“Yes, of course, I want to extort unnatural favors from you so that I can refuse them when you consent. Even I am not so perverse, Willem,” Jouglet said, miserably. “But I cannot abide the absurdity of this. The emperor trusts only three souls in this court, and if two of them are revealed as deceiving him together it will devastate him. This cannot happen.”
“Then why did you kiss…” Willem hesitated, glancing up at the old woman as she disappeared across the drawbridge.
“To scare you off, of course!” said Jouglet. “To bring it into the open so it would die of exposure.”
Willem was briefly taken aback, then defiant. “You failed,” he announced.
“The ale, the excitement of the day, it’s all gone to your head,” insisted Jouglet. “Go back up there, please, and see if the company of decent, civil men can cure you of this delirium. I’m sure there is some lady in there who would be thrilled to quench your thirst.”
Willem stared incredulously a moment and sounded furious. “I have disregarded every tenet of my breeding to speak to you as freely as I did. And you repay me with remonstrations for doing it! After you yourself initiated such behavior!”
“I told you, I only meant to scare you off. I am considering the needs of His Majesty and of your— “
“You are a dishonest and misleading rascal,” Willem interrupted in hurt, confused disgust and turned away to face the top of the stairs. He looked sharply over his shoulder. “I never said a thing to you in earnest just now. You will not accompany me up there or stand near me once you’re in the hall, do you hear?”
He mounted the stone steps again, his tread heavy.
Alone, the minstrel muttered angrily, “You certainly rolled that die badly, Jouglet, you imbecile.”
Upstairs, Willem so avoided Jouglet for the rest of the evening that even when the musician was called upon to make up new toasts to honor the knight, the knight did not acknowledge them. Nobody noticed this new tension, because nobody was sober— except Marcus, who was too distracted by his own problems to notice anything at all.
This will never do, Jouglet thought miserably, and on some feeble pretext slipped out of the hall again and into the narrow courtyard. There was only one way to resolve this, however, and it was the one thing the minstrel would have given almost anything in the world to avoid.
* * *
When the feast had been cleared, Marcus again tried to get away but was stopped by the cook, the baker, the butler, and the marshal, all of whom wanted to show that they had kept good accounts of this most happy and celebratory day, and none of whom had the decency to bring him news that the count’s courier had been struck by lightning. Then Konrad informed him Willem of Dole, the great hero, would be sleeping as a guest of honor in the smallest of the three rooms in Konrad’s suite, and would Marcus immediately see to it that young, handsome, perfect Willem have a bed brought in large enough to sleep him and his squire, as well as poultices and various other things so that Erec could attend to his wounds and bruises. Marcus wanted to hand this particular task over to a deputy but then realized all the deputies were out paying ransoms in Konrad’s scheme to show up the king of France. He thought of the message heading south that would keep Imogen out of his arms forever. Out of mood and out of character, he shouted his page boys awake, to help him comfort the man whose arms she would end up in instead.
* * *
Moments after Willem was settled into Konrad’s receiving room, his good friend Jouglet appeared at the top of the large staircase that opened onto the room, and asked for a quick word alone with the knight. Willem’s page, used to Jouglet’s unannounced appearance, withdrew down to the kitchen, happy for an excuse to scrounge for sausage ends.
Jouglet paused before knocking. “Come in,” said a muffled voice from inside. Jouglet opened the door and stood at the threshold, knowing better than to enter.
“Do not come in here!” Willem snapped but reined himself in at once. “Why have you come? I don’t want to speak to you.”
Jouglet experimentally took a step into the room, and when Willem did not object, closed and bolted the door, came all the way in and tentatively sat across the small hearth from him. The knight was sitting awkwardly on one corner of the camp bed that had been set up for him, leaning back against the wall on musty woolen blankets, soaking his feet in a bath of mineral salts. He smelled like a crone’s hut from the collection of salves and balms that Erec had dutifully administered.
“Konrad loves us both quite well,” Jouglet began in a quiet voice, “and he wants us both at his court, but if I have to spend another evening like this one I shall die of putrefaction from a sour stomach.”
“My boots fared worse than your accursed stomach,” Willem muttered. He leaned his head back so that he was staring at the painted ceiling, and replaced a sopping poultice over one eye. He wished he was still drunk.
“You and I are going to come to an understanding before the sun rises or one of us will have to leave this court.”
“Is that a threat?” Willem snapped from his awkward position. “Are you threatening me? I’ve been given my own room by the emperor, who makes you sleep on the floor with his dogs after seven years of service to him. I just won a tournament wearing his helmet!”
“I put that helmet on your head and I can take it off again,” Jouglet warned. “With your handsome head still in it, if need be. Don’t rest on your fresh-plucked laurels, Willem. I have a history with Konrad that outweighs yours, and I know how to play the games of policy that you are too naïve to understand. You were given this room at my suggestion. Make your peace with me tonight or you will find yourself on the road back to Dole before the week is out. I want good things for you but never at my own expense, is that clear?”
Willem shifted the poultice uncomfortably, still looking up at the ceiling, and nodded with a surly expression.
Jouglet calmed. “I did not expect anything about tonight to occur the way it did. But…” A heavy sigh. “Very well. I suppose we’ll just have to soldier through this. Willem, we were at cross purposes on the stairs tonight— “
“You mean you didn’t plan all that?” Willem said, glad he had an excuse not to make eye contact.
“Of course not. But I want to explain my behavior.”
There was a long pause. Willem experimentally removed the poultice, then replaced it, needing an excuse not to sit up straight and look at Jouglet. “Very well, say what you have to say,” he commanded in a clipped voice.
Jouglet took a long while considering the right words and finally, unsatisfied, began. “Imagine the circumstances were just a little different. Imagine, for example, if you had experienced such behavior from, let us say, a fellow knight, or say a woman— “
“A knight would absolutely never do that, and such behavior from a woman means the woman is a whore,” Willem interrupted.
Jouglet’s jaw tightened. “Imagine such behavior from a woman whom you regarded as you regard me.”
“Jouglet, that’s a ridiculous proposition!” Willem said impatiently to the ceiling. “You could not be a woman. The world would never let a female grow to be what you are.”
“That’s true,” said the minstrel, and then added in a fierce whisper, “that’s a very good reason for me not to be a female, isn’t it?”
Willem’s one free eye blinked. “What?”
Jouglet took a deep breath and added with difficulty, “Even if I were to have been born one.”
For a moment the knight remained slouched against the wall, then he very abruptly pulled the poultice away and sat upright on the bed, staring. Jouglet was looking at him beseechingly, obviously as rattled as Willem himself felt. “What are you saying?” Willem demanded, a peculiar feeling in the pit of his stomach.
But when the moment came to say it outright, Jouglet couldn’t. “I cannot…I do not want…balls, I thought I could do this intelligently,” the fiddler muttered in annoyance. Then in a quieter but harsher voice, “I did n
ot want to do this, Willem, you are pushing me into something against my will and I resent you for it— but still that’s preferable to your utterly rejecting me and making life at court impossible for both of us.”
“What are you saying?” Willem repeated, a little more firmly, kneading the poultice and then dropping it in disgust when it began to leak on him.
“I have said nothing,” Jouglet said nervously, backing away and glancing nervously between the two doors of the room. “You cannot claim that I’ve said anything.”
“I do not want to claim anything. Just tell me clearly what it is you haven’t said!” Willem said with sudden vehemence. He struggled to his feet and took an unsteady step toward Jouglet, then pulled a knife from his belt, shoving it at the minstrel, who nimbly leapt up away from it. “Undress yourself,” he ordered hoarsely.
Jouglet eyed the knife with genuine alarm. “If I undress for you at knifepoint and I’m a woman, this may be accounted rape.”
Willem waved the knife impatiently. “If you undress for me at knifepoint and you’re a man, it’s not much better. Don’t force me to force you to do anything!” A pause, and then, almost voicelessly and almost frightened, “Would it be accounted rape?”
Jouglet did not answer, and they stared at each other in silence. Willem put the knife away with a grunt.
“I never take a misstep,” the minstrel murmured, in a tone that was both apology and self-recrimination. “There is no excuse for this coming to pass.”
Willem closed his eyes. “Take off your tunic and shirt.” He put a hand over his eyes. “Or don’t,” he added, gently, from that position. And then added, just as gently, “But if you are not willing to be honest with me now, go away and do not come back to me, ever.”
There was a long pause in which neither of them spoke, or moved, or looked at the other.
The minstrel saw to it that both the doors were bolted from inside, then with trembling hands, pulled off belt, tunic, and shirt, and said, barely above a whisper, “Look, then.”
After a beat Willem opened his eyes and brought a hand to his mouth to stifle a gasp. Clad only in an absurdly baggy pair of men’s drawers stood a willowy woman, her small breasts completely exposed. She looked at him from his friend’s face, smiling with a shyness Jouglet had never once displayed. The features that had never seemed quite masculine enough suddenly, on a woman’s face, did not seem quite feminine enough either.
“I have just put my life in your hands,” Jouglet announced quietly, then made a nervous expression that was half smile and half frown. “Willem, your mouth is hanging open.”
He shut it abruptly, stood up gaping, circled the room ogling this inexplicable creature from every angle, absolutely unable to speak.
“What are you?” he said very hoarsely when he recovered his voice.
“I thought we had established that,” Jouglet said with a failed attempt at laughter. “Or do you need me to take off the drawers as well?”
“A noblewoman? A peasant?”
“A minstrel,” Jouglet said.
“You’re standing naked by my bed,” he said, as if he could not imagine how this had happened.
“No I’m not,” Jouglet said. Fingers trembling, she untied the drawers, let them fall to the floor and stepped carefully out of them as Willem’s gaping increased. “Now I’m standing naked by your bed.”
“Are you a prostitute?” he asked at once.
Her face flushed with anger. Then she laughed. “No, I am your friend Jouglet the minstrel. Do not leap to simplistic assumptions.”
He collected himself a little. “After such deception you have no right to tell me not to leap anywhere!”
“Keep your voice down! Anyhow you deceived yourself,” Jouglet shot back. “Did I ever once claim to be a man? I have never uttered a single lie about my sex. I thought this revelation would be a relief for you. I thought you might…” A hesitation. “I thought you might embrace me.”
“I can’t embrace you,” Willem said, slightly shocked. “You’re a…you’re a woman standing naked by my bed.”
“Would you prefer me to get dressed?”
“No,” he said, so automatically that despite her fear she threw back her head and laughed. It was a gesture so characteristically Jouglet that it almost made Willem dizzy with confusion to see it performed by a person with breasts.
“Well then, would you like me to sit down?”
He looked hurriedly around the room, as if the bachelor state of disarray from Erec’s ministrations were a sudden embarrassment. “I…let me find you someplace comfortable,” he began self-consciously and bent down to pick up a musty blanket that had fallen from the camp bed.
“Oh, for the love of the saints,” Jouglet muttered and reached down for the tunic. “I’m putting this much back on until you can stop acting like a fool.” She slid the tunic over her head, letting it hang loose without the belt.
Willem froze, gaping now at the blanket, at his own solicitousness in picking it up. He threw it down and looked hard at her. “Does Lienor know about this?” he demanded. “Have both of you been playing me for a fool behind my back?”
Jouglet waved a hand dismissively, reassuringly. “I’ve never told Lienor a thing. And I have never played you for a fool, Willem. I was perhaps a fool myself, and you were the victim of my foolishness. That’s not the same thing at all.”
For another long moment he kept staring at her, skeptically. She stood with resignation, arms at her sides, head high so he could scrutinize the suddenly alien face.
“Why?” he finally demanded.
“Why live as a man?” she replied with the usual Jouglet shrug. “Have you not noticed what my options are otherwise?”
“I meant why me? Why did you bring me here?”
“So I could have my dearest friend near me in a place where we might both prosper,” Jouglet said. “Whatever else you have ever believed or might ever believe about me, Willem, please trust the truth of that.”
Willem looked uncertain. “What else?” he demanded.
She made a defenseless gesture. “Only what is obvious! I hoped that you and I might advance your sister, whom I do cherish, even if my courting her is just an artifice. And I hoped to benefit my emperor, because he would benefit from both you and Lienor in his court. And I thought we— you and I— would have a grand time with all of it. Which we have. I did not mean this to happen, though, I swear I didn’t.” A pause. Jouglet took a careful step toward him. “But it has, and I think— I hope— I will not regret it. If you don’t.” Another step in his direction, with a tentative smile.
Looking alarmed at her approach, he took a large step backward and bumped into the camp bed, then crossed away from that too. “I have no interest in possessing you,” he said awkwardly, almost defensively.
“Really? You considered it when you thought I was a youth.”
Willem hesitated. “You are an attractive young man. You are, forgive me, not such an attractive young woman.”
Jouglet laughed. “It’s the same face!” And added pointedly, “It is your friend’s face.” Again she took a step toward him.
Again he pulled away. “You’re not a virgin, are you?” he said in the same defensive, almost desperate tone.
“Willem!” said Jouglet in exasperation.
“If you’re not a prostitute, or married, or— “
“You’re not a prostitute or married, or a virgin,” Jouglet pointed out.
“I’m a man,” he said.
“There are a dozen witty responses to that insightful observation, but I’ll refrain. No, Willem, I’m not a virgin. But,” Jouglet added, in a softer tone, “I’ve always been on the road, without intimates. You’re the only man to whom I have entirely revealed myself, and the first with whom— ” He looked so alarmed she was afraid to say anything too direct. “The first with whom any embrace would not be a casual encounter.” She risked another step toward him.
“Ah. So you’re a harlot, the
n,” he said, sounding unconvinced.
“You deserve another bloody nose,” she snapped, and in a huff went to fetch her drawers. She pulled them on as she spoke, her hands shaking with anger so that it was hard to tie them. “I am not a harlot, Willem, I am someone with desires that you were not displeased about earlier, and occasionally— occasionally— I find a way to fulfill them. It would be unhealthy not to. Do not ask me to be passive and pure as the morning dew until the moment that I’m in your arms, and suddenly I’m vital. I’m always vital, Willem, that’s part of what you’ve always liked about me.” The drawers finally tied, she looked around for her belt and the purse she kept tied closed hanging from it.
Willem saw it before she did and grabbed it from the rushes where she had dropped it. “You’ve just given me the biggest shock of my life, I am entitled to be beside myself for a little while,” he chastised.
Immediately she held up her hands in a yielding gesture. “I grant you that,” she said, and with a small confessional laugh, added, “you gave me quite a shock yourself, when you came back to me on the stairs. I thought I’d managed to scare you off. I would never take you for a sodomite.”
“I would never take me for one either! You underestimated your own charms,” Willem said gruffly.
“I underestimated you,” said Jouglet.
There was a moment of unsettled silence between them, with Jouglet’s eyes looking almost plaintively at the belt and purse, forgotten in Willem’s large palm. “My belt, please,” she said as offhandedly as possible.
Willem glanced down at what he held. “What is it, then?” he asked, patting the small purse. “Obviously not herbs to keep your boyish treble.”
Revenge of the Rose Page 18