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"Queen Eleanora loves music. She grew up in her father's court and heard when still a child the songs of Cercamon and Marcabru and other troubadours of like gifts. Her husband does not care for such things but he wants to please her, he wants to save the marriage. I have suggested to him that he should make a gift of you to the Queen, and he has very graciously consented."
"Make a gift of me? In heaven's name -"
"You would have great success in Paris. The Queen would like you and so would the court. You have a voice of rare quality and range and you know how to put feeling into the words, which is not such a common thing.
Also you have a fine presence, you are tall and handsome and have the look of the north about you, which makes you different from the singers of Poitou and Aquitaine that people are used to."
I almost felt inclined to laugh, it was such an absurdity, coming at such a time. My head and trunk and arms and legs, all the ties of my life in Palermo, all the hopes I still had, in spite of everything, in Alicia, bundled together into a packing box, tied up with ribbons and sent off to Paris! "I am grateful for your good opinion of my singing,"
I said, "and I hope for a better understanding between their majesties, but what you are asking of me is quite impossible. To be frank with you in my turn, my life is about to change but not in such a way as that. I am soon to be married and my bride and I will be leaving for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where we will live on our estates."
He was silent for a while and I saw him nod his head. "That will be the lady you so stoutly defended yesterday. A pity – with your gifts you could make your fortune in France. Well, I see the time is not right, which is often the case with causes that are otherwise good. But the offer is there still. If for any reason you should change your mind in these next weeks and decide to come to Paris, remember my name, Robert of Talmont, ask for me and I will make sure you are well introduced."
I thanked him for his kindness and promised not to forget his name, and he wished me good fortune, and so we parted. The encounter, and the unexpected proposal, had helped to turn my mind from the disappointment I had suffered that morning, and once back in my room I began to think what it might be best to do. She would not come now, so much was certain. There might be some word from her waiting for me at Palermo. I had delivered the money to Spaventa and I had his token. No one here would care whether I stayed or went. I decided to leave with first light, whether or not I found company, even though some parts of the way were dangerous for the solitary traveller. In the event, I was fortunate: the Saracen troops from Brindisi, their escort duties concluded, had a period of leave which they were spending in Salerno, and it was in their company that I left the castle.
The return journey has left no mark on my mind. I was hoping to find some message waiting for me, but there was nothing. It was late at night when I came to Palermo and I was exhausted – from the haste of the journey, from the tumult of my feelings. This must still have shown on my face next morning, as Stefanos remarked with concern on my drawn looks, and he was the only man, of all those I knew, who would be concerned for me in this way. Yusuf might see, but he would not speak.
My father did not see my face, nor I think any other, except perhaps the suffering one of Christ Crucified.
I had intended to make my report to Yusuf immediately, and in particular relate the circumstances of my meeting with Spaventa and the words we had used; these I had memorised carefully so as to give him an accurate account. But he was not in the Diwan, so Stefanos told me, nor in his town house, where I might have sought admittance; he was at his mansion in the Conca d'Oro, host to a party of Arab dignitaries from Spain.
I busied myself during the day with the documents that had accumulated during my absence. When we were making ready to leave Stefanos asked me if I would like to accompany him home and sup with him and his wife Maria, something I always enjoyed because of the warmth of their welcome and the attention they gave me. Maria was an excellent cook, far surpassing Caterina, the Amalfitanian woman who kept house for me. This time, I knew, the invitation was not pla
In the company of these good people, whom I had known and trusted for a good many years now, my heart was eased and my case began to seem more hopeful. She had been prevented from coming, and from sending word.
Something had occurred, some unexpected obstacle. But she would find a way to circumvent it. I had her love, she had shown it when still hardly more than a child and now again as a grown woman. And she was resourceful, I knew it of old – how often, in my thoughts of her, I found comfort in this resourcefulness, proved over and again in the stratagems of childhood.
"But you have lost weight, you are thi
She was stout of figure and broad-cheeked, with a high colour and luxuriant eye-lashes and very lustrous black hair, often in some disorder. She believed in feeding as a means of solving all problems, whether of heart or mind or spirit. She had used this method with her three sons, she was fond of saying, and they had all grown up to be full-bodied men and were making their way in the world. It was extraordinary to listen to her and look across at Stefanos and see how lean he was.
She had not had time this evening to prepare a wealth of courses but what she served was plentiful and delicious. We had chicken on the spit in the Greek style, flavoured with cumin and garlic, a great platter of minced cabbage and lentils and beans in the pod, wheat cakes flavoured with honey and the sweet pastries she had learned to make from Arab neighbours – in this region, on the south side of the Cala, Arab and Greek lived happily enough together. With the meal we had the red wine that comes from the slopes of Mount Etna, and it was good and fresh, only recently fermented.
Under the combined assault of food and drink and warmth of friendship, I came very close to unburdening myself to them, confessing my feelings for the Lady Alicia and the difficulties we were encountering in the course of our love. I did not do so, whether from caution, care for her name, the habit of reticence, I do not know. I have wished often enough since that I had spoken of her then. Stefanos' position in the Diwan was not exalted, he was in the third category of the administration, but he had been there many years and heard many things, and he was observant and shrewd and retentive of memory; he might have known something remembered something, perhaps only a scrap but it could have changed everything.
Instead I asked about the things that had happened during my absence. In this way I learned that Demetrius and his Byzantines had ended their work at the Royal Chapel, and were gone from Palermo. I was sorry to hear this, though it was no more than I had expected, and I could tell that Stefanos, who was of the Greek faith, was sorry too. The new people who had come were Lombards and northern Italians, he said. Some spoke only German. The King would come to the chapel for the Feast of the Transfiguration on the Sunday after next. It might be the last time he attended in single state to hear the liturgy: he was soon to marry Sibylla of Burgundy.
As he spoke of the Transfiguration – a feast day formerly more celebrated among the Christians of the East but gaining much in importance also in the Latin Church of late years, though Rome had not yet established a date for it – something tugged at my mind, something heard or witnessed, something quite recent. But it eluded me and Stefanos's next piece of news distracted me from it: old Glycas had died, his monumental task of proving the existence of Sicilian kings in remote antiquity still uncompleted. "He died as he lived," Stefanos said. "Pen in hand, at his writing table, between one phrase and the next."