CHAPTER TWELVE

 

Ascesis

 

 

Though Sir Amaury had attached himself to the household of Barral Nerra, he was forever looking back at the Court of Normandy as a lost opportunity. He was embittered and resentful – always hungry for news of the Duchess, yet always incensed if it came. ‘I’d’ve overtaken them all by now,’ he would say sourly. When Bernart de Ventadour prospered, Herm would spit at the mention of his name and say, ‘That should’ve been me.’

‘Why leave, then?’ asked Oriole, but got no satisfactory answer. What he really wanted to do was to put his shoulders against Herm’s back and yell, ‘Go there, for Christ’s sake, why don’t you? Leave me here with her!’ But he kept silent, kept his place. At least now he was permitted to write.

On the journey south to Barral Nerra’s ash-coloured territories Herm seemed to have left behind his taste for writing poetry. He was quite content to present his jongleur’s poetry as if it were his own, confident that Nerra would never notice the difference. ‘Anything’ll serve for him,’ he said, with surly contempt.

It was perfectly true that Barral Nerra had no discrimination in artistic matters, but he had a strong craving for people to think he had. The status of having a noble troubadour paying court to his lovely wife was one he wanted at all costs. The King’s wife had followers. All the great knights were trobars or had trobars among their households. And since Barral was richer than most, it followed that his wife must have the best, the most admiration: must be seen to have the best. It had been part of his reason for travelling all the way to Poitiers – to attach a troubadour to his wife, just as he attached ingots of gold to the massive talisman round his neck.

Barral bore all his wealth ostentatiously. He had been known to roast an ox using a thousand candles, burning away the costly tallow in a magnificent incineration of money. The beef tasted of wax and soot, but the cooking of it lived in the mind. So did the time he had dug a trench, filled it with straw, pitch and fifty fine horses, then set light to their tails. Barral’s wealth was a miraculous obscenity, a braggardly proof of God’s approval.

His enemies, of which there were many, watched closely for signs of Barral out-trying God’s patience. For he was prone to such dire sins as must surely one day cause his downfall. Perhaps he would remain childless, they cheered themselves, but with the arrival of the lovely Alazais their hopes receded.

He was of the House of Nerra and therefore a relation of the Counts of Anjou – a very distant relation, true, but related nonetheless to Fulk Nerra. ‘From the Devil they came and to the Devil shall they go,’ Saint Bernard had said of the house. For Fulk Nerra was reputed to have married Melusine, a demon from Hell, and fathered on her the Plantagenet line to which Henry of Norm any himself belonged. Having given birth to her sons, Melusine had promptly flown back to Hell.

An alternative version said that Fulk Nerra had burned his wife to death on the cathedral steps: razed her to the ground, as he did castles, villages and monasteries. Such was the heritage in which Barral Nerra gloried, however far he was removed from the ‘royal’ strain of the family.

His own fortune was actually made from the rank étangs of the Camargue, boiling salt out of the seawater. His kingdom was one of grey salt dunes – a monochrome landscape stretching for acre upon acre, killing the ground beneath, poisoning the rivers running by. But since his fortune was founded on the salt of the ocean, it was just as bottomless as the sea. God had given into his hands the salt mill of the Frankish world, and so far did not appear to have thought better of the gift. Barral might be a sinner – he made no effort to deny it – but did he not always repent and make reparation to God? Did he not always spill tears of remorse and do penance? Even though Barral had repudiated his first wife for the crime of infertility and growing old, had he not squared his account with God by placing his brother’s eldest son in Holy Orders? Once, when his horse cast a shoe, he had burned an entire village of his to the ground for the offence of having no forge. But had he not sent four golden horseshoes to the Pope along with a flask of penitential tears?

Barral was a man who wept very easily – wept and raged and swore oaths. He did not resort often to thought, accounting himself a man of deeds. His wealth brought him everything he ever wished for – divorce, forgiveness, roast beef, the lovely Alazais; he would never have understood if Herm had refused his offer of hospitality and patronage.

Fortunately Herm complied. He mustered his household and made the immense and tedious journey from corner to corner of France, to a romanesque barbican surrounded by a landscape of salt, to adore another man’s wife.

Oriole could not credit, at first, that Herm could see Alazais and not genuinely love her. But to his great relief, Herm’s private ennui persisted, undisturbed by Barral’s beautiful wife.

Oh, he made a grand enough show when he first saw the lady, staring and staring, falling on his knees, pressing the cloth of her skirts to his face, begging to know from what treasurehouse of beauty Barral had stolen her. But to Oriole the insincerity seemed so glaring, so ill-disguised that he thought Barral must see through it.

On the contrary, credulity and childlike gratification daubed Barral’s face. He had applied for a second opinion on the worth of a recent purchase, and an expert had confirmed its value. For all his power and wealth, Barral Nerra lacked brainpower. He felt his way through the world, doing what he saw others do, believing what he had heard was true.

‘Might I sing to your wife in private?’

‘How d’you mean? Between mealtimes, d’you mean? Of course! Of course! How, “private”? – Alazais, are you listening?’ (It worried Barral that Alazais did not pay sufficient attention to her knight-trobar.)

‘Just myself and my jongleur – in the garden where she walks, or in the chamber where she sews. I must be brought close to the flame if I’m to be tempered by the fire.’ Barral gazed at him, his mouth a little ajar. Inside the mouth his tongue moistened itself in fresh saliva. Nerra was not a man who could resist temptation; that was what impressed him about these poetical types: they did it for a hobby.

Apparently, they liked to tempt themselves to the limits of endurance so as to strengthen their characters – their pretz. He had made enquiries; Nerra never undertook a thing but he did it wholeheartedly. You hear that, wife? Are you listening? The excellent Duke of Herm wants to sing to you in private. What d’you say?’

In the corner of the room, Oriole clutched his rote so tight he could feel it bruising his ribs. He tried to tell himself that she was only a woman – like all the rest – and would succumb to flattery just as soon. But he did not believe it, did not want to believe it.

Suddenly the woman spoke. ‘I hope I’m not so selfish as to want the Duke’s excellent songs all to myself, shut away in private. I’m quite content he should sing in front of the whole household. As he does now. At dinnertimes.’

‘Horse piss! Pig shit! You heard the man! We have to nourish the flame, eh? Nourish the flame!’

‘For myself,’ said Alazais, her eyes on her lap, her fingers pinching her dress into a seascape of folds, ‘I am quite content with the love of my husband and I have no ambition to raise hopes in any other man, which I can’t satisfy.’

The words entered into Oriole like strong drink: first a heat on his stomach and then a dizziness. She was chaste! She was good! He had known it all along!

Unfortunately, her husband was already drunk. His temper flared. Why was she not more pleased with the toy he had brought her? She saw his annoyance and tried to fend it off. ‘You know how shy I am of strangers, Barral. I’ve so few words in my head, I need you beside me when he plays, to praise his music.’

‘Well, I’ll be there! Of course I’ll be there.’ Nerra blustered. ‘I’ll be watching, naturally!’ Barral clearly did not like putting it into words. It sounded footling and really rather bizarre: to watch one’s wife complimented in secret. But then fashion commonly is footling and bizarre. ‘Go for a walk with the Duke tomorrow in the morning, and I’ll be there watching,’ he told his wife, and she inclined her head obediently.

Oriole turned his attention to Herm. He had clearly not been expecting Barral to be present at all: at least he had found out in time, Now he leapt to his feet and bowed to the lady with a great many flourishes of his free hand, avowing his delight. He did not fool Oriole. Oriole knew him, inside-out.

After the novel set-back of finding Alazais a genuinely chaste wife, Amaury concentrated all his efforts on the husband. ‘After all, he’s the man that feeds me,’ he told Oriole. ‘He’s the one showering gifts. He’s the one who wants a troubadour at his hearth!’ He made no mention of the fact that Alazais did not care for him.

‘I do believe the lady’s afraid of you, sir,’ Oriole said, breezy, casual, his voice quite sing-song high with indifference.

‘Yes. Mmmm.’ They were just entering the castle’s troubadour chamber and Amaury crossed at once to his row of panniers lined up on a spare bed. He pulled out mirror and comb and began absently to examine and preen his face and beard. Apparently the reflection reassured him, for he said after a moment, ‘She’ll soon soothe down.’

‘Maybe she just loves her husband,’ said another of the jongleurs. But the idea was so absurd, so preposterous, so grotesque that Amaury did not respond, and Oriole gave the boy a jeering push that knocked his head against the wall.

Oriole turned his back on the salt-encrusted landscape beyond the window and crossed to put away Herm’s mirror and comb. When he caught sight of his own face in the glass it was grey and bloodless, like the salty Camargue outside. His heart inside him had drawn in all the blood from his veins. She would, of course soothe down. They all did. They always did. It would be almost a relief: to find fault in her. In the meantime, Oriole went and bought himself a purgative from the apothecary, to ease the ache in his bowels.

‘You are shy, lady,’ whispered Amaury. ‘There’s no need. We are Eve and Adam restored to the Garden. I for one am in Paradise.’

‘God grant, then, that we learn by earlier mistakes.’

‘Amen, Amen,’ said Amaury. ‘The great thing is to remember that Love is Innocence and that nothing evil can spring from it. Even a kiss …’

‘A kiss? In a garden, monsieur? I remember the story. One of betrayal, as I recollect.’

They were both aware of her husband standing badly hidden amid the boughs of a lilac. He looked like a beast transported to the wrong habitat. Oriole’s music prevented him hearing anything which passed between his wife and the troubadour.

‘Do you fear betrayal, madam? Then someone has broken your heart! Tell me his name, and I shall avenge your unhappiness!’

She dropped her voice to an angry whisper. ‘No one has broken my heart, sir, though you may well snap my patience.’ She was for a moment distracted by a sudden discord on the organistrum. Oriole looked from one to the other, biting his lip in apology.

Suddenly she seemed to think better of the outburst. ‘Forgive me, sir. I feel you may not be aware that my husband enlisted you without consulting me. I am a newly married woman, and feel no need of the attentions of a troubadour. Indeed, I don’t know or understand why a man like you should persist in such a suit when there is nothing – absolutely nothing to be had by it. I admit, your jongleur has a very pleasant voice and makes very pretty music, but I wish you would spare me any more protestations of love. I am a wall newly pointed. Your suit runs off me like rain. I have nowhere about me for your compliments to lodge.’

‘Oh, there is one spot,’ said Herm darting his hand into the folds of her overmantle.

She put out a hand to fend off the lunge, and inadvertently caught him in the eye with a finger. He recoiled abruptly.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I hurt you, sir?’

‘Your heart, my lady. I meant that my compliments might lodge in your heart.’

‘I don’t doubt you did, monsieur.’

Just then, Barral came blundering out of the lilac. A butterfly had attached itself to his ear and he mistook it for a wasp and tossed his head. But his far greater anxiety was for Amaury. ‘What’s the matter? What’s happening?’

Herm got to his feet, his hand still over his eye. He started to protest his innocence: ‘Nothing! Absolutely…’ Then seeing that he was not under suspicion, ‘I’m afraid I looked at the sun and I was momentarily blinded by its brightness.’

‘My finger accidentally caught the gentleman’s eye,’ said Alazais crisply. ‘I was not expecting him to move so close. Not expecting it and not wishing it.’

‘Then I’d best remove myself to a greater distance!’ Amaury declaimed. ‘The anguish of separation will make me a better man and a finer poet!’ And he set off for the gate of the garden. The hand that laid hold on Oriole’s upper arm was fierce with repressed annoyance.

‘Well, it was a right pretty song!’ insisted Barral, hurrying after them. ‘Was it new? Did you write it specially for my Alazais?’

How would he know? thought Oriole peevishly. He had sat up half the night composing it. But Herm took the credit. Of course he did.

Amaury’s grip slackened on his jongleurs arm and he left the garden arm in arm with Barral. Oriole stayed behind, perfectly immobile, so as to escape their attention. He noticed that Alazais too stood stock-still. Only the breeze moved the blue cloak of her dress around her like the water falling from a fountain. She was waiting for him to go too. Or perhaps she wanted to speak to him. She looked as if she wished to speak to him. He persuaded himself of that.

‘Madam ….’

‘Young man?’. ‘Did you like the song?’

‘What? Oh. Yes. Thank you, jongleur.’ She felt for her purse and unlaced it from inside her mantle. ‘I didn’t realise.’ She held out money towards him.

‘I didn’t want anything. I only meant … I wrote the song myself’ She looked through him to some more distant anxiety. ‘He didn’t write it, I mean. Did you like it?’

‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening very closely.’

First she mistook him as asking for a tip, then, on top of all that, she had not been listening. A great upheaval shook Oriole through and through, but all he said was, ‘Christ!’

‘What! Must I apologise to you too now? For not listening to foolish ness in my own garden? You at least I can order to go, surely? You at least have to go when I tell you. Go on! Go! Go away! Get out!’

Oriole pulled in his head as though starlings were mobbing him. He ran to pick up his lute, steering a huge circle around her and, finding the garden fence too high to jump over, edged his way back round her towards the gate. Apologies were falling from his lips like broken teeth after a blow. He felt as if he had left his heart impaled on the fence.

‘Wait!’ She called him back just as he was about to close the gate.

‘Wait.’

He had to slide the lute round again to behind his back, so as to fit through the foolish little wicket gate. And then, by the time he reached her, she claimed to have forgotten what she meant to say. He fell on his knees in the grass. ‘Could I speak?’ he asked.

‘If you must. _ What? Something from him?’

‘No! No! Not at all! … Don’t trust him, that’s all. You’re right not to trust him. That’s all I wanted to say. Don’t believe what he says! … I mean, they’re not even his own songs!’ He was inarticulate; he was gabbling.

‘You are very kind,’ she said, resting one hand on his hair. ‘My home is a great distance from here, you know. Sometimes I miss my brother’s good advice very much.’

‘Amor purus …’ said Amaury of Herm drawing a heart on the tabletop with a finger wetted in wine, ‘Pure Love. Amor purus is the sweet discipline of the soul. It inhabits the mind and the heart, and while it is there it purifies them.’

Barral strummed his lips. Amaury was educating him in the Gay Science and had just recounted the story of the Eaten Heart. Barral was still extricating himself from its horrid fascination. ‘Thinking about women, eh? Well, it’s a cheering kind of pastime, I’ll give you that. Thinking about women. It’s purifying, you reckon?’

‘As fasting is to the soul. To want without having. To see without enjoying … The scholars say there are three things arise from female beauty: the desire to kiss it, the desire to embrace it, and the desire to mount it.’

‘They had to study to find out that?’

‘… And since the first two are permissible, a tension is created – a tension, you’d agree?’

Barral shifted his big thighs in his seat. He was a man full of appetites and the mention of bedding women – even of not bedding them – was enough to make his breeches bind uncomfortably. Not in a barracks, perhaps, or by a campfire, or among men as uncouth as himself But coming from this exemplar of courtesy, the smell of royalty still clinging to his plush red hair, talk of sex was oddly exciting, inciting. What did Barral know of ‘tensions’? If a seam pulled, he opened it up with a knife. But he nodded and said, ‘Tensions, yes,’ as if he understood.

‘The Ordeal of Ascesis is the anguish which strengthens a man. His pleasure is the very pain of pleasure withheld. The eunuch in the harem. The monk in the brothel. That exquisite agony of restraint. That’s the heightened state of mind to strive after. It germinates the seed of poetry. It tutors a man for suffering in the world at large. It assays his soul.’

Oh, Amaury had researched his man. He chose his words carefully: ‘pleasure’, ‘pain’, ‘watching’. He saw the great bulk of Nerra rock on its leather-clad thighs, on the edge of the seat. The woman may have proved difficult, an unexpected – almost unprecedented setback. But her obduracy in the garden had only confirmed Herm’s decision to cultivate the husband rather than the wife.

‘And this kiss …’ Barral reflected.

‘The First Desire, yes?’ said Herm. ‘What of it?’

‘D’you want to kiss her, then?’

‘With all my heart, sir! Naturally! I’m a moth drawn to the flame of her lips! … But why tell you? Surely you’ve tasted them? Aren’t they lips fit to make a man …’

‘All right.’

‘Sir?’

‘I say you shall!’

Amaury rose to his feet, fingers spread on the tabletop to steady himself. ‘Sir. Please don’t joke. I’m a man of flesh and blood, after all, like you.’

‘And I say you shall have a kiss. Good God, man! You’ve had a long enough journey coming here! And if it helps you write your poetry … Isn’t that how it works?’

‘Precisely,’ said Amaury. Barral shook the large deal box containing his chessmen: its rattle brought servants in at every door of the room. ‘Tell my wife I want her.’

While they waited for her to come, Amaury protested his unworthiness. He said he would have preferred a week’s anticipation, to feel the moment swell like ripening grain, etc. But Nerra (who had acted on impulse and was already suffering doubts) only shut his eyes and shook the box continuously to drown out both words and misgivings. On and on the sharp noise echoed until his wife, standing in front of him, took the box out of his hand. He opened his eyes and his colour deepened with pleasure at the sight of her. ‘Sir Amaury wants to kiss you,’ he said.

Her face, by contrast, turned a stark white. ‘Then I hope he can bear with his disappointment, my lord.’

‘And I say he shall … Never mind all that. Protests.

Bashfulness. I’ve given my permission. Kiss the man.

Says he needs it for his poetry … What are you waiting for? It’s all right. He’s a troubadour. They do that kind of thing. Don’t mean a thing by it.’

‘I wish, then, that he had asked me. I would have refused him as kindly as I know how.’

‘Asked you? How’s that? Asked you? If I’d wanted Duke Amaury to borrow my horse, I s’pose you’d’ve had him ask the horse! Give him a kiss, woman, and don’t be difficult. Always making difficulties. They do that, Herm. Take it from me.’

‘But surely, Barral, it wouldn’t be lawful! I’m a married woman!’

‘Not lawful? Not lawful? If kissing was a crime, the prisons would be fit to split, eh, Amaury? The prisons would be …’

‘In the eyes of the Church, husband! Surely. I know it would be a sin.’

‘Where? Where’s it say in the Bible? Don’t quote Holy Law at me, woman! I know my Bible, me! I’ve been to Jerusalem, me, remember? Don’t you try and tell me the Bible troubles itself with kisses. Where? “Thou shalt not kiss?” Where?’ Her recalcitrance, especially in front of a guest whose good opinion he valued, fuelled in Barral a greater and greater obstinacy. The sea’s salt might turn to soot now before he allowed himself to be gainsaid, in public.

After the great ranting of his tantrum, her slight, sweet voice was plaintive. ‘I never thought to give my kisses to anyone but you, my dear.’

‘Enough! Not interested! Do as you’re told, woman! Why does no one ever do as they’re told anymore?’ He flailed his arms, and Amaury, in pure obedience to the gesture, stepped up and took the kiss.

He stood with his feet set wide apart, and taking hold of her two hands, folded Alazais in an embrace which pinned both arms behind her back and bent her backwards. His open mouth covered hers. Like a lion gorging on something dead, the folds of his cheeks were pushed back, and they could all hear the wind whistle in his nostrils as well as the protracted sexual moan he made.

Barral Nerra half-rose out of his chair, his mouth open, the high colour shrunk to two spots of red in his hog-like cheeks. Then he sank back down, but on to the leading edge of his chair where he rocked forward and back, forward and back, like a man on horseback.

Even when Amaury finally gave Alazais back the use of her mouth, he did not immediately let her go, but held her against him. His eyes were screwed shut to imply both ecstasy and the agony of abstention, the little death of bliss. Barral studied that face. He watched it as he had watched the face of a witch he once had drowned in an icy lake, held under with forked branches. Amaury had tasted his wife like a connoisseur and confirmed her priceless value. But Amaury could take nothing more, whereas Barral had total possession: she was his today and every day. Barral Nerra was a happy man, grateful to the knight-trobar for showing him his happiness afresh.

Alazais’ face was hidden from sight, of course. Her chin rested perforce on Amaury’s shoulder, away from her husband. A pinprick rash encircled her mouth where Amaury’s beard had pressed. Her eyes were not shut. They looked straight ahead, so could not help but meet with Amaury’s jongleur. The tongue-tied young man. The one who wrote songs. She might as well have been looking in a mirror, for she could see her revulsion reflected in Oriole’s face. He stood on the balls of his feet with his hands clenched and elbows bent, as if he were about to run towards her or fling himself flat on the floor.

‘Well? D’you think you might get something out of that, Herm?’ Barral blurted out, brash and banal.

‘A lifetime’s inspiration,’ Amaury replied, retracting his face and weaving his head about in front of hers, trying to get mastery of her eyes. ‘

‘Good. Good. Excellent. Must see if we can’t help some more. Yes. Good. You. Alazais – Are you listening, woman? Come with me. I’ve got something … matters to discuss with you. Come on. Come on.’ He took her hand, gripping it tightly – a little punitively perhaps – and led her out of the bleak audience chamber with its one table and litter of standing visitors. Man and wife went upstairs to their bedchamber.

‘And will she smooth down?’ said Oriole, knowing that his voice would emerge expressionless. The jeer was all inside, tamped down, hidden away.

Amaury wiped his beard as if he had just been eating meat off the bone. ‘What if she won’t?’ he grinned. ‘Why trouble smoothing down the wife when the husband can be pricked up? The end’ll be the same, by the broad road or the narrow. I’ll have her anyway.’

‘But the broad road leads to destruction,’ thought Oriole. And that was the first moment in which he contemplated killing Sir Amaury of Herm.