The Wanderer and the Way 9
Alphonso the Chaste
This is Chapter 9 of The Wanderer and the Way
Alfonso the Chaste was a tall, vigorous, well-made man of some thirty-six years. His mode of dress was rich but simple. His beard and hair were long and thick and carefully trimmed and curled. There was, as yet, no trace of gray upon his head or upon his chin, and yet there was gravity and care worn into his face by constant activity and danger. He was not a dour man, but neither was he merry. He was a man of purpose who, having ventured one thing, moved on to the next with little time wasted in celebration or mourning over the success of what had gone before.
If Alphonso recognized that the Agnes who had greeted him at the gate in the afternoon and attended to him as a servant was the same creature as the Elswyth who served as lady of the feast and brought the guest cup to him in the evening, he gave no sign of it and made no remark on it in Theodemir’s hearing. He was as gracious to her on the first occasion as on the second, and it seemed to Theodemir, as he watched her, that Alphonso’s gaze did not trouble her, and he watched the king carefully to see is he could discover how to look at Agnes without offending her. But he made no progress in this study, for the encounters were, in both cases, too brief for detailed examination.
Brevity seemed to mark all of Alphonso’s encounters. When Theodemir himself was introduced to the king, Alphonso said, “I hear well of you, young man. We will talk in the morning.” And then he immediately moved on to the next local man of consequence, who was greeted, praised, and deserted with equal dispatch. Witteric, who had perhaps expected better for himself, was dismissed in the same way, and his evident dismay at this treatment brought a touch of joy to Theodemir’s heart. Only the bishop received any more of the king’s attention that afternoon, for as soon as all who were entitled to be greeted had received their greeting, Alphonso clapped the bishop on the shoulder and said, “Quendulf, my old comrade, come and walk with me.” The king and the bishop walked off together towards the river, and when Witteric and several of the other local notables made as if to follow, one of the king’s retainers took Witteric’s arm and shook his head. The other men understood the sign as once, but Witteric shook the man’s hand off angrily, and they stared at each other a moment before Witteric looked around the company and said, “Well, my friends, while our great moral guides take council together, let us take some refreshment and a little entertainment before they return to scold us.” This proposal seemed to sit well with the snubbed grandees, and so Witteric kept their esteem and led them off to where the full company of his small brown girls waited to smile on them and fill their cups.
Theodemir was in no frame of mind to join them. The small brown girls had been dressed as in a Dionysian fresco, and the thought of having to sit and laugh and gossip while Sakina, bare-limbed, her form apparent to every eye beneath the thin fabric of her brief tunic, smiled and filled the cups of the reclining men, was unbearable to him. He knew that the small brown girls had all been told to have ready a much more modest dress to put on should the eye of the king fall upon them, but it was Witteric’s apparent intent to test how well deserved the king’s nickname of Chaste might be. And if it proved that it was deserved, his second purpose was to show his followers that their loyalty to him was more luxuriously rewarded than any allegiance to the king would ever be.
Unwilling to follow his uncle’s party and forbidden from approaching the king and the bishop, Theodemir turned to Agnes, who was gathering up the cups from which the draught of welcome had been drunk from wherever the assembled men had chosen to lay them down. He picked up one or two that were near to his hand and carried them to the tray which she was using to gather them. He hoped that she would notice this gesture and say a word to him, but she said nothing and continued with her work.
“I beg leave to keep your company, Lady,” he said after having been ignored for as long as he could bear.
“It is your house, sir,” she replied. “I suppose you may sit or walk anywhere you choose.”
“A philosopher,” he said, “would note the distinction between remaining in your presence and keeping your company.”
“I am not a philosopher, sir,” she replied, picking up the tray and starting off towards the kitchens with it. For a moment he though to walk with her and engage her in conversation as they walked, but then he stopped and let her go on alone.
He waited by the gate to see if she would return to her post or would stay away to avoid coming into his presence again. She would have ample excuse for doing so. All who were expected had arrived and she would soon have to return to the village to put off Agnes and regale herself in the most splendid version of the Lady Elswyth for the feast.
But she did return, and as she approached him, he attempted to look at her in a way that would not offend her, but while it seemed at first that he was achieving his desire, there was soon a frown on her face and her eyes looked away from his, and it was clear once again that she was pained by his gaze.
“Should you not be joining the other men on the terrace,” she asked.
“I cannot bear to be with them,” he said.
This seemed to interest her and she looked up at him.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Do you know what my Uncle did to Sakina at dinner on the day the king’s messenger came?”
“I did hear,” she said. “There was some talk of it in the kitchen.”
“I witnessed it,” he said. “It sickened me.”
“How is it different from what you have done with her in your bed?” she asked.
Not everything, it seemed, was gossiped of in the kitchens.
“I have never committed any sin against her,” he said, “Nor against Fatima either.”
“No sin at all?” she asked archly.
“Not that sin at least. I have not raped any of his servants.”
“You do not think it is rape if it is done without protest and in a bed?” she asked.
“I have never had knowledge of any woman of this house,” he protested. But then he felt a flush to the roots of his hair and added. “Since I returned, I have not.” But, yes, there had been a small brown girl who had gone without protest to his bed many nights in the years before he had left for Rome. It had simply been the custom of the house, part of its luxuries, like good wine and fine clothes. What had become of Lalla while he was away, he wondered. Witteric’s small brown girls were never allowed to grow old in his possession. He had been fond of her and had thought that she returned his fondness, that the service that she had rendered him had been an easy and agreeable one, as she had always made it seem. It could not be, surely, that he had been raping her, night after night, month after month?
It was a question he did not dare to put to Agnes. He already stood so low in her estimation that this revelation must surely remove any hope he had of winning her affection. But then he looked at her and saw that all this was known to her already, that it already formed part of her opinion of him.
“It was the violence of the thing,” he said, explaining more to himself than to her. “It was not done for his pleasure. I landed a jibe on him, which is a thing I can rarely manage, and he did it in front of me, violently, his eye fixed on mine all the while.”
“So he raped you,” she said. “And that is why it is different to you.”
“Yes, Lady,” he said, astonished at her perception. “He raped me and used Sakina as his instrument.”
“I think she had the worst of it,” she said. She would give him no reprieve, no mercy.
“Why do you remain here,” he asked, “in the villa of men you despise, awaiting the return of a husband you hate.”
She turned and looked out toward the river, where Alonso and Quendulf were now sitting in conversation under the willow tree that was her accustomed sanctuary. “When I was young,” she said, “I had everything a sensible girl could desire and the promise of far more to come when I married. Yet my mother always complained that I had a wistful heart, never content but always looking over the horizon and away. And Sister Eormenberg said the same thing, and Mother Wynflaed too. And my wistfulness was the cause of my sin and the cause of all the harm I have done. So I will not be wistful anymore. I will stay were God or fortune put me and make as best of it as I can. I will not wish. I will not pine. I will not waste my days in wistfulness or hope. I will stay where I am put so that I will do no more harm.”
He could not see, for her back was towards him, yet he knew that there were tears in her eyes by the time she had ended this speech. He wanted desperately to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he was certain that such an act would not give her comfort.
“But is it not wistful,” he asked, “for you to continue to act as a gatekeeper when you are fated by your own will to be the Northman’s lady?”
She sank slowly to the ground, her shoulders quaking.
“Your pardon, Lady,” he said, heart-struck. “I did not think how cruel those words were until I spoke them.”
She collapsed into a twisted ball on the ground, half sitting, half kneeling, her head bent and her back heaving with sobs.
“Is there nothing I can say or do to comfort you, Lady?” he begged. He was standing over her, feeling himself a looming, threatening presence over her slight form, for she was a small woman, soft-cheeked, almost a child.
She made no reply but continued to sob. He looked around desperately for someone he could summon to comfort her. But the small brown girls were all busy on the terrace, and the cook and her helpers were occupied with preparations for the feast. The young women of the village, those who were not too great with child to be an amiable sight for the guests, had been required to come and help serve the feast, and he looked toward the village in the hope some of them might be approaching, but the path in that direction was empty. The only souls in sight were Alphonso, the king, and Quendulf, the bishop, and he could not imagine how he could go to them and say, I have upset the gatekeeper with my thoughtless words. Will you come and offer her comfort.
“How can this do harm to any?” Agnes cried aloud suddenly in the midst of her grief.
“It is honest service, Lady. Indeed, it is worthy and can do no harm,” he said, willing to say anything that would mend what he had broken.
“Will the day ever come,” she said, looking up at him with tear-stained cheeks, “when I forget how much I hate him? Will the day ever come when he ceases to care when he sees that hatred in my face?”
“You speak of such a day almost as if you desire it, Lady,” he said, offering a hand if she should choose to rise.
“I would at least be something then,” she said. She rose without taking his hand and brushed the dust off her dress with her hands. “A vikingr woman, and nothing else. I would be something whole at least.”
“There are other ways you might be made whole, Lady,” he said.
“You are deceived,” she said.
He frowned at this. He was not deceived. He had his vocation. That much he was certain of. He would make her whole, though by what method he remained uninformed.
“If I cannot ease your suffering, Lady,” he pleaded, “tell me what to do to make amends for what was done to Sakina because of me.”
“There is nothing you can do,” she said. “She is his slave. You have no power to change her fate in any way.”
“While he raped her,” he said, “his knife lay on the table beside them, and Fatima stood there, as if she was waiting to fill his cup, and I thought, ‘why does she not take that knife and plunge it into his throat?’”
“But you did not think to do the deed yourself?” she asked.
“I was too far from him. If I had moved, he would have had time to defend himself. Or, more likely, put his knife to Sakina’s throat.”
“You could go to his room in the night and murder him while he sleeps,” she said.
“I should think myself a coward for doing so,” he said.
“And to escape that, you will let the monster live and rape,” she said.
“You could kill him in his sleep as well as I,” he said. “So could Fatima or Sakina. What stays their hand, or yours?”
“I do not want to be a murderer,” she said. “I have blood enough on my hands already.”
“You have convicted me of rape,” he replied. “Would you make me a murderer as well?”
She looked at him, and for a moment he thought he saw something akin to kindness in her face. “No,” she said. “I would not ask that of you. And so I go on as I am, and so do you, and so do they.”
“Lady,” he said. “I have had a vision. It was interrupted, and I had only half of it. But this much I know. God has placed you in my care. You are my vocation. My special charge. I do not yet know how I am to serve you. Perhaps God will show me that in time. But know that I am dedicated to your cause, absolutely and without reservation, as a direct charge from God himself.”
She looked at him with somewhat less surprise than he had expected when he had begun to blurt out this confession. “You should meet my mother,” she said. “She thinks me wistful. But you are ten times worse.”
Comments welcome. If you spot a mistake, please let me know by replying to this email or by sending an email to author@gmbaker.net. Thanks!