The Lute Player (61 page)

‘I shall have bussed every female out there before the night is done,’ he said, as though explaining. ‘And that was a kiss of peace.’

‘Thank you, my liege,’ I said, forcing my voice to lightness. Father, on very rare occasions, had brushed my brow with his beard but no man had ever kissed me before.

XV

That Twelfth-night marked the end of the revels; some lords and ladies took their leave and I began to think, almost in homesick fashion, about L’Espan but whenever I mentioned leaving Le Mans, Berengaria found some excuse to detain me. Finally, after some days of dalliance, I said:

‘But you will be going back to Rouen yourself very shortly.’

‘Not until the Châlus treasure arrives. Richard is waiting for that. And surely, Anna, you who are so curious about all things remarkable would like to see a board and chessmen all made in gold that has been buried for five hundred years. They say it belonged to Charlemagne himself.’ She spoke as though the Châlus treasure were something that everyone knew about.

Buried in L’Espan, I had never even heard it mentioned and was forced to ask, ‘What is the Châlus treasure?’

‘I told you. A golden chessboard and pieces. Had you not heard? A peasant ploughing on Vidomar’s fields turned it out with his ploughshare. All the pieces are gold but to distinguish them some are set with rubies and some with emeralds and the squares on the board are also marked with jewels, one square being set with small diamonds and the next with sapphires.’

‘That,’ I said, ‘would be a very remarkable sight. And if Charlemagne ever possessed such a toy, every chronicle I ever read about him was at fault; he was supposed to despise such gauds.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘wait until tomorrow or the next day and you shall see for yourself.’

Later that day I mentioned the Châlus treasure to someone else and was told that one of Vidomar’s ploughmen had uncovered the door of a secret underground chamber which, investigated, yielded six alabaster jars full to the brim with jewels.

Putting the two stories together, I found myself just able to believe that one of Vidomar’s ploughmen had ploughed something of interest and possibly of value out of a field. It was worth waiting one day or two days to see what it was, particularly as Berengaria seemed to cling so ardently to my company.

Perhaps I was the only person who found that “treasure,” when it did arrive, of any interest.

It was a jar of coarse red pottery with a lip at one side and a handle at the other and when the clay was soft somebody had scratched on both sides the ‘fish’ sign which abounded in the catacombs of Rome. I recognised the jar as one of those lamps which had shed a light upon those early Christians as they gathered underground for their worship—with Nero and his lions, Poppaea and her curiosity, Trachus and his spies almost overhead. Somebody faithful or sentimental had carried it northwards and at some time of crisis had buried it. There were twelve coins in it, six silver, six of base metal and all so defaced by usage that they told me nothing.

Richard refused—or to be just—was completely unable to believe that this paltry bit of pottery, these few worthless coins actually constituted the Châlus treasure.

‘If Vidomar thinks he can fool me thus—’ he said, and breathed out threats as a dragon breathes fire.

He was, it seemed, a believer in the chessboards rather than in the alabaster jars of jewels for the message he despatched to Vidomar ran, ‘Will you give up the golden chess set or must I come and take it?’

Berengaria said to me, ‘Until he gets the answer, Anna, he will have no thought for anything else. I think I will ride back with you and spend a few days at L’Espan. I would like to see it and the women again.’

I took it as a good sign that she should evince interest in something outside her relationship with Richard and we set out in good spirits. Once I should have harboured doubts concerning the effect of her arrival on Blondel’s peace of mind but from the time of his return to the time of Richard’s sending for her we had all lived together so pleasantly and peacefully that such doubts seemed now out of time and out of place.

They greeted each another with a warmth and pleasure which, despite their difference in rank, spoke of a steady affection. She said he must play for her a great deal during her visit because no other musician—and she had heard many in Rouen and Poitou—could make music half so well and sweetly as he did. She praised the appearance and design of the house which had grown up during her absence and gave him full credit for his work on it. I watched and listened and remembered how once a word of praise from hers could bring a blush, a glow, a too-ready word of self-deprecation. Now he listened and smiled and was pleased but without anything pitiable about his pleasure.

When we were alone she said, ‘How old Blondel looks, Anna. And how ill!’

He is older,’ I said; ‘we are all older. And he drinks too much.’

‘And what has happened to his arm?’

‘It is withering. Like a half-lopped branch. Don’t you remember, it was almost slashed through at the Battle of Arsouf?’

‘Of course,’ she said but I could see that she had either not known or had forgotten that trivial thing.

She was older now and kinder, less self-centred. And in a curious, almost ominous way, despite the elaborate hairdress, the new-fangled gown and pointed shoes, the shining jewels, she fitted in with the peaceful, unworldly jog-trot life of L’Espan, that refuge for unwanted women. It was a pleasant, peaceful week that she spent with us; then the news came that Vidomar, Lord of Châlus, had returned Richard’s message: ‘I see, my lord, that by demanding of me something I do not possess and have never possessed you are determined to pick a quarrel with me. I sent to you the only treasure-trove to which as my overlord you are entitled; anything else of mine that you covet you must indeed come and take.’

Once Richard would have perceived the integrity of that answer, would have admired the sturdy spirit of the man who despatched it and laughed and returned some witty, friendly answer. But he was older, too and, under that genial, boisterous manner, soured and suspicious. He had chosen to believe in the golden chessboard, the jewelled chessmen, and without more ado he prepared to move against Vidomar and to besiege the castle at Châlus.

‘I must go with him,’ Berengaria said, thrown into a flutter. ‘Now more than ever, I must be where he is.’ She looked at me earnestly. ‘Anna, I wish you could come with me—you are the only
friend
I have in the world—but I won’t ask it of you because we shall be on the move and L’Espan is so peaceful, so comfortable. I can see why you love it. But, Anna, if I ever want you, need you, will you come?’

‘Of course I will. It is peaceful here, true, and I don’t particularly enjoy the company of your fine ladies—but now that the building is finished, L’Espan is likely to bore me. I’ll come whenever you send for me.’

As soon as she had gone I turned my attention to Blondel. I sent for him and he came and stood before me. It still lacked an hour to noon but he was already drunk. Not reeling or helpless as in Acre—that stage was long past—but drunk nevertheless. I looked at him, puffy under the eyes, under the jaw, glazed pink over the cheekbones, his mane of hair, dead white now, too long and unkempt. His tunic, new for Christmas, was crumpled and stained, his hose dirty and in need of mending. The shrivelled small right hand he now carried, of habit, thrust into the front of his tunic.

And as he stood there I remembered with the greatest clarity the singing boy who had smiled at me in the market place at Pamplona—the taut slim figure, the lithe grace, the lovely intelligent face.

‘Blondel,’ I said, ‘why do you do it?’

‘Do what, my lady?’

‘Drink,’ I said brutally. ‘Fuddle yourself with that damned wine. Look at yourself. You’re still a young man but you’re beginning to look like an old soldier at a street corner.’

‘Well, I am an old soldier, am I not?’ he asked amiably. ‘Of your charity, lady, kind lady, a penny for an old soldier back from the Holy Wars.’ It was good mimicry and he laughed at the end of it.

‘I’m not laughing,’ I said sternly. ‘I’m very much concerned about you, Blondel. Maybe I have been careless and and unnoticing but Her Majesty was quite shocked; she said how ill and how old you looked.’

‘Indeed?’ he said and tilted his head with something of his old merry look. Then he laughed again, not exactly bitterly or sardonically but as though there were a joke in it, a joke known only to himself. ‘Did she now? And dirty? Did she say I was dirty?’

‘No,’ I said, a little taken aback.

‘She could have done, in good truth, but maybe she didn’t notice that. For dirty I am.’

‘And why?’ I asked passionately, crying out on my own hurt. ‘Why should you destroy yourself? You’re young and healthy and immensely gifted. Maybe your life has gone wrong in one respect—or more than one,’ I skimmed on hastily, anxious to convey sympathy without knowledge, ‘but that is a very common fate. Only the weak and the silly—’ I hesitated. I had meant to say ‘behave as you do’ but something in his eyes gave me pause and I tried to find a more general, less offensive ending for the sentence.

‘I am weak, I am silly. We have our uses, you know.’

‘You’re not silly,’ I said impatiently. I could see that this conversation was leading nowhere.

We were standing near the little glassed-in window of my room, the window in which I took such pride, and although outside the garden was bleak and winter-bound and the trees still stark and bare, I could hear a bird singing, most piercingly sweet, confident in spring’s coming. I fumbled for some thought that eluded me.

Then I said, ‘Really, Blondel, I didn’t send for you to rail at you; it was just that I can’t bear to see—But we’ll leave that, I wanted you, now that the house is completed, to turn your skill to another task.’ That was it! While the building was going forward he had been moderately sober; what he needed was to be busy, interested, engrossed. But as I said “another task” I hadn’t in my mind the slightest shadow, the frailest seed of an idea of what I could set him to do. But I looked at him, saw the withering right hand, remembered that he could write with his left—write… write… Battle of Arsouf… Yes, I had it.

‘The fact is,’ I said, ‘that monks who have never left their cloister and secular clerks who have never stepped outside their own rooms are pouring out accounts of this crusade as fast as they can scribble. Now you are a penman, maybe the only penman of any skill who went on the crusade and fought in the battles. If you would set down a record of personal experiences, all the little things, things the others couldn’t know or guess at, it would be of great value. Could you face such a task? For instance—you were there, Blondel, standing just behind the Queen on that evening when the Marquis of Montferrat told us about the letter and the cake he had received from the Old Man of the Mountain. You heard with your own ears. Now at Hagenau they said that the Old Man was pure fable and the scribes who know no better are saying that he has no existence—do you see? You could refute so many of their theories if only you would shoulder this task.’

Between the puffy lids the eyes had brightened.

‘I could write what I saw, what I know. I doubt whether it would rate as a historical record.’

‘It should shape well beside the account of Selwyn of Tours who is so lame that he has to be carried from the scriptorium to the refectory and from the refectory to the dormitory,’ I said. ‘For some reason he feels himself qualified to write most didactically about the Third Crusade and why it failed. I understand that he—of course he is a monk—blames the women who followed the army and undermined the morale of the common soldiers.’

Blondel laughed. ‘He’s barking up the right tree, you know, my lady, but from the wrong side of the tree. Richard of England once said—and I am inclined to agree with him—that women were the root of the trouble. But one woman was more to blame than the others—and that was Her Grace, the Duchess of Apieta.’

I gaped and goggled and said, ‘I? I’d like to know how you make that out.’

‘So easy, so plain.
You
sent me to Westminster. She would never have thought of it alone. Her mind works on the small things.
You
sent me to Westminster. So Richard didn’t marry Alys and that made Philip his enemy; and Isaac of Cyprus insulted the princess who had refused him, so Lydia Comnenus was taken prisoner and Leopold of Austria was affronted, being her uncle. You and I, my lady, though we do not figure in the chronicles, we are—what is the term?—mythical figures! Between us we ruined the Third Crusade!’

‘You
are
drunk!’ I said. ‘For God’s sake, if you write, write in all soberness, not fantastic, wine-flown rubbish of that kind.’

‘I will write and I will write the truth.’

‘I think Pontius Pilate said something like that.’

‘Ah no! That shows your mind to be a palimpsest. Pilate
asked
, “What is truth?” and he
said
, “What I have written I have written.”

‘I stand corrected. Well, will you begin at once?’

‘This afternoon,’ he said.

XVI

He was still writing busily weeks later when Berengaria sent for me. A brief message, ‘Please, Anna, come. Blanche is here, gravely ill. I need you.’

It was late March and the month had been dry and windy, so the mire had dried into dust on the roads and I made good speed to the manor house at Limoges where Berengaria had lodged while Richard besieged Châlus, twenty miles or so away. Châlus had proved a harder nut to crack than Richard had bargained for and Blanche’s husband Thibaut had come to lend his aid. Blanche had ridden with him, saying that it would be nice for her to be with Berengaria. Blanche had sought St. Petronella’s aid in September and I had wished her a fine big boy. But she had ridden hard for three days, keeping up with Thibaut and his men-at-arms, and the seven-months child she bore during the night after her arrival was rather bigger than most normally gestated children. The women and the midwives had done their best: there was careful stitching with black thread on her torn body, there were the open oyster shells under the bed, the bunch of hazel twigs on the pillow. But she died the day after I reached Limoges and there were Berengaria and I linked in common grief again.