Jaufre looked back in the direction of the castle. “We’ll wait till morning. Come around this ridge in plain view like we have nothing to hide and nothing to fear.” He looked at Tiphaine. “How is your juggling coming along?”
The guards at the gate were bored. The cloudless morning promised another blistering day in this unusually warm fall, and since the lord was away their attention to their duties was not perhaps quite what it ought to have been. They flirted with the village girls, opined on the past excellent harvest with the villagers, and speculated on how the war was going in the Low Countries, or was it Bavaria? At any rate, a war somewhere they weren’t, where soldiers other than themselves reaped the spoils of battle in gold plate and jewels and women willing or unwilling, it mattered not.
They didn’t hear the flute at first, and when the beat of the tambourine registered they didn’t rush to the gate, which stood wide open to facilitate what little breeze there was. It wasn’t until Tiphaine, dark curls caught up in one of Alma’s gauzy, glittering scarfs, strolled through the gate, juggling three rag balls as if she’d been born to it, that they realized the defenses of L’Arête had been penetrated. Before they could sound the alarm the invading force resolved itself into a small troupe of traveling troubadours. They relaxed, although the sergeant of the guard, when summoned, looked apprehensive and muttered something about the lord not liking it.
“He’s not here, is he?” one of the guards said. They’d all heard the story about the lord’s lady eloping with a different group of troubadours on her wedding day, but she was back, wasn’t she? The reputation of the Lord of L'Arête was so fearsome that they saw little enough in the way of travelers. They hated Ambroise as much as they feared him, especially after that poor little tyke had been thrown from the wall. The half of Ambroise’s personal guard who had remained behind when their lord went to Avignon had left the day before to inform the boy’s parents of his death, although be sure they wouldn’t tell them how he had died, or why. However the parents reacted, the show of force would keep them in line. It wasn’t the first time they had performed such a task, and it never failed of effect. It would also occupy them for at minimum four days including travel time.
So they were bored, and feeling a little rebellious while not under their lord’s eye. “Come on, sergeant, have a heart,” one of them said, eyeing Alma, who smiled at him and put a little extra into the sway of her hips. “One night. What can it hurt?”
Tiphaine melted the sergeant’s heart by tossing him her balls one after the other, and darting in to catch the one he dropped before it hit the ground, neatly catching the other two when he tossed them back and returning all three into a simple fountain. The sergeant laughed and the guards applauded, and the townsfolk came out of the houses lining the tiny street that wound uphill to the square, situated, very conveniently, directly outside the gate into the castle. There, Johanna and Jaufre came forward and with a graceful bow to the assembly launched into a spirited rendition of one of the very first songs they’d ever heard Félicien sing.
O wandering clerks
You go to Chartres
To learn the arts
O wandering clerks
By the Tyrrhenian
You study Aesclepion
O wandering clerks
Toledo teaches
Alchemy and sleight-of-hand
O wandering clerks
You learn the arts
Medicine and magic
O wandering clerks
Nowhere learn
Manners or morals
O wandering clerks!
It scanned and rhymed in French, thank goodness, even Provencal French, and their voices blended together well, and if they sang a trifle loudly, why, they had their way to make in the world and could be pardoned for a hearty sell. Besides, the song went over so well that by the middle of the last verse everyone was chanting along, the last “O wandering clerks!” bellowed out by guards, villagers and soldiers peering through the crenellations from the castle parapet above.
Johanna bowed again, and fell back, deferring to Jaufre, who stepped up. His hands and face had been stained a deep brown with walnut juice and his blond hair was hidden beneath a long dark scarf knotted elaborately in the way of the Tuareg. Alaric’s skin was likewise stained and he had condescended, at Jaufre’s insistence and not without the inevitable grumbling, to leave his sword behind and to be dressed in yeoman’s clothing. When he remembered he stooped to disguise his height. She only hoped it would do.
“Good gentles, thank you for your kind attention and applause for our humble offering,” Jaufre said, pitching his voice to be heard over the castle walls. Indeed, the people standing in front of the crowd fell back a little from the force of it. “We are Jerome’s Jongleurs, late of Venice, Jerusalem and Persia—” he let his voice drop dramatically on that last “—and with your kind permission we will entertain you with a show this evening beginning at dusk, here in your beautiful place de la cité.” He flourished another bow, Johanna feared to the imminent hazard of his headdress, but by some miracle it remained upon his head. “I am that selfsame Jerome, and here—” indicating Johanna “—is the lovely Jeanne of the East, who will sing you stories of the wonders of Cathay, the mirrored roofs of Cambaluc, of the Great Khan himself, and of Princess Padmini, and of the night it rained emeralds.” He winked.
An anticipatory murmur ran around the crowd.
“Mohammed of Alamut, student of the Old Man of the Mountain Himself, will dazzle you with tricks of the sword!”
Firas stepped forward, too dignified to bow to people so infinitely beneath him. They had of course left all their long weapons behind in Lyon, but they all wore short swords, although the women wore theirs in light scabbards strapped to their backs beneath their clothes. The sword Firas wore was slightly curved, not quite a scimitar but similarly shaped, and he drew it now and tossed it up into the air, where it spun three times and fell hilt first neatly into his hand. There was a rumble of appreciation from the guards.
“Zubadiyah, late of the harem of the Sultan of Bagdad and valued student of Giotto of Firenze will draw your likeness in charcoal!” Alma insinuated herself forward, hips rolling in the best harem-approved manner, to the point that one goggle-eyed man had his head thumped by his indignant wife and was subsequently towed home by his ear. A charcoal sketch on a piece of vellum that had been scraped so many times the sun shone through the illustration it bore was held high in her hands as she circled the square, although when asked later hardly anyone and certainly none of the men could have said what the illustration was.
“And the lovely Umayma will tell your fortunes as they are written in the secret stones of Damascus,” Jaufre said, dropping his voice again as Hayat stalked out and fixed the crowd with a bleak and intimidating eye. She had been the hardest to convince of her role when they had planned this mad scheme on the journey from Lyon to Avignon, and she was privately terrified that the first fortune she told would get them all killed. She didn’t know that her demeanor alone convinced everyone with a penny in their pocket that some austere and unforgiving deity had blessed the intimidating Umayma with the seeing eye, and all of them determined on the spot to have their fortunes told that evening.
There was a bit of applause following Hayat’s introduction and into the middle of it tumbled Tiphaine, regaining her feet with ease and commencing a fountain with three apples the fruit vendor had not known were missing until Tiphaine caught them all, bowed, and strolled over to return them to him. Charmed, or perhaps mindful of the ripple of laughter from his fellow villagers, he gave her one, and she winked at him and bit into it with gusto.
Born to the part, Johanna thought.
“We meet again at dusk, good gentles,” Jaufre said, bowing again. The crowd began to disperse, chattering eagerly—L’Arête with the master it had, diversions were probably rare, something Johanna had counted on when she made her plan—and the headman and the sergeant of the guard stepped up
to begin negotiations. Non-resident duties, a tax one paid to reside inside the gates for a night, and stallage, the right to offer one’s wares, or as in this case a performance within that city were both reasonable, as both gentlemen planned on attending the evening’s entertainment. Inquiry brought the information that the lord was not in residence. “How sad that we shall not be able to entertain him,” Jaufre said, trying his best to seem so.
The sergeant, mistaking his meaning, grinned and clouted him on the shoulder. “Never fear, good Jerome! Entertainment such as you provide is not easily come by in L’Arête. The people here will reward you well.”
“His family is with him?” Jaufre said casually. “His knights and their ladies?”
The sergeant’s bonhomie dimmed. “There is only his wife remaining, and I doubt she will attend,” he said dryly.
“A pity.” Jaufre bowed and effaced himself to rejoin his companions. “She’s here,” he said in a low voice. “The sergeant confirms it.”
They refreshed themselves at the communal fountain in the center of the square and retired to an unoccupied corner out of the sun. They piled their bedrolls and packs and Alma and Hayat went off to see what could be had in L’Arête in the way of charcoal and scraps of paper, parchment or vellum. A sullen Pascau subsided beneath a large plane tree, attended by a vigilant Alaric and an ever-smiling Hari, who maintained a constant flow of gentle conversation. Pascau did not look to be greatly attending.
Tiphaine went off with them and returned before they did, looking as if she would burst if she couldn’t speak. Jaufre and Johanna retired with her to a shadowy corner.
“Ambroise’s personal guards are gone off somewhere!”
“Quietly,” Johanna said, smiling over Tiphaine’s head at a curious housewife.
“The spearmen, Johanna, they’re gone, off to some manor east of here.” Tiphaine’s eyes were blazing. “They won’t be back for at least three days and perhaps as long as a week.”
Johanna looked at Jaufre and saw that his eyes were blazing, too. “Our luck is in,” she said, “but we stick to the plan.”
Tiphaine looked up at the wall of unbroken white rock stretching above them. “Do you think she heard us?”
“Someone will tell her,” Jaufre said, with more confidence than he felt.
“Will she know it’s us?”
“She wrote the song we sang, Tiphaine,” Johanna said. It was the only way they had been able to think of to get word to Félicien of their presence. She only hoped it worked.
No one contacted them during the afternoon, but they hadn’t expected it. Even if Félicien was free to move about the castle, even if her close guard had been raised, she would most probably have a servant with her at all times, and that servant was in the pay of Ambroise. She had given Ambroise her word not to leave again but that didn’t mean he believed her.
Félicien had to find her way out of the castle, because otherwise they were going to have to find their way in, and then find Félicien’s room, and somehow get in and out of the room, castle, castle gate, village, village gate, down the precipitous path without being either stabbed, shot by the castle archers or pulverized by the mangonel.
But first she had to know they were there. Johanna looked up at the wall and saw faces peering at them over the parapet, but not the face they most wanted to see.
People began filtering back to the square well before dusk, blankets and cushions in hand along with food and drink. Jaufre had marked off a half circle of space next to the castle gate, where normally nothing was allowed, the gate remaining clear of detritus at all times as a matter of security. But for this special occasion, with the master away, the sergeant of the guard had allowed himself to be persuaded. He had also been persuaded to allow a couple of rough tables to be set up and their legs lashed together to provide a rudimentary stage.
Jaufre and Johanna with Shasha, Alma, Alaric and Hari started off with what had brought them their crowd, a repeat of Félicien’s wandering clerks song. That went over well, some of the village folk were even joining in the chorus. Johanna only hoped that Félicien heard it the second time if she hadn’t the first. They followed it with a drinking song.
When I see wine into the clear glass slip
How I long to be matched with it;
My heart sings gay at the thought of it:
This song wants drink!
I thirst for a sup; come circle the cup:
This song wants drink!
The last line was more shout than song and from that moment the audience was theirs to do with what they would. After a dozen songs the musicians rested while Tiphaine juggled and tumbled and was impudent to the audience and Alma drew portraits for anyone with a penny to pay. This was very popular and the coins in the little bowl passed by Tiphaine while small in denomination were large in number. The sergeant, who had commandeered a seat in the very front, gave Jaufre a gratified nod, and Jaufre bowed in acknowledgment. Alma took up her flute and accompanied Shasha on a song about a traveling artist and a farmer’s wife, which went over as well as any song about a farmer’s wife and a traveling anyone did.
The others retired, leaving Johanna the stage. She sang a song of strange things culled from her grandfather's writings, of the stones that burned, of the tribe with tails. She sang of Aijuruc, daughter of Caidu, a warrior of the Bright Moon who refused to marry anyone who could not defeat her, and lived unmarried to the end of her life in her father’s kingdom far beyond the mountains of Salamander. She sang of Ferlec, where the first thing they saw in the morning they worshipped for the rest of the day, and the resulting disasters this odd custom caused. She sang of the pearl fishers of Cipangu, and the enchanters of Tebet, and of the monks of India, who caused ropes to climb to the sky and then climbed them to vanish into the air. Her voice had never been able to reach as high as Félicien’s but she could write songs every bit as well, and she had not spent all that time reading the different versions of her grandfather’s book in vain. Her audience showed their appreciation with generous applause and much coin.
For the second interval Hayat, adorned by an elaborate turban made from one of Alma’s spangled harem scarves, of which she apparently kept an infinite number wound about her person beneath her clothes, settled onto a rug and told fortunes with the storied Secret Stones of Damascus. The Secret Stones of Damascus were a handful of smooth agates recovered from a tiny beach between Lyon and Avignon, one dark in color, the rest light. On the river they’d all worked with Hayat to come up with a plausible set of stories that could be altered to fit anyone. Her fierce and forbidding aspect led everyone to regard her with some trepidation, and added that much more weight to the fortunes she told. It helped that, in Hayat’s fortunes, every man’s crop or business would prosper, every married woman would bear a male child next, and every maiden would marry a man both handsome and kind.
In the break after Hayat’s fortune telling Johanna noticed two women standing just inside the gate to the right of the stage. One was dressed in gray, the other in black. Both wore cloaks in spite of the warm evening, their hoods pulled forward so as to shadow their faces.
She nudged Firas, who was nearest. “I saw,” he said, his lips barely moving. He drifted off to stand near Jaufre, who was doing his best to look everywhere but at the gate. If you didn’t know him, perhaps you might not notice, Johanna thought. Perhaps.
By now the audience was in an excellent mood, beating time in a body to a trio of marching songs that evoked the spirit of the Road. Johanna sang in her mellow contralto of Princess Padmini and Ala-ud-din, and women wept. She sang another about the night it rained emeralds on the steps of the palace in Everything Under the Heavens, and men sighed with envy. What they could do with a fistful of emeralds.
Their last song was the plum tree song, the first song Jaufre had ever heard sung by the Wu family, with Wu Li keeping time on a small skin drum, Shu Ming plucking out the tune on a lap harp, their voices melding with Johanna’s and Shasha’
s and Deshi the Scout’s.
White petals, soft scent
Friend of winter, summoner of spring
You leave us too soon.
The lyrics, which were not at all or not only about a plum tree, had as powerful an effect translated into French and performed before this audience of villagers and castle guards as it had had on Jaufre in the caravansary in Kashgar so long ago. They had taught it to Félicien, who had sung it with them over a thousand leagues of Road and more, and who was standing now just inside the castle gate, close enough to them to join in. She didn’t.
He found himself swallowing back tears, and felt Johanna’s touch, gentle and fleeting on his hand. He turned his head to look at her, really look at her for the first time since Milano. The moon had risen and flooded the square with light, and she looked so beautiful to him in that moment that she seemed almost not of the same world he inhabited.
Their eyes held for a long moment of absolute stillness, that ultimate accolade of the professional performer, and then she smiled, and applause crashed over them, shouts and whistles and clapping of hands and stamping of feet. Before it had quite ebbed the troupe launched once more into “O Wandering Clerks,” this time everyone joining in, Jaufre, Johanna, Shasha, Firas, Alma, Hayat, Hari, Alaric, and of course Tiphaine, who sang louder than any of them. By then almost everyone in the audience was letter-perfect in the chorus, if not the lyrics.
The bowl Tiphaine passed during the last chorus came back gratifyingly full. The villagers dispersed and the castle folk returned to their lodgings or duties and the troupe gathered in a tight knot in their shadowy corner, ostensibly to refresh themselves and take their own rest before departing the following morning.
“Did you see the two women standing inside the gate?” Tiphaine said.
They all had. Jaufre tore off a chunk of bread and ate it mechanically.
“They left just after the plum tree song,” Shasha said, her voice low.
Silk and Song Page 56