knight we watched this morning—the one with the red hair.’
‘I told you his name. He’s the Duke of Aquitaine and if he outlives his father he will be King of England. He’s supposed to be the strongest and bravest fighter in the whole of Christendom.’
‘Young Sancho persuaded him to come and joust here; he’s been trying to get him for years but generally he’s busy with real fighting. I think that’s all I know.’
‘I want him for my husband,’ Berengaria said.
That made up for the hours and hours I had spent in this very chamber, brushing that mane of hair and listening to trivial chat. I was seventeen years old, almost a year younger than Berengaria, and for the whole of seven years which I had spent at the court in Pamplona the matter of Berengaria’s eventual marriage had been a subject for talk, gossip and speculation. Sancho, our father, was a man of peculiar notions. Unlike most men of his rank, he had married for love and although his lovely wife had become a madwoman he had, with the exception of one piece of dalliance, of which I was the unfortunate result, remained faithful to her. And he had openly stated his intention of allowing all his children to choose mates for themselves. Berengaria, whose beauty had been bruited abroad for many years, had been much sought after, for even princes who must marry within the royal degrees desire to find wives as attractive as possible, but Berengaria had refused every offer so far made and Father had done nothing to direct her fancy.
Blanche, whose behaviour I privately considered to show far more of the “signs” Mathilde watched for, had at the age of fourteen betaken herself to the convent at St. Lucia where she lived as a lodger. She was always just going to become a novice but she never did. Every now and then she would come back to Pamplona and give us little pious talks about the dedicated life, eat her head off, sit out a tournament with me, indulge in a mild flirtation with any man who happened to be handy and then suddenly retreat again into her convent. And Young Sancho spent his time going from court to court, from jousting to jousting, always falling madly in love with some completely ineligible lady and then falling out of love again. And Father seemed not to mind at all. A very strange royal family with two princesses who should have been betrothed long since and a prince who showed no sign of his responsibility to the succession.
And now here was Berengaria announcing her choice of husband at last; and I, her crippled, bastard half-sister who had spent the first two days of the tourney in company with the grooms and scullions, was forced to say:
‘Oh dear. That is awkward. The Plantagenet is betrothed, and has been for some years, to the Princess Alys of France.’
Most young women, at such a moment, would have looked disappointed. Berengaria’s expression remained almost unchanged. That grandfather who had gone on crusade and brought back many of the ideas and furnishings which made the castle at Pamplona so luxuriously comfortable had one day mentioned, in the presence of Berengaria’s mother, then a young woman, the Saracen habit of slitting the eyelids of girl babies in order to give them that doe-eyed, flowerlike look. He said that this custom was responsible for the placid, unchanging beauty of Eastern women which remained, he swore, unaffected even by a thrust of sword or spear through the body. Years later, when he was dead and Berengaria’s mother had borne a girl baby, this curious crumb of information had floated to the surface of her demented mind and nothing would do but that this child’s eyes should be slit in the Saracen fashion. And it so happened that Father, back from his Sicilian campaign, had brought with him a captive, a Saracen physician and surgeon—for in the East the two trades are combined—who was competent to perform the operation. Apparently what our grandfather had said was true; much of the
‘I told you his name. He’s the Duke of Aquitaine and if he outlives his father he will be King of England. He’s supposed to be the strongest and bravest fighter in the whole of Christendom.’
‘Young Sancho persuaded him to come and joust here; he’s been trying to get him for years but generally he’s busy with real fighting. I think that’s all I know.’
‘I want him for my husband,’ Berengaria said.
That made up for the hours and hours I had spent in this very chamber, brushing that mane of hair and listening to trivial chat. I was seventeen years old, almost a year younger than Berengaria, and for the whole of seven years which I had spent at the court in Pamplona the matter of Berengaria’s eventual marriage had been a subject for talk, gossip and speculation. Sancho, our father, was a man of peculiar notions. Unlike most men of his rank, he had married for love and although his lovely wife had become a madwoman he had, with the exception of one piece of dalliance, of which I was the unfortunate result, remained faithful to her. And he had openly stated his intention of allowing all his children to choose mates for themselves. Berengaria, whose beauty had been bruited abroad for many years, had been much sought after, for even princes who must marry within the royal degrees desire to find wives as attractive as possible, but Berengaria had refused every offer so far made and Father had done nothing to direct her fancy.
Blanche, whose behaviour I privately considered to show far more of the “signs” Mathilde watched for, had at the age of fourteen betaken herself to the convent at St. Lucia where she lived as a lodger. She was always just going to become a novice but she never did. Every now and then she would come back to Pamplona and give us little pious talks about the dedicated life, eat her head off, sit out a tournament with me, indulge in a mild flirtation with any man who happened to be handy and then suddenly retreat again into her convent. And Young Sancho spent his time going from court to court, from jousting to jousting, always falling madly in love with some completely ineligible lady and then falling out of love again. And Father seemed not to mind at all. A very strange royal family with two princesses who should have been betrothed long since and a prince who showed no sign of his responsibility to the succession.
And now here was Berengaria announcing her choice of husband at last; and I, her crippled, bastard half-sister who had spent the first two days of the tourney in company with the grooms and scullions, was forced to say:
‘Oh dear. That is awkward. The Plantagenet is betrothed, and has been for some years, to the Princess Alys of France.’
Most young women, at such a moment, would have looked disappointed. Berengaria’s expression remained almost unchanged. That grandfather who had gone on crusade and brought back many of the ideas and furnishings which made the castle at Pamplona so luxuriously comfortable had one day mentioned, in the presence of Berengaria’s mother, then a young woman, the Saracen habit of slitting the eyelids of girl babies in order to give them that doe-eyed, flowerlike look. He said that this custom was responsible for the placid, unchanging beauty of Eastern women which remained, he swore, unaffected even by a thrust of sword or spear through the body. Years later, when he was dead and Berengaria’s mother had borne a girl baby, this curious crumb of information had floated to the surface of her demented mind and nothing would do but that this child’s eyes should be slit in the Saracen fashion. And it so happened that Father, back from his Sicilian campaign, had brought with him a captive, a Saracen physician and surgeon—for in the East the two trades are combined—who was competent to perform the operation. Apparently what our grandfather had said was true; much of the
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