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Chapter Five
Castle Cary, Somerset. Ailyth hadn’t been looking forward to arriving at her new home but, after a slow six day journey holed up in a small carriage with the girl who was her husband’s lover, and with her body bruised by the bumpy roads, the sight of the large stone castle looming over an equally impressive village was almost welcome. How she ached! She hoped that her mattress was filled with feathers, and not with straw.
They arrived at Matthew’s home by late evening and Ailyth was swiftly shown to her chamber, the room that she would share with Matthew. She had shuddered at the thought but, that night as she lay in her large bed and nervously waited for her husband to join her, she was relieved to find that he did not come to her. She heard the following day that he had drunk too much ale in the kitchen and had passed out in the stables, and wondered whether Elfrida had suffered the same fate.
The rat wasn’t as much company as Heloise had promised. It had spent the whole journey to Castle Cary asleep, waking up only to stuff its face with stale bread or to relieve itself in the corner of the carriage. During the first night at the castle he had tried chewing the wall tapestries four times, ran away for three hours and had scratched Ailyth’s hands to shreds. She had tried to ‘lose’ him in the corridors, but by the time she had returned to her bed he was there on a pillow, waiting for her.
“Don’t you want to escape?” she cried in frustration. “Freedom, and all that?”
The rat just stared at her quizzically and ground his teeth.
“Well,” she said, “You’re not sleeping in the bed.”
The rat was not going to be deterred so easily, and had clearly decided that he was going to sleep on the bed, and no amount of pushing, shoving or dropping him was going to put him off.
“Persistent little vermin, aren’t you,” she murmured as she finally gave in and fell asleep. When she woke up the following morning she wasn’t entirely surprised to see him sprawled out on his side next to her.
Ailyth had plans for her first day at Castle Cary. Firstly, she was going to lie in bed for several hours, feeling miserable and thinking of Tristran. Secondly, she would take a bag full of kitchen scraps and go to explore her new home, and hopefully manage to get rid of the rat on the way. Then she would hide until nightfall, when she would go back to bed and pray that once more Matthew would not manage to find his way back to their chamber.
It was not to be. She had scarcely been awake five minutes when the door opened and Elfrida let herself in. The rat dove under the covers, and Ailyth sat up.
“Yes?” she said. Elfrida curtseyed and said, “I’m sorry to be so late, my lady. I’m here to help you get ready.” She looked quite flustered, and trembled slightly.
Ailyth yawned and stretched her arms. “Late? I’ll bet it’s barely six o’clock. And ready for what?”
“Why, morning Mass, my lady,” Elfrida said, looking dumbfounded. “It’s due to start in thirty minutes.”
She went to a large chest in the corner of Ailyth’s chamber and pulled out a bundle of silks and woollen gowns. “This chest contains your daywear, my lady,” she said. “I will be here each day to help you get ready.”
Ailyth was dressed in clothes she had never dreamed of wearing to church before; a Firenze dress, the height of fashionable clothing for young noblewomen. Firstly Elfrida slipped a long, square-necked navy gown over her mistress’ body, which trailed around her feet precariously. After this had been fitted, she placed an equally long, red sleeveless dress over the navy gown, with an opening at the front tied together with golden cord, which matched the shining embroidery on the over-gown. As a final touch, her hair was gathered together in a snood; a flaxen net that kept her raven hair resting gently at the back of her neck. It was nothing like Ailyth had ever worn before and, as she looked down at the heavy layers of cloth that had been draped over her, she felt suddenly shapeless.
Ailyth cursed as Elfrida dressed her, and wondered where to hide the rat while she was in church. Putting it into a box would suffocate it, if it stayed in the chamber it might be discovered and she was sure that taking it into church would count as blasphemy. Once she was dressed she hid it into her long, trailing sleeves and, as she stepped out of the castle’s doors, she threw him gently onto the ground.
“Go!” she hissed. “Run and play. I’ve granted you your freedom.”
As the rat looked up at her plaintively, she stuck her nose up in the air and swept her way to the church.
If heaven and hell ever met on earth, it would be in the church of St Mergatrine and our Virgin Lady, which stood a little way from the castle. As Ailyth walked to the family prayer box to take communion she passed hundreds of the manor’s poor, begging for alms. Each stood or crouched with their arms out-stretched, pleading for mercy or for money, whichever was more likely. Ailyth fumbled with the purse hanging around her waist, but Matthew put out a hand to stop her.
“Don’t,” he said. “It isn’t Sunday.”
She blushed slightly, as if she were a child who didn’t know how to behave, and tried to ignore all of the old, crippled and poor who only wanted a little to help them. It wasn’t something that she could do easily. In my father’s manor, she thought, we looked after our own. What sort of place is this, where its people are left to rot?
After a painful service, where Ailyth was dismayed to learn that she was expected to kneel the whole way through, the Monbardier family walked out into the early morning sun. Matthew strolled on ahead with his father whilst his mother chatted to a cluster of ladies, decorated in brightly coloured Firenze dresses like herself, only also wearing wimples and tall, pointed hats draped with see-through veils. This left Ailyth feeling like an unwanted guest. Tristran and Heloise would have found the time to talk with her.
She was busy being consumed by bitterness when a scream rang out. The Lady Lenora, who had been talking to Matthew’s mother, was standing by a grass verge and pointing. Her mouth was so wide open bats could have nested in it.
“Benedicte!!” she cursed, “it’s a rat! In broad daylight!”
No! Ailyth groaned inwardly as she made out the familiar shape of the creature Heloise had given her. Had the animal no sense? The rat was standing on his hind-legs, having a good look at all of the commotion he was causing and twitching his whiskers. For a moment Ailyth could have sworn that he looked amused.
“Dear Lord, is it always up to me?” Matthew sighed, drawing his sword.
Ailyth stared at her husband, and then at the rat who had waited for her with such misguided yet touching loyalty, and no sense of fear. The poor little thing won’t know what’s hit him, she thought sadly. Heloise suddenly flashed back into her mind and, before she realised that she was even moving, she jumped in front of him.
“No, my lord husband!” she cried. “You can’t.”
Matthew shot her a look that could have turned fire to ice. “My dear Lady Ailyth,” he growled, “do not forget yourself and presume that you can tell me what to do!”
Everyone was staring at her, and she knew that if Matthew was at all like her father she would be beaten later.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you mustn’t kill it.”
“Why on earth not? It’s vermin, isn’t it?”
“True.” Ailyth struggled, trying to think of a suitable reply as the rat climbed unseen up the back of her dress. “But didn’t our Holy Father create all living things? Even rats?”
Matthew glared at her, and tried to win back the argument and his pride.
“That may be so,” he said, “ but if He allows us to kill His creations for food then I’ll also kill His creations who steal our grain.”
Feeling the rat tuck himself safely into the folds of her dress, Ailyth curtseyed to Matthew and moved away. “God’s teeth!” she heard him shout. “It’s gone!”
Ailyth slipped away to be by herself, and felt the rat move up her back so that it was sitting on her shoulder. His whiskers tickled her face and she could hear him grinding his teeth.
“You have no intention of leaving me alone, do you?” she muttered. “Lack-a-mercy, what am I going to do with you?” She quickly tucked him into the sleeves of her dress so that he wouldn’t be seen and followed the others back to the castle.
As she expected, Matthew was not impressed by his new wife’s display and, as soon as they reached their chamber he started to vent his anger at her.
“By God, I should send you back to your father!” he bellowed. “I bought myself a wife, not a shrew.”
Then send me back, she thought. I never wanted to be here.
“I’m not a violent man,” he went on, storming around the chamber and kicking out at the chests that quartered the room, “but if you ever humiliate me in front of my family again I swear blind I’ll beat you so blue that the whole country will know that I am your master!”
He grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her so hard that tears of fright sprang to Ailyth’s eyes. Her face turned red and her whole body pulsed along with her heart as she recoiled in fear from Matthew’s snarling face, her eyes squeezing back her emotions as she begged, in her head, for him to let her go.
“Do you hear me, wench?” he spat, his faces inches from hers. She nodded vigorously, her eyes still tightly closed, feeling his stale breath against her cheeks. Please, please God, she thought, her mind a twisted spasm of panic, don’t let him kill me. Don’t let him hurt me. She continued nodding, too terrified to stop in case Matthew thought he had not made his message clear. She was a trembling wreck, until her husband made a noise of disgust and threw her onto the bed, where she sprawled a red-faced, frightened wreck.
"You're pathetic," he sneered, and only when she heard the door slam did she dare open her eyes again.
The room was calm and still, despite the fact that she was shaking and that her whole body was weak with relief that he had gone. As the attack her husband had made slowly sank in, Ailyth dissolved onto her bed in wracking sobs. How could her parents have married her to such a man? Already she could feel bruises forming on the top of her arms where he had grabbed her, and her hands trembled as she tried to peel away the hair that had plastered itself to her wet, red face. The thought of being married to this creature from hell for the rest of her life broke her heart. Why had it come to this? Why had Tristran left her to face this man?
As the hours passed Ailyth began to feel calmer, until Elfrida knocked politely on the door and let herself in, carrying the mid-morning rose water. Ailyth barely looked up as she entered, and just buried her face in the heavy bed linen, pretending that she wasn’t at home.
“There are ways around him,” Elfrida said.
Ailyth sat up sharply. “What did you say?”
“I’m sorry, my Lady,” the maid said, almost dropping the bowl and stepping back towards the door. “I didn’t mean to speak out of place, I just thought to help.”
It was unheard of for a maid to speak to her new mistress so freely, and Elfrida panicked. Had she overstepped her mark? Would the new lady beat her? There was a quiver to her hand.
“No, wait,” Ailyth said. “Please, tell me what you mean.”
Elfrida hesitated for a moment, before turning back. “He won’t ever be told what to do,” she said, “so you must stop thinking that you can ever change his mind. You won’t, not ever. He’ll die before being proved wrong.”
“And I’ll die if he’s going to control me!” Ailyth bit back, tears in her eyes again as she thought of her misery. “I’m his wife, not his servant!”
“In his eyes a wife and a servant are little more than the same thing,” the maid said. “If he thinks you’re going to answer him back and show him up in front of other people, he’ll do everything he can to make you realise how little you mean to him...”
“So I should do whatever he asks of me?” Ailyth spat, sinking back into the bed in frustration. “What marriage is that?”
“That’s not what I said,” Elfrida replied. “Be meek and mild for a time, or he’ll only try to break you if he thinks you’ve got spirit. Let him think he knows best. I’ll tell you now what my best trick is. Making him think that whatever you want him to do was his idea in the first place. Like with the rat, for instance.”
Ailyth’s hand flew to the rat, who was nesting under the covers, protectively. “What of it?” she asked.
“Well, I would have pointed out that he might get blood on his best new boots then, while he was thinking that over I’d have scared the poor creature away then told Matthew that he was very wise to think twice, as blood his hard to get out of moleskin. He’d swagger away thinking that’s he’d saved himself some trouble.”
Ailyth smiled, not believing a word that Elfrida said, but wanting to show her that she was grateful for the effort. “That won’t work,” she said.
“Try it,” Elfrida grinned. “He’s a fool at heart, and often he drinks so much ale that he forgets himself and the things that he’s said.”
They were both quiet for a little while, as Ailyth tried to think of ways she could work this to her advantage. Persuading Matthew not to share her bed, or that she could buy new dresses...maybe she could live with the man if she learned a few tricks. Even so, the idea of acting submissively to him was vile.
“Why did you protect the rat?” Elfrida asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“What? Oh.” She rested her hand on it again. “I just hate to see creatures harmed,” she said.
“Ah. Then tell me, why have you brought it back to your bed-chamber?” There was a hint of a smile in her voice.
Ailyth turned to see that it was poking its head out from under the covers and cursed. Elfrida was going to think she was mad for this.
“Well,” she said after some thought, “it’s kind of a pet. My nurse gave it to me as I left the manor...I think she’s going a little doddery in her old age, she probably thought it was a kitten or something. I’m none too fond of rats either but, when it came to it, I couldn’t bear to see it hurt and...well, it’s quite tame really, like a puppy.”
Elfrida laughed. “Well, as you said yourself, God did make all creatures.” What’s its name?”
Ailyth stared at the black creature, its fur a little patchy and ragged. It looked underfed and dirty, as though he had been rolling in dust (which, in effect, he had). The corner of its ear had also been bitten, and it looked a sorry creature.
“Um, RiffRaff,” she said.
“It suits,” the maid said, standing up to leave. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking that you were crazy, now.”
As Elfrida reached the door and started to turn the heavy iron handle, Ailyth felt a rush of gratitude towards her. She had been so determined to hate her maid after realising that she was her husband’s mistress, and had been so rude to her on the journey to Castle Cary by scarcely speaking a word to her, that she felt that somehow she should make it up to her. After all, Elfrida had been unnecessarily kind to her, despite everything.
“I don’t love him, you know," she called out. "And he’ll never love me. I...just wanted you to know that.”
Elfrida paused and half turned back, before nodding almost imperceptibly and leaving the room.
Despite Elfrida’s advice, Matthew was not as easily manipulated as Ailyth had hoped. Clearly his humiliation in the church burned for a long time as, despite his father’s angry orders that she should be, “pregnant, and as soon as possible,” Matthew still hadn’t shared a bed with her by the end of her third week at the castle. But that didn’t stop him from trying to make her suffer as often as possible. When she sang it was “annoying, and off-key.” The dresses she wore made her look like a “poorly-kept peasant,” yet her hairstyle made her look like “a woman of ill-repute.” Making a little attempt to keep the peace, Ailyth tried to please him but she was told several times, “don’t bother. A dog will always be a dog.”
Before long, Ailyth was at the end of her tether. She twitched in dreaded anticipation every time she heard her husband’s grating voice, and avoided him at all costs. If it hadn’t been for her friendship with Elfrida, she doubted that she would have survived her first few weeks at the castle, and it didn’t take long to get over the fact that she was running to her husband’s lover for advice.
“It isn’t that I care about him,” she moaned after he’d criticised her yet again. “In fact, Elfrida, I don’t know how you can bear his company. My eyes, it feels like he’s chipping my confidence from a rock into a pebble.”
“I’m sorry,” Elfrida frowned. “Maybe it’s easier for me to get his good side; he’ll do whatever I ask, if I say it in the right way.”
“Hrmph,” Ailyth shuddered, remembering how he had attacked her on her first full day at her new home. “Matthew has a good side?”
“Oh yes!” the maid beamed, her pale face shining with enthusiasm. “He can be very witty and daring, and if you heard him play the lute I swear your heart would break. Sometimes, when we’re alone, he talks so kindly and beautifully that I feel like...like...” She broke off, overcome for a moment. “Like he’s married to me, and not you.”
Ailyth remembered how Tristran had made her feel and gave her a sad hug. “I wish he was,” she said. “He seems a different person with you.”
“He is,” Elfrida murmured.
Ailyth did want to see Matthew’s good side. If she were to be married to him until the day she died, she knew that she would have to see some good in him, or she’d go mad like Crazy Jim back home, who spent his days talking to chickens thinking that they were his dead wife. But, no matter how hard she tried to see the man that Elfrida described, Matthew continued to be cruel to her, and she spent more and more time alone with her embroidery, with only RiffRaff for company.
Every day, after morning Mass, she would sit in her room hemming sheets or mending dresses, thinking of Tristran and talking to the rat. Heloise had been right - the little animal was good company and she took him everywhere with her. To pass the time she taught him some tricks, and in the evenings Elfrida would sit in the chamber with them and watch as he fetched a bobbin or stood up on command.
“I'm invisible here,” Ailyth said. “I thought I’d have so much to do, carrying out my lady-duties and gossiping with the other women, but every day I sew...and I hate sewing! It just shows how bored I am. Mercy, I miss my old life.”
“It’ll get better,” Elfrida promised her. But that night Matthew shared her bed for the first time and, even though they just lay there in silence, hating each other, Ailyth found it unbearable and wished more than anything that it was her Tristran lying next to her. By the morning she was so filled with bitterness towards her husband for not being the man she loved, she vowed that she had to get rid of him somehow.
“We’ll watch him,” she told RiffRaff, her constant companion. “Find out his weaknesses. Then we’ll get him out of this place!” As an afterthought, in case the rat misunderstood her intentions, she added, “We won’t kill him though. That’s perhaps going a bit too far. We’ll just...get him out of the way somehow.”
So everywhere that Matthew went Ailyth was behind, with RiffRaff tucked safely in her sleeve. She wasn’t particularly good at stalking, and countless times Matthew would turn to see Ailyth dash behind a pillar or another person and, if she knew that she’d been seen, she’d give him an innocent wave. After two days of this, Ailyth heard him tell his father that he thought his new wife was a little simple. It wasn’t easy after this as Matthew was determined to give Ailyth the slip. He dashed into the privy so many times to avoid her that she began to think that his main weakness was a bowel problem. But then, after just a few days of trying to discover his flaws, he gave Ailyth more hope than she could have imagined.
He had been in a meeting with his father for several hours and, no matter how hard Ailyth tried she was not allowed to follow him. Instead she loitered outside the main hall, ready to catch up with him when he came out. When he did emerge she attempted to hide in the shadows, but he spotted her and walked towards her angrily.
“Go in there and tell him!” he cried, kicking the ground. “Tell him that it’s only right that I should be allowed to go!”
“I...er...what?” Ailyth said.
He hadn’t heard her. Instead, he continued raging, muttering “I am the eldest son, it’s only right that I should go with him and fight for glory and make a name for myself on the battlefield. I’m a soldier, curse him, a knight! What good’s a knight who stays at home and guards the sheep? Eh? Hey you, wife, I’m talking to you!”
“Sorry my lord,” Ailyth replied, “but what are you talking about?”
“The war in France!” Matthew stormed. “My father the Baron leaves tomorrow to do battle for the king and I want to go too but no, I have to stay and run the castle while he goes and has his fun! I ask you, don’t you want a husband who has won honour in war? How glorious would it be to be a hero!”
A slow smile crept onto Ailyth’s face. Here was her chance, blessed be to God! “Leave all to me,” she said. “I’ll change his mind!”
She slipped into Baron de Monbardier’s chambers before Matthew had a chance to stop her, and curtseyed to her father-in-law, who was busy ruffling through papers on his table.
“Yes, girl, what is it?” he asked gruffly.
Ailyth threw her hand over her forehead and sighed loudly. “It is my husband, my lord, I am sorely worried about him!”
“Is that right?” the Baron muttered. “Well he has just been here with me, and I saw nothing to fret over except for his pig-headed stubbornness!” He said those last few words loudly, in case Matthew was outside listening.
“He has only his father’s passion for justice, my Lord,” Ailyth said, “and he dearly wants to go to war at his rightful place, by his father’s side.”
“And I have just told him,” the Baron cried, forgetting that he was merely talking to his son’s wife, “ that with me gone he has to protect the manor!”
Ailyth moved closer towards him. “But in days gone by, when the men go to fight it is the women who look after the manor until they return. You have a strong, clever wife and I myself am not afraid of hard work. There is also your steward to make sure things are kept in order. The castle would not go to rack and ruin whilst you’re both gone.”
The Baron looked thoughtful for a moment, before shaking his head. “No,” he replied, “I will not have it. I cannot risk my son’s life on the battlefield.”
“But your son is a man, and all men must fight. Wouldn’t it anger the king if he found out that Matthew had stayed behind? And think of his pride! He is your son, and you are treating him like a daughter.”
“Yes...you may leave me now,” he told her firmly, and Ailyth knew that he wasn’t happy with her. “Go back to your sewing, girl, and let me take care of matters that you’ll never understand.”
Disappointment ran through Ailyth’s blood as she left the room and returned to her chamber.
“Well, we tried RiffRaff,” she said. “I suppose we’ll just have to think of something else.”
But later that day Matthew told her that her plan had worked. The following morning, he would be going to war.
***
Ailyth stood with her mother-in-law, watching the men go to the port of Plymouth so that they could begin their journey to battle. She felt a huge swelling of achievement. She had got rid of her husband! With the satisfied feeling of a job well done, she watched as Matthew, dressed in gleaming, unused armour covered by a white hooded surcoat emblazoned with the red cross of St George, approached his horse. It would be months, maybe even years before she would have to see his scowling face again.
All of the men had to be helped by their squires onto their war-horses and then, when every man had mounted, the banners were lifted. With drums beating out a pre-triumphant rhythm, and with the women crying and waving, the men left to battle in France.
Fantastic, thought Ailyth. Yes he would be back, but not for a good while, and until then she had freedom! The first thing she would do would be to take that lazy walk around the meadows that she had planned on, and then...
“You evil little witch!” a voice said, and Ailyth looked up to see Baroness de Monbardier glaring at her. “It was not enough that my husband was going to war, but you had to persuade him to take my son too! Did you hate him so much that you wanted to see him killed!”
“Madam, no!” Ailyth cried. “I don’t want any harm to come to him!”
“He’s going to battle, you fool!” she replied, and there were angry tears in her eyes. “He’ll not come back without a scratch.”
There was no denying that Ailyth felt guilty, even in her happiness, but it was done now. She couldn’t call him back. “He wanted to go,” she said meekly.
“And I wanted him to stay! I begged my husband not to send him, but then you had to have your say and now look at what’s happened!” She grabbed Ailyth’s arm roughly, and began dragging her back into the castle. “Well, he’s as good as dead now, thanks to you,” she spat, “and if you think you’re life will be one of pleasure now then you are gravely mistaken.”
Ailyth didn’t know what to expect from this outburst, but from that moment onwards her every move was watched by the Baroness. At daybreak she was dragged from her bed and forced to work with the servants, doing the most laborious tasks that her mother-in-law could think up. Cleaning the privies, shovelling the dung; every task that would make Ailyth shudder or be humiliated was meted out to her. If she cried, then she was beaten.
“Do you feel like a noble-woman now, Ailyth?” the Baroness would ask her, kicking over a wood pile as the girl desperately tried to light a fire, despite having no knowledge of how to. “Perhaps, if Matthew comes home again, you will have learned a little humility.”
There was no point in arguing as, without their husbands there, she ruled the castle, and every person whom Ailyth turned to for help would look away and pretend that they hadn’t heard. Even Elfrida was forbidden from seeing her, as the Baroness made sure that Ailyth had no-one to turn to, and no friends to offer her support. Not that Ailyth could face her friend. Only when the brief feeling of relief that Matthew had gone had died down did she think of how she must have upset Elfrida. For that she felt guilty.
On the day the kitchen boy was taken sick with fever, the Baroness was almost apoplectic with happiness. This was the chance she had been waiting for; the final show of humiliation that she hoped would break Ailyth’s spirits.
“You,” she said, “are to take over his duties, as well as your others. At night, you must stay awake to watch that the stove doesn’t burn out.”
It would mean that Ailyth would never have a chance to sleep and, what was worse, the cook had been given strict instructions to beat her should tiredness overcome her.
“I can’t do that to a lady,” the cook had protested when he was told this, for he had a heart of gold where the Baroness’ was stone. But with the threat of punishment himself, there was little he could do to over-ride the his mistress’ will.
“I can watch the fire for a few hours,” he told Ailyth at the start of her first night by the castle. “You can sleep for a little by the ashes. But I can’t give you no more help than that,” he explained sorrowfully. “If I spoil the meals ‘cause I’m so tired, she’d have me guts for garters.”
The floor by the fire was hard, and the ash filled every corner of Ailyth’s lungs.
“She really means to punish me,” Ailyth whispered to RiffRaff, shivering by the grate. She patted the rat gently on the head and, looking up towards the heavens, asked, “Oh Lord, can things possibly get worse?”
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