The Lute Player (55 page)

‘It would be better if he were,’ Blondel said harshly and then added—but the break had been perceptible, ‘Captivity to a man of his kind must be the worst form of torture. And the uncertainty is torment to those who care for him. My lady, will you lend me four crowns?’

‘It is a deal of money,’ I said thriftily. But I smiled, pleased because it was to me he had turned.

‘I’ll use it to good purpose.’

‘What purpose?’

‘In the first place, I need a new lute.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what happened to your own?’

‘I sold it. I kept it almost to the end. It earned my bread. But when I was so near the border that I knew I shouldn’t starve before I found someone to whom to tell my story, I sold it and hired a horse.’

‘Ever since I heard you had returned I have been longing to hear the whole story. Oh, Blondel, there is so much for you to tell me; all about—’

‘I will tell you everything another time. Stories to entertain you till the end of time—in return for four crowns now.’

‘A lute won’t cost even half of one,’ I said.

He laughed—and his laugh had altered; I had so often striven to make him laugh in the old days, to enjoy the gay, wholehearted, boyish sound of mirth.

‘All women are alike,’ he said. ‘I’ve noticed it a hundred times. A man will toss you what he can afford and if half an hour later you’re drunk in a ditch it’s all one to him; but if a woman reluctantly hands you a penny it’s, “Now don’t go spending it in the tavern, young man; what you want is a new pair of shoes!” Can’t you lend me four crowns and ask no questions?’

Again I was aware how much he had altered. In the old days he would have blushed, been hesitant and diffident if he had had to borrow. Now he was wheedling; his voice had almost the professional beggar’s seductiveness but defiant and mocking too.

I had my purse and my money in it because here in our temporary room I had no lockfast place. I took out four crowns and laid them in his palm and closed his fingers over them. And in an effort to match my manner to his, I said:

‘Now don’t go spending it in a tavern, young man. What you need is a new tunic.’ And that was all too true. The one he wore was shabby and had been patched, and the patch had broken away, and it was soiled and crumpled too. Staring at it—at first in mockery and then in earnest—I recognised it as the one Berengaria had provided for him to wear in England all those years ago. And he had grown—I saw that with a curious, weakening clutch at my heart. He was no stouter but his shoulders had widened and his arms lengthened. He’d gone here and there, always on somebody else’s business and nobody had thought to give him new clothes. My throat swelled and ached with love. My dear one, to whom I would have given everything in the world that I could lay hands on! I suddenly spoke from my heart.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘when will you have done with all this chasing hither and thither? I still long to go to Apieta and build that house. Let’s leave the kings and queens and the knights and the bishops and the castles—this is a chess game and we’re just the pawns and I, for one, am sick of being a pawn! Let’s hop down from the board and go about our own business.’

‘I have just this one more thing to do. Then I swear, my lady, nothing in the world shall stand between me and building that house—if you still want it.’

‘And what is this one thing?’ I was willing then to brush anything aside. To walk out of the door and start for Apieta that very afternoon.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you promise not to say a word to anyone. I wouldn’t for all the world raise a false hope but there is just one thing that I, and I alone, can do. And you, Anna Apieta, put the idea into my head.’ He told me what he meant to do.

I shrugged myself out of my groti.

‘You must have this,’ I said. ‘I can easily get another. And of course you need more money. Fool to be setting off with four crowns on such an errand!’ I opened my purse and was emptying it into his when the door of the Queen Mother’s room opened and the powerful old voice shouted into the gathering gloom, ‘Amyas!’

‘God speed you,’ I said. ‘Have a care to yourself. And come straight back to me.’

VI

Eleanor Aquitaine was no fool. When, seven months later, Blondel came back and said, ‘I have found him. He is in a castle called Tenebreuse at Drurenberg which is in Austria hut not strictly in the archduke’s jurisdiction,’ she had wit enough and cunning enough not to begin screaming to the world that Richard had been found by a lute player who had spent seven months on foot in the Empire sedulously playing, by every castle wall, every tower, every prison, the first verse of a song which he and Richard had composed in Sicily, waiting to be answered, plodding on, disappointed and finally almost despairing until the dramatic moment when, as the first verse,
Sing of my mail
, died into silence, another voice took up the strain and the words,
Sing of my sword
, told Blondel that his quest had ended.

No, that was a fantastic story, more fitted for legend than legal evidence; and Eleanor, taking up her squeaking quill, merely wrote letters which began, “I have incontrovertible evidence that Richard of England is held in durance in the Castle Tenebreuse at Drurenberg.” And, in writing to Leopold of Austria she had guile enough to add that he would be “astonished and concerned” to know this fact.

“Incontrovertible evidence”—that phrase combined with Leopold’s guilty conscience and his desire for the young Eleanor to spur him to action. It took His Holiness by the elbow and said, ‘Now, now—no more vacillation is possible!’ It frightened the Emperor who had always said, ‘When we have proof… When we know…’ Most guilty persons will confess if somebody looks them straight in the eye and says, “I have incontrovertible evidence.”

And such a burst of confession, of hand washing, of dragging out the other person’s dirty linen began in Europe at this time that it would take three good scribes a lifetime to give the details.

Amidst all this bustle Blondel was completely overlooked and forgotten, save by Eleanor who gave him a hundred marks—with many an inward groan, I am certain, for already the word “ransom” was being bandied about.

I never understood that ransom. Richard was not a prisoner of war. He was a returned crusader inoffensively making his way home through the country of a man who, however bitterly offended he may have been personally, was at peace with England and the rest of Richard’s domains. He was thrown into a dungeon with no reason given, nor any trial, and his whereabouts kept so secret that those most eager for his release were helpless. And when at last his enemies were forced into the open and that farcical trial was held at Hagenau, he was acquitted of every charge.

One would have thought that if any money were concerned it would have been a large sum paid to Richard as indemnity for fourteen months’ reasonless imprisonment. However, the fact was that Richard hadn’t a single strong friend, not an ally nor a relative capable of saying to the Emperor, “Set him free or I will come and make you.” Every really important man—with the possible exception of the Grand Master of the Templars, who had fought with Richard on crusade, hated him like poison and would have been delighted to see him hanged. Philip of France, who had left Palestine with the promise that he would do nothing to hurt Richard’s interests while he remained to fight, had broken that promise a dozen times and was hand in glove with John, the would-be usurper. England was divided and weak. So when all the commotion died down, when charges and counter-charges had been made and refuted, when Philip and Leopold had tried to justify their conduct by accusing Richard of the murder of Conrad of Montferrat—who had laughingly mentioned his own death sentence at a supper table within arm’s reach of me—then it was that the Emperor, with unequalled audacity, declared that Richard could go free on the payment of one hundred and fifty thousand marks. And nobody uttered so much as a formal protest. There was just the old white-haired, wild-eyed woman saying, ‘It must be found!’ and Hubert Walter, sorely anxious as to what had been taking place in England while he was at Hagenau, saying, ‘Madam, I doubt if at this moment there is so much—God help us, half so much—money in all England.’

I think that when Henry the Stern set the ransom at this impossible sum he had done so after a pretty shrewd assessment of the resources of England and Aquitaine and reckoned that the money would never be paid and Richard would languish on in prison for the rest of his days. But, like most of his kind, Henry underrated the ordinary common people. To them Richard Plantagenet was a hero whatever he might seem to his peers; and for every commander who cherished a grudge on account of a brusque word, an uncivil criticism or a countermanded order there were fifty lowly archers who remembered that Richard, even at his busiest, had always found time to see that their food was as edible, their quarters comfortable as his own. And for all the masses who had never been to war with him he represented something not quite ordinary, something larger and more colourful than life. They were proud of him, they owned him; their King had been the greatest leader, the best fighter, the one who struck fear into the Saracens; and of course he would have taken Jerusalem if he’d been given half a chance. Also—and this should not have been overlooked—Richard had been for a long time absent from his domains; that made it very easy for men who felt themselves wronged and downtrodden to say, “Things wouldn’t be like this if the King was here.” The rulers who were there were, like all rulers, unjust, extortionate, cruel; the ruler who was absent was just and mild and humane, as well as being a popular hero.

The scribes and the clerks who deal with such matters reckoned that when all the demands were met every one of Richard’s subjects had been stripped of one fourth of his possessions and most had paid the dues gladly, without complaint or protest. Even the religious houses, exempt from secular exactions and rather given in such circumstances to plead: ‘This is not
our
treasure but God’s; touch it at your peril!’ opened their secret stores and contributed heavily. In Aquitaine every sheep was sheared to the hide; and it was quite a common thing to hear a man crying in the market that half the price this cow made or a third of the sum this horse fetched was going to be given towards “the great ransom of our liege lord, now held in durance vile by the Emperor.” The word “German” came into popular abusive use, just as “Assassin” had been in Palestine. It was synonymous with everything that was treacherous and disgusting or, running down-scale, bothersome or awkward. ‘My German old pot sprang a leak this morning and put my fire out,’ I once heard a woman say to another.

While all this was going on in the outer world Berengaria and I were back in Le Mans, precariously and uncomfortably housed in a corner of the bishop’s house. Less than a week after Blondel had set out on his secret errand, Eleanor had found time to cast her eye over Egidio and give her consent to the marriage. So Joanna had left us and we had been very tactfully and considerately but firmly pushed out of the castle at Rouen. Even the few mean rooms we had occupied were needed for the accommodation of the visitors who perpetually arrived to discuss business with Eleanor, with Walter of Rheims, with Hubert Walter when he could spare time to come to Rouen. There wasn’t room for two redundant women.

Berengaria was now the kingpin, the moving spirit and Eleanor was no longer comfortable in the presence of her daughter-in-law. I could understand her feelings perfectly. She was the alchemist whose experiment in gold making has failed and who wishes to wash all his unsuccessful ingredients into the gutter. She had hoped that the marriage would be successful, that an heir would be bred, that the wife—so lovely and so lovable—would work the miracle of conversion. From the moment when she had set eyes on Berengaria until the day she left Messina Eleanor, the least meek of women, the least tolerant, had gone out of her way to be pleasant and agreeable to her son’s bride. But the miracle had not happened and when they met again Berengaria roused in Eleanor nothing but a distaste and a memory of failure.

Berengaria was Queen of England, the legal, impeccably behaved, unchallengeable consort; it was impossible to ignore her; but the sight of her, the mere mention of her name reduced Richard from the status of favourite son, great crusader, most famous knight, wronged King to that of plain bad husband. And that Eleanor resented. And now and again while we were in Rouen some overpunctilious messenger or ambassador would seek audience of Berengaria who was, after all, Queen of England until Richard’s death was an acknowledged fact; and every time that happened Eleanor was irritated.

So we went back to Le Mans and did our waiting there. When the ransom was being raised Berengaria gave many of her jewels and extracted one hundred marks from Father. That was the last of her requests he ever acceded to for he died, dear man, shortly afterwards.

The news that the ransom had been raised in full was announced one Sunday morning in church and there were great rejoicings.

‘So now he will soon be home,’ Berengaria said; and although they were almost the same words in which she had received news that the crusading army had turned back from Jerusalem her voice, her manner of speaking revealed to me that her mood was no longer one of purely pleasurable anticipation. Doubt and something like dismay tinged it. While Richard was lost and while he was imprisoned her pretence had been very easy to maintain; now, very soon, he would be back, unwilling or unable to share the pretence, exposing her to fresh humiliation.

But even to me she did not admit her doubt, her mixture of feelings. With that dogged courage of hers she went about making her small, pathetic preparations to receive him, ordering a new gown, new shoes; saying, ‘When Richard, comes…’ asking anxiously, ‘Have I changed? Do I look older?’

There are days in early autumn when the trees stand, still green but touched with gold, warily waiting for what the day brings; sunshine, then they take on their ripe summer look and no leaf falls; but if rain comes and wind, how they despair, strip off each yellow-touched leaf and, shivering, moan against the winter.

Berengaria was like a tree at such an indecisive season.

Eleanor’s behaviour was the first cold blast. With the ransom money and an impressive train she left for Mentz where she was to meet the Emperor and reclaim her son. She left without a word either of information or invitation to Berengaria and was indeed three days gone before we heard of it. She had, it is true, matters of great urgency and weight on her mind and she had long ago dismissed Berengaria as a person of no importance but the callousness of her behaviour was nonetheless inexcusable.

Berengaria wept and threw herself about the room, crying:

‘She should have taken me! Who should be there if not his wife? What will people think and say? How can I preserve even the pretence that all is well when his mother treats me like an old castoff clout?’

There was no answer to that.

‘What have I done,’ she demanded, ‘that this should happen to me? I loved him with all my heart. I meant to be a good wife. And even now I ask so little—just to be saved from being a laughing-stock for the whole world. Now when the eyes of all Christendom are turned towards Mentz and everyone of any importance in his kingdom is there to give him welcome, I am left behind. What have I done to be treated so shamefully?’

There was no answer to that, either.

The wretched day stretched endless but at last she was exhausted and allowed me to put her to bed with a cup of wine, into which I had slipped a drop or two of old Mathilde’s medicine. She cried on for a while and then slept.

I was exhausted, too, and I did not fall asleep so soon; in the morning I slept on and was awakened by her shaking me.

‘Wake up, Anna. We’re going back to Rouen today. He must go there; it is his capital as well as his favourite town. And I shall be there when he arrives. I won’t be overlooked and forgotten again. I’ll show that old she-cat who is Queen of England!’