Lovesong by Geraldine McCaughrean

Author:Geraldine McCaughrean [McCaughrean, Geraldine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Memoirs Publishing
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Clap-Net

‘Would Foulque ever have made a bishop?’ Ouallada asked her patron as they lay in bed together, to keep warm.

‘Christ, yes. He’d’ve made a cardinal for sure if he hadn’t fallen in love with me. Not that he has the rank by birth, you know. He’s a poor relation. But what a relation he has! Only a merchant who’s as good as bought himself the rank of a duke, that’s who. His uncle would’ve bought Foulque advancement in the Church, as high as he wanted to rise. Meant him to, of course – to win a voice in the Pope’s ear, for the sake of the family, you know. But Foulque fell in love with me instead.’

Aude was a little selective in what she remembered of Foulque’s past. She recalled that he was landless, but not how his family had been ruined. His uncle – the same one who had placed Foulque in Orders as a child, with the hope of him rising – had annexed his own brother’s castle and estates, had dispossessed Foulque’s father. The sort of thing Aude recalled was the moment Foulque had first seen her and become trapped, like a wasp in a cup of mead. She failed to remember that he was also seething with indignation at the time – against the short-comings of the Church, its legal immunity, its pride in ignorance, its lack of penitence for its many sins. Foulque was incensed by it, but then Foulque was incensed about so many things that Aude had never taken any great note of the particulars. Only his romantic enslavement could she remember in every detail.

‘He just watched. For week after week, he just watched me from the back of the room,’ she said. ‘Never smiled or bowed. I swear that man seems to look quite through to your worst sins … but then it was his place to once, I suppose … Then all of a sudden he marches up to the fireplace and takes hold of a tabor and beats it so hard the ducks leave off laying for a week, and he sings me this song about how I’ve made him mad as Legion and tied him up in chains of Love. It was quite alarming, I promise you!’

‘But you don’t care for him, sure?’

‘Don’t I?’ Aude sat up in bed, genuinely wondering. ‘How should I know? How shall I know who I love till I’ve put them all to assais and tried their love to the bottom?… You’re probably right, of course. But he isn’t a faller yet. Oh, he’s such a monk still, you know. I used to think he’d cling to his vows in or out of the cloister – I’m sure he meant to. But one by one I’m bending that stiff neck of his. Men are like horses, don’t you think? They have to be broken in before they’re ridden … And how can I tell which is going to be the best until

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