Vespers-Compline
Isabel had furnished the bleak little dungeon with a candle, a chamber-pot, a wash-basin, and a strung pallet wide enough for two. When she entered, Anselm and Catherina were seated on it, slumped over, utterly exhausted. Margareta stood next to them. She’d brought bread and cheese and a ewer of water, but the Perfected Ones were ignoring the food.
“They took a little water, Lady, when they came in, but I think Catherina, at least, has entered the endura,” said Margareta. The black robes of the Perfecti were worn and filthy, and in their stupor of fatigue, at first they didn’t seem to notice her. But after a moment Anselm looked up. He took in her fine blue gown with the deep-scooped neck, her gold necklace, flushed face and loose hair, and offered her a small, weary smile before he finally rose to give her the Kiss of Peace. As Isabel embraced him she could feel the bones of his shoulders under his habit.
“I doubt you are ready to receive the Consolamentum just yet, Sister,” he said. His voice was as thin as a breeze rustling dry reeds, but his eyes, deep-set in his gaunt face, were glinting with humor.
“I beg your pardon, Brother Anselm,” Isabel said. “I did not expect you. My husband arranged a feast, and I had to…”
“Hush. It doesn’t matter. We did not expect to be here. But we had no other choice.”
Catherina rose unsteadily, resting a hand on Anselm’s shoulder. “Of course we had a choice, Brother.” She faced Isabel. “But our sinful flesh still clings to us, and we needed time to prepare ourselves for casting it off…” She was even thinner than Anselm, her skull almost breaking through its stretched parchment.
“And they gave us no time,” Anselm finished.
“Who?”
“I think you can guess, Sister,” Catherina said. “The Dogs of God are on the hunt again. They have already taken Perfecti in Narbona and Carcassona, and some Credentes as well. We have been walking for three days, and the poor people have been too afraid to give us food, though a woman in your own village gave us some water.”
She swayed, and Anselm caught her elbow before she fell, helping her to sit back down on the low bed.
“We don’t want to put you in danger,” he said. “Just shelter us for the night, and we’ll be gone before dawn.”
Isabel’s head buzzed with fearful questions, but she said only, “Of course. Lie down, rest. Try to eat something.” She couldn’t resist a harsh laugh. “In fact you came at the right time. Everyone’s too drunk to notice you.”
The Perfected Ones were barefoot, part of the scourging of the flesh which they had pledged to undergo, along with the wiry, tormenting goathair shirts they wore under their habits. But even their hardened, horny feet were bruised and bleeding from their long trek. Isabel motioned Margareta to fill the washbasin, and the two women knelt to clean off the crusted blood and grime.
But Anselm said, “You offer to wash our feet? Neither of us is the Christ, dear sisters, nor are you Mary and Martha. Please don’t tempt us. Thanks for the water- we’ll tend to our own feet, rest a little, and when we feel stronger we’ll leave as quietly as we came.”
Isabel started to object, but Catherina raised a hand and said, “The body is Satan’s last illusion, Sister. Waking from it into the Light is hard, but we all must do it, willingly or not. Being willing makes it a little easier, that’s all.” Her smile was radiant.
So Isabel left the little cell with Margareta. There wasn’t time to wall it up, but she thought that perhaps it could be concealed temporarily with storage crates. The two raced up the staircase into the keep’s undercroft and slammed down the trap door to the cellarage beneath it, shifting a heavy bench over it. In the bailey court she said, “I suppose the rest of the castle staff already knows.”
More a statement than a question, and she was surprised when Margareta replied, “I don’t think so, lady. When they arrived and sought me out, Brother Anselm said there was no watch mounted on the walls, the drawbridge was down, and the portal was wide open. Most of the servants were busy in the hall, and Anselm said he didn’t think the cooks tending the firepit and ovens had seen them.
“I hope you’re right.”
The older woman looked at her sternly, the guttering torchlight of the courtyard erasing the plumpness of her cheeks and shadowing the folds from her nostrils to her mouth, so that she looked like the carven image of a pitiless saint in a niche framing a church portal. “There’s not a man or woman of us would betray a Perfected One, lady. You know that.”
Isabel caught the slight emphasis on “us”, and her own face turned harsh.
“I did not suggest that. But you heard Sister Catherina. The false god’s Hounds are back, and they are torturing the Believers. I hope to spare our people that. The longer we can keep our holy guests a secret, the safer everyone will be.”
“But where will they go, lady?” Margareta’s voice was barely a whisper.
“For the moment, nowhere. Attend to them as best you can, and I’ll help you whenever I have time. Maybe we can conceal the entrance to the cell a little. With the tournament beginning in the morning, there won’t be many people in the castle. I have to get back.”
She turned to the older woman and embraced her fiercely, trying to hold in her tears. “Blessings in the Light, Sister,” she said.
“And to you, Sister,” Margareta murmured, with the ghost of a smile.
Isabel entered a silent hall, and realized the dancing and the feast had ended while she was in the cellarage. She found only the consort of minstrels sitting at the high table by the light of a single candle, quietly eating some leftovers and sharing a flagon of wine. They seemed oddly subdued after the wild music they had played all evening, and as Isabel neared the table she realized they were almost as weary as her dangerous guests below. The scrawny old piper had already fallen asleep with his face pillowed on his arms on the table, and was snoring lightly. The leader, Jannequin, poked him as he rose and bowed to her. The other minstrels raggedly followed suit, wiping their greasy mouths with their sleeves. But the piper merely sat up and blinked at her, as if he had no idea where he was.
“Where is my husband?” Isabel asked, a tinge of fear sharpening her tone more than she intended.
“Gone to bed, I think, lady,” said Jannequin said. “Or perhaps to his solar. He mentioned he felt like working some more on his new songs. But it’s late. I’m sorry if we have startled you. The Senhor said we could eat.”
“Of course, of course. He said nothing else?”
“Only that he was happy with the music tonight.” The man’s face – it was hard to guess his age, but he looked hard-used and shrewd – was almost expressionless, but there was a slight smile on his lips, as if Bernier’s praise had meant a lot to him. Isabel relaxed slightly.
“And so was I, Master Jannequin. I’ve never heard anything like it. It made me feel…” She was about to say “young,” but didn’t want to speak so revealingly to a hireling musician, however accomplished. “It made me feel as if there is some hope even in this dark time,” she finished.
The jongleur nodded. “I think, lady, that sometimes you find hope only in music. It goes on, it follows its own rules. We just try to puzzle them out.”
“You make it sound like God.”
“No, lady. There are too many gods. Music’s just music. Maybe music was here on earth before gods. Maybe gods came down to listen to it.”
“You know that is blasphemy.”
“I do, lady. But think of how the birds sing. Do they make their music for a god? I think they just like to sing. Or they just have to sing.”
Isabel smiled in spite of herself, “This is too deep for me.”
“For me, too, lady. Deep as the grave.”
“Quips and conundrums, Master Jannequin! I thought you were hired as a minstrel, not a jester.”
“Oh, I could never be a jester, lady. I can’t tell jokes.” The old piper had watched the exchange with his glittering raven’s eyes, and finally he rose, bobbing his head to her in a travesty of a bow.
“There are no jokes in heaven, lady. Only in hell. Do you know why?”
“No, but I know you’ll tell me,” Isabel said.
“Because in heaven, nothing hurts,” Gilles said. He cackled at her, and Isabel couldn’t resist a smile.
“But in the place of torment, who is there to laugh at jokes?”
“Why, the Devil, of course! The damned make jokes in the hope that the Devil will stop hurting them, at least for as long as he’s laughing. And that makes him laugh even harder, oh yes, and all his demons with him!” In the dim light the piper looked demonic himself, grinning to expose the few teeth in his black mouth.
“Gilles, enough,” Jannequin said.
“No,” Isabel said to him, “It’s a good joke.” She turned back to the old man. “But you forget that we are already in hell. That’s the real joke, and the Devil made it, and the joke’s on us. Laugh at that, Master Piper.”
Gilles went silent, and she scanned the faces of the other minstrels briefly. “Finish your supper and go to bed, friends,” she said. “A busy day tomorrow. Thanks for your music.”
And she walked briskly away from them toward the staircase leading to the second storey. When she was out of earshot Maroc let out a low whistle. “I wouldn’t want to cross that one,” he said. “She reminds me of Jeanne when she’s caught me in a lie.”
“What was she talking about?” said Geraut querulously. He was more than half drunk, and a little earlier he’d been slapped across the face smartly by a pretty serving girl for cupping her ass as she was putting the flagon of wine on the table. “We’re not in hell yet! We’re still alive!”
“That’s what she meant, Geraut,” Jannequin said. “Come on, all of you, to bed. As the lady said, it’s a busy day tomorrow.”
The musicians collected their instruments and made their way to the dormitory. Even though he was happily weary, still feeling a glow from the way the music had gone, Jannequin had trouble getting to sleep. What the lady had said confirmed what he’d dreaded ever since the encounter with the villein woman in the village. He shifted uneasily on his pallet, fussing with his blanket and trying to cast his mind back to the previous night, when he’d thought the castle lay under a peaceful enchantment out of the romances. There was enchantment here, all right, but it had nothing to do with peace or romance.
Jannequin had never married. Maroc was an exception among musicians, whose traveling lives didn’t appeal to most women. But he’d known a woman in Carcassona, a baker’s daughter his own age, maybe even a little older, tall, handsome and smart, who fancied him as much as he fancied her. They had talked about marrying, and her father and mother had approved of the match once Jannequin’s fame as a musician began to grow and he started making good money. Mariseult had already been pregnant with his child when Old Count Raimon’s army arrived to take back the city. Discipline had broken down among the Frankish defenders, mostly mercenaries, and a gang of them, hungry and scared, had bulled into the bakery. Mariseult had been alone with her mother and younger sister, for her father had been ordered to bring bread to the soldiers on the parapets. The gang had raped Mariseult, her mother, and her nine-year-old sister, and then they had cut their throats. Mariseult’s father always insisted that when he returned and found the bodies, the little girl was missing an arm and a leg, and that the bones had been in the bake-oven, slightly scorched and marked by knife-cuts. But the man had been driven insane by grief, and he had taken his own life shortly afterwards, jumping off the city wall. Jannequin found it hard to believe that even the lowest of the Frankish rabble would have resorted to eating human flesh, but then he remembered his rats.
He had given up all dreams of marriage after that, and had devoted himself to his music, taking his pleasure casually when a tavern girl or a country lass offered it, or paying for it at need. But that night, after he finally dropped off to sleep, Mariseult appeared to him in a dream. She was naked, weeping, tied down to a trestle table, and a drunken Devil and an even drunker God were rolling dice for her between her splayed thighs, telling each other jokes and laughing hugely. He couldn’t remember the jokes in the morning, which was some comfort.