The Lute Player

by Norah Lofts

  Richard raised his haggard face.

  ‘No, Walter. The blow is the excuse, not the reason; the last twist on the pulley that sets the stone flying. He goes home because men get wounded—they do, you know, in battle! And they got fever and sores and water in the bowel. And he goes home because Philip of France went long since and because Conrad of Montferrat had business in Tyre and has not returned. Also, there is sometimes a shortage of food and eke of water. And why? These things happen, Walter, because I am not fit to lead an army. Nobody has confidence in me any more. I am mad; I have not even a horse; I work with my hands like a serf. How can any man trust me? Oh, it all came out. He has a thousand reasons and he gave me them down to the last one. Most generously he forgave me the buffet! That in itself, he said, was a sign that I was overwrought and beside myself.’ He brought out the final words with fine irony but I saw his great shoulders shake and he lifted his hands and pushed back his hair with a gesture which, if not distracted, approached that state. ‘Am I mad, Walter, Raife, Blondel? You are near me; you should know! Am I overwrought, beside myself and incapable of leading an army?’

  ‘Sire,’ Walter said, ‘go out and ask that question of your English archers! For myself I am a plain man and can only say that, churchman though I be, you are the leader whom I would follow to the gate of hell and beyond! Because, lacking a horse, you pressed on; because, lacking labour, you toiled like a serf for the liberation of the holy places. And, my lord, God Almighty, if He is worth His salt, looks on you as I do.’

  Hubert Walter, Bishop of Salisbury, was a man of level mind, of integrity of spirit and in control of his tongue. From him such impassioned speech was a tribute indeed.

  Richard said almost apologetically, ‘He provoked me, you know. I went and suggested civilly—I swear by Holy Cross, civilly—that he should pretend, only—pretend, to take turn at the work so that his lily-handed knights should pretend, too, and the malcontent Burgundians have their answer. And do you know what he said to me? With a jibing grin on his face he said it: “I am not the son of a mason or carpenter.” As though I were! And you and Algenais, all the true men who have sweated. Before I could think or had time to swallow my gorge my hand went out and I struck him.’ He moved his right hand and looked at it and then dropped it with the other between his knees and they hung there, lookng oddly clumsy, helpless and pathetic. ‘I’m not clever enough with words,’ he said. ‘There are many things I could have said, sharp, punishing things more hurtful than any blow. But I haven’t the skill. Leopold and Philip could always taunt me; they’ve made me writhe many a time. Tonight I struck back—a clumsy riposte—with the only means I had and tomorrow he goes home with the best of excuses.’

  ‘Tomorrow he may repent his decision,’ Hubert Walter said but there was no conviction in his voice.

  ‘It was not a decision,’ Richard said. ‘He seized an excuse. In the last issue men do what they want to do. Philip wanted to go home, his illness excused him; Conrad wanted to go home, business called him to Tyre and kept him there, mark you. Leopold wants to go home but he needed an excuse acceptable to Christendom and now he has it. He will go.’

  ‘When Christendom knows the truth, my lord—’

  ‘How can it?’ Richard interrupted. ‘How can anyone who stayed at home understand? Leopold will go back and ask, How can anyone work with a crazy man who demands that nobles dig and delve and strikes them when they demur? Christendom will side with him to a man.’

  It was not the first time that I had been struck by the acute awareness of Christendom which Richard Plantagenet suffered. In many ways the least imaginative, certainly the least self-critical, of men, he had always a nagging sense of being watched, judged, praised or blamed by a vast vague mass of opinion. This flaw in his otherwise impenetrable self-assurance interested me; it hinted at the need which every human being feels for some standard of judgement overruling his own. We say of a brave man, “He fears neither God nor man,” and so far as that can be true of any, I judge it to be true of Richard; but he did fear the adverse opinion of Christendom—a body made up of many members, any one of whom, as an individual, he heartily despised. I have noticed several similar cases of men appointing their own arbiters, stout fierce fellows who live by the light of some woman’s judgment—wife, mother, mistress—not merely by reason of love but because they respect her opinion and fear her censure. And such wear a yoke heavier, I think, than do men who defer to God or Holy Church whose rules of conduct are laid down clearly and whose judgement is given in advance.

  When Richard said, “Christendom will side with him to a man,” although he exaggerated a little, he showed great prescience. Leopold did go home and did give his reason almost in the very words Richard had used. And his letter of explanation to the Pope—of which I have seen an accurate fair copy—reads like the letter of a man who has by good luck escaped from a Gadara where the most raving lunatic of all had been put in charge.

  Richard put his head into his hands again and Hubert Walter sat silent, watching him, trying to think of some comfortable thing to say. I could have whispered him the words or, for that matter, have said them myself, but I felt that they would have more weight if spoken by a fighting man. And in a moment Raife of Clermont said them. ‘My lord, when you have taken Jerusalem, Christendom will have nothing but scorn for the men who went home.’

  I couldn’t have worded it better myself; no man could. He had made mention of the two things which really mattered to Richard, the taking of Jerusalem—with a “when,” not an “if”—and the good verdict of Christendom. And certainly Richard lifted his head and straightened his shoulders but for once the old fiery enthusiasm failed to take possession of him. He said sombrely:

  ‘I was counting on the Austrians. They suffered less at Jaffa than we did and lost fewer horses. And they have better health.’ He stared at Hubert Walter, frowning. ‘It is in my mind, Walter, that those sausages they carry and depend on so completely are a more healthful food than our own salt beef. They have fewer sores—Escel would bear me out there; he has noticed it too—and since all other conditions are for them the same as for us, even to the drinking water, I do wonder about those sausages. Did you ever note them, Walter? I once gave an Austrian footman an aurei for one. I had it somewhere in my gear.’ He got up, moving more slowly than usual, less resiliently, and turned towards the heap of his possessions.

  ‘I know it. I’ll find it,’ I said. He looked at me gratefully and sat down again. I disinterred the object which, in his opinion, kept the Austrians healthy: a fat reddish sausage about the length of a man’s arm from elbow to fingertip and about as thick as the thickest part of his forearm. Solid as wood, enclosed in a tough skin, that sausage had travelled in a bag of shirts and shoes since Richard had bought it in Arsouf and now it emerged in its pristine state; even the end where he had cut it in order to taste and examine it was neither rotted nor moulded.

  ‘Now look at that,’ Richard said. ‘Absolutely indestructible. Compare it with our salt beef and pork. We’ve covered the casks with sacks and kept them wet to prevent warping but they’ve warped and the meat has rotted. Leopold’s men carry a bunch of these at their saddleside or slung on their backs. They hack off a slice with their swords and they’re fed and they don’t get sores! Why should that be?’

  ‘How should I know? I’m not a physician,’ Walter said.

  ‘All this talk of eating reminds me that I have had nothing since morning,’ Richard said. ‘Let’s sample Leopold’s sausage.’ took his knife, cut four slices and handed them about.

  It was very hard, hard as the oldest cask beef, but neither tough nor stringy; it had a pleasant savoury flavour and, for army rations, one superlative virtue. It was very filling.

  ‘Give me beef, however rotten,’ said Hubert Walter, staunchly insular. ‘There is virtue in beef too. By the quantity and quality of their beef the men of Kent deem their rations good or bad—and I have yet to see better fighting men!’

&nbs
p; Raife of Clermont gave his little deceptively tittering laugh.

  ‘Oh, you English! I remember one of you, Martin the Bowyer who was taken soon after I was. The Emir of Famia had him for slave and once when they were hunting together—Martin bearing the gear and bursting his chest running alongside—he saved his master’s life when the mountain lion they were hunting leapt up to the horse’s haunches and clawed the emir’s back. Markin dropped everything and shot a true arrow: The emir was—not unnaturally—pleased and promised Martin a stewardship and gave a feast to celebrate his escape and Martin’s promotion. And at the feast he took up and presented to Martin the choicest tidbit from the dish. Can you guess, sire, what it was? A sheep’s eye, most highly esteemed! Martin, stout fellow as he was, turned pale when he recognised it, lifted it on the point of his knife and cast it to the dogs. The emir was deeply offended; Martin did not get his stewardship—but he did get a beating!’

  ‘Poor man,’ Walter said. ‘I feel for him.’

  Richard, though he had listened to the story with his eyes on Raife’s face, made no comment but now interrupted:

  ‘Blondel, go and find Escel. Here, give him my purse. He has tended all sick impartially and is in good odour with the Austrians. Tell him to move about amongst the purveyors and storekeepers and baggagemen and buy every one of these’—he tapped the sausage—‘that they can be persuaded to part with. They’re going home—they’ll be in reckless mood—and if they sell too much and starve before they take ship at Acre, so much the better. And you, my lord of Salisbury, go back to your men of Kent, pick out thirty or forty sensible, trustworthy fellows and tell them to move amongst the Austrians as they pack their gear and to buy or beg the sausages. Raife, do you the same with the Christian prisoners. If we can’t take the Austrians with us to Jerusalem we’ll take their sausages and if they save us a sore or two that’ll be the Austrian contribution to this crusade!’

  He spoke the words with irony, with defiance, but the wild, overdriven look was back in his prominent eyes and all the lines in his face were harsh. I remembered with a little pang the first time I had heard him mention the word “Jerusalem,” the passion and beauty of his own song, Jerusalem on Thy Green Hill. It seemed a far call from that glowing enthusiasm to this sour, disillusioned plotting for sausages.

  Bound on our curious looting errand, the three of us were near the tent door when one of the guards burst in, crying with more excitement than formality, ‘My liege, my lord, the old infidel has sent you a horse!’

  Hubert Walter, who was somewhat of a disciplinarian, said sternly, ‘That, my man, is no way to enter your King’s presence. Before you stand guard again I will give you a lesson in manners!’

  The man who knew Walter’s method of teaching blanched a little and stammered. Richard’s voice from the far end of the tent said:

  ‘Leave be, my lord. He is excited; and if his news is true, I shall be excited too. Did you say “horse,” fellow?’

  ‘My lord King, a horse, a most beautiful horse.’

  Richard moved to the door; his step was still heavier and slower than even physical exhaustion could make it but the expression of his face had already changed; the planes had shifted and lifted and the lines softened into interest. We stood aside to allow him to pass and then followed him out.

  The open square before the tent was torchlit and in the glare we could see the lovely horse, pale cream in colour with long mane and tail of slightly darker shade. It had the narrow head, the slender lines, the alert but not nervous look of the Arab breed at its best. A woven rug, silky and pliable as velvet, lay under its saddle and the saddle itself and the bridle and reins were of scarlet leather studded with silver which caught and reflected the torchlight—as did the horse’s hooves, polished into the brightness of black steel. Stretching upward to hold the bridle was a child or a dwarf with a dark monkeyish face. He was fantastically dressed in long baggy trousers of deep orange colour, a short blue jacket and a yellow turban in which a long peacock’s feather nodded.

  At the sight of Richard he said, ‘Melech-Ric?’ and drew from his sash a letter.

  ‘There may be some trick,’ Hubert Walter said hastily and reached out to take it. Most crusaders believed that the Saracens were skilful and subtle poisoners; even the opium eaters were inclined to attribute the drug’s good effects to itself and its bad to some adulteration added by the pedlars.

  The small dark creature snatched back the letter and said again, ‘Melech-Ric.’

  ‘Here,’ Richard said, and held out his hand. ‘Good my lord, would anybody poison a letter with the whole saddle to work on?’

  He broke the sealed string which bound the letter and spread the page.

  ‘Is it Arabic, my lord?’ Raife of Clermont asked.

  ‘Answer yourself,’ Richard said, handing it to him. He himself stepped forward and laid a hand on the smooth satin neck of the horse. The animal turned its head and looked at him; a little shiver rippled through the shiny body but it stood still.

  ‘I make nothing of this,’ Raife said, puzzled. ‘My lord of Salisbury, do you?’

  Hubert Walter took it, stared, scowled.

  ‘It could be Latin,’ he said suspiciously, ‘but such Latin as I have no knowledge of.’

  ‘Now let Blondel draw his bow,’ said Richard, turning back to us but keeping his hand on the horse’s neck.

  With a grunt Walter handed me the letter and for a moment I stared blankly at the wild looking jumble of black scrawl. What had Conrad of Montferrat once said? “Written with some substance resembling tar with an instrument like a pig’s foot.” Never was description more apt. But he had added, “In tolerable Latin, withal.” That was true too. This letter had been written by a Saracen scribe taking down the dictation of one who had rather less Latin, I thought, than the marquis’s correspondent. I though of Gorbalze and Father Simplon’s little rod! But it was readable, once one made allowances for the script and the faults of grammar. A little proud of my understanding, I read aloud:

  ‘Good friend and preordained enemy, it has come to my ears that you go on foot. When outside Jerusalem we meet for the end, I would that you be mounted. Therefore, accept in good spirit this horse, not heavy enough but the best obtainable, swift and meek.

  ‘Salal-al-Din’

  ‘May God and Jesus Christ and Allah and Mahomet look kindly on him for this,’ Richard said solemnly.

  ‘Remember, sire, what you yourself said about the saddle,’ said Hubert Walter gruffly.

  ‘And you remember what I have said so often and in good faith, Walter. Nothing can touch me until I have taken Jerusalem.’

  This time the word rang out with the old jubilant assurance. Lithely, lightly, he set foot in the stirrup and vaulted into the red saddle. The little dark imp jumped briskly aside and the lovely horse stood poised for movement, awaiting the controlling touch. Before he gave it Richard turned to us and spoke. ‘A sign from heaven,’ he said. ‘So good an enemy deserves the best fight I can give him. I will go and apologise—on my knees, if need be—to the archduke and beg him to reconsider his decision. Wait here until I return.’

  In no account of that famous quarrel can I find any reference to this apology. Leopold denied that it was ever made. It suited his case better to say that Richard struck him and stalked away. But the Bishop of Salisbury, the knight, Raife of Clermont, and I, Blondel the lute player, know that Richard went forth to apologise and returned, saying, ‘I wasted my errand. I offered him that he should ride in the van and set his standard first in Jerusalem when it was taken. All to no avail. And it would be better that those who remain should not know that. Let us see them depart light of hearth as though their going mattered nothing. You three go now and look to the sausages.’

  Despite his failure, his mood was now cheerful and resolute rooted, I think, in an ease of conscience. It occurred to me to wonder whether he reflected, as I had, that that promise about setting of standards in Jerusalem could only remind Leopold of the
tearing down at Acre. Such considerateness was months too late. And a scrap of gossip which I gleaned from a French harpist from whom I bought six sausages later that evening, and who had been in or near Leopold’s tent when Richard returned, was very illuminating.

  ‘You ride this evening,’ Leopold had said in the course of the interview.

  ‘On a horse sent me by Saladin’s self,’ Richard had replied, pleased and anxious, by confiding, to please.

  ‘A pretty present,’ Leopold had commented and dropped the subject. But later, when Richard had left, denied and repulsed, the archduke had said to Hugh of Burgundy:

  ‘Look to yourself, my lord Duke. For I leave you with a man who loves his enemies better than his friends. And when the time comes to make treaty with the enemy, it is the Plantagenet’s friends who will suffer.’

  How far that drop of poison in Burgundy’s ear influenced his future actions none can say. I have my own opinion.

  XV

  Early next morning the Austrians began to move away. Richard in his soiled, sweat-stained clothes went back to the building of Ascalon fortress, noisy, over-energetic, singing and cracking jokes as he worked. The stolid English and most of his own Aquitainians worked as usual. But soon after midday he gave proof that he was not the simple blustering fool of whom so many songs tell. He had posted a page to watch Leopold’s headquarters and presently the page came and whispered. And Richard, all dusty and dishevelled, stopped work and shouted:

  ‘My lads, the Archduke of Austria is about to set forth. We must send him off in proper style. No time for finery! I’ll give him a workman’s farewell. Come on, pick and shovel, present!’