Authors: Norah Lofts
The Lute Player (49 page)
A few of those to whom I have told my story seemed inclined to blame me for not making more fervent and thorough inquiries at this point. But even as I plodded through the sticky mud towards the house which stood at the far end of the field where the horses grazed, something which in the circumstances wore every aspect of truth bore down on me. The King had decided to travel on alone.
I could give myself several good reasons for his action.
I was now little but an embarrassment to him; it was my cold in the head which had made him curtail a journey and lose our horses; he believed that he was short of money. And, besides reasons there was, I thought, evidence. Insisting on leaving me at the inn while he went to do the bargaining; insisting that I keep the glove money because he had been wondering what I should do if we were parted… it all fitted in.
The door of the house was open when I arrived at it and the man who sold horses and a woman whom I took to be his wife were standing together, heads bent, over a table. I saw them clearly as I lifted my hand and knocked at the door. The man turned about swiftly, defensively, placing himself before the woman who fumbled on the table. I heard the clink of coins even as the man asked in his own tongue, which his expression made quite understandable, what the devil I wanted. I knew all about peasants and their secret hoards and I guessed that Richard had given a good price for the horse and that they were adding it to their savings and that their embarrassed, furtive looks were due to my having disturbed them. Face to face with the man who stood in the doorway, as though keeping guard, I was aware of the curse of Babel. He could understand nothing. I pointed to the horses, held up one finger, patted my pouch, measured Richard’s height on the doorpost, sketched an imaginary beard, all the time asking, ‘Man? Horse?’ in French, German, Latin and English because we had, along the road, found many natives who could at least recognise single words used by crusaders and pilgrims. This clown recognised none, did not even understand gestures. He just stared at me and looked at once surly and frightened.
Then the woman, who by this time had put away her hoard and recovered her composure, moved forward. She laid a rough brown hand on her man’s shoulder and twisted him out of the doorway. I noticed her eyes, bright and brown as a bird’s, intent on me as I went through all the gestures again. She took a second to consider and then, pulling herself up, she adopted a haughty look, touched a great beard, drew out her eyebrows, lifted her arm, measuring a giant’s height on the wall, waved towards the horses and held up all the fingers and the thumb of her left hand, the thumb of her right. Yes, six; did I understand there had been six horses? Then all tucked away save the first finger of her left hand which she tapped with a finger of her right. See? One sold. Sold to a tall man with a great beard and bushy eyebrows. And to make everything plain she stepped out into the mud and pointed first towards the road to Vienna and vigorously shook her head, then to the road towards the Rhine and nodded with the same vigour.
And the bright brown eyes slid round towards her husband: you see, I understand, I could answer him. The clown’s face was, after all, capable of some other expression besides surly fear; he looked at her now with admiration, not unmingled with doubt.
I smiled my thanks at her; she smiled back. Then, as though aware that she was wasting precious time, she stepped back briskly into the house and slammed the door.
I am not the first man to have been outwitted by a woman. But was I too easily deceived, too ready to receive proof of what I already felt to be true? It is so easy to be wise afterwards. Then it all seemed clear and logical. Richard had tired of our uneasy association; he thought that he would travel more swiftly and more cheaply alone. So he had left me enough money and gone on, fooling me as much as he had fooled Hubert Walter.
Part Five: Anna’s House of Stone
Anna Apieta continues and closes the story.
When the last of the masons and carpenters had shouldered their tools and gone away, whistling, they left great quiet and a feeling of finality.
Now that every stone was in place I could walk round and see, in its entirety, the house that I had built. I pretended that I was a stranger seeing the place for the first time; and when I had proceeded from the entrance gate, with its neat porter’s lodge, inwards until I stood in the garden which, backed by the birchwood and lovingly tended for the last five years, had an air of greater maturity than its age warranted, I stood and laughed aloud, so loud that the doves flew up and fluttered in fright.
This, I thought, is my house, my house of stone. And I remembered an old Navarrese saying, “Be careful what you set your heart on; you may get it!”
Always, ever since I was a young girl and realised the limitations and the possibilities of my condition, I had planned to build myself a house with a glass window and a garden and no awkward stairs. Then later I had planned that Blondel should be the architect and that he should live under my roof.
Well, there the house stood, the low sprawling roof shining in the June sunlight, and here was the garden with little apples just forming on the trees and a pink rosebush in bloom and a clump of white lilies in bud and the lavender hedge growing spiky with flowers. And I knew just where I could find Blondel. Allowing for the errors inherent in every translation this house, a translation from dream to actuality, might be regarded as the thing upon which I had set my heart.
I had meant to build a small cosy house in Apieta and instead I had built a large and imposing house in Aquitaine.
That was all. I had come nearer than most people ever do to attaining a heart’s desire.
Nevertheless, there was something in my laughter that frightened the doves.
I remember exactly the moment when I abandoned my plan for building my house in Apieta. It was just after the hasty visit which Richard Plantagenet paid Berengaria in order to inform her that he was leaving for England within an hour and that she and her women were to return to Aquitaine under the care of Sir Stephen.
By this time it was plain to everyone, even to Joanna of Sicily who was much torn between her sisterly loyalty and her fondness for her sister-in-law, that this marriage was a hopeless failure. Richard had given up all pretence of behaving like a husband. There had been three nights immediately after the wedding when they had retired together like any other married couple and been bedded. What happened then? Berengaria gave no clue; in her the dignity of the bride had never broken down into the half-obscene, half-lyrical confidences of the young wife. When Richard left Cyprus in haste for Acre she seemed to accept his reason; and when in Acre he camped with his men she accepted that, too. It seemed not to occur to her that almost every other man in the crusading army could spare an hour now and then for his lusting, if not for his loving, and when finally Richard started his march to Jerusalem she was mainly concerned for his personal safety and took great comfort from the fact that Blondel was going with him.
We waited in Acre for more than twelve months in a state of infinite boredom. I lightened mine by studying Arabic, tutored by an old man who had been a prisoner in Saracen hands ever since Eleanor’s crusade. Even with that as a hobby, and maintaining my custom of going out and about freely, just as I chose, I almost went mad with the heat and the monotony and the enclosed, dull, futile manner of life and how the other women bore it I do not know. Blondel sent letters with all possible regularity; Berengaria seized on them, read them and left me to write the replies. When the news—I thought it dreadful, heartbreaking and yet dramatic—of the crusade’s failure arrived, Berengaria said, ‘Then Richard will soon return.’
Richard returned but not to Berengaria’s bed; he camped amongst his men and paid her only a formal visit. I believe that during that visit and up to the moment when he left hope had run high in her. She looked so beautiful with that something of warmth and liveliness in her loveliness which only appeared when he was there.
But he left with the courteous—and in other circumstances feasible—excuse that he had a good deal to see to before he left next morning for Damascus. When he had gone Berengaria retired and bolted the door against us.
Joanna, Pila and I sat on the verandah as the sun went down and the breeze sprang up and the pleasantest hour in all the Eastern day arrived. Pila snatched up her embroidery and went on stabbing away with her needle long after it was too dark for her to see where she was placing the stitches. She had a bursting, choking look and but for the way her eyes shone and the fury with which she plied her needle one should have thought that she was struggling against the more violent and audible form of indigestion. Joanna, who was in love with Count Raymond Egidio, had learned a little earlier in the evening that Richard had given consent to the marriage; and she leaned on the marble rail that ran round the verandah and drifted away into a sweet lovesick dream. I sat and thought my own thoughts about Blondel and Apieta. More stars pricked out one by one.
Finally Pila drove in her needle, folded her work as though crushing some obnoxious insect in its folds and burst out:
‘He may be your brother and I have no wish to hurt your feelings but I think his conduct is infamous! Disgusting and infamous! What right has he, or any man, to shame a woman so, make her a laughing stock in front of the whole army?’
The word “brother,” I was glad to think, absolved me from any need to consider myself addressed, so I sat quietly. I knew what I had heard, I knew what men were saying but then my manner of life exposed me to street gossip. How much Pila had heard, or Joanna, I had no notion. The subject had never been opened amongst us and I wondered what form this present conversation would take.
‘You mean Richard and Berengaria,’ said Joanna, coming out of her dream. ‘Yes, it’s such a pity, isn’t it? They should have been so happy.’
‘A pity!’ exclaimed Pila. ‘It’s a crying scandal. He out there sleeping with his men and she here, eating her heart out. Is that, I ask you, a marriage? It should be annulled. I shall tell her so. His Holiness is well known to be lenient in such eases.’
‘But—but Richard hasn’t
done
anything. At least not
so
dreadful,’ Joanna faltered, rather unwillingly taking up the cudgels.
Pila let out one of those squeals of laughter which are the very voice of obscenity. It would have enlightened any but the most extremely innocent.
‘Hasn’t
done
anything,’ she, repeated mockingly. ‘Isn’t that what I’m complaining about? Isn’t that why she, poor dear, is crying there within at this minute?’
‘I know. I am sorry. But there isn’t anything we can do, is there? I mean if she can’t persuade—’ I could sense rather than she the blush on Joanna’s cheeks. She was older than I by some years, she had been married and widowed but she had retained a virginal mind and the new courtship had made her even more like a girl.
She hasn’t heard anything, I thought. Or, if she has, the meaning has escaped her. I made myself ready to deal with Pila.
‘I never expected Richard to make a very
good
husband,’ Joanna went on in a gently worried voice. ‘He never cared much for women. He was one they never had to worry about in
that
way. My brother Harry had got him a bastard before he was fifteen and Geoffrey seemed always to be falling in love with married women whose husbands resented it—but Richard never seemed to notice. Of course he’s always been busy fighting and building and thinking about Jerusalem; and always with men…’ She paused as Pila laughed again. ‘I can’t see what is so funny, Pila. It’s extremely sad never to have had time to take notice of women and to fall in love.’
‘Oh it’s
sad
, but it’s also—’
‘Pila!’ I said sharply. She understood. ‘Sympathy with the Queen might be better expressed by the making of a cool sherbet drink than in futile discussion,’ I finished.
‘I’ll make it. I’ll go. She’ll be more likely to open to me,’ said Joanna, snatching at the opportunity of getting back to her dream.
‘You know then. You’ve heard,’ Pila said eagerly while the curtains behind us still stirred from Joanna’s passing.
‘Long ago. But they don’t know. And they are not to be told.’
‘Not to be told?’ she said in a loud voice, jumping to her feet and coming to stand in front of me. ‘They should be told. Not that that mealy-mouthed little fool would understand but Berengaria would. She isn’t fool—not deep down inside. She’d understand and then she could begin to get rid of him. I’m going to tell her myself. I won’t see her crying her eyes out for a —!’
I could see that Pila was affected by the deep, very real disgust which some women do feel for this form of perversion. It makes them want to stamp on, to hurt the participators. Quite understandable; it threatens something that women stand for. It cuts out, disowns, disinherits them. And there is more to it than that. Women are fertile, this thing is sterile; they were put into opposition at the first moment of creation. Easy for me, of course, to take an impartial, academic view.
I remembered that and said quite gently:
‘Pila, I don’t want Berengaria to know
now.
They’ve never had much chance. Now that the war is over, things will sort themselves out. Tomorrow he goes to Damascus to sign this treaty. Then he will come back and they will go on together to Europe. Let her hope, let her cry. Eventually he will either have to live with her as a man should live with his wife or admit—It may come right. I wouldn’t have a hasty word spoken even though you mean well, I know. But if you let so much as a hint drop or a laugh in the wrong moment, Pila, I shall be very much annoyed.’
‘Oh,’ she said in a nasty voice, gladly bending her bow of spite in my direction. ‘And if
you
were annoyed it would be a grave pity, wouldn’t it?’
‘It would,’ I said quite lightly. ‘Because I should then make it my business to see that you didn’t get the pension Father promised you.’
‘You couldn’t—’ she spluttered when she had dragged in her breath. ‘You wouldn’t—’
‘Try me,’ I said.
We waited again and after a few days Richard came back from Damascus, dashed into the palace as a man might dash into a tavern and was gone, taking ship to England, where affairs had reached a crisis which even the She-wolf couldn’t handle. We women were to return to Europe under the care of Sir Stephen de Turnham.
They say that rats know instinctively when a ship is about to sink and go swarming away. Maybe there is always one rat who finds that the lines are cut, the anchor raised and the shore already receding when he comes to make his escape. I was that rat.
Joanna Plantagenet wept at taking leave of her brother and wept anew as she faced Berengaria, saying, ‘I shall stay with you until I marry but now that Richard has given his consent, I might marry soon. Dear, dear Berengaria, I shall hate to leave you but I must…’
Berengaria kissed her. ‘Dear Joanna, we shall be together until we land. And I hope you will be very, very happy.’
Carmelita, Duchess of Avosola, who had never been much more than a decoration to our household until she fell victim to the prevalent fever, was out of bed that day and came tottering out to the verandah to enjoy the evening air.
‘So we are going home at last,’ she said. ‘God be praised. Sometimes I thought we should linger here until death released us. Now I can go home and look after my naughty Pepita.’ Her daughter Pepita had married a cousin of the brotherless, heirless King of Castile. ‘Three times while I have stayed here,’ said the duchess, raising three slim, fever-bleached fingers in the air and then dropping them languidly to her lap, ‘has she miscarried. She is sad beyond words. And worse, her husband grows impatient. I shall go home and see what she does wrong. Maybe she still takes little dogs in her lap or goes hunting or eats the flesh of cow or ewe or doe. Who can tell? I spoke my warnings before I left and I have written repeatedly but she is so careless. She does not heed. However, now that I can go home—’
‘Dear Carmelita,’ Berengaria said, ‘I am sure that with your wise guidance your daughter will bear a son who, God willing, will rule Castile.’
What an apt, gracious, knowledgeable little speech, I thought. Yet I swear that in ordinary circumstances one might have discussed Castile, its King, his cousins and the order of succession for an hour in Berengaria’s presence without rousing a flicker of interest or eliciting an intelligible word.
Pila said, ‘So we’re going home. I hope that means to Pamplona.’
‘Aquitaine.’
Pila went momentarily crazy. ‘Aquitaine?’ she squealed. ‘You mean we wait again in Aquitaine? While he goes prancing off to England, Scotland, Brittany? And we wait, you wait, as we waited in Marseilles, in Brindisi, in Messina, in Cyprus and here—here in Acre, over a year! I’ll not do it,’ she said. ‘I’m going home, home to Navarre. And you’ll come with me and tell your father, we’ll get a divorce. I’ll help you. I’ll write. I’ll go with you to His Holiness if need be. We’ll get a divorce.’
‘A divorce?’ Berengaria spoke the word as though it were some new thing she had never heard of. ‘You seem to be beside yourself, Pila. If a little waiting—in the most comfortable circumstances, I would remind you—is so obnoxious to you, the last thing you should call yourself is lady in waiting. You have my leave to retire.’
That was royally spoken. Pila went out, as Joanna and Carmelita had done, throwing me a dark look as she went.
And there were Berengaria and I alone together.
I had no wish to go to Aquitaine. I wanted to go to Apieta and build myself a little stone house with a glass window and a garden. I wanted Blondel to come with me, to plan the house and oversee the building and then settle down to overlook my small estate, share my books, make music for me, marry some plump pleasant girl and have some children to whom I could be godmother.