by Jean Gill
There was an impatient cough from the queue, waiting at a discreet distance behind Estela, and she finished quickly with an Amen and crossed herself. She laid the cloth in front of the altar, with the flowers and trinkets of the other votive offerings, and moved away quickly before she could change her mind. Petronilla’s precious gifts, a cloth of gold mantle and coronet with diamonds for the Virgin, would be given directly to the new bishop, just in case a lifetime’s wealth left in the open could tempt a poor man to sacrilege.
Estela walked into the daylight, blinked again and felt eased. She had shared the burden of whatever these family mysteries meant, and she felt stronger to deal with whatever threats conventional piety posed to the people who mattered now. Dragonetz, Musca and Nici were her family and her duty was to them and all who depended on them. That did not include the relatives she’d left behind in Montbrun. May they stay away from her forever. Dead or living, they were no longer part of her life.
With no deliberate intent to rebel, her feet took her away from the plaza where the Queen was organizing her ladies into a return procession. Estela went around the corner, over the bridge to the far bank, where she and Dragonetz had first seen Zaragoza. The sun was going down and the front of the building was now in shadow. Instead of the river dazzling with sunshine, it gleamed a twilit blue reflection of the cathedral, Mary’s blue. Another sign for the fool on the bridge. As she leaned on her elbows, hanging over the side of the bridge to drink in the view, something butted the back of her knees, hard.
Pickpocket! Estela automatically reached for her dagger as she whirled round, then laughed and stroked the deep, white fur. She’d wondered whether she’d glimpsed him as the ladies made their progress. Nici was in the habit of keeping a watchful eye from a distance and bounding along on any outing where he spotted his family. Outside the palace, he mixed cheerfully with the street curs, although he could hardly be said to blend in.
‘Come on, you,’ Estela told him. ‘We have a performance to prepare.’ Her return to the Palace was more leisurely, her affection for this timeless city growing daily. Accompanied by Nici and a thousand turbaned ghosts, she regained the Aljaferia and, deliberately rebelling, found joy in the Palace with Dragonetz that night.
Chapter 8
Even though he knew the Palace of Joy was poor defensively, Dragonetz did his best. His own man Raoulf was training the guards, once more practising a retreat to the tower in case of siege. The last practice had been executed to perfection, apart from the fact that the royal party would have been left sleeping in their chamber, over-run by barbarians. On the positive side, while Ramon and Petronilla were being murdered in their beds, all those in the tower would have been safe in a solid keep of almost Christian design. The keyhole doorways and decoration showed otherwise but these did not affect Dragonetz’ military plans.
He gazed at the vaulted cellar, and at the spiral staircase up from the lowest level with a satisfaction as deep as the circular well. He was dispatching a hundred Almohads when his imaginary fights were interrupted by the English Mintmaster, John Halfpenny.
‘My Lord? May I speak with you.’
Dragonetz realized with surprise that he’d not found time to speak with the man since the brief thank you for his work at Monteagudo. Normally, he’d make time to learn from a master craftsman and he’d enjoy debating metals and making.
He’d intended to visit the notary today and write his will but doing so in another day or two would make little difference. He ignored his conscience reminding him that he’d been postponing the unpleasant task ‘one more day’ for as long as he could remember, ever since realizing that his mortality affected a woman and child.
‘Of course,’ he said, quickly reviewing the man’s current role, and possible suit.
Although in Ramon’s employ, Halfpenny owed his life to Dragonetz and his allegiance showed in his eyes and actions. Given his wiry physique and lack of skill at arms, taking him on campaign should have been merely food wasted, and yet, the man’s skills had helped gain the vital alliance with El Rey Lobo. An alliance that should prevent the tower’s defence being tested at all.
John Halfpenny had cleaned up from his prison filth to be red-haired and red-bearded, with a silvered skin like his own coins. His eyes were still mud-coloured, no longer hopeless, but sharp, like a ferret’s.
‘You did good work with Murcia’s Mintmaster,’ Dragonetz told him again.
Halfpenny’s eyes darted sideward and he licked his lips. It seemed he wasn’t seeking praise, and he wasn’t sure of himself. Dragonetz waited.
When the Mintmaster did speak, he gabbled in bursts, in that strange northern accent of his. ‘Gold is all they think about in Murcia, in Zaragoza, with their new dirhams and morabetins, and their old bezants from Byzantium. Gold be difficult to get and difficult to work so a man can’t sleep for worrying about the relief –,’ Dragonetz’ face must have shown his puzzlement for Halfpenny barely paused for breath while explaining, ‘that is the surface on the coin – and it distresses just by looking at it – that is it rubs off, so fragile the gold is, and I’ve told them the coins should be smaller and fatter but they can’t get the gold and they won’t change the dies – that is, the molds. Half the workers be heathens and the rest – well, if they’re not competing with Byzantine coinage, they’re keeping up with the Saracens who lived here before, and some of them live here still, and it’s driving me mad! I can’t remember half the names of all these coins and I can’t do my job with metal that don’t behave right and is worth more than a year’s bread for each coin. Don’t bear to think about what mistakes cost.’
With the air of one about to make a huge confession, he took a deep breath and, enunciating each word separately, said, ‘I don’t like working with gold.’ Then, head bowed, he waited for the sword to descend.
Totally at a loss for how to respond, Dragonetz hedged as he tried to understand what, apparently, had been made clear to him. ‘You’re making gold dirhams – morabetins,’ he corrected, ‘in the Zaragoza mint.’
Halfpenny looked at him as if he were an idiot, which Dragonetz took as assent. ‘You can’t get the gold?’ he hazarded.
‘Gold comes from Oltra mar, over the sea,’ Halfpenny explained as if to a dull-witted schoolboy. ‘Like silk, so it’s very expensive. But you can’t heat silk up and use it again so you don’t get some stupid idiots wanting to melt down silk as you do with bezants – beautiful coins! – and then they use the gold for the thin rubbish we’re turning out here. They’ll be lucky if there’s a raised pattern after a year, never mind the king with his orb and sceptre like they want. Ridiculous! Breaks my heart to do such shoddy work! If they’d been in England in the days of old King Henry they’d have learned to give exact measure, or they’d have lost their privates!’
Dragonetz refrained from pointing out that Halfpenny had been accused of forgery when they first met. He was starting to understand what Halfpenny didn’t want but not what he did. ‘And when you’re not working with gold...’ he prompted.
‘Base metal will last,’ Halfpenny conceded. ‘But there is nothing like hammered silver and best of all is hammered English sterling silver.’
The man was home-sick! ‘I thought you had to leave England because you were in danger there?’
‘King Stephen will not live forever.’
Of course. Dragonetz remembered now. The man had sided with Queen Matilda, then made coins for various barons displaying their images, not an act popular with the King’s Mint he supposedly worked for.
‘If you wish to return to England, you must put your request to your Liege. It is not in my hands.’ Dragonetz frowned. ‘Even if it were, I confess I’d rather a skilled man like you were working for me. There are few with your talents.’
‘That’s what I was hoping, my Lord,’ was the odd reply, made even more puzzling by Halfpenny’s next words. ‘Should you be travelling north, my Lord, I’d be glad to go with you.’
Dragonetz laug
hed aloud. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Halfpenny, but I have no plans to travel north and as for voyaging to England, I’d rather see the tusked monsters of India than risk the flux in such barbaric wetlands.’
‘Yes, my Lord,’ said the Mintmaster but he did not sound disappointed and, although he bowed his head respectfully, his demeanor suggested he knew something his Lord didn’t.
Dragonetz frowned after the man for a while, wondering what gossip had entertained a roomful of coin-makers. Estela too had implied that ‘what people said’ was upsetting. Pff, rumour-mongers. A man had more serious worries. And pleasures. He dismissed the conversation from his mind, and mused on the far more entertaining topic of which songs he and Estela were to sing before the court.
THE THRONE ROOM OF the Aljaferia was the jewel in the palace crown, from the white marble flags with black veins, to the wooden ceiling panels and painted friezes. Dragonetz and Estela had sung in palaces from Narbonne to Jerusalem but never in one as opulent. Not content with mere arches, the Moorish architects had embellished curves with inner arches and curlicues, drawing the eye to outer passageways and more columns, in an illusion of infinite space.
The columns supporting their confection of plasterwork were as symmetrical, and as individual, as people, each one topped by exquisite carvings – a flower, a fish, a pine cone. Everywhere in the palace were pine cones, their overlapping scales repeating the pattern of the interlaced archways. Everywhere the poetry of mathematics, the harmony, until Dragonetz felt his head spin with looking.
‘My Lord?’ A boy filled his goblet with wine and drew Dragonetz’ attention back to the pleasures of the table. He and Estela had seats at the top table with Ramon, Petronilla and other privileged guests. The marbled Hall was set out in the same way as any ordinary castellan’s would be, with trestle tables running the length of the room.
From the top table, Dragonetz could see the boys entering through the keyhole doorway with trays of food, and his stomach growled in response. As any experienced performer knew, it was a jongling act to be polite to his noble hosts but also restrained in what he ate and drank, if his performance was not to suffer. He saw Estela cover her goblet with her hand and the boy pass on to the next guest. She had long since mastered all the social skills required for her role.
The civet of singed veal claimed his attention, in a cameline sauce that mixed sweetness with a tang he could not identify. Estela could no doubt tell him not only the name of each spice, but in what quantities and how they were prepared. He glanced at her again.
Watching his lover in animated conversation with her neighbour, Dragonetz tried to see her as others did. Words like accomplished, beautiful, vivacious no more portrayed her true nature than did black-haired. They were all true but empty. When he’d looked up on that dusty road and seen her on Sadeek, his universe had breathed one word, Estela, and in that one word was every moment they’d lived together. He could remember the moment he’d first seen her golden eyes and grubby-clothed passion, how dazzled he’d been. She darted a sudden smile his way, as conscious of him as he of her, however many people sat between them. He was still dazzled.
It was time for them to take to the floor. Excusing himself to his neighbours, Dragonetz stood. Estela took her cue from him and accepted the hand he offered to escort her to the place they’d left his mandora, her oud and two chairs.
Always the flutter of nerves beforehand, hidden in a cough, the tuning of instruments. Always the two of them, facing the world together, and breathing when the song dictated they could.
At first, Estela accompanied Dragonetz as he sang two of her compositions. The audience knew them well, but the male interpretation in rich baritone brought out different qualities from Estela’s soprano performance. Dragonetz brought the timbre of war and weapons to the Song of Arnaut. His voice carried his love for his brothers-in-arms, past and present. He sang for Malik and for Ramon, who raised a goblet from the top table.
Then Estela lay down her lute, turned her back on her lover and the Hall waited, whispered their guess at what song might follow, recognized the opening straight away, the lark beating its wings. Ventadorn murmured the listeners.
Dragonetz pointed at the wilful woman as he sang car no vol so c’om deu vole, for she wants what she should not, and the audience sang the second line with him, quietening to listen and enjoy the lover’s anguish and haughty response as the troubadours threw the lines to each other with their own personal touch. Estela mocked him as he sang of her wickedness and his despair. The audience loved their act.
Then Dragonetz slipped into his own best-known songs, or versions of them. As he relaxed, he extemporized, drawing laughter from around the Hall as he slipped in current events and well-known characters, emphasised by his comic acting and rich baritone. He switched moods, drew his audience into a sensual longing that made couples glance at each other, hands touch surreptitiously under the table.
When the mood was right, he glanced at Estela and she strummed the opening notes of his aubade. A murmur of appreciation swelled round the Hall as everyone recognized the song before it had even started. Dragonetz sang a verse then turned to his lady and she sang the next, while he joined her in playing his lute. They embellished the melody with their nimble fingers as well as their voices and wove the last verse into a duet of passion and loss. Their duet of passion and loss, of their meeting and parting, of the time when they had known they should be together and thought it impossible.
‘If only day would never come
If only night could spare the pain
Of each new parting, little Death
That leaves enough to die again.’
As the last notes died, there was silence, then an uproar as the audience reacted, shouting for more. Dragonetz looked at Estela and she nodded. Her face was well-schooled but he could detect both strain and determination. They had discussed this and both felt the need, however hard it might be.
The Hall hushed as people strained to hear Dragonetz’ words.
‘... in memory of a singer who died too young. We’re going to sing the dawn song again but as it was sung in the court of Jerusalem by a boy we loved. I will sing the song in English, as my Lady Estela de Matin did on that day, and Estela will take Muganni’s part. May he sing forever with the angels.’
Dragonetz sat down and took up his lute. Estela moved to stand behind Dragonetz and put her hand on his shoulder, a gesture of affection in the audience’s eyes, no doubt. He could feel her hand clenching the velvet of his tunic and knew she was steadying herself. Then his shoulder was light and he played the first notes, sang one line, as had Estela in Jerusalem, when she and Muganni had gifted Dragonetz with their duet, prepared in secret, with love.
Echoing every line in the Arabic of Muganni’s translation, Estela faltered at first, missed a note and then found her way. Willing strength to her, Dragonetz embroidered her lines with minor chords, adding to the oriental effect, and she responded with a mournful vocal technique she’d learned from Ella.
‘My sweet, my own, what shall we do?
Day is nigh and night is over.
We must be parted, my self missing
All the day away from you.’
As Estela sang the closing words, Dragonetz let his fingers play a last goodbye to the boy he’d rescued from a brute’s tent, and who’d sung for a queen before whatever death he’d suffered. Then the hand stilled, the echo died and the lute was silent. Dragonetz felt Estela’s grip on his shoulder once more and he guessed she was spent. They’d intended to lift the mood with one of Estela’s popular compositions but he knew it was not possible.
He took Estela’s hand in his own, held it tight as he stood beside her. He bowed, she curtseyed in the silence that lingered, let the audience wipe their eyes, come back in their own time from the magical otherworld they’d visited through song. A communal sigh ran like a wave through the Hall, responded to another bow with applause and weak shouts for more. Everyone understood
that the performance was over, and everyone understood the tear-tracks on the singers’ faces. Everyone knew grief and loss.
‘I brau, well done,’ Petronilla told them as they returned to their places at table. Her eyes were shining and Dragonetz remembered what Estela had told him. His heart looped. Did the Queen have another boy’s loss in mind?
Ramon, too, was generous with praise, said ‘Would that Malik had been here to credit the finer points of the music!’ He chewed his lip, came to a decision, said, ‘I would talk to you tomorrow, in the cool of evening.’
‘My Lord,’ Dragonetz acknowledged the appointment without question. Outwardly. Inwardly, he wondered. It was going to be a busy day as he had a notary to visit in the morning and this time he would go. One day death would come, will he or nill he, and he must make provision for his lady and child.
‘My Lord Dragonetz!’ Estela toasted him from further along the table, her eyes dancing as she realized how much they had moved their audience, how they had shone, together.
‘My Lady Estela,’ he returned, raising his goblet and kissing its rim, his eyes never leaving hers. Death could wait. Tonight was theirs and they would continue in private what they had started in public.
Estela blushed but her gaze never wavered. Her imagination could match his, in all things. He smiled.
Chapter 9
Dragonetz drummed his fingers on his knee, wondering how notaries were all imbued with the same mind-numbing nit-picking capacity to spend hours ‘clarifying’ what was clear to any sensible man in minutes. He concentrated on the lawyer’s hat to keep from walking from the shop while the lawyer studied his bookshelves and muttered.
It was in the style that some Jews chose to affect, soft, round-brimmed with a hemisphere as the centre and a strange spike on top. Like a breast with a stiff tassel, thought Dragonetz, remembering some of the more esoteric entertainments in Damascus. It was unlikely that Master ben Aaron would appreciate the comparison. Below the hat, he wore the customary jubba, in green silk, the sweat stains under the wide sleeves refreshed with recent damp.