After Peire Raimon finished Charles started on his “new” song, “I Dare to Claim,” by Cardenal. It had been—would be— composed after the crusade and the conquest by the north, and it sounded different from all the other songs they had practiced—weary, resigned, done with things of this world. He was free of chains now, the troubadour said, speaking of his lover’s hold on him—yet speaking ironically, since he had fallen under the chains of the northerners.
It was a new style, more cynical and less joyful than the songs written before the conquest. Peire Raimon turned to Charles, surprised and impressed, and Ann felt strangely vindicated. One for our team, she thought.
When it was his turn Peire Raimon sang about a man who wished that his lord was far away, so far that he could lie in his lover’s bed and not worry about her husband interrupting them. With each stanza he sent the lord further and further from his castle, until finally he banished him to Jerusalem, where, he said, the lord became religious and entered a monastery.
Everyone laughed and clapped. Trencavel laughed too, and raised his wine cup in a salute, and Peire Raimon bowed to him and Agnes.
Charles began a song she didn’t recognize, one they hadn’t practiced. It was another poem about a man’s love for a high-born lady, the wife of a lord, and as he sang it he seemed to change, to become more alive, intense. He’d gotten caught up in the competition, she saw, determined to meet Peire Raimon’s challenge.
Lady Agnes turned toward him, her eyes shining, her lips parted as if in a kiss. The rest of the company watched the two of them with their mouths open, shocked and gratified at the same time. It was like looking at a car accident, Ann thought, or a sport that could turn violent at any time.
Finally the dinner ended. The viscount and his wife stood and the others followed, their voices louder now.
The troubadours went down into the banqueting hall, mingling with the diners. Her questions were piling up, threatening to spill out into the crowd, but she knew Charles would want her to wait until they were behind closed doors. Someone nearby praised Peire Raimon, and someone else said Peire Raimon had better look out, this new man was the best he’d ever heard.
“Listen, man,” a voice said.
They turned. It was Trencavel, cutting through the crowd to speak to Charles. “God gave you talent, that’s certain enough,” the viscount said. “I’d like to offer you my hospitality, here in the castle. If, that is, you don’t have somewhere else to go.”
“I’d be honored, sir,” Charles said, bowing.
“Wonderful, wonderful. This way, my friend.”
Trencavel led them through more rooms, each opening out of the next like a honeycomb. If Peire Raimon did make love to Viscountess Agnes, Ann thought, where on earth could they go in this castle to be alone?
They reached a hallway, only the second or third Ann had seen in the castle, and the viscount headed down it. “Maybe my cousin’s right,” he said. “Maybe the world is a vile place, already lost to the Evil One. But you can’t think that way, can you? Not when there’s meat and drink, and companionship, and beautiful women … And that music you played— how can that be evil? It gives you joy—it even made me think of God. Not very often, I have to admit.” He grinned, then became serious. “You have to take what happiness you can, especially now. The crusaders are on their way, you know. Who knows where we’ll be, this time next year?”
He wasn’t expecting an answer, of course, but Ann could have given him one. Trencavel would go to the crusaders’ camp, thinking that he could negotiate with them, and he would be held as a prisoner of war until he died there soon after. Or was killed—the history books were divided.
The hallway was cold, but Ann felt a chill that came from somewhere else, the winds sweeping through the years. Seshat, she thought.
A group of men went into one of the rooms, singing loudly: Peire Raimon and his troubadours. Peire Raimon turned to look at them, briefly, then looked again. “Good day, my lord!” he said.
“You’ve met Charles here,” Trencavel said. “He’ll be taking the rooms next to you.”
Peire Raimon scowled at Charles. Well, great, Ann thought. We aren’t even here for a day, and we’ve made an enemy already.
“You can get some dinner in the smaller banqueting hall,” the viscount said to Charles. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned to Peire Raimon and said, “Both of you.”
Ann waited impatiently until Charles had closed the door behind them and then asked, “What on earth was that all about?”
“What?” Charles asked.
“Is Peire Raimon sleeping with Agnes? How could he say those things? And how could Trencavel just sit there and take it—why doesn’t he have him thrown in the dungeon?”
“They don’t have a dungeon.”
“You know what I mean. And you—” She wanted to ask him why he had sung the songs he had, if he was courting the viscountess as well. But she had vowed to be more professional, to finish this assignment without getting into trouble.
“You should have gotten all this from Professor Strickland,” he said. “It’s a convention, nothing more. No, Peire Raimon isn’t sleeping with the lord’s wife. And I won’t be either, if that’s what you were going to ask.”
“It sure seemed like it,” Franny said. Franny the romantic, Ann thought, pleased the other woman was taking her side. “I wasn’t expecting anything nearly that steamy.”
“I bet they are sleeping together,” Ann said. “We don’t have cameras inside the castle, right?”
Charles sighed. “If they were, Trencavel would have thrown him in the dungeon, like you said. Figuratively speaking, of course. He wouldn’t let the man stay here and give him gifts, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know,” Franny said.
“That’s enough of that,” Charles said. “We have to find dinner, and then get our things from the inn—Franny and Jerry, you’ll go and do that. And I have to practice. You’re right about one thing—I wasn’t expecting so many of those songs either. We’re going to have to step up our game.” He took out his tablet and scrolled through it.
The troubadours did not perform at the smaller meal that evening, to Ann’s relief. Charles, she knew, had hoped to be seated near the viscount, but they were placed far from the fire and light, nearly in darkness.
Afterward they went back to their rooms; she anticipated more practice but Charles shook his head.
“They go to bed early here,” he said. “They’re zany careful about wasting candles, and we should be too. And it’s better if we keep to their schedule.”
The viscount had given them two rooms; she and Franny took one, and Charles and Jerry the other. It was far too early to sleep, and she thought that they would stay up and talk about the day’s events, but to her surprise the other woman was soon snoring gently. Maybe she was tired from her walk through the city; they had gotten lost more than once, she’d said.
That was fine, though—she had plenty to think about. “They’re zany careful,” Charles had said, and she had once heard Walker say something similar. Did “zany” mean “very” where they came from, in the future?
But the most important thing, of course, was that strange triangle, Trencavel, Peire Raimon, and Agnes. A rectangle now, with Charles. Maybe she could find out where the viscountess slept and wait outside her room, see where she went. Ann would bet anything she ended up next door, with Peire Raimon. She should have made that bet, with Charles …
She fell asleep, and woke the next morning to see cold golden light coming through the windows.
THEY PLAYED FOR THE viscount and his wife that day, and for the next few days. Ann watched the couple closely, but Trencavel seemed as jolly as ever, and pleased with Peire Raimon’s music. Perhaps it was true that these songs were normal for this tace, Ann thought, but there must be plenty of troubadours who took advantage of that convention, who seduced high-born women with heady poetry.
The poems themselves spoke
in highly exaggerated terms about love—the lover burned, he writhed in fever, he would die without his lady. She had been envious of the clothing Charles and Jerry got to wear, had thought their finery meant that they had higher status in this tace, but now she wondered if the men dressed that way to impress women, if it was really the women who held the power hern. If, in some strange way, this was another Knossos.
One day Trencavel stopped Charles on his way to the banqueting hall. They were too far ahead for Ann to hear what he said, but she saw the viscount take a ring off his finger and give it to Charles, and then say something that made Charles grin. “Of course, my lord,” Charles was saying, when she caught up with him.
He slid the ring over his finger and moved to catch the light coming in through a window. It was a ruby, its sparks flashing like fire.
“Whoa,” she said. She wondered if he got to keep it, but she remembered her vow not to ask too many questions. “What did he say to you?”
“Later. You’re supposed to be my servant—I’m not going to tell you my business in front of everybody.”
Peire Raimon noticed the ring as soon as Charles put his hands to his lute. He scowled again; it was becoming habitual with him. Ann had already figured out that the viscount was making him jealous on purpose, stirring up rivalry between the troubadours so that each of them would strive to outdo the other.
Still, it wasn’t the viscount who was on the receiving end of Peire Raimon’s hatred. Their room had been searched the day before, some of their things moved from their places, and Charles was certain that Peire Raimon had done it. Fortunately Charles’s tablet had been hidden, in a secret pocket deep inside his bag.
And what had Trencavel said to Charles that had him looking so pleased? She waited impatiently for the dinner to end, for them to be allowed back to their rooms.
“We’ve been invited to an evening meal with the viscount,” Charles said, when the door had been safely closed behind them.
“And that’s good, right?” Ann said. “You said that’s part of our assignment. So now what?”
“Now I write to the company and tell them we’ve gotten this far. And then we go take a walk, pick up a package.”
“I thought communication with the company took a lot of energy.”
“That’s right.”
“But—” She tried to work it out. “So this package—it’s important, right? But why didn’t the company send it along with us?”
Charles said nothing. He worked at his computer for a while, then, when he was finished, he collected a few things and wrapped them in a blanket. As they left their rooms the door next to theirs opened, and Peire Raimon and two of his men stepped outside.
“You know what I wonder?” Peire Raimon asked. His men stood in front of them, blocking the hallway. “I wonder why I never heard of you. Someone who plays that well, who writes poetry the way you do—you can’t have come from nowhere.”
“I’m from the Rhineland,” Charles said.
“The Rhineland.” Peire Raimon leaned against the wall. He was drunk, Ann realized. “Well, someone should know your name. I talked to some people, some friends of mine … You know what we think?”
He stopped; he seemed to have gotten lost. “No, what do you think?” Charles said, prompting him.
“We think you’re a spy. A spy from the pope. You’re writing to him, telling him all about the castle. The vulner— vulnerable places, where they can get in and kill us all. I’m going to tell Trencavel.”
“You do that. He could use a good laugh.”
“All right then.” Charles moved toward the men, and they backed away.
As soon as they stepped outside the castle they felt the welcome heat of summer. The streets were nearly empty, even the merchants gone; they passed the storefronts for a barber, a carpenter, a money-lender, all of them shut and dark. The few people they saw hurried past as if a storm were about to break. Rumors Ann had overheard in the banquet hall had the pope’s army heading for Carcassonne.
“Do you think he’ll really talk to Trencavel?” Franny asked.
Charles laughed. “Peire Raimon? I wouldn’t worry about him.”
They came to the gate. Several guards stood there; Ann looked for the man they had met earlier but didn’t see him. “We’ll be back this evening,” Charles told them.
The guards stared at him in amazement. “The army’ll be here any day now,” one of them said.
“We’ll take our chances.”
The farmhouses were all deserted, along with the orchards and vineyards. A hen squawked somewhere, and a bird flew overhead, a straight line against the blue sky. The silence seemed eerie, even sinister, and without talking about it they drew closer together.
Finally they reached the grove of trees where Charles had hidden the key. He dug for it, lifted it out, and manipulated a few of its wheels. “You might want to close your eyes,” he said.
Ann ignored him. Something shimmered, and then a whorl of colors shot from the key, colors that seemed wrong somehow, that should never have been put together in that fashion. Things moved to form impossible geometries, with too many corners, or too few. Her eyes closed involuntarily, and when she opened them she saw … an angel.
She blinked. Someone stood there, someone who would have looked like a man if it were not for the wings rising from his back. He had long golden hair, amber eyes, and, she could not help noticing, no genitals at all. She had never seen anyone with an expression like the one he wore, a look of innocent joy at everything around him.
Charles shook out the blanket. A few things dropped out but he ignored them and threw the blanket over the man’s shoulders. Then he picked up a pair of hose and tried to fit them on over his legs. “Here—help me with this, one of you,” he said.
Jerry moved forward and they struggled together. The man made no effort to help them; he seemed not to know about hose, or blankets, or anything from the human world at all.
“Who—who is he?” Ann asked.
“Bioengineered,” Charles said. They’d gotten the hose on somehow, and he bent and picked up a pair of shoes. “Haven’t you seen our bioengineering before? You shouldn’t be that surprised.”
That’s right—she remembered the griffins in Kaphtor. She had never seen anything so beautiful, though. Even wrapped up, his body hidden inside the blanket, the man looked like something from the childhood of the world, before everything had gotten so messed up. He gazed around him and smiled.
“Does he talk?” she asked.
“No. We haven’t been able to bioengineer anything with consciousness, unfortunately. He’s about as intelligent as a bird. Jerry, could you get the other shoe?”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“I’ll tell you when it’s time.” Jerry shoved the shoe on somehow and Charles turned the man around, back toward the city. “All you need to know is that we can’t let anyone see him, not until we’re ready.”
“How are we going to get him through the gate then?” Franny asked.
“It’ll be all right if he’s wrapped up,” Charles said. He stepped back and studied him. The man began to wander off, and Charles grabbed his arm and pointed him in the right direction. “They’ll probably think he’s a hunchback. I hope so, anyway.”
Charles re-buried the key and they headed toward the road, Charles’s hand still on the man’s arm. Something moved through the trees behind them, and Ann spun around. Branches shook, and leaves pattered to the ground. Then whatever it was scurried off into the distance.
“What was that?” Ann asked.
“Nothing. An animal.”
Was it? It had sounded big, the size of a human. But there were boars in the forests here, and deer, animals large enough to cause the disturbance she had heard.
Still, she couldn’t shake the idea that someone had been watching them. We can’t let anyone see him, Charles had said. But what if someone had been standing among the trees? What if he or she had already
seen him?
They began walking. She turned back several times before they got to the gate, but once again the streets were deserted.
The guards only glanced at them before passing them through. Finally they reached the castle and their rooms, and they sank down gratefully on the beds.
“He can’t leave here until we’re ready,” Charles said. “One of you will have to stay with him at all times.”
The man squatted suddenly. Charles cursed and ran for the chamber pot, then struggled to pull the man’s hose down his legs. But even as the man urinated into the pot he looked vaguely delighted, as though this was the first time he had ever done such a thing. He must have a hole there somewhere, Ann thought. But she didn’t want to think about his plumbing, wanted to concentrate instead on his extraordinary beauty.
She volunteered to guard him the next day. When the others had gone she studied him as he moved around the room, looking at things, touching them, trying to put them in his mouth. The feathers on his wings were the color of pearls, of sunlight breaking through the edge of a cloud.
She reached out and stroked one of them, and he turned and looked at her, seeming puzzled. “Can you fly?” she asked, moving the wing up and down to show him what she meant.
He flapped his wings slightly. “That’s right,” she said. She smiled to encourage him. “Flying. Can you do that?”
He raised his wings high into the air. They were so huge that he couldn’t straighten them completely, and they bent against the ceiling. Then he lowered them; there was a whoosh like a sail coming around, and a blast of air blew past her. But he hadn’t managed to get off the ground at all.
Probably he was too heavy, she thought. Maybe they couldn’t give him lighter bones, or they didn’t need him to fly. He flapped his wings again and again, each time harder, but nothing happened.
Weighing Shadows Page 19
