The Lute Player

by Norah Lofts

  He made no move and with a sudden uprush of relief I knew irrationally, but with certainty, that this could be left to him for handling. I was so sure that I turned away and began to kick the logs on the hearth nearer the heart of the fire.

  ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘that was an order and it goes against the grain for me to disobey you; but I cannot, in this case, both obey and serve, so I must disobey. The King of England lives in a tent surrounded by common soldiers and what private life he has goes on behind a screen in a space about a third as large as this room. Any unknown player forcing his way in would be well below the salt—where the talk alone would scald your ears. For that reason, if for no other, I would not dream of taking you there—even if disguise were possible which it is not. No woman over the age of twelve could really masquerade as a boy, despite all the songs in the world.’

  ‘You refuse to come with me?’ He did not answer. ‘Very well, then I’ll go by myself. I can find a minstrel and doubtless I can hire some clown’s clothes which his master provided.’

  ‘Madam, the clothes which you gave me are yours by unalienable right. But whether you go in those or in those you wear now, when you go into the tent of the King of England you go heralded so that your rank and your sex are accorded the respect due to them. If needful I will announce you at the very top of my voice.’

  He said all this very firmly but quite casually and it was exactly as a husband, indulgent but sensible, might counter some outrageous whim in his wife.

  I stared at him admiringly; Joanna gaped at his effrontery; the duchess looked slightly, very slightly, amused; Berengaria seemed stunned. Four women, one man. And the man had spoken!

  Berengaria, for all her stunned look, found words first. She said, as coldly and calmly as though she had had him in to answer some trivial question:

  ‘Very well, you may go.’

  His face flew a sudden banner of scarlet; in all his spoilt days nobody had used that tone to him before, I gathered. But he bowed to us all and made his exit without any loss of dignity. And as though the closing of the door behind him had released some restraining spring, Berengaria’s rage broke.

  VIII

  My nerves were still throbbing with agitation at the memory of that rage and the scene which it precipitated when, two hours later, I mounted a mule and set off through the dark drizzle to go to Richard’s camp. I was once again heavily conscious of my age and of the fact that I had been completely routed and forced into taking an action at odds with my will.

  Complete loss of self-control is as contagious as fire and when Berengaria stared at that closing door and then flung round and gave way to her temper, it was as though someone had thrown a blazing brand into a dry haystack. In a moment, it seemed, we were all afire with rage, rashly exposing our hatreds and prejudices and grudges with the same demand for attention and thoughtless self-exposure with which a beggar will exhibit his horrid sores.

  Who would have thought that my gentle Joanna hated me so much? That the same voice which had so recently said, ‘Mother is right,’ should now be shrieking, ‘The sons, always the sons! Richard is busy, so he mustn’t be disturbed! Except by her who sends the messages and gets them back, even when they are about my affairs! Women don’t matter. Only the boys. It’s been like that always.’

  It was, in a way, true. I was fond of my girls but they hadn’t mattered as the boys had.

  On the turbulent flood of memory another piece of flotsam appeared. Myself, rounding on the little duchess and saying:

  ‘It’s all your fault with your jest that wasn’t a jest at all! I always knew that your sort would work me ill! For years I’ve known it. I thought it was physical aversion but it was prophetic. Your sort brings bad luck. We were happy enough and all was going well until you weighed in with your jest. Damn your wits, they’re as crooked as your carcase.’

  Much of that was true too. And the saying of it, the understanding of that premonition released me. I hated her for her part in this affair but I no longer shuddered at the sight of her. I could have touched, shaken, smacked her as though she were whole and sound. And she hadn’t spoiled my supper tonight! That was over. I knew why I had hated cripples—they were just unlucky for me.

  And there was Berengaria screaming at her half sister:

  ‘You sat there dumb! You knew he would do anything you said. You sat dumb. You only suggested it in the first place so that he should be able to make a fool of me! Because I didn’t want him to go and build your accursed house.’

  Truth there, too, now that I had time to think of it. The suggestion was made in malice, the result regarded with amusement; the one had been deliberate and the other foreseen.

  The only one of us who had not lost her head or shouted or exposed herself was Anna (I could think of her as ‘Anna’ now). And it was she who, when Berengaria had lashed herself into complete frenzy, used her puny strength to restrain her and turned to Joanna and said, ‘Fetch Mathilde and tell her to bring the physic, she’ll understand.’

  Joanna was completely hysterical by that time and said, ‘Yes, that’s my part—to run other people’s errands! I’m Queen of Sicily, not a page boy.’ It was then that I smacked her face. And she came back to her senses and dropped back on the settle, crying helplessly, while I summoned the waiting woman.

  With Berengaria’s removal, clasped to Mathilde’s voluminous bosom—‘Come, come, my lamb, what have they been doing to thee?’—and with Lady Pila’s face, changed from greed to curiosity, poking round the door and saying that supper would soon be ready we all, Joanna, Anna, and I, gathered the rags of our dignity about us and were fain to cover not only our long-festering sores but also our newly inflicted wounds. Joanna had thrown her arms about my neck and begged forgiveness.

  ‘I love you, Mother. I admire you above all women. I meant nothing; it was just—it was just—’

  ‘It was just enough,’ I said, making play with the word. ‘And when you have sons, as I hope you will and daughters, you will understand and forgive me.’ I took a bracelet from my arm and pushed it onto hers. She was pleased as a child and went away to wash her face and tie her hair. I was, for a moment, alone with Anna. We stood in embarrassed silence. Then she said:

  ‘Truth is like wine, isn’t it? You can get drunk on it.’

  ‘I’m sober now,’ I replied. ‘And for anything that I said in the heat of the moment to hurt you, I beg your forgiveness.’

  ‘Nothing you could say could hurt me. And I was to blame.’

  ‘You were,’ I said, countering frankness with frankness. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you mention this—Esmeralda at all?’

  ‘If I told you, you’d think I was raving too.’ She looked at me with so much kindness that I thought she was about to take me into her confidence. But finally, with a little lift of one shoulder, she said, ‘That is not important. What matters now is this desire of Berengaria’s to see Richard before we sail.’

  And Berengaria, on Mathilde’s shoulder, had cried, ‘I only wanted to see him, just to see him. Is there anything so very wrong about that?’

  It was there that I took my decision.

  ‘I will go to Richard and see what can be arranged,’ I said. ‘Tonight, after supper. But do not mention it to anyone. We must not raise false hopes.’

  So here I was, with my own page, Gascon, holding to my stirrup and swinging a lantern, riding on a mule to Richard’s camp. It was a dark night and long before moonrise but almost as soon as we set out we could see the camp: the smoky rose of the fires where men were cooking their meal and the bobbing points of the lanterns. Then we dropped down into the cavernous streets of the town and the mule’s hooves slid and slithered on the damp cobblestones. We emerged on the other side and the camp was visible again and soon I thought, or imagined, that I could smell it. The unmistakable, unforgettable smell of a great company of men with their horses and their leather and their canvas—the smell of the camp.

  I began to feel better. A most cur
ious excitement moved in me, as though a butterfly had been trapped in my chest. I forgot not only the recent scene but a great stretch of years and found myself thinking of that long-ago time when I had ridden out to war, slept under canvas or under the stars, taken no thought for the morrow, carried no burden of memories. Nothing, nothing in all this world—and I doubted whether there was anything in the next—could make up for the joy of being young with all the future stretching in sunlight before you. Time passed with quarrels and sorrows, expedients and compromises, and there you were, suddenly an old woman looking backwards with all the past blurred in a shadow; even those sunlit expectations revealed for what they were, marsh lights, delusions.

  Oh, if only I were a young man riding down to put my hands between Richard’s and take the oath.

  This camp by the sea outside Messina was only a temporary mustering place but it was a good camp, arranged as though to last forever. Alert sentries swung lanterns in our faces before allowing us to pass. The tents were laid out in straight rows with wide paths between them, not in a shapeless huddle, and now and then the acrid, pungent effluvia of a slowly burning muck heap informed me, through my nose, that Richard had his sanitary arrangements well in hand. I remembered how often in other camps, during the former crusade, I had urged some such measure upon Louis.

  ‘The dung heaps are too great,’ I said. ‘The earth can only absorb so much and when it is saturated it spews out the rest and we sicken.’

  Louis said, ‘That is women’s talk! Every farm door opens on a muck hill and who is healthier than a farm boy?’

  But I knew that camps were different and Richard knew it too. His muck had been gathered and was being consumed by fire. Such a good organizer, oh, my Richard; and I come into the midst of all your organising to bother you with such a little matter.

  It did seem such a little matter then. Whether he saw her, whether he married her here or in Cyprus; what real difference could it make?

  Already my mood had changed so much that if Richard and I had been under the same roof and I had gone, say, to his apartment to tackle him about his attitude to his bride, I should have shrugged my shoulders and turned back from the door. But having come so far… Besides, now that I was within reach of him I was bound to admit that my desire to “see him” (horrible words!) was almost as urgent as Berengaria’s own. So I pressed on, past a silken pavilion which the standard of France—once, strange to think, my own—marked as the lodging of Philip of France and on to an open space in the centre of which stood a large plain canvas tent with the Leopards of England hanging limp from its centre pole. The flap was pinned back and the opening shone golden. A tall bearded man-at-arms stood on guard, beside it.

  I got down from my mule with a wry grimace at my stiffness—a fine crusader I made nowadays—and picked my way over the stones which had been placed in the mud before the tent opening. The guard dropped his lance with a practised gesture across my path and asked me my business. Gascon let the mule’s rein drop free and ran forward, announcing me in a loud, challenging voice. The guard put his hand across his mouth in a confused, uncertain manner and hesitated for a moment. It was plain that he had been told to be careful whom he admitted. Then he peered into my face and reached out a hand and caught one of the attendant pages by the shoulder.

  ‘Her Majesty the Queen Mother to see His Majesty,’ he mumbled and swung the lance aside.

  I, in turn, caught the page by the shoulder and said: ‘Make no fuss. I can go in unannounced.’

  It was a large tent, oblong in shape and wide enough to take three trestle tables set parallel with one another and running lengthways from the opening to within about ten feet of the upper end. These tables had obviously just been used for supper; broken bits of food and puddles of spilt liquor lay about their tops and below them the hound-dogs worried the bones which had been thrown to them. Three or four serving-men, moving with concentrated quietness, were clearing away and at one side, between the table and the tent wall, two young squires, also unnaturally quiet, were polishing mail.

  At the upper end of the tent, where the tables ended, a rough platform of planking had been raised and some slight attempt had been made to transform this into a dais. A rug or two had been laid over the planks and on it stood a table of a more permanent kind, though mean enough. On one end of the platform stood a screen, but that was now pushed back, and I could see a low plain bed and a wooden stand bearing a basin and ewer. I had been right in telling Berengaria that Richard lived amongst his men and not much more comfortably. A stinking oil lamp hung from the roof of the tent, just over the table on the platform, and there were candles at each end as well so that, coming from the dark outside and standing in the dimly lighted body of the tent and looking into the brightness, I was for a moment like a spectator at a morality play in a church. But no church and no play ever offered any observer such a curious spectacle as now met my eyes.

  My eyes sought Richard first, naturally. He was sitting in a chair behind the centre of the table and the light of the lamp fell directly upon him, touching the red-gold of his hair and the yellow-gold of the simple circlet upon his head and making all the hollows of his face look deep and grey. He looked tired and old, even ill, an effect increased by the fact that he wore only shirt and drawers, although a cloak of red velvet was cast over the back of his chair. The heat in the tent, where many men had lately crowded over hot food and where lamp and candles were burning, was quite stifling. Walking from the farther end, I had already loosened my damp cloak and thrown back my hood and I could feel the sweat breaking out on my face.

  Richard’s head was bent over what looked like a toy made of firewood which stood between his hands on the table. Standing behind him, with his head almost resting on Richard’s shoulder, was a small pale-faced fellow in a black gown with a white-tabbed collar. And at some distance, towards the table end but also peering at the toy, was a big burly man in the buff coat of an archer. As I approached, the little man fumbled in his pocket and brought out something which he handed to Richard. Richard fitted it into the toy and a second later something came flying through the air towards me. I put up my hand and by the merest chance caught it. It was a little clay pellet, just like those which boys roll in the gutter every spring. Marbles, the game is called, and many times I had watched the game from my window at Winchester and wondered that it should always be played in March and April and then abandoned until next year.

  Richard, following the flight of his marble through the air, looked at me and said, ‘Mother!’ He stood up, reached one hand behind him for his cloak and succeeded in pushing it off the chair. The archer and the man in the black robe rushed to retrieve it and I heard their heads crack.

  I laughed. ‘Never mind your cloak, Richard. I’ve cast mine,’ I said, dropping it as I spoke. ‘Give me your hand.’ He came to the edge of the dais and stretched his hand, which I took, and pulled myself up beside him. He kissed me and I ran my hands over his shoulders and over the place where his hair grew harsh at the back of his neck. The old weak tenderness ran over me. My son, I thought, my son! And in the back of my mind I heard Joanna crying that only the boys mattered. Could she but have known. Of all the boys—my beautiful boys—only Richard! Or rather Richard most of all.

  ‘What brings you, Mother? Is anything wrong?’

  ‘No. Nothing wrong, Richard. And I have no wish to disturb you. I can wait. Go on with your game of marbles. Look, I caught this one. You can shoot it again.’ I opened my hand and offered him the pellet. He took it between his finger and thumb and turned back to the man in the black gown, saying gaily:

  ‘Just my luck, Escel! This is my mother with whom I refused to sup the other evening, pleading lack of time. And she comes to see me and finds me playing, as she says, at marbles!’

  The man made his obeisance, at the same time letting out a little nervous titter to show that he appreciated the King’s joke.

  ‘But it works, Escel! Let’s try again. Here, Mother, s
it down and watch for a moment. Now, Escel, swivel it round and aim at the farthest candle.’

  Escel fiddled with the firewood contraption and in a second or two another pellet flew out, striking the candle with such force that the flame was extinguished and candle and stick were borne downward and outward, over the edge of the table and to the ground.

  ‘Accurate, too,’ Richard cried, pleasure and awe mingling in his voice. ‘And to think that we’ve been working it the other way all these years.’

  ‘It will certainly do damage. The pellets I made to exact proportion; they are the equivalent of a ball of lead weighing a hundred-weight.’

  ‘That’ll make the Saracens jump! Escel, I’ll knight you for this here and now, without formality, as though we were on the battlefield.’

  Escel became very flustered. ‘Sire, should you not wait until the engine has proved itself in battle? And I would remind you—the idea was not mine in the first place.’

  ‘What of that? If I wait I shall be atop the walls of Acre and you’ll be dispensing your pills. I’ll reward the boy, never fear. Kneel down.’

  He moved behind the screen, fumbled about for a moment and emerged with his great sword in one hand and, in the other, a pair of spurs caked with mud. ‘Go on, man, kneel down; I haven’t got all night! Now, I call on all those here present—and that means you, too, Dickon, so leave that table alone for a moment—to witness that I here and now confer the order of knighthood upon this man, Escel, with all the privileges and responsibilities appertaining to the rank. I think that qualifies. Rise up, Sir Escel,’ he said, striking the bowed, black-covered shoulder. ‘Here’s a pair of spurs for you and I’ll find you a horse in the morning. And keep your eyes open for suitable timber, will you? We must take it with us. I’m told there’s not a tree left standing within twenty miles of Acre. I’ll talk to you further in the morning. Good night, Sir Escel.’