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.’
She got up and paced restlessly across the chamber and back. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘I just can’t sit still and wait, not tonight.’ She sent for a writer, and the officers commanding, her troops and artillery; they worked into the small hours drawing up lists of the extra provisions they would need to withstand a full-scale siege. ‘There’s no doubt,’ said Eleanor with a flash of her old practicality, ‘that we shall be bottled up for a considerable time; till Charles gets back in fact. There won’t be any question of chivalry either, of being let to walk out with our arms or anything like that, the whole thing’s far too serious; but at least we shall know by the time we’re through who’s actually running this country, ourselves or an Italian priest.’
She poured wine. ‘Well, gentlemen, let’s hear your recommendations. You can have anything you need, arms, men, provisions; I only ask one thing. Don’t leave anything out. We can’t afford to forget any details; remember there’s a rope, or worse, waiting for every one of us if we make a single slip…’
The seneschal stayed with her after the others had gone, sitting drinking wine in the firelight and talking of all subjects from gods to kings; of the land, its history and its people; of Eleanor, and her family and upbringing. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it’s strange, Sir John; but it seemed this morning when I fired the gun I was standing outside myself, just watching what my body did. As if I, and you too, all of us, were just tiny puppets on the grass. Or on a stage. Little mechanical things playing out parts we didn’t understand.’ She stared into her wineglass, swilling it in her hands to see flame light and lamplight dance from the goldenness inside; then she looked up frowning, eyes opaque and dark. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
He nodded, gravely. ‘Yes, my Lady…’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s like a… dance somehow, a minuet or a pavane. Something stately and pointless, with all its steps set out. With a beginning, and an end… ‘
She tucked her legs under her, as she sat beside the fire. ‘Sir John,’ she said, ‘sometimes I think life’s all a mass of significance, all sorts of strands and threads woven like a tapestry or a brocade. So if you pulled one out or broke it the pattern would alter right back through the cloth. Then I think… it’s all totally pointless, it would make just as much sense backwards as forwards, effects leading to causes and those to more effects… maybe that’s what will happen, when we get to the end of Time. The whole world will shoot undone like a spring, and wind itself back to the start…’ She rubbed her forehead tiredly. ‘I’m not making sense, am I? It’s getting too late for me…’
He took the wine from her, carefully. She stayed quiet awhile; when she spoke again she was half asleep. ‘Do you remember years ago telling me a story?’ she asked. ‘About how my great uncle Jesse broke his heart when my grandmother wouldn’t marry him, and killed his friend, and how that was somehow the start of everything he did… It seemed so real, I’m sure that was how it must have been. Well, I can finish it for you now. You can see the Cause and Effect right the whole way through. If we… won, it would be because of grandfather’s money. And the money’s there because of Jesse, and he did it because of the girl… It’s like Chinese boxes. There’s always a smaller one inside, all the time; until they get so small they’re too small to see but they keep on going down and down…’
He waited; but she didn’t speak again.
For days the castle rang with activity; Eleanor’s messengers rode out to scour the countryside around bringing in more men, provisions, meat on the hoof. The great lower bailey was prepared for the animals, pens and hurdles lined against the outer walls. The steamers toiled once more bringing cattle cake and baled hay from Wareham, chugging down the road with trailers empty, clanking back through the outer gate to discharge their cargo in heaps on the flattened grass. Everything possible was shifted under cover; what stacks remained exposed were covered by tarpaulins, and turves and stone rubble strewn on top.
The fodder would be a prime target were the enemy to bring fire machines with them. All day the hoists clattered and most of the night too, taking the provisions down to the cellars, bringing up quarrels for the crossbowmen, powder and ball for the harquebusiers, charges for the great guns. The semaphores seldom stopped. The country was aflame; Londinium was arming, levies from Sussex and Kent were marching towards the west. Then came worse news. From France, from the castles of the Loire, men were streaming to fight in the Holy Crusade while to the south a second armada was embarking for England. To Eleanor, John sent no word; but his intentions were plainer than speech. Her Ladyship redoubled her efforts.
Steamers towing vast iron chains scythed the banks of the wet ditch; working parties fired the scrub from the castle motte, the bushes and trees that had seeded themselves there over the years; and down over the blackened grass went ton after ton of powdered chalk. The slopes would glow now in starlight, showing up the silhouettes of climbing men. Through it all the sightseers came, parking their little cars in the village square, flooding into the castle, through the gates and across the baileys, staring at the guns and the sentries on the walls, poking their noses into this, their prying fingers into that, impeding everybody nearly all the time. Eleanor could have closed her gates; but pride forbade her. Pride, and the counsel of the seneschal. Let the people see, he murmured. Invite their sympathy, appeal to their understanding. Her Ladyship would need all the support she could get from the country in the coming months.
On the thirtieth day after the massacre the seneschal rose and dressed at dawn. He walked down softly through the still-sleeping keep, through chambers and corridors let honeycomb-fashion into the huge walls, past arrow slits and fenestellas pouring livid grey light. Past a sentry, dozing at his post; the man jerked to attention, bringing his halberd shaft ringing down onto stone. Sir John acknowledged the gesture, raising a hand thoughtfully, mind far away.
