Winter Song (49 page)

There was also the possibility that the seeming coldness of
her letter was generated by fear, but that conclusion was not very helpful. It
merely reinforced the urge to rush off to Arles. Unfortunately, this was the
one thing Raymond knew he must not do until he learned what reaction Sir Romeo
would have to the news that Alphonse had gone to King Louis. The intense
frustration generated an enormous energy in Raymond, which was expended in a
more thorough examination of the state of war readiness in Aix than had been
experienced since the early years of Raymond-Berenger’s rule when he had come
himself.

Some of the older vassals and castellans who remembered
those years, scratched their heads and muttered, unsure of whether to be glad
or sorry. The total freedom they had enjoyed under Alphonse’s easy rule was
obviously gone, but so was the indifference and neglect. Adding one thing with
another, the men decided God had been watching over them. In the good years of
peace after Toulouse’s downfall, they had done as they pleased. Now that
trouble was coming, they were blessed with a strong leader.

The general satisfaction and willingness to make ready for
trouble soothed Raymond in one way but gave no further outlet to his need for
action. He knew there was no profit in fighting one’s own men, and he picked no
quarrels. Still, he was so uneasy that some rebellion would almost have pleased
him better than the compliance with which he was met. He returned to Aix and
put the guard and armorers to such labor that they fell, like dead men into
their beds, when they were allowed to seek them. But he dared not stay long at
Aix. If Sir Romeo sent a second command to come to Arles, he did not wish to be
in Aix to receive it. On the other hand, if Alys should soften and decide to
write, he wanted her letter. Thus, he went to Gordes, since it was the place
she had last known him to be.

Raymond thought so little of Lucie that it was not until he
sat rereading Alys’s old letter that he remembered why he had come to Gordes in
the first place. He cursed wearily, wondering if he should leave, but Gordes
had another prime advantage, there was a road, not good or well traveled, but
negotiable by a troop of mounted men, going almost directly to Arles. For some
time he sat staring into nothing. He had been celibate as a saint since he left
Alys, which was ridiculous, a self-imposed penance. Then he laughed without
mirth, thinking that Alys would never believe him if he told her. And would she
even care?

As if in answer to that question, the castellan appeared in
the doorway. “There is a letter from Arles, my lord, sent on from Aix.”

“The seal?” Raymond asked, although what he could do if the
letter was from Sir Romeo, he did not know.

“I do not know it.”

“Alys!” Raymond exclaimed, more because it was what he
wanted than for any other reason.

The desire was fulfilled, it was Alys’s seal with the arms
of Marlowe. He skipped the salutation and began with the words “I dare address
you so boldly because”, and his heart sank. Raymond closed his eyes, but when
they opened they fell on the preceding line and he was so instantly filled with
joy that he had to close his jaw hard to keep from crying out in relief. He
should have begun at the beginning.

“To Lord Raymond d’Aix, my dear lord and husband”, Alys
wrote, adding to that formal beginning, “my dearest and most precious love”.
That was the boldness for which she had begged pardon. Raymond took a deep
breath, restrained himself from reading the lines ten times, and got to the
meat of the letter.

I dare address you
so boldly because my news is so good that I hope your joy in it will lead you
to forgive such freedom in a wife so imperfect. Today we have had letters from
your father in France. I enclose herein his short message to me. From it I
understand that Louis has either accepted his homage for Aix or has given him
surety that he would do so as soon as circumstances permit. Moreover, I suppose
that if Louis desired Lord Alphonse to remain with him, it can only mean that
he intends your father to accompany his envoy or to carry for him to Lady
Beatrice an offer for young Beatrice.

Although this deduction hardly required great perspicacity,
Raymond smiled as fondly as if Alys had written a sentence worthy of the
judgment of Solomon. At the next, his smile broadened.

Thus, I believe it
safe now, if your work among the vassals be finished, to come here. You must do
what you know to be best, but for myself nothing could be more desirable. I
must not write more lest I forget my duty and urge you to forget yours, so
greatly do I desire to see you.

“The clever little witch,” Raymond muttered to himself,
having noted the date and relished the tender closing.

At the moment no new doubts had yet entered Raymond’s mind.
He recognized only Alys’s overt purpose. Plainly, from the hesitancy of the
first lines, she still feared some punishment. Her first defense had been to
include his father’s brief letter to her with its “treasure of my house”.
Modesty would forbid her to quote the lines, so she had sent the note. Her
second line of defense was to urge him to come to her. Alys knew he would find
it difficult to exact any punishment in the crowded conditions of Arles without
raising comment and exposing more of his private affairs than he would wish.
Probably she hoped to soften him enough over the time spent in a guesting
situation that he would consider whatever scolding he could find time and place
to deliver as sufficient lessoning.

Raymond chuckled softly and stretched until his bones
cracked, feeling loose and relaxed for the first time since he had entered Tour
Dur nearly a month before. He was warm and amused, very eager to see Alys, but
without the feverish feeling of urgency that made him constantly miserable when
he felt he had lost her love. He wished the letter had arrived earlier so that
he could have started that day, but he was not furious with impatience that it
was too late to go. After sitting for a while, looking comfortably into the
fire and chuckling now and again as he thought of various ways of teasing and
alarming his properly remorseful wife, he went to tell the castellan that he
would leave at dawn.

Just before he gave the order Raymond paused, suddenly feeling
uneasy and wondering whether there might be any other reason for Alys to urge
him to come to Arles, a political reason she did not wish to state. If so, the
few hours, that is, whether he arrived in Arles at daybreak rather than at
evening, might make a difference. Then he remembered the frank discussion of
his father’s purpose in going to Louis. If she feared her letter would be
opened, she would never have written that. Raymond gave the original order he
had intended and put the uneasiness he felt out of his mind.

It so happened that Raymond’s arrival at Arles at dawn would
have saved everyone there a period of great anxiety, but it could not have
averted the trouble that overtook Alys because that had happened before he
received her letter. When Alys finished writing it and had sent it off with one
of the men from Tour Dur, she felt particularly lighthearted. She had, indeed,
planned just what Raymond had deduced, but what made her happy was the thought
of seeing Raymond, not escaping punishment.

The fact that she was free of Lady Jeannette’s sighs, tears,
and constant demands and complaints not only increased her cheerfulness but
also enabled her to seek an outlet for it. For the first time since
Raymond-Berenger had been interred, Alys sought out the younger group of
guests. She was welcomed with pleasure by Beatrice and with stares and in-drawn
breaths of admiration from the young men. They had scarcely caught a glimpse of
her previously, since most of them sedulously avoided the knot of older women.

“Thou lily-white, sweet lady, bright of brow. How sweeter
than a grape art thou,” one of the young men sighed.

Alys’s eyes opened as wide as possible, bright blue pools
dramatically surrounded with overlong, dark gold lashes. “How did you know?”
she asked, sounding astounded. “
I
do not even know your name, and here
you are blabbing my secrets all over the place.”

“It cannot be a secret that thou art sweet as a grape,
lily-white, or bright of brow. That can be seen at one glance,” the young man
said with determined admiration, although one could see that he was a trifle
put out by being interrupted before he finished his poem.

“The grapes where I come from are tarter than crabapples,”
Alys said, “but that was not what I meant. If I am unwelcome to you, it would
be sufficient to turn your back and not speak to me. There was no need to quote
at me lines from which I fled more than two hundred leagues.”

“W-what?” the poor young man stammered. He had met various
responses to flattery, but this one was totally new.

“Oh, did you not know?” Alys asked innocently. “Then I beg
your pardon. I see you meant no offense. I have these crochets. I am driven
nearly to madness when lips are likened to strawberries or necks to those of
swans…” Here Alys paused and cocked her head to the side. “Although,” she
continued, “there would be some sense in that, you know. Only think how
convenient it would be if one’s neck could stretch up an arm’s length and then
bend down and turn right around so that one could see the small of one’s back.”

For perhaps two heartbeats there was a stunned silence. Then
Alys slowly and deliberately lowered one lid in an exaggerated wink. It was too
much for another of the young men, who burst into laughter, and then the whole
group followed. Alys now went and apologized prettily to the gentleman who had
first spoken to her.

“I did not mean to raise laughter at your cost,” she said.
“I know it is a dreadful lack in me, but I am not in the least poetical. When
someone says to me ‘Take thou my hand’, I see myself carrying away his hand,
and I wonder what in the world I am going to do with it.”

“Does it never occur to you that the hand is attached to the
man?” asked the gentleman who had first laughed, adding, “I am Raymond de
Villeneuve.”

“And I am Alys d’Aix. As to what you said, it does not seem
to have occurred to poets that a man cannot be cut up. They are forever
offering you pieces of their anatomy—a heart, a tongue, a liver—although what
good the poet would be without the part puzzles me. Also, it would be very
messy to be carrying around a dripping heart or an oozing liver, and I think
the tongue would soon dry out and look quite unlike itself and horrid.”

The group around Alys was by now convulsed with mirth, the
men whooping with laughter and the girls tittering into their sleeves. Beatrice
laughed so hard she hiccupped, but Guillaume des Baux, who had been standing
closest to Beatrice, turned on Alys with a scowl.

“Your heart is hard, madame, if you cannot feel for the
suffering of a hopeless lover,” he said.

Alys’s fair brows rose. “My heart, sir, is a red, ugly thing
just as any woman’s is, no harder, no softer. If you wish to blame me with
justice, rather say my temper is risible or my thoughts suspicious. That is, I
like to laugh and I do not believe anyone ever died of love. It is quite
remarkable to me how blooming and healthy sighing swains remain, except in
their verses or tales.”

“You wrong us, Lady Alys,” Sir Guillaume said. “Men have
died for love.”

“Oh, yes, and women, too,” Alys agreed. “Outraged husbands
have killed wives and lovers, outraged women have killed poets who whispered in
one ear while their eyes sought another victim. I said no man or woman had died
of
love.”

“Who has wronged you that you are so bitter, Lady Alys?”
Guillaume asked nastily.

Guillaume des Baux was very angry. In a few words, Alys
seemed to have destroyed the delicate structure of romance he had been building
around Beatrice. First she had laughed as heartily as—more heartily than—any of
the other ladies when Alys poked fun at lovers, and then her expression had
grown quite hard when Alys spoke of crimes of passion. Had Guillaume not been seduced
by his own verses so that he had convinced himself that he was in love with
Beatrice, he would not have been so clumsy. He had lashed out with the hope of
embarrassing the sharp-tongued lady, but he should have been warned by the
quickness of her repartee that she was unlikely to fall into so obvious a trap.

Alys widened her eyes to their full extent. “But sir,” she
protested, “do you take me for corrupt from the cradle? Or do you suggest that
Queen Eleanor has so little control over the damsels entrusted to her care that
I could come to such harm while under her eye? Or is it my mother-by-marriage
you impugn?”

Poor Guillaume, not expecting such a flood of accusations,
merely gaped, and Alys changed her expression from astonished indignation to
one of merriment.

“No, no,” she cried, “you must be punished for so evil a
calumny. I name you to be hoodman blind.”

A slight tension that had developed in the group in expectation
of a quarrel dissolved into laughter. Alys had broken the romantic mood with
her joking, and everyone was in the right humor for a lively game. Raymond de
Villeneuve stepped forward swiftly and drew the hood of Guillaume’s tunic over
his head and down to his chin, obscuring his vision. Beatrice jumped up from
her chair and began to turn her swain round and round so he would lose all
sense of direction. The other young men hastily carried whatever furniture
there was in the area to the walls. Finally Beatrice gave Guillaume a hard
shove, which sent him staggering into the center of the hall.

“I do not wish—” Guillaume began furiously, intending to say
he did not wish to play silly games.

He reached to lift the hood that blinded him, but someone
pushed him strongly from the rear, and Beatrice cried out that he should not be
so poor a sport. That remark sounded a warning, even through Guillaume’s fury.
He might not have been a very experienced lover, but he realized that showing
himself ill-humored and spiteful, unable to take a jest when it was turned on
him, would certainly not inspire admiration in any lady, especially Beatrice.
So he swallowed his rage as well as he could and played the game.