by Norah Lofts
This year, however, safe in the possession of the ring, I had no need to be mean. So I laid out certain sums of money, really comparatively small, and opened a little booth between two of the buttresses of St. Nicholas’s Church where the poor could obtain a bowl of stewed meat and vegetables and a lump of bread any afternoon between the hours of two and four o’clock. And sometimes, if it were not too cold or icily windy, I would walk down and stand out of sight and watch the food being dispensed.
I was, truth to tell, more ashamed than proud of my charity. Out of my much—so little; a sop to Cerberus. And yet a visit to that booth was entertaining and enlightening. Piteous as the people might be by reason of their circumstances, they were often cheerful and amusing in themselves; and to see the hungry mouths crammed with the bread, the cold fingers closing about the little clay bowls of stew, gave me a distinct, if unworthy, satisfaction.
One afternoon in late January, Blondel joined me as I crossed the drawbridge on my way into the town.
‘I must go down to order myself some new shoes,’ he said.
‘If you have an errand I can perform for you—’
‘That is kind,’ I said. ‘Actually I am on no errand. I merely go down because it interests me to see the dispensation of food to the poor.’
‘At that booth by St. Nicholas’s Church?’
‘Yes, it’s the only one, isn’t it?’
‘But I’ve never seen you there.’
‘Maybe not. I stand on the far side of the porch.’
‘I stand on the Market Cross—just where you, madam, found me and the bear that day.’
‘And why are you interested in it?’ I asked.
He looked at me askance.
‘And why are you, madam?’
‘If you’ll answer my question, I’ll answer yours. That’s fair.’
‘Well, one afternoon, the supply of food ran out before all were served. I happened to be passing. And I thought of all the food that is wasted up at the castle—it was just at the time of the Lady Maria’s wedding. So now the best of what would be put in the pig swill up there comes down here instead.’
‘And how did you arrange that?’
‘The chief cook is devoured by a desire to read and write. I teach him. He is more stupid than seems possible; he doesn’t yet know his alphabet but he is honest. He picks out the best bits every day and sends down two tubfuls. And somehow I like—’
‘To see them enjoying it. It is the same with me. It isn’t that I feel generous or patronising; in fact, mostly I feel ashamed that so little sacrifice on my part should mean so much. But just as one likes to see one’s guests enjoying one’s hospitality—hospitality is so much nicer a word than charity, isn’t it?’
‘Then you opened the booth in the first place?’ I nodded.
‘Why, were you ever hungry?’
‘Only by my own whim,’ I said. ‘I once fasted just to see what it felt like. And I didn’t like what it felt like at all.’ I hesitated for a moment and then, in an outrush of feeling towards him, confessed.
‘That is the bother about pity. I pity hungry beggars because I might easily have been one. It’s difficult to decide how much is pity and how much is fear for oneself—pity could easily be defined as the fear for oneself which one feels when faced with another’s plight.’
‘No.’ He spoke the word with assurance. ‘That kind of thought is the kind of choplogic, the unreasonable extension of an idea akin to this argument about how many angels could sit on the point of a needle. That is dangerous. It underrates a generous impulse. Any normal person would hate to be hungry but that doesn’t make every normal person feel pity for the hungry. If it did, booths like this would open in every town and village.’
We had reached the place where the booth stood.
‘It’s all very confusing,’ I said. ‘Christ ordered us to sell all that we have and give to the poor—adding that they are always with us.’ I turned the great ring on my thumb. ‘If I sold this,’ I said, ‘it would feed every beggar in Pamplona for a century—and I’d be feeding with them. But if every person who owned a jewel set out to sell it to give the proceeds to the poor, it’s self-evident that there’d be no buyers, the market would be swamped.’
‘That is profoundly true. But that is because men have, over the centuries, built up a whole series of false values. That ring is very beautiful but it oughtn’t really to represent wealth enough to feed all the poor in Pamplona for a century—in itself it wouldn’t keep any living creature alive for a day. The truth is that nothing is of any value except the soil which grows things and man’s labour.’
‘Soil and toil; land and hand; mud and blood,’ I said.
We stood and watched the booth together and then walked slowly back to the castle. I was tired and presently, sensing this, he helped me along with his hand under my elbow as before. And we talked and laughed as we walked. He did seem so utterly different out of doors. I wished with all my heart as we crossed the drawbridge that Berengaria had let him go to Apieta.
As soon as we were indoors she began to complain about one of the letters which he had written for her that morning. She could read and, pressed to it, she could write quite a tolerable hand but she was averse to the exercise and before Blondel’s arrival I had written most of her letters. Now that was one of his duties and for the last day or two he had been kept busy acknowledging the presents which various relatives and envoys in distant places had sent her for Christmas.
Whether there was anything wrong with the letter or not I never knew for certain, for I thought it wise to hold myself aloof lest I be dragged in as arbiter, and I did cherish a slight suspicion that she made the complaint because Blondel and I entered the bower together and had laughed on the stairs. Ever since my attempt to borrow him she had been a little wary and had more than once spoke of him as ‘my minstrel’ with a slight emphasis on the possessive.
Blondel listened to her chiding for a moment and then said calmly, ‘May I see it?’ He studied it and handed it back. ‘That is perfectly correct.’
Berengaria went to the table, took up a quill, scored a line on the sheet and scribbled something, and said:
‘Now it is correct. Copy it out afresh with the correction.’
His face went dark with anger and his eyes flashed and he looked at her with the sudden vast hatred which is love’s other face.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘if you wish His Eminence to think that you are served by those as ignorant as you are yourself.’
There was a sudden shocked silence in the bower. We should none of us have been surprised if she had reached out and smacked his head. I began to quiver. It is an intolerable position to watch the one who is lord of your heart reduced and shamed by something over which you have no control.
But Berengaria said into the silence, ‘I’m sorry, Blondel. You are quite right.’ And she smiled at him her cold, small, secret smile. ‘And I am very ignorant, though it ill becomes you to say so.’
He was now as white as he had been scarlet and over his jaw on one side of his face there was a twitching. I remembered the old saying about a falling out being a renewal of love—and I remembered how I had for a moment hated and then with renewed force loved him when he had flung the drawing of the mangonel into the fire. I knew exactly how he was feeling at that moment.
He remained in a curious way master of the situation.
‘It cannot be despatched like this. I’ll make a fresh copy. That is, if Your Highness is really satisfied that the original was correct.’
And despite ‘Your Highness,’ he spoke as a husband might speak to a cherished wife who had just been a little more than ordinarily silly. Tolerant, indulgent.
Well, he could forgive her; she was the loved one to whom all things are forgiven. But spite yeasted in me. I hadn’t yet told her about my conversation with Father. Tonight—it happened to be my turn to brush the hair—I would.
IX
The parting that ran across
her skull was thin and white, like a seam, and the hair under my hands was smooth and heavy, warm near the head and then cool; and it was black with blue lights in it, like a blackbird’s wing.
She sat in front of the silver mirror, not looking into it. She studied her reflection less than any normal woman I ever knew.
And in a moment, when I had said the words I was shaping on my tongue, she would cry. Beautifully. She was beautiful, she was legitimate, Father adored her, everyone pandered to her. Blondel loved her. And she wouldn’t let him go free to Apieta. Very well, I thought; after all, this isn’t pure spite, Father asked me to say these things. So I drew in my breath and Berengaria said:
‘Anna, we’ve heard nothing from Cardinal Saturnino. I believe both he and Father have forgotten all about it.’ She spoke peevishly.
I stood there with two words, “forgotten” and “oubliette,” weaving themselves together in my mind. They came together, they wrestled like lovers, they were quickly fertile and their astonishing offspring was produced and matured all in a moment and was there, ready to leap from my brain as Minerva was said to leap from the head of Jove.
‘I suppose you have forgotten too,’ she said even more peevishly. ‘I’m talking about Saturnino’s errand to Westminster.’
‘No,’ I said, speaking slowly and with care. ‘I hadn’t forgotten. In fact, I have given this matter a great deal of thought and I have come to a conclusion—’
‘That Father never commissioned him at all. Yes, I suspected that myself. Father never took this business seriously enough—’
‘That wasn’t my thought. I think that it has been a mistake all along, sending great scarlet cardinals to batter on the front door and ask questions. It puts people on guard and if there is a secret—as there seems to be—naturally those who know it take pains to keep it close. What we needed was to send some humble, inconspicuous person who could go in by the back door and insinuate himself. Suppose now that you could have sent me to Alys and said that I was the best needlewoman in Europe and would she like me to help make her wedding dress. I’d wager my emerald to an old wimple that I’d have known at once whether she needed a wedding dress and if not why not.’
She turned to me with her great eyes shining.
‘Oh, Anna, how true! I suppose you couldn’t—’
‘I said humble and inconspicuous, Berengaria.’
I waited. I should have liked the choice and the suggestion to be her own.
‘Mathilde would do anything for me and I’d trust her but her sight is failing and her stitches, look!’ She lifted the hem of her gown and showed me an example of Mathilde’s needlework. ‘And Pila is such a greedy gossip, she’d betray herself. Catherine I don’t altogether trust—’
Well, I thought, go on! Work your way through the whole household. I’ve waited so long for this monent I can wait another hour; there’s no hurry at all.
‘It need not be a sewing woman; that was just a suggestion to show you what I meant. We need somebody trustworthy but observant and with some qualification which would gain an entry in an inconspicuous way.’
Isn’t that tantamount to saying the name? Doesn’t it cry aloud? Oh, you stupid, stupid woman!
She made one or two other fatuous suggestions; she even mentioned Blanche, who might pretend to be ‘just a visitor.’
‘You might as well go yourself,’ I said. Then I waited another minute and came to the end of my patience and said the thing I had planned from the moment when the word “forgotten” had linked with “oubliette” and I had known that this time her dream would be a weapon in my hand.
I pretended sudden inspiration. I snapped my fingers and exclaimed, ‘I know! We could send Blondel.’
It annoyed me, after all her own ridiculous suggestions, to see her look so surprised and so dubious, as though I had suggested sending Blanco or one of the bound-dogs.
‘Blondel?’
‘Yes, Blondel. Think—in his lute he has a key that will open almost any door. His appearance is pleasing, his manners ingratiating; with a little contrivance we can get him into Alys’s very bedchamber. He’s intelligent and observant and God knows he has enough experience in getting on with women!’
She turned that over in her mind and then said: ‘But that would be worse than letting him go to Apieta.’ I governed myself, pretended again to think and again to be visited by inspiration.
‘But, Berengaria, that is what the dream meant! I see it now. You said just now that Father and Saturnino had forgotten, and the worst part of your dream was your feeling of what “oubliette” meant. Don’t you see? Blondel will get you out—by means of what he has in his hand. The lute.’ Some inward light seemed to be kindled; she glowed, she shone. She looked so very beautiful and so transported that my heart smote me to think that I should, for my own purposes, be deceiving her so. But if she had let Blondel go to Apieta I wouldn’t have been driven to such extremities.
Besides, I thought, who knew? Something might come of it. There was a mystery about Alys and Richard. And everything I had said about Blondel’s qualifications as a spy was true, even if disingenuous.
‘What you must do,’ I said, ‘is to send a letter to the cardinal. Tell him that you are sensible of what he has tried to do and grateful. Send him a present, just valuable enough to justify the special personal messenger, and add that the bearer is an accomplished musician and that if the cardinal thinks he is good enough perhaps he would introduce him to the ladies at Westminster—you know, a gushing, impulsive, girlish kind of letter. I know just what to say.’
‘And then we might know! Anna, think. Suppose he really found out something. It is the not knowing that has been such torment. I couldn’t give up hope while there was this mystery. Oh, Anna, you’ve given me something to look forward to. I do love you!’
She put her arm about my waist and pulled me to her and kissed me. It was like a sun-warmed rose touching my face. I was quite horribly ashamed.
‘Now,’ I said a little gruffly, ‘what shall we send to His Eminence?’
‘How about that ring with the sapphire which Aunt Lucia gave me when I stayed with her? She had it specially blessed by the Pope but it’s far too big even for my thumb.’
‘A combination of the fitting and the unfitting that makes it the most obvious choice,’ I said.
‘And, Anna—’
‘Yes?’
‘Will you be so very kind as to tell the boy? Not too much, if that can be avoided. I should feel awkward. He’s so insolent in a smooth way. It’s my fault, I know. On account of the dream I’ve rather spoiled him. This afternoon, for instance, I was right about that letter and I ought to have smacked his head when he called me ignorant. But I thought, He isn’t bonded, he might run away. So I held my hand. And what a mercy I did! Oh, Anna…’
I was rather afraid that she might kiss me again, so I moved away and said with sincerity, if with a feeling of guilt:
‘I do hope something will come of it, Berengaria. We mustn’t hope for too much.’
‘Just to know, even the worst, would be a relief. If I knew beyond all hope and doubt that Richard was going to marry Alys, I could lie down on that bed and die!’
I could have said, ‘And that isn’t so easy!’ When I was thirteen and first realised the full meaning of my deformity—that it wasn’t just a matter of being awkward on stairs, easily tired, unable to hunt—when I knew that it meant being ugly forever, that no man would marry me, that I should have no children—then, and for a long time afterwards, I had often had fits of depression when I had cast myself on my bed and longed, prayed to die. I’d lain on my bed and sobbed and writhed and sweated but I hadn’t died! I had just become old. At sixteen I had reached the state which most women attain when they are forty, winkled, grey, and past childbearing. There are blighted peaches and pears like me, spotted, ripe before the main crop and lying rotting at the foot of the tree while the others mature in beauty. I had sometimes, by a morbid fancy, taken up such a one
, bitten into its good side. Not all wasted.
Well, if I could save Blondel from the bower, from Berengaria, from himself, I should not have been all wasted either.
X
A little snow fell that night and when we woke the bright, unreal reflected light filled every apartment. It was bitterly cold but the sun was shining in a sky the colour of wild hyacinths.
Berengaria started the day by bidding Catherine fetch out the heavy little ironbound box in which she kept her jewels.
‘We’ll find the ring and you’ll write the letter to accompany it, won’t you, Anna?’ she said, giving me a significant look.
‘All in good time,’ I replied, returning the look. ‘First I’m going out to look at the snow. You’ve never seen Pamplona under the snow, Blondel. If you’d like to come with me I’ll show you from my special place of vantage.’
We climbed to the place from which I ordinarily watched the joustings. The tourney field lay smooth and untrodden at our feet and beyond the outer wall were the huddled roofs of all the little houses glistening white in the sunshine. It was quite magical and for a while we stood in silence, just staring with wonder that was almost childlike.
‘It is beautiful,’ he said at last. ‘I’m glad that you brought me out. And now, hadn’t we better go back? It’s rather cold for you.’
‘I really brought you out because I have something to tell you,’ I said. ‘We’ll find a more sheltered spot.’
We moved around to the south side of the Roman Tower and found a place in the sun, sheltered from the cold wind that came from the mountains—the wind which had brought us the snow—for here so little had fallen that it was no more than a sprinkling. I brushed a clear space and sat down, pulling my cloak closely about me. We were sitting in one of those breaks in the wall designed so that anyone defending the castle could shoot arrows, drop stones or pour boiling oil or water upon his enemies and then dart back behind the covering wall and the space was just wide enough for our two bodies. I was nearer to him than I had ever been before. I looked at him and in the bright light saw that the laughter marks about his eyes had given way to others not graved by merriment and that there were now some silver hairs amongst the gold on his head.