It sounded so simple—and so sure to get me an audience. “Aye, yes, soothly I will,” I said eagerly.
Before he could answer, the cottage was struck by a force that tipped a few candles and made the desk jump. Then Enoch rammed in, bellowing like a bull!
“Where be the slummock what stole my brother?” He whirled on Giselle, his gaveloc raised to kill.
Just as fast his arms were pinioned by criminals and freaks who’d run after him. Dagobert slunk behind them and tried to signal me that he hadn’t told, and I knew that Madame Annette had betrayed me.
Zizka put hands on hips and walked close to Enoch to study him.
“Now this is more in keeping with what I’d heard of the Scots. Yes, a true wildman. What cold gale blew you hither?”
“Stand back or I’ll bite yer terse off! Alex, come here!”
I sidled next to him. “It is my brother Enoch, sir. You can tell your men to let him go—he’s harmless.”
“Harmless, am I? If these roughs be not bagits, their balls be dust. As fer ye, Master Sweettalk, ye with yer flower face, ye’re the most ungrateful warlo of all! Yell learn how harmless I be.”
By this time he was free and I smiled gratefully at Zizka. Not that I cared if they tossed Enoch into a bag of snakes and pulled the top tight, but I was glad to even the score somewhat: now I had saved his life.
“Come, we’re gang home.”
I didn’t move.
“You’re to be congratulated, Master Wanthwaite,” Zizka said smoothly. “Your brother has just joined our troupe, the aristocrats of jongleurs we call ourselves.”
Enoch stared down at me, his eyes fair jumping from their sockets. I couldn’t contain my triumph. “I’m going to meet King Richard.”
“King Richard, is it?” He whistled softly and turned to Zizka. “King Richard, very clever. He’s the bait—where’s the trap?”
“No trap, Enoch,” Zizka answered, bemused. “Alex has told you the truth.”
Enoch pointed to Fat Giselle. “And I hear that this slut-daw arranged his meeting with the king. Or mayhap some of these sticked swine around me be special friends with the king. Wake up, bairn, or a trompourer will rob ye blind. Aristocrats! Ye know that I bow to no man when it comes to despising English kings, but e’en I have to defend King Richard from such sludge-mates.”
Zizka’s jaw wiggled til and fro, which I guessed was a sign of anger, but he remained courteous.
“Unfortunately you’re all too accurate, Enoch, in defending the king from such questionable taste in company, but King Richard does appreciate the arts of minstrelsy and verse-making. After all, he grew up in a different … clime? … from Scotland, an ambience of troubadour poetry, the Arts of Love. ’Tis one of history’s temporary ironies that the purveyors of such elegant entertainments are outside the law. Here in Paris, we’re required to live with the more disreputable elements who are also outlaws, but I assure you that we are a breed apart.” Then he repeated what he’d told me about Ambroise.
“I’m going to see King Richard,” I repeated firmly.
“Be quiet, Alex.” Enoch looked long at Zizka, impressed I could see, then took in the books lining the wall, the fastidious desk and lights, all indeed a contradiction to the motley people in the room. I knew I’d won when he spoke in French.
“How much is this Ambroise going to pay you for Alex’s presence?”
Zizka shrugged. “A small fee. Not enough to matter. It’s the art which must be served.”
“The art for you, money for Alex and me.”
“You!” I exclaimed. “Who asked you to go?”
Zizka took a wary step closer to the Scot so he could see his expression.
“Naturally we’ll feed and house the boy while we’re on the road, provide costumes, at least the one for that particular act.”
“All his expenses and a fee for each appearance,” Enoch said adamantly. “What are his duties?”
Again the shrug. “Almost nothing. To sing, dance a little. He happens to be the physical type I’m seeking.”
Now Enoch’s eyes were narrow and his lips rolled tight. “Physical type for what?”
“Please, Monsieur Wanthwaite, you’re embarrassing me. You can see for yourself, a sweet little boy. He’s to play Cupid … I don’t know … we might revive a number about Alexander. Two or three solos, playing the clappers with our instrumentalists if we’re short, learning a few choruses.”
“Write it out,” Enoch ordered. “Be sure you include everything you want, for he’ll not do one thing else. We’ll want two parisis for each performance, room and board for both of us. I’ll look after him.”
“Robbery!” Fat Giselle called out. “Make the Scot wrestle with Belle-Belle the bear if he wants pay.”
Zizka and Enoch were eye-locked like two male dogs meeting on the road. I hoped Zizka could outwit him but didn’t think he could. As long as I had my audience with King Richard alone I supposed it didn’t matter too much to me.
The haggle went on for some time with Enoch winning most points; then they came to the date of our departure.
“Ambroise writes sometimes between April and June next year,” Zizka said.
“Next year!” I bawled. “But I can’t wait! You promised, take me now!”
Everyone except Enoch gazed, astonished.
“Great heavens, child,” Zizka admonished mildly. “At your age, six months flies.”
“Aye, yell wait, bairn, and ye’ll learn the law like we intended, and logic as well. I’m thinking astronomy might be a good course too, for we’ll come here to rehearse only on Saturdays.”
“Oh no,” I moaned.
The men shook hands, made arrangements for contracts. On the way out, I spoke to Fat Giselle.
“Thank you kindly for your help. I—I—”
“You’d better deliver, for that price,” she said, boring into my eyes so I trembled. “And remember your oath.”
Outside, Enoch, Dagobert and I made a human chain as we walked to the gate where Twixt was tied. Enoch was going to make Dagobert walk home in the knee-deep mud, but our shivering friend pled so pitifully that he was permitted to mount on the mule’s rump and we began a long stumbling trek back to Madame Annette’s. The crashing and sizzling on all sides couldn’t keep Enoch quiet; he would harangue and scold if the world came to an end.
“One thing I promise is that ye’ll stay innocent yif I have to chain yer ankle to mine.”
“You’re too late!” I shouted, exasperated beyond endurance. “I’m already not innocent!”
At my words the heavens split in two parts in a deafening crash and spat a maelstrom of fire! Twixt stumbled and stopped while I made a silent prayer to Satan that I hadn’t meant it.
“That were some fireflash,” said Enoch, awed. Then, as we continued, “How be ye not innocent?”
“I know as much as you,” I improvised to cover my blunder. “We go to the same classes.”
“Aye, as much aboot some things. Let me ask ye, ye’ve seen the stones by Fat Giselle’s. What think ye means ‘Trousse-Puteyne’ and ‘Gratte-con’?”
“Easy,” I said. “Whores-slit Street and Scratch—uh—cunt?”
“That’s the English. Meanin’?”
“Whore—hoar, hoary trench. The ditch must get frosty.”
“Aye, there be some such. Go on.”
“Scratch—a cunt is a small furry animal. We have them in England but you may not have any in Scotland.”
“I believe I’ve seen a few. Well, I admit ye’ve surprised me, bairn.”
And that stopped his mouth, but it didn’t stop my thoughts. One piece of secret information was a canker in my joy and I crossed my arms, pressing hard: still no breasts, nor had I bled again.
But six months from now?
Dry and snug in bed much later, I still fretted and turned, worrying and seeking. Then I sat bolt upright.
In all my concern about Enoch racing me back to claim Wanthwaite, I’d completely
forgotten Roland de Roncechaux and Northumberland! Was it possible that they’d already sought audience and sealed Wanthwaite’s fate? King Richard had gone to London for his coronation in August and this was November.
I lay back so hard that Enoch grunted from his mat. Deus juva me, I hoped King Richard was as fair and Christian as some people said, that he would honor my claim.
Otherwise I was lost.
The ripened maid delights to learn
In wanton Ionic dance to turn,
And fondly dreams, when still a child,
Of loves incestuous and wild.
HORACE
ZIZKA TURNED OUT TO BE RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING: the next six months did fly fast, though not because of my age forsooth. Enoch kept me so busy running from early morning to sundown from one class to the other, then sitting half the night by candlelight trying to absorb what wed heard, that there was no time to reflect on the passage of time. The Scot, too, had predicted rightly when he’d said I’d never be free of him an instant. Zizka was more fortunate in his shadow, for Brise-Tête was a dumb mime, unable to speak because someone had relieved him of his tongue when he was young. Would that same wight had snipped Enoch’s waggling member.
Nor did I mature in my body, Deo gratias. My breasts didn’t appear; I didn’t bleed again; I was still fitting easily into Arthur’s rags. This kindly turn of Fortune’s Wheel may have come because of some invocations I remembered my mother teaching me, but ’tis more likely that ’twas simply in my stars. I also recalled what she’d said about my aunts who were so late developing into women.
Yet I did go through an inner change which was dreadful worrisome though not even Enoch seemed to notice it. I think I caught a peculiar fever from Madame Annette’s kitchen, or mayhap ’twas from that time I forgot and drank Paris water which everyone warns is poisonous. Whatever the source, the symptom was a fierce burning through my innards and straight to the fantastick cells in my head. Although my skin remained cool, my cheeks pale, my eyes clear, nonetheless I was racked day and night by a pounding heart, sudden gales of laughter and frantic joy over nothing, followed by such a melancholy humor that I sat for hours contemplating the icy Seine, paradoxically enjoying my despondency I finally concluded that my liver was enflamed, that the fire therein was stoked too high, and I asked Dagobert for an elixir. He was unsure what to prescribe so asked his master in turn who said ’twas impossible for the liver to cook too fast and that ’twas more likely I was possessed with a demon. He suggested I come and confess, then be exorcised, but since I didn’t have anything to confess except my kissing Satan’s toute-ass which I dare not tell on pain of losing my soul, I just accepted my condition.
When we finally left Paris in June, my pulsing liver almost exploded in a burst of joy and dread. The joy was easy to fathom, the dread more complex. Naturally I feared that Northumberland and Roncechaux had already succeeded in annexing my estate. If the whole country of Scotland could be bought, why not Wanthwaite? Well, I would soon find out. Then the thorny question rose: Could I persuade King Richard to reverse such a decision? I would have to try. A more murky dread lived like a snake hidden in the depths of my vital spirits: I was afraid to become Alix again. ’Twas passing strange, I knew, and I couldn’t understand it but there it was. I couldn’t go back to the girl I’d been because I hadn’t her circumstances, and to be a girl in my present condition was fraught with dangers, both known and unknown, for I would now be a woman. And I thought of my mother and Maisry.
Yet the dice had been thrown at my birth and there was naught I could do.
BRISE-TÊTE TUGGED MY LEG AND pointed to his shoulder, then shaded his eyes and turned his head from one side to the other as if scanning the horizon.
“He wants to show me something,” I interpreted. “He wants me to get on his shoulders.”
Enoch looked at Zizka’s dumb mime with disbelief. “Is he woodly? Yer hurdies be not exactly feathers. And even Twixt is melting in the sun.”
’Twas true. This central valley of France was a bowl of hot broth, resisting our forward movement, immersing us in our own drench. Furthermore we were presently atop a grotesque escarpment which grew in this flat bowl like a wart. Nonetheless, I slipped off Twixt onto Brise-Tête’s muscular shoulders and he immediately trotted up a steep cliff on our left.
“Heigh, fool, where gang ye? Bring the boy back!”
“Fool, bring the boy back!” the dark-skinned performer Dangereuse echoed, for she was so enamored of Enoch that she repeated his words like a litany.
There was nothing wrong with Brise-Têtes hearing but he paid no heed to the cries for he was a headstrong fool. Leaning into the sharp angle, he climbed straight upward as I clung to his head. When he lifted me down I saw that we were on a narrow ledge overlooking the next steamy valley. He pointed eagerly, then turned an anxious face to watch my reaction.
“Be it Chinon?” I asked.
He nodded proudly.
On the far side of a hazy shallow kettle perched a long horizontal series of towers and rocky outcroppings, a jagged vision softened by its reversed reflection in the Vienne River below.
“Alex, air ye all right?” The Scot was streaming with sweat and had turned a dangerous red color.
“Look.”
By this time Dangereuse and the singer, Berthe, had also crowded beside us.
“Is King Richard there yet?” I asked Berthe, for she is our authority on royal banners in this part of the world. I’d learned that her father Papiol was jongleur to the infamous Bertrand de Born, the troubadour who’d incited King Richard to rebel against his own father.
She squinted. “Champagne, and someone from the French court—the Princess Alais would be my guess. We may sing at a royal wedding if King Richard decides to consummate the affair at last.”
“And the king?” I insisted.
“No, not yet.”
Several of my organs went back to their proper places in relief I’d become so nervous about the outcome of my interview that I almost wished I’d not come. A week from now I might be the most miserable creature alive, the assigned wife of some gross, brutal Norman knight, and I would look back on this free life with the jongleurs as a period of pure joy. If I’d had more talent, or if it hadn’t been for my poor parents, I don’t know if I would have pursued my goal further. But there it was: I had no choice.
A long twilight had given way to black velvet before we began our final climb to the castle gate of Chinon. Large twinkling stars seemed brightest close to the horizon as if Heaven had dropped her ripe fruit: campfires, Enoch explained, of new Crusaders awaiting King Richard. Sure enough, as our awkward two-wheeled long carts rumbled over cobbled paths, peasants and archers clustered about us to see if we were from the king. On we went, across the lowered bridge, past the guards at the gate, through torchlit courts stacked high with armor, around vassals rolled in blankets at our feet. Finally we reached the kitchen court where we swiftly created our own little fortress against the wilderness.
Only this was no wilderness: this was the castle of Chinon at last. The end of my journey, more than a year in the making but done at last. I lay with hot eyes gazing into the familiar mystery above and rehearsed in my head just what I would say and how I would phrase it. Laudatur Maria the king would prove kind! He had to be, must have sympathy for my youth and wretched state. Somewhere in the distance outside the wall men sang “The Crusader’s Hymn”; inside other male voices rumbled pleasantly; from another direction the Te Deum in female voices.
All awaiting King Richard.
THE NEXT MORNING WE LEARNED that he would arrive this very day, albeit too late for us to perform for him. That would take place on the morrow. Nevertheless we rehearsed like demons, doing our best and worst together from our extreme excitement. Zizka was impossible to please: he acted as if he’d been given a group of imbeciles to whip into shape under threat of death. After a wearisome exasperating siege, I slipped away by myself to try to recover my equilibrium for the
greater trial ahead, my interview with the king.castle. Finally I stood in a maze of stone paths amidst greenery, surrounded by invisible laughter like birdsongs. Women! Ducking behind a clipped hedge, I looked through the leaves curiously but saw no one. Nevertheless I pushed on farther to find solitude, beyond a high wall of gaudy blossoms, down a slippery bank. At last it was quiet. I found a moss-covered rock and sat basking in the dancing pattern of sun and shade, then plucked on my strings and practiced softly the song Zizka had criticized most:
“Now be done with drudging,
Life is sweet! Let’s enjoy the juices
of youth’s heat!
Our springs too quick a-springing,
’Twill not repeat.
We have brief time
To quest for budding pleasure;
Let’s trip the lover’s measure
While we be young!”
As my voice trailed off I watched the closed green canopy expectantly, knowing my music must evoke enchantment on such a day. And soothly a delicate white hand stole forth and moved a branch, then another, then a face appeared and a body, and I gazed delighted upon the most beautiful young lady in all Christendom. She stood with light brown hair curling around her petal face, wide eyes the same color as her hair, pink lips parted in wonder, her exposed throat heaving, her tiny waist enclosed in a green satin gown.
I was afraid to speak for fear she was an airy nothing from my own head for she seemed my female self as I might be, or Maisry come back in new guise but with the same merry eyes. Therefore was I relieved when she sat next to me and spoke first.
“Hallo, you’re a very pretty boy. Where did you come from?”
“Zizka,” I answered, fearful that she’d despise my lowly station. “Have you heard of him? He’s very famous.”
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