by Jean Gill
Estela bit back her first three responses and thought hard, disarmed by the clear innocence in the liquid brown eyes. Perhaps something had changed after all. Was that what she had lost? Was this what they meant when they said a girl had lost her innocence? That she no longer treasured the hope of a touch like the summer breeze through a tree, of a kiss like a strawberry burst in the mouth, of words of love whispered with skin warm on naked skin. Girlish dreams.
She met clear brown eyes with honest golden ones. ‘All marriages are different. For you, there will be celebration through all of Dia when you marry. Your people will bless the union of their future Comtesse and wish it fruitful. Your chosen one will be a match for you, a man to share a kingdom with.’
‘And to share a bedchamber with.’ Bèatriz spoke so quietly Estela hardly heard her.
‘And to share a bedchamber with,’ Estela replied firmly. ‘And nothing to be afraid of in this. The man who is lucky enough to marry you will be as grateful in the bedchamber as in the Great Hall and you will rule both together, wisely and well. That’s what you are here to learn.’ She gave the most reassuring smile she could command and the girl’s face glowed.
‘I have been wondering about such matters,’ she said, stumbling on, ‘because the Queen and Ermengarda have proposed a Court of Love and they have asked me to preside over it with them and be party to their judgements.
‘A Court of Love?’ Estela queried.
‘After the Night of Music, you know, the one planned as a last tribute to Aliénor before she must return to Paris, when Dragonetz and you, and some lesser troubadours will show their skills.’
‘Yes, I have been practising with al-Hisba.’ Estela tried not to think of the forthcoming performance and remained none the wiser for the Court of Love. It was Sancha who spared her the need to show the depths of her ignorance.
‘It’s a fancy of our great Ladies. They give audience as is customary but this time the questions must be only on matters of the heart. The more philosophical the question, the better they enjoy the debate. And their judgements are the last word in refinement on the proper comportment of lovers.’
‘Well,’ said Estela, ‘that’s just what I need.’
‘Me too,’ breathed Bèatriz, alight with excitement. Someone called her name from the doorway and the needlework she hadn’t touched was abandoned on the stool behind her. ’I must go.’ Like a butterfly drunk on spring, she zig-zagged across the room and out. Estela watched her go, older by two years and a chasm.
Sancha touched Estela’s arm and said, inexplicably, ‘That was well done.’
Estela’s ignored her heartbeat as it drummed arrhythmically, ‘Return to Paris, return to Paris, return to Paris...’ She herself of course now belonged to Ermengarda and was going nowhere. With anybody.
Chapter 17.
Hardened by sun and exercise, Dragonetz led his men back into Narbonne. Their tight formation gave the impression that the control would have been the same on open plains as through the meandering streets of the city. Horses gleamed, armour shone, even the men looked polished and no-one doubted the keen-ness of their sword blades. This was a deliberate show of force, the mailed fist wielded by Aliénor’s silken power and let no-one forget that this was the army of a Queen. A Queen paying a friendly visit to a much-respected ruler, a Queen keeping her dogs of war on a tight leash, but a Queen nevertheless and her dogs were showing their teeth.
A handful of Ermengarda’s men observed the triumphal entry from the Palace gates but Sicres was not among them, nor was there any attempt to meet military splendour with equal show from the City Guard. Which made its own point, acknowledged and approved by Dragonetz, who dismounted in one fluid movement and tossed his reins to an anonymous stable-hand. Dragonetz made sure the stable-hand remained anonymous, not worth one glance. That way he wouldn’t have to kill him if the wrong stable-hand came within range. He left his officers to disband the men, organise fodder, lodgings and duty rosters for beasts and humans and he strode into the Palace to make obeisance to Queen and Viscomtesse, strictly in that, officially correct, order.
The interview took longer than he had hoped, each ruler demanding a lengthy explanation of events in the Jewish Quarter a week earlier. The version that Aliénor received was remarkably similar to the version given to Sicres, that Dragonetz’ men were going soft and needed to pit their skills against an adversary, that surprise had been essential for the exercise and that of course Dragonetz had to tell the Guard that he was acting under Aliénor’s orders to avoid unpleasant consequences. Yes, he appreciated that he had a nerve asking for Aliénor’s authorisation after the event. Yes, he was duly penitent. No, he wouldn’t do it again.
Then came the matter that had really galled her. Was it true that Ermengarda’s Captain had defeated Dragonetz one to one, as everyone said? Dragonetz gave her his steadiest look in response. What did she think? Her gaze dropped. Lesser mortals, he told her, needed trivial imaginary victories. She could hardly berate him after that so he rescued her. Had she seen her troops entering the city? She had. Was she satisfied with them. She was. Oh yes, she was very satisfied with them. So he had been right to test their mettle and return them to battleworthiness. He had been right. But he should have discussed it with her beforehand. Of course.
Once out of Aliénor’s sight, Dragonetz smiled. It couldn’t have gone better. His promise of new songs and and his best ever performance as troubadour at the planned evening of entertainment had sealed their understanding. It was perfectly clear between them that Ermengarda must be left in no doubt that Aliénor had the best fighting men, the best troubadours, in a word the finest court in Europe, which meant in the world. Then Aliénor could return to Paris happy with all aspects of her sojourn in the south.
There was no need of such ego-dancing with Ermengarda. What had passed between them had left behind a freedom of speech and thought, and Dragonetz knew that Ermengarda valued Narbonne and its citizens above differences of race or creed. As he’d hoped, Raavad had already spoken to her and outlined the situation but the mercenary band of provocateurs was a new factor.
‘And you have no idea who was behind this?’ Ermengarda’s perfect high forehead was crumpled in thought.
‘All I can say for sure is that they intended to start civil war in the streets of Narbonne, Jew against Christian, and they came damnably close to succeeding. And that it would have pleased them to add my corpse to their success. There is no doubt they knew who I was and were hoping for a big fat reward from their employer. So that gives us the usual suspects.’
Ermengarda nodded. ‘Anything that hurts Narbonne pleases Toulouse. And it is possible that Toulouse holds you condemned, as Aliénor’s Commander and perhaps there might be personal grounds too?’
‘I know of none, my Lady. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’
‘You weren’t over-friendly with his mother, perhaps?’
Dragonetz laughed aloud. ‘God forbid! I’d have remembered.’
‘Of course,’ she said.
He looked at her then. ‘I will always remember,’ he said. And she received the words graciously as they were meant, a last gift between ex-lovers.
‘Toulouse this, Toulouse that - he is an easy answer and I am sure the right one for some of my city’s problems. But’ she hesitated, ‘I have a concern I hardly dare speak aloud.’ He waited. ‘There is also someone who increasingly disputes my legal rights and tries to move land and judgement boundaries to his financial advantage, someone who would very much like to cleanse Narbonne of heretics and heathens. I can imagine him hiring your band of thugs as a way to get Jews out of Narbonne. What I can’t see is why he would care about you, unless I envisage some wholesale Church conspiracy against either Aliénor or you or both.’
‘Your Archbishop,’ Dragonetz confirmed.
‘Narbonne’s Archbishop,’ Ermengarda corrected, ‘and it is clear he would prefer a different Narbonne. He preaches of the weaknesses in a woman as ruler
, and of course all the sins embodied in our sex that have been the downfall of so many good men; he preaches the Crusading spirit and the corruption of living shoulder by shoulder with unbelievers; and of course he practises invasion and deceit in all aspects of his jurisdiction in my city! But he is the Papal Nuncio, the representative of the Pope himself, God’s holy messenger and I dare not use his own methods against him, nor strike at all without proof. I must be a better Christian than he!’
‘Not difficult,’ was Dragonetz’ short response. ‘I cannot say whether he is involved but yes, he has reason to ill-wish me. To connive at my death seems a little extreme, I must say, but I shall think about it and take precautions.’
‘We understand one another,’ Dragonetz was told by the second powerful woman in one morning but this time he was holding nothing back when he agreed. Meeting over, he barely stopped to take water and a day’s rations before commandeering a fresh horse, from a stable-hand whose very existence Dragonetz denied firmly to himself. He was too recently back from the company of stars, night breezes and hard, physical work to enjoy the constraints of Palace politics and it was with a sense of escaping that he spurred his horse onto the river path and out towards his paper mill, where, he sincerely hoped, he would find al-Hisba supervising the enterprise of his dreams. With al-Hisba he could discuss paper and polyphony, plan an export route and prepare his new songs, while working shirtless alongside men, and men only. Perhaps the Archbishop had something right in his sermons after all. Life would certainly be simpler if.
The smell of rotten eggs reached Dragonetz several leagues before he could see the tanks, beams and mill-tower with its wheel turning; the smell of the sludge in the holding pond, the smell of the future. Dragonetz jumped out the saddle and, throwing his reins and a nod to the worker who greeted him, sought out al-Hisba. The robed, turbaned figure was easily identified through an open door, gesticulating near a tank where two men were raising a metal screen, the deckle, with its sheet of yellow matted fibres.
Paper, thought Dragonetz, with rising excitement as the words Al-Hisba had taught him came back to mind. Macerating, pulping, couching on the felt, deckling with mould and deckle, then pressing. Dragonetz frowned. It looked to him as if a new stage had been added to the process since he last visited. Every new stage added time and cost so he hoped whatever it was that al-Hisba was doing was worth it - and worth the smell of rotten eggs.
‘One sheet at a time,’ al-Hisba was instructing. ‘Take a few sheets between the wooden rods and dip them into the size, then press them here.’ He indicated the rack beside the vat. ‘If the two of you take turns, you’ll get into a rhythm once you’re working.’ The two men, sweating in their leather aprons, each picked up two wooden sticks, clamped them around a few sheets of deckled paper and the first one dipped his sheets into the viscous liquid in the vat, which was the colour of rancid butter. He swore while laying the sheets on the press.
‘Be careful!’ Al-Hisba said, without noticeable annoyance. He shrugged as he turned to Dragonetz. ‘There will be wasted sheets. There always are. That’s why the sizing place is known as ‘the Slaughter-House’.’
‘So why are we doing this? What’s in the vat?’
‘Raw paper soaks up water like a flower in the rain. The moment your nib touches it the ink spreads like ripples from a stone in a pool and writing is impossible. So we size the paper, coat it to repel liquid enough that the ink will stay on the surface and not spread. The easiest way is brushing with sugar starch.’
‘But that’s not sugar starch. So? There is a reason we are using whatever that is?’
Al-Hisba nodded. ‘Starched paper deteriorates very quickly. This is a gelatin and alum mix.’
Dragonetz couldn’t help taking a sharp breath.
Al-Hisba nodded again. ‘I know. Expensive. Complicated.’
‘If this ends up as expensive as making parchment, we might as well import the animal hides and be done with it! Gelatin and alum! Suppliers?’ Dragonetz snapped.
‘The tannery downriver for the gelatin, at a good price. Colour varies so the sheets come out cream, yellow, beige according to what we get from the tanner. Alum -’ al-Hisba paused. Dragonetz was well aware that the only alum mines were in the control of the Ottoman Empire and Venice held the monopoly of the alum trade in Europe. So either al-Hisba was breaking trade laws with direct Moorish contacts or he had bought at Medici prices, for that powerful family was the Venetian alum trader.
‘Tell me the worst.’
‘It is the best size there is. The alum acts as a mordant to bind the gelatine to the fibres. And I have a contact who gets alum to Narbonne direct from Venice, without middle-man prices.’
‘Convince me.’ Dragonetz told him and the rest of the morning passed in account details. Unwillingly, al-Hisba divulged his Narbonne alum contact and Dragonetz felt less uneasy when he knew the route his alum took from a merchant in the Venetian ghetto to the Jewish Quarter of Narbonne. He had given his steward responsibilities and freedom to use his own judgement and in return the accounting was to be full and frank. Al-Hisba bowed his turbaned head and gave no cause for criticism.
In fact, Dragonetz knew that if the Fates had not brought him this genius of an engineer, with all his foreign wisdom, the paper-making dream would have rotted in its first vat. And there was no doubting al-Hisba’s own pride in the mill’s efficiency as they strolled round the processes, giving a word of quiet praise where it was due, and, according to al-Hisba, it was due to all of the workers in their different ways, each named and acknowledged. Dragonetz duly admired everything that was pointed out to him, from the well-greased shaft mechanism to the deckled edges of the final product.
He fine-tuned the plans for shipping the finished paper, in its 14" by 20" stacks, the size of the mould. He agreed a shipment to a merchant in Venice’s Jewish Quarter, where the paper was to be marbled in the secret expertise of that city and no doubt sold on at a hundred times the price paid for it. That was the world of trade; take a product and add value, then sell it on. The other recipients of the first export of paper from the mill were duly listed and a meeting arranged with a Bookbinder, to discuss a personal project Dragonetz had in mind.
And every time he was near paper, whatever stage it might be in, his long, tapering fingers touched the fabric, whether the mushy mix of rags or the weave of the finished product, in which he could trace the grain. He must speak to al-Hisba about the possibility of some kind of branding, something unique to their mill, so that even when rivals set up their Mills, his paper would be distinctive.Maybe if a symbol was coated before the paper was sized, the brand would remain distinct on the sheet? There must be some way and if there was, al-Hisba would think of it.
Breaking fast at mid-day, Dragonetz speared a loaf and gnawed on it, alongside his men, not even aware of the silence. He contemplated the water clock, idly. If he attached further rings to the clock, say with figures attached, he could get the figures to move at designated times, make a fancy for a gift. Perhaps he’d try it with some wire birds. Not that he had anyone special in mind to give it to. His mind drifted with the one cloud in a blue sky until the same clock was referred to by the Supervisors to call the men back to work,
Only one exchange between the two men marred Dragonetz’ visit. ‘There is a problem with Estela,’ al-Hisba said, hesitating, his eyes glancing sideways away from Dragonetz as they had done when he was unsure of the reaction he would get over the alum. ‘We have been rehearsing for the banquet. The Queen wants the performance of your lives.’
‘I know.’ Dragonetz was curt.
‘Estela has lost her music. Oh, her technique is better than ever. And she will pass muster singing satires and religious faradoodles. But her love songs are as flat as the desert. No life in them at all. I cannot tell her that there is no feeling or she will lose even the notes that she still has. I cannot give her feeling, my Lord. I don’t know what has happened or if anyone can but you could try.’
‘It was probably just an off-day,’ Dragonetz said lightly, ‘It will be fine.’ His stomach lurched and called him a liar but he saw no way out. They would have to sing together at the banquet anyway. ‘I will see her.’
Estela told herself how excited she was about the coming performance. In a few months she had got everything she wanted; she was a singer at the most refined court in Occitania, with the Viscomtesse as a generous patron. In al-Hisba she had musical tuition that combined expertise and patience with a twist of the unexpected. She had the security and freedom given by her marriage, without any unpleasant duties attached to this state. She had a chamber to herself - unheard of! She had silks, lace and jewels in the latest fashion. She even knew what the latest fashions were. She was happy with the way she looked. She didn’t need her mirror to tell her that her eyebrows were a delicate trace of black in a permanent arch of enticement. Her skin was still the unfortunate golden colour she had been born with but it was smooth with rose-water and glycerine, scented with attar and musk. Her body had filled out, too much in her view, but at least the curves had stopped rounding further and she had grown used to a woman’s hills and valleys. Her teeth showed the benefits of the daily rinsing, rag-rubbing and fennel-chewing that she had learned from her mother along with other herbal lore.
What is missing? Estela asked herself for the umpteenth time. And once again refused to acknowledge the answer. She had thought this emptiness would pass with her monthly courses, which, after the initial relief, had brought her pains in the belly as if kicked by a horse. It was hardly surprising that she had not been her best in music lessons, even having to excuse herself and retire with a concoction of lemon balm and ginger, an antispasmodic she had seen al-Hisba use when Dragonetz had stomach cramps after the poisoning. But her time of the month was well over and a dragging ache, a void, still remained, changing to something more painful when she received the summons to a music lesson, with both her mentors. It would be the first time she had seen Dragonetz since the stable incident, as her thoughts termed an event about which she refused to have feelings. If, that is, she thought about it all. And surely no knight worth the name would refer to such an incident, so all she had to do was get past a little awkwardness between them and find the common ground that had always been there in their music.
