I stopped where I stood. “You lie, and you know it. There’s no such place as Dingle-Boggs.”
“Aye, that there be. I be a Boggs of Dingle-Boggs, Lord of the whole estate.”
“Do you think I don’t remember that you’re the youngest of three brothers?”
“That I be,” he agreed, then amended, “or war. My twa older brothers died sum time ago.”
“Died!”
“Aye,”—he leaned close, leering—“of the pox.” And he laughed like a fiend at his own macabre jape.
“If that’s true, you must have an estate!” I cried.
“Aye, a goodly portion.”
“Then why do you claim you must have Wanthwaite? That you need land?”
His eyes glittered with heat. “Because Dingle-Boggs be fens, black moors, sea-lochs and crags. Every inch be bathed wi’ my father’s blood and be my land. But I need fertile acres below the oatline: Wanthwaite. And I’ll have it sure!”
I made up my mind forthwith to have Dagobert take me to Fat Giselle. The sooner I reached King Henry, by whatever means, the better.
MY DETERMINATION TO SEE FAT GISELLE WAS NOT EASY to bring about, for I could never get away from Enoch. Not only were the law lectures consuming (for we were supposed to memorize all we heard), but Enoch enrolled us in logic with a Master Roger who was pupil to a pupil of Abélard, a stimulating but heretical instructor, and Enoch studied the new Arabic mathematics as well. We were forever walking, listening, pricking on our tablets, examining each other, mostly on the difference between sin and crime.
Some crimes were not sins, for example coin-clipping, and some sins were not crimes, the most obvious example being heresy, but there were others. I was especially intrigued by a strange sin that seemed to pertain to shitting in bed, incredible though that seemed: “He who intentionally becomes polluted in his sleep shall get up and sing seven psalms and live on bread and water for that day; but if he does not do this he shall sing thirty psalms. But if he desired to sin in sleep but could not, fifteen psalms; if however he sinned but was not polluted, twenty-four; if he was unintentionally polluted, fifteen.” After hearing this, I resolved never to sing psalms again lest people get the wrong idea.
At last, however, I had a hurried conference with Dagobert on the stair and he agreed to take me to Fat Giselle’s on a day that Enoch had promised to spend with Malcolm to discuss Scottish matters.
So again Dagobert and I strolled down the lane alone and I felt the delicious frisson of both sin and crime that I was outwitting Enoch. However I was disturbed by Dabogert’s bizarre behavior, for he jerked this way and that, began sentences and left them midair, looked everywhere but at me. ’Twas similar to his ordinary manner but more pronounced, and I feared an attack was coming on.
“We can postpone this meeting, Dagobert, if you’re not feeling well,” I said anxiously.
Instantly he became normal, his face stiff. “As a doctor of physic—almost—I assure you my vital spirits are in excellent condition. I assume that you were referring to my arrogans polish, which naturally a barbarian from Scotland wouldn’t comprehend. ’Tis the height of fashion to behave so, I assure you, and I had thought to teach you and your brother a little grace so you be less conspicuous, but if you’re honestly so savage in your sensibilities that you think I am ill, well then!”
Quickly I begged his pardon, assured him that both Enoch and I would be grateful to learn his tremors, and we continued on our way. When we came to the rue de St. Jacques, we were forced to halt before a parade of people marching toward the Petit Pont, screaming, singing, scuffling in frenzied joy. ’Twas three times its usual size and in hysterical mood. We both stared, puzzled. The only clue as to the meaning was a song sung over and over.
Redit aetus aurea
Mundus renovatur
Dives nunc deprimitur
Pauper exultatur.
As we walked on the grassy bank in the opposite direction from the students, I translated the ditty but was no further enlightened:
The age of gold returns
The world’s reform is nigh;
The rich man now made low,
The pauper raised on high!
I supposed it was some new cause of the students who always needed more money.
We must have gone three miles or more and were in the thinning suburbs of Paris before Dagobert turned off St. Jacques to lead the way up an ancient Roman street surrounded by groves and crumbling villas. Finally we stopped before a villa placed at a crossroads marked with painted stones, one reading “Trousse-Puteyne,” the other “Gratte-con.” The walls of the villa were freshly white-washed, and when we entered the gate I saw that the house itself had been well restored, albeit painted a garish rose color. The cobbled courtyard was filled with horses and snoozing grooms, while from within came a chorus of shouts and laughter, singing and piping, confirming that Fat Giselle was indeed popular. Accustomed as I was to the strident students, I hung back timidly from entering and Dagobert had to turn back to fetch me; I’d not faced such company before without Enoch.
When we entered the second gate, we were still outside in a second court, but one surrounded on its four sides by two stories of rooms, those above opening onto the court through balconies. There was a canopy rolled back onto the roof, and today the court was open to the sky. Though ’twas crowded with people, the first impression was of a garden with flowering vines climbing and tumbling everywhere, with blooms overflowing in pots as well.
Yet the people quickly dominated nature and a gaudy lot they were. Many were students of course, all shouting at the top of their lungs, and bold-faced women dressed in every shade of the rainbow. Then there were soldiers and—to my amazement—clerics, plus merchants and many more I couldn’t recognize. The smell of sweat, burnt honey, roast capon, ale and sour wine permeated the air; huge frescoes covered every wall, so lascivious that I blushed and turned my eyes downward only to find the same tongues flicking genitalia in mosaics under my feet. Arrested by the cacophony and dazzle, I almost tumbled into a sunken tub of water wherein sat a naked pink lady with an equally naked tonsured cleric.
At last grasping the evil nature of the place, I tugged at Dagoberts tunic. “Please, Dagobert, I think I should go home …”
But he couldn’t hear me, so he pulled me forward toward a huge corpulent woman dressed in black standing in a far corner. We had to struggle through the patrons and I lost count of the pinches I suffered on my buttocks, but there were at least twenty. Fat Giselle was arguing with a student who’d left his cloak as surety then refused to give it up when he lost at dicing. As the harangue promised to be long, I turned my attention to a singer who appeared to be marvelously skilled if I could have but heard her.
She was frail and almost as small as I, too pallid for prettiness and with enormous bulging eyes, but her voice resonated throughout the court. The crowd confirmed my opinion by crying against the din: “Berthe! Berthe! Let Berthe sing!”
She smiled graciously, raised her arms and invited the patrons to join her:
“Redit aetus aurea
Mundus renovatur
Dives nunc deprimitur
Pauper exultatur.”
Everyone went wild, cheering and tossing pieces of clothing, clinking tankards. Dagobert and I watched, still perplexed, for the frenzy went far beyond students’ causes. Suddenly we were both enclosed by two black-clad arms and hugged to Giselle’s soft body.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she boomed.
“What’s happened? What’s all the excitement?” Dagobert asked.
“King Henry’s dead! Richard is now King of England!”
And I fainted.
WHEN I REVIVED I WAS LYING UNDER a tree with my head in the lap of the girl who’d been singing, Berthe. Behind her stood Fat Giselle and Dagobert, the dappled sunlight swaying over their bodies and making me feel sick so that I closed my eyes again. In the distance I could still hear the roistering crowd and knew we were somewhere in the
villa. I wanted my mother.
“I think he’s conscious,” Berthe said. “Alex, can you hear me?”
She touched my cheek and I turned away fitfully, not wanting to wake, not wanting those awful words to be repeated. Oh, what would become of me? How would I ever retrieve Wanthwaite?
I knew that Giselle had knelt next to me, by the strong smell of her rosewater.
“Come on, boy, you’ll be all right. You’re not hurt. Drink this.”
My eyes closed, I sipped a burning liquid.
“Go back to your friends, Dagobert. Berthe and I can look after Alex.”
There was no escape: I must wake. Berthes lavender eyes protected me tenderly and she smiled. Fat Giselle, too, appeared much softer than she had when haggling with the student. It wasn’t really fair to call her fat, though she was buxom, but she was also shapely and quite attractive. Her large brown eyes were friendly as a cow’s, her skin dewy white, her mouth wide and turned down at the corners, her black tunic cut shamefully low to her nipples and her straight dark hair clipped at her neck.
“My, my, aren’t you a luscious apricot,” she crooned. “My, my, I’ve never seen a boy more beautiful. Berthe, look at that skin, the eyes. Do you have all your teeth, Alex?”
I nodded, feeling the blood flow back to my face.
Berthe smiled. “’Tis almost a shame to waste such glory on a boy.”
“Boys have their uses too,” Fat Giselle answered.
I sank dreamily into the warm liquid of memory: how nice to be with females, how sweet their voices, how kind their flesh. The courtyard cries faded into the distance; there were only the gold-edged elm against a cerulean sky and women doting on me.
Fat Giselle stroked my cheeks. “Roses are blooming again. You’re feeling better, aren’t you, honey-pot? Would you like to talk now? Dagobert said you came to learn about King Henry.”
The elm blurred into puddles of green; I turned my face against her bosom.
The women were silent as I listened to the solid thump of Fat Giselle’s heart; then Berthe asked me gently if I’d like to look at their menagerie: they had apes, a bear and a cat from Africa big as a dog. I nodded and struggled to my feet. Fat Giselle scrutinized me carefully from head to foot as if I were a prize horse; she turned my face this way and that, lifted my hair to see my ears, pulled my upper lip to count my teeth, ran her hands along my sides, e’en sniffed my skin. I was repelled but not offended by her odd inventory for it seemed so impersonal. Yet she lost her motherly kindness by her acts; I now noticed heavy bulges under her smudged eyes, hard lines around her mouth, a brisk professionalism in her hands. Berthe, however, remained the same.
She chatted as we began to move. “You’re in Zizka’s school for jongleurs, you know, and his animals are trained by Tue-Boeuf and his wife Pax.”
She spoke as if I should know Zizka, but I couldn’t recall him from the Petit Pont.
“Who’s Zizka? What’s a school for jongleurs?” I asked shyly.
Berthe explained that Zizka was a Bohemian, the topmost jongleur (that is, performer) in France, oft appearing before royalty. He was the first to receive love songs (trouvères) from the south writ by famous troubadours and he introduced them to cultivated people everywhere. Furthermore he knew all the heroic tales (chansons de geste), including the most recent rage, the stories of King Arthur and his Round Table. He had a legendary library of manuscripts. Would I like to see it? I nodded.
All the time Berthe talked, I was aware that Fat Giselle continued her appraisal of my person and I wondered—though without too much concern—if she’d discovered that I was a girl. I was also aware that King Henry had died, but I wasn’t yet prepared to confront the hideous fact.
The library was housed in a large cottage, which also served as home for Zizka though he wasn’t there at present. I’d never seen so many leather-bound volumes assembled in one place and wondered if this Zizka was a sorcerer. I doubted that even Magister Malcolm had such a collection.
Berthe pointed. “Those are the chansons de geste, but Zizka claims that their day is finished which I hope is true, for they inspire war. I much prefer the songs from the south; love is a sweeter subject than war, don’t you think? My father was Papiol, you see.”
Before I could inquire who Papiol was, Fat Giselle asked me abruptly if I could sing.
“Aye,” I said uncertainly, not sure what the question imported. Certes I could sing Christian responses and the Celtic lays my mother had taught me. If she meant could I sing well, I would have had to confess that I was not so gifted as Berthe. Yes, I decided, not too well, but loud, forsooth.
We went back into the sunlight to look at a bear called Belle-Belle, a friendly beast but treacherous. Pax, the lady handler, was teaching it to appear more fierce than it was.
Although the menagerie was diverting, I was more intrigued by the human activities around me. A family of midgets was practicing a balancing act on a pile of straw and though they hadn’t far to fall, being so small, ’twas a dangerous activity. More alarming was a woman dancing on a high rope with no straw below to protect her. She had the darkest skin I’d ever seen, a huge mane of crisp black curls and performed with an utter disdain for safety or modesty, for we could see straight up her flashing skirts.
“That’s Dangereuse,” said Fat Giselle.
“An appropriate name,” I said wittily.
“So we thought when we gave it to her, though we’d not seen her on the ropes then, but it suits her in all ways. Her Gitano name is unpronounceable.”
So far all I’d seen had charmed me, but now I noticed disturbing practices on my left, people twitching almost as Dagobert did.
Fat Giselle caught my frown. “Those are Jobelins. You remember Job, patron of thieves. Look you how cleverly they can dissemble. Those applying sores and tumors are Pietres; it takes years to learn to hobble convincingly. Behind them, the Sabouleux have soap in their mouths to simulate froth; the Francs-Mitoux are trying falls for they faint in public places. These profitable arts pass largely through families, but other deceits can be learned by any honest applicant, how to forge documents for example, or various hoaxes such as pretending to be robbed. The variations are as many as there are fools to believe them.”
The offhand smugness of her words belied their evil and at first I heard them as from afar. Then suddenly my ears and my conscience came unplugged together, as if I were rising from water, and I recoiled in horror. Benedicite, I must leave at once!
“Where’s Dagobert? I have to get back to my brother,” I said.
Hands of iron gripped my arm. “Soon. Only first we must talk of why you came.”
“There’s really no need, now that—” and I managed the awful words—“King Henry’s dead.”
But I was forced to go to her upper chamber with her as Berthe stayed below, forced to say that I was carrying a message from my dead father—but if the king was dead, that was that. Naturally I didn’t feel so resigned, but I was desperate to leave. It was time for Enoch to be home.
“Why King Henry?” Fat Giselle offered me a cup which I refused. “Why not King Richard?”
“I know naught of King Richard,” I said uneasily. “Some of my family fought with King Henry, you see; he would have remembered us.”
She raised skeptical brows. “Old Henry had many soldiers in his time. Surely Richard would appreciate the message just as much, perhaps more. He’s a very noble person, Richard of Poitou, Eleanor’s son through and through.”
I stared at the black drapes swaying behind her in the faint breeze, trying to adjust to this new circumstance; my father’s words had been so explicit, so positive about King Henry. I’d never dared tell Enoch that my own father had been with the expedition which had captured Scotland’s king for Henry, the very day after Henry had done penance for killing Thomas à Becket. Feeling the victory was a sign of God’s approval, the old king had been so jubilant that he’d declared a national holiday and sent commendations to each Englis
h nobleman personally who’d been in the field, the parchment I now carried. Surely Richard would be unimpressed by such news since he’d fought his own father. But personal considerations aside, would he honor England’s law and restore Wanthwaite even so?
Giselle interrupted my reverie, almost as if she’d read my mind. “King Richard will be a most gracious monarch, you’ll find. All new kings work to redress the wrongs of the old; it’s to their advantage to appear beneficent in comparison to what went before.” She stood and paced, paused to play with my hair. “Of course I know not your business with the king, but I can tell you this, Alex: I can get you a private audience with him, that I promise! Zizka will be sending a message to Ambroise soon; be sure you’re ready if you want to be included. I’ll take you to Zizka now if you like.”
“Ambroise?” I hedged.
“Richard’s official troubadour, Zizka’s oldest friend.”
“I—I’ll have to think about it. There are—things,” I trailed miserably.
Her eyes, cowlike no longer, burned into mine.
“Think it over, but don’t take too long and don’t deceive yourself that there’s another way. No small boy with a message about Henry will reach King Richard, I can assure you, for the new king must get his kingdom settled and leave on his Crusade. Only those critical to his grand project will have audience. This is a rare turn in Fortune’s Wheel for you, my pigeon.”
She spoke with chilling authority and though I sensed both sin and crime in her person far beyond what I’d seen or learned of in Malcolm’s class, I believed her.
“Thank you, you’re—very kind. I’ll let you know,” I muttered. “Now, could you please take me to Dagobert?”
I thought on her words all the way home, sinking more and more into a melancholy slough that turned my liver cold. With Henry, all my hopes for recovering Wanthwaite had died as well. My mind ran through one dark labyrinth after another but found no exit. Benedicite, King Henry had been hard enough to chase, and now I was told that King Richard would be impossible, what with his Crusade to the Holy Land which might last years. And then what quality of king was he? Sister Petronilla hadn’t liked Henry, of course, but my father had; I’d try to learn all I could of Richard, though I came back to the undeniable point that it would avail me nothing to know his character if I was never able to see him.
Alix of Wanthwaite 01 - Shield of Three Lions Page 13
