Authors: Norah Lofts
There was a moment of silence after that, during which we all three pursued our own thoughts. Then Richard said:
‘Of the Queen, yes, you both speak true—and of my sister. But there’s that little crooked one—Anna. I shall read Jerusalem writ large in her eyes. With understanding and pity… Raife, God boggled with some of us, did He not? Anna isn’t soft or smooth or silly.’
‘Then let Blondel give her a really vivid account of water in the bowels,’ Raife said. ‘That’ll take her mind off the subject.’
There was, of course, every excuse for him. The blister on his heel had never mended. Escel had tried not only the mouldy biscuits but every known and reputed remedy: poultices of herbs and of bread, salt packs, dressings hot and cold, applications of tar, oil, various wines, crushed figs, which the Saracens swore by and even, at last, not without protest, a warm cow dung which rumour said was used most successfully in India. Nothing availed; the heel had rotted. Escel had cut away the putrefying flesh, scraped the softened bone. Raife had suffered great torment but he bore it all with sour patience, with furious resolution. Midway between Jaffa and Acre he had been forced to abandon even the smooth-paced Arab and take to a hastily rigged litter and now he lay abed, lame to helplessness, racked with pain but indomitable and still in full possession of his sharp wits.
Thinking of his state, I thought I saw a loophole for escape. It was more than a year since I had looked upon my lady and the absence, combined with the comfort of the wine-bibbing, had brought me a kind of peace. But I knew how precarious a peace it was. It had been shattered by the mere prospect of seeing her.
‘If you can dispense with my services,’ I said, ‘I will stay here and keep Raife company.’
‘But I counted on you to help entertain them. A song or two and a story. God’s wounds, Blondel, it’s a twelve-month since I saw them—and nothing but failure to report. Raife, we’ll be gone little more than an hour and you won’t be alone. Sibald will come and play chess with you if you wish.’
‘Thank you, no. My sufferings are sufficient. I shall lie here and think of you. But I pray you, give me no thought.’
‘You see?’ Richard said, turning to me.
The year’s passing seemed to have touched them very lightly if at all. Anna’s sharp little face looked a trifle sharper and smaller and the Lady Joanna’s hair seemed slightly less bright but Berengaria was so exactly as I remembered her that it might have been an hour instead of a year since I had taken leave of her.
Her greeting, cooler and more careless than ever, for she had eyes for no one but Richard, made mock of the tumult of emotion within me, a mockery which my own mind shared. I stepped into the background of this tender scene of reunion thinking about the threefold nature of man: body, mind and spirit. Body knew its lusts; mind ridiculed the whole situation; spirit, on its knees, worshipped the beauty, the sheer loveliness that was akin to the perfection of a flower or a sunset.
The women had somehow, with feminine skill, made a fine meal. Food was now scarce and poor everywhere. The natural resources of the country were exhausted and when the army had turned back from Jerusalem the majority of the supply ships had held off.
‘This smells good,’ Richard said as a dish of young goat cooked with herbs came to the table. ‘Here, Blondel, no ceremony, sit in by me…’ He made room for me beside him. The Duchess of Avosola, who had been seated by him, made herself small. Hot-faced, awkward, hating him for his tactlessness, I sat down. Standing back, holding my lute and waiting, I had at least the right to a minstrel’s place; here, squeezed in, defying all order, I was like a pet dog. But he meant it kindly and after months of hard living—I had not even smelt fresh meat since the day when I had been wounded—I tackled the food resolutely, determined to enjoy it. So long as we were at table the subject of the crusade was avoided so scrupulously that it shrieked aloud through the very omission. The ladies talked gaily about future plans, joy of going home, making it sound as though we had all come to Palestine on a visit which for some reason had proved more dull and disappointing than had been expected. It was lovely to be going home.
I could feel a growing restlessness in Richard and a glance at his face told me that it wore its bleak, winter look. Once he mentioned abruptly that next day or the one following he expected to go to Damascus for the signing of the treaty. The word “treaty” dropped into the bubbling conversation like a stone. But the ladies cheerfully ignored it and began to chatter about Damascus. The buildings in Damascus were famous, were they not? The Cathedral of St. John was said to be wonderful… I saw Berengaria glance at Joanna who, like a puppet whose string has been tugged, leaned forward and asked:
‘Richard, couldn’t you take us; not all of us, of course, just Betengaria and me?’
‘Quite impossible,’ he said shortly. ‘It’s a long way and bad road. The dust alone would—Besides, we can hardly mount those who are bound to go.’ He turned to me and muttered; ‘Get up and play now; I’ve had enough of this babble.’
Before I had half finished the first song I saw another glance exchanged; this time it was Joanna who looked significantly at Berengaria who turned towards Richard and said, with rather more directness than she ordinarily employed with him:
‘My lord, will you withdraw with us? Joanna has something of importance to talk over with you.’
Something of warmth and interest came into his face and he looked along the table and smiled.
‘Here, Raymond, come and plead your own cause.’
Count Egidio rose, looking a little confused. Joanna went rosy-red.
‘For my part,’ Richard said with sudden heartiness, ‘I have quarrels enough of my own. The feud ’twixt my mother and your sire, Raymond, means nothing to me.’
The four went into an inner room. Richard had said enough to indicate that his consent to the betrothal would be easily won. A fresh babble of talk broke out about the table. A voice at my elbow said: ‘Finish that song and then come out on the balcony. They are not listening.’
I looked down and met Anna’s sweet yet derisive little smile. She hobbled away and I brought the song to an end prematurely and joined her in the far corner of the balcony where she stood, leaning her elbows on the marble balustrade and staring up at the star-filled sky.
‘Well,’ she said without turning her head, ‘and how are things with you, Blondel?’
‘Much as they were, my lady. And with you?’
‘Precisely as they were,’ she said, and laughed. ‘I noticed that you still play left-handedly.’
‘Yes. The wound healed but the strength hasn’t returned to my arm yet.’ I did what I did a dozen or more times a day—whenever I thought of it, in fact—lifted my arm to shoulder level, bent the elbow, stretched it, flexed and unflexed my fingers. Anna half turned and, as I let my arm fall again, caught the ends of my fingers in her little palm.
‘So cold,’ she said, ‘on such a warm night. Is the other hand—’ She touched that, too, and, finding it warm, withdrew her hold. ‘Was it properly attended?’
‘Oh yes, by Escel himself. It is doing well; I should exercise it more.’ Moving it, talking of it reminded me that it was heavy and limp and weak. I detached my fingers from hers and thrust my hand into the front of my jerkin; there, released from its own weight and warmed by my body heat, I could carry it and forget it.
‘You trained your left very quickly and well. After each letter you wrote I tried to write with
my
left, just for curiosity, you know. My letters were quite illegible.’ There was a small pause.
‘The King has taken his failure hard,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is true, what they are saying, that the French deserted on the very eve of the assault?’
I told her briefly as much as I knew of the affair.
‘So it’s over. All the sweating and straining, the hope and—all the dead men. What are you going to do now, Blondel? Have you any plans?’
‘None very sure. It would sound silly, ridiculously self-important, to say that I should stay with the King as long as he wanted me—and yet—well, Raife of Clermont and I were there when it happened and he seems to rely—I mean to be more at ease with us at this moment than with anyone else except the Bishop of Salisbury and of course he doesn’t attend him.’
‘We expected Raife of Clermont to supper.’ The remark followed smoothly on the mention of his name, yet I was left with the feeling that she had abruptly changed the subject.
‘I doubt if he will ever sup out again,’ I said. ‘He’s very brave and resolute but he’s more gravely ill than he admits, even to himself. Escel says he will die.’
‘Then the King will be lonelier than ever, and more—’ She broke off. ‘It’s selfish of me but at this rate I shall never get my house built.’
‘You still cherish that dream?’
‘Why not? It is a comparatively harmless ambition.’
‘And still want me to help with the building?’ She nodded.
‘Many men could do it as well,’ I pointed out. ‘Nevertheless this present state of things will end soon. When we leave Acre the King will cast all this behind him and will take up his ordinary life again. He’ll have no need for me then.’
‘And you will come and help me build? Is that a promise, Blondel?’
‘A vow.’
‘Well, when this Raife of Clermont dies—if he dies—don’t go trying to take his place, making yourself indispensable.’
There was a note in her voice that I remembered from the old days, sharp, dictatorial.
‘I could never do that,’ I said. ‘Raife has qualities that I lack.’ I was prepared at that moment to give her a eulogistic and perhaps fundamentally untrue account of Raife’s qualities, for the threat of imminent death had cast its peculiar light upon him, diminishing his faults and enhancing his virtues. But even as I thought of that it occurred to me that really every one of us was going to die and that we should all of us, always, regard one another in that light. And before I could speak Joanna and Egidio, with their hands linked and a halo of happiness about them, stepped from the inner room on to the balcony; and almost immediately Richard was calling for me and saying that it was time we returned.
One can never experience exactly the same emotion twice over. Rather more than a year ago when Richard had left his wife in the same sudden, cold, heartless fashion I had been angry, shocked, disgusted. Tonight, as he hurried me through the dark, saying that he had given his consent to his sister’s betrothal and that he hoped this time she would be very happy; saying that he wondered whether the messsage from Saladin had arrived and if they would ride to Damascus next day; saying he wondered how Raife was now, I found myself trying in vain to muster up those old feelings. I succeeded only in feeling sorry for him with the pity that one would feel for a bilious man at a feast, a cripple on the march, a blind man standing in the sunset glow.
Saladin had sent word. The leaders of the crusade were to set out next day. And Raife of Clermont had fallen into the comatose state which Escel had predicted as inevitable.
In the morning, when he was ready to leave, Richard committed Raife to my care.
‘Look after him, Blondel. If he wakes and wants anything, get it, whatever it is. And have a priest ready.’ He drew on his gloves and stood scowling. ‘When the time comes—hold his hands; they say that eases the passing. I must go, you know. The others are so anxious to get home they’d sign away Acre if I weren’t there. I must go.’ He gnawed his gloved thumb, staring down into Raife’s blank, fever-flushed face, and then turned abruptly away.
Raife died next day at sunset. Escel had been in and warned me that he was dying and I had sent for a priest who had gone, I thought, to fanatical lengths to rouse him and make him aware of his condition. But the slappings and shakings and douchings with cold water had failed and at last the sad, beautiful rite was performed and I was alone beside the bed.
The camp was very quiet. All the commanders, accompanied by as many men as they could mount, had gone to Damascus and the ordinary men had drifted into Acre or down to the harbour, now crowded with ships awaiting the great burst of embarkation. In particular our tent was deserted since pages and serving-men alike were anxious to avoid the place where a man lay dying.
It was a stifling hot evening, full of dusty purple light; the stench of the rotting flesh and the sound of Raife’s heavy snoring breath filled the tent. I should, sober, have felt very melancholy; but I had taken the precaution of laying in a full wineskin of the Blood of Judas. A year of wine-bibbing had changed me from a novice who reeled and retched and fell on his face into one of those deceptively sober-seeming drinkers who, with wine in them, can do most things they can do empty and some things better. I was quite drunk, quite numbed of mind when the sound of Raife’s breathing changed but I was alert and far more calm than I might have been sober.
He had been breathing as though his open, cracked-lipped mouth had been gulping in thick broth instead of air; the noise ceased suddenly and I went towards him. He opened his eyes and looked at me with recognition.
‘Blondel?’
‘Yes, Raife.’
‘It’s—very dark.’
‘It is evening. Shall I make a light?’
‘No. Where is the King?’
‘He was obliged to go to Damascus. Saladin sent word that he was ready to sign the treaty.’
‘I know. Acre… he must have Acre. He means to come back alone to take Jerusalem. I shan’t be there.’
However honest one is, one feels it incumbent to refute such a statement and I gave the traditional answer:
‘Come, man, be of good cheer; the war can’t be resumed for three years and you—’
‘You know where I shall be, Blondel. Get me some water and then listen to me carefully. I have something to say to you.’
I went to the water pot which stood, covered with a wet cloth, outside the tent door. At some distance, out of sight, several horses were moving rapidly and in rhythm. For a moment I hoped that something unforeseen had brought Richard back to hold Raife’s hands himself but the clatter came no nearer.