The songs were about unrequited love, usually the love of the troubadour for a married woman. They felt plaintive, sorrowful, filled with yearning.
There was another reason Tran had played the troubadours’ songs for them, one they learned in Professor Strickland’s next class. “The crusaders are all men, and the people in Carcassonne have known each other all their lives,” she said. “So the only way we can insert you into this tace is by making you troubadours. Fortunately there were women troubadours as well as men, so your appearance won’t seem too odd to them.”
“Troubadours?” Ann said, alarmed, and at the same time Jerry said, “But—”
Strickland held up her hand. “Yes, I know, none of you can sing. But your Facilitator this time is Tarquin Charles, and he can.”
Ann remembered the man called Tarquin from the fifth floor. A computer modeler and a musician, she thought. Pretty talented.
“All you’ll have to do is carry his instruments, and hand them to him when he needs them,” the professor went on. “It shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Roadies,” Jerry said. Ann laughed, but Strickland didn’t seem to know the word.
“You’re going to be from the Rhineland this time,” the professor went on. “That’ll explain your accent, and the fact that you won’t know some of the customs. There were troubadours there too, called minnesingers, and they had the same kinds of songs, the same tradition of courtly love. But according to the background we’ll give you you’ll have traveled all over western Europe, from Germany to Spain—that way you’ll have a diverse repertoire, you’ll be able to come up with whatever your audience wants to hear. Well, Charles will, anyway.”
A few days later they went to the costume room and tried on their clothes. Ann got a long yellow dress with a belt that rested low on her waist, a green kerchief for her head, and high uncomfortable boots. Jerry’s clothes seemed more decorative, more splendid—a tight-fitting coat that reached to his thighs, hose for his legs, and boots that ended in a sharp point. He had told the class that he couldn’t wear contact lenses but the company had given him some new kind of lens so that he didn’t need to wear his glasses. His face looked naked, skinned.
She nearly tripped over the hem of her dress as she came out of the changing room. Good Goddess, how was she supposed to walk in this thing? A woman bustled over with a tape measure. “Some women did wear their dresses this long,” Strickland said, “but since you’re supposed to be traveling it wouldn’t look very believable on you.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ann said.
The days passed quickly, and suddenly it was time to leave. They got their clothes from the costume room and put them on, and Ann noticed with relief that her dress had been shortened and the boots stretched out to fit her. Then they went to the briefing room, where they met someone Strickland introduced as Tarquin Charles.
He wasn’t the man she had seen on the fifth floor after all. He was short, like the rest of the group, and nearly bald. He seemed filled with nervous energy, pacing across the briefing room as Strickland went over their final arrangements.
It was weird that he was called Tarquin, though. Probably the name was in vogue in whatever tace he came from, like all the inexplicable Brittanys and Britneys in her own time.
They went into the launch room and stood together on the platform. People handed up their bags and the musical instruments, and someone began to count down to zero.
THE SHARP PAINFUL LIGHTS diminished, and Ann stood up. She felt sick to her stomach; Da Silva had been right about time sickness getting worse with each insertion.
They had landed at the edge of a forest, a few yards from a dirt path. Charles was bent over next to her, burying the key.
“All right,” he said, standing up and brushing the dirt from his hands. “Let’s go.”
Everyone was standing now. Ann felt relieved to see it; a part of her still expected to find one of them dead. Charles motioned them over to the path and they began to walk.
They had arrived in late May. The sun burned hotly, a brooch of heavy gold in the sky. A warm breeze eddied past, bringing smells of pine and wild strawberries and lavender, and beneath that a sharp barnyard odor of stale food and animal excrement.
As they walked they saw whole families, out working in small orchards and along rows of grape vines. “Wait a minute,” Franny said. “It looks like they’re picking fruit over there. But it’s only May—nothing can possibly be ripe yet.”
“They’re worried about war, about a siege,” Charles said. “They’re taking everything they possibly can and storing it behind the walls. They don’t want to leave anything for the army.”
Now they were passing clusters of stone farmhouses standing back to back. The ground floors seemed to be used as stables or chicken coops, and stone stairs climbed the outside walls to the area where the family lived. Other, smaller buildings lay scattered in the yards, barns, henhouses, dovecotes. And at nearly every house men and women and children were hard at work, harnessing horses, taking down laundry, piling their belongings into carts.
The path joined up with an old Roman road, wider and paved in stone. The road wound back and forth up a hill, until finally they saw the walled city standing in the distance.
“All right,” Jerry said, impressed.
More people crowded the street here, going up to the city. Ann and the others edged around a flock of sheep, dogs nipping at their heels, and then passed the shepherd and his family. A cart drawn by oxen rode past them, stacked high with beds and tables, pots and dishes. Where would they put them all? she wondered, but no doubt the city had made plans for a siege.
Now they could see turrets rising above the walls, capped like mushrooms. A few more turns brought them up to the walls themselves, a patchwork of red brick and large pale stones from the old Roman fortifications.
A line of people had formed in front of the gates. The four of them shuffled forward slowly, finally coming to the gates as the sun began to set.
Two guards stood there. “We’re—” Charles began.
“Troubadours,” one of the guards said, squinting out at them. “I can see that. It isn’t a good time, to be honest.”
“We know the pope’s thinking about a crusade,” Charles said. “We’d like to come in anyway.”
“You won’t have much luck here. I doubt the viscount feels like music.”
“That’s our business, though, isn’t it?”
“All right.” He squinted again. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He stepped aside, and they headed into the city.
“Not much of a reception,” Franny said in English.
“Quiet,” Charles said. “We’ll talk when we get to the inn.”
Charles was right, Ann saw. There were too many people here for them to talk comfortably. They hurried to their inn and went up to their rooms.
Charles shut the door behind him and began to pace. Ann, Franny, and Jerry sat on the beds. “The crusade isn’t for two months yet, right?” Jerry asked.
“Well, but they don’t know that,” Ann said. “For all they know the pope’s army’s coming straight here, instead of Béziers.”
“So what do we do now?” Franny asked. “What’s our assignment?”
“We have to get close to the viscount,” Charles said. “His name is Raimond-Roger Trencavel, and his territories include Béziers and Carcassonne. Ideally, we want him to invite us to a meal, or somewhere else private.”
“But—well, you heard that man,” Ann said. “He probably won’t be interested in music.”
“We’ll just have to be extra charming then, won’t we?” Charles said.
It was growing dark outside; as usual the company had sent them in during the afternoon, to give them time to settle in. “We’ll go out and find dinner, and see Trencavel tomorrow,” Charles said.
THEY SET OUT FOR the castle the next morning. Although Ann had seen the videos she had retained a picture of Carcassonne as
a typical medieval town, with winding streets, small one- and two-story houses, churches, and a market square. But at every turn she came upon something new, surprising: a fountain covered in bright geometric tiles; a garden almost hidden from the street; a stall with a roof of striped cloth, selling meat heavy with spices. And the people were varied as well; she saw a man wearing a turban, and then a group of people with dark skin and straight hair who looked as if they might have come from India. Carcassonne itself wasn’t a harbor but there were many towns in Languedoc that were, welcoming ships filled with spices and African ivory, sending out strawberries and pears, Cordovan leather and Toledo blades. And the city was next door to Muslim Spain, with its mathematics and medicine, architecture and poetry, perhaps the most advanced culture in Europe.
She had read historical novels, of course, but little from before the Renaissance, and she had always pictured the Middle Ages and earlier as very boring: a dull procession of peasants and landowners, men and women who worked without ceasing, breaking their routine only to go to church. Instead she had seen Copts and Jews, goddess worshippers and mathematicians—and now she was about to meet heretics.
“Trencavel isn’t a heretic himself, of course,” Charles said, breaking into her thoughts. “But he believes in what you would call freedom of religion, the right of everyone to worship as they like. And it’s almost certain that some members of his family are Cathars.”
Why was he explaining all of this? They had studied it with Professor Strickland, learned it until they could give the lectures themselves. Ann would rather look around her, take in the feel of the tace, the people’s attitudes and expressions, the way she had done in Knossos and Alexandria.
Charles continued to talk, though, and she tuned him out. Probably, she thought, he was one of those people who liked the sound of his own voice.
She soon became aware of one difference between this city and the others she had been to. Garbage flowed down the middle of the streets, channels carrying offal and human waste. It smelled and looked terrible, and the channels overflowed in places; she had to be careful where she put her feet. As she watched a pig waddled to the edge and nuzzled at something, and she had to look away.
It was strange, she thought, that a city that had existed twenty-five hundred years ago had been cleaner than this tace. Progress was not the straight line she had thought it was; all through history things were discovered and then lost again. Someone in Muslim Spain had invented the steam engine, Professor Strickland had said.
The viscount’s castle looked like the outer wall, with the same mismatched stone and squat towers. A stone bridge built over arches led to the castle doors. A guard on the other side of the bridge asked them their business, and when Charles said they were troubadours he nodded and let them in.
“That was easy,” Jerry said, laughing nervously.
“Hush,” Charles said.
They went through a series of cramped dark rooms, cold and uncomfortable-looking, with uneven floors. The castle smelled of burning wood and cooked meat, though none of the rooms they saw had fireplaces. Two dogs ran past, frisked and tangled in a mock battle, and hurried out again.
There were few hallways; instead, one room led into the next, and every so often they found themselves interrupting women at their sewing or men reading aloud. “Do we know where we’re going?” Ann asked. Her voice echoed off the stone walls.
Charles said nothing. They came to a closed door guarded by two men, who ushered them into another room. This one was larger than the others, with candles glittering along the walls, tapestries to keep out the cold, and, Ann was glad to see, a fire burning in a fireplace. There was even a carpet, in knotted squares of red and gold and green.
A large man sat in a carved wooden chair. He wore crimson silks and velvets, and he was clean-shaven, like most of the men of the south. Charles bowed and introduced himself.
“Very good,” Trencavel said. He grinned. “We love music, don’t we?” Several people in the shadows murmured agreement. He hummed for a while and then broke off. “Do you know ‘All the Birds Are Leaving’?” he asked.
“Of course, my lord,” Charles said.
“Wonderful! And your own tunes? Do you have something new for us?”
“We do. Many things.” Charles opened one of the sacks they had brought, but the viscount raised his hand to stop him.
“Not now,” he said. “You’ll play for us at dinner.”
“Yes, my lord,” Charles said. “Thank you.”
“My man here will take you somewhere you can practice,” Trencavel said. “Dinner is in an hour.”
An hour? It wasn’t even noon; dinner must mean something else hern. Even Charles looked a little panicky, though his face slipped back into blandness a moment later.
A man came toward them out of the shadows. “This way,” he said.
When they got to their room Charles took a tablet out of his leather bag, unrolled it, and scrolled through it quickly. “Ah, here it is, by Bernart de Ventadorn,” he said.
He brought out the lute, tuned it, and began to play. “We don’t have a lot of time here,” he said. “You’ll have to learn which instruments to give me, and when.”
“Do you really have your own songs?” Ann asked. “Something new you can play?”
“Not mine, no. But I can play songs that haven’t been composed yet, things I know he hasn’t heard before. ‘I Dare to Claim’—Peire Cardenal will write that a few years from now.”
He started another song, but Ann barely heard it. She felt as if she had just discovered new, unknown rooms within her mind, as if it had stretched outward in order to encompass this new idea. “But—but if this Cardenal comes to hear it, and he starts singing it, and then—well, who really wrote it? No one did, right? Not you, and not him either—it just appeared.”
“We don’t have time for those kinds of questions. Franny, you’ll give me the guitar here. Then when I come to the end of this part I’ll need one of the drums, that one over there.”
Ann could not get the idea out of her head, though, and she thought about it while Charles practiced the next song, missing her cues once or twice. If she used a proverb hern, “A stitch in time saves nine,” maybe, and it survived until the twentieth century and first time she heard it—where did it come from? What if someone introduced Bach’s cello suites, or Einstein’s theory of relativity …
“Ann,” Charles said sharply. “The lute, please.”
All too soon the viscount’s man came to get them, and they followed him through the castle. They came to a hall holding a long table, and the man led them up a staircase into a gallery. A wooden screen stood at the front of the gallery, carved into diamond lattices.
Another group of men was already there, watching them as they took their places. “Who do we have here?” one of them asked.
“We’re troubadours,” Charles said. “We’re—”
“Of course you’re troubadours,” the man said. “So are we—we’re all troubadours. I thought we were the only ones playing today, that’s all.”
“He wants to see who’s better, I suppose,” someone else said.
“Who are you people?” the first man asked.
“My name’s Charles, and these are—”
“Charles? Never heard of you. Well, I don’t see any challenges here.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, sir,” Charles said. “And you never gave us your name.”
“Peire Raimon de Tolosa,” the man said.
The name was familiar from their classes. Charles nodded, and Peire Raimon seemed gratified to be recognized.
People were coming into the banqueting room now, the women in long gowns and fur, the men in jackets and hose. Jewels sparked as they moved, making glittering constellations in the candlelight. They found their places and stood behind their chairs, talking quietly.
Trencavel entered, a woman on his arm. She looked, Ann thought, a little like a fish, with protruding eyes an
d lips that seemed to lie flat against her face. “That’s his wife, the Viscountess Agnes,” Charles said softly.
The couple sat together at the end of the table, and the others took their places. The talk grew louder, boisterous, and a smell rose into the gallery, of unwashed bodies and heavy perfume. Dogs ran into the room, barking, and dived under the table.
The viscount clapped his hands and the noise faded. “We have two men to sing for our pleasure today,” he said. “Peire Raimon de Tolosa, who I’m sure you’ve heard of, and—” He looked up at the minstrel’s gallery. “I never asked who you were, did I?”
“Charles, my lord.”
The company laughed softly, at the contrast between the melodic sound of the first name and the lone syllable of the second. “Charles. Why don’t you start?”
Charles nodded. He did not look nervous, but his hand trembled as he motioned for his lute. As he played, though, his fingers began to move through the chords with confidence, and his voice sang out strongly into the room below. He was playing “All the Birds Are Leaving,” Ann realized, the song Trencavel had asked for earlier.
The people below applauded when he finished, and then it was Peire Raimon’s turn. He raised his lute, bowed to the assembled company, and set his fingers to the strings.
He sang about his love for a lady, a woman of high birth married to a nobleman. As he came to the second stanza he lifted his head and looked straight through the lattice at Trencavel’s wife Agnes.
They had discussed this in class with Professor Strickland. It was a convention of troubadour poetry to address the lord’s wife, Strickland had said, a way of flattering both the lord and his lady. But Ann had read the poems and seen the naked desire in them, the sexual yearning, and now, watching as the drama played out in front of her, it seemed to her as if Peire Raimon was courting Agnes. No, more than that— as if he was making love to her, before her husband’s eyes.
She glanced at Trencavel but he sat silent, his face impassive. How could he bear to listen to this, to hear his wife’s beauties praised so intimately? Agnes seemed unmoved as well, but as Ann watched she shook her head so that her hair fell to the sides of her face, and she smiled directly at Peire Raimon. No one in the hall would have noticed it, but Ann saw her clearly, her face changing, transformed into something beautiful under his magic.
Weighing Shadows Page 18
