Revenge of the Rose (12 page)

“It’s beautiful,” Willem said in an awed voice, and reached out to accept it, handling it as if it were an infant. At an encouraging gesture from Konrad, he lifted it higher and then settled it down over his head. It fit remarkably well, although it felt a little as if he’d stuck his head into a slatted box. “I feel invincible!” he said excitedly, and there was a murmur of amused approval around the room. Willem took it off again and handed it to Boidon to be put back into the box. “Thank you, sire, I shall wear it well and bring it safely back to you.”

“Oh, no,” Konrad said with grand offhandedness, petting his dog. “It’s a gift. It’s yours to keep.”

There was a smattering of envious applause around the hall. Konrad was known for his ostentatious generosity— but it was usually reserved for court-level aristocrats. Who was this landless borderman to receive such an honor on first sight?

The landless borderman, flummoxed, glanced down the steps and saw Jouglet nod once firmly. Willem blinked in disbelief then looked back at Konrad and said in a warm voice, “May God reward you, sire.”

“If you are half the knight you’re rumored to be, he already has,” Konrad replied. “Jouglet,” he added, forgiving, “well done in bringing us this fellow.”

Jouglet was looking up at Willem from the foot of the dais with great satisfaction: now Willem had a helmet, and Konrad, thinking Willem required purchasing, believed he had the bill of sale.

Paul the Cardinal, who had offered Willem such sympathy, glanced down at the minstrel with a scrutinizing glare.

Jouglet ignored Paul.

Willem decided the nuances of court enmities were more than he could decipher, so he gave up trying.

Marcus received a signal from a servant at the kitchen screens and motioned to Konrad that the meal would be served soon. The emperor pushed away the whippet and rose to his feet, and the entire room scrambled to follow suit. Everyone stepped to one side of the hall, where a row of boys held silver handbasins full of rose water, and a row of girls beside them offered scented linen towels.

Willem was stunned at the size and volume of everything— there were more children helping with the hand washing than he had servants, total. The hall was actually modest for the exterior vastness of the fortress, but still bigger by far than any he’d seen before, and brightly decorated. On the vaulted, plastered ceiling was painted the imperial coat of arms, and colorful murals illuminated all four walls. There were rows of windows on both long sides, unsealed and un-shuttered to let in the summer light, although the view to the east, into the surprisingly claustrophobic courtyard, was only of the red sandstone walls of the other wings. There were more than a hundred men in here, all of them ornately dressed in greens and reds and yellows, furs and gemstones, and all of them familiar— or affecting familiarity— with eating at the emperor’s board. Most of them had coloring closer to Lienor’s or Erec’s than his own. A few of them looked to be ministers or visiting dignitaries; some of them were local lords; many of them were seasoned knights fulfilling their feudal obligations in the king’s bodyguard. A very few of them had ladies attached, sitting in the lower end of the hall nearer to the servants. There would clearly be no courtly pursuits that way tonight, and Willem was glad of it.

Despite Konrad’s own welcoming congeniality, the general mood struck Willem as colder and sterner than any feast he’d attended within Burgundy. Everybody in the room was viewing him appraisingly, jealously, even resentfully. He felt self-conscious and yet oddly exhilarated by it. Without vanity he saw that he was better-looking than most of them, and younger than many. He was wearing the most expensive garments that he owned, but they were lackluster compared to the gilt of the evening. He would have to ask Jouglet where he could order better fabrics on credit in the town tomorrow.

As Alphonse was returning to the high table from the washbasins, Konrad gave him a meaningful look and gestured to the place at the end of the table, where Willem had sat. The count grimaced but bowed in acquiescence, and took that seat. When Willem returned to the dais— trying not to gawk at the beautifully woven table coverings and extravagant settings that had been placed during the hand washing— there was only one seat left. And so he found himself sitting at Konrad’s right side, after all— which everybody noticed.

At the far end of the hall, Jouglet looked delighted. And Erec shot him an encouraging wink too, nearly giggling into Jouglet’s shoulder. Willem felt a pang of jealousy at how lightning fast those two had suddenly taken to each other in the course of the afternoon. Possibly this was a calculated move on Jouglet’s part to cultivate Erec’s goodwill— but still, they certainly looked to be enjoying themselves more than he was at the moment.

A trumpet sounded to announce the first course, and the room grew quiet as Paul gave a lengthy, sonorously nasal blessing. Marcus stood between the royal brothers to taste whatever food was set before them. A man seldom given to fancy, he imagined it was Imogen’s health he was safeguarding.

Over the first few courses— first cherries, then peppery cheese soup, puréed cabbage, lamprey, roast heron in garlic sauce— Willem attended only to his table manners, deferring to the Count of Luz, with whom he shared his trencher, holding the goblet by the base to avoid greasing the enameled sides, washing his hands after each course as the page boys came around with the basins of rose water. He spoke little, except to thank the pretty woman who served the drinks, but he listened to those around him. It nearly put him off his food: all of the lords and knights, and even Konrad, were earnestly discussing the upcoming tournament, but they spoke of it as though it were a cockfight, or a gambling match. There were many swaggering wagers being placed over the venison stew on who could unhorse whom, and by what time of day. The rest of the discussion was men making fun of absent knights, mostly Flemish and French. The mockery was not of their horsemanship or breeding, but simple and base insults— the shape of this one’s nose, that one’s pockmarked face, the Englishman William the Marshal who was getting long in the tooth, another one who stuttered, and many warriors’ rumored lack of— or excess— virility, a topic that inspired shocking commentary about a number of well-born ladies.

The only person who shared Willem’s distaste of the general attitude was Cardinal Paul, and for that reason Willem began to warm to him, directing many of his comments over Konrad’s shoulder to the slightly pudgy younger brother. But his enthusiasm faded when he realized that Paul, speaking as the shrill voice of the church, was
entirely
against the tournament, no matter how it was approached. In Willem’s own household, discussions of tourneys were nearly on a par with discussions of faith. They were always very much focused on discipline and technique, a verbal preparation for the actual deed. It was detailed and technical enough that Lienor, on those rare occurrences when she succeeded in winning her way to the table to join them, had learned many of the basic terms and strategies.

Suddenly he missed his sister terribly and wondered what she was doing right now, what she would have to say of these well-dressed overfed louts hammering the air with hollow braggadocio. He fell into a reverie of home, of his maddeningly contrary sibling and all that was familiar to him, smiling slightly without realizing it.

“What are you musing on?” Konrad asked as Marcus served them each a wing of roast capon.

Willem answered promptly, “I was thinking I would best all of these men at the tournament, in your name, in honor of your stupendous gift.” Jouglet, he thought, would have been proud of that.

Konrad doubted this was the true answer, but he approved of the impulse that had sponsored it. He wiped his hands on the embroidered tablecloth and clapped Willem on the shoulder. “Earlier I said this because it was proper, and polite, but now I say it from my heart, Willem,” he said in a low voice. “You are most welcome to my court.” He sat back.

Willem felt both Paul’s and Alphonse of Burgundy’s eyes upon him again. Alphonse’s displeasure he could understand— it must be uncomfortable to be outranked by the grown man one had betrayed and terrorized when he was a powerless child— but Paul was a mystery to him.

Then Willem caught Jouglet’s gaze from across the room. Jouglet, like the cardinal and count, had seen the quiet exchange between Konrad and Willem, and gave Willem a reassuring nod that helped put him at ease. He wished the minstrel would be summoned to join them, stay right at his elbow for the evening. He was still so nervous he could hardly appreciate the whimsy and finesse of this, the most exotic and sumptuous meal he’d ever sat down to in his life. Mostly all he noticed was that the food was saltier and saucier than what his own cook made in Dole.

Bellies were digesting figs and gingerbread, some seventeen exotic courses later, when the trestles were cleared away for evening entertainment. Several people stretched out on the rushes of the lower hall playing backgammon or a Spanish dice game; others, including most of the sparse female population, clustered nearer the hearth close to His Majesty. The Count of Burgundy and his nephew Paul, the papal spy, disappeared together. “My family,” Konrad said with a droll sigh, smiling at Willem. “The phlegmatic and the bilious. I would my father and I had been each an only son.”

Jouglet, asked to lead off the entertainment, announced a song from Provence, translated to the German. The bow ran droning smoothly over all the strings as Jouglet fingered an introduction on the top one. “It’s a love song, and I dedicate it, as I do all my songs, to my secret beloved,” the musician explained in a throaty voice, hazel eyes slowly taking in each woman in the room. Willem watched, astounded, as each of them in turn blushed, giggled, or grew moony-eyed. With a start, he remembered Nicholas’s declaration that Jouglet’s secret lady was probably Lienor. It had never occurred to him to take Jouglet’s flirtation with her so seriously.

Each woman in the room— wives, maids, and aging crones— looked as if she would have thrown herself at the singer’s feet, and Jouglet basked in the attention. Willem had never seen his friend in action before this kind of crowd. Even while chanting dolefully, the jongleur had a quiet cockiness, the charismatic confidence of a young gallant; Willem felt a surprising wave of pride that he himself had been singled out for the young gallant’s confidences.

The love dirge was followed by a more upbeat tune typical of the Danube, by the young Dietmar of Aist, about a typical little bird on a typical little linden tree. Then Jouglet sat beside Willem for a while, presenting him in glowing terms to the moony-eyed ladies (who all clearly liked the look of him but found Jouglet more entertaining, at least tonight). Dancing girls were brought out, ruddy and unhappy-looking yet smiling bravely— Slavic conquests of war, Jouglet whispered discreetly, from Konrad’s campaigns in the east. They were followed by acrobats and jugglers who had been carted up to Koenigsbourg for the occasion, and finally Jouglet was asked to close the evening.

The minstrel chose to enthrall the male audience this time, with a translated passage from
The Song of Roland,
but paused at a most dramatic moment: the dying Count Roland is surprised by a Saracen who, after feigning death, steals Roland’s sword…but Roland gets a second wind and begins to beat the Saracen to death, when…

Jouglet lowered the bow and grinned at the assembled company. “If you’d like me to finish, this spot at my feet is an excellent place for those hard little round things you carry in your wallets.”

There were groans and protests around the circle of listeners at this familiar and imperially sanctioned extortion. But that was followed by a rustling of silk and linen, a creaking of leather, as men reached for their belt-pouches, and a moment later there was a considerable pile of coins at Jouglet’s feet. The performer nodded approvingly. “You all know perfectly well what happens next, but here is my divine craftsmanship to conclude it.” It took another seven verses before Roland was finally tragically, romantically, handsomely, graphically, heroically deceased.

His Majesty, the hooded falcon back on his wrist, bade an avuncular good night to all the knights and squires but amazed Willem by telling him to stay. Konrad led him, the page boys, the guards, and Jouglet through the lower entrance of the hall and up one flight of a spiral staircase of stone— a bit of architecture nothing more than functional, but Willem still had a hard time not gushing over it. They stepped onto the second floor, and all but the guard, who stayed by the door, entered Konrad’s personal suite. This was a string of three rooms opening onto one another, running the length of the south wing: bedroom, dayroom with its enormous window alcove of which Jouglet was so fond, and a small receiving chamber at the end, with a door out to an external spiral stair. All three rooms had hearths, an extraordinary luxury.

Willem was given a brief glance of it all before they settled in the bedroom. It was the most opulent room he had ever sat in, so opulent that by the next morning he would hardly remember a single distinct thing of worth or beauty— except the breathtaking view of the woods-and-hedgerow-decorated landscape in the midsummer twilight, and the scent of the beeswax candles all around the room in their enameled holders.

The emperor handed off his falcon to a boy who took her into the dayroom with the dogs. At His Majesty’s invitation, Willem settled onto velvet cushions while Konrad himself reclined on the tilted bed, and they spoke in reasonable voices rather than shouting over masses of men. Jouglet put the fiddle away in its leather case, picked up a small gut-strung harp, and began playing something soft, almost dronelike, as they ate cherries and sipped wine. There was a small pack of omnipresent page boys in one corner of the room, who entered and exited from either door with the quiet efficiency of worker bees; when Konrad had no need of them, they and their monarch seemed oblivious of each other’s presence. They all huddled together now, taking turns losing pennies and glass beads to one another over dominoes and dice.