The Lute Player (6 page)

Apparently Alys had been sent to England as a mere child in order that she might grow up in the language and customs of the country of which she was to be Queen and had been reared with the Plantagenet children. Ever since she had become nubile there had been repeated efforts on behalf of her French relatives to arrange for the marriage to be celebrated but always some excuse had been made and the date pushed forward to some unspecified future. Richard, who was on the worst of terms with his father—that was in the Angevin tradition—never went to England and the young King of France, Alys’s brother, had recently expressed himself as dissatisfied and puzzled by the whole business.

This much information Father had obtained by indirect means and when he reported it to Berengaria she said, ‘Then there is hope for me! Will you, Father, as you love me, approach Richard himself?’

Father was very reluctant. ‘To mention such a matter hints at ignorance both of circumstances and procedure. We in Navarre are not so cut off from the world as not to know that the betrothal has never been officially broken, nor so unmannerly as to disregard it.’ But Berengaria was very insistent and Father, who had never been able to deny her anything, gave in and sent Cardinal Diagos to Richard’s headquarters at Rouen with orders to make discreet inquiries and, if the omens were propitious, to put out a cautious feeler.

Diagos, a most courtly and diplomatic old man, must have mistaken the propitious moment, or else the subject was a very sore one indeed, for he sent back and reported that at the first experimental mention of Alys’s name the Duke of Aquitaine had reached for his battle-axe and roared out, ‘By Christ’s Holy Cross, I swear that the next man to mention marriage to me I’ll split from chin to chine!’

That most effectively quelled further inquiries. But side by side with this report Diagos sent home a new rumour which said that Henry, very much at odds with Richard over the administration of Aquitaine, was planning to marry Alys to his younger son, John, with whom he was on good terms. It sounded as though Henry regarded the girl as a prize for good behaviour, not as the partner in a firm betrothal.

Berengaria chose to regard this as a most encouraging report and began to beg Father to write to Richard himself.

‘He cannot cleave you if you remain in Navarre,’ she said, and no one could tell whether she meant the words as a joke or as one of her matter-of-fact statements, for her voice and her face remained expressionless.

Father demurred but by this time he was beginning to be interested in the mystery which seemed to lie behind this situation—as indeed I was myself—and after a little persuasion he did send the letter. The reply was prompt and blunt. It said that the duke was betrothed to Alys of France; and it added, obviously in reply to some remark in Father’s letter, that the inquiry had given no offence, since were the duke free to do so he would marry any girl who brought in her hand a good dowry to contribute to the crusade he was planning.

Over this letter Father and Berengaria fell out. Father was furious. ‘It’s the letter of a huckster and an insult to the unfortunate woman he is to marry. It implies that were he free he would sell himself to the highest bidder, as Jaime of Alva sells the services of his Arab stallion. You are well out of any further dealings with a man of so coarse a nature. This letter is typically Angevin; they’re upstarts and hucksters to a man and would sell their own mothers to serve their greeds.’ He said a great deal more, all of it derogatory, and then added, ‘Let me hear no more about it. This ends a matter that should never have been begun.’

‘Father, it practically invites you to make him a dazzling offer. And if you love me you will take it in that spirit and write back and say that if he will marry me instead you will make a good contribution to his crusade.’

Father looked at her with disgust and dismay. He smashed down his fist on the letter. ‘You mean to tell me that after
this
you want him? How can you be so shameless? And so stupid? With beauty like yours are you to go to a man who thinks of nothing but the bag of gold round your neck? Good God, Berengaria, you must be mad!’

He had spoken the forbidden word. And while he stood ashamed, his face contracted by the pain of his thoughts, Berengaria began to shed her beautiful tears.

Whether it was a gift from God or a mere result of old Ahbeg’s little knife, she could cry as I never saw another woman do. She never sniffed or snuffled, her face didn’t screw up or her chin pucker and shake; water just welled into her great wide eyes and spilled over her cheeks and she looked just like a rose with early-morning dew on it. Nobody could resist her then, though any woman watching her must needs be jealous of such a rare weapon. I must admit that she used it rarely, which was perhaps rather clever of her, and hardly ever on anyone except Father and Young Sancho.

However, on this occasion she had come into opposition with something which in Father was not just a formal pattern of behaviour but a deep and vital principle, his chivalry. This whole affair, in his opinion, was a subtle slight upon an innocent lady. I knew that if he had ever been in Richard’s place and had to write that letter he would have found it incumbent upon himself to add to the brief statement of his betrothal the courteous, even if untrue, comment that he loved Alys and regarded her above all women.

Father was a romantic and an idealist; that was why he had cherished his mad Beatrice; why he had let his daughters grow up unbetrothed. It was also why he tried to make up for his one most human lapse by treating me so well, making me a duchess in my own right and arranging for my financial independence.

And it is a fact that when the gentle sentimentalist really digs his heels in he can be firmer than the worldling whom worldly arguments sway.

‘I’m very sorry, Rosebud, but even to pleasure you there are some things I cannot do. And to offer to buy a man from the lady to whom he has given his troth is one of them.’

‘But I can never marry anyone else. Unless I marry him I can never be married at all.’

‘Don’t talk like a fool,’ Father said, beginning to take refuge in rage. ‘You’ve never even spoken to the man or looked him full in the face. I’m a bigger fool ever to have lifted a finger to humour such a fancy. And you won’t persuade me by crying. You’re just obstinate—obstinate as an iron mule—and I ought to take a stick to you.’

I approved of that expression, “iron mule”; precise and picturesque, it was worth remembering.

That evening Berengaria began a siege on the time-honoured method of starving one’s opponent out but it was original in that this time the besieger did the starving. She refused breakfast, dinner and supper; she said she felt sick and the thought of food nauseated her. She ate, at any time, less than anyone I ever knew and would refuse any dish over- or under-cooked or one that had caught the smoke from the fire or been too much handled in the serving. Woe betide the page who sneezed or coughed while he was handing her a dish, however choice; the food was quite discounted, the sneeze or the cough sharply reprimanded and the dish sent away untouched. I had known her, through an unfortunate combination of circumstances, to sustain life for thirty-six hours on a single crust and be none the worse. So I did not concern myself over a twenty-four-hour fast. Nor was I unduly perturbed on the second day. She must surely, I thought, come to her senses—and one of the senses was the sense of hunger. But no! The third day came. I watched, sceptically, minutely; Mathilde went in and out of the chamber where Berengaria had taken to her bed but I would swear on the Cross that no crumb was smuggled in. And by the end of the third day her face showed the pinch of hunger and had the wan, hollow look which beggars’ faces have.

Pila, Catherine, and Maria, though they made many inquiries and many suggestions, tended to keep their distance lest the illness from which their princess was suffering—as they thought—should be contagious. Only Mathilde, who would have faced the plague itself for Berengaria’s sake, and I, who knew what it was all about, would enter the inner room. And my interest, I must confess, was almost purely academic; how far would she go, I wondered, to force Father into taking action against his will? I was interested to see what starvation felt like and managed, without drawing attention to the fact, to abstain from food myself for twenty-four hours. And I did become desperately hungry; so hungry, in fact, that I went to the kitchen and broke a piece of meat off a joint of venison on the spit—it burnt my fingers and my tongue and tasted like heaven and made me most profoundly sorry for beggars.

Yet there was Berengaria refusing calves’ foot jelly flavoured with fresh oranges, turning her head away from bowls of bread and milk flavoured with a clove-stuck onion, rejecting even a glass of sweet red wine from Portugal. An iron mule indeed!

On the morning of the fourth day Mathilde came out of Berengaria’s chamber into the bower and said:

‘Whatever she says and against her orders, if need be, I’m going to tell the King. This is no ordinary sickness. I know the signs. And this is the way her mother, God rest her sweet soul, started. His Majesty wouldn’t take up arms in the cause of Castile against Aragon and my lady took it very hard and wouldn’t eat from Ash Wednesday till the Friday following. And then I took a clothes peg and forced her jaws apart and poured in the broth so that she must either swallow or choke on it. And she lived and was crazy thereafter, to my everlasting sorrow and his too. Now the same thing has happened; I know the signs. But this time I’m not taking a clothes peg. Whatever it is on the
mind
has got to be lifted or she’ll be like her dear mother. Now, Your Grace, would this come better from me or from you?’

In my own way I loved my father. I blamed him for my crooked back and for my illegitimacy but on the whole I enjoyed being alive, my eating and drinking, my comfortable way of life, my money, my freedom. In the circumstances he had done very well by me. And very often he amused me too.

I felt that it would be better for me to go and talk to him than that Mathilde with her morbid memories, her grudge and her grim predictions, should do so. So I went to his private apartment and told him that Berengaria hadn’t taken sup or crumb for three whole days and that it was my belief that she would not until he had written to the duke again.

The Plantagenet’s reply this time pleased Father and displeased Berengaria. It read, ‘To my dear brother and friend of Navarre, greeting. Being bound, I cannot be your son-in-law; but when you choose him take care that he be a man of your mind and mine and we will set your standard, with ours, on the walls of Jerusalem.’

‘You see,’ Father said.

And Berengaria said, ‘I see.’

It was to me that Father said, ‘But being bonded,
why
doesn’t he marry the wench? He’s always at war and he’s heir to England. Why doesn’t he marry and get her in whelp? By God, the whole thing is a mystery. I think I’ll concoct an errand and send Saturnino to London. He’ll sniff it out if anybody can.’

So Cardinal Saturnino had departed for the court at Westminster with orders to make himself especially agreeable. And the court at Pamplona had settled down. Something had broken in Berengaria. She was no longer the beautiful, pampered favourite to whom all things came as by right. She was the little girl who saw, at the fair, some bright and glittering toy and cried unashamedly, ‘I want that, I must have that, that is for me!’ and then learned that an earlier customer had reserved it.

And I, who had for seven years, ever since I understood our positions, envied and even hated her because she was straight and beautiful and a real, royal princess, had come in the end to pity her. Because it was so plain that nothing gave her pleasure; nothing mattered save that great redheaded, hard-hitting Plantagenet who was bonded to Alys of France.

III

It was because I pitied her that I took Blondel home with me. Emerging with that thought out of the past and into the present, I became aware that the boy had been saying something about the new way of building outer walls with projecting towers.

I said rather vaguely, ‘And where did you learn of such things?’ He said, a little shamefacedly, that he had once watched one being reconstructed.

‘One day,’ I said, ‘I am going to build a house. With a glass window.’

And why, I wondered, did I say that? I had never mentioned that intention to anyone; but I had, very often, when the other women were talking about the future and making much of their hopes and plans, clutched the thought to me, as one clutches the covers on a cold and draughty night. One day Father would die and Young Sancho would be King and then he would marry and his Queen would certainly not want me about the court. But I wouldn’t be either pitiable or self-pitying; I’d be off to my own Duchy of Apieta where, under the sheltering shadow of the great castle, I could build a house without defences, a comfortable house to live in with a glass window and a shelf for my books and an herb garden to scent the air outside the door.

And no steep stairs, I thought grimly, for we were now at the foot of the Queen’s Tower and the steep, badly worn stairs loomed before me. I knew very well that Blanco, who lived in the little kennel-like room at the top of the flight, would come at a call and carry me up as easily as though I were a kitten but such a procedure humiliated me and never, in health, did I take advantage of his services. Alone, I swarmed up on all fours like a crab; under observation I climbed slowly, clutching the wall and hating the places where it had worn smooth and slippery. Conscious of this, and not wishing to make a spectacle of myself before the boy, I signalled to him to go ahead of me. ‘Up here,’ I said, and waited.

Any other boy picked up in the market place would have obeyed me thoughtlessly; but this boy, with a little smile, stood aside, flattening himself against the turn of the wall. Where had a strolling player picked up such manners? I wondered as I set myself to face the climb.

At the third step he was just behind me and at the fourth his hand was under my elbow. I had a vision of that hand as it had lain between the ears of the bear—slim, young, browned by the sun and, I remembered, most noticeably clean. My elbow fitted into the palm of it and with each painful effort I made it was there, warm, supporting, surprisingly strong.