The Lute Player

by Norah Lofts

  That startled them both. The boy looked confused and guilty, Richard surprised and concerned. He got to his feet and with an exact repetition of his former gesture assisted me onto the dais. This time, however, instead of embracing me he peered at me earnestly. ‘You should have been safe home ’ere this. What happened?’

  ‘Nothing amiss.’ I was surprised to hear my voice, so light and easy and ordinary. ‘It was just that on my way, like Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus, I saw a great light and came back to discuss what it revealed to me.’

  ‘Then,’ he said jovially, ‘you’re luckier than the saint to whom nothing was revealed. If I remember rightly he lay blind for a fortnight. Is that correct, Blondel? You’re the bookman. Good God, boy, don’t stand there looking as though you’d been caught picking a pocket. Madam, my mother, will overlook your being out of bounds after dark.’

  The haste to set the boy at his ease was significant. And if I had been blind, the very way in which he had said the word ‘Blondel’ would have informed me; nothing is more revealing of love or hatred or indifference than the way in which one’s given name is spoken.

  ‘I have one or two other things to occupy my mind,’ I said ironically, ‘and perhaps I also am out of bounds after dark.’

  The boy shot me a look of understanding. ‘By your leave then, sire, madam…’

  ‘All right, Blondel. Tomorrow, if you can elude the watchdogs. I may have a little time after supper.’

  Exactly in that manner would Robert of Antioch dismiss and make further assignation with the favourite of the moment. Deceiving no one but himself, poor fool. And I wondered whether Richard would fall into the usual pattern of behaviour by watching the boy out of sight. He did.

  The only thing that was different was the boy himself. Robert’s favourites had all been conscious, pert, slyly flaunting. There was nothing of that about Blondel; no flicker of the eyelashes, no knowing smile, no smugly wriggling bum. He walked away into the dimness and out of the tent as a young squire might walk. However, I remembered from my talk with Sancho that this was a young man who had kept one secret well. And that was Richard’s secret too!

  I sat down heavily on the end of Richard’s bed and he turned from watching the boy’s exit and bent over me with concern.

  ‘Mother, you are worn out. You shouldn’t have turned back. What was it you thought of that couldn’t wait until morning?’

  I found myself wishing to God that I hadn’t turned back. As he stood leaning over me, tender anxiety on his face and the whole of him so handsome, so virile, I wished with all my heart that I had not turned back and so escaped that hurt of this dreadful knowledge. I said involuntarily, ‘Oh, Richard, my dear boy…’

  ‘Mother, what is it? What ails you?’

  The Dead Sea poured its bitter waters in which no fish breeds, no weed lives, the very symbol of sterility, over Sodom long ago. Fertile green England is my concern. I will not be circumvented.

  ‘Richard,’ I said, ‘on my way back I was thinking about Longchamp and John and about your plan for sending Coutances to settle things. Look,’ I said. ‘I know this is going to make you angry and I know that no man, you least of all, likes being told what to do by a woman; and when I came out of Winchester I vowed that I would never offend you by opposing or advising you. But I must. I saw this thing so clearly that, as I told you, it was like a revelation and so I came back to tell you that Coutances isn’t the man to send—’ I hesitated because he was staring at me with that same immense concentration which had disconcerted the archer. And I hesitated also for the supremely ridiculous reason that I had got my sentence in a muddle. ‘Coutances isn’t the man to send; I am,’ didn’t make sense; it might make him laugh and turn the whole thing into a joke. I should have said “person.”

  And while I hesitated Richard began to speak.

  ‘I’ve been thinking this over too,’ he said. ‘I saw Coutances; he’s willing to go but dubious. And while he was humming and hawing I thought—’ He broke off and, reaching along the table, produced a letter, folded and sealed. ‘While the scribes were at work writing to Geoffrey and to Longchamp I got this ready to send to you. I thought the boy could deliver it to you in the morning. Here you are, read it and spare me saying it. It sounds so ridiculous said out loud.’ He broke the seal and handed me the sheet, open. And then, ‘Ha,’ he said. ‘The boy forgot his lute; he must have been thoroughly disconcerted.’ He took it in hand and while I read the letter he picked out with one idle finger the simple outline of the melody they had been singing.

  I took in the gist of the letter at a glance and thought: He isn’t a fool, nor is he so indifferent to England’s plight as would appear.

  Aloud I said, ‘Stop that noise, Richard. And tell me, what is ridiculous about this prosposal?’

  ‘I meant no offence by that, Mother,’ he said hastily, and threw the lute aside so roughly that its strings twanged and thrummed. ‘But after your saying that Coutances was too old—that I must send a man, a soldier—to say, ‘Go yourself,’ did sound a little—’

  ‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘But it was, in fact, the thing I came back to suggest myself.’

  He began to laugh and after a moment I joined in his laughter. I was so relieved that the argument had been avoided; that he himself had suggested my going. It made my position so much more assured.

  We laughed together, gasping out that we must both have thought of this thing at the same moment, trying to fix exactly the time when the thought struck us.

  And then another thought struck me and I said, ‘But I actually came to strike a bargain, Richard. You know me, nothing for nothing and damned little for a groat—that’s my motto.’

  Keep him in this good humour for as long as possible. And think—marriage might save him even yet. Marriage carries certain obligations and it curtails time and opportunity. Only the very depraved—and he wasn’t that, surely, only tainted—O God, let it be only tainted and recoverable!—could pursue both courses at once. And this thing that has happened to him is a thing which does, they say, happen to men who live almost exclusively with men, soldiers, sailors on long voyages, monks. It’s like vines left unstaked which twine about one another, substituting and pretending. Berengaria is so beautiful and she is so passionately inclined towards him; she could save him.

  (But at that moment—so mixed is the human mind—there flashed into my mind the memory of Uncle Robert turning from a troupe of lovely Arabian dancing girls to fondle a nasty, positively cross-eyed little page.) But one’s thoughts can be enemies and must be dealt with as such; Robert wasn’t married then, I reflected resolutely; and he was older, more set in his ways.

  ‘Well,’ Richard said, ‘what’s your price, Mother?’

  ‘I would like to see you married before I go.’

  ‘There isn’t time. I want you to go back with Alwyne.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Then there is ample time. Berengaria doesn’t desire a spectacular wedding. She has her gown. If I go back this evening and say that on account of my leaving for England the wedding is to be tomorrow she will be in the seventh heaven of delight. You have no notion, Richard, how much that young woman adores you—or how lovely she is. And you know, I would like to finish off one job before tackling another. I did set out to bring you your bride and see you safely bedded with her. Give me that satisfaction. You set to work and get the bishops and archbishops prepared and I’ll go and tell Berengaria to shake out her wedding dress.’

  ‘I’d do it out of gratitude to you, inconvenient as I myself should find it,’ Richard said, ‘but for one thing which I am rather surprised you should have overlooked. Lent, Mother. Lent started last Wednesday.’

  Months later, when Richard was lost to the world, cast into some nameless prison and years later, when he was dead, beyond the reach of praise or blame or irony, I was glad that I did not then round on him and say what was in my mind, it was so very scathin
g. As though Lent mattered to him! As though he didn’t know that any priest—English, French, Sicilian—on the island would have performed the ceremony and known that the dispensation was certain. Richard Plantagenet pleading Lent as an excuse!

  A dozen scalding remarks formed in my mind but I uttered none of them. Not because I hesitated to offend—that was all over and in future I was determined that I would always speak my mind; and not because at that moment I wished to spare his feelings. What held me silent was utter weariness. I felt as a man might crossing a mountain range, climbing one pass and another and yet another and then finding that one more confronts him and that his vigour is completely spent. Quite suddenly all my strength drained away as life-blood drains from an unstaunchable wound. There’d been the emotional strain of the scene with Berengaria which now seemed as though it had taken place a hundred years ago; then the mule ride; then the wrangle with Richard over Coutances; then another ride and the further, emotional demand of making my own decision; and finally the torturing weight of my discovery. Now, faced with this last evidence of Richard’s determination to have things his own way, I capitulated without any struggle.

  That is what it is to be old. Some power remains but it must be husbanded, not squandered.

  After a moment I said quite gently, ‘The wonder is not that I should have forgotten, Richard, but that you should have remembered.’

  And so at the end we parted tenderly. Our paths lay in opposite directions and neither of us was bound on a peaceful errand. God alone knew how many things might so conspire that we might never see each another again. And he was my best beloved son; flawed by a fault I had never suspected, less perfect than I had believed all these years but no less dear.

  I hung on his neck and kissed him and cried a little. He rallied me cheerfully. ‘Settle this business quickly, Mother, and take no risks for yourself. Remember—we are pledged to ride into Jerusalem together.’

  Exhaustion had made me weak and fanciful. I stood there and I knew with a certainty past all question that we should never take that ride together. I thought then that the failure to keep the tryst would be on my side—I should be dead or too infirm. I never doubted that he would take Jerusalem; even as he spoke I could imagine that triumphant procession, the ultimate aim and object of his life. But I could not imagine myself by his side: no, the woman who rode there would be Berengaria. And that was as it should be. However, I answered him stoutly:

  ‘You make way for me in Jerusalem, Richard, and I will keep London open for you. We will ride together not once but twice!’

  He kissed me again with great warmth and said: ‘We’ll meet outside Jerusalem!’

  And then there was nothing left to do but to wish one another Godspeed.

  Part Four: Richard’s Troubadour

  Blondel gives his own account of the Third Crusade.

  I am writing this history of the Third Crusade at the bidding of Anna, Duchess of Apieta, who has always been my true friend and patron.

  I know quite well why she set me to it. It distresses her that I should so often seek oblivion in the wine pot and now that the house is finished she has cunningly—but I see through her—found me another occupation.

  But why should I complain? Should I not rather gloat? I sit here in the sun with the shade of a vine to shelter me at need; I have quills and ink and fine Chinese paper for my work. By my side is a butt of that strange red Palestinian wine known as the Blood of Judas and I have time to write, time to remember. No scribe could ask more.

  I am going to tell the truth as I see it about this crusade. Too many stories, each with that grain of truth that makes the falsehood palatable and dangerous, are already rife. When Richard Marched through Holy Land, Jerusalem, I Die for Thee and Crossing the Holy Headland are sung in every hall and tavern. And for the great mass of Christian men they tell the whole story.

  The very word ‘crusade’ has something of magic and even men who have no skill in music and who lack voice for singing, provided they also lack an arm, a leg, an eye or have some scar to show, can stand up anywhere and recite one of these three songs and know that however they gabble and garble men will forgive them and reward them with alms. Why, once in Poitou I heard When Richard Marched through Holy Land being declaimed at three street corners simultaneously, so that a man might make a round of the market and never lose track of the tale. Very few of these minnesingers know or care whether their tale is true or false. I at least, as Anna says, was there.

  My story begins on a night in Messina when Richard of England was bidden to sup with his betrothed, his mother and his sister and at the last minute failed them, sending some excuse about dredging beef barrels out of the inwashing tide. There were thousands of men in Messina at that moment who, at his bidding, would have drowned themselves, walked out and let themselves drown in that tide at a word from him—such was his power. Why must he stay and thus disappoint her?

  When the news came I was in the kitchen of the palace in which we were housed, steadily and carefully drinking, sip by sip, waiting for the moment which I knew would eventually arrive—the moment when, with all my senses numbed by wine, I could face the ordeal of seeing the meeting between the woman I loved and the man she loved. Ludicrous and fantastic as it may seem—and, irrelevant as it may be to this story—I loved, and had loved for a long time, my mistress, Berengaria of Navarre, who looked on me as a dog. The spirit, as it says in Holy Writ, bloweth where it listeth. There is no more to say and do not fear that I shall trouble you here with a story of unrequited love.

  This story, indeed, starts with anger. I knew better than any man alive that Henry of England, father to Richard, was a lecher unmatched since Herod Antipas who debauched Salome, his stepdaughter. And now I thought: Like father, like son; and what is all this we hear about the niece of Tancred? So that evening, my lady not being in a mood for music, I took my lute and, falling back to my old wayfaring gait, ten steps walking, ten steps running, made my way to the crusaders’ camp. And as I travelled I remembered the stories I had heard in England about Queen Eleanor’s way with little harlots. Tomorrow, if my suspicions proved well founded, she and I would be allies, most strangely yoked. She wanted an heir for England; I wanted my lady’s happiness.

  So, hot in pursuit of the hare of my suspicion, I thrust my way into the camp and by showing my lute and saying that I had come to play to the King of England I gained access to his very tent. He was not within it and a glance informed me that it was no place in which any intrigue of a secret nature could be carried on. It was a large tent and the lower end was just like the lower end of any castle hall. If Richard of England intrigued with Tancred’s niece he did not do it here.

  Supper was over; a few latecomers were still at the trestle tables; a few satiated men lingered over their drinking, watching two young knights put their hounds through their paces for a wager. One fellow, very drunk, stood unsteadily on his feet and gave voice to a ribald song which was received with enthusiasm and sly exhortations to further bawdiness.

  My lute, as always, assured my welcome. A sober-visaged squire removed the bone upon which he had been gnawing from his mouth and beat on the table with it. ‘Now we shall have some proper music, and time too,’ he shouted. The man who was already singing took objection to this and spoke his mind freely. The grave man stood up and dealt him, without rancour, a stunning blow and then, taking him around the middle like a sack, attempted to throw him out of the tent. Those who had been applauding the song joined in the fray. The two hounds, leaping and baying, added to the confusion and the noise.

  ‘Strike up, for the love of God,’ someone said in my ear, ‘or there’ll be fighting in a minute; and fighting amongst ourselves is one thing the King will not tolerate.’

  So I struck up as lustily as I could, choosing a song which I knew—having once been in England—was immensely popular there. Within a moment every Englishman in the tent was roaring out the stanzas of ’Twas on a Fair May Morning with their pecu
liar mixture of sentiment and bawdiness and the Frenchmen present joined in by humming or beating out the measure on the tables. Even the hounds were clouted into silence.

  By repetition and by inserting trills I made the song last as long as possible, for I knew I had no other which would be so well favoured here. But at last I was bound to end it.

  There was some applause and through it a loud voice said:

  ‘I am glad to see a company in such good heart.’

  We all scrambled to our feet and faced towards the tent entry.

  I had seen Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Aquitaine and King of England, before in circumstances which have no place in this story. I had seen him first in a dimly lighted anteroom in William’s Tower in London and there my jealous eyes had sought his face and his body for the beauty or the grace which had so commended him to my lady that she had fallen in love with him at first sight. I found none then and tonight I found none.

  He was a tall man, certainly; his shoulders were broad and his his hips narrow; but his legs were slightly bowed from long hours in the saddle and his arm muscles so overdeveloped that they looked clumsy. Christ once gave sight to a man blind from birth and he, looking on his fellows for the first time, said, “I see men like trees walking,” and that exactly describes Richard Plantagenet. Minstrels sing of his red-gold hair and beard. Red-gold is a colour which shows to advantage from a distance; close at hand, it was the raw crude colour of a scraped carrot. And it accorded ill with his complexion which was so red that it wore habitually the look of a skin flayed by harsh winds or newly sun-scorched. Amidst all this florid colour his eyes, which were blue, looked startlingly pale, prominent, which gave him an unsettled look. He had, too, very thick eyebrows of the same colour as his hair; they grew outwards in tufts and upwards in points and were unusually mobile. His nose was short, hooked, with great flaring nostrils full of red hair and his mouth was wide, paler than his face and slightly crooked. His mouth wronged him; it gave him a sardonic look, as though he mocked. And mockery was never one of his pursuits; his approach was always very simple and straightforward. The tree walking!