The Lute Player

by Norah Lofts

  The tension was eased when Berengaria took her seat. I signalled to the boy to begin and he proceeded to play as vilely as anyone I ever heard. Fumbling, missing notes and striking false ones and singing in a sharp falsetto voice, he blundered through a song and I saw Catherine catch Pila’s eye, pull down the corners of her mouth as though she had tasted a lemon and make a grimace towards me. Ever since Berengaria had chosen me for her confidante and seemed to seek my company there had been jealousy in the bower and Catherine, least good-natured of the three, had shown her feelings quite plainly. Her grimace now was less a comment on the boy’s appalling performance than a criticism of me for bringing him in.

  At the end of the first tune I managed to catch his eye and give him a smile of encouragement and I willed with all the power in me that he should play better. He grinned at me in a way that made me think of someone grinning through physical torment, shook back his hair and broke into the amusing ditty of The Dame of Chalon and Her Little Red Hen. That was better. And when he proceeded to play The Death of Chloris he was performing almost as well as he had done in the market place.

  When that extremely heart-rending song reached its end Catherine said in a voice of sharp challenge:

  ‘Can you play any of Abélard’s?’

  Abélard’s songs were by that time so well known and so popular that spit boys hummed them as they basted the meat and ’prentice boys ran errands to their rhythm and the question, tossed out that way, was deliberately insulting.

  The boy said calmly:

  ‘Yes, my lady. And one I know that is not so well worn as the rest. Shall I sing it?’

  He looked to the strings of his lute, moving a little farther into the room as he did so and then, leaning one elbow against the back of a settle in a pose suddenly easy and negligent, sang:

  To be thy servitor is all I ask;

  To see thee happy is my only joy;

  To do thy bidding is my chosen task.

  Knowst not, thy smiling is my sun at noon,

  Thy voice, e’en when it chides, my singing bird,

  Thine eye, however bent, my sun and moon?

  The world is nought, the future harsh and drear;

  Frail is our hope and threatened is our joy.

  But ah, how dear thou art, how dear, how dear!

  With that song—and it was set to very moving music—he had conquered the ladies, even the prejudiced Catherine. When it ended they broke into little exclamations of praise.

  Berengaria said, ‘You play very well. Thank you. And now you must take some refreshment,’ and she signalled to Pila who, because she was greedy by nature and had once run her own household and understood not only food itself but the peculiarities of cooks, had been put in charge of our commissary. And then she called me to follow her and walked into the inner room.

  ‘Anna, where did you find him?’

  ‘In the market place.’

  ‘I want him to stay here.’

  ‘To take Coci’s place?’

  She nodded.

  Now surely for a strolling player with a bad master to be at one stroke promoted to the position of lute player to the princess was a fantastic piece of luck. Henceforward the boy would have a roof over his head, be certain of three good meals a day, be warm in winter. And he would change a bullying master for a kind and indulgent mistress. Could fate be kinder?

  But I thought of Coci, cantankerous, peevish and yet somehow servile; kindly treated and yet somehow negligible, of little more account than a pet dog or monkey; playing the same tunes over and over to the same audiences; sorting out the silks and the wools for the embroideries; bearing the brunt of the ladies’ little moods of irritability; listening to their complaints about their little ailments; running their little errands. Something rebelled in me at the prospect of the boy reduced to that. Instead I saw him out in the open, leading his bear from market place to village green, always welcome, always with a new audience, a free unmastered man. And I preferred that picture of him. Security can cost too much.

  I was too wise to voice even a hint of opposition directly.

  ‘Do you think he’s good enough?’ I asked. ‘Out in the open I was deceived; indoors I found him fourth-rate. And Father promised to bring a musician from Aragon, you remember. Is it worth bothering with meantime?’

  ‘I don’t care if he never touches his lute again,’ Berengaria said quite vehemently. ‘I want him to stay here.’

  ‘But why, then?’

  She was silent for a moment, looking down at her hands. Then she said, ‘I’ll tell you, though I have no doubt you’ll think it sounds mad and begin to share Mathilde’s suspicions.’ (That surprised me; Mathilde was very outspoken to me but very discreet, I thought, with Berengaria herself.) ‘I want him to stay because I once dreamed about him.’

  ‘Never having seen him?’ I asked sceptically.

  ‘I recognised him at once. I almost exclaimed when I saw him. And he must stay because the dream made him of the greatest importance to me.’

  My attitude towards dreams, like my attitude to many other things, was extremely mixed. Dreams and their meanings formed one of the main topics of chatter amongst the women of the bower and I was often bored by the trite, arbitrary explanations assigned them. ‘Dream of water and you’ll hear from your lover…’ Now why should that be? And what happened if the dreamer had no lover? On the other hand, warning and prophetic dreams had an acknowledged place not only in secular literature but in Holy Writ as well; how else was the Holy Child saved from Herod’s infanticidal hand but through Joseph’s dream orders to make the flight into Egypt? One must keep an open mind on these matters. And my interest was sharpened by the reflection that never before in all our lives together had I heard Berengaria mention any dream of her own or known her to regard anyone else’s with other than mild derision.

  ‘What was the dream?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh,’ she said with an air of making nothing much of it, ‘it was one of those nights when I couldn’t sleep and Mathilde insisted on giving me some of her poppyhead physic. I dreamed I was in the oubliette, down in the dark with the toads and rats. Very horrible. I felt so completely abandoned. I realised for the first time what the name means. I was really forgotten and I knew I should stay there till I died. And then I looked up to where the light showed and I saw that boy. He had a little posy of flowers in his hand and he was looking at me kindly. He threw down the flowers and immediately I was free, above ground, out in the open sunshine. I no more knew how I got out than I knew why I was there in the first place. But just now, when I saw him and recognised him, I knew that it was important that he shouldn’t go away again. Sometime, somehow, I’m sure he’ll do me a good service.’

  The simple, undramatised, unemphatic manner of her telling the dream seemed to give it force. I felt a little cold shudder run over me. Was it mere chance that I had gone to the market this morning? Mere coincidence that I had conceived the idea of bringing the boy back with me?

  ‘There’s a bear in the case,’ I said lightly, trying to dismiss my metaphysical thoughts. I told her about the bear.

  ‘Oh, buy the bear then, Anna. Anything so long as he stays. Here, take my purse.’

  She handed her purse to me in a very lordly way and I took it with justifiable misgiving. She was extravagant about clothes and other feminine accoutrements and the worst accountant in the world, so she was always hard up and almost always in debt. I was not at all surprised, upon looking into the purse, to find that it contained less than would purchase an ordinary milking goat, let alone a trained performing bear which could dance and balance a ball on its nose.

  ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ll even lend you a crown, for there’s nothing but trash here. But mind, it is only a loan.’

  I gave her back her purse and went into the solar. The ladies were clustered about the boy, plying him with things to eat. Catherine was even tying a bunch of ribbons to his lute.

  ‘The princ
ess has asked me to pay you,’ I said to him; and to the women, ‘Wouldn’t you like to see the bear?’ I explained where we had kennelled it and they ran off as excited as children.

  Alone with the boy I looked at him again, pictured him in Coci’s place, pictured him as his own man.

  ‘The princess,’ I said, ‘has suggested that you stay here and be our minstrel. Would you like to do that?’

  ‘No,’ he said without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I would not.’ He then looked very contrite. ‘Such a prompt refusal of such a kind and flattering offer sounds ungracious and ungrateful. I’m sorry but I don’t think it would suit me at all.’

  ‘If you decide to stay,’ I said, forcing myself to be fair to Berengaria, ‘the princess will buy the bear so that it stays with you.’ And then, to be fair to the boy, I added, ‘But if you prefer to go I will give you the money to buy it yourself.’

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘would be perfect. Snout-face and I would be grateful to you all our lives. Madam, you are so kind and so generous I cannot find words to express my gratitude.’

  I looked at him again and thought of Berengaria’s dream. She had dreams of being in a dark place, therefore it followed that lightness would figure in the symbol of liberation. Or it might be that in her sleep-weighed, poppy-drugged mind some memory of a pictured angel stirred. The boy was rather like a young male angel. She hadn’t dreamed of this particular boy, I thought, stiffening my mind; any fair-haired, light-complexioned boy would have reminded her of her dream and thus been in a degree recognisable. It was all very silly and very superstitious.

  ‘I think you chose wisely,’ I said. ‘By which I mean, of course, that you chose as I would have done myself.’

  He laughed. ‘A nice definition, madam.’

  We settled the price of the bear after a little amicable argument; he was plainly anxious not to impose upon me and I was anxious that he should have enough to make the purchase without condemning both himself and the bear to immediate starvation. And as he held out his slim brown hand with its long delicate fingers to take the coins I remembered how it had cupped itself under my elbow and the feelings the touch had roused in me. I thought, Perhaps it is just as well that you are leaving. I might, God help me, get to be rather silly about you and that would be terrible.

  I wasn’t wise enough then to know that such a thought shows the thought-of thing to be an already established fact.

  He thanked me again and kissed my hand and went swiftly and lithely to the door. I heard him humming on his way down the stairs and I was glad that we hadn’t succeeded in trapping the singing bird and condemned it to a cage where, though safe and cherished, it would rub its wings and pine for the open sky.

  I decided not to tell Berengaria of his refusal to stay until he had had time to collect his bear and get away from the castle. So I sat down at my corner of the piece of tapestry and began one of my furious onslaughts. I had done only about six stitches, however, when there was a noise on the stairs and, in a moment or two, the door was thrown open and there was Blanco, holding in his arms the boy who had so lately gone out of the room and, I thought, out of my life. His forehead was broken and bruised and blood was running down into his eye. His upper teeth were clenched down on his lower lip and all round his mouth there was a wide white band of pain. As I ran forward he looked into my face, loosed his teeth and said with wry humour:

  ‘I told you this place boded me no good!’ And promptly swooned.

  Catherine, Pila and Maria were clutching one another and gabbling like geese. They had been at the bottom of the stairs when he missed his footing on the worn steps on the curve and tumbled down at their feet.

  Blanco laid him down on the divan nearest the window and, rolling his wide-whited eyes, said, ‘Boy wouldn’t faint for knock on head. Other thing.’ He ran his big black pink-palmed hands over the limp body, shaking his head from time to time until at last he said with a certain satisfaction, ‘Ah. Ankle broke. Listen.’

  We could all hear the nasty little grating sound.

  Pila, with a little scream, turned away. Maria said, ‘I’m going to be sick.’ Catherine put her arm around Maria and said to me with a defiance that seemed irrelevant, ‘When he broke his head the blood went on her skirt.’

  I didn’t feel quite steady myself. There is something so completely against nature in a broken bone and the little grating noise had hurt me, driven a pain into the lower part of my body and down the inner sides of my thighs. But I reminded myself that men had their bones broken every day and that I was a soldier’s daughter.

  I said, ‘Run, Blanco, and fetch Ahbeg. Tell him the princess needs him at once.’

  Ahbeg was that Saracen physician whom Father had brought back from Sicily and who had fixed the expression of Berengaria’s eyes for all time. Father had retained him in his service despite the protests of the churchmen and the peculiarities of the man himself. Not young at the time of his capture, he was now very old, almost incredibly eccentric and fantastically dirty. He lived by himself in a small room over what we called the Roman Gate because there were some remains of a Roman fortress in that part of the castle; and there he cooked his own food—people said that Christian babies formed part of his diet—and brewed his physics. Until lately he had always accompanied Father on his campaigns but this year when the Aragon campaign began he had said he was too old to travel any more and he had given Father some pills, which Father called ‘horse-balls,’ to swallow each ninth day. ‘They will preserve your health,’ he said, ‘and should any accident befall you I will be with you immediately, even if it cost me my life.’ Father had gone off contentedly; he really had the most implicit faith in Ahbeg. I had been angry and accused Ahbeg of gross ingratitude; but at this moment I was very glad that he was in Pamplona and not in Aragon where Father, according to report, was enjoying superb health. But the old man would only stir from his cell for Berengaria whom he regarded as part of Father. We had proved that some weeks earlier when Pila had swallowed a fishbone which stuck in her throat. I had been obliged to retrieve that with my scissors!

  So now, remembering that I had demanded Ahbeg’s presence under what amounted to false pretences, I made the boy as comfortable as I could, at the same time trying not to disturb him, since the setting of a bone even by the most skilful hands is a painful business and the best done while the sufferer is unconscious, and then went and called Berengaria. She did not inquire whether the boy had agreed to stay or not, taking it for granted that no one would refuse an offer of such security, and I did not open the subject. She went and stood by the couch and looked down at the unconscious face with a gaze that was intent, if expressionless. Then she glanced round and summed up the situation of her ladies and said mildly, ‘I hope Gaston retires when you marry him, Maria; knights tend to come back to their wives in worse case than this. As for you, Pila, I thought you went through the siege of Jaca!’ Those words, spoken by me, would have given the ladies grave offence and had many small, exasperating repercussions; from Berengaria they were accepted with proper meekness and within a few minutes Pila and Maria were restored, hovering about, offering suggestions and endeavouring to appear helpful. And within another few minutes Ahbeg arrived.

  I realised when I saw the old man that he had had some justification in refusing to accompany Father; he had aged since I last saw him and was now very old, very thin and very frail. Palsy shook his head and his hands and, from the manner in which he peered at his patient, I judged that his sight was failing. He managed, however, to convey his displeasure at being brought from his retreat to minister to a menial and even as he confirmed Blanco’s diagnosis of a broken bone he muttered that any barber would have set it.

  ‘And lamed the boy for life?’ Berengaria asked.

  Thus informed that the boy’s future activity was of importance to his mistress, Ahbeg set to work with his pastes and his bandages and his little wooden splints and worked with such skilful speed that he had almost finished the job before
the boy opened his eyes and groaned. He set his teeth into his lip again. Of all the faces clustered above him, his eyes sought out Berengaria’s. As though in response to a question, she leaned forward a little and said almost exactly what I was preparing to say: ‘You’ve had a slight accident. But don’t worry. The bone has been properly set. And we will look after you.’ She laid the extreme tip of her finger on his arm and smiled down at him with her own peculiar smile which always seemed to have something of secrecy about it.

  Poor little lute player. I suppose he was lost from that moment. And the strange thing was that she was a woman more sparing of caresses, less lavish with smiles, than any I ever knew.

  IV

  Of that one day, from the moment when I heard music in the market until the moment when, after long discussion, we decided that the boy had better be bedded in the solar, my memories are perfectly clear and vivid, easily sorted because they run upon a single theme. But of the time that followed, my memories are confused and muddled and untidy, like the back of my tapestry work. Blondel—that was his name, he said—suffered no setbacks and made an ordinary recovery and was soon hopping about on a crutch rigged from a broomstick. Catherine, Pila, Maria, old Mathilde and even Blanco vied with one another in spoiling him and trying to do him little services. I would gladly have tended—and spoiled—him myself if I could have looked after him singlehanded but I have always found it tedious to match my behaviour to that of a mob of people, so I stayed a little apart, though I talked to him, and when I discovered that he could read I let him use my books. I had nine of my own already. Berengaria also held aloof, inquiring each morning, very sweetly, how his ankle did and whether he had slept and thereafter ignoring him.