Page 24 of The Evening and the Morning
Count Hubert was proud of many things. He cherished his warlike Viking heritage, but he was more gratified by the way the Vikings had become Normans, with their own version of the French language. Most of all, he valued the way they had adopted Christianity, restoring the churches and monasteries that had been sacked by their ancestors. In a hundred years the former pirates had created a law-abiding civilization the equal of anything in Europe.
The long trestle table stood in the great hall, on the upstairs floor of the castle. It was covered with white linen cloths that reached tothe floor. Ragna’s parents sat at the head. Her mother’s name was Ginnlaug, but she had changed it to the more French-sounding Genevieve to please her husband.
The count and countess and their more important guests ate from bronze bowls, drank from cherrywood cups with silver rims, and held parcel-gilt knives and spoons—costly tableware, though not extravagant.
The English monk, Brother Aldred, was miraculously handsome. He reminded Ragna of an ancient Roman marble sculpture she had seen at Rouen, the head of a man with short curly hair, stained with age and lacking the tip of the nose, but clearly part of what had once been a statue of a god.
Aldred had arrived the previous afternoon, clutching to his chest a box of books he had bought at the great Norman abbey of Jumièges. “It has a scriptorium as good as any in the world!” Aldred enthused. “An army of monks copying and decorating manuscripts for the enlightenment of mankind.” Books, and the wisdom they could bring, clearly constituted Aldred’s great passion.
Ragna had a notion that this passion had taken the place in his life that might otherwise have been held by a kind of romantic love that was forbidden by his faith. He was charming to her, but a different, hungrier expression came over his face when he looked at her brother, Richard, who was a tall boy of fourteen with lips like a girl’s.
Now Aldred was waiting for a favorable wind to take him back across the Channel to England. “I can’t wait to get home to Shiring and show my brethren how the Jumièges monks illuminate their letters,” he said. He spoke French with some Latin and Anglo-Saxon words thrown in. Ragna knew Latin, and she had picked up some Anglo-Saxon from an English nursemaid who had married aNorman sailor and come to live in Cherbourg. “And two of the books I bought are works that I’ve never previously heard of!” Aldred went on.
“Are you prior of Shiring?” Ragna asked. “You seem quite young.”
“I’m thirty-three, and no, I’m not the prior,” he said with a smile. “I’m the armarius, in charge of the scriptorium and the library.”
“Is it a big library?”
“We have eight books, but when I get home we’ll have sixteen. And the scriptorium consists of me and an assistant, Brother Tatwine. He colors the capital letters. I do the plain writing—I’m more interested in words than colors.”
The priest interrupted their conversation, reminding Ragna of her duty to make a good impression. Father Louis said: “Tell me, Lady Ragnhild, do you read?”
“Of course I do.”
He raised an eyebrow in faint surprise. There was no “of course” about it: by no means could all noblewomen read.
Ragna realized she had just made the kind of remark that gave her a reputation for haughtiness. Trying to be more amiable, she added: “My father taught me to read when I was small, before my brother was born.”
When Father Louis had arrived a week ago, Ragna’s mother had drawn her into the private quarters of the count and countess and said: “Why do you think he’s here?”
Ragna had frowned. “I don’t know.”
“He’s an important man, secretary to the count of Reims and a canon of the cathedral.” Genevieve was statuesque but, despite her imposing appearance, she was easily overawed.
“So what brings him to Cherbourg?”
“You,” Genevieve had said.
Ragna had begun to see.
Her mother went on: “The count of Reims has a son, Guillaume, who is your age and unmarried. The count is looking for a wife for his son. And Father Louis is here to see whether you might be suitable.”
Ragna felt a twinge of resentment. This kind of thing was normal, but all the same it made her feel like a cow being appraised by a prospective purchaser. She suppressed her indignation. “What’s Guillaume like?”
“He’s a nephew of King Robert.” Robert II, twenty-five years old, was king of France. For Genevieve the greatest asset a man could have was a royal connection.
Ragna had other priorities. She was impatient to know what he was like, regardless of his social status. “Anything else?” she said, in a tone of voice that, she realized immediately, was rather arch.
“Don’t be sarcastic. It’s just the kind of thing that puts men off you.”
That shot hit home. Ragna had already discouraged several perfectly appropriate suitors. Somehow she scared them. Being so tall did not help—she had her mother’s figure—but there was more to it than that.
Genevieve went on: “Guillaume is not diseased, or mad, or depraved.”
“He sounds like every girl’s dream.”
“There you go again.”
