Free The Lute Player by Norah Lofts

going to tell the King. This is no ordinary sickness. I know the signs. And this is the way her mother, God rest her sweet soul, started. His Majesty wouldn’t take up arms in the cause of Castile against Aragon and my lady took it very hard and wouldn’t eat from Ash Wednesday till the Friday following. And then I took a clothes peg and forced her jaws apart and poured in the broth so that she must either swallow or choke on it. And she lived and was crazy thereafter, to my everlasting sorrow and his too. Now the same thing has happened; I know the signs. But this time I’m not taking a clothes peg. Whatever it is on the mind has got to be lifted or she’ll be like her dear mother. Now, Your Grace, would this come better from me or from you?’
    In my own way I loved my father. I blamed him for my crooked back and for my illegitimacy but on the whole I enjoyed being alive, my eating and drinking, my comfortable way of life, my money, my freedom. In the circumstances he had done very well by me. And very often he amused me too.
    I felt that it would be better for me to go and talk to him than that Mathilde with her morbid memories, her grudge and her grim predictions, should do so. So I went to his private apartment and told him that Berengaria hadn’t taken sup or crumb for three whole days and that it was my belief that she would not until he had written to the duke again.
    The Plantagenet’s reply this time pleased Father and displeased Berengaria. It read, ‘To my dear brother and friend of Navarre, greeting. Being bound, I cannot be your son-in-law; but when you choose him take care that he be a man of your mind and mine and we will set your standard, with ours, on the walls of Jerusalem.’
    ‘You see,’ Father said.
    And Berengaria said, ‘I see.’
    It was to me that Father said, ‘But being bonded, why doesn’t he marry the wench? He’s always at war and he’s heir to England. Why doesn’t he marry and get her in whelp? By God, the whole thing is a mystery. I think I’ll concoct an errand and send Saturnino to London. He’ll sniff it out if anybody can.’
    So Cardinal Saturnino had departed for the court at Westminster with orders to make himself especially agreeable. And the court at Pamplona had settled down. Something had broken in Berengaria. She was no longer the beautiful, pampered favourite to whom all things came as by right. She was the little girl who saw, at the fair, some bright and glittering toy and cried unashamedly, ‘I want that, I must have that, that is for me!’ and then learned that an earlier customer had reserved it.
    And I, who had for seven years, ever since I understood our positions, envied and even hated her because she was straight and beautiful and a real, royal princess, had come in the end to pity her. Because it was so plain that nothing gave her pleasure; nothing mattered save that great redheaded, hard-hitting Plantagenet who was bonded to Alys of France.

    III

    It was because I pitied her that I took Blondel home with me. Emerging with that thought out of the past and into the present, I became aware that the boy had been saying something about the new way of building outer walls with projecting towers.
    I said rather vaguely, ‘And where did you learn of such things?’ He said, a little shamefacedly, that he had once watched one being reconstructed.
    ‘One day,’ I said, ‘I am going to build a house. With a glass window.’
    And why, I wondered, did I say that? I had never mentioned that intention to anyone; but I had, very often, when the other women were talking about the future and making much of their hopes and plans, clutched the thought to me, as one clutches the covers on a cold and draughty night. One day Father would die and Young Sancho would be King and then he would marry and his Queen would certainly not want me about the court. But I wouldn’t be either pitiable or self-pitying; I’d be off to my own Duchy of Apieta where, under the