The Lute Player (20 page)

Geoffrey of York was the one man with ability and integrity and personality enough to hold Hugh of Durham and that little rat Longchamp in leash. In Rosamonde’s son the Angevin virtues had emerged untainted by the Angevin vices; he had courage without recklessness, high temper without rashness, determination without obstinacy. Given an opportunity, he could control even John. If Richard showed him kindliness and favour now, before exile embittered him, before his devotion, unfocussed since his father’s death, had found another object upon which to expend itself, he would have gained himself an adherent without peer. So, brushing the ghosts and the memories aside, I wrote and begged my son to give authority to the son of his father’s mistress. I wanted Richard to have the best.

IV

I have lived to see Berengaria’s beauty become a byword. The songs and the stories about her give her credit for that rare type of loveliness which makes instant appeal to men and women alike and which remains vivid in the memory of anyone who has ever looked upon her. All that is true—in a way; but although the first feeling evoked in me by the sight of her was one of astonished admiration, disappointment followed so hard on its heels that the two were almost inseparable.

She was wearing, I remember, a gown of pale blue-green colour, cut low and tightly laced; and halfway up her long throat, worn in a way I have never seen a necklet worn before, was a wide band of gold studded with sapphires which incongruously called to my mind the heavy leather collars studded with spikes which wolfhounds wear for protection when they hunt. A gauzy veil of the same blue-green colour, fastened by ornaments of sapphire, covered her hair which was very black and glossy and dressed in plaits which fell over her shoulders and bosom to far below her waist. Her skin was white and quite without blemish and her eyes remarkable, large, clear, blue-green in colour and fringed by long dark lashes.

At first sight breath-takingly lovely but at second, disappointing. There was something lifeless and cold, almost inhuman, about her. Even when she smiled the smile never reached her eyes; the smooth red mouth stirred, the plane of her cheek took on a different, still lovely curve but her eyes never lightened or warmed.

She had great natural dignity; that and the cold remote beauty would be becoming to the Queen—but to the wife? Especially to the wife of such a turbulent, virile, lusty man as my Richard? I had doubts. Doubts, too, about her capacity as a breeder. That long slender neck, those frail wrists, those narrow hips gave no promise of fertility. I had seen them before on childless women.

And always, of course, there nagged at the back of my mind the memory of the mad Queen Beatrice.

With these thoughts in mind I took no care to present Richard’s demands pleasantly to Sancho; indeed, I hoped that he would refuse them outright. My first interview with him, however, quelled that hope and left me with the suspicion that Richard might have demanded much more and still been accommodated. Sancho was almost pitiably eager for the match.

‘To tell you the truth, madam, since the moment when my daughter looked first upon your son, two years, three years ago—time passes so swiftly it is difficult to keep count—I have not had one easy moment. These minnesingers and strummers who chant about the glory of love at first sight should stand in my shoes for a while; they’d alter their tune. I doubt whether any woman in Christendom has had more or better offers made for her hand—but no, nothing would do. She must have Richard Plantagenet or die. And by the Virgin’s hair, at one time death did seem the only alternative. Thanks be to God all that is over and we have attained a safe deliverance.’

‘You should have betrothed her long ago, sire,’ I said, deliberately making my voice light and playfully chiding. Why had he not?

‘I know. And had I my time over again, by God’s throne I would. But, madam, I could never convince myself that these cradle matches are just or kind. Expedient, certainly, as I have learned to my cost. Nevertheless…’ He let the subject drop. ‘In this one case, at least, all has ended well.’

I reserved my judgment. And I was cunning. I set the date for the sending of the money a full week ahead so that I might have time to observe, to come to a decision. ‘She must have Richard Plantagenet or die’ seemed to indicate that some fire smouldered beneath that icy exterior but it might also indicate the inexplicable whim of the insane who must demand strawberries in March or fresh peas in October.

But I was wrong. At the end of a week which I had used cunningly and well I gave Sancho word to send the dowry to Rouen. I had talked to Berengaria often and seen that she warmed undisguisedly at the mention of Richard’s name. Those strange eyes never altered their expression but they lit up from within; and she was eager to hear the least, most unimportant thing about him, anecdotes of his childhood, his preferences, his prejudices.

I had talked also to members of the household, my ear alert for any word or even any silence which might give a clue. There was one garrulous old woman named Mathilde who had nursed Queen Beatrice and tended Berengaria since her birth. She was too stupid to suspect the reason for the questions I asked her but she answered them all to my satisfaction. With the two waiting ladies also I had long and intimate conversations without gathering anything which justified suspicion.

And Blanche, Sancho’s other daughter, came home, in honour of my visit, from the convent where she spent most of her time. She was a pleasant, quite ordinary young woman against whom all that could be said was that she had difficulty in making up her mind to take nun’s vows, a fact which I personally took to be a sign of sanity rather than otherwise. The third member of the family, Young Sancho, I wholeheartedly liked. Save that his colouring was darker and his temper one of easygoing good humour, he might have been one of my own brood.

Gradually and cautiously I came around to the opinion that the match was a good one.

Once the dowry was despatched and the betrothal made certain, I began to talk to Berengaria about the future, the travel, the possible hardships and deprivations she must face. Drawing on my own experience, I explained the folly of taking too much baggage, too many ladies, and her docility endeared her to me.

‘I need only Mathilde to look after me, Pila for appearances’ sake and of course Anna and Blondel.’

‘That would be too mean an entourage,’ I said. ‘Who are Anna and Blondel?’

‘Anna is Duchess of Apieta and Blondel is my musician. They are away now, in Anna’s duchy. She is building a house there and since Blondel can plan and draw I lent him to her to help her. But they will be back soon.’

Anna and Blondel, thus defined, sounded welcome additions to the party. Richard had boasted that he kept no minstrel but even his single-minded parsimony could hardly extend to a refusal to retain one who came in his wife’s entourage and everyone knew how much a good minstrel could contribute to the happiness of a household. As for the duchess, I felt that Berengaria’s bower could well do with such an embellishment. I have never been one for pomp and show but even I thought that her establishment was meagre and unworthy, typical of a court which lacked a queen. She had two ladies, a jolly greedy widow and a thin embittered spinster, neither very well born or well-travelled or learned. They lived together in circumstances of comfort and in an atmosphere of amity which I had noticed to Berengaria’s credit but although they were suitable enough, perhaps, to attend the princess of a small obscure kingdom, they were not quite right for a queen of England.

Therefore, the mention of the duchess interested me and I tried to make Berengaria talk about her. Building houses is a hobby which ordinarily only women of sense and substance pursue and I visualised Her Grace of Apieta as a large, dignified, middle-aged noblewoman. And this idea Berengaria did nothing to dispel; she lacked, indeed, all that made a good gossip. Her conversation gained fluency only when she was talking about Richard, though occasionally she brought out little shrewd remarks which proved that despite her remote and detached air she was more aware of what went on than one would have suspected. Nor, indeed, was she so lacking in humour as her cast of countenance suggested. As day followed day and I found her docile, surprisingly without vanity and very good-humoured, I found myself thinking that Richard, choosing blindly, had chosen wisely. If he could avoid the thought that if he touched her she would break in pieces, they might do very well.

All the arrangements went smoothly; the sempstresses set to work on the wedding dress; presents and messages of goodwill began to pour in. Sancho selected a number of knights and ladies who were to travel with us and to attend the wedding and a series of pre-nuptial banquets was given, including a great feast to all the poor in Pamplona. It was on the evening after that feast, the last of the series, that the Duchess of Apieta and the minstrel came home and stabbed through the complacency into which I had relapsed.

Blondel was the French lute player with a young face and white hair whose throat I had commissioned Alberic to slit.

Anna, Duchess of Apieta, was a horrible hunchback.

Now I have suffered, from earliest childhood, from a reprehensible but uncontrollable aversion to the maimed and the malformed. When I was four, they say, I went into a convulsion at the sight of a one-legged old soldier whom my father, out of charity, had employed as a groom. This aversion is completely unreasonable and for that reason ineradicable. In the presence of a cripple or deformed person my flesh crawls on my bones, I become physically sick. While I was Queen of France and again while I was Queen of England I founded various homes—‘retreats,’ they called them—for afflicted persons; I was credited with Christian charity but my sole desire was to rid, as far as possible, the streets and highways of sights which made me shudder, lose my appetite, and which spoilt a day or a journey for me. I was not
sorry
for the objects of my aversion; if I could have momentarily overcome my disgust I would have smashed them to pulp; I hated them for the malaise with which they afflicted me; I wished them out of existence. I suppose God has His strange reasons and purposes and some unfortunates must therefore be born misshapen or suffer mutilation through no fault of their own; but they should not be allowed to expose their infirmities and so torment the rest of us.

The duchess arrived back in Pamplona just at nightfall. She had been expected two days previously and for the last forty-eight hours Berengaria’s placidity had been replaced by a fidgety impatience. It was she who first heard the clatter of horses’ hoofs on the drawbridge and cried, ‘Here they are at last!’ A few minutes later the door opened and there was a huge Negro bearing in his arms what looked like a large overdressed child. A sharp-featured, pallid little face peered out from beneath a richly furred hood, a velvet cloak bordered with fur covered the whole body and two tiny feet in shoes of softest leather dangled in the air. Berengaria rushed forward, crying, ‘Oh, Anna, I thought something had happened to you. I expected you two days ago. Oh, I have missed you.’

‘Dear me,’ said a musical, slightly husky voice, ‘such a greeting would put anybody back on his feet. Set me down, Blanco.’

He did so and once again I felt the sickness which deformity evokes in me. This was the Duchess of Apieta who was to come with us to Sicily, to Cyprus, and on to the Holy Land! Not if I could help it, I thought.

Controlling with difficulty my shuddering repulsion, I took her little clawlike hand in mine and said that I was delighted to see her. She made me a curtsy, very competent considering her disability, and made some reference with just the right touch of light courtliness to my almost legendary past. She had heard so much about ‘The Lady of the Golden Boot,’ she said, and was honoured to see me in Pamplona.

‘And where is Blondel?’ Berengaria asked.

‘Gone to see the bear. I trust it has been well seen to in his absence.’

‘Then everything is all right,’ Berengaria said, and her placidity dropped back over her like a garment. But across the hunchback’s little white face there drifted an expression which most irrelevantly reminded me of Richard when he wore his foxy look.

Berengaria turned to me and said happily, ‘We can set out now. Perhaps the day after tomorrow. To Anna she said, ‘You must come and see my wedding dress, Anna, it is beautiful. Laced, like those they preached against.’

‘I’ll see it tomorrow,’ said the little duchess. ‘I must go to bed now. I am exhausted. In the end they had to rig me a litter.’ She brought out the last words in a wry, self-derogatory way.

After supper the minstrel, Blondel, appeared in the bower, bringing his lute. I recognised him instantly and without pleasure. Without any undue stretch of the imagination it was possible to fill in the little gap which had hitherto existed between the breaking of one betrothal and the making of the next. Richard had told me that Sancho’s emissary had arrived in Rouen with a renewed offer of marriage before anyone save Philip knew that the engagement with Alys was ended. The lute player had posted straight back to Pamplona with his scandalous bit of news; and although I must in honesty admit that no one about this court had given any sign of secret knowledge, doubtless they had all been regaled by the story of how the King and Prince of England had denounced one another and the Princess of France, subject of the dispute, had ‘squawked like a stuck pig.’

This knowledge made me uncomfortable; more uncomfortable than it would have done some weeks before, when I was on the alert for signs that the secret was out. When one has lived for some time watchful for rumour and then has gradually sunk back into complacency, there is a sense of shame as well as a sense of shock in discovering that all the time one has been living in a fool’s paradise. But I tried to be reasonable, telling myself that it was stupid to resent an action which had borne such happy results and brought Richard such a lovely and suitable bride as well as the money which meant so much to him. At the same time I felt that Sancho was to blame. Assuming that he had used the boy as a spy and made use of his discovery to further his own ends, then he should not have left him alive and free to tell his tale where he would. We managed these things better in Aquitaine!

It was a jaundiced eye which I turned upon the inmates of the bower that evening and especially upon the handsome, white-haired boy with his sweet voice and his nimbly strumming fingers.

I made up my mind that I would not set out or share the close proximity of shipboard, tent and march with two people, one of whom filled me with physical nausea, one of whom caused me mental uneasiness.

I was confirmed in this determination when, next morning, I found myself taking my breakfast next to the duchess who seemed none the worse for her overnight exhaustion. The meal was spoiled for me and, to tell the truth, after sixteen years of Nicolas of Saxham’s providing, I was taking a delight in gluttony. There were so many things for which, from increasing age and long abstention, I had lost the taste that I held hard to what was left to me to enjoy and food was one of them. The thought that for months to come I might be obliged to share board—and possibly even bed—with this deformity was not to be borne. Nor was the thought that probably our sole source of entertainment might be the white-haired lute player who knew too much.

I intended to speak to Berengaria immediately after breakfast but as soon as the meal was over she and Anna disappeared into the dark inner room which led out of the bower. I took a piece of bread, smeared it thickly with honey and sat myself down to wait until the duchess, having—as I supposed—inspected the wedding gown, emerged. Once I heard voices from within the room, voices raised to the pitch where the sound of them, but not the sense of the words they uttered, penetrated the thick walls. Then after a short time the door opened and the duchess came into the bower. Her small face was very white save for two bright feverish patches high on her cheeks. I had already, in such short time, developed the trick of staring at her face whenever I was obliged to look at her. It was not unattractive, with small clear features and lively, intelligent eyes, but her usual expression, like that of all cripples, was sharp and defensive. She recognised my presence but did not speak and hobbled out of the room.