The Lute Player

by Norah Lofts

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘In Harold’s place I could have held it. Harold was a good fighter but a poor strategist who fought the wildcat while the tiger mustered for the spring!’ He stood still for a moment, running through his mind the battles of Stamford Bridge and Senlac Field as he would have fought them. Battles, the muster and disposition of men and weapons were to him a mental playground.

  I moved quietly back to the table and into one of the coarse horn beakers which had long since replaced the silver on my table I poured a measure of the bitter English ale with which it pleased Nicolas of Saxham to serve me instead of the wine I loved.

  ‘This is quite horrible,’ I said, ‘but I can say from experience that it is harmless and even sustaining.’

  He took the beaker and drained it, set it back on the table and then walked beyond and seated himself on the seat below the window.

  ‘You argue just like a woman, Mother,’ Richard said. ‘With one breath, you tell me that if men knew about my father and my betrothed—damn them both to hell—they’d laugh till their ribs cracked and with the next you predict that the same news would lead to bloody rebellion. Now you can’t make that team pull in the same yoke.’

  I had been accused of almost everything in my time but never before of lack of logic.

  ‘You say that because you don’t know your English, Richard. The very ones who laughed at you, the cuckold, would be the first to rise against him, the lecher. And you must admit that between the two there’d be very little royal Angevin dignity left.’

  ‘Nimble little tongue,’ Richard said with sudden good humour. ‘No wonder he keeps you locked up!’

  ‘I keep myself locked up,’ I said proudly. ‘When Harry and I rose against him I could have gone to Aquitaine and bleated out the true story of Rosamonde Clifford, justified myself, and ruled there. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted England—all of it. And I didn’t want it for John; remember that. Harry first, then you. You are my sons. Were; are. Harry was; you are. John is Henry’s man.’

  Richard was silent for a moment, then he said:

  ‘Well, you have muddled the argument but you have convinced me. I’ll tell Philip and nobody else. Then I’ll make an excuse to fight Henry and this time I’ll fight him to the end. I’ll begin by attacking Le Mans which he regards as another Bethlehem because, forsooth, he was born there.’

  ‘And for Christ’s own sake, be careful when you fight,’ I said. ‘I live in dread lest anything should happen to you.’ Everything, every conflicting expression went out of his face, leaving a great clear shining.

  ‘Nothing can happen to me,’ he said, ‘until I have taken Jerusalem. Begin to worry about me when my colours fly over the Holy Sepulchre. Then I may tread on a rusty nail or swallow a fishbone; and die, the happiest man on earth! Until then nothing can touch me. I’ve proved that. I’ve taken special risks to prove it. Mother, you must come on crusade with me. The Lady of the Golden Boot must ride again! We’ll ride into Jerusalem side by side and feast where Solomon’s great palace stood. And then you shall repeat your exhortations—and I will listen. For when I have taken Jerusalem I shall be vulnerable like other men.’

  ‘Richard,’ I said, forgetting my role and speaking motherly, ‘that is wild talk. And dangerous. You are vulnerable now. You have great strength and great skill—but you are flesh and blood, prey to sword or axe or arrow. What you have just said sounds—so reckless. And it smacks of witchcraft too.’

  ‘And isn’t that natural enough?’ he asked with a teasing laugh. ‘Aren’t we all, according to legend, descendants of the devil?’

  ‘Hush,’ I said. A little shudder ran, down my backbone. This was not the moment to remember the woman who was great-grandmother to my brood. The woman who went to Mass so seldom and then was always careful to leave before the consecration and whose husband finally ordered four strong men to hold her down at the moment when the Host was lifted. They said that the four men were left with the cloak of the countess in their hands. She had vanished and there was the scent of burning brimstone in the church.

  ‘Richard,’ I said firmly, ‘who is talking like a woman now? We are settling policies and campaigns. Let’s leave the chatter of broomsticks and magic to the old women huddled over the fire on winter nights. I have thought of something useful. If you do decide to fight your father there is that which he regards more highly than the town of Le Mans—the loss of which would deal him a shrewder blow.’

  ‘He loves that town beyond all.’

  ‘No, he holds one thing more precious.’

  ‘And that is? Mother, tell me. It shall be my first target.’

  ‘Your brother John,’ I said. ‘John is the heart of his heart. If you could persuade John to join you…’

  I felt, even as I spoke, that I was suggesting the impossible. John was Henry’s man. I myself regarded John as a hen might regard a duckling which she had hatched or as a briar might some graftling. Out of my flesh he sprang, of my blood he was born but he was no child of mine. He had lain at my breast in his suckling days, a dark-skinned, dark-eyed baby, inclined even then to fattishness, the stranger. Henry, Geoffrey, Richard, even my gentle daughter Joanna, had courage from the start; they thought nothing of a nipped finger, a broken knee. John was a born coward. My children had no conscious charm; they did what they willed. If it was wrong, they were in disgrace; if it was good, they were in favour—but they never tried to please.

  John had great charm, deliberately exercised. All through his youth he behaved as though he were a peasant child suddenly transported and, conscious of his inferiority and his alienness, was endeavouring to please while at the same time, peasantlike, he pursued his own advantage. Even I, puzzled as I was to realise that I had produced him, could not hate him with any thoroughness. I disliked him, I distrusted him, I was very jealous because Henry preferred him to any of his legitimate sons and rated him almost as highly as he rated the other Geoffrey, Rosamonde Clifford’s bastard, but there were times when something he said, acutely intelligent or witty or flattering, would disarm me. Several times during my banishment—but always when his father was overseas—John had arrived at Winchester to pay me a visit; always he brought some present, most carefully chosen wine, preserved fruit, game, trivial yet showing that he understood exactly my circumstances. I would be on my dignity with him at first but he would ignore that or, rather, use his awareness of it to spur him to greater efforts and he would retail me all the gossip of the court and reel off every funny story he had heard and be, for an hour or so, a most charming companion.

  ‘Brother John,’ said Richard quite softly, ‘little Brother John Lackland! That should be easy. Little Greedy-guts sticking to Father because Father has the key to the pantry! We’ll see! I’ll make a bargain. I’ll tell him that if he joins me now I’ll leave him in control when I go on crusade. If I am King, as I hope to be, I’ll make him regent of England; if not, I’ll give him power in Aquitaine. Given authority anywhere, he’d wring himself out a fortune in six months! And just to make the bargain sweeter, I’ll promise him not to breed an heir until I return from the Holy Land. And that will give him something to pray for.’

  So many vehement protests formed in my mind then that I hardly knew which to voice first. John in the saddle in England would mean trouble within a fortnight; John in the saddle in Aquitaine would drive my duchy into the arms of France in seven days. Hadn’t this great, magnificent, silly perspicacity enough to see that? Of course it was a bribe which was certain to bring John to his side and Richard, being what he was, had no thought of anything but the immediate—fighting; he was taking John up as a man lifts a weapon. I could see all this. But it would be dangerous to say so. I would leave that, I thought, until later. I merely said:

  ‘Oh, Richard, that would be an ill thing to promise. You should get the crown on your head and at least two healthy boys at heel before you go crusading at all.’

  At that he gave a hearty laugh in which there was no tinge of bitt
erness.

  ‘A fine thing to say to a man who has just lost his betrothed!’

  ‘A small loss,’ I said, ‘and the world is full of young women.’ I said it absent-mindedly for, thinking back to the affair of Alys and my husband, I had remembered something.

  ‘Richard, a while back when you spoke of discovering this business you mentioned a French lute player who aided you. If we’re going to keep this affair secret and tell only Philip the real truth, what of that fellow? Is he clacking all over London at this moment? How much does he know?’

  ‘Not being deaf, everything. He was in the anteroom—I’d borrowed his lute and he waited to recover it. The King and I both bellowed at the top of our voices and Madam squealed like a stuck pig. At that moment I didn’t care who knew or who clacked—I meant to clack myself.’

  ‘He must be found and his weasand slit at once,’ I said. I thought rapidly. ‘I’ll attend to it. Alberic is at hand. He brought me news of your arrival some days ago and I asked him to remain in the district so that I could send you a message if you failed to come. If the fellow has blabbed already, his throat being cut so promptly will give pause to others who think to spread the story and at worst it may find its way into a ballad, like the Fair Rosamonde tale which already they call a legend. What was this lute player like?’

  ‘He had white hair,’ said Richard, frowning in an attempt to remember. ‘But he wasn’t old. I noted him little at the time. He played very well and spoke French like a Frenchman.’

  ‘He should be easy to find,’ I said. ‘Alberic shall go to London this morning.’

  ‘I also, in search of John,’ Richard said. He rose and came towards me and laid his arm across my shoulders. ‘Be of good cheer, Mother. Before we meet again things may have altered. If God has any justice I shall win this time. We’ll enjoy our freedom together!’

  I found myself repeating my pleadings with him to be careful, not to take unnecessary risks. That made him impatient and our leavetaking was, in the end, abrupt and lacking in sentiment. As soon as he was gone I sent for Alberic, pretending that I was in need of sewing materials. He took my strange order with his usual calmness and set off. It was some weeks before he wandered in again, bringing as his excuse some lace which, he said, was too good and expensive to offer to any but the highest ladies in the land.

  He had failed to find the white-haired French lute player, though he had learned his identity and made a thorough search for him. But he brought, he said, news of all kinds. The poor little Princess of France had fallen into such a state of ill-health that all thought of her marriage must be abandoned. She was leaving London. Some said that she was returning to her own land, others that she was going to the nuns at Rumsey, others that the King was making her a permanent establishment at Windsor as though she were his own daughter. Of the true reason for the breaking of the betrothal arrangements Alberic had obviously heard no whisper of rumour, for even when I had plied him well with my detestable breakfast ale, saved for the purpose, and he was in the maudlin state in which any natural delicacy he possessed which might have held him silent on that subject to me would be abandoned my most cunning and leading questions drew blank. The lute player had vanished and he had not clacked. Putting those two facts together, I came to the conclusion that Henry himself had taken steps to ensure his silence.

  Meanwhile I had other things to think of, for Alberic brought other news. Duke Richard, he told me, had had another quarrel with the King about the supervision kept on him and the authority imposed by the royal officials.

  ‘Unless they are withdrawn,’ he is said to have shouted, ‘they shall all share the fate of Salisbury and his lickspittles who were sent to hold my mother down in 1168.’ (In that ill-omened year Henry had sent me back to my duchy, ostensibly to control and consolidate but he had sent the earl and a great horde of officials to do the real ruling; and my fierce people, insulted on their own account and on mine, rose and made mincemeat of Salisbury and his men, all in one bloody day.)

  ‘And if they share his fate—nay, if one of them is so much as touched—you shall share your mother’s fate,’ Henry bellowed back.

  That was their last talk together. Richard went back to Aquitaine, and already Henry was mustering men and making arrangements to leave England.

  II

  Soon there was no need for me to depend upon Alberic for news. Every tongue wagged with it. The young French King and the young Duke of Aquitaine, ‘united as never before’—a noteworthy phrase—began the attack; Henry of England rode to meet the challenge but something was wrong with him from the beginning. Age? Disillusion? The carelessness bred of long dominion? Whatever the reason, he took only a small army, largely composed of mercenaries, and the young allies, ‘united as never before,’ very soon established their superiority.

  It may be grossly sentimental of me but I always believed that the affair of Alys destroyed something in Henry. The seduction of his son’s betrothed, a young girl who had been entrusted to his care, who had literally been like one of his own children, was something which, in the heat of passion, he could square with his own conscience and with his own peculiar attitude towards God—so long as it was secret. But now he knew that Richard knew and he must have guessed that, since the two young men were now firm allies, Richard had told Alys’s brother the reason for the breaking of the match. And I think Henry was ashamed who had never known shame in his life. The three met, we are told, in a farcical attempt to arrange matters peaceably and Richard and Philip, after some puerile chat, marched out of the conference place laughing with their arms linked. Henry must have known why they were laughing and why they were so firmly linked against him.

  They took his most beloved town, Le Mans, and burned it. Henry, defeated, wounded and in great pain, sat on his horse and looked back at the flaming town and then vented his fury in words of unparalleled audacity. ‘Since God has seen fit to take from me that which. I most valued, I will take from Him that which we are told He values most—my immortal soul!’

  After that, tended and comforted by his bastard, Geoffrey, Rosamonde Clifford’s son, he rode to his lodging and there he received the insolent, domineering terms upon which his son and his son’s ally were prepared to make peace. Amongst the demands was the forgiveness of all his subjects who had taken arms against him. He roused himself to ask who, and how many, they were. And the son of his mistress took list in hand and read out the names. Amongst them was the name of John. Just as Richard and I had planned.

  It was the final blow. They said that he groaned out, ‘John too. My well-beloved son. Now my cup is full.’ With that he turned his face to the wall, refused food, medical attention, the priests’ ministrations, and so died.

  And Richard was King of England and lord of the whole Angevin empire, just as I had hoped and planned. And I was free to leave my prison at Winchester and take my rightful place in the world after sixteen years of exile.

  But something had happened to me, too. Just as the exposure of his love affair with Alys bad made an old man of Henry, so Henry’s death had made an old woman of me. For so many reasons that even the long night watches when I lay wakeful were hardly long enough to suffice for me to sort them out.

  I lay in my new bed, most comfortably feathered and covered, and I mourned for Henry. He had treated me ill and I had hated him and had waited for his death these many years, yet I mourned the manner of it. There was something about that defiant outcry of his against God that roused my blood. It was admirable, manly, and it fitted the young Henry as I remembered him when he first visited the French court with his father and we looked at one another, he a youth of seventeen, I a queen, twelve years his elder. I would think of that and sometimes I actually found myself wishing that I had been a woman of another sort, cut to the pattern of his paramours, meek, pretty, feminine counterparts of the man who could go to his death defying God. If I had been such a woman I might have held him but the very part of me that made me appreciate his daring mad
e it impossible for me to live with him in peace and endure his lordship meekly. That was the paradox. Any one of his women outside that burning town would have cried, “Oh, Henry, oh my dear, don’t, you’ll surely go to hell!” I should have cried, “Bravissimo!” But then, any one of his women, told to do this or that or not to do anything at all, would have said, “Yes, Henry.” I always said, “Why?” or “Have you thought…?” or “In God’s name that is folly!” We were ill matched and we came, as husband and wife, to an ill end.

  Other times in the night I lay awake and thought about the price Richard had paid for his victory.

  And if my mourning for the lost days and the failure of my marriage may have been feminine sentimentality, my fears for the future were every one of them logical and well founded. Time proved that. Richard had gained the allegiance of Philip and of John. And between them they brought him to victory. But at what cost!

  I have lived long enough to see the final result of that alliance which made Richard and Philip ‘united as never before’ and sent them swaggering out of Henry’s presence laughing, their arms linked. Implacable hatred, that was the result. And for a very curious reason, a reason which seems to be unknown to all the makers of ballads and the singers of songs who go jingling on about the Third Crusade and the differences which arose between Philip of France and Richard of England. They all attribute Philip’s hatred of Richard to jealousy, jealousy of his size and strength, his valour, his skill in fighting and his popularity with the common soldiery. All of that may be true but I believe that the trouble between them began, though it lay dormant for a while, on the day when Richard found Philip hunting, drew him away from his entourage and said:

  ‘My father and your sister are lovers. I shall not marry her and him I shall fight to the death. Now, Philip of France, will you side with me or with that lecher and that whore?’