Страница 45 из 85
He had stopped with me, but did not look at me fully, glancing away as if tolerating these questions rather than welcoming them. "I would not say known," he said. "I was a stable-boy in the castle when she was born."
I had a mind, as we resumed our walking, to question him further; anything concerning Alicia was of absorbing interest to me, and this Caspar must have seen her grow up. Not only that: if he had come with her from Jerusalem, it seemed likely that he had gone with her there when she left to be married to Tibald. But he stopped and pointed and said, "She is there, you will come upon her if you follow the paved way through the gardens. There is a gate and beyond it a walled yard with a fountain and a small pavilion."
With this he inclined his head and withdrew, leaving me with the impression that he quitted me thus abruptly, and while still at some distance from where Alicia waited, so as to curtail this talk of ours and forestall further questioning. But the anticipation of seeing Alicia drove all else from my mind, and I walked on eagerly until I came to the gate he had spoken of, which was low and tinted with silver and surmounted by arabesques.
Passing through this, for a fleeting moment I thought that the enclosure was peopled, then saw that there were shrubs of some dense-growing sort which had been very skilfully cut into the shapes of animals and birds, and these cast shadows on the walls, which had been whitened with lime, so that the figures were repeated there. Among these shapes, and the shadows they cast, there was at first no sign of Alicia, but then I made out her form above me, inside the pavilion, saw the pale colour of her gown first, then her face. She heard my step and turned and saw me but remained in the shade of the pavilion. This had a balustrade with short marble pillars set very close together in it like bars. Now this is strange to relate, but as I began to climb the marble steps towards her, I thought I heard somewhere in the distance that wailing sound of the herons, wulla-wulla-wulla, and a memory came to me, brief as the flicker of an eye, of mounting to the deck of the ship and looking across the white birds in their cages at Nesrin.
Then Alicia came forward and held out both hands to me and I took them in my own and would have kissed her, because this was a different kind of being together now, we were no longer wayfarers amazed at a chance encounter, wanting to talk and remember, we were meeting in private, by assignation, by a summons of the lady. I would have kissed her on the mouth, but she held back, though it was gently that she did so, and she still remained close.
"We have little time," she said.
"All the more reason." My breath came quickly. The nearness of her face, face so much dreamed of, confused my sight. As if seen in a dream now, the level, fair brows, the candid blue of the eyes, the mouth full but well-formed, half smiling. "All the more reason, if the time is short,"
I said, in a voice not quite my own, and I leaned and kissed her and felt the answering warmth of her lips, but then she drew away a little and half-raised a hand as if to stay me. "This evening at supper we will have more time together. We are to sup at the lakeside, they will make fires. Then, with the dark and all the movement and the boats, it will be easier for us to escape notice."
The promise I felt in these words went to my head like a strong drink. I pictured this retiring together, away from the firelight, into the darkness of the woods…
"Do not look so," she said. "I meant that we will be free to talk together and make plans, without attracting any particular attention."
These words too were delightful to me, though in a different way. To make plans was to talk of a future shared. I felt my whole being brim with joy. When I spoke my voice came huskily. "Lady Alicia, let me tell you my gratitude -"
Gratitude, I was going to say, and which I felt from a full heart, for her existence in the world and for the pains and care she had taken to contrive our being together in this way. But she laid a finger on my lips to prevent my continuing, and I kissed it with the passion of my gratitude, but when I looked into her face I saw something of distress there, in the eyes and the mouth, something I was at a loss to understand. "What is it?" I said. "What is it troubles you?"
"No, it is nothing," she said. The look had left her face as I spoke.
She hesitated a moment, as if uncertain, then said, "It is Adhemar, he is always watching me. Even here…"
"Adhemar? But why should he watch?"
"He has his own ideas for my future, and you have no part in them."
"What ideas? He seemed so friendly and full of smiles…"
"Yes, he can smile, but he has a strong will behind the smiling. There is one he favours as a future husband for me, a fellow of his in the service of Count Raymond of Tripoli."
This came as a blow to me all the heavier for the joy of the promise that had gone before. How could her brother behave with such a degree of friendliness when all the time he was regarding me as a possible adversary, an impediment to his plans? There was an element of treachery there that went beyond the necessary, and I felt the chill of it even in that shaded warmth of the pavilion.
"Take care not to show him that you know this," Alicia said. "Do not change in your behaviour towards him, return his smiles. So he may be lulled into thinking that he will have his way, and cease from pestering me with praises of the wealth and prowess of this knight."
"And will he? Will he have his way?"
"Can you ask me that after the way providence has brought us together again, after the words exchanged between us? This friend of my brother's means nothing to me. It does not matter to me if he is wealthy and well-famed. I have had my fill of my family's friends – Tibald was one such. It is as I told you that night at the hospice. I am free to choose and I will choose at the bidding of my heart. This I promise you."
These words, and the look she gave me as she said them, went far to solace me for the double blow of Adhemar's perfidy and the existence of another suitor, but did not altogether heal it. My rival was rich, it seemed. Before I could reply there came the loud sound of a hunting horn from somewhere closer to the palace. "They are calling the Assembly," she said. She raised her face to me and kissed me lightly. "You must go to hear the huntsmen. I will follow more slowly. I will not join you there, I do not take part in the hunt – this one or any other. I do not enjoy the sight of the bleeding stag."
I did as she bade me, leaving her there still in the shade of the pavilion. As I made my way towards the gate, I saw how the shadows cast by the effigies on to the walls crossed and overlaid one another, making strange, deformed shapes. The lion was a jawless crocodile, the tall flamingo had a camel's hump.