The Lute Player (48 page)

It is very easy to condemn: it is indeed wiser and safer to condemn. One’s own immunity from taint is better established by loud protestations of horror and disgust than by speculation or attempts to understand.

What does puzzle me about it all is the inescapable sense of shame which attends even the thought of the subject. It is, we say, “against nature”—but then so are so many things: patricide, matricide, infanticide—yet the mention of them brings no blush to the cheek. True, it is sterile, it defies God’s order to “be fruitful and multiply” but the same is true of all monastic and conventual vows which are considered most honourable. It is not forbidden in the Ten Commandments; nor does it take rank with the seven deadly sins. Yet in all but its addicts it violates some deep instinct and starts a recoil which even pity, even curiosity cannot mitigate. Not that the addicts escape shame. The difficulty of approach, the constant danger of rebuff, the constant risk of mockery are all pregnant with shame. So different from the normal procedure; for, even at that low level where the coupling of man and woman is free and easy and not a matter of family or social procedure a girl can rebuff a man and he can laugh and say, ‘She would have none of me,’ and be lowered neither in his own esteem nor in that of his small world. And the way to a girl’s bed is usually so well posted with familiar signs, with soft or provocative glances, sweet words or kind gestures, that none but a man set on folly need err therein. But this outlaw path is necessarily blind and leads to scenes like the one I shared, fantastic to partake in, most horrible to remember.

When everything had been made plain between us I—for some, quite inexplicable reason—was afflicted by a sense of guilt. I began to remember with painful clarity all the times when he had been kind to me and had shown me favour or indulgence. I was conscious, as it were, of a burden of undischarged debt; and that in turn made me angry. I owed him nothing, I told myself savagely. If he had all along been mistaken in me that was his affair and why should I, on this score at least utterly innocent, feel guilty? But it would not be so summarily dismissed. The feeling of having failed him nagged at me and I kept remembering Raife’s last words. And then my mind took the most perverse turn of all and I began to reckon his many virtues, his great courage, his justice, his attention to detail, his lively mind, his fortitude in adversity; even the fact that he was, when he chose, a minstrel without peer leapt up to give me a sharp stab. I had always preserved a sense of proportion in my attitude towards him, had never fallen into the state of hero worship as so many diverse kinds of men had done. In the great days of his triumphs and resounding exploits some corner of my mind had stayed sour. Now in the days of his failure, with his fatal weakness exposed, my cursed minnesinger’s art set to work on him and I saw him as a great man, a hero—rebuffed by a sniffling, prudish little lute player.

I could not explain why I felt guilty towards him but one evening, lying on the verge of sleep and thinking over the matter, I did understand with a shock of surprise why it was that I could now admire him without reserve. It was very simple. I was no longer jealous of him. As simple as that. In the eyes of the world he was Berengaria’s husband but she could never belong to him as a woman should belong to a man. He was no more capable of enjoying her than I was. Therefore, my body could forgive him and my mind, following suit, could admit that he was the best knight, the most inspired commander, the grandest minstrel of his day.

Whereupon my sick sense of guilt swelled larger.

We rode on together. There was now a coolness, a consciousness of the unspoken thing between us and our eyes were reluctant to meet. Three days’ ride out from Seleucia I choked out an inquiry whether he would prefer to ride on alone.

He said, ‘Bless you, boy, no!’ And it occurred to me that perhaps this uncomfortable situation was not unfamiliar to him. Well past his thirtieth year, he might have met many similar rebuffs.

We reached Styria and there the good weather broke and a furious, bone-searching wind from the north blew rain and sleet in our faces. We were obliged to abandon our habit of sleeping in any handy sheltered place and take to lying at inns, always filthily dirty and exorbitant in their charges. Retiring became a matter of embarrassment to me; so often there was only one bed and so seldom a third traveller. Perhaps Richard guessed; he always made great show of tiredness, stretching and yawning and declaring that he should sleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. And one day as we talked on the road—for we did still talk, quite avidly at times—out of a conversation, I think about army discipline, the word “rape” cropped up.

‘With that,’ ‘Richard said with complete calmness, ‘I have naturally no sympathy at all. Even along my own line I consider reciprocity to some degree desirable.’ And he looked me in the face and laughed. So set your mind on that score, boy, the look said. I felt silly and shamed.

I was shamed again, and perhaps with better reason, outside Graz. Richard grumbled blasphemously about the weather but said it was healthier than the heat of Palestine and seemed immune to it but I developed the worst cold I have ever had. My bones ached, my nose and eyes dripped rheumily, my head ached and great hammers beat in my ears. Dreading his sympathy more than his scorn, I made as little of my affliction as possible but he noticed and at the first inn we reached after mid-afternoon he said, ‘We’ll stay here. What you need is a brick to your feet and some mulled wine.’

There was a hind in the yard and we left the horses to his care; usually I saw them safely stabled and fed. Richard himself mulled the wine while the woman of the house heated the brick.

In the morning I was much better but our horses had vanished. Whether they had been stolen or whether, as the innkeeper protested in dumb show, insecurely stabled and had wandered, no one could say with surety. The stable was certainly nothing more than a piece of thatch supported by two posts and I should have hobbled the horses before leaving them there. On the other hand, horses tend to huddle into any shelter.

Richard was furious but restrained himself from violence because of the unwisdom of drawing too much attention to himself. The landlord, with wide gestures, invited him to search the whole village which he did, very thoroughly, anxious to find, if not our horses, some horses capable of carrying us on the next stage of our journey. But there was not a horse in the whole village. Four draught oxen, six cows and an incredibly aged donkey which worked a water wheel were all the livestock, Richard reported. And, ‘Shall I buy the donkey?’ he asked. ‘It could carry you today, I
think
.’

I protested that I could walk. The landlord, putting himself into the attitude of a child riding a hobbyhorse, bobbed up and down and said, ‘Eedburg. Eedburg.’ We understood that to mean that at Eedburg we should find horses. A very precise and accurate piece of information it was, too; what he did not convey to us in mime was that Eedburg was seventy-five miles distant.

At Eedburg there were horses—we saw six in a field—and the rain clouds lifted to let through the sun and the road forked. Three good things. We had been alert for the fork in the road for the road which ran westwards to Augsburg and the Rhine; and now here it was. Eedburg lay in the fork with an inn of some size and substance lying at the point of the V and on the far side of the right-hand road, which led to Vienna, there was a field with six horses in it. A wall of roughly piled stones separated the field from the road and we leaned on it for a moment, looking at the horses. Then Richard straightened himself, set his hand under my arm and propelled me towards the inn. He called for mulled wine and, when it came, lifted his cup and said, ‘You have walked valiantly.’

Then he said, ‘If horses are as rare as they seem hereabouts we shall need money.’ And he opened the plain leather pouch which hung at his plain leather belt and began to count out his coins. Then, sweeping them together, he said:

‘Losing the horses and having to walk has delayed us somewhat. Passages down the Rhine will cost money and by that time news may have leaked. We might need money in a hurry. Better be prepared. I have two salable things—’ He broke off and smiled at me. ‘You don’t carry a secret hoard, by any chance?’ I confessed my complete dearth of money.

‘I have these,’ he said, flattening his gloves out on the dirty table, ‘and my belt.’ His hand went to his waist where, under the leather belt, under his tunic, lay the embroidered belt which Berengaria had worked for him during the long time of waiting. It was made of blue velvet, stiffened with a length of woven horsehair and lined with soft leather. The embroidery was done in gold and silver thread and a pattern of pearls and sapphires was worked all round it. I remembered how she had brooded over the design, how diligently she had stitched, how she had overlooked the craftsman who pierced the needle holes in the stones and finally sacrificed her diamond brooch to make the clasp. It would be a pity, I thought, to sell it before the need for money was more urgent.

‘This is a small place,’ I said. ‘The belt would not fetch its price here.’

‘The gloves, then,’ he said, and looked at them with affection and regret. I looked, too, and realised that, once fine, they were now shabby from long wear. Made of tough goatskin, well cut, firmly sewn, they were still shapely and whole but the palms were scored and scruffed and in several places on the pearl-embroidered backs threads had worn through so that pearls had been lost and the pattern broken. Struck by the same thought, Richard took out his knife and carefully severed some of the loose-hanging threads.

‘My one finery,’ he said. ‘It goes against the grain to part with them.’ And again his hand went to his waist. Remembering the considerable amount of gold still in his pouch, and bearing in mind that his notions about money, especially where his personal expenditure was concerned, were warped by a panic niggardliness, I asked, ‘Is it necessary to sell them
now
? In such a small town and while you still have money?’

‘I look ahead. This is no time to be sentimental,’ he said. ‘Then I will go out and sell them,’ I offered, laying my hands hastily on the gloves. ‘You might be noticed.’

The market place lay a little back from the Vienna road. I tried first a booth where decorative trinkets were for sale and a gnome-like little man, as soon as he saw that I was anxious to sell, not to buy, waved his arms and drove me off with what sounded like curses, as though I were a straying bullock. On the other side of the open square I found a booth where leather articles were displayed. There a more agreeable man took the gloves, turned them about, nodding his head over the pearls, shaking it over the worn palms and the places where the threads had given way.

As he hesitated a man, plainly a citizen of some substance and importance, crossed the square and approached the booth. He was a short, thickset man, dressed in velvet and he was followed by three little dogs, the like of which I had never seen before. Their bodies were half as long again as those of ordinary dogs, their legs very short, the front ones bowed. They had flap ears, bright intelligent eyes and their hides were so smooth and sleek and shining that they, too, seemed velvet-clad. Fantastic as unicorns.

The booth owner, with a significant glance at me, laid down the gloves and turned his attention to the newcomer. The little dogs surged about me and I bent over them as they scrabbled at my hose with their overlarge blunt paws. When I straightened myself again the owner of the dogs had Richard’s gloves in hand and was studying them with every sign of approval. He and the booth holder were conversing in their own language and though I understood no word I gathered that he had come in search of just such gloves. Finally he opened his pouch, took out two gold pieces, held them up inquiringly and then laid them on the edge of the booth. It was twice as much as any reasonable person could have hoped to make from the sale and I was delighted but hesitant. The man who lived by making and selling leather goods should, I felt, have a picking. But the dog owner turned and strutted away across the square and the booth owner lifted his shoulders, spread his hands and smiled. I took up the coins, thanked him and made my way back to the tavern. At the door I became aware that one of the little dogs had followed me. I bent over, touched the velvet head, where the skin was all puckered into wrinkles of bewilderment or concentration, and said, ‘Go home. Go back to your master,’ and waved my hand in a gesture of dismissal. Then I went in.

‘Well?’ Richard asked.

‘I sold them. And very well. They chanced to fit a passing citizen with a full purse.’ Rather proudly I laid the two gold pieces on the table.

‘I don’t need them now. Perhaps it would be as well if you carried them, Blondel,’ Richard said. ‘I thought just now when you said you had nothing, what would have happened if some ill chance had parted us?’

‘I have my lute. I can always sing for my supper.’

‘True. Nevertheless, pouch the glove money and hold against our need. I’ll go now and bargain for the horses.’

‘I’ll go,’ I said. For throughout all this journey I had never been quite easy in my mind when we were stationary and people were able to look at him closely. Everywhere I looked for the flicker of wonder, of recognition. His looks were so remarkable, his fame so widespread and old soldiers were everywhere. ‘I am, you must admit, a shrewd bargainer,’ I said, ‘and I do know a good horse when I see one.’

‘And you are blue with cold,’ Richard said. It may have been true; it was a sunny day but a biting wind was blowing and I had shuddered as I stood waiting by the booth. ‘You stay here by the fire and finish the wine. I’ll bring up the horses and whistle.’

I gave way to temptation. Ever since I had set foot on the
St. Josef
I had been a little more sober than I liked to be. It is not that Richard would have minded but he was, on the whole, a very abstemious man himself and I could not with any seemliness outdrink him. So now, like a wallowing hog, I turned firewards and guzzled.

Once I heard the sound of hooves but certainly no whistle; and though I hastily set down my cup, gathered my cloak round me and made for the door, whoever had ridden by had disappeared by the time I had rounded the inn and looked first along one road and then the other. Anxiety began to gnaw at me. I reminded myself that Richard was a hard bargainer and that time always seems long when one is waiting. I went back to the fire, kicked a dry log into a blaze and thought that I would not begin to worry until it was consumed. It blazed, it became a hollow red shell, it fell apart into pinkish dust. Then I got up and went out, straight to the field where we had seen the horses. There were now five in the field, their tails and manes streaming out on the wind.