to snatch a candlestick from the table and ram it through his eye.
My frenzy makes me reckless. Last week, one of the grooms surprised us in the stables as he came to fetch a cropper. Thankfully, the hinge on the stable door squeaks. We were able to cover ourselves, and made a great production of having come to show Ada Guy’s new colt. But servants gossip. I know I should rein myself in, temper my passions unless we can be absolutely safe. Next time, we wait until Guy’s away visiting one of his outlying tenants. We meet in the guard room at the top of the north tower: you can bolt it from the inside, and since Athold’s death Guy hasn’t bothered with a sentry there. It’s as safe as can be had.
I get there first. It’s a cloudless night and the moon is fulclass="underline" it shines through the windows and arrow slits, gleaming off the heads of the spears in a rack on the wall. The whole room is filled with silver light. I spread a cloak on the floor and wait.
I see Ada’s approach by the candlelight creeping up the doorframe. The stairs are steep and uneven: she doesn’t trust them in the dark. When she appears, she’s wearing a spotless white shift. No coat or dress, just a mantle of marmot fur.
The candle she carries lights up the tower like a beacon. Anyone could see it. I pinch out the flame with my fingers and hug her close, pressing my mouth into hers. She doesn’t reciprocate. There’s a stiffness in her, a withdrawal. I step back.
‘Are you all right?’
She stands so still that in the moonlight she looks like a statue of herself, a stone Ada. It reminds me of a telling of the Tristan story I’ve heard, where Tristan builds a wooden likeness of Yseult in a cave so he can stand and watch it hour after hour while she’s separated from him.