Later in the afternoon, as darkness drew in, the feasting and banqueting took place in the royal mansion hastily refurbished for the occasion. I did not attend. Court protocol and etiquette demanded that during her first marriage days, Isabella could only be waited upon by women of the royal blood who had witnessed the nuptials and the consequent royal bedding. I kept to my lodgings in the nearby old bishop’s palace, accepting, like my companions, the remains of the feasts: scraps of venison, pork, beef, fish, half-eaten manchet loaves, bruised fruit and jugs of wine of every variety.
Isabella did not ignore me. She sent a small purse filled with English silver and a piece of parchment on which a forget-me-not flower was carefully inscribed. More importantly, Sandewic came into his own. He was now Custos, knight-keeper of the princess’s household. She was the centre of the English court so her retinue was embraced by the English king’s peace. During the wedding days Sandewic used the opportunity to bring in an escort of Welsh archers, little wiry, dark-faced men who spoke a tongue I could not understand. They were clothed in Sandewic’s livery, a white lion rampant on a green background, they carried longbows of yew with wicked-looking stabbing knives dangling from rings on their belts and quivers of yard-long shafts strapped to their backs. These archers guarded and patrolled the bishop’s palace, cheerful men who loved to drink and sing the haunting songs of their country. They were most vigilant and careful, demanding that the servants who brought my food first taste it before they allowed them through. Oh yes, those days marked a sharp shift in the seasons! I too was now in the power of England.
Casales and Rossaleti also recognised their tasks were changing. Rossaleti prepared himself to carry Isabella’s secret and privy seals though she quietly vowed that only she and I would seal what she and I should only know. A distance grew up between Casales and Rossaleti; they were no longer envoys but members of different households. Baquelle came into his own, being specially charged with organising the English departure from Boulogne to the nearby port of Wissant. Of course Sandewic gave me the news about the banquets and feasts hosted by the various courtiers with their flowery speeches and empty promises. He also took me out through the dreary mizzle of a Norman winter to view the sights.
Boulogne was a town transformed; banners, streamers, brightly coloured ribbons flapped everywhere alongside the fleur-de-lis of France and the leopards of England. Bishops, nobles, haughty ladies, high-ranking clerics, swaggering mice-eyed retainers tricked out in their glorious attire of ermine, brocade, satin silks, linen from the looms of Flanders and goldwork from Cologne. Sleek horses of every type, sumpters, destriers, palfreys and cobs, clattered across the frost-glazed cobbles. In the fields outside town the war-pennants fluttered and glowed in the bursts of weak sunshine. The might of Europe, garbed in the armour of Liege and Limoges, Damascus, Milan, London and Toledo, had come to do mock battle in the lists, those great tournaments and tourneys organised in Isabella’s honour. The frozen meadows outside the town walls were transformed by a host of standards all displaying their exotic insignia: wolves, wyverns, leopards, dragons, fire-breathing salamanders, suns and moons, wheat sheaves, fabulous birds, charging boars, rampant lions, crouching dogs, all parted per pale or per fesse, per cross or bend sinister. All these emblems were painted in the colours of heraldry, azure, gules, sable, vert, purple and argent. In the centre of this city of silken pavilions stood the lists, where knights in plate armour, helmets carved in terrifying shapes and surmounted by brilliantly coloured plumes, charged, lances splintering, shields buckling. As one joust finished another began to the blast of trumpet and horn, the air riven with the clash of steel, the thunder of hooves and the heralds shouting, ‘Lessez les aler, lessez les aler, les bons chevaliers!’ Pages and squires clustered round the heroes who’d survived the battling of the last few days, all intent on winning the golden crown. I quoted the lines of a troubadour:
Speech does not comfort me,
I am in harmony with war,
Nor do I hold or believe any other religion.
Casales, who accompanied Sandewic and myself, seethed with humiliation at not being able to participate. He laughingly mocked my criticisms but Sandewic looped his arm through mine and nodded.
‘I’ve seen enough of battle!’ he remarked as we walked away, gesturing with his head. ‘It is nothing like that.’
By then it was the end of January, and the feasting and revelry were beginning to pall whilst the tournaments and tourneys had already led to the deaths of four young knights killed in a furious melee, a supposedly friendly joust between the courts of England and France.
‘It is time we were gone,’ Sandewic growled as we took off our cloaks in the buttery, warming our hands before the fire after our icy walk back from the tourney field. ‘The pot is beginning to bubble and the scum rises to coat it all,’ he added. ‘We should go before any real mischief is done.’
‘Nonsense,’ Casales objected, gesturing at Rossaleti, who was busy at the table transcribing household lists. ‘We have enough provisions whilst never again will the courts of England and France meet.’
‘I don’t like weddings or nuptials. They harvest bitter memories for me,’ Rossaleti intoned mournfully. Without any invitation the clerk threw down the quill pen and began to describe his own early days as a Benedictine novice and how he realised that he was not fit to take solemn vows. He talked about his marriage and the tragic death of his beloved wife, speaking so wistfully that he stirred the memories of others. Casales described his wedding day and the death of his wife in childbirth, and the long arduous years since. Sandewic nodded sympathetically but lightened the mood by describing his own marriage of many years, its humour and companionship, though he grew sad with sorrow over his wife’s death and his frequent quarrels with his children. I sensed the deep sadness of these men who, in the words of Sandewic, had become ‘priests of politic’, giving up their own lives in the service of their king.
Our mood was lightened by Baquelle’s arrival. Sandewic winked at me and put a finger to his lips, for Sir John needed little encouragement to sermonise us on his all-important marriage to the sister, as he kept telling us, of the most powerful wool merchant in England. The little knight, cheery-faced from the cold, was full of what he’d seen and who he’d talked to, determined on delivering a lengthy sermon about the different courts which had assembled. Sandewic ordered a cask of Bordeaux to be broached and cut Baquelle off in full flow by declaring that we were sitting as if visited by the Three Summoners of Doom: Sickness, Old Age and Death. He filled our cups with the heady claret, ordered Rossaleti to fetch his dulcimer and told us not to be faux et semblant at such a joyous time but to revel and carol with the best. Rossaleti brought his dulcimer in and Sandewic broke into a bawdy song about a knight, his lady and a cuckolding friar whose testicles the knight vowed he would enshrine in a hog’s turd. Sandewic had a powerful voice, as did Casales, and both roared out the filthy but very comic song as Rossaleti tried to pluck music on the dulcimer. Sandewic taught me the words and made me join in the singing till tears of laughter bubbled in my eyes. A warm, amicable afternoon to spite the hailing sleet and numbing drizzle outside, yet it is curious, isn’t it, looking back, how every torchlight creates its own host of shadows?