Authors: Norah Lofts
I was by this time close to the edge of the dais, ready to speak as soon as the song should reach its end. Blondel began on the next verse.
Sing of my shield
I had been looking at the boy as I moved towards the dais; my eye, first startled by the sight of him unexpectedly encountered, had been arrested by the fact that he looked different from the Blondel of the bower. Ordinarily he wore a hangdog look. I had once or twice wondered at it, for he had a very pleasant life; all the ladies spoiled him; he ate and lived very softly for one of his kind. But now and again his face reminded me of the faces of men who have borne some shocking experience—some of the Christian prisoners whom we released from Saracen hands (and our crusade, if it did nothing more, set scores of them at liberty) had worn that look; and I have also seen it on the faces of men stricken with mortal sickness and soon to die. But tonight that look was gone; his face was merry and young; even the white hair shone gold in the lamplight and lost its frosty incongruity; and his eyes took on a lustre and his teeth shone when he opened his mouth to the singing. One could imagine an archangel—not Michael for he, being a soldier, would wear a sterner look but Gabriel, perhaps—looking somewhat like that.
And I remembered that earlier this evening—though it seemed much longer, years and years ago, in fact—I had had reason for gratitude towards him. Although in the confusion that followed his withdrawal I had lost sight of the fact, he had prevented Berengaria from making a fool of herself. And now he was doing well, too. Richard, after the music and the singing, would be in a softer and more amenable mood than he would have been coming straight from the interview with Coutances or from the mule pickets. More likely to listen to me.
How you do seem to crop up, I thought quite kindly, looking at the back of the silver-gilt head bent over the lute. And then, coming back to practical things, wondering who sent him. Berengaria? Anna? Once before he had spied out the land—was he spying again? But the whole thing had a remoteness, an unreality which it would not have had if I had found Blondel in this tent before I had heard those soldiers say, ‘Help, help for the Holy Sepulchre!’
I stood there, waiting for the verse to end and thinking these oddly assorted thoughts. Then it happened.
Richard’s hand, lean and brown, cupped for caressing, reached out until it almost touched the back of that silvergilt head; it hesitated, hovered and fell away, as Eve’s hand must have fallen away once, twice, before it closed at last about the deadly apple.
And I looked into Richard’s face and saw there what is perhaps the most shocking, most humiliating thing any woman—let alone a mother—can see on any man’s face; naked, hungry, lustful desire directed at another man…
Quite unmistakable to anyone and to me horribly recognisable, for as a young woman I had spent some time in the company of my uncle, Robert of Antioch, the most charming and handsome man of his day but a notorious lover of boys.
One can think many things in a second of time and I thought then: How odd that I should remember Robert this very evening. For when I was thinking over my thousand failures I had thought of how, full of the pride of young womanhood and beauty, I had flaunted my charms at him, exerted myself to be witty and companionable, not in jealousy exactly but certainly competitively with the favourite of the moment. And Louis had been angry and accused me of misconduct—and how could I say that Robert hardly noticed me because I was not a pretty page boy? That was one of the thousand of failures, remembered just before I had halted the mule.
And now I saw in my most beloved son the taint. And knew that it had been transmitted through my blood. Henry and his kin had vices enough, God knew, but the vice of Sodom was not one of theirs.
The full weight of my understanding and my knowledge fell on me like the lead that falls on the wretch condemned to
peine forte et dure
; and I stood there, within arm’s reach of Richard, so shocked and stunned that if he had looked up and seen me I could not have spoken to him. If a lion had come rampaging through the tent I could not have stepped out of its path.
Alys, I thought, and the long delay… Berengaria and the absence even of curiosity… It all fitted.
So did that damned boy’s reluctance to accompany Berengaria on her innocent, girlish escapade.
If there had been anything to sit on I should have sat down; if there had been anything to cling to I should have clutched it. But the trestle tables and the benches had been moved away and I stood there in the empty space and the darkness and the emptiness whirled round me and over me and through me. I was alone in the infinite night.
But blows fall and none but the last is fatal; from the rest we reel and recover ourselves and go on. Presently my mind began to move again and I thought: This thing which I have stumbled on by chance in no way affects what I came back to say. England stands where she stood. And Richard, whatever he may be, is still my son.
Just then the song ended. The boy swept his fingers across his lute in a final triumph-burst of melody, leapt to his feet and, facing Richard, said, ‘Sire, that was magnificent!’ And though my heart’s beat reverberated in my ears and made all my limbs unsteady I forced myself to move forward and say, before Richard could speak, ‘It was indeed.’
That startled them both. The boy looked confused and guilty, Richard surprised and concerned. He got to his feet and with an exact repetition of his former gesture assisted me onto the dais. This time, however, instead of embracing me he peered at me earnestly. ‘You should have been safe home ’ere this. What happened?’
‘Nothing amiss.’ I was surprised to hear my voice, so light and easy and ordinary. ‘It was just that on my way, like Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus, I saw a great light and came back to discuss what it revealed to me.’
‘Then,’ he said jovially, ‘you’re luckier than the saint to whom nothing was revealed. If I remember rightly he lay blind for a fortnight. Is that correct, Blondel? You’re the bookman. Good God, boy, don’t stand there looking as though you’d been caught picking a pocket. Madam, my mother, will overlook your being out of bounds after dark.’
The haste to set the boy at his ease was significant. And if I had been blind, the very way in which he had said the word ‘Blondel’ would have informed me; nothing is more revealing of love or hatred or indifference than the way in which one’s given name is spoken.
‘I have one or two other things to occupy my mind,’ I said ironically, ‘and perhaps I also am out of bounds after dark.’
The boy shot me a look of understanding. ‘By your leave then, sire, madam…’
‘All right, Blondel. Tomorrow, if you can elude the watchdogs. I may have a little time after supper.’
Exactly in that manner would Robert of Antioch dismiss and make further assignation with the favourite of the moment. Deceiving no one but himself, poor fool. And I wondered whether Richard would fall into the usual pattern of behaviour by watching the boy out of sight. He did.
The only thing that was different was the boy himself. Robert’s favourites had all been conscious, pert, slyly flaunting. There was nothing of that about Blondel; no flicker of the eyelashes, no knowing smile, no smugly wriggling bum. He walked away into the dimness and out of the tent as a young squire might walk. However, I remembered from my talk with Sancho that this was a young man who had kept one secret well. And that was Richard’s secret too!
I sat down heavily on the end of Richard’s bed and he turned from watching the boy’s exit and bent over me with concern.
‘Mother, you are worn out. You shouldn’t have turned back. What was it you thought of that couldn’t wait until morning?’
I found myself wishing to God that I hadn’t turned back. As he stood leaning over me, tender anxiety on his face and the whole of him so handsome, so virile, I wished with all my heart that I had not turned back and so escaped that hurt of this dreadful knowledge. I said involuntarily, ‘Oh, Richard, my dear boy…’
‘Mother, what is it? What ails you?’
The Dead Sea poured its bitter waters in which no fish breeds, no weed lives, the very symbol of sterility, over Sodom long ago. Fertile green England is my concern. I will not be circumvented.
‘Richard,’ I said, ‘on my way back I was thinking about Longchamp and John and about your plan for sending Coutances to settle things. Look,’ I said. ‘I know this is going to make you angry and I know that no man, you least of all, likes being told what to do by a woman; and when I came out of Winchester I vowed that I would never offend you by opposing or advising you. But I must. I saw this thing so clearly that, as I told you, it was like a revelation and so I came back to tell you that Coutances isn’t the man to send—’ I hesitated because he was staring at me with that same immense concentration which had disconcerted the archer. And I hesitated also for the supremely ridiculous reason that I had got my sentence in a muddle. ‘Coutances isn’t the man to send; I am,’ didn’t make sense; it might make him laugh and turn the whole thing into a joke. I should have said “person.”
And while I hesitated Richard began to speak.
‘I’ve been thinking this over too,’ he said. ‘I saw Coutances; he’s willing to go but dubious. And while he was humming and hawing I thought—’ He broke off and, reaching along the table, produced a letter, folded and sealed. ‘While the scribes were at work writing to Geoffrey and to Longchamp I got this ready to send to you. I thought the boy could deliver it to you in the morning. Here you are, read it and spare me saying it. It sounds so ridiculous said out loud.’ He broke the seal and handed me the sheet, open. And then, ‘Ha,’ he said. ‘The boy forgot his lute; he must have been thoroughly disconcerted.’ He took it in hand and while I read the letter he picked out with one idle finger the simple outline of the melody they had been singing.
I took in the gist of the letter at a glance and thought: He isn’t a fool, nor is he so indifferent to England’s plight as would appear.
Aloud I said, ‘Stop that noise, Richard. And tell me, what is
ridiculous
about this prosposal?’
‘I meant no offence by that, Mother,’ he said hastily, and threw the lute aside so roughly that its strings twanged and thrummed. ‘But after your saying that Coutances was too old—that I must send a man, a soldier—to say, ‘Go yourself,’ did sound a little—’
‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘But it was, in fact, the thing I came back to suggest myself.’
He began to laugh and after a moment I joined in his laughter. I was so relieved that the argument had been avoided; that he himself had suggested my going. It made my position so much more assured.
We laughed together, gasping out that we must both have thought of this thing at the same moment, trying to fix exactly the time when the thought struck us.
And then another thought struck me and I said, ‘But I actually came to strike a bargain, Richard. You know me, nothing for nothing and damned little for a groat—that’s my motto.’
Keep him in this good humour for as long as possible. And think—marriage might save him even yet. Marriage carries certain obligations and it curtails time and opportunity. Only the very depraved—and he wasn’t that, surely, only tainted—O God, let it be only tainted and recoverable!—could pursue both courses at once. And this thing that has happened to him is a thing which does, they say, happen to men who live almost exclusively with men, soldiers, sailors on long voyages, monks. It’s like vines left unstaked which twine about one another, substituting and pretending. Berengaria is so beautiful and she is so passionately inclined towards him; she could save him.
(But at that moment—so mixed is the human mind—there flashed into my mind the memory of Uncle Robert turning from a troupe of lovely Arabian dancing girls to fondle a nasty, positively cross-eyed little page.) But one’s thoughts can be enemies and must be dealt with as such; Robert wasn’t married then, I reflected resolutely; and he was older, more set in his ways.
‘Well,’ Richard said, ‘what’s your price, Mother?’
‘I would like to see you married before I go.’
‘There isn’t time. I want you to go back with Alwyne.’
‘When?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’
‘Then there is ample time. Berengaria doesn’t desire a spectacular wedding. She has her gown. If I go back this evening and say that on account of my leaving for England the wedding is to be tomorrow she will be in the seventh heaven of delight. You have no notion, Richard, how much that young woman adores you—or how lovely she is. And you know, I would like to finish off one job before tackling another. I did set out to bring you your bride and see you safely bedded with her. Give me that satisfaction. You set to work and get the bishops and archbishops prepared and I’ll go and tell Berengaria to shake out her wedding dress.’
‘I’d do it out of gratitude to you, inconvenient as I myself should find it,’ Richard said, ‘but for one thing which I am rather surprised you should have overlooked. Lent, Mother. Lent started last Wednesday.’
Months later, when Richard was lost to the world, cast into some nameless prison and years later, when he was dead, beyond the reach of praise or blame or irony, I was glad that I did not then round on him and say what was in my mind, it was so very scathing. As though Lent mattered to him! As though he didn’t know that any priest—English, French, Sicilian—on the island would have performed the ceremony and known that the dispensation was certain. Richard Plantagenet pleading Lent as an excuse!
A dozen scalding remarks formed in my mind but I uttered none of them. Not because I hesitated to offend—that was all over and in future I was determined that I would always speak my mind; and not because at that moment I wished to spare his feelings. What held me silent was utter weariness. I felt as a man might crossing a mountain range, climbing one pass and another and yet another and then finding that one more confronts him and that his vigour is completely spent. Quite suddenly all my strength drained away as life-blood drains from an unstaunchable wound. There’d been the emotional strain of the scene with Berengaria which now seemed as though it had taken place a hundred years ago; then the mule ride; then the wrangle with Richard over Coutances; then another ride and the further, emotional demand of making my own decision; and finally the torturing weight of my discovery. Now, faced with this last evidence of Richard’s determination to have things his own way, I capitulated without any struggle.