The Lute Player (24 page)

‘Anna,’ Berengaria said in that same wild voice, ‘you must think of something. Think of some way to let me see him before we go away again.’

Joanna said, ‘Mother can do it. Mother will devise a way.’

And suddenly it was as though a line had been drawn across the room with Berengaria and Joanna on one side and the duchess and I on the other. She looked up, put a finger in her book to mark the place and waited. I said:

‘Really, Berengaria, you make it very difficult for me. Richard is busy and it is his wish to defer the meeting until you are in Cyprus. We asked him to come here and he was prevented; if he had wanted—I mean if he had been free to come another day, he would have suggested it himself. Begin now, sweetheart, to be a good wife and make your husband’s wishes paramount. In a few weeks you will be married and see him every day.’

I was conscious of a failure in me. I should have moved towards her at that moment and taken her in my arms, administered little deft pattings of the shoulder and strokings of the hair. Meaningless gestures but time-honoured, soothing to the one in distress and giving the observer something to do other than stand and stare. But such actions do not come easily to me. Joanna, however, got up and put her arms about Berengaria and said, ‘There, there,’ and things of that kind, and tried to draw her back to the settle. Berengaria shrugged her off and took a step or two towards Anna.

‘Anna, you say something. Help me.’

The little duchess said coolly, ‘Madam of England has explained the situation, ’Garia, and really there seems nothing to do about it. Unless you emulate Esmeralda…’

Berengaria looked blank for a moment; the tears that were in her eyes spilled over but no more came. Then she smiled her sweet small smile. ‘Esmeralda… Of course. Oh, Anna, why didn’t we think of it before?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t advise it. It wouldn’t work in real life, you know.’

I had never heard of Esmeralda, so I had no idea what they were talking about, but something in the duchess’s voice was disturbing to me. It had a falseness; she was saying one thing and meaning another and usually her voice was very genuine. Now, though she said, ‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ she was really saying, ‘Go ahead and do it.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked quickly. ‘Who was Esmeralda, and what did she do?’

‘She was only in a song,’ Berengaria said.

‘Oh, I remember now,’ said Joanna, brightening and blowing her nose. ‘Oh, that would be very romantic. Just the sort of thing to appeal to Richard.’

‘It’d be madness,’ said the duchess. Deliberately, ostentatiously, she took her finger from the page and resumed reading. But the arrow was shot and the harm had been done.

There was at least one person in the room whom I could address with sharpness and authority. I did so.

‘Joanna! Will you please answer my question and tell me who Esmeralda was?’

‘Only a girl in a song, Mother. Don’t you remember? The one who took a lute—no, a harp, I think. It was a harp, wasn’t it, Berengaria?’

I snapped my finger impatiently and Joanna hurried on, ‘Took a harp and went to the place where Sargarossa was holding her husband prisoner and sang a song that sounded just like a song to everybody else but was so cunningly fashioned for his ear alone that he understood that Gilbert Falaise was coming to his rescue.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And you are lunatic enough to believe that if Berengaria went in for such mummery Richard would find it romantic! I always knew you were a fool, Joanna, but I should have thought that even a fool might have more sense at your age!’

I knew that I was making poor Joanna the scapegoat because I could upbraid her without actual breach of etiquette; and I thought even in my irritation that later on I could explain to her that everything I said to her I had actually meant for Berengaria and the duchess.

‘No wonder men despise women,’ I said, ‘and choose to keep them at a distance whenever serious business is afoot. Richard is so busy with things that are real and important that he has no time to call upon us and you think it would be romantic to go acting like somebody in a ballad. Wearing cap and bells, I suppose.’

Joanna’s chin began to shake again and her eyes filled with easy tears. The duchess closed her book with a little snap and said:

‘Madam, please remember that it was I, not the Queen of Sicily, who made the suggestion; she may not have understood that I made it in jest.’

‘One should be careful of the jests one makes in the presence of simpletons,’ I retorted.

Berengaria stood up again.

‘Joanna is not a simpleton and Anna is not jesting,’ she said. ‘I cannot go to Cyprus without seeing Richard. And since he cannot come to me, I must go to him. And I must go in such guise that I neither waste his time nor distract his attention. Anna had wit enough to see that and to devise a way.’

‘Unfortunately you haven’t Esmeralda’s gifts,’ said the duchess, repudiating the compliment. ‘You can’t sing, Berengaria.’

‘I can strum on a lute well enough; Blondel can do the singing,’ Berengaria said, quite unruffled. ‘And I can wear his better suit of clothes.’ She appeared to become aware of my consternation and turned to me, saying sweetly, ‘I am sorry, madam, to act against your wishes and without your approval but this is a matter of great concern to me and for once I must judge for myself.’ With that she moved to the door, opened it, looked out and said, ‘Find Blondel. Tell him I want him at once.’

I said, ‘Berengaria, if you do this thing you may regret it all your life. Something will happen. You will be discovered and Richard will be angry beyond words. In songs and such rubbishy tales disguises are always perfect—but, my dear girl, whoever heard of them in real life? Your breasts, your hips would betray you in a moment. You’d never reach Richard’s tent. The archers would take you for some camp follower up to a prank and God alone knows what might happen. Rape, probably. A camp is not a convocation of monks, you know.’

I thought to frighten her. I succeeded only in frightening Joanna, who gasped out:

‘Mother is right, Berengaria. Besides, what would you do with your hair?’

Berengaria lifted her hands and touched the long black plaits which lay over her shoulders, followed the curve of her bosom and ended well below her waist.

‘Cut it off,’ she said calmly. ‘It will grow again on the way to Cyprus.’

‘For God’s sake, don’t talk like an idiot,’ I burst out. ‘Before the boy comes and you make yourself a laughing-stock before him, Berengaria, listen to me. The whole idea is insane. You shan’t do it. I forbid it. Do you hear me? Until you are married you are in my safekeeping and I forbid you to say another word or make another move about this mad notion.’ I swung round to the little duchess. ‘You started this,’ I said hotly, ‘in jest! Now end it! Go on, use your famous wits and say something that will bring her to her senses.’

Before she had time to say anything there was a gentle tap at the door; it opened and there was the lute player. He was breathless and flushed, as though from haste, and his hair was all misted from damp so that it stood out, silver-gilt, like a halo.

‘Go away,’ I said, ‘we don’t want you after all.’

‘Come in, Blondel. And shut the door.’ That was the duchess’s voice, so low that it was almost gruff.

He included us both in a sweeping glance and then, still on the threshold, his hand still on the door, looked towards Berengaria.

‘Madam, you sent for me.’ The words rebuked me and the duchess.

‘Yes, I did, Blondel. I want you to fetch your lute and your better clothes—not for you to wear them, to lend them to me. I’ll explain everything afterwards—as we go. Hurry now and bring me the clothes.’

I had always thought him an effeminate young man, a pretty boy. Generally he fitted in so well into our female company with his songs and his lute, his handiness with the tapestry wool, his knowledgeableness about women’s attire. But tonight, quite suddenly, as he stood looking not puzzled but cautious and entirely unhurried by the strange order, I became aware of the male quality in him. Masculine, reasonable… He might be my ally. Before I could speak to denounce the plan anew to one who might be in sympathy with me, the duchess spoke.

‘The princess has taken a fancy to emulate Esmeralda, Blondel. It is entirely my fault. I joked about it and said that was the only way of getting into the camp.’

‘The camp?’ he said.

I could see that there was no need for further explaining; he was familiar with the story of Esmeralda. I shot a venomous glance at the duchess and noticed that her eyes were bright with malice. Through some part of my mind which held aloof from the immediate problem there passed a strange thought: She has something up her sleeve! From the moment when she made that apparently idle suggestion she has been moving towards
this
moment! Now why? To what end?

I gathered myself together and spoke direct to the boy.

‘This may have started as a joke,’ I said, ‘but it has now gone too far. Princesses masquerading as goose girls or minstrels are all very well in stories and songs, but to think of it happening in real life is nothing short of madness. If you lift a finger, Blondel, to assist in this prank you will do your mistress a very ill service and—’

He broke in quite rudely: ‘That was in your mind, my lady?

‘It was and it is,’ said Berengaria. ‘Madam of England has voiced her objections and absolved herself of all responsibility. Any blame that comes of it I will take on myself. Now, Blondel, there is no time for further talk. Go fetch the things.’

He made no move and with a sudden uprush of relief I knew irrationally, but with certainty, that this could be left to him for handling. I was so sure that I turned away and began to kick the logs on the hearth nearer the heart of the fire.

‘My lady,’ he said, ‘that was an order and it goes against the grain for me to disobey you; but I cannot, in this case, both obey and serve, so I must disobey. The King of England lives in a tent surrounded by common soldiers and what private life he has goes on behind a screen in a space about a third as large as this room. Any unknown player forcing his way in would be well below the salt—where the talk alone would scald your ears. For that reason, if for no other, I would not dream of taking you there—even if disguise were possible which it is not. No woman over the age of twelve could really masquerade as a boy, despite all the songs in the world.’

‘You refuse to come with me?’ He did not answer. ‘Very well, then I’ll go by myself. I can find a minstrel and doubtless I can hire some clown’s clothes which his master provided.’

‘Madam, the clothes which you gave me are yours by unalienable right. But whether you go in those or in those you wear now, when you go into the tent of the King of England you go heralded so that your rank and your sex are accorded the respect due to them. If needful I will announce you at the very top of my voice.’

He said all this very firmly but quite casually and it was exactly as a husband, indulgent but sensible, might counter some outrageous whim in his wife.

I stared at him admiringly; Joanna gaped at his effrontery; the duchess looked slightly, very slightly, amused; Berengaria seemed stunned. Four women, one man. And the man had spoken!

Berengaria, for all her stunned look, found words first. She said, as coldly and calmly as though she had had him in to answer some trivial question:

‘Very well, you may go.’

His face flew a sudden banner of scarlet; in all his spoilt days nobody had used that tone to him before, I gathered. But he bowed to us all and made his exit without any loss of dignity. And as though the closing of the door behind him had released some restraining spring, Berengaria’s rage broke.

VIII

My nerves were still throbbing with agitation at the memory of that rage and the scene which it precipitated when, two hours later, I mounted a mule and set off through the dark drizzle to go to Richard’s camp. I was once again heavily conscious of my age and of the fact that I had been completely routed and forced into taking an action at odds with my will.

Complete loss of self-control is as contagious as fire and when Berengaria stared at that closing door and then flung round and gave way to her temper, it was as though someone had thrown a blazing brand into a dry haystack. In a moment, it seemed, we were all afire with rage, rashly exposing our hatreds and prejudices and grudges with the same demand for attention and thoughtless self-exposure with which a beggar will exhibit his horrid sores.

Who would have thought that my gentle Joanna hated me so much? That the same voice which had so recently said, ‘Mother is right,’ should now be shrieking, ‘The sons, always the sons! Richard is busy, so he mustn’t be disturbed! Except by her who sends the messages and gets them back, even when they are about
my
affairs! Women don’t matter. Only the boys. It’s been like that always.’

It was, in a way, true. I was fond of my girls but they hadn’t mattered as the boys had.

On the turbulent flood of memory another piece of flotsam appeared. Myself, rounding on the little duchess and saying:

‘It’s all your fault with your jest that wasn’t a jest at all! I always knew that your sort would work me ill! For years I’ve known it. I thought it was physical aversion but it was prophetic. Your sort brings bad luck. We were happy enough and all was going well until you weighed in with your jest. Damn your wits, they’re as crooked as your carcase.’

Much of that was true too. And the saying of it, the understanding of that premonition released me. I hated her for her part in this affair but I no longer shuddered at the sight of her. I could have touched, shaken, smacked her as though she were whole and sound. And she hadn’t spoiled my supper tonight! That was over. I knew why I had hated cripples—they were just unlucky for me.

And there was Berengaria screaming at her half sister:

‘You sat there dumb! You knew he would do anything you said. You sat dumb. You only suggested it in the first place so that he should be able to make a fool of me! Because I didn’t want him to go and build your accursed house.’

Truth there, too, now that I had time to think of it. The suggestion was made in malice, the result regarded with amusement; the one had been deliberate and the other foreseen.

The only one of us who had not lost her head or shouted or exposed herself was Anna (I could think of her as ‘Anna’ now). And it was she who, when Berengaria had lashed herself into complete frenzy, used her puny strength to restrain her and turned to Joanna and said, ‘Fetch Mathilde and tell her to bring the physic, she’ll understand.’

Joanna was completely hysterical by that time and said, ‘Yes, that’s my part—to run other people’s errands! I’m Queen of Sicily, not a page boy.’ It was then that I smacked her face. And she came back to her senses and dropped back on the settle, crying helplessly, while I summoned the waiting woman.

With Berengaria’s removal, clasped to Mathilde’s voluminous bosom—‘Come, come, my lamb, what have they been doing to thee?’—and with Lady Pila’s face, changed from greed to curiosity, poking round the door and saying that supper would soon be ready we all, Joanna, Anna, and I, gathered the rags of our dignity about us and were fain to cover not only our long-festering sores but also our newly inflicted wounds. Joanna had thrown her arms about my neck and begged forgiveness.

‘I love you, Mother. I admire you above all women. I meant nothing; it was just—it was just—’

‘It was just enough,’ I said, making play with the word. ‘And when you have sons, as I hope you will and daughters, you will understand and forgive me.’ I took a bracelet from my arm and pushed it onto hers. She was pleased as a child and went away to wash her face and tie her hair. I was, for a moment, alone with Anna. We stood in embarrassed silence. Then she said: