The Lute Player - Softcover

Norah Lofts

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752444670 ISBN 13: 9780752444673

Publisher: Tempus Publishing Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

Here is the story of the Soldier-King and the Third Crusade, of his mother, the She-Wolf, Eleanor of Aquitaine who loved her son with a frantic, possessive pride. And above all, here is the story of the minstrel whose life was linked with that of the King - the story of Blondel - the lute player.

About this title

About the Author:

Norah Lofts was one of the best-known and best-loved of all historical novelists, known for her authentic application of period detail to all her books. She was a bestselling author on both sides of the Atlantic, was born in Norfolk. She taught English and History at a girls' school before turning to writing full time in 1936. Her passion for old houses and their continuing history sparked off her much praised Suffolk trilogy, The Town House, The House at Old Vine and The House at Sunset. These were followed by the bestselling The Concubine, about Anne Boleyn and by The King's Pleasure, a novel about the life of Katharine of Aragon. Lofts wrote more than 50 books, including historical non-fiction and short stories.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Part One
God's Pauper

This fragment of the lute player's story is told by himself. He was called by his given name, Edward, and was a novice of the Abbey of Gorbalze in Burgundy. The incident of which he tells took place in the early spring of the year A.D. 1188.

I

ANOTHER PACK OF WOLVES," BROTHER Lawrence said as we rounded a curve in the track and sighted the little group of beggars. And I thought how much I would have preferred to meet actual four-legged wolves. One's attitude toward a wolf pack is so simple; one hates, one fears; one attacks and scatters it or one flees in terror before it. No pity is involved. And I, for three days now, had been so wrenched by pity, so appalled by my own lack of power to help those I pitied, that now, seeing the beggars on the path, I thought that I could far more easily have stood still and let a wolf pack tear me to pieces than face a repetition of the scenes at Vibray and Amiche.

"Wake up, boy," said Brother Lawrence, and moved his left leg so that his stirrup struck me on the upper arm. "Listen and kindly bear in mind what I say. No more hysteria, if you please. It serves no purpose and has a very ill effect. I shall give them what is left in the alms bag and pass straight on. I want no more of your nonsense. Remember, hungry men are dangerous."

I turned my head and looked at him, and as I did so he twisted his head and looked straight ahead; but I had seen the expression -- almost of gloating -- with which he had been regarding me. And I wondered how far my behavior during these three days had been responsible for his. Once in the old days I had watched a bearbaiting and I had seen, on the faces of several spectators, that very look. A gloating compounded of amusement, ruthlessness, and a kind of speculation: What will this provoke? I made up my mind that this time I would betray no feeling, give him no satisfaction. He pulled the alms bag into an easily accessible position at the front of his girdle and set his face into lines of grave, remote contemplation. So we moved towards the knot of beggars; I limping on account of the blister on my heel and bending forwards a little to ease the ache in my empty belly, while my mind ran backwards and forwards, remembering the events of the last three days and dreading the moment that was approaching.

It was very strange to find myself hating Brother Lawrence. Only three days before I had accorded him the admiration, the hero worship which a young man must extend to an older man extremely skilled in an art to which he himself aspires. To me, on the morning after Lady Day, Brother Lawrence had been the man who had devoted four years of his life to making an incomparable copy of the Gospel of St. John. The manuscript now lay in the library at Gorbalze and was at once the inspiration and the despair of all ambitious young penmen. A visiting cardinal had once said that nothing in Rome or Cassino could equal it, and even that seemed not too high a compliment. There was one page -- the opening of the third chapter -- upon which it seemed a living spray of wild roses had been carelessly laid. So perfect each petal, each stamen, each thorn; the strong yet slender stems seeming to lift, to make a link between the earth from which they sprang and the heavens of which they hinted; the flowers so fragile, so vital, touched here and there with colors not of this world, colors whose names were known only in Paradise.

Fresh from brooding over this loveliness wrought by pen andbrush wielded by human hand, I would see Brother Lawrence pass along the cloister or take his place in the refectory, a solemn, quiet, rather fattish man in no way noticeable or distinguished: yet I looked upon him with awe and admiration and knew that if ever he should speak to me I should sweat and stammer.

On the afternoon of Lady Day I was at work in the South Cloister, painstakingly adding word to word of my own humble manuscript, when a shadow fell over the page and, glancing sharply round, I saw, not our novice master, Father Simplon, but Brother Lawrence looking with interest over my shoulder. I shook out my sleeve to screen my unworthy work from his eyes. He reached over and took up my quill and studied it.

"A trifle too sharply cut," he said, and laid it back. "You are the one they call Edward, are you not?" I nodded. "Then I have a message for you. I am to ride out tomorrow to bring in the manorial dues from Amiche and Vibray; you come with me to keep the reckoning. We shall be gone three days. We leave immediately after Prime and carry food for the journey. I shall take the gray palfrey."

I nodded again and gulped and stammered, overcome with elation. Brother Lawrence glanced once more at my manuscript and said gravely, "You have the makings of a penman." Then he walked away, leaving me dazzled by his cool judicious compliment and by the prospect of spending three days in his company. Perhaps, I thought, I should eventually pluck up courage and lure him into talking about that wonderful copy of the Gospel of St. John.

There wasn't a happier boy in Burgundy, in France, in Christendom, than I when on the morning after Lady Day we set off through the cold brightness of the spring morning. Even Brother Lawrence's choice of mount seemed fortunate to me; I loved Grys, the gray palfrey, and he knew and was fond of me. I was even pleased, God help me, at the thought of the food we carried in the saddlebags; we were to enjoy travelers' indulgence and the meat and roast fowl thus conceded were, for me at least, a rare and special treat, for Father Simplon was a strict adherent to the rule of our founder and never allowed to us novices the evasions and dispensations often openly enjoyed by our superiors.

Brother Lawrence; Grys; good food. All doomed to be the instruments of pain rather than pleasure.

During the past year the seasons had gone awry; there had been a drought in the spring at the time of seed sowing and in many fields the unsprouted corn had blown away with the dust on the easterly wind. August and September had been wet, so that the surviving crops and the fruit in the orchards had rotted as they ripened. Now, at the end of the long winter, there was famine on the land. And beggars on the road.

I was almost eighteen years old, but I had never before seen men and women and children gaunt and wild-eyed from hunger. Until I was sixteen I had lived in my father's castle, dividing my time between a small room where my tutor ruled me and the great hall where food was always plentiful. At sixteen I had entered my novitiate, and though under Father Simplon's rule food was coarse, simple, and sometimes unappetizing, no novice ever went hungry.

Brother Lawrence carried, as was apparently customary on these occasions, a small alms bag of copper coins. To the first little group who accosted us, a man, two women, and a child, he offered his ritual charity, and even as the clawlike hands were extended I heard the man mutter that money was of no use, there was nothing to buy; had we no bread? At that I impulsively reached down into my bag of food and handed out the bread and the lump of meat, and I was appalled by the savage eagerness with which the beggars tore and devoured it.

Brother Lawrence said, "Well, there goes your dinner, boy. And I hope that, having squandered your own, you won't count upon eating mine."

I swear that no such thought was in my mind. I was quite certain that I could, at a pinch, spend three days without eating at all.

Throughout the first day I had indeed no appetite; the sight of so many starving had sickened me. And I had been sickened, too, by the protests of the debtors at Vibray and by Brother Lawrence's ruthless insistence upon the monastery's dues.

By midday on the second day I was hungry. My bag was empty and so was my stomach, and I found that I could not watch Brother Lawrence eat his meal. I had never realized before how gross men are when they eat, how the crumbs fall about, how lips grow shiny with grease. I went away from him and fed the palfrey, thinking of the prodigal son who would have eaten the swine's husks, thinking of the long fasts recorded in the lives of the saints, thinking of our Lord's sojourn in the wilderness and His resistance to the devil's offer of bread. I actually took and nibbled a few grains from the palfrey's nose bag and he nuzzled me, ungrudging, and I felt bound to remind myself that Grys could never have made that lovely manuscript.

The third day was worse. There was an ache in my belly, my head felt swollen and noisy, my legs shook. And my mind rotted. Instead of thinking of the forty days in the wilderness, or the fastings of the saints, or what a good penman Brother Lawrence was, I found myself concentrating upon the capon that was still intact in his bag, and thinking that a kind man, a Christian, would give me a piece to eat and even offer me, because of my blistered heel, an hour's relief upon Grys's back. Outside Vibray, faced with another mass of misery, I had thought, I merely hunger, they starve; this pain which is so sharp after only three days has been theirs for a long time. Then I had broken down and cried, "Is there nothing we can do to relieve them?" And the beggars had taken up the cry and pressed close, perhaps in hope, and clawed us with their hands. Brother Lawrence, with the capon, a piece of cheese, and the better part of a loaf safe in his saddlebag, had urged Grys forward, chiding me for making a scene.

Now, late in the afternoon of the third day, we were moving towards another group of beggars, the biggest group we had yet seen, and Brother Lawrence was saying, "No more hysteria, if you please."

There were between fifteen and twenty of them, and several were children. Some part of my mind, dissociating itself from their misery and mine, noted that in each group we had encountered the women had outnumbered the men. Did women more easily l...

About this edition

• Publisher: Tempus Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0752444670
• ISBN 13: 9780752444673
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448