The Life of Sir Archambeau: Ch. 3 (pt. 3) - Death Comes in Fours
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He died.
But before he died, he was walking up the stairs of a tower.[1]
Everything he laid eyes upon was the exact same as it had been in the vision. From the grey stone of the walls to the arrangement of the tables in the rooms, nothing had changed, not even the musty smell which hung in the air. The stairs creaked in the same place. It was profoundly disorienting in a way the battle hadn’t been.
During the battle, hundreds of men made hundreds of choices, leading to a noticeable difference in how it had played out. But today, there was only himself, Camille behind him, and his squire waiting outside. So far, he had done everything perfectly to make it as identical to the vision as he could, because he liked what he had seen in the vision, apart from his death. But he knew how to avoid that.
Camille, his soon-to-be wife, was pleasing to the eye, with freckled pale skin and blonde hair braided in a bun at the back of her head. Her simple cotton dress, embroidered with swirling lines on the collar, swished as they climbed the stairs. In the little they had talked, it felt like they had known one another for a decade or more.[2]
“A lovely castle this is,” he said.
“I was thinking the same, once this story of a ghost is laid to rest.”
Together, they ascended the tower, checking each floor as they went. The hall, kitchen, and dormitories were empty and offered nothing interesting, barring the large number of rats scurrying about. On the sixth floor, they encountered a lounge room that took up two-thirds of the available space. The stairs continued up.
“The count’s rooms are much more homely than the floors we’ve seen so far,” said Camille.
Two windows flooded the room with sunlight; beneath one was a cedar chest with a chess set on the lid, and below the other window was a table and chairs. Spread along the walls were bookshelves half filled with trinkets, scrolls, and a Bible. Opposite them was a door to the count’s bedroom.
“These will make fine rooms,” Archambeau said. “Let’s see what’s in the hoarding.”
They climbed the final flight of stairs to the stiflingly hot hoarding box at the top of the tower. Archambeau brushed a cobweb away that stretched across the stairs—he wasn’t going to walk into them this time. Stepping onto the landing, he scattered more cobwebs before helping Camille up. With no wind to push away the hot air, he started sweating.
The hoarding box covered the top of the tower, which would normally be open to the sky and give an unbroken view of the land. Instead, there were eight square windows cut out of the wooden walls. The box also extended over the sides of the tower walls by two feet; holes in the slats allowed defenders to drop rocks on attackers below or loose arrows at them. The original battlements remained in place for when the box needed replacing, or if the next count would want to tear the hoarding down, which Archambeau planned to do.
The roof of the box slanted on all four sides up to a point. On the other side of the battlements, where the holes in the slats were, the roof was low enough that Archambeau would have to duck down if he stood on that side. Bridging the narrow beams of the roof, a garden spider the size of his fist walked across its large web to dine on one of the many flies it captured.
All of this was familiar to Archambeau from the third vision; so long as he didn’t step onto the floor of the hoarding box, he would be safe. The floor could not take the weight of him. Fearful of tripping, he gripped the battlements with two hands and avoided looking at the slat floor. It didn’t stop his legs from shaking, however.
Despite his potential death, the reason he’d brought Camille up to the box was for them to have the same conversation they’d had in the vision, barring the stupid things he’d said. He could not mess this up.
“We have reached the top,” she said. “The tower isn’t haunted after all. I’m sure you are glad for that.”
Archambeau held his tongue. In the vision, he had rather untactfully implied she wasn’t too bright to believe the tower was haunted. “It’s a weight off my mind.”
Camille bent down to see out an arrow slit. “I’ve never been this high up; have you?”
“No, definitely not.”
“I have always wanted to come up here. All the kids in my village do too.” Camille looked at him, her green eyes sparkling in the dusty attic-like space. “And we made it. But it’s not what I expected. I can’t imagine being on watch in this heat.”
“You can gloat to them all and tell them no ghost lives here.”
“A woman never gloats.”
Archambeau crouched beside her to better view the countryside. To the southwest was a town and an ocean of wheat. In the opposite direction stood snowcapped mountains blanketed in forests.
“You could paint a nice picture from up here if the hoarding was torn down,” he said.
“Will you invite me back once this box is gone?”
“I shall provide you with paints and canvas as well.”
Unsure of what to say next, he turned away and watched the garden spider, finished with its fly, descending inch by inch on a single piece of thread to one of the merlons.
A wind picked up and shrieked through the hoarding box, sounding all too much like a ghost wailing. Camille gasped and fell.
Archambeau jumped up, sticking his head into a cobweb. Pulling silk threads out of his hair, he stepped forward, inadvertently walking through another spiderweb. Yanking more of the threads off his face and out of his eyes, images of ghostly apparitions sent shivers creeping down his spine. The wailing wind increased in volume. Boots scraped on the steps and the stairs creaked.
Out of sheer terror, Archambeau ran to the battlements and jumped over a crenel to the outer floor of the hoarding box and to his own demise. The planks had gone soft with rot, and he fell right through the floor.
“Archambeau!”
For a brief moment, he was falling, falling, falling, plummeting faster than the wood splinters. His stomach felt light. Mouth agape, he stared at the underside of the hoarding box and Camille’s horrified, screaming face. What a wonderful feeling of flying, he thought. Then the moment ended with a sickening thud.
He lay there, mangled and blind, body limp and in terrible pain. His breathing was ragged from a rib that had pierced his lung. His failing heart slowed with each beat. The Michaelmas ring, tied to a leather cord around his neck, lay on his cheek, the cold metal burning into his skin. A bird sang a beautiful song, one he would have loved to listen to forever. The grass tickled the back of his neck. His leg twitched and—
—he was back in the hallway.
The pain washed away, and Archambeau gulped in air for his empty lungs.
It was getting easier, experiencing his own death. He hated that it was true. But he understood now how right the old woman was: This was an honor, and one he shouldn’t squander. But as he mulled the vision over, he didn’t know how to make sense of it.
With his shoulders back and a hand resting on the pommel of his sword, he faced the old woman and said, “Who—”
“That ring will fit her finger nicely,” she interrupted.
“I am to marry her?”
“You’ll want to stay sharp; she loves to banter,” the old woman said with a smile.
“Why was I there? Who was this count? Was the tower really haunted?”
The blind woman’s face darkened. “A man trapped by his past. You will learn more, in time.”
Archambeau didn’t try to push. He doubted there was anything he could say to get her to change her mind.
“I will say that in the vision, you were so caught up in the future that you forgot to live in the present. In haste, without thinking, you got yourself killed.”
“Isn’t that how it always is?”
“In a way. We will speak more after you have seen what you must. The final door, please, and remember, a forgetful mind leads to foolhardy decisions.”
The knight stepped in front of the fourth door. Then he half turned and asked, “Did I ask different questions on another path?”
“Naturally.”
Before he knew it, he was pushing open the door—
[1] The first part of the third vision is missing from the original poem.
[2] In the French text, Archambeau meets his future wife Camille in the third vision. In the Middle English text, he meets his future wife Alice in the third vision. This could be why the girl from Ains is named Alice (whom Archambeau might have married, as seen in the fourth vision), as a nod to the Middle English poem, though it is unknown whether Alice in the French text inspired the Alice in the Middle English text or vice versa, or whether the monks added Alice into a story she was otherwise absent from to unify the two versions even more.
In the Middle English text, Alice is the daughter of an English noble family who have been struggling financially since the Norman invasion. In the third vision, Archambeau enters a duel against an Englishman named Wulfgaet because both of them are vying for Alice’s love. Archambeau, portrayed as an arrogant man with very low opinions of the English, is killed while showing off for Alice. After the vision, the old woman mentions that on another path, Alice kills Archambeau, telling him this as a warning that she is not a woman to trifle with.