Bread and Chocolate. Philippa Gregory

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      ‘Dead?’ Ygraine asked. It was as if she had heard the word for the first time, as if she were turning the meaning of it over in her mind. ‘Dead?’

      Lady Fielden shot a quick look back at Ygraine, and her sharp eyes narrowed when she saw the girl’s face. ‘Not a word more,’ she said in a sharp undertone. ‘Ygraine, the sun is troubling me, give me your arm back to the castle. I am going to my room to rest. This is poor sport here.’

      Ygraine turned a tranced white face towards her. ‘Dead?’ she asked.

      ‘Come,’ Lady Fielden said abruptly. ‘Take my arm, Ygraine.’

      Ygraine rose to her feet but turned away from the older woman, as if she would go out to the jousting ground itself. ‘I must go to him,’ she said. ‘He wanted to wear my glove on his lance and I said ‘‘no’’. He wanted to hide it inside his armour and I said ‘‘no’’ to that too. Anything he wanted, any little thing, I denied him them all.’

      ‘Quite right,’ said Liza Fielden sharply. ‘Now come away!’

      Ygraine took two stumbling steps, then she looked back. David’s squire had his master’s helmet off. David’s curly brown head lay on the grass. He was quite still.

      ‘Is he dead?’ Ygraine asked incredulously.

      Liza Fielden gripped Ygraine’s arm and drew her out of the ladies’ box, through the crowd which parted to let them through, up the stone steps of the terraced garden and in through the wide open doors of the castle to the darkness and coldness inside.

      As soon as the shade fell on Ygraine’s blank face she whirled around and said ‘David!’ in a cry like a falcon makes when it has lost sight of the falconer and is lost in a strange country.

      ‘Hush!’ Lady Fielden hissed at her. ‘You will be ruined, Ygraine. Hush and come away to my rooms.’

      She half-dragged the girl through the great hall, empty now except for two large dogs nosing among the rushes on the floor, and up the turret staircase. Only when she had pushed Ygraine roughly into the room and bolted the door behind them did the woman loosen her grip on the girl’s arm.

      Ygraine touched her arm as if she had been hurt. She looked with wide lost eyes at Liza Fielden. ‘Why did you take me away from him?’ she asked. ‘He’s dead now, isn’t he? My reputation is safe enough with a corpse, isn’t it? I could tell him now that I love him, can’t I? Now that he can’t hear me? I’m allowed to kiss his face now he can’t feel it? Aren’t I? Now that he will never hold me, and never kiss me. I can love him now, can’t I?’

      Liza Fielden slowly shook her head. She crossed to the window seat and sat down by the slit window. Looking down she could see them carrying David St Pierre’s body, awkward and limp on a long shield. They were taking him to the chapel. Some friend would sit in vigil with the body all night long, and tomorrow they would bury him. Ygraine had no time for vigil. She must bury her loss this day, and smile and laugh and show herself ready for her mother’s order to marry a stranger.

      ‘No, you cannot love him now,’ Liza Fielden said with a sigh. ‘Not even now, Ygraine. You did well to hide your love all these years while you have been growing up. But you’re a woman now, and a woman may love no-one but her lord. Not even a boy who died before he could hold her. Your love is dead, Ygraine, forget it; forget him.’

      She had thought the girl would flare up. She was almost disappointed when Ygraine looked at her blankly, and then the anger went out of her dark blue eyes and was replaced by the look that cattle wear, when they are walking slowly to the butcher’s yard. Ygraine’s passion had been under the yoke of obedience for so long that she could forget if she were ordered to forget. And the dangerous love which Liza Fielden had watched grow, and which she had envied, was over. Ygraine was as cold as David St Pierre when they laid him on the marble stone in the chapel and put a candle at his head and another at his feet.

      When Liza Fielden’s women came in a flurry of excitement to sit with her, she nodded to Ygraine and told them to brew her a tisane of poppy-seed, and let her lie and sleep for she had been wearied by the sun in the brightness of the morning. One girl hid her mouth with her hand and whispered a word to another. Liza Fielden raked her with a look and the girl was silent. Ygraine slept as if she never wanted to wake.

      

      They laughed a little less at dinner that night. It was still noisy – men shouting for meat or more ale, hammering at the table with the bone handles of their meat daggers, tripping the hurrying pages, throwing scraps to the dogs. But David St Pierre’s place was empty, and they left a seat and a plate for him, out of respect. His best friend, another young impoverished knight from the desolate northern moorlands, was absent too – sitting away the long cold hours at David’s side.

      The ladies’ table was quieter, the women chatted in an undertone, trying to speak of something other than jousting, or David, or Ygraine. For Ygraine was missing. Her mother was tight-lipped and bright-eyed. Liza Fielden sat beside her and spun some tale about Ygraine and the sun shining too bright. But the women were as avid as adders for a drink in hot weather. The women knew. They knew Ygraine had loved him, but they had thought she had curbed herself on a tight rein, kept silent, lowered her eyes, bated her breath. Now she was missing from dinner and her lady mother was black as thunder beside the empty place.

      Ygraine would be whipped, Ygraine would be ruined unless she came to dinner at once, and talked and smiled at once. Half of them thought she would never manage it – playacting fit for a mummer’s show. All of them knew she had to do it. Their eyes were as bright as cats’ hunting at night. Their gentle voices were rippling with an unstated excitement. They looked as if they had taken the fever, they were hot for her disgrace. And among them, with a look that would freeze water, sat Ygraine’s mother. A woman with a hard hand, and other daughters to dispose of too.

      There was a rustle at the tapestry which hung across the little door to the hall and the women glanced over. In their sudden silence the noise made by the shouting men was abrupt and loud; and then they were quiet too. No-one could believe what they were seeing.

      It was the Lady Ygraine, her head held high like a bride, as pale as a ghost; but smiling a little private smile, as if she were walking to meet her lover. Her hair was gathered under her tall hat, the silk veil streamed out behind her. Her gown was pale green, a colour like birch leaves in springtime. And over her gown she wore David St Pierre’s surcoat; with the mud on the back where he had fallen, and the bloodstain very crimson on the front. She walked quietly to the ladies’ table and took her place, her eyes cast down as a modest maiden should sit.

      ‘Ygraine!’ her mother hissed urgently. ‘What the devil are you doing, girl!’

      And the Lady Ygraine, grown at last from the little girl whom David St Pierre had loved, met her mother’s appalled face with a smile as clear as birdsong on a summer morning. ‘I am wearing my lord’s favour as he would wish,’ she said. ‘For he carried me in his heart, even on the very day of his death.’

       Theories About Men

      When Stephanie was only thirty years old, and married only five years, she evolved her own theories about men. She believed that men are unfaithful to their wives not from passion, but from an innate vagueness that they can no more help than the month of November can help being wintry. Husbands simply forget that they are СКАЧАТЬ