… there are some dirty and corrupt prostitutes who desire to seem to be more than virgins and they do make a constrictive for this purpose, but they are ill-counselled, for they render themselves bloody and they wound the penis of the man. They take powdered natron and place it in the vagina.
Occasional storms had punctuated the summer heat for weeks but the heaviness never quite cleared. It was as if the pressure outside gathered inside her own head, thought Estela as she worked in her dispensary or practised her lute, far too busy for embroidery. She saw Dragonetz in passing, a glance, a fleeting touch. She could see how busy he was too, now that the date for the tourney was fixed, but he was never too busy to send her flowers, speaking in the language all lovers knew. Marguerites, with their delicate suggestion that she was ‘a pearl’ among women, had been followed by roses and more roses, passion and more passion. A promise.
Still a surprising lack of blue in his choices but no lack of fervour. Surely he would send a blue flower for her to wear at the tourney? If not, she could pin whatever it was with a blue ribbon. But would that seem ambivalent to others if she had a red rose and a blue ribbon. On tourney day of all days she wanted to wear her lover’s colours.
Not that she anticipated he would be in any real danger, with Malik and de Rançon to watch his back and do his bidding. He was too fine a commander to come to harm in play-fighting. There would probably be more damage to the men from heat-stroke in all that armour than from the mock-battle itself! But the body of soldiers needed blood-letting as much as did any human corps. Good health for the body politic would follow.
She thought of her own blood-letting and how effective it had been in calming the hot humours of the Lord of Les Baux. If only she could tell Dragonetz who’d inflicted Hugues’ irritating wound, the cause of all these delays in the tourney. She smiled to herself. Hugues was on the mend and if his pride still felt the prick, so much the better. The tourney would take place, Ramon would win Les Baux’s alliance if not allegiance and then Barcelone would return home, where Petronilla was in the last months of pregnancy.
Afterwards, the story would be worth singing and Estela was part of it, but she longed for home, for Musca and Nici. When Barcelone left Les Baux, Dragonetz would be free to leave too, for his mint project in Arle. Estela refused to consider the idea that he might choose to stay in Les Baux as its lord. Hugues was wrong and that was all there was to it. There was no reason why she and Dragonetz should not return home in a couple of weeks, he to his various projects and she to the baths at Ais, where she could make the most of her new chemical expertise.
In the meantime, she had her studies, her experiments and her singing. She had been too busy to see much of de Rançon but, when she had, she’d been mindful of Dragonetz’ feelings, however misguided they might be, and had steered conversation away from the most titillating gossip. He had accepted her lead and proved, as always, to be a paragon of chivalry in her company. It was normal to enjoy the company of an attractive man, she told some silent challenger, with a flare of irritation.
Perhaps in response to that inner voice, she had ducked de Rançon’s suggestion that they sing together and also changed her programme of songs. She’d prepared some of the northern ballads that Dragonetz loved so much, lays of King Arthur’s knights that had reached the court of Aquitaine by way of the Welsh bard, Bledri. She was proud of having acquired some of the original songs, as well as some Frankish versions, and she planned to surprise her lover with the new repertoire.
Gallant knights and beauteous ladies made for stories that touched the heart but somehow she didn’t think Dragonetz was in a humour for Lancelot and Guinevere, the perfect knight and his best friend’s wife. Estela was neither Helen of Troy nor Guinevere but she was a troubairitz with a certain reputation. Growing older and wiser merely seemed to constrain her subject matter beyond bearing! Frowning, she added an extra dose of sugar to the bubbling pot and noted the quantities. At least here, in her scientific domain, there were no people to consider!
She ignored the knock on the door at first but it was persistant, if not loud. The quickest method of making it go away was to answer. She sighed, yelled, ‘Wait a minute!’ at the door in a manner more suited to the apothecary than the lady. The mix of blackberries, water and sugar boiled and clotted to her satisfaction. She removed the pot from the heat and, red-faced from working, went to see if anybody was still standing at the door.
Patiently waiting on the other side, was a girl with long, black plaits, a demeanour that suggested she was a servant but clothes richer than such a station would allow. Estela sniffed. She knew what her mother would have said.
‘Come in,’ she said, ‘and don’t touch anything. I expect you have coughing fits or some such thing.’ Or the pox, she thought, wiping her hands on her sackcloth apron.
The girl flinched at such a brusque reception, eyeing Estela like a rabbit with a rabid fox.
‘I’m sorry. I was busy with my work.’ Estela wiped the sweat from her forehead and remembered that she’d tied another bit of sacking round her head, to protect her coif and hair. No doubt she had traces of soot on her face too. Sackcloth and ashes. She must look like a pilgrim on the last step of a thousand mile atonement for murder. She laughed.
‘What must I look like!’ She moved ‘Antidotarum Nicholai’ onto a clean flagstone and liberated a stool for the girl. ‘Sit yourself down and tell me all about it.’
Hesitant at first, the girl - Maria - opened up with more confidence as Estela prompted gently. She’d heard such stories a thousand times and however often she had to turn down the requests for love potions and abortificants, she felt that it helped girls like this just to unburden themselves. So she listened, waiting for the moment Maria said what she’d come for. Estela schooled her restless spirit to patience, to the observation Malik had taught her.
The patient’s eyes? Bright with clear whites, so healthy. Not over-bright, pupils not dilated so this was not a digitalis-user. Not unlike Estela’s in colour but more hazel than golden. Black hair shiny and well-oiled. Skin the olive tones of the region, smooth but not always protected from browning, although the patterns of sunlight were faded. This was a girl who had only recently started to take care of her appearance.Her hands gave her away, as was always the case. Just as Estela’s said ‘lute-player’ so did Maria’s hands show manual work. In the past, no doubt. Perhaps even washing clothes. River-water and wringing clothes on stones, in all weathers, coarsened hands.
‘He has asked me to come to him and I have said I will, tomorrow night,’ Maria was saying. ‘I know he is too much above me for me to hope for marriage and yet, I think, if I please him enough, he might keep me by him as his mistress…’
‘So you want help in pleasing him enough?’ Estela helped her, awaiting the inevitable.
‘I know exactly how to please him,’ was the unexpected reply, ‘but it’s physically impossible.’ Estela ran through the many and varied sexual problems detailed by Trota, along with their cures, and waited.
‘I need to become a virgin.’
‘Ah,’ said Estela, not very sympathetically. ‘I take it you have lain with another.’ The situation was common enough as most men expected a maiden in bed on their wedding night and many men preferred virgin whores or the illusion thereof. Many a good marriage had been founded on reconstructed virginity and many a renowned whore had remained a professional virgin.
In her current humour, Estela was critical of all this hypocrisy. At least she could say she’d never tricked her lover, whatever her nagging conscience might say about enjoying dalliance. So she was not in the mood for indulging such a request.
‘It’s not as if you’re hoping for marriage,’ she said bluntly, ‘and if this noble lord expects a virgin to come to him when he snaps his fingers, he doesn’t seem very admirable to me! If he cares about you, then he should accept you as you are.’
‘My Lady, maybe such a one as you could behave so but not an ordinary girl like me. I worked hard to become a servant in the castle, I was hoping to be a lady’s maid one day, maybe even marry and have children. To be chosen by a knight like my Lord, you couldn’t know what a chance this is for me. He says he’ll give me a ring,’ she declared with pride. ‘Every girl is after him but he’s chosen me. And I love him. I will do anything to make him happy. And he has told me how. One night and he will be mine. But I have to be a virgin!’
There was silence as Estela considered how to phrase her refusal. ‘I can pay you well,’ Maria offered. ‘My Lord has been generous.’
Payment in advance, was Estela’s cynical response to my Lord’s generosity. Then a thought struck her. Could he have recovered enough to be back to his old ways already? Ignoring her threat? By God, if he was, she’d tell Dragonetz everything and Provence could go to hell!
‘Is it Lord Hugues?’ she asked. ‘This fancy lord of yours. You can tell me. A physician is like a priest and shares nothing with others. And I would do nothing to hurt you. I swore an oath that I would do no harm.’ Except to that rutting lordling, who needed more blood let than she’d thought!
Maria’s startled expression showed the words had hit home. ‘How did you know?’ Estela nodded grimly. ‘It was my Lord Hugues who took my virginity.’ The girl’s eyes filled. ‘I told him no but that just encouraged him and you know we have no choice when the Lord decides. We’re his vassals. But I might as well have said yes to the carpenter’s boy when he asked and I wanted to, if I was only going to part with my treasure anyway!’
Damn Hugues! thought Estela. But at least he had not broken his word to her, as far as she knew. And he was hardly the first young lord to make free with the serving maids. Like it or not, that was how things were.
‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘But only once. I will not be party to continuing trickery with different men.’
‘I promise, my Lady. This will be my real, only, first time with a man.’ Her eyes gleamed at the prospect and Estela almost envied her. The first time, with a man you loved. What a sweet combination of desire and duty. Or an illusion.
The Trotula offered many ways of restoring virginity. Estela mentally reviewed the ingredients to hand and chose ground holme oak for constriction. She measured a suitable amount of the powder from one of her jars into an empty one, added some rainwater and stirred till the ground bark dissolved.‘Dunk a clean cotton cloth in this and put it in your vagina.’ She could see the girl had no idea what the medical term meant. What on earth did such girls call their private parts? She tried, ‘Inside your tunnel of Venus. To make it tighter.’
‘Oh,’ the girl nodded understanding.
‘Keep it there until one hour before intercourse.’ The word was obviously new to Maria but the meaning was clear enough to work out. ‘Make sure all is removed before you lie with your lord,’ Estela warned.
Maria took the jar but her face fell. ‘But he won’t believe it unless there’s blood.’
Now comes the hard part thought Estela as she went to a stone ledge and took the leather cover off the bucket. ‘They like to be cool and they can stretch out so thin, you’d be surprised what holes they can get out of and into,’ she remarked conversationally as she scooped a couple of leeches out of the bucket and popped them and their water into one of her jars, ‘so keep the cover on when you’re not using them and make sure the holes stay tiny, needle-pricks, like they are now.’ She tied string round the jar and handed it to the ashen-faced girl, who held it like it was plague-ridden, rather than health-giving.
‘You’re sure you want to seem a virgin?’
Maria nodded, gulping, unable to speak.
‘Then you need to insert the leeches into your vagina - your tunnel of Venus - tonight. Not too far, mind you.’ Maria nodded, her eyes never leaving the jar in her hands.
‘That should make enough blood for a clot that will break up nicely tomorrow night. Take them out first thing in the morning and use the holme oak the rest of the day.’ Estela reviewed her instructions. Trota hadn’t suggested using the two methods together but there were no contra-indications and The Trotula was particularly insistent on the efficacy of leeches.
Oh, yes - there was one more thing. ‘I want my leeches back, mind. There are other patients need them, for serious health reasons.’
Maria seemed eager to leave, one jar in the pouch she’d brought, the other clutched firmly and held as far in front of her as she could.
‘She must really love him,’ Estela muttered to herself as she closed the door. Then she dismissed the matter and concentrated on her latest syrup. If only sugar were cheaper, this soothing potion, made from a thyme tisane, would benefit so many people. Her great hope was that the syrups would keep long enough to use them in the winter from herbs picked in their summer season. Now that would be amazing progress.
After hours of boiling, measuring, noting and labelling, Estela decided she’d had enough. She put everything back in its place, removed her sackcloth and wiped her face as best she could, using her reflection in a copper pan. She smoothed her hair and reached for her blue scarf, which she’d removed to keep it clean. It wasn’t on the books, where she thought she’d left it and she couldn’t see it on any of the shelves, stocked with neat ranks of jars and boxes.
Maybe she was confused and it was the day before that she’d worn that scarf. She frowned. She had other blue ones but that was Dragonetz’ favourite and she’d planned to wear it to the tourney. Perhaps she’d treat herself to a new one at market the next morning. She locked the iron-bound oak door and took the key personally to Malik, just to make sure there was no subversion of messengers possible, no way Dragonetz could ever have access to the poppy, if he weakened. She’d even labelled it ‘devil’s rosemary’, so nobody but she and Malik could find it on the shelf.
Sweating and sleepless, Dragonetz lay in bed, fighting his demons. He wanted to spare Estela this weakness that came over him, especially in the middle of the night, from just the thought that the poppy was within reach. Sweet, trusting Estela, who really thought she’d hidden the poppy where he could not get it. No doubt she’d put it on a high shelf in the dispensary where she worked her magic. She’d probably labelled it ‘Not the poppy’ or some such thing, in Latin or Arabic, to throw him off the scent. He smiled.
The problem, my dear Estela, is that de Rançon only gave you a small portion of his stock in the first place. We both know, he and I, that I only have to send a messenger to him, any time of day or night, and I can get relief from this craving, sleep, heal… and awake worse than ever. Knowing it is one thing, dealing with it is another. The poppy, within reach.
Nights were the worst so Dragonetz had done his best to put the poppy out of reach. The hawk’s perch barred the door. To leave the chamber and send a message, he would have to brave an unhooded Vertat in her foulest of moods. He had been keeping her lean, hungry, ready to attack. Her hood was tied to the perch, within her reach, and each morning, he had to be quick enough to grab the hood without the hawk reaching him.
At night, such acrobatics were difficult enough to stop the thought in its tracks. To put the poppy out of reach. To help him say no to the messenger who knocked on his door, saying, ‘My Lord de Rançon wondered if you needed anything?’
‘No,’ he shouted. ‘Go away and don’t come back!’ making up in communication for what he lacked in grace. The sound of the page-boy running away echoed along the corridor.
Vertat stood watch between Dragonetz and all comers, keeping his nights safe, if sleepless. He stayed sane in his accustomed manner, through music and poetry. He reached for the memory of voices that mingled in unearthly harmonies, the music that had come to him across the water, in his poppy dreams. He’d vowed that he would transcribe it one day and he felt closer to that goal, memorising the sections that felt right and re-working others.
Verses by Ibn Zaydūn soothed his cravings, setting his days in the context of a purpose bigger than he could imagine, beyond his control. Poetry sang in his head and let him sleep.
Elsewhere in Les Baux, another man lay awake but his cravings had no connection with the poppy. Geoffroi de Rançon was alone in bed but did not expect to remain so for long. To calm his anticipation, he reviewed his successes to date and felt he deserved congratulations. Tormenting Dragonetz could not have been more nicely judged: having the desired effect while keeping Estela’s trust - he must not pursue that line of thought or anticipation would not be calmed.
He forced his distracted mind back to his projects. By recounting the news from the north and entertaining his noble audiences, he had also managed to gain status in this court that see-sawed between Les Baux and Barcelone. He wasn’t yet sure how to make the most of the resulting position on Dragonetz’ team but it had potential.
Why then, having achieved more than he’d hoped, did he not feel happy? He imagined Dragonetz lying alone - now that thought did give him some satisfaction - fighting the poppy addiction. De Rançon had frequented some of the more unsavoury quarters in Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem, and had seen the consequences of the poppy. When he’d known Dragonetz was doomed to such a fate, he’d found out what he could. Nothing had prepared him for the sharp-eyed Commander he’d met again in the Great Hall of Les Baux. There was no trace of the wild-eyed lunatic from Jersusalem days.
But no mortal could ever be that indifferent to the poppy, once dosed as Dragonetz had been. Especially when kicked in the gut by a double blow from home. An unfair blow, the kind that left slow poison, making a man wonder, ‘How could she believe such a thing of me.’ A wound that must fester, even if the future exonerated Dragonetz - as of course it should. De Rançon had no doubt of the knight’s honesty and loyalty. Irony indeed. Dragonetz’ father and liege readily believed him too proud or too headstrong to obey the order to go north and yet de Rançon had never once thought Dragonetz disloyal. He knew his enemy. However, he was more than happy to accept fate’s contribution to his plans for Dragonetz.
So, the question remained. Why did he feel no satisfaction? He pictured Dragonetz, ill and sweating, wanting the poppy - or giving in and slumping into drugged sleep, the road to oblivion. He replayed the disbelief, the hurt on the other man’s face when the messages from Aliénor, from Lord Dragon, were announced to the whole court of Les Baux. De Rançon imagined the blade being twisted in the wound as Dragonetz read those letters of contempt. The humiliation that his mother loved him ‘despite’ all he’d done.
Yes, Geoffroi had been thorough in completing the task he’d set himself years back, when Dragonetz had broken de Rançon Senior and made the family name a byword for disgrace. Death was too good for such a man and Geoffroi had repaid his father’s debt in kind, destroying Dragonetz in body, mind and reputation. And yet he was still standing, offering the challenge to fight to the death ‘with honour’. How could a man who’d been a crusader still hold such a notion? Geoffroi himself had seen ‘honour’ diminish daily in his father’s shame and rages, self-pity and whoring; in the moment Geoffroi’s mother gave up and left them. And yet, he felt no satisfaction at the damage he’d caused Dragonetz. Not even at the prospect of killing him.
His unruly spirits only rose at the thought of the tourney, of the pleasure in fighting with and against such opponents, of doing what he did best - behaving as a knight. In battle, even mock-battle, he could forget the letter from his own father. How well he understood all that Dragonetz was suffering! An unfair blow, he thought, the kind that leaves slow poison, making a man wonder, ‘How could he believe such a thing of me.’ The kind that left a man wondering what to do with his life.
A soft knock at the door interrupted his bleak thoughts and his heart thumped like a boy’s. Naked, his welcome evident, he opened the door and let the woman slip into the chamber and into his arms, willing.
‘Estela.’ He buried his face in her hair, breathed in her scent, musk and oriental spice, a unique blend that she’d worn since their trip together to the Holy Land. ‘You won’t need this,’ he murmured, loosening the scarf around her shoulders, kissing the golden skin revealed.
‘Geoffroi,’ she whispered, ‘I have waited such a long time, for you, only for you.’
This too he shared with Dragonetz: Estela.