The Lute Player

  Richard told me himself that those were his words. Blunt, tactless, inconsiderate and to the point. And the question naturally put Philip in a very awkward position. It would have been a difficult question for any man to answer but for Philip it was peculiarly so. For Philip had inherited from his father, my first husband, a pious streak and he took very seriously such a choice between his personal inclination and his moral obligation. In such a situation a man, according to whether he is hedonist or idealist, must make his choice; and Philip found the choice hard because in him the two were balanced. His sound good sense bade him to keep out of this quarrel; his piety forbade him to side, even by neutrality, with a lecher and a whore. Richard’s blunt words had left him no loophole and in the end he came out on Richard’s side and for a time drowned his doubts by a violent partisanship. But he always, I think, cherished a resentment against the man who had forced the decision on him. He repeatedly proposed, after Henry’s death, that Richard should let bygones be bygones and marry Alys after all.

  ‘Had you not been so tardy a lover that accident would never have happened; and it is no worse than marrying a widow,’ he said on one occasion when the question of Alys’s future cropped up. Richard, with an ill-timed humour, replied that a man was forbidden by Holy Church to marry his father’s widow! That kind of joke went down ill with Philip who was monkish and had all the monk’s outward attention to form and inward sly evasion. Philip may have disliked Richard for many reasons and he may have regarded him with deadly envy but many little signs, particularly Philip’s attitude towards the woman Richard did marry, point to an enmity beginning on the day when Richard made his blunt decision and then used a moral lever to force Philip make an equally blunt one.

  And then there was John. No evasion of the promise and the bribe was possible now. Richard had said that John should be his regent if he were King before he went on crusade. He was King and he had taken the Cross side by side with Philip in the new crusade which William of Tyre was urging throughout Christendom. So in a matter of a few months England would lie at John’s feet and suffer all the misrule that can spring from authority without responsibility. Just at the moment when the most sound, most cautious government was needed to hold the country in trust for its absent King a reckless, selfish, greedy savage child would be in control.

  I worried incessantly and I resented it for, apart from such mental discomforts, my life had come out into a pleasant place. In some ways the change was comic. When the breath went out of Henry’s body Nicholas of Saxham, erstwhile my gaoler, became my subservient slave and Glanville, who had never taken his overseership seriously enough to care whether I lived or died, became most attentive. There was no more brown ale; the wine appeared on my table almost as suddenly as it did at the wedding in Cana; all my clothes and a good many of my jewels were returned to me. Did I wish a fire, the day being chill? Would I care to ride, the day being fine? Overnight I changed from being an unwanted, unloved wife of a king to a cherished queen mother. Sometimes I thought wryly of all the women whose sun had set over their husband’s graves; mine had known a belated but brilliant redawning. Before ever Richard had come back for his crowning I was besieged by fawning suitors and I lost count of the petitions and requests which came to me—often accompanied by gifts—as a means of reaching the King’s ear. I ignored them all and the only request I made to Richard at that time was a purely personal one.

  (‘Nicolas of Saxham, Your Majesty, presents a solemn petition and begs that he may be suitably rewarded for the faithful discharge of his duties as your mother’s warden all these years.’

  ‘And what would my mother suggest as suitable?’

  ‘His head would look mighty well at the top of a pole; and if excuse for such extreme reward were needed, I think a close scrutiny of his accounts would provide it.’

  ‘Aye, and teach the rest of the knaves that I take count of pennies. A timely lesson and one they must learn soon.’

  So Nicolas of Saxham went to his account and Richard permitted me to give his forfeited Suffolk manor to the faithful Alberic, only stipulating that the feudal dues on the property be raised from four fully furnished men-at-arms to ten. Alberic was demented by pride and joy. He took for his coat of arms a pedlar’s pack with ten lances sprouting from it!)

  Richard was crowned in September with more pomp and ceremony and magnificence than had ever been seen before. It was such a pity, I thought, that he should take so little pleasure in the welcome extended to him by his English people or from the efforts they made to display their fervent loyalty. He spent no penny of his own and grudged the extravagance of others. ‘If they have no better use for their money, I have,’ he grumbled. ‘Does a canopy that costs enough to arm ten knights make me more a king than I am already?… So the Tailors’ Guild is providing free wine for every sot in London! By God, before I’m through with them they’ll wish it back for the sake of their own dry throats.’

  Only the gifts which came to him pleased him and for any king less devoured by single-minded ambition they would have assured wealth for many years. Not even I had guessed the immensity of England’s wealth or of Richard’s popularity. Apart from his size and beauty—always sure key to the heart of the common people—there was his reputation as a fighter to commend him. The streets of London rang day and night with songs of his prowess, many true, some exaggerated, some invented. And the gifts poured in. Simple common people who saw in Richard the son of Henry the Lawgiver and the symbol of their security dug into their greasy purses and wooden coffers; the nobles and barons who saw him as the knight-errant who would shortly go off on crusade and allow them to return to the lawless power of the old days opened their silk purses and jewel boxes. Even the Jews ventured out of their protective obscurity and brought him presents, a move which resulted in a small immediate tragedy and a great future one. Richard received their presents graciously, even eagerly—he would have taken a present from Satan himself, I think—but some officials, mindful of the law forbidding women and Jews from participating in the ceremony and some of the rabble who needed no excuse for disorder, set about the Jews and there were riot and massacre, both on a small scale. Richard was vexed but the matter was easily forgotten in the general rejoicing.

  III

  As soon as the ceremonies and the feastings were ended Richard came to my new and most comfortable apartment in Westminster, greeted me briefly but warmly and threw himself into a chair. ‘There,’ he said, ‘God be thanked, all that mummery is over. Four days we’ve been at it and now I think everyone is satisfied that I am King of England. And now, Mother, I want to talk to you.’

  I said lightly, ‘I am all attention, Your Majesty,’ but something warned me that he was here on a serious errand; and, looking into his face, I was aware of a faint, pricking concern for his health—the first, I think, that I had ever known. Boredom and his own boundless impatience, both of which he had been compelled, in some measure at least, to restrain, had exhausted him more than any physical effort could ever do; he looked tired and strained, almost distraught. I determined there and then that whatever it was that he was about to ask me—and I suspected that a request was forthcoming—I would do without question and without hesitation.

  ‘You know, don’t you,’ he began abruptly, ‘that I intend to go to Palestine as soon as I have gathered men and gear sufficient? I’ve just seen Longchamp and Hugh of Durham and they are off to raise money quickly. Longchamp has a stupendous plan for turning the Jew riot in York to advantage—but I won’t go into that now. If you choose’—he wagged a finger at me—‘you can gather me in a considerable sum in a short time. But I won’t deny that it entails some inconvenience to yourself.’

  My jewels, I thought with a slight pang. Ludicrous! I’d gone decked like a shrine in the jewels of France, forfeited them all when Louis divorced me and gone to Henry as bare as a tinker’s bitch; Henry had loaded me again, fingers, wrists and ears, throat and brow, as became a queen; then he had taken all away
. Some had recently been restored to me and now…

  ‘My jewels,’ I said. ‘Well, luckily I haven’t yet got into the habit of wearing them! Several of the best pieces have vanished, too. But to what I have you are welcome; Richard.’

  His strained face softened into a grin, boyish but not quite at ease.

  ‘I don’t ask your trinkets, yet. It might come to that! I’d rather save them against the day when we ride together into Jerusalem. Remember? No, Mother, what I ask of you at this moment is a feat of exertion and no small measure of diplomacy.’ The uneasy, boyish grin, the cajoling way in which he had said, ‘Remember?’ and above all this beating about the bush—so unusual with him—puzzled and disconcerted me. What was he about to demand?

  ‘I want you to go to Navarre—to Pamplona—and do an errand for me there.’

  ‘Holy Mother,’ I said, ‘that is quite a journey for a woman of my age!’ But I said that because that was the first sentence I could form in my confusion. Behind it my thoughts ran wild. It was a journey but if Richard knew anything about me at all he must know that journeying was my delight and after all those years of captivity to be made free of the wide world… No, it wasn’t the journey, it was the errand that made him hesitant and furtive. Surely he didn’t want me to marry Sancho! Or did he? Did he secretly, like Louis and Henry and Harry and John, fear and detest me? Had he so soon planned such a subtle way to be rid of me? And I thought, I won’t do it. I’ve suffered enough from husbands! I’ll go to some small estate and live as a private person; as a peasant, rather.

  ‘Yes,’ Richard said, ‘it is quite a journey and that is the least of it! It’s when you get there—’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I exclaimed, ‘speak out, Richard. What do you want me to do in Navarre?’

  ‘Convince Sancho,’ he said, ‘convince him that my intentions towards his daughter are honourable and persuade him to send me the money immediately. I can’t marry her yet. I haven’t time. But I will, as soon as I get this business well under way and to do that I want the money. If you go and talk to him and bring her to meet me somewhere and get him to send the money to me at once, I’ll be everlastingly grateful to you, Mother.’

  I saw my hands moving as though they had been detached from my body, weaving about in the air before me. Hysteria, I thought, and clasped them firmly in my lap.

  ‘You’re going to marry one of Sancho’s daughters?’ I asked. ‘Which one, Blanche or Berengaria?’

  ‘Berengaria—if it can be arranged.’

  ‘But, Richard, in heaven’s name, why? You’re free now, you’re King of England, lord of Aquitaine; you could marry any princess in Christendom.’

  My mind broke into froth and I groped about in it to pull out certain facts I remembered as poor people grope in the surf of breaking waves for driftwood.

  ‘Her mother was mad,’ I said. ‘I well remember when my godchild, Marie-Maud, was married at Limoges—and, Richard, that must be almost twenty years ago—all the gossip in the bower was about the Queen of Navarre having conceived in a moment of sanity and whelped in a fit of madness. They joked about it and said usually it was the other way round! And since then I’ve heard that this Berengaria is superbly beautiful. Richard, she’s beautiful and twenty years old and not yet betrothed! Doesn’t that suggest anything to you? She’s probably mad, too.’

  ‘She can be as crazy as all Gadara for all I care,’ Richard said.

  ‘You mean you fell in love with her pretty face when you were in Pamplona some time ago,’ I said bitterly. ‘Richard, my dear one, my darling son, the only son I have left please, just this once, just this one time, listen to your mother…’

  ‘If my mother would just listen to me for a moment, if she had listened at all,’ Richard said coldly, ‘she would remember that money was mentioned. Not madness in old queens or pretty faces in young princesses, money, gold coins which a man needs to equip an army and conduct a campaign. So stop squawking for a moment while I tell you the situation. I never saw the girl; I daresay she was there amongst the other women during that tournament and events seem to suggest that she took a fancy to me. Sancho began to make approaches a long time ago when I was tied by the heel. Then lately, in fact before I’d told anyone but Philip that I wasn’t going to marry Alys—there was Sancho’s emissary again. He’d offered me a substantial contribution towards my crusade once before; this time he doubled it and this time I was in a position to accept it. But breaking with Alys after so long a betrothal and no reason given hasn’t exactly enhanced my reputation with scheming papas and Sancho, before he parts with a penny, needs some assurance of my good faith. If you go to assure him and collect the girl, all will be well. But if the job isn’t to your liking, say so now and I’ll ask Joanna to go. She’s kicking her heels in Sicily and would be pleased to help her brother.’

  ‘I’ll go, Richard,’ I said hastily. ‘If anybody goes, I’ll go. But I wish you would think, just for a moment. Lightly as marriages are arranged, they matter. And so few people are free to choose. You are. You are the most eligible man on earth, I should think. Is it really necessary for you to sell yourself’—I used the word deliberately and repeated it—‘to sell yourself for a sum of money, like an apprentice marrying his master’s buck-toothed daughter?’

  He rose from his chair and stood over me until I rose, too, and pulled myself up and faced him.

  ‘Should you talk?’ he asked, not rudely; if anything, a little sadly. ‘You chose Father! You could have stayed with Louis or had any man in the world. Every man who looked at you lusted after you. You chose! This mad, this destructive notion that one person matters more than another, this devilish worship of personality—where did it land you? I don’t want a certain woman or even a certain sort of woman in my bed; I don’t crave a face or even a certain sort of face at my table. I want to get to the East quickly and beat Saladin. Sancho’s money will be a means to that end. That is all I want, all I’ve ever wanted since I could remember. I’ve never drawn sword, lifted axe or couched lance without thinking: Beware, Saladin, here I come! But thinking and wishing and praying are not enough. In these days nothing counts but money and of that I have always been short. I’ve scrimped and saved; if you could see my headquarters at Rouen you’d see them poorer and meaner than your prison at Winchester. I keep no state, no musician, no court fool. Soldiers I feed, no others. Look at me! My mail is good; that goes to Jerusalem; the gloves you gave me—the rest is rubbish. Four days ago they set Edward’s crown on my head. This morning I broke it up and sold it, piece by piece, to the Jews. By God, I’d sell London itself if I could find a buyer.’

  The vehemence of his speech had flushed his face and brought the sweat out on his brow just below the line where the red-gold hair sprang crisply. I looked at him and thought: London, that fair rich city which I saved for you! But there was nothing to say; any protest I might make would only alienate him from me without in the least affecting his resolution. Edward’s crown, London, England itself, were worthless to Richard because he had a nature which could never appreciate a gift; the only thing he could accept was a challenge.

  I felt a little unwilling nudge of pity towards this Berengaria, mad or sane. For she would love him, soon or late; no woman could see him and not feel the prick of desire; and he…

  ‘And you,’ I said irrelevantly, ‘write love songs!’

  He looked surprised and uncomfortable for a second, then he laughed.

  ‘Quite another thing! Well, Mother, will you go to Navarre for me or must I send Joanna?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said. I must not miss the chance of putting him “everlastingly grateful” to me. For in matters of that kind Richard was a man of his word; he executed his threats and he honoured his promises. I could foresee a time when it might be necessary for me to have some hold on him and I could always remind him, say, ‘Who went to Navarre for you?’ and gain at least his attention.

  ‘Then listen,’ he said. ‘Explain the situation to Sancho and te
ll him that the sooner I have the money the sooner I can make my arrangements; and the sooner they’re made the sooner will his daughter be Queen of England. If he balks at that condition, if he says he’ll pay after the wedding or wants me to waste time on a wedding at Westminster or any such nonsense, don’t parley with him. Loss of time, to me, is as bad as loss of money. Let me know by swift courier and then make what excuse you like and come home. But if he is amenable, bring the girl to Marseilles or Sicily—I cannot tell yet. So much depends. And keep her quiet and contented until I am ready. And another thing—this is where you will be valuable—at all costs prevent her from bringing a horde of women with her or much baggage. You’ve been on crusade; you know the conditions. Frighten off the waiting ladies, as you love me. Now, how soon can you leave?’

  ‘In an hour,’ I said. ‘I must change my clothes and tell Barbara to get ready.’

  He laughed. ‘It will take me a full day to arrange your escort. And I think you should aim to make a good impression. Say the morning after tomorrow. Can you really be ready by then?’

  ‘I can,’ I said.

  He looked at me curiously. ‘A woman in a thousand,’ he said slowly. ‘I shall always remember that you did me this great service.’

  ‘I hope you will remember it with gladness.’ I heard the doubt in my own voice; he heard it, too, and answered it.

  ‘Young Sancho, the girl’s blood brother, is whole and sane enough, Mother.’

  ‘God send the girl is.’

  There and then I made up my mind that if I found otherwise I would so contrive and arrange that the money would never be despatched; I would throw it into the sea, rather. Yes, I’d save Richard from himself; I’d not have him marry a madwoman. But that was all in the future and uncertain; there was something quite certain and immediate which I might be able to do.