by Norah Lofts
‘Then I will tell you,’ said Raife, casting Philip a glance of cold dislike and then looking back at Richard. ‘I went once with my—with the Sultan when he visited him. It was a very secret visit and he chose to take me to attend him rather than a native because he trusted my discretion.’ A peculiar look, half smile, half sneer, flitted across his tanned face for a second. ‘There is a castle and there are domes and floors of silver, just as they say—or rather more fantastic than they say. The castle stands on a ledge of rock, surrounded by the gardens of which, again, the stories are rather understatements than exaggerations. At the edge of the garden the mountain drops down to a ravine so deep that it looks like the edge of the world. One day as we walked there the Old Man said in an idly curious way to my—to the Sultan, “Now you are no mean ruler, would any of your people jump over that edge if you gave the word? Willingly, joyfully, I mean.” The Sultan looked at me and I felt the sweat break out. Not that I would have jumped, of course, but—well, they hold life cheap and until you have seen—’ He faltered and then went on, holding now the fascinated attention of the whole company: “Mine would,” the Old Man said. And he said something and made a sign and I swear, my lords and gentles all, I swear by Holy Cross that six men, sprung as it were from nowhere, came running and with jubilant cries—indeed, there was no mistaking—with jubilant cries they threw themselves into the abyss. “You see,” said the Old Man, turning away as calmly as though he were leaving a supper table, “they know that by obeying me they go straight to Paradise!” And it is in that belief, of course, that they go forth to do these almost ritualistic murders at a word from him.’
They paid him the tribute that all storytellers crave, the breathless attention, the hush of appreciation. Then Philip of France leaned forward and spoke.
In these last days, with little to do save watch and listen, I had realised that the King of France bore one of those most involuntary grudges against Raife of Clermont, akin to a man’s hatred of blue eyes because once a blue-eyed girl jilted him or a housewife’s distrust of all red-haired men because a red-haired pedlar once sold her a bad comb. Philip could never look at Raife without remembering that the surrender of Acre had been made to Richard alone. Richard’s fussing over Raife and Raife’s obvious deference to Richard had, for Philip, a hateful significance. When Richard had eventually taken Raife along to Philip’s tent and exhibited him as the first rescued prisoner and told his story, Philip had been incredulous—or chose to seem so—until given proof.
Now he was asking again for proof.
And of course, though we did not know it at the moment, those of us who were Richard’s friends should have been grateful that Philip did not let this moment pass in easy acceptance of a dramatic story but leaned forward and said most courteously:
‘Sir Raife, did you really see this or are you repeating—in good faith, I am sure—a story told you? I ask because your story is so very true to the pattern of the legend and also because since my arrival I have gone to some pains to make inquiries about this mysterious old man and they have all led me to the conclusion that he is a mythical personage.’
Raife’s dark face went darker.
‘That, sire, is tantamount to calling me a liar. I tell you I saw him.’
‘I would not deny,’ Philip said with patient civility, ‘that you saw a tribal chieftain and were impressed by his eccentricity. But what—as an impartial and curious inquirer—I must ask is this. Is there really one who calls himself the Old Man of the Mountain, who has the—’
‘But hasn’t he just told us—’ Richard began.
A smooth, velvety voice, the voice of Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat, broke in:
‘One moment, my lord of England! My lord of France, when you were seeking information about this mythical personage you should have applied to me. I could have told you that he does indubitably exist. I know. I had a letter from him.’
The centre of attention shifted. ‘Signed?’ Philip asked.
‘A letter, written with some substance resembling tar with an implement like a pig’s foot on a sheet of white silk—but in tolerable Latin withal. And signed, “The Old Man of the Mountain.” Why is that so unbelievable, Philip? You sign yourself “Philip, King of France.” He’s an old man and he rules in the mountains and when he takes his pig’s foot in hand that is how he signs himself.’
‘But I was given to understand,’ Philip said stubbornly, ‘that no such person exists—that he is akin to the fairies and hobgoblins of the West.’
‘Oh well,’ Conrad said pleasantly, ‘if you insist, I have received a letter from a fairy. And a sizable cake, too. Quite solid and about so big.’ He cupped his hands together.
‘My lord—he sent you a cake?’ Raife of Clermont asked, forgetting to control his voice and letting it ring out thin and shrill.
Conrad of Montferrat nodded and smiled at him. Then to the company he said, ‘Some time ago, in Tyre, I had reason to hang two of his Assassins. At least perhaps “reason” is an exaggeration. They were there, they were involved in a street brawl and if they didn’t deserve hanging, then they’d probably deserved it in the past or would have shortly had they stayed alive. I hanged them. The Old Man sent me a very insolent letter demanding some ridiculous quid pro quo. Naturally I ignored it. So the other day he sent me a cake. It was found by my bed in the morning and my servants almost died of terror—rightly, for it proved them negligent. But apparently it is his amiable habit to send out cakes as a sign and a warning. The cake by your bed means the Old Man of the Mountain is after you! I believe it is a fact, Philip, that men have died of fright upon receiving one of his cakes.’
‘It is tantamount to a death sentence,’ Raife said solemnly. ‘You should look to yourself; my lord.’
‘I do,’ the marquis said cheerfully, ‘and I spoke severely to my fellows. “Do you realise,” I said, “that whoever put this cake by my bed could have stabbed me as I slept?”
‘For them that would have been too simple, too easy. They send the warning so that you may be alert and watchful and thus be worthy of their skill,’ Raife said.
‘But what proof have you, apart from the superstitious suppositions of your servants—all natives—that the cake was actually sent by this personage?’ Philip asked.
‘Dear man, none! And when a tile slips from a roof as I pass and splits my skull or a fruit seller whips out a dagger as I chaffer with him and stabs me to the heart, there will still be no proof. Look, Philip, if his existence and his methods were susceptible of proof we would not be sitting here talking of him now. It is the mystery that gives him such power.’
‘But don’t you spend your days and nights in terror?’ asked Leopold of Austria, releasing his niece’s plump hand and speaking for the first time.
‘No. I’ve lived here long enough to be of one mind with the Saracens over that, at least. Death comes when it comes. Court him too soon and he will evade you; avoid him after he has marked you and you waste your effort.’
‘And there, Conrad, I agree with you,’ Richard said.
My lady, with her nice and accurate judgment of how far a subject should be pursued and when abandoned, then turned and signalled to me to play. The Old Man of the Mountain, with his letters on silk and his cakes and his threats, was relegated to Limbo. Philip, who from the first had doubted his existence, was perhaps justified in his later scepticism but Leopold at least should have remembered that he had asked that question about terror by day and night.
VIII
The guests rose to take their leave and go to their own places and the King of England, after courteously seeing them on their way, turned back to his wife, his bride of three days and nights and scrupulously civil, saying that he had much to do and must be afoot early in the morning, kissed her hands and took leave of her.
To say that everyone who remained in the banqueting room was astonished would be to emulate those musicians who deliberately mute their music in order to make people listen. He ha
d married, cut short his honeymoon, been separated for many days and nights from his bride and was now reunited. He had been triumphant, Acre had fallen and now in this palace in the centre of the city his bride awaited him. And with a kissing of hands he prepared to leave her. Her face looked to me like a sweet sun-warmed white rose overtaken by a sudden frost. Not pitiable, for to be pitiable is to make some appeal, conscious or unconscious, to those who have it in their power to help you and she made none. Tragic, rather, for tragedy is battling with fate and being defeated. And I have no doubt Richard thought that she was content with the arrangement! And probably everyone else—except, perhaps, Anna Apieta—recovering from their astonishment, went on to think that she was cold and hard and impervious.
I have heard it said that she was stupid but that is not true. A stupid woman at that moment would have betrayed herself, probably begged him to stay, provoking him to embarrassed evasion and her suite to sniggering mirth. Berengaria merely bade him good night with that gentle dignity and air of unawareness which were amongst her greatest charms—and which were to be her only defence, poor thing.
But I had seen her face and judged Richard guilty of deliberate cruelty, the one unforgivable sin, and I thought: May I be damned if I go with you again and act as your lackey and nurse and secretary and musician! Why should I spend my time in your company, you brute?
So I watched him go and then went out to the kitchen quarters and renewed my acquaintance with the pages and cooks and scullions, whom I had not seen since the days in Cyprus, and tasted for the first time some Palestinian wine known as the Blood of Judas. The wine had a legend attached to it. They say that after Judas hanged himself in the potter’s field somebody planted the ground with vines which, in the press, yielded a vintage of a kind never yet known to man. It was a dark red wine, very sweet while it was on the tongue but leaving behind it an astringency and a faint bitterness. It was reckoned to be both preventive and curative for stone in the kidneys and to this reason was ascribed the fact that vines from that field had been transplanted to other places where their peculiarities and virtues had been reproduced. The wine was not a very popular drink except with those who were concerned with the state of their kidneys and those who drank in search of oblivion rather than good cheer. And it so happened that Berengaria’s chief steward was one of the former and had laid in a large quantity as soon as he heard of its virtues. So it was handy and we drank it; and presently I, at least, was very drunk. A comfortable haze was settling between my inward sight and the memory of her stricken face and it was well worth the dryness of my mouth, which felt as though I had been eating sloes from the hedges, and I was looking about for some place to sleep when a page came calling, ‘Is Blondel here? Has anyone seen the lute player?’ Several helpful hands pointed me out, several willing heads nodded in my direction and the boy came close and said, ‘The Queen, my mistress, is calling for you.’
I had been sitting on a bench and leaning back against a wall and had not realised, until I stood up, how helpless my legs were.
‘I can’t come into her presence in this state,’ I said. ‘I’m drunk as a tinker’s bitch. Go back and say that you failed to find me. Or tell her the truth. Small matter. Trot along.’ He stood and goggled at me, mumbling some protest. ‘Go on,’ I said roughly, ‘or do you want some help from behind?’
I remembered that last time I had had to do with him I had helped him—stupid homesick young creature—to write a letter to his mother. He probably remembered it also. He gave me a look and turned and fled. And I sat there and mused how low I had fallen; so befuddled that when my lady sent for me I was not fit to stand before her, so befuddled that I was threatening young pages with kicks from the rear.
For that kind of self-hatred there is but one cure—more of the Blood of Judas. Oh, apt name! Some poet christened that wine and rightly all wines should bear it. The traitor’s label. Thinking that thought, I gathered to myself another brimming jug and went and sat down in my corner. The kind haze gathered again and began to blot out this last iniquity. And then there was a disturbance. Pages, serving-men, scullions, cooks, stewards shuffled and stirred and I lifted my eyes where the drunken slumber weighed heavily and looked up and saw Anna Apieta standing in the doorway.
For the feast she had worn a scarlet dress but now that was discarded and she was clad only in a grey undergarment with a shawl clutched round her shoulders. As soon as she saw me she stood still, lifted her hand and beckoned me. And because she should not have been there, because she was not properly clothed, I rose at once, staggered to the doorway and joined her and turned, kicking the door closed. We stood in a dark passage lighted by a single candle sconce.
‘You must come,’ she said in her direct way. ‘The King sent over to know if you were here and the Queen wishes you to go to him at once. But first she must see you. She is quite frantic. Can you understand what I am saying, Blondel? I can see you are completely flown but can you understand?’
‘I understand,’ I said truthfully. ‘Understanding is easy; standing is more difficult, if you will forgive the play on words.’
She laughed, quite unshocked, and asked in a conspiratorial voice, ‘What shall we do? What can we do? She has set her mind on seeing you.’ She tapped her little fingers on the wall against which I was leaning. ‘You must try, Blondel. Go and walk briskly three times round the courtyard and breathe deeply and pour cold water on your head. I’ll wait here.’
I went out, dipped up a bucket of water, poured it on my head, drank a quart and was immediately sick and imagined that I felt better. Twice during this procedure I measured my length on the ground and when I got back to the passage where Anna waited she dusted me off in no very gentle manner, looking at me sharply while her hands dealt the brushing. Then she ran her fingers lightly down my arms, from shoulder to wrist, in a soothing gesture that was almost a caress and said, ‘You look very well—considering. Now pull yourself together; we must hurry.’
‘I’m not going back to wait upon His Majesty of England, if that is what Her Majesty plans,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
‘Ah, I have my reasons,’ I said darkly.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘don’t imagine that you are coming back to this household. She never wholly forgave you that remark about the collar—’ She was making that remark sharply and then broke off remembering, no doubt, as I was, her own extraordinary behaviour on that occasion. There was an awkward little pause.
‘I’m not bound to either of them,’ I said truculently. ‘There are other households in the world. Or I could go back to the road.’
‘Very true,’ she agreed, ‘but let me tell you this: If your reason for leaving Richard is the one which I suspect, by refusing to go back you make yourself as bad as he is!’
I took several steps, thinking that out.
‘And what do you know about my reason?’
‘I didn’t say “know,” I said “suspect.” And if you weren’t so extremely drunk you’d see that if a man kicks a dog in the stomach the way to show your disapproval is not to turn round and kick the same dog under the chin. Here we are!’ With that she opened a door and pushed me briskly into a small lighted room where Berengaria sat on a stool while Joanna of Sicily brushed her hair. There I was in her presence with that sharp, shrewd sentence about kicking the kicked dog still sounding in my ears and the old question about the extent of Anna Apieta’s knowledge rearing its familiar head.
Both my lady and Joanna of Sicily had been crying. Joanna, who cried easily and in the ordinary woman’s way, had red eyes and a swollen nose and had just reached the snuffling stage of recovery. Berengaria’s face showed no betraying sign but there were dark patches on the bosom of her blue gown and at the edges of her long sleeves.
‘Oh, there you are, Blondel,’ she said. ‘We have been concerned about you. His Majesty sent back to know if you were here and at first we thought you were lost and then that lying little pa
ge said you were drunken, rolling in the kitchen.’ She came a step nearer to me and looked at me with the eyes which some people thought so expressionless but which I found eloquent always. ‘Are you drunk, Blondel? Is that why you did not go back to camp?’
‘I’m tired of the camp,’ I said. But even to myself the words rang false.
‘I wonder,’ she said. ‘Blondel, has he chided you? His temper is touchy, I am told.’ (“I am told,” she said, speaking, of the husband, the stranger.) ‘But you know, Blondel, I feel bound to say that sometimes you can be very exasperating.’ She softened that statement with a smile, rather wavering and uncertain. ‘What happened?’ she asked in the voice of one who coaxes a confession from a child.
Could I say: He left you, he stabbed you to the heart, made you cry; I hate the sight of him? Could I?
‘Nothing happened,’ I said. ‘I went out through the kitchen and found several old friends whom I had not seen since we were in Cyprus and we celebrated our reunion a little too well. And I am tired of the camp. Truth to tell, madam, I have little stomach for war and when—’
‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Prevarication leads nowhere. You refuse to be honest with me but I will be honest with you. Blondel, I want you to go straight back to the camp and stay there. I know you live—as he does—in great discomfort and there is danger and you see horrid sights. But please go back. When he was ill, Blondel, your letters saved me from going distracted. No message from any courtier—no, not from the King of France himself—could have brought me such comfort.’
She began to pace about the room, taking long jerky strides and working her hands together. ‘They all hate him,’ she said. Joanna muttered something and she rounded on her. ‘Why shouldn’t I say it? Blondel can be trusted—he wouldn’t tattle—and, for that matter, I’d say this in the open any day. They hate him; they’re jealous. Did you mark Philip tonight, doing his utmost to provoke, to whip up his temper so that he can turn round and find an excuse for his own perfidy? Blondel, if you can imagine what it is like to be a woman, to know these things and yet to be locked away, shut out. Did you hear him tonight? When he leaves Acre we are to stay here. There will be weeks, months of waiting and not knowing the truth about anything. That is not to be borne.’ She stopped in her pacing, close to me, and laid her hand on my sleeve. ‘Do you realise,’ she said violently, ‘that when he was ill they said he was dead? If I had not had your letter, Blondel—’