The Lute Player (4 page)

‘But Brother Lawrence—’

‘Bless you, child, Brother Lawrence was just a hungry old man who wanted to get home and realised that you can’t feed nineteen people on one capon. By the time you are his age you’ll know that, too, and also that if God were concerned with empty bellies He’d have made figs grow on thistles or so constructed us that we would find oak leaves appetising and nourishing. The fact remains that He didn’t and we must accept it without making futile protests which can only result in charges of unorthodoxy.’

Both glance and voice had softened into something approaching kindliness. I should have been cheered by that and by his tolerant summing up of my behaviour; yet every cool, reasonable sentence seemed to add weight to my depression. Father Simplon sentencing me to bread and water, Dirk laying on the stripes with good will, Brother Gaspard arguing hotly about manorial dues had, after all, been acting in a known and approved pattern, implying that God was good and that I was a sinner to have entertained even a moment’s doubt. But Guibert, under the kindliness, was saying in effect that God was, at best, an enigma and that I was a fool not to have seen that and kept quiet about it. It was rather as though a physician called in to treat me for a mild form of some disease had suggested no medicine but, baring his own breast, had said, ‘See I ail the same thing but I survive, so will you.’

‘What we must now consider,’ Guibert said in a brisker voice, ‘is the practical side of the question. Before we embark upon that, pour me some wine and take a measure yourself… Thank you. Now what I have to say is this. I think it would be very unwise for you to remain here. Brother Lawrence will doubtless do his duty and forgive you for striking him, Brother Gaspard will one day outlive the loss of the palfrey and your revolutionary remarks about church property but something will remain and for many years, in a community of this size, everything you do or say will be, in a measure, suspect. You agree? I understand that you are a penman of some promise, so I propose sending you to Arcelles where they will welcome you. In twenty years they have never succeeded in breeding a penman of their own. You should do well there. And certainly the manorial dues will concern you very little; it is the poorest foundation in Burgundy and as a rest from writing you will doubtless till your own field and fish for your own eels.’ The mockery of the last words was mitigated by a smile which altered his whole face, making it friendly and conspiratorial. And one small corner of my mind put forth the thought, Oh, I’d like to have known you as a young man, seen that understanding, merry look come into your face as we sat in a pennanted tent planning an assault on the infidel… But the main trend of my thoughts ran another way: This is the moment when I must speak; I must say it now but what words can I find?

‘And now, I suppose,’ he said, ‘you will proceed to tell me that you don’t want to go to Arcelles or anywhere else; that you don’t want to be a monk at all; that you have lost your faith and with it your vocation and propose to rush away into the world and commit all the seven deadly sins at once.’ He smiled at me again and I found myself smiling back.

‘I hadn’t thought yet of the sins, my lord. But—but the rest is what I have been thinking for the past few days.’ He became serious immediately.

‘Have you taken any orders yet?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Why did you enter in the first place?’

‘My father—’

‘Oh yes! Something to do with a vow, wasn’t it? A son, and a manor out of his many for Holy Church if his leg—was it his leg?—mended. Why were
you
chosen?’

‘I was the youngest and, as a child, small. In his opinion I had not the makings of a knight.’

‘Come here, show me your hands.’

I stood up stiffly. The wine I had drunk—sweet and strong—had gone to my head a little and the floor seemed a long way away. I thrust out my hands, regretting their slight unsteadiness and their more than slight uncleanliness; there was no provision for washing in the punishment cell. Guibert took them in his own, which were thin but of steely strength, and bent back my thumbs and flexed my wrists.

‘Your father was right,’ he ,said, giving me back my hands as though they were something he had borrowed. ‘A born penman’s hands; useless for anything heavier than a dagger. Did you play any instrument?’

‘The lute—a little,’ I said humbly.

‘Would you be welcomed at home? Would your father—’

‘He would crack my skull for me and then, if I survived, send me back.’ That was the truth, innocent of exaggeration. My father was a terrible, fierce man. I remembered my three sisters, packed off one by one, as soon as they had reached marriageable age, to marry men they had never seen; they had been terrified, weeping and, save by my brother William and me, completely unpitied. I remembered William himself, thrown from an unmanageable horse and then savagely beaten for allowing himself to be thrown; and my other brother, whom fat nauseated, condemned to eat fat and fat only for a week, ‘to teach him to master his belly.’ More than once in the past I had been grateful that Father had dedicated me to the Church, for my training was left to a tutor and so long as I minded my book and remained unobtrusive I escaped notice. I had been beaten twice; once for trying, in a moment of madness, to ride the horse which had thrown William and again when the curtain wall was being repaired at our castle and I had slipped away to watch the masons at work. Horses and buildings had always been a passion with me but Father considered that interest in either was unsuitable to one destined to be a monk; and a beating from him was a powerful argument. I knew that if I went home now, with some muddled explanation about lack of vocation, my shrift would be very short indeed.

‘A cracked skull would complicate, rather than simplify, the problem of your future,’ my abbot said. ‘And it may be a problem. A few years ago I could have thought of a dozen noblemen to whom I could have recommended you as scribe and musician but these are bad times. The idea of a new crusade hangs in the air and even the greatest are beginning to count mouths at table and practise economy. Also, there are too many young men—and quite a few women—who can handle a pen after a fashion.’ There was another significant little pause. ‘It would be rather a pity, don’t you think, if your sympathy with the starving poor resulted in your joining their numbers? At the moment you are angry with God for letting some peasants starve, angry with Brother Lawrence for not sharing your anger, angry with me for talking cold sense instead of hot theory. But I would quite seriously advise you not to let these angers—which will pass—ruin your whole career. There is a difference, you know, between a career and a vocation. Inside the Church a good penman has an assured future; outside it he may starve. I would advise you against making a hasty decision.’

I knew that he was looking at me with kindly earnestness but for the first time I found myself unable to meet his eyes. I was afraid that my own sudden knowledge might show in mine. For the course he was suggesting to me, I realised, was the one which he had chosen and pursued successfully. Disabled, frustrated, he had taken refuge in the Church and to the same refuge he advised me to take my feeble penman’s hands.

I looked beyond him, at the wall behind him, which was covered by a large piece of tapestry held out from the curve of the wall by a stretchered frame. It portrayed in horrible and realistic detail the scene upon Calvary; nothing of pain and terror and brutality was lacking. Looking at it, seeing the writhing, tortured limbs, the blood, the crown of thorns, the pierced side of Christ, the broken legs of the felons, the women weeping and the Roman soldiers detachedly casting dice for the pitiful pieces of raiment, I thought of the heat of the Eastern sun, the flies which would swarm, the thirst, the consciousness of failure, of being ranked with common malefactors and that final despairing sense of abandonment which had found voice in that inexpressibly desolate cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’

And I knew why I had always known an unadmitted revulsion towards all the stories and pictures and crucifixes. That Good Friday represented the very nadir of human experience; as His idealism and kindness and perception were superior to other men’s, so His final despair and disillusionment were fiercer. And the Church which bore His name had taken this unbearable moment for its very centre—was founded upon the theory of the scapegoat, the universal whipping boy. It advised, prescribed contemplation of this scene of horror. It gloated!

Small wonder, I thought, that a religion founded upon such human catastrophe breeds on the one hand Brother Lawrence, who can watch other men starve, and on the other Abbot Guibert, who can commend the Church as a career.

Guibert’s voice reached me. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you think things over. I shall tell Father Simplon that I think you have been punished enough and you had better return to your ordinary routine. Meanwhile I will communicate with Arcelles.’

With fluency and courage owing in some measure to the effect of the good wine upon my empty stomach, I told him that I had no need to think any more, my mind was made up: I didn’t want to be a churchman, either as a votary or a careerist. I heard my own voice, as if from a distance, giving cogent if rather incoherent reasons. And finally, with a sense of horror I heard myself thanking my lord abbot for his tolerance and kindness, ending, ‘But then, of course, you shouldn’t have been a churchman at all. You should have been King of Jerusalem.’

Guibert was startled but unperturbed.

‘Small wonder they think you uncanny, boy! Well, what of it? I should have been better than that bag of sawdust they crowned. I could have held—’ He broke off. A glint of self-mockery shone in his eyes. ‘There again, you young rebel, you have an instance of God’s inscrutability of purpose. Countless good knights have spent their fortunes, shed their blood, starved and suffered pestilence in attempts to free the holy places from the defiling hand of the infidel. Yet—and I’ve seen this myself a dozen times—even the wind will work against them. And when at last, despite everything, victory
is
obtained, fools and poltroons are permitted to fritter it away and all’s to do again. And a new mass of poverty-stricken, hungry, plague-stricken enthusiasts will fling themselves forward, crying as we did, ‘
Deus vult
’—God wills it—and having said that, you have said all.’ He shifted his leg an inch, wincing at the movement. ‘And it may be that God wills you should cast yourself upon the world. Who am I to gainsay it? The world may have need of you.’ His voice briskened again. ‘But I am not dismissing you. I want no trouble with your father. If you obey me you will go from this room and across to the infirmary where Brother Ambrose will find you useful employment. So you understand?’

I did, perfectly. At Gorbalze the infirmary lay separate and at some distance from the main building and had its own entrance. Brother Ambrose, the infirmarian, was as deaf as the biblical adder and took no notice of anything or anybody outside his own province. I could walk out by the infirmary gateway where there was no porter’s lodge. Father Simplon would hear that I had been ordered to the infirmary, Brother Ambrose would never know that I was sent there; it might be weeks or months before the community at Gorbalze woke up to the fact that it was one novice short. I was going to drop away as unnoticed and unmissed as a leaf from a heavily foliaged tree.

Looking back, I realise that Guibert taught me, without homily, without stripes, a profound lesson in humility.

Part Two: Berengaria’s Fool

This fragment of the lute player’s story is related by Anna, Duchess of Apieta, natural daughter of Sancho, King of Navarre.

It was I who found the singing boy, Blondel, playing his lute for pennies in the market place. It was I who took him up to the castle.

Nowadays I derive much of my entertainment from my memories and the speculations and deductions that arise from them. And sometimes I carry my thoughts to the most fantastic conclusions and say to myself, Good God! Not only would so many lives have pursued a different course but the whole campaign that they call the Third Crusade might have been otherwise if I hadn’t chanced to walk abroad in Pamplona that morning.

Easy enough for me to walk out when and where I would. I had, very probably, more liberty than any other female creature in Navarre, for poor women have duties that bind them and rich women are fettered by convention. The rules that govern women are based upon fear; fear of rape, fear of robbery, fear that the woman herself may have a roving eye. Well, nobody would rape me, twisted, warped thing that I have been from birth with my back curved like a bow and my head seeming to grow out of my chest; it was as much as most men could do to look at me without recoiling; and nobody, in Pamplona at least, would dream of robbing me for, apart from respect for my rank, most people were scared of me and thought me a witch; as for my roving eye, nobody cared where it alighted. What difference could it make?

What difference could it make? I will tell you.

I saw the crowd and heard some notes of music and hobbled up to the edge of the throng. Naturally I could see nothing; but after a moment or two the crowd in front of me began to move backwards and, since I stood my ground, spilt out on either side of me. I realised why. A little man, not much taller than I, was going round holding out his hat; and those who had pressed forward most avidly to share the entertainment now pressed with equal vigour backwards in order to avoid paying for their pleasure. In the space thus cleared for me I could see a shaggy brown bear tethered to one of the market-place hitching posts; and between the bear and me stood the boy, carefully shrouding his lute with a piece of sailcloth.

The matter of first impressions has always been of interest to me. When one sees another person for the first time one is actually seeing with one’s physical eyes the other’s physical form. That never happens again. Always after that first moment one’s eyes are clouded or distorted by what one knows or what one imagines. That I have proved in my own person. People seeing me for the first time are horrified and repulsed; yet the people who live with and know me are not. The words “use” and “accustomed” leap to the mind in this connection but what is use and what is custom save the seeing beyond the purely physical? I am as ugly at the hundredth time of seeing as at the first; Berengaria is as beautiful at the end of a year’s looking as at the beginning. Nothing has changed save the eye of the beholder; and that, with longer acquaintance, has lost its first sharpness.

To that first glance, unclouded by knowledge or emotion, the boy made an instant and interesting appeal. He did not look like a strolling player; he was very shabbily dressed but there was a curious look of breeding about him. His hair, cut short, page-boy fashion, was very fair, straw-coloured in the sunshine and in marked contrast with his tanned skin. His eyes were light, too, and if there had been nothing else noticeable about him they and his very fair hair would have set him apart. But the most striking thing about him was his lack of interest in the situation. Obviously he had done the playing and the little man who was his partner was now attempting to wrest payment from the crowd but he took no interest in that part of the business. His lute shrouded, he walked towards the bear which greeted him ecstatically, rearing upon its hind legs, lifting its forepaws and almost embracing him. He fumbled in the breast of his shabby jerkin and produced an apple which he placed in its groping paws, rubbed the bear behind the ears and then stood, remote, detached, waiting.

The little man, observing me, thrust his hat under my chin and I fumbled in my
aurmônière
and found a silver piece and dropped it in.

‘God bless you, lady; the blessing of heaven upon you, lady,’ he gasped, and returned to his pursuit of more elusive customers.

I hobbled forward and addressed myself to the boy, who turned to me immediately with courteous attention which was followed by a flash of repulsion which, in its turn, gave way to that look of pity which the sight of me often inspires in people of the gentler sort.

‘You play very well,’ I said.

‘It is most kind of you to say so,’ he said, and made me a bow which no courtier could have bettered.

I was, for no reason that I could have named, disconcerted, at a loss for words. I had heard a few notes of music, paid my coin, offered an entirely gratuitous compliment; I should have turned then and hobbled away. But something held me.

‘And the bear,’ I asked, ‘what does he do?’

The boy’s face darkened.

‘He dances,’ he said shortly. ‘And he balances a ball on his nose.’

As he spoke he stepped backwards towards the bear and again laid his hand behind the animal’s ears; and the bear again raised itself, put its paws on his shoulders and thrust its long muzzle into his neck.

‘He loves you,’ I said.

‘Poor brute, yes! I believe he does.’ The musical young voice was rueful.

‘And why does that cause you regret?’ I asked. It seemed to me a most obvious question but the boy looked at me with astonishment, as though I had said something profoundly startling.

‘How do
you
know I regret it?’ he asked with the slightest possible emphasis on the pronoun.

‘By the way you spoke,’ I said.

‘Well,’ he said, and this time I could tell from his voice that he was about to say something very confidential, ‘to tell you the truth, I do regret it. This bear has a hard enough life without being hurt in his feelings. I was a fool… When I fell in with Stefan I was sorry for the bear and did my best to ease his lot. Now, as you say, madam, be loves me; and when I leave Stefan he may miss me.’ The grey eyes looked at me dubiously; the wide mouth curved into a wry self-derisory smile. ‘Stefan holds that animals aren’t human and therefore don’t have any feelings. I don’t tell him that I stay with him for the bear’s sake. But that is so.’

‘Why don’t you buy the bear from him and then leave, taking it with you?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘That is my dearest dream—though what I should then do with the bear I cannot imagine. But you see, the bear dances and I play—and Stefan makes the collection. Now and again, at a wedding for instance, I receive something for myself. Given time, old Snout-face, given time,’ he said, turning to the bear and fondling it again, ‘we’ll get away.’

It was at that moment that the idea came to me. I thought of Berengaria, of her waiting ladies. Catherine, Pila and Maria, shut away up there in the seclusion of the bower; I thought of Coci, our late lute player, so suddenly and so tragically dead.

I said, ‘I could put you in the way of earning a gold crown. There are ladies in the castle who would appreciate your music.’

The castle at Pamplona stands on a mound above the town, protecting, threatening, as you choose to think. I saw the boy look towards it, towards the grey stone walls and battlements outlined against the sunny blue of the sky. I saw him change colour under his tan.

I misunderstood. I thought that he was nervous at the prospect of playing before a more sophisticated audience.

‘They are bored,’ I said. ‘They will be easily pleased. In fact, you will be doing them, as well as the bear, a kindness!’

He looked again at the castle and then back at the bear and finally said with an air of relief, as though the burden of decision had been lifted from him:

‘We shouldn’t profit. Stefan would claim the Payment.’ I put my hand on my
aurmônière
, feeling rich and powerful.

‘I will give Stefan a gold piece too. One for him and one for you. Will that persuade you?’ And without waiting for an answer I turned about and looked for the little man who was now returning, rather dolefully counting the coins in his hat.

‘For a gold crown,’ I said, ‘can I hire your boy for an hour?’

‘Lady,’ he said, ‘for a gold crown you can have him and me and the bear for a fortnight.’

‘I said the boy for an hour,’ I said sharply. I took out the gold piece and held it towards him. He took it, thanked me, spat on it and put it in his pocket and then, calling to the boy that he would meet him there in an hour, went hurrying off to the tavern on the other side of the market place.

‘I am at your service,’ the boy said, and he tucked his lute under his arm and began to walk beside me, curbing his lissom young stride to match my hobble. Before we were out of the market place, however, a little burst of noise broke behind us. The boy turned about sharply and exclaimed, ‘There, that is what I mean!’ in a voice of furious disgust. I turned, too, and saw that about the tethered bear a small group of children had gathered. Some, with sticks in their hands, were poking at the bear while those unarmed stood farther off, peering and throwing little stones. The bear, now upright, now on all fours, was lunging at his chain, furious and impotent.

‘Stefan never thinks,’ said the boy angrily. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to bring the bear with me.’ He turned and ran swiftly towards the hitching post, pushing the children aside. I watched and saw how the animal changed moods from fury to fawning, stood up and licked the boy’s ear and then dropped down and back, padding along behind him like a dog.

We must have made a strange-looking trio as we moved, at my slow pace, towards the castle.

I tried to engage the boy’s attention and by talking put him at his ease. I am usually adept at that since nobody is immediately at ease in my presence but the boy answered me shortly and absent-mindedly; and it seemed to me that as we drew nearer the castle he moved more and more reluctantly until when we came to the dusty slope immediately before the drawbridge it was I, slow as I was, who seemed to be forcing the pace. Finally he halted altogether and stood looking up at the castle’s towers and ramparts and I could see that he was now very pale under his tan and that a fine dew of sweat had broken out on his brow and on his upper lip.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I am more critical of music than any of those within and I think you play beautifully. They’ll be delighted with you and probably make a great fuss of you. And if the princess chooses to reward you herself, don’t be silly enough to say that I have already paid you.’

His face momentarily lost that look of a man bearing physical torment and he gave me a knowing, conspiratorial grin which revealed his white teeth and deepened the sun wrinkles about his eyes. Then the tortured look resumed possession.

‘I’m not frightened,’ he said, ‘though I am grateful to you for trying to dispel the nervousness which I should no doubt be feeling if I had time to think about it. The fact is, madam, that I am terribly torn in my mind. I want to get us’—he laid his hand between the bear’s ears—‘out of Stefan’s clutches and the gold piece would take me a long way towards that end. But I don’t want to go in there.’ He nodded towards the castle.

‘Could you tell me why not?’ I asked.

‘I could,’ he said, and again that very engaging grin shone across the misery of his face as the sun will sometimes on a winter’s day flash out across a sullen landscape. ‘And then you would think me mad as well as ungrateful.’

‘Shall I guess?’ I suggested lightly, trying to help him. ‘A fortuneteller at a fair when you were a little boy warned you to keep away from castles because unless you did a stone from a rampart would shatter your brainpan or a drawbridge would collapse under you and you’d drown in the moat.’

He threw back his head and gave a great crow of laughter, and between the sun wrinkles his astonishingly light clear eyes looked at me with amusement, with pleasure and with relief. Then, with that same abrupt transition to gravity, he said;

‘It is quite as silly as that. I’ll tell you. Last evening when we arrived there was a red sunset and I looked at the castle blocked in all black and solid against the glow. And I felt that I was not seeing it for the first time and that it boded me no good. It was like recognising an enemy. I imagined that we—Stefan and the bear and I—would have a poor reception in Pamplona, perhaps be chased out of the town. And here I am, invited to enter the castle itself and superbly well paid to do so. Is that just an accident?’ He looked down into my face with an earnest scrutiny which made me uncomfortable.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can assure you that no ill awaits you within. In what we call the Queen’s Tower there are four ladies who lead a dull life and who would welcome diversion. And the bear could go into a kennel and have a pot of honey—they like honey, don’t they? But,’ I added, ‘I have no wish to persuade you to enter against your will. You must decide.’ I looked at him and was immediately the victim of a quite crazy impulse. I am ordinarily a little mean about money because, although I have plenty, I am saving towards an end.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘if it eases your bother, here is your gold piece. Take it and your bear and go away and avoid whatever it is that threatens you if you enter.’

He looked at the coin I proffered but made no move to accept it.

‘You mock me,’ he said a trifle sullenly. ‘And you have already paid Stefan! To cheat and take charity because a castle looked black against the sunset would be ridiculous. I’d remember and scorn myself as long as I lived. If you please…’ he said, and with the same incongruous grace with which he had bowed when I first praised him, he stood aside and indicated that I should lead the way across the drawbridge.

Pleased that my little plan to relieve the tedium of the bower was going, after all, to succeed, I led the way in; and once inside, the boy shed his uneasiness and began to look about him with interest. We went to the stables and saw the bear safely kennelled and I sent a young groom running to seek honey and gave another the strictest instructions that the animal was not to be teased or interfered with.