Strange Images of Death

Chapter Five

‘I was going into the chapel to inspect the medieval fabric: the stones, the statues, the inscriptions-I’d been promised wonders. I’ve a fascination with the Courts of Love which were held in the castles hereabouts. You’ll have heard of the Courts of Love, Commander?’

Joe didn’t confide that he’d encountered the notion only two hours before in a guidebook. He nodded silently, not wishing to interrupt the man’s flow.

‘Well, I’m wandering through this blessed land of Provence in the tracks of these lords and ladies who presided over the birth of a concept so essentially a part of our humanity we are living by it today. I speak of Romantic Love.’ He looked heavenwards for a second while he questioned himself. ‘Now was it the birth or was it simply the acknowledgement of an ideal of love which already existed? An ideal which transcended the boredom and the distasteful duties of noble wedlock?

‘Wedlock! The word itself snaps like manacles! In a time of arranged marriages and religious demands it pleased the ladies of the day to turn the phrase “God is Love” on its head. For many “Love is God” drew a warmer response.’ His glance wafted lightly around the table, touching the women with a complicitous and forgiving unction. ‘A wife was her husband’s chattel but she could be queen of her lover’s heart.’

Joe noted that the men in the audience-with one exception-were staring in disapproval or discomfort at their plates. The women were melting, intrigued. Even Dorcas seemed to be well adrift.

‘All over this fair land of Provence, from citadel to citadel they reigned, these clever beauties, patronesses of the arts, spinners of the bright thread of romance which lives on and spells out their names in letters of gold: Stéphanette, Cécile, Blanchefleur, Aliénore, Elys …’

Having tasted the silver syllables, he surged into an explosion of the ancient Provençal tongue, its muscled certainty celebrating its stout Roman roots:

‘Ah! Mounte soun le beu Troubaire

Mestre d’amour!

‘Where is he, the handsome troubadour, past master of love? Where indeed may I find my troubadours, the wandering musicians who enchanted with music and song? I’m trailing them in the hope they will lead me to a queen. A queen of both England and France. A woman who was as clever as she was beautiful: Eleanor of Aquitaine. The wife of kings, the mother of kings, the daughter of a prince. I feel sure my heroine-for so she is, and I don’t blush to declare it-must at one time have arrived here to preside over the revelries. Perhaps she even sat at this table, right there in the place which a beauty of our own day now graces.’ He paused to lift his claret glass to toast a simpering blonde who dimpled and squirmed to find herself unexpectedly the centre of attention.

The Irishman was taking longer to come to the boil than Orlando, but Joe noted his audience had settled to listen to the hypnotic voice with the wide-eyed anticipation of children turning the last page of a favourite bedtime story. They knew the ending but were enjoying travelling with him towards it. And the whole performance was being put on for Joe’s benefit after all. He assumed a more receptive expression.

‘Here, at Silmont, I felt I was drawing closer, entering her world. I had a tryst in the chapel, not with Eleanor herself, but with one almost as well known-her contemporary and namesake: Aliénore. A noble lady whose legendary beauty had drawn me across the breadth of France.

‘Aliénore … And there she was-or rather, there she had ceased to be.’

The handsome features creased in pain for a heartbeat.

‘It’s Keats who expresses the deepest emotions in the fewest words, don’t you find? Knowing something of the lady I was about to see and afire with anticipation, my thoughts were captured by two lines of his:

‘Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time …

‘Well, that holy place was steeped in silence and the air was heavy with the slow passage of many centuries, but the bride …’ The honeyed flow faltered and resumed, spiked with bitterness: ‘Ah, the bride I was to find was no longer unravished, poor creature! She had been hacked to pieces by a barbarous hand.’