The Lute Player

by Norah Lofts

  I remembered seeing similar signs of premature age in a young man, a young knight whom Father had brought home with him from one of his little wars. He had been wounded in the chest and the wound would not heal. He’d been patient at first, submitted to invalid regime and Ahbeg’s ministrations, and then rebelled. The wound was hidden when he was clothed and for about four months he went about pretending that there was nothing the matter with him. But his hair, which had been black to begin with, whitened every day and his face, in the end, was the face of an old man. One day, dismounting from his horse at the end of a day’s hunting, he had given a groan and dropped dead.

  He had been buried and forgotten for fully five years but now I remembered him, his look of defiant endurance and the way he had aged in four months. I had marked him much at the time because I was in a morbid state of mind myself.

  He had walked about devoured by a suppurating wound; Blondel was devoured by hopeless love. And so was I. Was the sign set on me too?

  ‘You are hesitating about what you have to tell me,’ the boy said. ‘After my rudeness yesterday I shall not be surprised, you know, to hear that the princess can dispense with my services.’

  He grinned at me quite cheerily.

  ‘It hasn’t anything to do with that at all. The fact is, the princess has an errand which you can do better than anyone else. In London. And rather a curious errand.’

  Interest woke in his face.

  She had told me to tell him as little as possible but he must be told exactly what we wanted to know. I told him, making it all sound rather more official and conventional than it was, saying, ‘We are wondering… we are mystified…’ I knew that anybody but a fool would understand who was interested and why and the boy was no fool. He understood.

  But even as he accepted the errand his face went white and the lines in it deepened; my heart turned over in my breast with pity and the desire to comfort him.

  And then I thought, as in moments of emotion I rather tend to do: How utterly ridiculous this all is. Here is a nameless, landless strolling player suffering the agonies of hell for love of a princess; and here is a woman, completely unlovable but a king’s daughter and a duchess, suffering the same agonies for love of this same lute player.

  ‘You know, Blondel,’ I said, ‘sometimes it seems to me that we are born and live our lives in order to make sport for the gods. Not the one great God but all the lesser ones. Consider Berengaria! So beautiful, so eligible, that in the twelve weeks she spent with her aunt Lucia in Rome fifteen young nobles made offers for her hand. Most of them were ineligible in the strict sense of the term but no matter. I’ve lost count of the eligible offers she has received. Crowns roll at her feet like skittles. But the one man to whom she takes a fancy is this man, already plighted. You’d think that alone would satisfy the gods—but no! She must be further tormented by the fact that, though plighted, he remains unwed. And while this goes on every woman who sees her thinks, Oh, to have such hair; oh, to have such eyes; oh, to be so beautiful! That is what the gods laugh about.’

  And what sport we are making for them at this moment, I thought. But I have saved you, if you will consent to be saved. Once you are out of this place, the enchantment will wane. There’ll be a girl, straight-backed, round-breasted—and one day you’ll say, ‘There was once in Pamplona a lovely princess…’ Me you will not remember at all, save as an example of the horrible shape to which the human body can be twisted. Yet twice I have manipulated the strings of your life. I put you into a cage—and I have set you free.

  He said, ‘If there is anything to be discovered I will discover it. Will you tell her that? And if there is anything to be done, I will do it.’

  I felt the same peculiar thrill, that movement of the flesh against the bone that I have sometimes felt when watching young men take the vows of knighthood. The simple words had that same solemn ring.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘don’t forget to enjoy yourself at the same time. England could be very interesting, especially if you get to Westminster. There’s Eleanor of Aquitaine, for instance. She rebelled against her husband and tried to make her son independent in Aquitaine. They say she’s in prison somewhere. And all these stories about Fair Rosamonde… For a minstrel and a song maker a visit to England should be an interesting experience.’

  We had to climb down from the battlement and he went before me, his arm stretched up, his hand cupped about my elbow. For the last time!

  At that point I realised what I had done. Self-pity washed me. I completed the descent in silence.

  XI

  The preparations for his departure occupied three days. Berengaria, looking at him for the first time with complete awareness and seeing not just the face out of her drugged dream but the whole person, said that he must have new clothes. As he stood, she said, he would do her little credit. So a tailor was summoned.

  I added to the new suit and the cloak which was ordered a pair of shoes and a pouch into which I put ten gold pieces.

  ‘You planned my house,’ I said, ‘and I should have paid so much to anyone else and probably for a worse drawing. This is no more than your due.’

  He and Berengaria and I were in the inner room together. We were arranging the method by which any information he gleaned should be sent back.

  Remembering the episodes of the battle-axe and the rush-chewing fit, I was prepared to believe that the secret, when unearthed, might prove dark and scandalous. So we invented a code. Blondel was to send us back a song; Alys was to be the Lady; Richard, the Knight; the Dragon was to mean King Henry; the King, Philip of France; the Crone, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

  Blondel and I were both sunk in depths of secret misery and even Berengaria at this moment lost heart. And our misery took the form of a crazy hilarity, so that we vied with one another in inventing the most scandalous secrets about the English court and putting them into innocent-sounding rhymes.

  Presently Pila put her head round the door and announced that supper was ready.

  My heart climbed out of my chest and resumed its beating in my throat. I wanted a moment alone with him—he would be off at first light in the morning—but I knew that he would want to take his leave of Berengaria. His need. My need.

  I stood up and stretched out my hand. ‘Good-bye, Blondel, and may God speed you.’

  ‘And may He keep Your Grace,’ he said. Our hands met and touched and fell apart.

  But in the morning I rose stealthily from amongst the sleeping women and climbed in the dawn-dusk to a point where the battlements overlooked the road he must take to the port of San Sebastian. And presently I saw him in his new blue cloak, with his wrapped lute and his little bundle strapped to his saddle, ride clattering out, accompanied by the groom who was to bring his horse.

  At the point where the road turned he checked and looked back for a moment. Once again the castle looked stark and black against the red sky but it was the red of the sun’s rising this time; a good omen.

  I remembered then that in all the talk and the planning there had been no word said by any one of us concerning his return. Neither I nor Berengaria had said, ‘When you come back…’; he had never said, ‘When I come back…’ His going fulfilled her poppyhead dream, perfected my plan for his release and doubtless chimed with the secret wishes of his own heart. He would not come back.

  So go, I thought, looking my last on him, get away, be free; go and meet your ordinary young man’s life. And God send you happy!

  The horse moved on; the turn of the road hid him. Presently I was calm enough to climb down and take up my pretence at living again.

  XII

  The first news came from him far sooner than any sane person could have expected, though in the short interval Berengaria had almost driven me mad with her impatience. Every morning without fail she had said, ‘Perhaps we shall hear today,’ and every evening she had gone to her bed disappointed. It had taken every modicum of patience I possessed to say, ‘He is still on the ship, Berengaria
’—and I saw the ship, a prey to wind and wave; or ‘He has only just landed’—and I saw dangerous, robber-infested roads.

  So the days passed until the morning came when I could honestly say, ‘Yes, with any luck he should now have arrived and perhaps been presented to Westminster but we must allow at least ten days more.’ Late that afternoon a thin, pale cleric shaken by a terrible cough came to the castle and sought an audience with the princess. He came from England, from Cardinal Saturnino. He explained, coughing the while, that the climate in England had affected his lungs and that the cardinal, a humane man, had sent him home to recuperate and had entrusted him with despatches.

  Poor young man, so courteous, so travel-weary, so glad to be back in Navarre, how shabbily we treated him: hardly listening to his greetings, snatching his packet of letters and retreating to the inner room, leaving Pila to perform the offices of hospitality.

  The package was bound with thread and sealed. As Berengaria set about tearing it open, like a starved animal with a parcel of food, I felt bound to say warningly, ‘This cannot tell you anything you wish to know. The boy can but have arrived. You’ll find nothing there save a letter of thanks for the ring.’

  She severed the thread with her teeth, unheeding, and when it broke cast away the outer wrapping with the seals. Inside there were three letters, two slim ones for her, one, stouter, for me. She held out mine without lifting her eyes from her own.

  I opened mine gently: his fingers had folded it; I had recognised his writing at a glance. And as soon as the page was unfolded I had seen that this was no ballad written in code but a long, straightforward letter. I was amazed, touched, flattered and excited all at once. But I had scarcely read the opening words of greeting when Berengaria slapped her two sheets together and exclaimed in a voice of intense disappointment, ‘You were right, no news of any kind. See for yourself. What does yours say? Is it from His Eminence or from the boy?’

  ‘From Blondel,’ I said. ‘Why should the cardinal write to me?’ I could hear the asperity in my voice. I felt as though a thousand tiny needles were pricking my skin. Here was Blondel’s voice in my ear, unexpectedly, delightfully, and this fool of a girl interrupting.

  ‘Let me see. You’re so slow. There might be something.’ She thrust her two letters under my chin and snatched at mine.

  ‘There could be nothing of interest or importance. Time forbids,’ I said. But I let her take it.

  To distract myself I read her letters. That from the cardinal was a succession of fulsome, grateful phrases. I really only noted the part where he mentioned Blondel. ‘The boy,’ he wrote, ‘is delightful. Sending him was a veritable inspiration, for how could Your Highness have known how sadly I miss the music of my own country? At the first opportunity I shall take him to Westminster, in accordance with your gracious suggestion, and let them hear what music should be. Their own is barbarous.’

  Blondel’s letter to the woman he loved was short and stilted. The letter any young servant might write—having skill with a pen—to any mistress whom he remembered kindly. He thanked her for the new clothes and the cloak because the weather was colder than she could imagine. For the rest it merely announced his safe arrival and reiterated his desire to serve her to the best of his ability.

  While I read the two letters, the one so fulsome, the other so stiff, Berengaria had skimmed through mine and now, thrusting it back at me, she said irritably, ‘What a mass of scribble and not a word of sense in it.’

  I tried—I honestly tried—to imagine how I should be feeling if a despatch had come from England and contained no mention of Blondel’s name.

  ‘It is too soon,’ I said as pleasantly as I could. ‘Have patience. We shall hear. Already the cardinal has accepted your suggestion that Blondel go to Westminster. That is a great stride forward, exactly what we hoped for. News will come.’

  ‘You are such a comfort to me, Anna,’ she said sweetly. I felt rebuked for the pang of hatred I had felt when she called my letter a mass of scribble. And again rebuked when she said in her remote, dreamy way, ‘I suppose I should go and be agreeable to that young priest.’

  Left alone, I read my letter from Blondel.

  It is the first letter he ever wrote me; the only memento of him that I have. I carry it with me always and have left instructions that it is to be buried with me.

  And every sentence in it is addressed to Berengaria. I suppose he thought it would look strange to send her a long rambling letter, yet the desire to communicate, which is one of the symptoms of love, had made him long to tell her of his experiences and impressions. So he had written to me, interlarding the letter with such phrases as ‘The princess might be interested to know… It would amuse the princess to see…’ Obvious, pitiable device. A mass of scribble!

  Maybe, reading it, I should have wept great warm tears of self-pity. Actually I laughed. Only one thing in London, in England, in the world, was of interest to Berengaria and the idea that she might like to know that in England they drank ale instead of wine, that even the burghers’ wives were wearing the new laced gowns and that no one had yet heard even the commonest of Abélard’s songs was amusing.

  However, the letter, though not meant for me, brought some comfort. The boy’s mind was akin to mine rather than to Berengaria’s. He was still aware of other things in the world; interested, receptive. His wound would heal now.

  Lent came; always a dull, dreary season with the spring taking little steps forward and then halting in the teeth of the east wind; with altars and vestments the colour of sorrow; with too much salt fish at table.

  This year the dullness of the season was broken in an unexpected manner. Father, who usually contrived to spend Lent in some place and some pursuit where church ruling did not run overhard, this year cut short his hunting in Grania and returned to Pamplona a fortnight before Easter. He appeared to be in excellent health and good spirits, though about the latter there was a slight overtone of joviality which made me suspect that he was not quite easy in his mind about something. And a well-founded suspicion it was, for we were soon informed that he had cut short his hunting in order to receive Isaac Comnenus’s emissaries—his brother, the Archduke Fernando, and his cousin, the Archbishop of Nicosia. Two such eminent messengers argued the seriousness of the Emperor’s intention, for, as Father said, ‘Short of coming himself, he couldn’t honour us more.’

  I began to see trouble ahead. It was something new for Father to speak of a would-be suitor’s showing him honour; he had dismissed several in the past with very scant courtesy. And my doubts increased when Father began to make high politics an excuse for the lavish welcome he planned to offer the Cypriots.

  ‘With this new crusade ready for launching,’ he said, ‘it is of the utmost importance to promote friendly relationships between the East and the West. An unwitting offence now may have most unfortunate effects later and these fellows have all the Oriental’s regard for pomp and splendour.’

  But the crusade had been talked of for quite a long time and ‘these fellows’ hadn’t recently formed a taste for splendour: No! All that had changed was Father’s attitude towards Berengaria’s marriage.

  Even Lent was to be disregarded. I made so bold as to remind Father of the season when he began talking about a banquet of venison and suckling pigs, of fresh fish rushed up from San Sebastián on relays of swift horses, of peacocks roasted and then redecked in their plumage.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘these fellows belong to the Eastern Church; their calendar is different. They keep Easter at some other time, if they keep it at all.’ I privately doubted whether the Byzantine calendar differed from the Roman by quite so much but I held my tongue. I was, in fact, a little horrified by the fact that Father could speak about Cyprus as though it were quite outside Christendom and yet be contemplating marrying his darling daughter to its Emperor. After all the years of indulgence, this new attitude seemed suddenly harsh and callous.

  ‘Have you told Berengaria that you intend to
consider Isaac’s offer seriously?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but I intend to do so and to make my intentions perfectly plain before they arrive. And didn’t I ask you, before I went to Grania, to hint something of the sort to her?’

  ‘I delayed. We still had some slight hope that the English affair might take a turn.’

  ‘It has. A turn in our favour too. I heard from Diagos in Rouen. He said that after a visit from Philip of France, Richard had spoken openly of immediate marriage and was planning to go to England almost at once. That suggests a wedding after Easter and that news has hardened my purpose. Now that the Plantagenet is disposed of, the next thing we know she’ll be falling in love with somebody else, probably even more unsuitable. I can’t go through this hoop again, Anna. An unmarried woman of marriageable age is a menace and a nuisance—as the old people knew when they either married their girls at twelve or clapped them into convents.’ That word obviously reminded him of his other daughter. He said quite angrily, ‘I’ve been a fool with my daughters, a weak, sloppy-minded fool and no mistake. And with my son. Here I am, well over fifty, with death looking me in the face and not a grandson to my name. One daughter setting her cap at a man who’s as good as married, another playing catch-as-catch-can with a religious life and you—you dare remind me about Lent. You’re a saucy minx, let me tell you.’