by Jean Gill
With face and lips more carefully rouged than usual, camouflaging any trace of extra pink in the cheeks beneath, Estela swished her silks and clicked her pattens towards the alcove in the allotted Hall, where her eyes caught immediately on the tall figure that unfolded on her arrival, a mere silhouette back-lit against the window but unmistakeable. She greeted Dragonetz formally, accepting the token brush of his lips on the back of her hand and turning quickly to al-Hisba, who bowed in his Moorish fashion, hands clasped as in a winter muff. Firmly avoiding eye contact with Dragonetz, Estela tuned her mandora and chatted breathlessly about the proposed programme for the banquet. With an artificial giggle that wouldn’t have been out of place among the Queen’s Ladies, she proposed that Dragonetz sing and she listen, as she would surely learn more that way.
‘I’ve practised myself to absolute shreds for weeks now, with al-Hisba spurring me on, so I’m sure I’m ready and it would be more useful for me to hear you and model myself on your interpretation.’ She drew breath and Dragonetz cut in.
‘No. We’ll sing the whole programme. I start with the nightingale song, you come in with the glory of our Lord in nature, then me again with the youth voyaging, we try a Cervantes to sharpen the wits, then the Tenson.’
‘I know the programme!’ She ought to. Al-Hisba had made her repeat every line of it until her dreams were full of witty puns and rhyming couplets. ‘And we finish with the Dawn Song as a duet.’
‘Of course.’ His voice lacked all inflection, emotionless, until he lifted his own lute, rested one knee on a stool and, standing, became a nightingale. Estela had wondered why he didn’t give her the nightingale song, so obviously better with a woman’s voice and she had her answer, the liquid melody flowing like nectar through all her defences, through the tangle knotting her core, through her veins until she felt she could fly if he told her to. Instead, his fingers danced their last chord on his lute and he nodded once to her, and the music skipped lightly from him to her and back again, then between them until she could shut her eyes, finding the notes with her hands and her heart, feeling words as laughter, light, tears and shadows.
Estela had no idea when al-Hisba left as there had been no-one but Dragonetz and her from the moment the nightingale sang and she was deep, deep in a world where a knight kept his promise through temptation and trial, where the sea-monsters and land demons snatched maids from their mothers, and where love was secret and everlasting. Dragonetz was what he sang, inviting Estela to join him in the song, to lean out the window of her tower prison to hear the nightingale better, to spurn the buffoon with her foot, to accept the lover kneeling at her feet, fingers still caressing the strings as he offered her his words in the Tenson and waited for her reply, his eyes on hers, black haunted with hope, deep with need that speared her like an arrow. They were acting, murmured the voice in her head as the flower of her body opened of its own volition to the murmur of ‘Dous’ amor privada’ .
‘C’aisi vauc entrebescant
Los motz e-l so afinant:
Lengu’entrebascada
Es en la baizada’
I twine the words and the melody
Like two tongues in a kiss,’ sang Dragonetz and as he knelt in front of her, his mouth on her hand was no courtesy but a lazy, circling continuation of the song’s promise as he waited the response that missed not one beat, thanks to the hard work put in by al-Hisba.
His smile pure mischief, Dragonetz acknowledged her cool timing, her control and his demise, rejected, was such a study in pathos that she would have wept laughing had she not her next lines to sing and her own performance to give, regret and sorrow lacing the slowed movement of the verse.
Reviving with remarkable speed, the dead lover told her briskly, ‘Straight into the Aubade,’ and there they were, fresh from a night sleepless with passion, naked, in bed, fully awakened to what could never be and sharing the last minutes before their enemy the Dawn parted them forever. Estela was so in tune with her partner that his kiss on her mouth was as natural as her fingers on the lute. His lips carried the sweetness of the night they had spent together and the pain of parting and if she clung to him to keep him against her, to hold him a moment longer, then so it would have been, surely. And if the mouth on hers hardened, became demanding, exploratory, wanting to renew known pleasures, that too, would have been in the Aubade. Her head was swimming as he broke off and stumbled away from her, his eyes dark as when poisoned.
‘We go too far.’ She hardly heard the words. She didn’t need to hear his words to feel what he felt. And finally, unequivocally, she knew what she wanted.
‘Come to me tonight,’ she commanded him, tall and straight and proud.
‘I can’t.’ He held himself as if bound in rope, lute discarded, arms by his sides. His eyes begged her.
Her confidence wavered and she could feel ordinary Estela replacing this magical lady she had been for just a precious moment, a moment she would never forget. She would not cry. ‘Ermengarda,’ she stated blankly. She had read the signs between them wrong. He had been acting. ‘You don’t want me.’
His eyes blazed and his hands jerked at his sides. He said nothing but he couldn’t hide his response, not from her. She had not been wrong.
‘Then come to me tonight. Or you insult me forever.’ She turned and mustered what dignity she could to stalk off and reach her chamber before her shaking legs gave way. She left too quickly to hear his low, ragged reply, ‘It is both that I fear, my Lady, but we have already gone too far.’
At whatever cost, Dragonetz lingered in the Hall, easing any suspicions that might have arisen in onlookers by showing off his comedian’s skills, giving a parody of familiar court faces, showing his facility in switching from one part to another. Satisfied that his acting talent and outrageous humour had left more impression than his musical rehearsal with his student, Dragonetz too sought privacy, where he often sought it, in a small shrine, where he could commune with his God.
Kneeling on the cold stone, his head bent on the cross of his sword, the knight felt the tumble of his thoughts like a mill race churning and chopping. Impossible to put to one side the warmth of her golden skin on his mouth, the way she had opened to him. Impossible for a man of his experience not to imagine what was freely offered and what he knew he should deny them both. From his first sweet induction at fifteen in a hayfield with a laughing farm-girl, he had known glut and abstinence, peasant and princess, hessian and silk. He had never forced a woman but then he had never been refused. He had rutted like any other soldier and paid court to a Queen. From the moment he realised his effect on women he had fine-tuned it to an art, given generously to the moment and walked away with an appropriate expression of courteous regret. How could it be otherwise? The sparks lit by flesh on flesh must always burn out and he had never waited till there were just ashes.
And then there had been Damascus, a girl who felt what he didn’t, a girl whose father told him proudly how she’d withstood all attempts to torture information out of her, about him, died for his sake. Dragonetz had watched a man’s tears, offering a general’s tawdry compensation for his daughter’s death - and for what anyway? For a campaign doomed by Aliénor’s caprices! Aquitaine would be the richer for its men and goods if they had all stayed home and the Duchesse had just randomly executed one in ten of her warriors! However much he turned his guilt on Aliénor, Dragonetz knew his real crime. He had murmured pride, thanks, the importance of her gesture to this bereaved father and he had racked his memory to find a picture of the girl.
Nothing. No name, no face, not even a cleft between thighs remained as a memory of her passage in his life. And yet he had ended hers. Shame filled his dreams with hair of all shades and lengths, eyes that were blue, hazel or green, all accusing and he denied himself the sweet thing that had meant so little. And so much. His body had woken to Ermengarda like a desert to the rain and he knew he would become dangerous without slaking those needs as Raoulf considered proper. Without Ermengarda, h
e could no more stay away from Estela than live without drinking. Perhaps his father was right and he should have married long since. Better to marry than burn. Perhaps, but it was too late and burn he must. He had no choice. He knew what Raoulf would say. ‘Scratch the itch and be done with it.’ But there was no chance that it would be done with, or mean so little, not this time.
If he left now, as he should, she was young and would get over it quickly. He never would. He wondered how long he had known this, how long he had denied it. Had it been there at the start in a song by a ditch, or later in blood and broken glass, in a blue token, in straw from a stable, in a million glances? He pictured himself riding away. He couldn’t stay in Narbonne and stay away from her so he would have to return with Aliénor to Aquitaine, give up the paper mill. No, he would leave al-Hisba as overseer. He pictured her lying in bed that night, waiting for him, growing tired, weeping perhaps, finally sleeping, knowing he had not come, thinking he didn’t want her. He pictured them both growing old, separately, remembering a might-have-been with gentle nostalgia. His knees creaked as he sighed and rose, suddenly cold in the gloom of the chapel. He lit two candles, one for each soul that must suffer this night, crossed himself and left. Decision made. This was how it had to be, in all chivalry.
So Dragonetz himself could never afterwards explain how, in the first hours of night, the flicker of sconces on the Palace Walls witnessed him tapping a quiet rhythm on the door to Estela’s chamber. He was answered by a growl and a whisper, then the door opened. Following instructions, he stepped around the great hound that blocked the doorway and watched him suspiciously, though without further comment. Automatically, Dragonetz bent and let the beast sniff his hand, and then he turned his attention to the mistress. She glowed in the candle-light, the thin white linen of her nightgown emphasising the contours of her body rather than concealing them even though the laces across her breasts were modestly crossed and tied. Although the summer night was warm enough that Estela was barefoot on the stone floor, she was trembling.
He took her hand gently and raised it to his lips. ‘I will go if you want me to,’ He searched the eyes raised to his, all depths and shadows.
‘Please stay,’ she breathed and offered her mouth in continuation of the kiss begun that morning.
He held her at arm’s length an instant longer. ‘Estela, I will go as slowly as I know how and I will try to stop if you ask me to but there will come a moment when I won’t be able to.’
‘I won’t stop you,‘ she promised and then she was in his arms. ‘Boethius,’ he said desperately, stupidly, breaking off. ‘Harmony between humans.’ He had to fight the desire to take her there and then, half naked against him and it took all his experience and self-control to hold her away from him long enough to calm his breathing. Boethius would help, for a short while. She smiled back at him, her hair floating about her in a cloud of black silk over the white gown. ‘The music of the Spheres,’ she responded. Of course, she had spent time with al-Hisba, talking philosophy and music. He stroked a tendril of her hair with the back of his hand.
‘Turn around,’ he ordered her quietly. It was the way she froze, like a deer before a hunter, that told him. ‘I should have killed him,’ he spat, his desire churning instead to white fury. ‘What did he do to you? What did you think I was going to do?’ Suddenly wary as a forest creature, her eyes round as saucers, she watched him, rigid, motionless. Mastering himself with difficulty, he spoke carefully to her, moving slowly away from her to the ledge where her toilette stood. ‘I wanted to brush your hair.’ He picked up the brush, its tortoiseshell back gleaming brown and gold. He could have left then, would have left then but she nodded wordlessly and sat down on the clothes chest, back towards him. The great white dog had looked up but now it thumped its head back down to rest and sighed, losing interest.
‘The first being cosmic music, concerned with the movements of the heavenly bodies and the cycles of nature,’ he said conversationally, placing the brush on her hairline and drawing it down deep below her waist, below the rim of the chest. He had to bend to take the brush to the end and then straighten to start again from the crown. His voice thrummed alongside the brush. ‘The second being human music, the harmony between soul and body and that between people.’ He found a rhythm and the deft strokes trailed a wake of sparks in their passing. ‘And the third being the technique and practice of instrumental or vocal music.’ His voice found the timbre he used in his ballads, half-crooning, half-hypnotising, modulated, musical. Her hair made fiery points in the candle-light.
‘Don’t stop,’ she murmured and he felt her shoulders slacken, her body arch again under the gentling brush.
‘As my Lady wishes,’ he whispered, tirelessly tracking bristle through the gleaming black tresses. ‘The earth and all upon it which has material existence is subject to time and therefore to change. Nowhere is there stability. The four elements commingle and separate in constant flux.’ Her hair crackled from the brushing. He touched it lightly with his free hand and the crackles stung him and disappeared into his own body. He moved his left hand in contrapuntal accompaniment to the right, ever brushing. ‘Our world is at the centre of the universe, surrounded by crystal spheres that fit perfectly and spin, enclosing in each one a heavenly body.’ As his hand stroked down the length of her hair, he could feel the warmth of her back through the fine cloth. ‘Outside of these is the firmament of fixed stars, not susceptible to time or change.’ He parted her hair at the neck, kissed the bared, young bone, pressed himself against her and his hand followed its natural course down from her shoulder to curve under her arm and gently cup her breast. He waited.
‘More,’ she whispered.
‘The firmament is stocked not with material things but rather with perfect forms.’ His fingers traced the bud hardening under his touch. ‘Free of material existence,’ he purred, ‘these exist in eternity. Through reason or in his very soul, a human being may contemplate and observe the eternal. Estela.’ He returned the brush to its place and raised her, turning her to face him. ‘Undress me.’ With his help she removed his tunic and loosened the gatherings so that his under-breeches fell to his feet. She reached out, curious, and he let her explore, her touch shy and hesitant. Then it was his turn. He untied the laces across her breast, loosed her shift, paused and queried, ‘Dagger?’ earning a laugh. Then her nightgown joined his under-breeches in a discarded heap. His mouth found the scar noticed so long ago but now was not the moment to ask. There would be time, later, to know everything. Now he ached with restraint and could hold back no longer. She moved to blow out the candle but he stopped her and his eyes never left hers as he lifted her onto the bed. Once sure that there was a welcome for him between her thighs, he murmured, ‘Guide me, Estela. Make it your choice to take me in.’ And then the great music of which the world is made took him over, beyond thought, beyond control until he heard her cry his name and they fell together off the edge of the world.
He held her like a child till she slept, tears dryng on her cheeks, ‘Jouissance,’ her last word. Then he carefully extricated himself, dressed quietly and stood, a silent silhouette against the window, as much guardian of her sleep as the white fur in the doorway, snoring. Whatever doom came upon them, they had known this night and when first light showed, he stirred and stroked her cheek to wake her. ‘I have a gift for you and then I must go,’ he whispered, watching her eyes wake from what dreams he could only imagine, to confusion at his presence, followed by a flush of emotion. He stood aside so she could see the window and gestured. ‘The present.’ Even through the small window the perfect dawn tinged the sky with cream, gold and red from the first rays of the sun. Her face lit up with her own awakening and he was amused to detect the return of desire. ‘I must go, really. People shouldn’t see me here.’ He detached himself gently, and reluctantly, from her questing hand.
‘I don’t care about people!’ she flashed.
‘But you must, my Lady.’ He put space between himself
and the bed and gave her his most charming smile. ‘Or it will be difficult for me to come to you again.’ Then he stepped over the dog and left, while he could still force himself out the door, banishing from his mind the raspberry tips of her full breasts, the curves of her hips and thighs, the opening folds and secrets of the sweetest place in the whole of the universe, an endless present.
Chapter 18.
Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, Estela passed the next few days of routine duties in a satiated daze, alive only in her lover’s arms at night. Reprise by reprise, their encounters added laughter and experiment to a mix that was already heady enough to leave both of them intoxicated. The geography of her own naked body had become the study of a cartographer as meticulous as any of Ermengarda’s log-keeping navigators and he wanted the history of the tiny burn mark on her calf - a childhood accident with a bonfire - and of the weal he kissed on her left shoulder, twisting a hank of hair to one side as he traced the raised edge of the scar with his mouth,
In this man’s arms she could say or do anything and so she told him how her father’s new wife had dazzled fourteen-year-old Estela with her pretty yellow hair and dainty manner. How she had encouraged the girl to grow into her womanhood and leave behind the smithy and the knife games that had been her refuge as a child. Equally enamoured, her brother was shaped by a smile here, a compliment there, into smoother behaviour and taking his duties as squire more seriously. Until the trap sprung, the day her father’s wife invited Estela to look through the spyhole to the great Hall, from the inner Sanctum of the new Private Bedchamber. While Estela was standing agog at watching the bustle below her, men and maids all oblivious to the young spy, her father was sent for. His wife suddenly started screaming at Estela who was apparently a viper in the bosom and a thief. Bemused, Estela saw her father arrive on this scene and comfort his distraught wife, who said she’d found Estela snooping in their Chamber, where she was not allowed, and that her worst fears were proved true. Of course, the wife’s missing bracelet was found under Estela’s pillow and, white-faced, her father took a whip to her.
