Shield of Three Lions (20 page)

I was thinking rapidly and decided it might be more prudent to withhold the truth. “No, from Scotland.”

“Ah, no wonder I didn’t recognize these weeds. I’ve always heard that Scotland was barbaric, inhabited by rough, hairy men wielding clubs. I see I’m wrong.”

He was right but I didn’t contradict him. He rose and drew me to his chair where he sat, putting an arm loosely around my waist.

“Tell me where you’re studying, Alexander.”

More and more at ease, I rattled on about the civil and canon law, the
sic et non
of the disputation in logic, universals and nominalism, adding even a few samples of medical knowledge gleaned from Dagobert. All the time, Zizka watched me closely.

“You were right, Giselle, better even than Bernardo. Nothing more exciting than the tight bud sleeping before dawn. The intellectual and spiritual glosses add piquancy.

“I told you,” she said smugly.

“So, Alexander, you want to join my troupe?”

“Oh, no sir,” I blurted. “I want to meet with King Richard. Fat Giselle promised me that you could arrange it. I have business with the king.”

Zizka raised heavy brows at Giselle.

“I hadn’t had a chance to talk with him,” she explained, then became angry toward me. “What did you expect? That wed pass out audiences with the king like alms? Of course you have to earn your keep.”

“No need to be nasty,” Zizka said mildly. “I’m sure Alexander will be happy to conform. The situation is this: King Richard’s court troubadour and historian, Ambroise, has commissioned me to bring my troupe to Chinon to perform for the king before he leaves on his Crusade. Some years ago Ambroise saw a particular act I devised requiring a small delicate boy of exceptional beauty, and requested especially that I include this act in my repertoire. Naturally I agreed, but unfortunately my former boy is now a man, so I need to train a new boy. If you sing a little, I think you would be perfect. However I would want you to train with me personally, for we have our reputation to maintain. What say you? Will you join us?”

It sounded so simple—and so sure to get me an audience. “Aye, yes, soothly I will,” I said eagerly.

Before he could answer, the cottage was struck by a force that tipped a few candles and made the desk jump. Then Enoch rammed in, bellowing like a bull!

“Where be the slummock what stole my brother?” He whirled on Giselle, his gaveloc raised to kill.

Just as fast his arms were pinioned by criminals and freaks who’d run after him. Dagobert slunk behind them and tried to signal me that he hadn’t told, and I knew that Madame Annette had betrayed me.

Zizka put hands on hips and walked close to Enoch to study him.

“Now this is more in keeping with what I’d heard of the Scots. Yes, a true wildman. What cold gale blew you hither?”

“Stand back or I’ll bite yer terse off! Alex, come here!”

I sidled next to him. “It
is
my brother Enoch, sir. You can tell your men to let him go—he’s harmless.”

“Harmless, am I? If these roughs be not bagits, their balls be
dust. As fer ye, Master Sweettalk, ye with yer flower face, ye’re the most ungrateful warlo of all! Yell learn how harmless I be.”

By this time he was free and I smiled gratefully at Zizka. Not that I cared if they tossed Enoch into a bag of snakes and pulled the top tight, but I was glad to even the score somewhat: now I had saved
his
life.

“Come, we’re gang home.”

I didn’t move.

“You’re to be congratulated, Master Wanthwaite,” Zizka said smoothly. “Your brother has just joined our troupe, the aristocrats of jongleurs we call ourselves.”

Enoch stared down at me, his eyes fair jumping from their sockets. I couldn’t contain my triumph. “I’m going to meet King Richard.”

“King Richard, is it?” He whistled softly and turned to Zizka. “King Richard, very clever. He’s the bait—where’s the trap?”

“No trap, Enoch,” Zizka answered, bemused. “Alex has told you the truth.”

Enoch pointed to Fat Giselle. “And I hear that this slut-daw arranged his meeting with the king. Or mayhap some of these sticked swine around me be special friends with the king. Wake up, bairn, or a trompourer will rob ye blind. Aristocrats! Ye know that I bow to no man when it comes to despising English kings, but e’en I have to defend King Richard from such sludge-mates.”

Zizka’s jaw wiggled til and fro, which I guessed was a sign of anger, but he remained courteous.

“Unfortunately you’re all too accurate, Enoch, in defending the king from such questionable taste in company, but King Richard does appreciate the arts of minstrelsy and verse-making. After all, he grew up in a different … clime? … from Scotland, an ambience of troubadour poetry, the Arts of Love. ’Tis one of history’s temporary ironies that the purveyors of such elegant entertainments are outside the law. Here in Paris, we’re required to live with the more disreputable elements who are also outlaws, but I assure you that we are a breed apart.” Then he repeated what he’d told me about Ambroise.

“I’m going to see King Richard,” I repeated firmly.

“Be quiet, Alex.” Enoch looked long at Zizka, impressed I could see, then took in the books lining the wall, the fastidious desk and lights, all indeed a contradiction to the motley people in the room. I knew I’d won when he spoke in French.

“How much is this Ambroise going to pay you for Alex’s presence?”

Zizka shrugged. “A small fee. Not enough to matter. It’s the art which must be served.”

“The art for you, money for Alex and me.”

“You!” I exclaimed. “Who asked you to go?”

Zizka took a wary step closer to the Scot so he could see his expression.

“Naturally we’ll feed and house the boy while we’re on the road, provide costumes, at least the one for that particular act.”

“All his expenses and a fee for each appearance,” Enoch said adamantly. “What are his duties?”

Again the shrug. “Almost nothing. To sing, dance a little. He happens to be the physical type I’m seeking.”

Now Enoch’s eyes were narrow and his lips rolled tight. “Physical type for what?”

“Please, Monsieur Wanthwaite, you’re embarrassing me. You can see for yourself, a sweet little boy. He’s to play Cupid … I don’t know … we might revive a number about Alexander. Two or three solos, playing the clappers with our instrumentalists if we’re short, learning a few choruses.”

“Write it out,” Enoch ordered. “Be sure you include everything you want, for he’ll not do one thing else. We’ll want two parisis for each performance, room and board for both of us. I’ll look after him.”

“Robbery!” Fat Giselle called out. “Make the Scot wrestle with Belle-Belle the bear if he wants pay.”

Zizka and Enoch were eye-locked like two male dogs meeting on the road. I hoped Zizka could outwit him but didn’t think he could. As long as I had my audience with King Richard
alone
I supposed it didn’t matter too much to me.

The haggle went on for some time with Enoch winning most points; then they came to the date of our departure.

“Ambroise writes sometimes between April and June next year,” Zizka said.

“Next year!”
I bawled. “But I can’t wait! You promised, take me now!”

Everyone except Enoch gazed, astonished.

“Great heavens, child,” Zizka admonished mildly. “At your age, six months flies.”

“Aye, yell wait, bairn, and ye’ll learn the law like we intended, and logic as well. I’m thinking astronomy might be a good course too, for we’ll come here to rehearse only on Saturdays.”

“Oh no,” I moaned.

The men shook hands, made arrangements for contracts. On the way out, I spoke to Fat Giselle.

“Thank you kindly for your help. I—I—”

“You’d better deliver, for that price,” she said, boring into my eyes so I trembled. “And remember your oath.”

Outside, Enoch, Dagobert and I made a human chain as we walked to the gate where Twixt was tied. Enoch was going to make Dagobert walk home in the knee-deep mud, but our shivering friend pled so pitifully that he was permitted to mount on the mule’s rump and we began a long stumbling trek back to Madame Annette’s. The crashing and sizzling on all sides couldn’t keep Enoch quiet; he would harangue and scold if the world came to an end.

“One thing I promise is that ye’ll stay innocent yif I have to chain yer ankle to mine.”

“You’re too late!” I shouted, exasperated beyond endurance. “I’m already not innocent!”

At my words the heavens split in two parts in a deafening crash and spat a maelstrom of fire! Twixt stumbled and stopped while I made a silent prayer to Satan that I hadn’t meant it.

“That were some fireflash,” said Enoch, awed. Then, as we continued, “How be ye not innocent?”

“I know as much as you,” I improvised to cover my blunder. “We go to the same classes.”

“Aye, as much aboot some things. Let me ask ye, ye’ve seen the stones by Fat Giselle’s. What think ye means ‘Trousse-Puteyne’ and ‘Gratte-con’?”

“Easy,” I said. “Whores-slit Street and Scratch—uh—cunt?”

“That’s the English. Meanin’?”

“Whore—hoar, hoary trench. The ditch must get frosty.”

“Aye, there be some such. Go on.”

“Scratch—a cunt is a small furry animal. We have them in England but you may not have any in Scotland.”

“I believe I’ve seen a few. Well, I admit ye’ve surprised me, bairn.”

And that stopped his mouth, but it didn’t stop my thoughts. One piece of secret information was a canker in my joy and I crossed my arms, pressing hard: still no breasts, nor had I bled again.

But six months from now?

Dry and snug in bed much later, I still fretted and turned, worrying and seeking. Then I sat bolt upright.

In all my concern about Enoch racing me back to claim Wanthwaite, I’d completely forgotten Roland de Roncechaux and Northumberland! Was it possible that they’d already sought audience and sealed Wanthwaite’s fate? King Richard had gone to London for his coronation in August and this was November.

I lay back so hard that Enoch grunted from his mat.
Deus juva me
, I hoped King Richard was as fair and Christian as some people said, that he would honor my claim.

Otherwise I was lost.

ZIZKA TURNED OUT TO BE RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING: the next six months did fly fast, though not because of my age forsooth. Enoch kept me so busy running from early morning to sundown from one class to the other, then sitting half the night by candlelight trying to absorb what wed heard, that there was no time to reflect on the passage of time. The Scot, too, had predicted rightly when he’d said I’d never be free of him an instant. Zizka was more fortunate in his shadow, for Brise-Tête was a dumb mime, unable to speak because someone had relieved him of his tongue when he was young. Would that same wight had snipped Enoch’s waggling member.

Nor did I mature in my body,
Deo gratias.
My breasts didn’t appear; I didn’t bleed
again;
I was still fitting easily into Arthur’s rags. This kindly turn of Fortune’s Wheel may have come because of some invocations I remembered my mother teaching me, but ’tis more likely that ’twas simply in my stars. I also recalled what she’d said about my aunts who were so late developing into women.

Yet I did go through an inner change which was dreadful worrisome though not even Enoch seemed to notice it. I think I caught a peculiar fever from Madame Annette’s kitchen, or mayhap ’twas from that time I forgot and drank Paris water which everyone warns is poisonous. Whatever the source, the symptom was a fierce burning through my innards and straight to the fantastick cells in my head. Although my skin remained cool, my cheeks pale, my eyes clear, nonetheless I was racked day and night by a pounding heart, sudden gales of laughter and frantic joy over
nothing
, followed by such a melancholy humor that I sat for hours contemplating the
icy
Seine, paradoxically
enjoying my despondency I finally concluded that my liver was enflamed, that the fire therein was stoked too high, and I asked Dagobert for an elixir. He was unsure what to prescribe so asked his master in turn who said ’twas impossible for the liver to cook too fast and that ’twas more likely I was possessed with a demon. He suggested I come and confess, then be exorcised, but since I didn’t have anything to confess except my kissing Satan’s toute-ass which I dare not tell on pain of losing my soul, I just accepted my condition.