The Lute Player (16 page)

‘Mathilde is here now, my lamb. Mathilde will look after you. Mathilde will make you a posset that’d bring you back from the edge of the grave…’

I hoped with all my heart that her posset would meet with a better fate than mine.

Pila and Catherine arrived just then with two pages carrying the rolled-up tapestry.

‘We thought you’d like to see how far we have progressed…’

I slipped away, ordered a tub of hot water and washed and changed all my linen as though I had veritably come from the pesthouse. I walked for a while in the gay sunshine and found the last shrivelled apple for Blondel’s bear. But even then, even while I was thinking of Blondel, I was conscious of a nagging, anxious melancholy and presently, with a mingling of relief and curiosity, I found myself back on the sickroom threshold.

The visitors were all gone and Mathilde was alone with Berengaria. A glance at Mathilde’s face told me what I wanted to know; it was swollen and smudged with crying.

‘It was too late,’ she said. ‘If I’d been called in earlier I could have cured her. I tried…’ I saw her hand go to her pocket and saw the outline of the clothes peg there. ‘I tried my old trick and I got the posset into her—but it was too late. It just made her sick.’ She turned away and began to cry.

I went over to the bed which had been freshly spread with fair covers. Berengaria lay with her eyes closed. Her body hardly mounded the quilt-that covered her. She looked like a dead girl.

‘She’s been like that this past hour,’ Mathilde blubbered. ‘His Majesty should be told—and a priest fetched.’

I stood there staring, facing at last the thing whose ugly face I had tried to avoid, thinking that Mathilde, thinking—that cheerful company… Now there was no more evasion possible. Berengaria was dying. I thought of all the songs and stories which ended, “And she died of love.” One accepted that in a song or a story; it seemed logical, romantic and seemly. But in real life—actually in real life—it seemed unnecessary, ridiculous, faintly squalid. For death, even death in a beautiful girl and death from love, wasn’t lovely to look at.

I thought that.

And then I thought; Well, Mathilde with her clothes peg succeeded in keeping Queen Beatrice alive until her mad seasons vastly outnumbered her sane ones. And was it worth it? If Mathilde was to be believed, Berengaria’s mother had gone mad over Father’s refusal to take up arms in the cause of Castile. Her daughter had apparently gone mad over Richard Plantagenet’s betrothal to Alys. Was another broken bowl worth piecing together and preserving?

And then I thought about death—the coldness and the corruption. How death is the last and invincible enemy who will have us all in the end but who must be fought to that end. Nobody should go over to him and say, Take me! And nobody should watch a loved one take that step, say those words!

A loved one!

Was she that? I’d hated and envied her so violently once and later I’d pitied her. But never until this moment had I realised that she was precious and valuable to
me
. That her death would take the light out of the sun. But now I did realise it. I remembered all, even the least, of the endearing things about her: her courage, her good humour—there wasn’t a happier court in Christendom until she fell in love—her lack of vanity and pride in her beauty and rank, the way she had of making little shrewd remarks, the fact that she had always been kind to me. Were all these—and all that beauty—to slip away into the wasteful dark, into the irrecoverable past?

‘Mathilde,’ I said, ‘go make another posset, strong and good. Put everything into it that you know.
Go do as I say!
’

As soon as she had gone I knelt by the bed and put my mouth close to Berengaria’s ear and I bellowed my lie.

‘I’ve had a message from Blondel. About Richard. Diagos was wrong! He isn’t going to marry Alys. Do you hear me, Berengaria? Richard isn’t going to marry Alys. I’ve heard from Blondel.’

Wherever she was, that reached her. The great eyes in their hollow sockets opened and stared at me.

‘Blondel,’ I said. ‘A message. Richard isn’t going to marry Alys. Do you hear?’ Do you understand?’

If there were any miracle by which blood from a lusty person in full health could be poured into the veins of a man wounded and bleeding to death, those who watched it might see what I saw then. Ahbeg was right—the will to live is a real thing. I saw it revive in Berengaria.

‘Say it again,’ she whispered. Her lips were so dry that they rustled and cracked as she spoke.

I said it again. I said a dozen things. Over and over I said, ‘Mathilde is bringing you a posset. You’ll drink it, won’t you?’

‘What happened? Is Blondel here?’

‘Not yet. I had a message.’

‘And the news is—sure?’

‘Quite sure. But secret. We won’t mention it yet. Not until he arrives.’

‘Richard isn’t going to marry Alys?’

‘That is so. Now don’t try to talk. When your posset comes, drink it and then you will be stronger. Here is Mathilde, now.’

And now, O God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, in Whose hands life and death lie to be dispensed as seems fitting to You, Three in One and One in Three, forgive all that great lie, that trespass on Your province. I couldn’t let her die for lack of a lie!

There was Mathilde saying, ‘My lamb, my honey-sweet child…’ and staring at me fearfully, as though I were a witch; and there was Berengaria trying weakly, like a newborn calf, to pull herself up in the bed. Welcoming the posset, opening her mouth to the spoon.

I stood back, realising what I had done.

XV

I had not been in the cathedral at Pamplona since I was thirteen and had first learned from Mathilde’s wine-loosened lips the story about my mother. Up to that time I had thought that the altar there was the epitome of all beauty. It had been set there by Father as a memorial to his dead wife and it was almost too lovely to look at. It was a filigree tower of ivory so finely carved that it was like lace; and of gold and silver spun out to the delicacy of a cobweb; and of jewels so great and splendid that they dazzled one’s eyes. One could only glance at it and think, Oh, lovely, lovely and then look away. I had taken great delight in it until the Sunday morning after the day when Mathilde, full of wine, had told me about Berengaria’s mother being mad and my mother being Sancho’s mistress and about the iron corset. On that Sunday morning I had looked at the altar as usual and thought, There it stands and here I stand, one too beautiful to look at and one too ugly and both of us memorials to a loved, mad, dead woman.

I was in a sorry state of mind then. I had just realised the full meaning of my affliction and the sight of the altar in its superb beauty and the sight of Berengaria, lovely as an angel by my side, were like blows struck upon flesh already bruised. I made up my mind then and there that I would not enter the cathedral again.

Now, on a night which was cold after the day’s sunshine, I stood there alone in the vast dark nave of the church. Some impulse which I could neither understand nor name had driven me out from Berengaria’s bedside, sent me hobbling past the St. Nicholas’s Church, where I usually attended Mass and made my confessions, and brought me at last to this place which I had avoided sedulously for years.

I dipped my fingers into the icy water of the stoup, crossed myself and, having made my obeisance to the altar, stood and regarded it. It shone out of the darkness. I knew then that I had come here to abase and punish myself; I wanted to invite the pain which had visited me in this place before. Why? Because I had lied? That wasn’t the true answer. I’d lied before; I had involved Father in a lie, and Ahbeg. I’d lied, in a way, about sending Blondel to England. But I had not felt guilty. Where was the difference?

I fumbled my way to the table where the votary candles were and lighted three, one for the Virgin, one for St. Agnes, Berengaria’s patron saint, and one for St. Veronica who was my own. And then I knelt down and began to pray with a passionate intensity which I had not felt for years—not since I had prayed that I might grow straight and whole like other children. And now I was praying for a miracle again, beseeching God and Christ and all the saints, the archangels and angels and all the hierarchy of heaven that my lie might not be a lie at all! that it might be true that Richard wasn’t going to marry Alys.

But I did take the precaution to add a petition that, if he were already married and my lie bound to be exposed, Berengaria would not take it too hard, would be resigned at last and go on living.

By the time I reached home again I was, I think, a little light-headed. The last six days had not been easy and this one just ending had been both physically and mentally exhausting. But I forced myself up the stairs to Father’s room where I found Mathilde making ready for bed. The princess, she said, had been sound asleep for the last hour.

‘Has His Majesty visited her?’

‘Yes. He was very pleased,’ Mathilde said smugly. I could see that she was going to take all credit for that posset.

But tomorrow… tomorrow…

‘Then I think I’ll go to my own bed,’ I said.

‘You look tired,’ Mathilde said. Her voice was kinder.

I crawled slowly down the stairs, across the rough tourney ground and reached the Queen’s Tower. The lantern at the foot of the stairs had blackened its horn and gave almost no light. I called twice for Blanco, but there was no reply, so I gathered the last remnants of my strength and mounted the stairs on all fours.

The solar was deserted but the fire had not been thoroughly stamped out and a handful of sticks, ready for the morning’s rekindling, lay to hand. My hands were icy-cold from the stone of the stairs, so I laid one stick and then another on the embers and they burst into flame. I crouched there, warming my hands by the little blaze, too tired to go to bed, too tired to think coherently.

When I heard a movement on the stairs outside I thought it was Blanco coming back to his kennel. And when the door of the solar opened and I looked up, half in curiosity, half in alarm, and saw Blondel standing there, I didn’t really believe my eyes. I so often called him to mind; I knew so surely that I should never see him in the flesh again; and all day everything had seemed unreal.

I just stared. He was wearing his blue cloak—I could see that in the light of the blazing twigs—and he had something of the same blue in his hand.

‘Your Grace…’ he said. And though I had doubted my eyes, I believed my ears.

‘Blondel! You came back—’

‘Yes, Your Grace. I came back. I found out what you wanted to know but it wasn’t a thing that could be put into a letter. And I was—homesick.’

The blue thing in his hand was a bunch of wild hyacinths such as gypsy children sell along the roads to passers-by. ‘He had a posy in his hand…’ I had lied. I had prayed. I had sent him away to find his own life. And here he was. Homesick. My mind spun like a wheel. I had only a moment left.

‘Tell me,’ I cried, and I could hear my own voice coming as it were from a great distance, coming through thunder. ‘Your news, Blondel, your news?’

At the far edge of the spinning darkness which bore down on me I heard him saying ‘Richard Plantagenet,’ saying ‘Alys…’

The miracle I had prayed for had come about. My lie was true. I had just time to know so much and then the spinning darkness closed in on me.

Part Three: Love’s Pilgrim

The story—with some mention of the lute player—is taken up by Eleanor of Aquitaine, the She-wolf, the Lady of the Golden Boot; one-time Queen of France, later Queen of England, mother to Richard Plantagenet.

When my one remaining spy, faithful Alberic the pedlar, brought me news of Richard’s landing in Dover I began to reckon my chances of seeing him before the wedding. There was no doubt in my mind that this much-debated, long-postponed marriage was at last going to take place. I thought it likely that I should be summoned to Westminster, have my crown loaned to me for a few hours, be given a fine new gown, have all the nobility of England and France crowding about me, sympathetically, curiously, jeeringly and saying how fortunate it was that my health had made such a timely improvement. That had happened on one or two occasions before during my sixteen years’ banishment; just one or two occasions when Henry thought it to his advantage to show the world that he still had a queen or to show the people of my own duchy that I was still alive and unmaimed.

I hungered for the sight of Richard; he had always been the favourite of my sons, the one most like me in looks and temperament, the man I should have been if the Almighty had seen fit to make me male. It was, I reckoned, eleven years since I had last seen him and time drags heavily when one passes it in monotonous confinement. I longed to see what he had grown into and there were a thousand things I wanted to talk over with him. I could have sent a request, through Nicolas of Saxham to Ranulf de Glanville and so to Henry himself, a humble request that my son be allowed to visit me. But that would have given three men who hated me and whom I hated an opportunity for spite. The two go-betweens would have delayed, forgotten and finally garbled the message; the fountainhead of authority would have been overjoyed to say ‘No.’ So I waited and did nothing, knowing that if Richard wished to see me he would come to Winchester with or without permission.

A week passed without a sign or a word. I began to harbour some cold doubts. Henry was extremely crafty and he was also most incongruously sentimental. He might have seized this opportunity of making peace with Richard and a break with me might be one of its terms. And Richard himself must be in a complaisant or subdued temper ever to have come to England. A truce with his father, a politic marriage with the sister of the young King of France—and thus, I thought, Richard passes from my ken. But he comes into his own; it is a clever and profitable change of sides. I mustn’t mind. I hated Henry, I hated the Princess Alys but I loved Richard. If this change of side were to his advantage—and I was sure it was—I would welcome it, at the same time wondering how long it would last!

On the eighth day, very early in the morning when I was at my breakfast, Nicolas of Saxham, who was called my resident physician but was in reality my gaoler, threw open the door of my apartment and announced, in a manner that denied all the petty cruelties and deprivations which he delighted to impose upon me, Prince Richard, Duke of Aquitaine. I got up, flurried as a green girl, with a manchet of bread still in my hand, and moved from the table a pace or two and so stood while Richard strode into the room.

He said, ‘Mother!’ and came and fell on his knees and took my hand in both his and kissed it, back and palm, and smiled up at me and said, ‘Thank God you look just the same, not a day older.’

And I swallowed and blinked and said: ‘I hope you do, Richard. Stand up and let me look at you.’

He was truly magnificent. Even at that time the minstrels and the minnesingers were making songs about him and since that time he has, of course, become the subject of many stories, many legends. And for once all the things they say and sing are veritable truth. I am not easily impressed by the stature or goodly looks of men. I was reared amongst tall knights. My grandfather, William of Aquitaine, was reckoned the most handsome man of his time; my uncle Robert, who ruled Antioch and of whom I had seen a great deal during the crusade which I made with my first husband, he of France, was a magnificent man. Even Henry Plantagenet when as a youth he had caught my eye and my fancy, had had looks and bearing beyond the common. But this, my son, eclipsed all. He had been shaping for size and beauty when I had last seen him, a boy of twenty-one; now he was thirty-two, hardened and matured; a full head taller than I who am a tall woman; his shoulders broad and square; his hips narrow and muscular like a good hound’s; his hair and beard of the true red-gold of the Angevins; his skin tanned and every bone in his face prominent and beautiful; his eyes blue-grey-green, variable as the sea. Truly a most magnificent man. And my son.

He said, ‘I am sorry to have disturbed you at breakfast.’

I said, ‘Richard, the sight of you does me more good than any food in the world. Eleven years,’ I said. ‘You have grown from boy to man. Eleven whole years.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, a little hastily, as though suspecting a rebuke, ‘I should have come. I would have come—but always there have been things in the way. I sent messages—’

‘I always received them.’

‘And I yours. And the gloves.’ As he spoke he held out the gloves I had made for him out of goatskin and a whole string of pearls. And as he held them out I realised that they were the only thing of any quality about him. If he had taken off his clothes and thrown them into a corner they might have belonged to any common archer. Against the worn, scuffed leather hose and jerkin the fine pearl-encrusted gloves struck a note of incongruity. Not that it mattered what he wore; he had no need for the outward display of rank or state; he would never be overlooked or underrated in any company.

Looking at him thus, I realised that the warmth of his greeting to me, the emotion of the moment and the pleasantries had been overlaid upon something very different. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red and the pulse in his neck beat hard. I recognised these signs of temper. Connecting them with this sudden visit to me—at the end of a week—I judged that he had yet again quarrelled with his father. Egoistically I thought that it might be about my presence at the wedding. Maybe Henry didn’t want me and Richard did. A quarrel and then this sudden early-morning visit. It fitted. Well, I would say that I didn’t want to go to the wedding, that I didn’t feel well enough. After all, I was supposed to have been an invalid for sixteen years!

‘I must talk to you, Mother,’ Richard said, beginning to walk about the room and slapping the gloves against his hand.

‘I know,’ I said helpfully. ‘About your wedding.’

He swung round abruptly and said, ‘You knew, then?’

‘I guessed. Henry doesn’t wish me to be present and you do and you’ve had another quarrel about it. Dear Richard, always so loyal! But this time it does not matter. I’m an old woman now; the journey would tire me and the falseness of my position would be irksome. I am delighted that you are to be married at last and I hope Alys will be brought to bed of a son within a year but I shall be happy not to be present at the wedding.’

They were beginning to call him Lionheart, Richard the Lion, Coeur de Lion; but there were times when, despite his size, he seemed to me to resemble more a red fox. When he was angry or carried away by enthusiasm he gave the impression of blunt honesty or reckless candour or transparent honesty; but there were other times when he looked secretive, wily, foxy. He wore that look now as he turned in his pacing, stopped slapping the gloves and instead drew them very slowly through his closed palm.

‘And is that all you have to say about the—wedding?’

Was his father’s sentimental streak yeasting in him?

‘Naturally I hope that you will be very happy,’ I added. ‘I never cared greatly for Alys myself—but then, in the circumstances, I was hardly likely to. And it is years since I saw her. Besides, Richard, any woman would be clay in your hands.’

He gave a short sharp bark of laughter.

‘And that is all you have to say?’

‘What do you
wish
me to say?’

‘Have you ever wondered
why
, whenever the matter of my marriage to Alys has been brought up, some reason, always a fresh one, has been found for the postponement? Answer that honestly, Mother.’

I answered him honestly. ‘Many times—with each postponement. At first I blamed you—not too hardly, Richard; you are young and many temptations, I am sure, come your way. And I am not sure in my heart that it is a good thing for both bride and groom to be innocent and untried. I was content that you should have your fling… More lately, I must admit I have begun to cherish a suspicion.’

‘Yes?’ he said, looking at me closely, with caution.

‘I have sometimes suspected that it would suit Henry very well if you got yourself killed before you had bred an heir. He dotes upon John. And if someone let daylight into you, Richard, as you are constantly inviting someone to do, before you had a son, then Henry could leave his crown to John and die happy. If during this past week you have made your peace with him and are now his friend, I apologise for speaking so bluntly; but why else has he hindered for years the match which he himself made when Alys was a child and you little more, a match in every respect most suitable?’

‘And that is the darkest suspicion you have ever harboured? My poor mother! Well, it isn’t news that I would willingly bear to you and I hoped that some inkling of it might have reached you even here. Hasn’t it? Hasn’t it?’ His stare bore down on me.

‘Once,’ I said, ‘Alberic did bring me word of rumour that was going round London—to the effect that since
you
were not anxious to marry Alys it might be well to let John do so… But nothing came of that,’ I added hastily.

‘What Alberic and the London gossipmongers didn’t know I must tell you now, Mother. My father and my betrothed are paramours!’

If a mangonel had hurled a great stone into the room I should have been less surprised. Surprised, not shocked. I was not shocked for I did not then believe it. But I could see that Richard did.

‘That,’ I said, ‘is the most malicious piece of gossip I ever heard. And it isn’t true. I don’t care who told you, Richard. It isn’t true. Do you think I should not have known? How could such a thing be kept secret? Besides, Henry wouldn’t dare. The princess of France, sent over here as a child and entrusted to Henry to bring up his son’s betrothed! Why, such a scandal would rock Christendom. No, Richard, whoever dropped that poison in your ear was acting from some ulterior motive, anxious to set you against your father again. Though it confounds me,’ I said after a second’s reflection, ‘to name anyone who could have thought of such a story. Unless it was John. Was it John, Richard?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nobody told me the story; I discovered the fact for myself with some slight help from a French lute player who never guessed what he was about. The evidence of my own eyes, Mother, does that convince you?’ His lips drew back from his teeth and his eyes glinted in a grimace that I recognised as his angry grin. ‘As for your not knowing, there is the best of reasons for that! Even if all England knew—which isn’t this time the case—the old devil would have taken care to keep
you
in ignorance. He hasn’t been outstandingly lucky with his lights-o’-love, has he, Mother?’

Not even at that moment was I going to admit anything. Not even to Richard. The stairs of Haverford Grange had collapsed under Huldah of Leicester and the woman they called Sweet Edith of Ely had eaten oysters that had been overlong on the road from the oyster beds at Colchester. Rosamonde Clifford had died suddenly but there were physicians who had attended her for the lung rot ever since the birth of her second son. I looked Richard straight in the face and said:

‘That sounds like a cheap balladmonger’s gibe, Richard. I hope you didn’t intend it so.’

Richard looked straight back and retorted, ‘When I made the discovery I remember thinking, even in the midst of my rage, that you must be either ignorant or very helpless or there’d have been some strange porridge brewed for that little drab.’

‘I should be interested to know how you happened to make the discovery.’

‘It’s a long story,’ he said impatiently. ‘I came over to please Philip. I want him with me on this crusade and he wants Alys married. So I came, meaning to despatch the matter as quickly as possible. His Majesty received me very genially. Mother, you know his way when he chooses, smooth and slippery as oil. He began by suggesting that I should go to Windsor; he talked of hunting, as though I were here for pleasure. I made myself plain about that. I explained about Philip and told him why I had come. He then said that the princess was sick; she had a rheumy cold and had been abed for a week or more. But God gave him those eyes, Mother—clear as Venetian glass, aren’t they? The deceit looked straight out at me! I countered with deceit; I changed my mind; I said I’d go to Windsor—she being ill and unable to receive me. So I left him. In the evening I went to William’s Tower, where she lay, and it was true, she was abed with a cold. But they let me in, all fluttered and excited—you know how women are. And I had presents for her from Philip. Two of her ladies were there in the bedchamber—and we talked. I gave her the presents and we talked about where and when the wedding should be and who should be invited. Very proper and formal. I took the opportunity of looking at her; I’d never seen her since she was full-grown, you know. A pretty wench, even with a gruesome cold—all that yellow hair. But uneasy. Very pleasant, agreeable to everything, but very uneasy and anxious to have us all away—not only me—all of us. One of the ladies yawned and she seized on that. I left her with them, setting things in order for the night.

‘In the anteroom there was this lute player, very softly trying over a new song. He said that sometimes he went in and played for her until she fell asleep. We talked for a little and then I borrowed his lute and went back. The women had gone and when I opened the door she thought I was the boy and said, ‘I don’t need you tonight,’ and then saw me and was most mightily confused… Oh, why am I spinning this long yarn? Mother, there is a secret door to her room, opening on steps from the river, and before I had played three stanzas
he
came in by it, cock aloft, if you will forgive the expression! And she began to scream. What she said in fear and what he said in rage made it all perfectly clear.’