by Jean Gill
His lute. Perhaps he had his lute with him.
Without hope, she said, ‘He’s a troubadour. He might have a lute on his back.’
A bearded man laughed. ‘Not on his back, sweet maid, for he was playing it.’
‘And not the sort of songs to win grace for a pilgrim’s soul!’ said another. ‘He caused a right to-do among some who wished for more godly entertainment!’
‘Where? When? How many days back?’ The questions fell over each other but all Estela really knew from the answers was that she was not going back home. Desperate to press on, she forced herself to spend the night beneath a tree, near enough to the travellers for her comfort and far enough for Sadeek’s. At daybreak, she was up, and now she knew the question to ask every living being she passed.
‘Have you seen or heard a troubadour with his lute, perhaps singing?’ Estela had a good idea what sort of songs would have caused offence, and she smiled. He was still hers.
SHE HEARD HIM BEFORE she saw him, singing the song she had taught him. Sadeek heard his master too and his ears flicked forwards. Trained for battle, he picked his way with disdain through the small crowd who’d gathered round the troubadour. As usual, men moved aside for the princely stallion and Dragonetz broke off in mid song.
He repeated a line, found his place again in the lyric but then Nici reached him, brushing a cacophony of false notes with each swipe of his tail. Dragonetz put his lute down as he stood to greet his dog, his horse, then his mistress, meeting her eyes as he sang for her.
D’aisso.s fa be femna parer
ma domna, per qu’e.lh’ o retrai,
car no vol so c’om deu voler,
e so c’om li deveda, fai.
And so my Lady shows herself to be
a woman, and deserves to be chidden,
for she does not want what she should want,
and does just that which is forbidden.
He broke off, his words completing the song’s accusation. ‘You shouldn’t be here!’
‘A sweet voice but empty,’ she teased him. ‘It lacks the maturity the song needs.’ He bowed, acknowledged the hit, his own words from their first meeting thrown back in his face. Only this time, Estela was the lady and Dragonetz the dusty-footed traveller seeking redemption.
She slipped off the great horse, handed the reins to Dragonetz and picked up the lute. There was an audience waiting, rapt, so she delivered the next verse, as intent on her lover as he on her.
‘Chazutz sui en mala merce,
et ai be faih co.l fols en pon;
e no sai per que m’esdeve,
mas car trop puyei contra mon.’
‘Deep into disaster I have dropped
and acted like the fool upon the bridge;
I know not why I should fall so low,
unless I strove to climb too high.’
She stopped playing to point at Sadeek, her high horse, and to mime sighs, drawing laughter from the crowd, but Dragonetz no longer wanted to play. She could see his eyes darkening but whether in anger, desire or something else, she didn’t know. She curtseyed demurely, passed him the lute so that both his hands were occupied. She should have known better.
Dragonetz passed the lute to a lad who’d been mouthing the words and nodding his head. ‘Please, sing for these good people while I attend to my Lady, whose unexpected visit leaves me temporarily without voice.’
He took Estela’s arm in a grip that looked to be the height of courtesy and was in fact pure steel. She doubted that Sadeek’s reins were held as tightly on Dragonetz’ other side but she let herself be steered away from the crowd, who soon lost interest in the drama as they listened to the pleasant voice of the young man. Nici’s tail was a white plume of happiness.
‘They need water,’ Estela pointed out.
‘What possessed you to take such risks? You’re lucky to be here in one piece! When did you leave Barcelone? Where’s Gilles? Or Raoulf. You’re not on your own, I hope.’ She knew he could read the answers in her face. ‘Estela! Sadeek’s no palfrey!’
‘And I’m no palfrey either!’ she fired back, freeing her arm and facing him. He took the chance to inspect his beloved horse’s mouth and she stroked the satiny coat. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she murmured. ‘I know why you love him and I took care. We floated,’ she declared, unable to conceal her pride.
Dragonetz was still checking that his horse showed no sign of damage or distress. ‘He did that for you?’ Finally, he turned to face her and opened his arms. ‘Of course he did,’ he murmured, and his kiss was a promise she had to break. She had to say the words.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘about de Rançon. Gilles told me.’
Dragonetz flinched as if he’d been hit then swore, at length, reducing Gilles’ ancestry to four-footed farmyard inhabitants.
Estela withstood the blast. ‘You had no right to silence my man!’
‘It was to protect you,’ he said, carefully, studying her. Quiet now, he asked, ‘How do you feel?’
The words came out in an unstoppered stream. ‘Dirty, stupid, gullible, insulted, demeaned, horrified, heart-broken... Muganni... I can’t believe it.’ Her voice broke. ‘And I kissed such a man. I thought him my friend.’
Dragonetz took her hand, spread his bedcloth on the ground, invited her to sit. She did so. ‘What exactly did Gilles tell you?’ he asked.
Falsehood. Treachery. The murder of a boy with an angel’s voice. She stumbled over the tissue of lies that Gilles had exposed, and her own role in them. The way de Rançon had pretended to her that he was Dragonetz’ friend and yet managed to disparage the character of his ‘friend’ with subtle references to the past and ‘all being forgiven’. The way Geoffroi had been charming, pretending to love Estela but holding back, from chivalry.
‘It wasn’t that we kissed,’ she whispered. ‘It’s that I kissed him and he nobly sent me below decks. How he must have crowed that his revenge was working! And Muganni.’ Her voice shook. ‘Then he came to Les Baux to complete his devilish work. He taunted you with cowardice and tempted you with the poppy and I just watched! Thought him your friend! It’s my fault.’ She glared at him. ‘And it’s your fault for not telling me! You’ve treated me like a child!’
Tears in his eyes, Dragonetz laughed, raw and humourless. ‘Now you know what I’ve been telling myself since I found out the worst. But when you arrived in Jerusalem, what you saw... me as I was then...’ Estela remembered only too well the poppy’s deadly work.
‘De Rançon’s poison was deep in you too, Estela. Not the poppy but words. I could see how he’d won you over, and I didn’t know what he’d said about me but I knew that he was no friend! I didn’t even know what he was up to until he tried to kill me in the dye-yard and Gilles heard all.
If I’d spoken against him, I might have played into his hands. I thought we could just leave the past behind.’
‘In Jerusalem, maybe,’ Estela conceded, ‘but later, when we’d found each other again, when you were yourself, you should have told me!
‘Why would I hurt you?’
‘Because you’ve hurt me more by not sharing the pain sooner. How do you think I feel now? I’ve been grieving for months for a murderous bastard! While you – you’ve been glad he’s dead and wishing I’d stop wailing!’
‘No.’ Dragonetz was hesitant. ‘I read his papers in Les Baux when I was called to his rooms after he died. He blamed me for his father’s dismissal and disgrace but Geoffroi’s parents believed that he was a curse upon them, that he was responsible for all their woes. What they wrote to him would have driven any man mad. I think the man you thought him was also inside his tortured soul. When we fought together, as brothers, that was the man he could have been, and his evil self was also the way we could have been.’
‘I don’t understand. Von Bingen speaks of gicht taking a man, the need for cooling the humours. Perhaps blood-letting would have rid him of the poisonous thoughts.’ Estela remembered all too well the use to which her leech
es had been put, on Geoffroi’s behalf. ‘Perhaps he suffered a head wound. Galen writes of a procedure called trepanning, where the skull is drilled to remove pressure. Such injuries can result in mad behaviour.’ Estela babbled, seeking relief from her roiling stomach in the wisdom of the ancients, distancing herself.
‘Maybe,’ Dragonetz aired the terrible thought quietly, ‘maybe we were as brothers. Maybe I would have become as he did if I’d borne the same burdens.’
‘No!’ Estela was adamant. ‘Our natures are not malleable in such a way. When you speak to me of brothers, I know that the same childhood does not lead to the same wickedness in two children!’ Then she told him about Miquel and her soul-sickness eased as she shared her own burdens. She told him about Malik’s illness, and Dragonetz held her when she started to shiver, reliving her responsibility for life and death. Her body knew how many shocks she’d suffered even though her mind denied them.
When they had talked out the daylight, they shared their rations and made camp as best they could, rolled in a bedcloth under the stars. Estela did not say how she’d camped in such a way, but alone in her bedcloth, when riding with Geoffroi de Rançon to join his friend Dragonetz in the Holy Land. But she remembered. Camaraderie and reminiscences, woodsmoke and exhausted legs.
‘He did love you,’ Dragonetz murmured sleepily, reading her mind. ‘How can I not understand that.’ She curved her body into his, comforted.
Later, much later, as she turned in the night, half-waking, Estela thought she heard her lover say, ‘If I understand them, I cannot kill them,’ but she probably dreamed it.
In the morning, Estela searched Dragonetz’ face for signs that the world had changed. Instead she saw a lop-sided smile.
Carefully, she asked, ‘Do you still wish to complete your pilgrimage, my Lord?’
He read her eyes. ‘You’ll come with me if I do, won’t you!’ He laughed.
The pause and flicker of eyelids had been miniscule but Estela noticed. She doused her involuntary spark of anger, spoke without accusation. ‘There is peace in pilgrimage, in letting go of the burdens, responsibility to Ramon, to me, for men, for your family. In a simple life.’ She thought of Malik, his relief at not dying and his peace at being confined to bed. ‘Maybe you need this for your own soul.’
‘No.’ He was firmer. ‘There is much to think about but I can do that at home now.’ A thought struck him. ‘Where is home?’
‘Zaragoza,’ she told him. ‘Our household is on its way to the court, in the Aljaferia. I think we had best meet them there.’
‘Malik’s Palace of Joy. And Malik?’
‘Recovering in Barcelone. I don’t think he’s well enough to join Ramon. He wouldn’t be of any use.’
Dragonetz looked at Sadeek, grazing peacefully. ‘How exactly did you intend getting me to Zaragoza once you’d rescued me?’ he enquired politely.
‘I didn’t think about it,’ she admitted. ‘I should have brought another horse along.’
‘Thank God you didn’t! You would have found out quickly enough the difference between a stallion and a gelding! Sadeek would not have tolerated you leading another horse!’
‘I could commandeer a wagon,’ she mused, ‘and drive you there, with Sadeek attached to the wagon. ‘Or you could drive the wagon while I ride Sadeek? Nici can run alongside.’
‘I think not,’ he told her, smiling. ‘Sadeek will take us both if we take it in easy stages. But for your impudence you can sit behind me and I warn you he has a short back compared with the hacks you’re accustomed to, so if he takes a sudden fancy to speed up, you’ll land on your behind. And if you provoke me, my Lady, Sadeek will be the first to know about it.’
Estela decided to save her protests for a time when her pride was less likely to take a fall. Sitting on the magnificent stallion, behind Dragonetz, with her arms tight around him, was not such a bad position for a woman after all. Nici made full circles around them in his enthusiasm, until he settled to the pace of a dog escorting a lost sheep home.
Chapter 7
The stone bridge stretched ahead of them across the broad race of the River Ebro to Zaragoza itself but it was not the treacherous currents that made Estela gasp. Like the desert mirages she remembered from the Holy Land, fairy-tale spires glittered on the opposite bank. The morning sun turned the river into golden waves, from which foundation rose the massive building like some heraldic beast. The great bell in its cage flashed, a miniature sun in captivity.
As Estela’s eyes adjusted to the glare, she could see builders climbing the walls, erecting ropes and pulleys, and the magic diminished to a large building with structural work taking place.
Dragonetz dismounted, grinned up at her. ‘Unless my Lady wishes to test the behaviour of the fool on the bridge?’
‘Not I, my Lord. I know when to come off my high horse!’ she retorted and slipped off Sadeek into her lover’s sure arms.
Partly to confirm that she was not dreaming the vision ahead of them, Estela wondered aloud, ‘The Aljaferia?’
‘I think not. It is not the style of a Moorish fortress. No, I think we have reached a pilgrim shrine, made holy by Sant Iago, though not the one I sought.’ He drew Talharcant, knelt on the dusty bridge and kissed the cross of the hilt. ‘Hail Mary.’
Another sign. Mary. The first and most famous shrine to Mary in all Christendom, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Pillar, and Estela was here, re-united with Dragonetz. She put her hand on his shoulder and promised an offering to the Madonna, though not new clothes and jewels. She would leave the wardrobe provision to Queen Petronilla.
‘My Lady?’ Dragonetz, rose, took her arm and they crossed the Ebro. A group of mallards fought their way against the current, caught in eddies. Like us, thought Estela, as the ducks escaped the fierce rush of the centre, to the lesser pull of the sides and then the calm of the bank, under some trees. Battered by winds, and mud at their roots, the trees leaned drunkenly but held their ground. No doubt they were half-submerged in winter floods but now, in summer drought, they merely bowed their heads to the scorching sun.
May the Palace of Joy live up to its name. Prayer or hope, the thought walked with Estela over the bridge to the plaza of the cathedral. Dragonetz’ Aragonese was better than hers and she tried to tune in as he asked for and received directions. It was similar to the Catalan she was used to in Barcelone, or to her own native Occitan, but there were ‘b’ sounds added to familiar words and the pronunciation was strange to her ears.
They walked on through the plaza, away from the cathedral and the river, heading west along a wide, paved road that told of an older city, before even the Moors and Goths. So much paving! And how could all these people go about their business without stopping to gaze, open-mouthed, at the beauty carved in wood and stone, in every façade. Not even in Barcelone had Estela seen such grandeur. If, as men said, Byzantium was the most dazzling of cities, then surely Zaragoza must be its sister.
They rounded a corner, still on flat ground, and this time there was no mistaking the Moorish fortress; solid semi-circular towers jutted out from golden walls made of stone blocks big as barrels.
‘Malik’s Palace of Joy.’ Estela spoke the thought aloud, earning a warning squeeze from Dragonetz.
‘The thought we do not speak,’ he told her.
‘But you feel it too? How things might have been? And the knowledge of who walked here before us?’
The silence stretched, full of turbaned rulers and their silken-robed wives, of a little prince playing in the home of his ancestors. ‘Yes,’ he acknowledged, his curtness another warning, spoken by the King of Aragon’s Commander.
Atop the towers, the pointed crenellations on brick bands made it seem that each tower was wearing a coronet, the arrow-slit windows like eyes. One square tower loomed at the back of the palace.
‘The strongest part, defensively, if it has access to drinking water,’ pointed out Dragonetz as he too assessed the Aljaferia but with different priorities. He had
been muttering to himself about the flat environment, the parched moat, the feeble protection for archers afforded by the fancy crenellations.
Interlaced arches made stone borders in the massive walls and the entrance was a keyhole arch in the style of Muslim shrines. Stones curved outwards from the keyhole shape, a miracle of architecture.
‘How does it not fall on us?’ Estela looked up at the curving fan of stone wedges.
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Dragonetz, while they waited for the guards to obtain permission to let them into the palace, ‘but I trust it will not!’
Permission received, Dragonetz ascertained that Ramon and a party of his men had arrived, and that the Queen was expected within the week. After Sadeek had been stabled, Dragonetz sought an audience with Ramon and found their allocated chambers. At which time, he and Estela took to their bed and slept soundly, while they could.
ONCE A BIG WHITE DOG had confirmed the family’s safety and enthusiasm at seeing her again, Estela busied herself in organising the new household. She wasn’t sure whether to be proud or sorry that they managed so well without her but she found fault with the storage of linen just to keep her staff on their toes.
‘Do I need to keep out of his way?’ asked Gilles, on hearing that the master had returned with the mistress. His gaze was steady and no regret in his eyes, as loyal as Nici. ‘And I bought this for you, in the market.’
Estela nodded thanks, running her fingers over the tooled leather belt, with its dagger sheath. It was very practical and would fit neatly under any of her skirts.
‘Beautiful,’ she told him. ‘The leatherwork in Iberia is second to none.’ She remembered the lessons he’d taught her when she was growing up and inspected the stitching. ‘Beautiful and well-made, I think.’
His smile of approval showed that he remembered too but faded quickly.