Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [318]
J’ay bien nourry sept ans ung joly gay
En une gabiolle
Et quant ce vint au premier jour de may
Mon joly gay s’en vole …
In the next verse his voice chimed in wildly, and because he was entrenched by the wall, his eyes closed, he did not see her eyes fill up, sparkling with tears, though her voice barely faltered.
Two voices ended the poem and started the next and the next, following Marthe’s lead through verse half known and forgotten, kept fresh and exact in her strange, precise mind.
Hast thou no mind of love? Where is thy make?
Or art thou sick, or smit with jealousy?
Or is she dead, or hath she thee forsake …?
La Sphère en rond, de circuit lassée
Pour ma faveur, malgré sa symétrie
En nouveau cours contre moi s’est poussée …
Ysonde to land wan
With seyl and with ore
Sehe mete an old man
Of berd that was hore …
Mis arreos son las armas
Mi descanso es pelear
Mi cama, las duras penas
Mi dormir, siempre velar …
She stayed all afternoon and evening, and all through the night. Sometimes he couldn’t keep up. Sometimes, when the attack was at its height, he broke off, the breath dead in his throat, and crouched gasping with pain by the bed until, girder by girder, he built up his courage again and, rising, wrapped the voice of his torment once more in the words Marthe brought him.
Throughout it all, she never attempted to touch him; even when, towards morning, he was so tired that he slept sometimes where he knelt until, driven upright again, unstrung and suffering, he would lift his eyes and, looking out of the blank greying panes, begin all over again.
But sleep, this time, was coming. Each spell of quiet had begun to last longer: the frayed voice, dropped to a whisper, told over its verses with less and less violence. At last, as the light slowly brightened and he stood, swaying a little, his back to the wall, he began, without her, a poem Marthe had not chosen.
I have a young sister far beyond the sea
Many be the dowries that she sent me
She sent me the cherry withouten any stone
And so she did doo withouten any bone
She sent me the briar without any rind
She bade me love my leman withoute longing
How could any cherry be without stone?
And how could any doo be without bone?
How could any briar be without rind?
And how could I love my leman without longing?
Somewhere in the white shell of his face, there was a lost spark of a smile, for Marthe. Speaking softly, Marthe answered it.
When the cherry was in flower: then it had no stone
When the briar was unbred: then it had no rind
When the doo was an egg, then it had no bone
When the soul has what it loves: it is without longing.
‘… You see,’ said Marthe. ‘I am not here to mock. I have worn out my revenge. You have guided me into a world which has been closed to me all my life. You have shown me that what I hold by, you hold by and more. You have shown me strength I do not possess, and humanity I thought belonged only to women. You are a man, and you have explained all men to me.…’
His eyes were closed, nor did he give any sign that he had heard her. Marthe smiled and, moving closer, laid her hand for the first time on his. ‘Francis. It is morning. Come and sleep.’
She had made the sheet smooth, and the pillow in its place was fair and downy and deep. She held the bedlinen back while he came to her; and when he lay still and delivered in its cool depths, she folded it round, barely touching him. He was already asleep.
The stairs were dark and uncertain, and she walked down them trembling, her icy hand gripping the rail. Below, in the grey light, Jerott was standing, his face white and strained and full of a queer and difficult grief.
He opened his arms and Marthe ran into them crying, and stayed there weeping as if she had just learned of madness; and been informed of the nature of death.
It was the turning-point. Lymond woke in exhausted peace, flat on the pillows, and allowed Jerott to do what he wished.
Later,