The Lute Player

by Norah Lofts

  I looked down and met Anna’s sweet yet derisive little smile. She hobbled away and I brought the song to an end prematurely and joined her in the far corner of the balcony where she stood, leaning her elbows on the marble balustrade and staring up at the star-filled sky.

  ‘Well,’ she said without turning her head, ‘and how are things with you, Blondel?’

  ‘Much as they were, my lady. And with you?’

  ‘Precisely as they were,’ she said, and laughed. ‘I noticed that you still play left-handedly.’

  ‘Yes. The wound healed but the strength hasn’t returned to my arm yet.’ I did what I did a dozen or more times a day—whenever I thought of it, in fact—lifted my arm to shoulder level, bent the elbow, stretched it, flexed and unflexed my fingers. Anna half turned and, as I let my arm fall again, caught the ends of my fingers in her little palm.

  ‘So cold,’ she said, ‘on such a warm night. Is the other hand—’ She touched that, too, and, finding it warm, withdrew her hold. ‘Was it properly attended?’

  ‘Oh yes, by Escel himself. It is doing well; I should exercise it more.’ Moving it, talking of it reminded me that it was heavy and limp and weak. I detached my fingers from hers and thrust my hand into the front of my jerkin; there, released from its own weight and warmed by my body heat, I could carry it and forget it.

  ‘You trained your left very quickly and well. After each letter you wrote I tried to write with my left, just for curiosity, you know. My letters were quite illegible.’ There was a small pause.

  ‘The King has taken his failure hard,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is true, what they are saying, that the French deserted on the very eve of the assault?’

  I told her briefly as much as I knew of the affair.

  ‘So it’s over. All the sweating and straining, the hope and—all the dead men. What are you going to do now, Blondel? Have you any plans?’

  ‘None very sure. It would sound silly, ridiculously self-important, to say that I should stay with the King as long as he wanted me—and yet—well, Raife of Clermont and I were there when it happened and he seems to rely—I mean to be more at ease with us at this moment than with anyone else except the Bishop of Salisbury and of course he doesn’t attend him.’

  ‘We expected Raife of Clermont to supper.’ The remark followed smoothly on the mention of his name, yet I was left with the feeling that she had abruptly changed the subject.

  ‘I doubt if he will ever sup out again,’ I said. ‘He’s very brave and resolute but he’s more gravely ill than he admits, even to himself. Escel says he will die.’

  ‘Then the King will be lonelier than ever, and more—’ She broke off. ‘It’s selfish of me but at this rate I shall never get my house built.’

  ‘You still cherish that dream?’

  ‘Why not? It is a comparatively harmless ambition.’

  ‘And still want me to help with the building?’ She nodded.

  ‘Many men could do it as well,’ I pointed out. ‘Nevertheless this present state of things will end soon. When we leave Acre the King will cast all this behind him and will take up his ordinary life again. He’ll have no need for me then.’

  ‘And you will come and help me build? Is that a promise, Blondel?’

  ‘A vow.’

  ‘Well, when this Raife of Clermont dies—if he dies—don’t go trying to take his place, making yourself indispensable.’

  There was a note in her voice that I remembered from the old days, sharp, dictatorial.

  ‘I could never do that,’ I said. ‘Raife has qualities that I lack.’ I was prepared at that moment to give her a eulogistic and perhaps fundamentally untrue account of Raife’s qualities, for the threat of imminent death had cast its peculiar light upon him, diminishing his faults and enhancing his virtues. But even as I thought of that it occurred to me that really every one of us was going to die and that we should all of us, always, regard one another in that light. And before I could speak Joanna and Egidio, with their hands linked and a halo of happiness about them, stepped from the inner room on to the balcony; and almost immediately Richard was calling for me and saying that it was time we returned.

  One can never experience exactly the same emotion twice over. Rather more than a year ago when Richard had left his wife in the same sudden, cold, heartless fashion I had been angry, shocked, disgusted. Tonight, as he hurried me through the dark, saying that he had given his consent to his sister’s betrothal and that he hoped this time she would be very happy; saying that he wondered whether the messsage from Saladin had arrived and if they would ride to Damascus next day; saying he wondered how Raife was now, I found myself trying in vain to muster up those old feelings. I succeeded only in feeling sorry for him with the pity that one would feel for a bilious man at a feast, a cripple on the march, a blind man standing in the sunset glow.

  Saladin had sent word. The leaders of the crusade were to set out next day. And Raife of Clermont had fallen into the comatose state which Escel had predicted as inevitable.

  In the morning, when he was ready to leave, Richard committed Raife to my care.

  ‘Look after him, Blondel. If he wakes and wants anything, get it, whatever it is. And have a priest ready.’ He drew on his gloves and stood scowling. ‘When the time comes—hold his hands; they say that eases the passing. I must go, you know. The others are so anxious to get home they’d sign away Acre if I weren’t there. I must go.’ He gnawed his gloved thumb, staring down into Raife’s blank, fever-flushed face, and then turned abruptly away.

  Raife died next day at sunset. Escel had been in and warned me that he was dying and I had sent for a priest who had gone, I thought, to fanatical lengths to rouse him and make him aware of his condition. But the slappings and shakings and douchings with cold water had failed and at last the sad, beautiful rite was performed and I was alone beside the bed.

  The camp was very quiet. All the commanders, accompanied by as many men as they could mount, had gone to Damascus and the ordinary men had drifted into Acre or down to the harbour, now crowded with ships awaiting the great burst of embarkation. In particular our tent was deserted since pages and serving-men alike were anxious to avoid the place where a man lay dying.

  It was a stifling hot evening, full of dusty purple light; the stench of the rotting flesh and the sound of Raife’s heavy snoring breath filled the tent. I should, sober, have felt very melancholy; but I had taken the precaution of laying in a full wineskin of the Blood of Judas. A year of wine-bibbing had changed me from a novice who reeled and retched and fell on his face into one of those deceptively sober-seeming drinkers who, with wine in them, can do most things they can do empty and some things better. I was quite drunk, quite numbed of mind when the sound of Raife’s breathing changed but I was alert and far more calm than I might have been sober.

  He had been breathing as though his open, cracked-lipped mouth had been gulping in thick broth instead of air; the noise ceased suddenly and I went towards him. He opened his eyes and looked at me with recognition.

  ‘Blondel?’

  ‘Yes, Raife.’

  ‘It’s—very dark.’

  ‘It is evening. Shall I make a light?’

  ‘No. Where is the King?’

  ‘He was obliged to go to Damascus. Saladin sent word that he was ready to sign the treaty.’

  ‘I know. Acre… he must have Acre. He means to come back alone to take Jerusalem. I shan’t be there.’

  However honest one is, one feels it incumbent to refute such a statement and I gave the traditional answer:

  ‘Come, man, be of good cheer; the war can’t be resumed for three years and you—’

  ‘You know where I shall be, Blondel. Get me some water and then listen to me carefully. I have something to say to you.’

  I went to the water pot which stood, covered with a wet cloth, outside the tent door. At some distance, out of sight, several horses were moving rapidly and in rhythm. For a moment I hoped that something unforeseen h
ad brought Richard back to hold Raife’s hands himself but the clatter came no nearer.

  I turned back to the bed. A change had come over Raife; he had shrunken into the pillows and lay with his eyes closed again, looking very small and pitiable.

  ‘Here is the water,’ I said, and put the cup to his mouth.

  He turned his head a little aside. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Listen, the King is a great man—and great men have faults in proportion. Little men shouldn’t judge. Do you understand me? You must be tolerant—and kind.’ He opened his eyes and stared at me and I was reminded of the look Father Simplon would turn upon a boy temporarily stupid-seeming though usually of good understanding. Boy, make an effort, understand this, you must, you must, you shall understand! The compelling, would-be eloquent stare bored into my eyes for a moment and then clouded over. I said hastily, ‘Yes, Raife. I understand. I will.’

  But he was not satisfied. His cracked, darkened lips moved again but no sound came. Then he struggled feebly in an attempt to rise and I slipped my arm behind his shoulders and lifted him a little from the pillows, at the same time putting my head close to his.

  ‘I can’t get—any air,’ he whispered. Then there were some other words which I could not catch. I loosed my right hand from its resting place and reached for his; he took it and for a second it seemed as though he were trying by the clasp of his fingers to communicate, to pour something from his mind to mine before death severed all the threads and sealed away all his knowledge forever.

  ‘Yes,’ I said loudly. ‘I know. I understand. I’ll see to it. I promise.’

  He gasped and shuddered. His hands fell away from mine and I knew that I held a dead man.

  I laid him down gently, closed his eyes and folded his arms across his breast. Sober, I should have wept a little, prayed a little, indulged in some sombre thoughts. As it was, I fumbled my way through the dusky purple twilight towards my wineskin, thinking wryly that I had done more than fulfil my orders to hold his hands. I had held him in my arm and sped him with a lie. I knew, I understand nothing what he had tried, too late, to tell me.

  XVII

  Next morning while I was making arrangements for the funeral I heard the explanation of the sound of horses which I had heard overnight. Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat, had been murdered as he rode along a street in Tyre and his widow, acting, she said, on his instructions, had come to put herself under Richard’s protection. Despite this fact, by afternoon the whole camp was humming with the rumour that the assassin who struck the blow had been hired by the King of England.

  Men seemed to find that very easy to believe. ‘No more than the deserter deserved,’ they said. Or, ‘God help Burgundy, then, riding alongside him to Damascus.’ Nobody stopped to ask why, of all the deserters, Conrad should be singled out. Philip of France was safe in Paris, Leopold of Austria in Vienna; no far-reaching vengeance had overtaken them. Nobody remembered Conrad’s feud with the Old Man of the Mountain or the little threatening cake. Richard’s enemies gladly seized upon this further evidence of his bloody-mindedness and his friends almost as openly rejoiced that the taking of vengeance had begun and so successfully.

  A few Burgundians hurried off towards Damascus in order to warn their duke. The English and Aquitainians veered like weathercocks and expressed bald-headed belief in Richard’s innocence and hurried off to prevent the carrying of the calumnious story. They overtook the Burgundians at Chorazin and there the last blows of the doomed campaign were dealt, in the deadliest, bloodiest battle of all, a battle never mentioned by the minstrels, fought to the death among men with the Cross on their shoulders. The vultures did well out of that rumour. They were still busy when Alberic of Saxham and I reached Chorazin.

  Alberic of Saxham had landed at Acre at noon of the third day after Raife’s death. He had asked to be directed to the King of England’s tent and, following his instructions, had duly arrived there to find me, its sole occupant, sleeping through the noonday heat. He shook me roughly, demanding to know where he could find the King and I told him what anyone else could have told him, that the King was in Damascus.

  ‘And where be the Bishop of Salisbury?’

  ‘With the King,’ I said.

  ‘And which way do this Damascus be?’ he asked.

  By that time I was fully awake and staring. I saw a squat, dishevelled little man, his hair and beard stiff and encrusted with salt, his face scorched and peeling with sunburn. He looked, he spoke, he stood and moved like a pedlar, a tinker or a smith but he was attended and accoutred like a nobleman and he bore credentials and a letter for Richard from no less a person than the Queen Mother. He showed me the letter. ‘Urgent,’ he said. ‘I promised to carry it faster than ever a letter had ever been carried before and so far as I can make out I have made the journey in ten days less than ever it was done before. So now if you’d be so good as to point out the general direction and tell me where I can hire some horses I’ll be gone.’

  I made a sudden and, as it proved, momentous decision.

  ‘If you like,’ I said, ‘I will ride with you and show you the way. I’ve never been to Damascus but I’ve mapped it often enough to know. And I doubt very much if we shall find horses.’ Richard and the other lords had taken the pick of the mounts in camp, the Burgundian knights had taken sixty more and the following force had actually ridden out knowing themselves outnumbered but with every horse that could be mustered. ‘We might get mules,’ I said.

  ‘All’s one to me.’ He turned his shaggy head and looked contemptuously at his little train, two squires and four pages.

  ‘Let you and me go by ourselves, young man,’ he said. ‘They’re all bone-weary; there’s been times when, what with their being sick and being tired and always wanting regular food, I’ve been ashamed they should bear my coat of arms.’ That made me look a little curiously at the sign emblazoned on the pages’ bright orange backs; it showed a bulging pedlar’s pack bristling with knights’ lances, very original and peculiar.

  ‘I’ll go and hire the mules,’ I said, ‘while you take some refreshment. But—I shall need some money.’

  ‘I don’t need no refreshment, no more than I carry with me. Young man, I’m ready to move.’

  A very precipitate little man, most suitable messenger between Plantagenet mother and son.

  Within half an hour, mounted on mules, we were trotting along the road to Damascus.

  I was very glad to get out of Acre. Ever since Raife’s death, with no bounden duty to hold me in the camp, I had been subject to temptation to go into town, to stroll past the white palace, to linger and stare at its doorways, its open, vine-shrouded verandahs. Now and again the temptation would assume a very reasonable face and I would think that I ought to visit the Lady Anna, who had always written to me kindly and faithfully. Fortified by much wine, my determination had held for three days but they had been long days. And when Conrad’s widow had come riding in haste from Tyre in order to obey the Marquis’s last wish and to put herself under Richard’s protection, and every idle curious man in the camp had gone to stare at the palace in the hope of catching a glimpse of her, I had almost gone too; it would have been so easy to stand in the packed, anonymous crowd…

  Now I was safe with the mule’s nimble hooves putting distance between me and the source of temptation. And presently something almost forgotten began to nag at my mind, a welcome distraction. We were on the road to Damascus; the road to Damascus. Why had that such a familiar and significant sound? I picked over the thought. It was the road to Emmaus where the risen Christ had walked with two of his disciples all through the day and their eyes were holden so that they did not recognise him. Emmaus, not Damascus. And yet the road to Damascus seemed to mean soomething more than a mere matter of direction.

  Alberic of Saxham rode thoughtfully, too, and I was a little startled when he said abruptly:

  ‘I must he getting old; there’s things I disremember.’

  ‘I’m flogging my mind at this moment to
remember something,’ I said. ‘With me I’m afraid drunkenness, not age, is to blame.’

  ‘No; you’re still young, ain’t you, despite all that white hair? That’s what’s bothering—By God’s footstool!’ he said, and slapped his thigh so that his mule, out of hard experience of threatening noises, leapt forward frantically. And I thought, Light has broken for him! Which thought immediately prodded my memory and I knew what had been nagging in me. It was on this road, the road to Damascus, that St. Paul had been blinded by a great light and known conversion. It might have been, I thought with a little chill and thrill of the blood, this identical spot.

  When my mule caught up with Alberic’s I thought he looked at me very queerly but he said nothing. Outside Chorazin the darkness which here, even in summer, came suddenly fell on us and we halted as soon as we found water. The Lord of Saxham shared with me the bread and cheese he carried in his pouch, chiding me for lack of foresight in coming on a journey without provisions. ‘Never count on nothing that ain’t in your very hand; that’s my motto,’ he said.

  ‘If you substituted “pack” for “hand” and put it into Latin,’ I said, ‘it would go well with your coat of arms.’ I spoke jestingly but he took it seriously.

  ‘So it would. That’d look well and do credit to an unlettered man like me. I’ll get it set out.’

  ‘I’ll set it out now,’ I said, and amused myself for the last moment or two before sleep came by shaping and reshaping the motto. When I had reduced it to “Count only certainties” I was content and slept.

  Next morning in Chorazin we managed to buy flat meal cakes and fresh fruit and I said, ‘Certainties are good but sometimes the unexpected has more flavour.’

  He laughed, only half in agreement. ‘Unexpected. That’s me with Saxham Manor and carrying messages for royalty. And along of you, of all people.’ He gave me another queer look.