Watermark

by Vanitha Sankaran

  Auda blushed, and Maria laughed again. An actor ran past them, chasing the dragon head with a torch blazing above his head.

  “Pestilence and plague is what I bring,” the dragon boomed.

  “I don’t care what you bring, but keep that fire from my house!” Maria yelled, joining in the awkward chase.

  Auda looked up at Jaime, trading a smile, and he placed a light kiss on her lips. Auda drew in her breath. She looked around, self-conscious, but he only laughed and pulled away. He untied a roll of canvas from his belt. After spreading the small canvas across the blanketed ground, he took a charcoal from a pouch at his side, leaned forward, and began sketching. His nimble fingers drew dark lines that soon grew into the scene before them: the cursed dragon, separated now by head, body, and tail; and the more wretched St. George, prostrate upon the ground. In the background, he drew the newlywed Pietr and Rubea with matching laughter in their faces. Their joy was so unlike the complacent certainty with which Poncia had approached her own wedding.

  Jaime wiped soot from his fingers onto the blanket and shrugged. “It’s a start. A false memory of a brief moment, inadequately captured.”

  Auda tilted her head.

  “Only an image,” he said with a sigh. “And not nearly so glorious as life itself. The fate of all art, worth only the happiness it gives to someone else.”

  No, Auda wanted to protest. The worth of art could also lie in the happiness it brought its creator, no? Not a false memory, but a kernel of beauty captured forever. She thought of the verse stored in the palace. Though their authors were long forgotten, the words still compelled their readers. Words of love and loss. If Jaime knew her love for writing those words, would he understand? Would he approve?

  Yes, she knew he would.

  A shout rose up ahead of them: the newlyweds had arrived. The brides streamed to their families while the grooms stood around, congratulating each other.

  “Aha,” yelled one of the jugglers, lifting his wine-stained face from a cup tucked in his lady’s breasts, snug in her bodice. “What kept you?”

  “Instructions from the Father priest?”

  “Or sweet messages to each other?”

  “I say they didn’t talk at all,” another said, evoking raucous laughter.

  “Time for music, time for the dance,” Maria said, opening her arms to embrace her niece. She kissed a flushing Pietr. “Play something gay!”

  The jongleurs struck up a lively beat and a round dance began not far from the feasting table.

  “Join them?” Jaime said, tucking away his canvas roll.

  Auda shook her head. Fast. She twirled her fingers of one hand in a complicated round until they twisted.

  Jaime grinned. “You’ll get the steps. I’ll show you.”

  Auda looked at the crowd, reluctant, but before she could reply Pietr stepped to the table. “Attention all!” he cried, banging his hand on the board as he wobbled from side to side. “It’s said a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, that her price is far above rubies.”

  “Give me a ruby and I’ll give you a virtuous woman,” some woman in the crowd yelled.

  “Your husband ought to beat you silent,” Maria yelled. “I’ll beat you myself if you don’t silence your tongue!”

  “Have you another use for it?” one of the jugglers asked with an impish grin.

  “I am truly grateful,” Pietr continued over the laughter, the wobble now in his throat and voice, “to have found a woman of such worth.”

  “Come, throw grain on the newlyweds to hearken their fertility,” Maria yelled out. The crowd roared their approval and she rushed to pour handfuls of wheat into people’s hands.

  “Ah, but it’s time for the marriage bed, no?” said one of the youths who’d been hanging about Rubea.

  “Never you mind them!” Maria yelled, running after the laughing boys. “Let them have their night in peace.” She hurried to the band, instructing the piper to play something festive.

  Jaime entreated Auda to dance again, and this time she took his hand.

  Another girl came up to her other side: Rubea. Spying Auda, she faltered momentarily. But Auda forced herself to look past the fear in the girl’s eyes. She took a deep breath and smiled at Rubea.

  Rubea met her watery eyes, then shrugged and offered her hand. Auda took it without hesitation and they continued the dance. She traded grins with Jaime, enjoying the exhilaration of it all, and wondering, for the first time, if such a love could truly be hers.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jaime escorted her home after the wedding. They walked in silence. Auda glanced at him through her wimple, surprised to see the same soft smile that had touched his lips at the wedding. When they reached the crest of the hill that led down to her home, she stopped and faced him.

  With a quick glance toward the small dwelling, she shook her head. No need to get her father involved, asking too many questions.

  Jaime seemed to understand. He bowed over her wrist and placed a kiss on her pale skin.

  Auda quivered at the thrilling touch.

  “Will I see you again soon?” he asked.

  Auda nodded, heart aching.

  “Next week?” he said, pleading with his eyes.

  She nodded again and put his hand to her cheek and lips. She’d find an excuse.

  Her reward was a crooked smile. The artist kissed her hand once more, bowed, and headed in the opposite direction. Auda ran home, giddy and needing a reason for her flushed cheeks and labored breathing.

  Her father, sitting in the hearth room cutting paper sheets to size, beamed when she walked through the door.

  “Ma filla!” he said, jumping up to embrace her. “Come, sit. Tell me about your week.” He stepped into the kitchen to fetch a drink. He’d bought a large earthenware pot of beer with his new funds and had parked it in front of Auda’s old hiding spot built behind the kitchen wall.

  Auda looked around the house, noting the loose dirt and withered rushes gathered in haphazard piles across the floor. The iron pot stood cold and empty over the missing fire, save for a few pigeon bones lingering in a cupful of greasy water. The house smelled old, forgotten.

  She shouldn’t have lingered so long at the wedding, she berated herself, should have come home and seen to her chores. Untying her wimple, she rolled her hair into a bun and started sweeping the dirty floor.

  Martin walked in with two cups. “Let it be, Auda. You were at the church late. What news from your sister?”

  Hiding a guilty look, Auda laid aside the broom and sat at the table. The meeting with her sister seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago.

  She asked. You. Me. She shook her head. It was too difficult to convey her sister’s request with gestures.

  Martin passed her a tablet. “Here.”

  She chose precise words.

  Poncia needs us at her house on Friday.

  It’s a special prayer. The archbishop leads it.

  He asked for you, for me.

  She handed the tablet to him, watching cautiously for his reaction.

  Martin read her words and threw the tablet across the table. “Will she never stop? What does she expect me to do, beg for a living? Not even the archbishop can gainsay my trade. No matter what she thinks!”

  Auda shook her head. She didn’t know what her sister was up to, but the bruise on Poncia’s temple was still vivid in her mind.

  Blessing, she signed, making a gesture of benediction. For family. It was a simple lie.

  Martin wasn’t convinced. “You trust too much, Auda. Especially when you should not.” Struggling to recover his temper, he sat again at the table. “Tell me of other things. About your week.”

  What to tell him? Of the immensity of the palace? The wealth displayed so casually in every room? Maybe he’d like to know about the vicomtesse and her husband, their reputations and lofty words.

  Instead, she told him of the verses that captivated her. She’d committed most to memory, and even now
carried copies of her favorites to reread.

  Martin was not as enchanted. “Bah,” he said, pushing away a verse she’d copied on the exaltedness of distant love. “Simple concerns for simple times. We’ve no room for this frippery, with the way Narbonne is growing today. Why only this week, two papermakers passed through town along the fair. There’s not work enough here for them yet, but soon. The world is changing, Auda. We can’t go back to the simplicity of past times.”

  Auda turned her face away, stung. Maybe past times were simple but they were also honest. She’d made a careful study of the troubadours, not just in the documents she’d copied, but also in her questions to the vicomtesse. At first the lady had been impatient, curt with her. But when she saw Auda’s interest was genuine, she told her what she knew of Narbonne’s lyrical history.

  “Our city once boasted the most proficient of musicians,” the lady said, “under the patronage of our own Lady Ermengarde. She held whole courts full of music, and called them her Courts of Love.”

  “The custom began hundreds of years ago with discussions on whether love was mere bodily lust or a morally elevating spiritual experience. Highborn ladies gathered alongside their men to bandy words on what it meant to love, and whether a pure love could ever exist amidst the obligations of noble life.

  “Eleanor of Aquitaine had held the most famous courts, and her daughter carried on the tradition in her own courts at Champagne. In those days, poets brought forth all manners of verse on the nature of real love, love based on noble actions and character rather than on birth and wealth. In the face of such love, they asked, does one give in to self-discipline or passion? An exalting love or debasement of the body? The transcendent or the physical?”

  The questions seemed all the more reasonable after her time with Jaime.

  In the last generations, apparently the Courts of Love had gone into decline. But still the beauty of the words, their rhythm and honesty, lingered. A man and a woman had to see each other honestly in love, had to value each other. Surely Poncia’s marriage was proof, the lesson still had to be learned.

  “Pay no mind to me,” Martin sighed, softening at the hurt in her eyes. “I am an old man talking to a young girl at the height of her promise. Truly, Auda, you remind me of your own mother.”

  Auda blinked, starting at the mention of Elena. Her father rarely spoke of her, and not in many years.

  Martin sipped his beer and sat back. “I remember it well, the day we moved here. It was winter, and cold as a crone’s tit. We carried everything we owned on our backs. Your grandfather wanted to send us by horse and wagon, but we decided to save the money to start the studio instead.”

  He leaned forward. “The winds whipped straight off the ocean and settled in our bones. Your mother never got used to the salty smell in the air, the reek of the fishing boats. It was she who insisted we live along the river. It smelled as fresh as home, she used to say.”

  Auda put down her cup, which she hadn’t touched. Her father’s words entranced her.

  “She never looked so beautiful as the day she birthed you,” he whispered, his voice distant.

  Auda sighed. This was more than he’d ever said about her mother, and now she understood why, if it made him so melancholy. Remembering the token she’d bought for him, she pulled the Gypsy’s watermark, wrapped in a fine red cloth, from the purse on her belt.

  Martin took the package. “What is this?” Unwrapping the bundle, he stared at the glittering piece of wire.

  Watermark, Auda wrote on her tablet. She rose and went to the studio, returning with a mould screen to demonstrate how the device worked.

  “A priceless gift,” he said, turning the device over and over in his fingers. His voice grew rough with tears. “The finest gift your mother ever gave me was her belief we would make our fortune with my paper.” He looked up. “How fitting that her daughter now does the same.”

  Smiling, Auda laid a kiss on his head, glad at least for the moment that everything between them was as it had always been.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The next week, the vicomtesse surprised Auda and decided to hold her own Court of Love.

  “Your questions set me to thinking. It won’t be a Court of Love in the precise sense, but these verses are too rich not to share.” She paced the study, inspecting the piles of boxes still unexplored. “Never mind the other documents for now. Search out whatever verse you can find. Make sure the originals are cared for, and make two copies on paper. In the meantime, I’ll have my minstrels perform what you’ve already given me.”

  She allowed Auda to attend her court that week—as a maid, of course.

  “Stay out of sight and don’t make a fuss. It will be helpful for me if you see what this is about, what I am looking for. You’ve done a fine job so far.”

  Auda bowed, pleased by the compliment. The vicomtesse normally held court every week, inviting noble ladies in town to visit her. Auda had never attended before, of course, but she’d heard the maids talk about it in the servants’ kitchen. The court sounded mostly like an afternoon of gossip and food, nothing like the vaunted discussions of passion and duty the Courts of Love were said to be.

  On the day of the event, Auda arrived early so as not to be noticed. She had never been inside the lady’s solar before. The room felt lush, not just in the cushioned chairs and benches that lined the walls, but in the sunlight spilling through each of the room’s three glass windows, illuminated by eight candles besides. Two desks stood in one corner, and a large table in another. Rich red tapestries hung on the wall and a hearth fire, alive even in midsummer, warmed the stone floor.

  The women began arriving down the hallway in small groups, soon totaling over two dozen. Their gossip grew loud, like a discordant symphony of bees. Their comments, when distinguishable, all hovered around the same topic: the Great Fair.

  “The New Market is a disgrace with the fair here!” one woman said. “Rubbish and refuse everywhere!”

  Another sniffed. “If the archbishop spent less time on riches and food, perhaps he would see what goes on beneath his own nose.”

  “He only takes his due,” a younger voice answered, “seeing how much he’s given to the town’s prosperity. I’ve never seen a more honest priest.”

  “Ha! An honest priest.” Several people laughed in agreement.

  Auda took her place in the back corner of the room, standing beside one of the desks, and none of the ladies noticed her as they entered. Just to be sure, Auda turned her face away. She felt naked without her wimple—the lady disliked the extra cloth, said it looked too much like church garb—and had banned it in her presence. Perhaps it would have been best to have feigned illness and not come here today. Auda had no wish to draw the court’s attention, to intrude on the day’s discussion of poetry. Yet she couldn’t stay away. Every time she read the verses, she felt her spirit soar. What would it feel like, she couldn’t stop herself from wondering, if the verses the minstrel sung today were hers?

  The ladies settled around the room, chattering in loud voices. Most had brought sewing to occupy their hands as they talked. One girl brought a rosary, which she twisted constantly.

  The vicomtesse walked in a few minutes later. The younger women rose.

  “We were just discussing the fair,” an older lady said. The wrinkles around her mouth continued down her neck and disappeared under the high collar of her crimson gown.

  “It’s a crowded muck, of course,” the young girl by her side said, her pleasant face and willowy body matching her youthful gaiety. She sat on a bench, adjusting the pink rosette in her hair and smoothing her skirts.

  “I told Clarys it always was,” a matronly woman answered. Behind her, a number of women murmured their assent.

  “Have you been out to see it yet?” another woman inquired. She too wore a rose-red gown, though it shimmered russet brown in the sunlight. Gold winked from her ears and her hands, clasped over her pregnant belly.

  The vicom
tesse stood over the blush-dressed women, tall and slender in her green dress, cut simply but made of the shiniest emerald silk. Settling in her velvet-cushioned chair, she fingered her pearl necklace. “I have, but only to listen to the minstrels and see whom to invite to court,” she said. “I heard some promising tunes. But nothing along the likes of what this court has seen in the past.” She gave them a conspiratorial smile. “Before we dive headlong into our chatter, let’s have a bit of music and some sweets.”

  Musicians entered the room to play some songs, and servants passed platters of candied fruits and pastries. The conversation soon grew louder than the music.

  The lady rapped her knuckles against her desk. “Come now, let us listen to the songs. I have a new one to share with you today.”

  This was the moment. Auda strained forward, anxious.

  A young man dressed in colorful clothes and a banded hat walked into the room, carrying a fiddle. Beardless with a boyish face, he seemed only a lad. But once he started plucking his instrument, his skill was indisputable. He played a simple tune of discordant notes, a song that was popular in the fair, but when he opened his mouth he sang a verse that the vicomtesse had chosen, one by the troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn.

  My Midons, I love so much

  Cherish but fear to attend her much,

  I speak to her naught

  And ask her for naught so naught is what I send her.

  But she feels my sorrow and my pain

  And if it pleases her, she sends for me.

  To succor me, comfort me, honor me.

  I could make do with far less than she.

  Auda closed her eyes, entranced by the crescendoing rift. The minstrel repeated the melody and sang the verse again. When he finished, the ladies clapped with enthusiasm.

  “Such beautiful words from a doting husband,” the young girl, Clarys, said. “He sings with such honesty.”