Canterbury Papers (29 page)

“He's good, isn't he?” said an even more familiar voice close to my left ear. I started, turning quickly. William's keen eyes were watching the stage, even as he spoke to me. He was crouching behind me, having to bend his tall frame slightly to put his head close to mine.

“What are you doing here?” I nearly fell off the bench, but he steadied me with a strong hand in the middle of my back.

“Following you. What else would I be doing at a county fair watching nonsense on a stage under a full moon?” he said, clipping his words in a martial way. Around us, people were straining to hear the actors. They hissed in our direction for silence.

“When did you…?” I began.

He put his elbow under my arm and half pulled me from the bench, drawing me firmly toward the edges of the standing crowd, which parted reluctantly to let us through. Conquering the impulse to resist, I moved with him as one.

When we arrived at the crowd's edge, he did not release my arm but tightened his grip as he bent his face close to mine.

“Now to answer all your questions at once and get it over: I arrived this afternoon. I didn't send to your room because I understood that you were not well. I didn't want to disturb you until you felt better, foolish fellow that I am. So much for
courtoisie.
But the steward's young wife came to us as we were going in to supper and reported that you had escaped on a lark of your own.”

“God's teeth!” I said ruefully. “Buying another man's servant is fool's work.”

“And that little message forced me to forgo the fire and an early bed and chase back across this rotting river to find you.” He stopped. “And to your next question, as yet unasked, the answer is yes, I have broken the code on your purloined letters. You may have the translation tonight.”

“Mother of God!” I had almost forgotten the letters. In my glee, I clapped his arm with my good hand. “I'm very glad for it. But can they wait until the Body and Soul finish their debate? When you arrived, the Body was winning the encounter handily, and that pleased me no end. If his advantage holds, my conduct in the future may be affected.”

“You can't be serious!” His heavy brows lifted. “You of all people?
You
love the stage?” He started to laugh aloud. People near us turned with rude comments, which he happily ignored.

“I love the stage, I love crowds, I love the open air, and I love game hens cooked on a spit,” I said, licking the grease that lingered on the tips of the fingers of my right hand, feeling the sensuous movement of my tongue. “I love all the things of ordinary life, the things no one ever let me have as a child, and I love them the more because of it.” I pointed to the booths with their hens trussed and turning on spits like a company of well-trained soldiers. As if on cue, a breeze blew our way, wafting the good scent of roasting garlic. “Try some, since you missed dinner at Montjoie's. I guarantee that the food will put you in a much better mood.”

“No thanks.” He grimaced. “Hens flavored with dust is a dinner I won't eat unless I am in the field, and even then only if I'm ravenous. I'll be treated to Thibault's best farm pigeon at dinner when I return.”

“On my word, these rough hens taste better,” I said, but William had already turned back toward the stage and did not hear me. The Body and Soul had finished their debate, and the hoods of the actors were tossed back as they took their bows to the cheering crowds. In the torchlight I could see the black-robed figure bow, his smile merry as the applause showed him clearly the favorite. He lifted his arms and his face upward to the light as his hood fell back. It was the diamond-shaped face of the young clerk, François.

“As soon as he joins us, we'll be off,” William said, shifting his gaze from the stage to me. There was a searching quality to his look, I thought, but I might have imagined it in the dim light.

We walked away from the stage and toward one of the many passageways between the stone buildings that led out from the town square down to the river. When we reached the bridge, William paused, then turned to me and asked, without preamble: “Did you have conversation with François in your journey from Wiltshire?”

“We talked at dinner and some while riding.”

“And what do you think of him?” The question seemed casual enough.

“A fine young clerk—or knight or monk, or whatever you and your men are,” I answered, but then I felt his eyes still on me.

“Would you like such a man in your service?” he asked. It did not sound like a question put lightly.

I covered my surprise as best I could, and honesty made me hesitate before I replied, “William, it's not clear to me where my service would lead. I cannot say yes or no at this time, for I haven't decided whether or not I will return to Philippe's court.” I thought for a minute. Perhaps I had misunderstood. “Are you offering him to me?”

“Not exactly,” he replied. But then our opaque conversation was cut short, as the young man in question caught up with us, panting hard from running, his black-hooded robe slung over his shoulder. It was only then that I saw he had purloined a Benedictine habit as his costume for the morality play. He showed no surprise at seeing either of us, nodding to William first and then bowing quickly in my direction.

“You acquitted yourself well,” William said to the disheveled young man, cocking one strong eyebrow quizzically. “You may have missed your calling. Mayhap you should forget aspiring to a knighthood or the church and follow the stage.”

“I was surprised to get your note,” the young man said, with a remarkable demonstration of
sangfroid.
“Thanks for letting me go on.”

He bobbed his head in my direction, then said, “What brought you here tonight?” The question was directed to William. Apparently he had little interest in what
I
was doing at the scene. The young face had revealed no surprise when he saw me, but then I had just seen a fine demonstration of his acting ability onstage.

“Chasing after you, you young rake. What will Hugh Walter say if I tell him his best classics student spends his free time frolicking on the stage?” William reached out to ruffle the burnt auburn hair, but François ducked with expert timing. “And making a comedy out of the very serious debate between the body and soul. The church does not take her mission to save souls lightly, young man, I can promise you. You should have learned at least that in your years at Canterbury.”

“You promised I wouldn't have to go back if—” François was laughing so hard he could hardly speak, but he stopped abruptly when he saw William's expression alter at his words.

“Later,” William said, with that occasional and sudden curtness and change of mood that left one wondering if he ever truly relaxed for more than ten heartbeats.

“My horse is over here.” François recovered gravity and gestured with his head back toward the stage, making the transition in the conversation with admirable grace. Again I thought, He has the makings of a formidable actor.

“Not anymore it isn't,” William replied, continuing to lead us in the opposite direction. “It seemed sensible to have all of our horses in one place, close to the river, so that we could leave before the crowds tire of their entertainment.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw another play just beginning. We were among a handful of people leaving the square. From the shadows now deepening around us, five more knights materialized on horses, three of them leading ours. How did he do it? I wondered, shaking my head in the dark. It was as if he had a secret kingdom at his beck and call. And we all mounted and rode off.

W
illiam himself saw me to my chamber. I paused with my hand on the door latch. I expected that he would want to discuss the translation of my letters, but he did not make any move to prolong our conversation or to come into my chamber. As if he read my thoughts, with that uncanny energy that flowed between us, he merely said, “We are all tired. In the morning, after we've broken our fast, we'll talk. I'll bring the letters then.”

“But you lead such a mysterious and peripatetic life,” I countered, with as much lightness as I could summon. “What if you get called away suddenly in the midst of the night? My letters will go with you. And there will go also the answers I believe might alter my life.”

“Or might not,” he said, jamming his thumbs into his belt. The hall torches shadowed his face, but they illumined mine. “Alaïs, trust that nothing will take me away from this house tonight, not before we discuss your letters.” His voice was as hard as iron.

Suddenly I became aware that we were standing close together. My back was leaning against the door to my chamber, my face to William in front of me. He seemed to be blocking my way, although it was I who stood against my own door. His gaze, framed by those remarkable brows, was directly on me in that peculiar, intense way of his. I placed my hand on the latch behind me. He might enter my room if I opened the door—he already had demonstrated a penchant for entering my private chambers at will—and it would be easier to face him in my chamber than as we were now. In my own room, I could put space between us. From this intimate position, I felt oddly vulnerable.

Without warning, he stepped back and turned about without saying a
bonne nuit.
Before I could speak, he disappeared around the corner. A confusion of feelings overtook me, both release and chagrin. I pressed the latch and entered my chamber.

There was new vellum on the table next to the chest. The torches were lit, and the room was filled with wavering light. There was no chance for sleep the way I felt at that moment, so I sat to sketch. Perhaps I could capture some of the joy of the hours just past while the night scenes in the Chinon town square were still in my mind's eye. But that was not to be. I made one try after another to draw the stage, Body and Soul in their debate, even the townspeople lurking on the outskirts of the crowd, which I usually found so fertile as subjects, but the charcoal did not cooperate as it usually did.

The face of William kept interfering. Finally I gave in and sketched that face. First the face I saw on the high altar at Canterbury—uplifted, distant, arrogant—then the busy host at Baron Roger's dinner party—social, charming. Next the face of the man who embraced me when I cried in my chamber at Wiltshire, a softer face, and then the laughing, ironic face, so full of fun, so essentially human, that caught me unawares in the town square in Chinon this very evening. Finally the impassive, preoccupied face of the William who had just left me so abruptly. I sketched all, a whole parchment full of Williams, and once I had finished, I looked down with satisfaction. I almost liked him when I contemplated those pictures. Or perhaps I should say I almost liked them, for there was a collection of people on my sheet of parchment. If I did not like one, I could take another.

I threw down the charcoal, washed myself in the water that had grown cool in the pitcher, and put on my night shift. Dousing the torches seemed a task for which I was well suited at that moment. Welcome, darkness.

As I lowered my tired body onto the bed, I had a strange
déjà vu.
It had to do with feeling pinned at the door by William's presence. I had been once, when young, in just such a position with Richard. My memory took me back to Eleanor's court in Poitiers, when Richard and I were both young and ardent. The three
sirventes
he had written to me privately to announce his love had been snatched from his room impishly by his brother Geoffrey and read aloud to all Eleanor's court that evening at dinner, much to the merriment of his sisters and brothers and my own sister, Marguerite.

By this trick Richard's love for me had been declared openly. It was almost a relief. We had only to wait until my sixteenth birthday for the nuptials, for us to fulfill that promise of love. There was no question of consummating our love before then. Our parents, rulers of France and England, would have been outraged if I had come with child before the wedding. And the chance for an illegitimate heir to complicate matters was a grave one.

Nevertheless we lived, we breathed love, because we were at the courts of love. Marie of Champagne, Eleanor's daughter by my father, was mistress of our revels of love. She decreed that we would hold court to ascertain the true meaning of love. Under her direction the monk Capellanus evolved a code of love to which—Marie said—we all must pledge ourselves. To abstain from lust, to refrain from physical love for the greater glory of poetic love, to create love in words—this was our highest ideal. We were equal to the challenge. Richard and I could wait for the nuptials.

That night when Richard went with me to the door of my bedchamber, he leaned down to press his lips to mine for the first time. The palm of my good hand became moist as he grasped it, then encircled me with his arms, pinning me to him.

If he had asked to enter my room at that moment, I could not have refused. I had no will left that did not race in the direction of coming closer to him.

But it was he who pulled away and, as abruptly as William tonight, turned and left without a word.

The moon shone through the openings in the wall. I watched the shadows of the trees outside play upon the ceiling for a long time. My own shadows were the decisions I needed to make about my future. This entire wild errand was over as far as I was concerned once I had heard what the Sarum letters contained. But in this process, and quite beside the point, something else had happened.

Tonight it occurred to me that I need never go back to Paris. Why have a life at court at all? They were occupied with vanity and position, clothes and feasts. Prattle they had aplenty, but there was not one whole creative idea in all of the combined brains of the court of France.

But if not back to Paris, where then? Charlotte's invitation to come to Fontrevault still echoed, suspended somewhere in the air. I was close right now. Fontrevault was an afternoon's ride from where I slept this very evening. I could ride to the abbey and take up quarters beside the aging Eleanor, assuming she ever came back from Spain alive. That arrangement would give us plenty of time to work out our secrets and misunderstandings!