“Zizka,” I answered, fearful that she’d despise my lowly station. “Have you heard of him? He’s very famous.”
“Zizka? Of course I know him. My mistress, the Countess Marie, has brought every great artist in Europe to our court in Champagne. She sponsored Chrétien de Troyes. Have you heard of him?”
Because of Zizka, I was happy to say I had.
“What’s your name?”
“Alexander of Wanthwaite.”
“I’m Lady Isabelle of Troyes. Well, you sing very sweetly, Alexander, though your voice still be soprano. I’m sure King Richard will be entranced. May I?” She reached for my lute.
“Please take it.”
She plucked aimlessly for a few chords, humming to get the key she wanted, then slowly picked out a song with many false starts and stops:
“Gentle handsome friend.
We sit here, the two of us;
Where-e’er our fates may trend,
Now have we cheer, the two of us;
Beneath the sun, the boughs that bend,
With naught to fear, the two of us;
Yet soon I leave, my heart will rend
When we’re not near, the two of us;
But let us kiss before I wend,
And pledge our love, dear, the two of us.”
She handed back my lute. “Well?”
“’Twas wondrously well wrought. Did you compose it just now?”
“Aye, but it could use polish. The last line doesn’t scan, though I’m getting better under Marie’s tutelage. However, I meant the sentiment. Did you like it?”
“Oh, yes, yes I did,” I said fervently.
“Then we’ll be friends.” She thrust her head forward, her eyes closed. “Sealed with a kiss.”
Lightly I brushed her warm dry lips with mine.
Instantly she leaped to her feet. “Good, now let me help you, for friends must be ever alert for each others interests. Come on, there’s someone you must meet.”
I took her hand and stumbled after her up the small bank, through the oleander and into the patterned garden again. We walked openly among languorous ladies taking the air, their bare tresses shining down their backs, their long trains hissing silkily across the gravel, through a clipped gateway into a tiny enclosed square where sat a lady alone, her brown hair topped by a narrow gold and diamond crown.
“Your Highness.” Isabelle dropped to her knees and I did likewise. “I’d like to present my good friend Alexander who sings with Zizka. Alexander, Princess Alais Capet of France, sister to King Philip.”
“’Tis a great honor, Your Highness,” I said, taking her hand.
This was King Richard’s betrothed? A drab dun-colored dame well past her prime with sagging skin, lined eyes, even a touch of gray in her dull locks, and the expression of a cowed child. I looked into hazel eyes which accepted the world without wonder, curiosity or resistance.
“Please take your ease,” the princess said tonelessly
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Alexander could sing at your wedding festivities?” cried Isabelle. “His voice is surpassing sweet.”
Princess Alais livened a little. “Indeed, I would like that. When think you that the wedding will take place, Lady Isabelle?”
I could hardly countenance her humility, that a princess would consult a lesser lady on such a great matter.
“Oh, I’m sure ’twill be soon, even here at Chinon. Countess Marie says King Richard will never leave on Crusade without trying to have issue before. ’Tis essential for the kingdom, is’t not?”
Princess Alais nodded and repeated. “I hope ’twill be soon for both of us, Isabelle.”
“No! No!” My friend shook her head angrily, then sang out: “You marry a god/I marry a clod! Really, Alex, ’tis true. I’m betrothed to a cull from the German royal tree: his breath smells of dead rats, his feet of old cheese, and his parts of what you’d expect. Furthermore he’s a tyrant.”
The princess smiled vacuously at this choleric outburst, though I thought I caught a shadow in her eyes at the words “a god.”
“With your permission, I must take my leave,” I said, nervous that Enoch would come crashing upon us and ruin my new friendship.
“I’ll walk with you.” Isabelle took my arm and we bade farewell to the numb princess.
“There,” said my new friend when we were out of earshot, “I’ve given you entrée into the English court for when you grow to be troubadour. Alais is loyal for all she’s a lifeless old bat. Didn’t you find her a pathetic creature? I daresay Richard will have his share of Rosamunds tucked away, for he’s said to be as lusty as he is brave.”
“Are all princesses so passive?”
Isabelle shouted with merry laughter. “Benedicite, no! Wait till you meet my Countess Marie, also a princess of France. She has her mother Eleanor’s head, some say her balls as well. She and the queen wrote a book called Tractus de Amore et de Amoris Remedia which came near to making that old fool Pope Clement excommunicate them, and he would have too, except they were clever enough to have it penned by a cleric called Andreas Capellanus so that it seemed religious.”
“What sort of a book? Poetry?” For I was thinking of Isabelle’s learning the art from Marie.
“Not a bit. ’Tis more a legal tract on the rules of love. There are thirty-one articles in which women teach men how to behave through love.”
I stopped short and looked at her with new interest.
“What mean you by love, Lady Isabelle? And how may a woman teach a man?”
“Ah, you see?” She waggled her finger archly. “No woman would ask that question. We are endowed with a superior nature and know from our birth about love, while all that you men ken is lust. Therefore do you fight and pillage, rape when you list.”
I felt I was on the edge of a cataclysmic discovery and stuttered in my urgency. “No, w-wait, don’t walk on, I must know.”
“Of course you must,” she agreed, “if you’re ever to make your lover happy, or become a galiol.”
“Aye, please instruct me so that when I marry …”
She brushed me aside with an impatient hand. “Who speaks of marriage? Marriages have naught to do with love. Love is based on the hearts choice and therefore must be adulterous.”
I was shocked speechless. The only adulterer I’d known was the unfortunate Maud whose midwife had given me my caul, and she didn’t seem an ideal lover. Of course I’d seen her under trying circumstances.
“Men naturally feel lust, as you may already know”—her eyes slid toward me—“but lust alone is abominable, a sin against nature. That’s why the Church prohibits lust in marriage and passes laws against pleasure, such as the chemise cajoule, a nightshirt with a padded hole placed so that it stops joy in the act. We women on the other hand feel that simple lust should be transformed to transcendent love, an ecstasy beyond belief, for ’tis worship plus passion, soothly a religion of love.”
Utterly confused, I tried to sort out her words but ’twas made difficult by my unruly liver. I groped toward what for me was the central issue. “You say that your Countess Marie and her mother Queen Eleanor wrote this tome. Tell me then, does King Richard adhere to its rules? Does he believe in the importance of love?”
“King Richard? Who can say? Of course he believes in chivalry, which is related to the rules, and courtesy.”
“Yes, but I mean in marriage, when he assigns marriages.”
“I don’t know. Besides, it doesn’t apply.”
I thought of my father and mother, for one transfixed moment thought I heard one of their voices, then lost it.
I was sore perplexed. “I don’t understand. Can’t man and wife be lovers? Must marriage always be—brutal?”
She laughed scornfully. “You must have been born in a bluebell. Why do you think Eleanor and Marie devised the rules? Certes they’d both like happy marriages, but their experiences have taught them the odds. ’Tis too unequal—the man rules his chattel while love must b
e free. Hear me, Alex, I’m to be wed to a smelly old man, Count Conrad. Think you that I love him? But I want to love …”
She looked at me with burning eyes. “Alex, have you passed rule six yet?”
“What is rule six?”
“A boy cannot love until he’s reached maturity.‘”
My mouth went dry. “I believe not.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. We can still be friends.”
She turned and ran, her green train slithering at her heels like a snake. I returned to the camp where I could see Enoch pacing in front of our tent and impulsively I, too, ran toward a small copse of poplars where I threw myself on the new grass to think.
My senses were much addled by Isabelle’s odd information: I was excited and depressed together. Sap ran in my veins akin to the whispering silver leaves above me and I near swooned at the power of my natural spirits. My boiling liver was all ablaze and if Isabelle hadn’t told me ’twas impossible I would have said that I felt desire. Not love, for there was no one to love; not lust, for I hated the impulse which had brought about my mother’s and Maisry’s rapes; but something. And that something demanded that I not be assigned to some dreadful revolting Conrad of my own. I pressed my hot forehead deeply into the cool grass and prayed to the Blessed Virgin to help me, to influence King Richard’s heart.
Everything depended upon the king.
NOT MORE THAN AN HOUR LATER, Lady Isabelle shouted from the step, “Alex, he’s coming! Follow me to the wall!” Then she turned and ran. I dropped the gold sandals I was polishing and dashed after her.
“Alex, where gang ye? Wait!”
Carrying her train high, Isabelle dodged among flowers all the way to the women’s court, then straight to a high wall and a narrow stair which led to a walkway. Enoch and I followed her upward.
“You can’t really see him yet because he’s beyond that crest, but his fanfare was heard.” She looked at Enoch.
“Who are you?”“I’m yer friend’s brother,” he said dryly, “what tries to look after him.”
Then we all noticed a fourth person: Princess Alais stood quietly staring into the distance just a few feet from us.
“Your Highness.” Isabelle bowed, as did Enoch and I.
“Please, Lady Isabelle, take your ease with your friends. ’Tis a great occasion, is it not?”
Her expression belied her words but I knew ’twas a great occasion, one that would decide my fate.
“I think I hear a trumpet!” Isabelle cried.
“No,” I said, “’tis a bee on the yellow bloom.”
Enoch shaded his eyes. “No, methinks the Lady Isabelle be right, for I can see dust directly in line with that bit of tile roof in the treetops, there.”
We all strained to see where he pointed and, aye, one of the dark cloud-shadows hanging over the valley seemed to have direction in its movement, then glints of light coruscating in its center: reflections on shields! My liver blazed and my hands shook so that I had to press them hard on the stone. At last, oh, my God, at last! Oh, surely he would grant me Wanthwaite! Surely assign me a fine knight!
“There, I was right!” Isabelle laughed over her shoulder as we all heard a faint silvery snarl from the cloud.
At the sound, the slumbering fields below suddenly shook themselves awake as people burst from the turf and ran in circles like ants.
“The king is coming! Get a place on the road!”
“Where? Where? Let me see!”
“The cross, put on your cross!”
“Move those cows!”
Behind us we heard the heavy groan of the castle doors swinging open, then the echoing clatter of hooves as a host crossed the moat to meet the king. They rode below us, archbishops and their companies, Countess Marie in green and gold and her son Count Henry with a hundred barons in their train, each with colorful banners flying. Foot soldiers lined the roadway with archers behind as the men and young boys who’d been waiting in the fields crowded to get a glimpse of Richard. All were united in that they wore bright crosses on their shields or shirts. Yet none, I trowe, was as excited as I was!
Now the cloud became a sinuous, undulating line creeping over the edge of the world and we could distinguish tiny horses bouncing brightly in the fore. And finally the sound! A slow rumbling roar, a catapult spewing stone from the earths stomach, as the beat of hooves, the thin whine of horns combined with the deafening shout from the common human voice: “Richard! Richard! Hail to the king!”
Trumpets blasted nearby as Marie answered her brothers fanfare, then a choir of men’s voices chanted the Te Deum, and holy tapers were lit to give God’s welcome.
“I can see him! I can see him! Is that not the king, Princess? Under the canopy!” Isabelle jumped up and down.
“Yes, ’twas his father’s,” Princess Alais answered, “the silken canopy of Plantagenet scarlet and gold.” A faint pink flushed in her cheeks.
“They’re takin‘ it away so he can be seen by the crowds,” Enoch said. “Look ye, Alex, the one in the center on the big cream destrier. That be yer king.”
Now they were approaching rapidly, the king clearly visible on his Spanish stallion, his red cross set with jewels so that it sparkled like diamonds in the sun, his long crimson shield emblazoned with three golden lions. He was surrounded by magnificent coursers rid by the highest dukes and bishops in the kingdom, but all paled in his roseate light. Closer, closer, borne on a wave of shouted love, answering with a gracious wave of hand, his face turning this way and that, his narrow ruby crown sitting like a halo on his golden hair.
“Hail to King Richard! Hail to the king!” I heard myself scream.
Then for a short time only, just as he reached our side of the Vienne, I was able to see him clearly albeit still somewhat far away. He was a god, nothing more nor less, taller, more beautiful, more touched with glory than any mere mortal could be. Like the stone carvings on the cathedrals, he showed his greatness first in size, for he was the largest man I ever remembered, dwarfing all those around him, yet was he well proportioned. His face was oval, his cheekbones high, his chin chiseled, and his wavy hair deeply burnished in the troughs, gold in the crests. But most of all his manner marked him: imperious, strong and gentle together with the confidence of one who knows his infinite power. Then he disappeared in a copse, to reappear directly below us where we could see only the top of his head and his horse.
“Hail, King Richard!” I screamed again, but he didn’t look upward.
“Come!” Isabelle cried. “Let’s see him in the courtyard!”
She and Enoch ran ahead and somehow I became tangled in Princess Alais’s train.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Your Highness. There now, you’re free.”
“Free?”
Our eyes met and held. For the first time, I was aware of an intelligence working. Somber, cold, desperate. Then the moment passed.
“’Tis a glorious occasion,” she said dryly.
“Aye, glorious.”
And I hurried down the stair to find Brise-Tête awaiting us. We were to return at once to begin preparations for the great feast tomorrow. At last my moment had come.
AT DAWN THE NEXT DAY A LARGE wooden tub was placed in our tent by Zizka and Pax, the animal trainer, who was to help me dress.
“I’ll bathe myself, if you please,” I said firmly.
’Twas the first time Pax had applied my make-up and she was obviously confused at this strange request till Zizka whispered into her ear that I was unduly modest because of my youth, and they both withdrew. Carefully I tied the tent-flap behind them, put a long blanket over my shoulders and disrobed beneath it. Still holding the blanket like a cocoon, I slipped my treasure belt into a declivity I’d dug beneath my pallet. Poor Enoch! If he knew of my riches! He kept an accounting of all he spent on me and someday I planned to repay him, but not from this hoard which represented my only security. Quickly I jumped into the tub with a toss of the blanket, then sank completely under to get my hair cle
an. After much soaping and rinsing,I dried under the blanket and pulled on the undergarment of my Cupid costume, flesh-colored tights which barely spanned the distance from waist to top of legs and made me appear naked, as Zizka wished. I put aside the rest of the costume to don after I was painted, and slipped on a splattered smock.
“Did you remember your teeth?” Pax asked critically when I emerged.
Soothly I’d forgot and pulled hazel shoots and wool between them, then dipped pumice in a mix of barley flour, powdered alum and salt mixed with honey for a thorough polishing. When I’d finished, we sat on opposite sides of a plank loaded with exotic paints and powders.
She cupped my chin in her hand, her eyes narrowed. “Can’t improve on this much. Yah, to be young again. E’en so, such delicacy fades in artificial light so we’ll enhance nature just a little, sugar-lips. Bah, alabaster powder’s too white—you’re not Brise-Tête. Wait here.”
In a short time she returned with a basket filled with various items and whipped up a concoction of powdered chickpeas, egg white and lukewarm rosewater which she spread evenly over my face, neck and shoulders and the side of my chest that would be exposed.
“Good,” she muttered, “just a touch of sandalwood for the cheeks, turnsole to the lips—press together tight and hold—enough. Now close your eyes: heliotrope on the lids. Wait, I’ll take some off, too blue. We’ll leave your brows and lashes as is. Now I think we’re ready for the hair. Still damp? Good.”
She mixed olive oil, alum and honey in equal parts to quicksilver, combed it through my locks, then turned them around a warm poker to make ringlets in the Greek manner.
“Want to see?” she asked, handing me her precious sliver of mirror, a rare French glass backed with silver.
Moving it from one side of my face to the other, I saw that my skin glowed a pearly pink, my lips a parted rose. Then I saw that my shadowed eyes were my own father’s luminous gray irises staring back and I almost dropped the glass! Gazing into one probing orb after the other, I silently promised him that I would succeed, I would!
Alone in my tent again, I slipped on a tiny bit of gauze fastened on one shoulder, a shameless garment but what Zizka claims Cupid really wore. Then a narrow gold belt, gold sandals laced up my smooth legs, my bow and quiver of arrows, my mask and my wings.
Alix of Wanthwaite 01 - Shield of Three Lions Page 16
