Revenge of the Rose

by Nicole Galland

  And the mealtime was ridiculous: on various feeble pretexts, each wife was given her turn to rise from her place and travel around the edge of the tables to bow before the king and by extension, to Willem— before returning to her wordlessly masticating spouse. They were literally on display for him, and the husbands seemed to have no argument with it. The conceit of courtly love was usually adulterous and doomed never to be consummated, but all the same— arranging it by collusion this way embarrassed him. Fate, or God, was supposed to cast one’s lady into one’s life.

  As the trestles were being cleared, after a final course of figs and dates, Konrad winked at Willem. “What do you think of the ladies of the court?”

  Willem smiled politely. “I think there is a sudden influx of them.”

  “Oh, you noticed that, did you?” Konrad grinned. “So did our little friend there— ” He pointed to Jouglet, who had sidled up to the Duchess of Swabia and was crooning things to her in a low voice that made her blush.

  Konrad turned suddenly to Paul with friendly offhandedness, as if he had not just spent all of dinner with his back to him. “Jouglet certainly likes the ladies, eh?”

  Paul looked, characteristically, like he was seeking an excuse to sneer. “The minstrel is entirely too forward in his attentions.”

  Willem sat up a little straighter to see around Konrad. “He has never been improper to any female in my ken,” he assured the cardinal.

  Konrad laughed expansively, and pushed Willem by the breastbone back into his seat. “Of course he has!” he countered. “Jouglet is a demon with his appetites— there’s never any doubt of his predatory tendencies, despite his being a scrawny youth.”

  Willem realized Konrad’s ulterior motive and wisely refrained from further comment.

  “Predatory like Nicholas?” Paul asked blandly, a comment his brother pointedly ignored.

  “Willem is quite the demon too,” Konrad went on. “The chivalrous demeanor is an act to fool the husbands. Isn’t it, Willem? You know what they say about men with noses like that! How many of these ladies send you aflame?”

  Willem looked out over the pleasant-looking collection of women in the hall. Nobody stood out. “They all have…promise,” he said obediently in the most lecherous voice he could muster, which wasn’t very lecherous.

  “Yes they do.” Konrad smiled. “Let us watch them fulfill that promise.”

  He clapped his hands and the chamberlain entered from the upper corridor, playing a falsetto march on a small, but very loud, pipe of horn. He led a trail of squires, walking in twos with carved and gilded chests between them. The chests were placed squarely in the center of the hall below the largest iron chandelier. “In honor of the great Willem of Dole’s generosity to me yesterday on the tourney field,” Konrad announced to the room, “I have been inspired to mete out indulgences to the honorable ladies of the court. Boys, remove the lids to those chests.” In unison, the squires did so. The honorable ladies of the court squealed.

  The chests were full of sensational robes and kirtles: sumptuous brocade silks and fancy, exotic weavings; sleeves edged with gold; silk and leather girdles; fabrics that troubadours could drone on about for hours. Some of the younger husbands looked startled to recognize the contents— they were the chests of “costumes” the common women had worn at Konrad’s summer bacchanal. Since the clothes were donned so momentarily in the summer camp, they were not the least worn and passed as new.

  “Today I am King Arthur in my generosity,” Konrad bellowed out over the oohing and ahhing as the ladies flocked around to grab at dresses. “Take as much as pleases you. Gentlemen, you may assist them.”

  Willem, watching from the emperor’s side, saw Jouglet wander over to the chests and run a critical eye over all that was inside. The fiddler’s hand darted into the farthest chest and out again, extracting a tunic of red silk. The sleeves and collar were heavily embroidered with gold and silver, and the whole trimmed with ermine. With a very feminine gesture, the minstrel held it up. It was extremely large, and hardly the most decorated or daintiest thing in the chests, but it sufficed to make a woman of its wearer. “I’ll be the best-dressed lady here today!” the minstrel called out playfully over the hubbub, and most eyes flickered briefly toward the voice. Willem almost leapt up in alarm.

  Jouglet batted pale lashes and blew kisses to all the men nearby. The Duke of Lorraine, kneeling by a chest helping his pregnant wife to untangle a green robe, received an actual kiss on the brow. “Do I not make a lovely lady?” Jouglet demanded. “Shall I put this on?” In response to a mild round of laughter, she pulled it over her head, over her clothing, and looked extremely lumpy. She grabbed the tunic with her fingertips approximately where nipples would be found, and called to the usher, “Milord, a pair of apples would be well placed here! Who wants to be my wooer?” And as Willem nearly yelped in disbelief, the minstrel ordered, “Willem of Dole, good sir, come try to woo me to your bower.” She struck a highly unoriginal pose of one who is coy yet lovesick: one hand supine at her forehead, the other stretched behind her. Willem felt spellbound; her convincing pantomime of a young man doing an unconvincing pantomime of a young woman bordered on the diabolical.

  Everyone called out, “Willem! Willem of Dole! To the lady!” He looked at Jouglet, flummoxed. Jouglet winked at him audaciously for the benefit of their audience, but the expression on the minstrel’s face was not playful. It was a challenge.

  So he rose from his place by the king, and the applause grew louder, bolstered by whistles of encouragement. People cleared a path for him as he walked unsurely toward the minstrel in the middle of the room. His tentativeness evaporated the longer people looked at him, however; he was emboldened by his newfound celebrity, and by the time he reached Jouglet he was feeling, uncharacteristically, almost cocky.

  He went down gingerly on one bruised knee and bowed his head. “My Lady,” he said dutifully. “You are the shining star of my existence, and I would give anything to come to rest against your bosom.” Giggles and catcalls percolated from the onlookers.

  “‘Tis a goodly request,” Jouglet said sweetly, blatantly imitating Lienor’s diction, and dropped down onto one knee to be beside him. The minstrel laid a hand daintily on the far side of his head— then roughly shoved his cheek down onto her chest.

  There was a swelling softness there, a small but distinct pillow of femininity, that Willem’s ear and jaw could feel through the bulk of layered clothes. He had seen her breasts last night, in the firelight, had stared at them and the rest of her as if at a succubus, but already he had erased the details from his mind. This was something he could not erase; the immediacy of it seared itself like a brand to his skin.

  Without pulling his head away, his eyes glanced up at her face, and— with his head so clearly couched against a woman— he read something feminine into the features too. She was a handsome woman. Not pretty, not delicate as ladies were supposed to be, she was not daintily perfect like his sister or seductively round like the widow, but it was a face to like enormously— and it was coupled with a spirit he had admired for years. He was staggered by his stupidity at turning her away last night. Feeling his eyes peering up, Jouglet glanced down and met his gaze a moment, grinned privately for a flicker of an instant. The grin made Willem’s stomach flop over, especially as he became aware of the royal brothers’ eyes upon him.

  * * *

  Beside him, Konrad sensed his brother’s agitation without actually looking at him. He turned to ask Paul what was troubling him, hoping it was something he could exacerbate.

  But there was a look on Paul’s face that Konrad, running through a mental index of their adolescent run-ins, recognized: the sly, gleeful, sleazy triumph that usually presaged an enormous falling-out between them. He did not follow Paul’s gaze to see the cause. He didn’t need to. He knew Paul was looking at Jouglet and Willem.

  * * *

  Jouglet fluttered pale lashes at Willem very publicly. “Oh, sir, you are such a
handsome man, so valiant and loyal and courtly and generous and strong— and very handsome, sir, I’ll tell you that. The only thing standing in the way of our true love is…” She looked at him with such a feminine affectation of devotion that he actually blushed— then the expression vanished rapidly, and she shoved him away from her, demanding in a nasty voice, “What’s your pedigree, sir? A mere landless knight? Bah! I make it a rule only to fall in love with my peers or betters.” She thumbed her nose at him theatrically.

  The audience, young ladies and old lords alike, laughed at a sentiment that all recognized, complacently, as true to life.

  Willem held up his hand for silence and retorted affectionately, “But my lady, does not pure love raise up the humblest to the highest? Am I not instantly of higher status simply for loving you as purely as I do?”

  Jouglet dropped the feminine demeanor and announced with gusto to their audience, “This knight is a student of Andreas Cappellanus, the fashionable French chaplain! That’s from his first dialogue on perfect love!”

  “It is?” said Willem, startled. “I thought I’d made it up.” Their audience responded to this with approving laughter, which further flustered him. “I’m serious,” he explained earnestly to the room at large, and that only prompted more amusement.

  “A seasoned disciple of The Art of Courtly Love!” Jouglet declared, determined to keep Willem from looking like an absolute naïf. “If every man in this hall strove to be so gentle, this would be a much-ennobled aristocracy, with much happier ladies.” The minstrel winked at the ladies by the chests. “Any one of you could be deserving of that gallantry, you know.” She went on, feigning not to see Willem turn scarlet. “He’s a little shy, so you would need to let him know, discreetly, that his efforts would not be in vain. He’s staying at Walther’s inn by the southern gate of town. You may entrust messages to Erec his squire— the burly blond pimply-faced fellow about my height— and also, of course, to me, my darlings.” She gave them the smile that Jouglet the Troubadour gave them before performing any love song, and despite the female costume now, most of them responded, as always, with hopeful blushes. Willem was simultaneously embarrassed, impressed, flattered, and amazed by Jouglet’s performance, and for several long moments was too distracted even to register what was going on around him.

  By the time he had collected himself, the dresses were all dispersed and couples were beginning to exit the hall.

  “Chess!” Konrad was informing him cheerfully, joining them in the center of the room. “And bring your fiddle, Jouglet.”

  “Yes, I would treasure a game of chess,” said Paul, suddenly present, with a convincing display of conviviality, as if he had been invited to join them; almost as if he were doing the inviting.

  Konrad gave him a withering look. “I’m sure there are others in the castle who play as well as my friends and I.”

  “But, brother,” Paul said, smilingly, “it is for the character, not the talent, that I seek fellow players. I would spend time with you all. If the young knight here is worthy of your great company, no doubt he is worthy of mine, which is humbler than yours.”

  Before Konrad could cut him down again, they were approached by yet another figure: the Count of Burgundy, drying his hands on the sides of his tunic, having left off the final hand-washing abruptly to include himself in this clutch. “My nephews both seem in good health today, God be praised,” he said, smiling. “I would be honored to join this party of an afternoon.”

  Konrad closed his eyes a moment. “Utterly absurd,” he muttered, then looked directly at his uncle. “We are no party, and it is boorish of both yourself and your kinsman here to invite yourselves into your emperor’s private chamber. I am retiring with these two young gallants, and nobody else.”

  “Actually, sire,” Paul said, a smarmy smile frozen on his face, “I received a missive from His Holiness the pope today, regarding his interest in your eventual nuptials, and had been hoping to speak to you of its urgent matter, to which the chess would have been merely a pleasant counterpoint. If you want neither myself nor our uncle Alphonse present, then the necessary discussion I would have had with you, I must have instead with him, as the leader of the Assembly of Lords. A group to which you are after all beholden on the matter in question. My good count,” he said, bowing to his uncle with exaggerated circumspection. “Will you walk with me? Our emperor is unmarried yet, and His Holiness has strong feelings on the subject. Perhaps the Assembly of Lords does as well.”

  Konrad had learned years ago how to mask even the sharpest irritation. “Alphonse of Burgundy is not free to speak with you just now,” he said in a tired voice. “He is coming to play chess with me, but you alas cannot, as I have only two chessboards and there are already four of us ascending, like the four cardinal virtues, so there is no room for you.”

  And thus when they were settled into Konrad’s dayroom, with the falcon above and the hounds at their feet, the pages in the corner and the guards outside the door, Alphonse was with them— which pleased him very much, but did not please anyone else at all. The page boys were excused to help haul up casting wax for the new chapel bells, from the bottom of the steep castle mount in the downpour. There was, in fact, only one chessboard; Jouglet played the fiddle as Willem in rapid succession lost two games of chess to Konrad and a third to the count.

  Sensing his sovereign’s extreme indifference to his presence, Alphonse clumsily steered the conversation in such a direction that he was able to say, as if it were a passing comment, “But of course I do not share the pope’s views on my nephew’s marriage plans.”

  All three of his companions paused. “Don’t you?” Konrad asked with a hint of sarcasm. “The pope wants me to marry the heiress of Besançon. You want me to marry the heiress of Besançon.”

  “I did,” Alphonse conceded. “But I have become convinced the sister of Willem of Dole is a better choice.”

  Willem stared at him and then in a blunt, suspicious voice, demanded, “Convinced how?”

  The count smiled with those flawless teeth that the family was famed for. It was a singular expression, a look that was both superior and sycophantic at the same moment— a look Konrad and Jouglet, both familiar with it, loathed. “Your sister is much fairer a prize than Besançon’s dour girl.” He reached out to pet the bloodhound, who growled at him as if he gave it indigestion.

  Willem’s jaw twitched. “Milord Alphonse, the last time you saw Lienor she was not yet ten years old,” he said. “And anyhow, you must take me for a country fool if you think I would be satisfied by such an answer. My sister is, in fact, very beautiful, so charming I know she would melt any husband’s heart, but I am not such a romantic innocent to believe marriages are about anything but politics.”

  Jouglet, head bent over the fiddle on the shuttered window seat, bit her lower lip, and Konrad sat back against the cushions of his bed, as if to remove himself from the scene.

  Alphonse reached out appeasingly to pat Willem’s arm. “I did not mean to gull or insult you,” he said in a paternal tone. “Of course, every union serves a purpose. But I think you discredit the god of love to entirely discount his role in politics. Otherwise, why would His Majesty favor you with access to a lady, today at dinner? You may choose whom to worship according to your fancy.”

  Konrad and Jouglet exchanged looks. Konrad made a gesture of giving permission to the minstrel, and Jouglet scoffed, “That’s not it at all. You are supposed to decide which lord you would most like to serve. And then woo that lord’s wife discreetly to flatter not only her, but her husband.”

  “What?” Willem demanded.

  “Of course. The wife repays the flattery with gifts of coin, and the husband with general patronage. Lords are always on the hunt for dedicated soldiers. You landless knights always need a patron, and when His Majesty decides he’s had enough of you, you’ll need another host, won’t you? I told you to pick a rich one.”

  Willem looked at the minstrel as if they were not
speaking the same language. “Gain is the purpose of choosing a lady? I thought gain was the purpose of choosing a wife. Where does love enter into it?”

  The minstrel held out a hand and tapped it. “You put a coin in my hand and I write you a love song for her, then a hundred years from now they’ll think you were in love with her. That’s what she rewards you for— an eternity of fantasy, of filling her loveless political marriage with the comforting thought that someday, people will believe she was adored.”

  The knight made a face. “That’s the most appalling thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Konrad laughed. “Then you are indeed an innocent, my friend.” Willem winced when the emperor gave him a comradely slap on his bruised shoulder.

  To avoid his sovereign’s expressing further affection with another such slap, Willem stretched and rose to his feet. “If you will excuse me briefly, sire, I’ve had a lot of your excellent wine this afternoon and need relief.” He bowed and headed to the door. “Your Grace,” he added over his shoulder, “I am of course biased, but the cask of Burgundian wine I saw the butler putting down for storage on my way to dinner— “

  “That was a small gift from myself,” Alphonse preened.

  “That was a small and very late feudal due,” Konrad corrected, cleaning his fingernails.

  “In any case, it’s excellent stuff, sire,” Willem said. “Since your boys are occupied, perhaps Jouglet could make himself useful and fetch us some.”

  “I try very hard to avoid being useful,” Jouglet said lazily from the window seat and did not get up. Willem shrugged and left.

  For a few moments, the three of them sat in silence. “A match, uncle,” Konrad said at last, gesturing to the chess pieces with exaggerated boredom.

  “Shall Jouglet play for us?” said Alphonse.

  Konrad stretched. “Later,” he said with a yawn. “Right now I’d like to indulge Willem and sample your wretched wine. Run fetch us some, Jouglet.”