The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [55]
For a moment, Sarah was in a quandary. But there seemed no likelihood of his coming back; and when she heard the notes of plucked strings and the sound of his song, she walked quietly across to the archway and stood in its shadow, where she could keep an eye on the farther house door and listen to the honeyed tones of Guido’s voice at the same time.
It was a sad song, which spoke of lost dreams, of the loneliness of the wanderer far from home, of the never to be satisfied yearning of unrequited love.
Guido was sitting on a low wall which surrounded a plinth dripping with jasmine flowers with a classical statue
– Venus? – surmounting it. He was half turned away from Sarah; she was sure that he could not see her; but when the song came to its dying fall, and the last sweet note lingered in the sun-soaked air, he spoke quietly.
‘Well, young man,’ he said, ‘do you think well of your minstrel?’
Sarah could hardly answer for a moment. She had been quite sure that she had put into the past the death of Waldo and the loss of the love that never was. But now her heart was full of an ache which held all the emotion of that time, yet still was forgiving of the pain of it.
194
‘Why are you so sad?’ she said at last.
It was his turn to pause, turning to look across the formal garden with its rectangular flower beds and stone ornaments.
‘I remember once, when I was yet not breeched, I stole a sweetmeat – my favourite – from my mother’s bedside.
But when I came to taste my prize, it turned to ashes on my tongue.’ He turned back to her. ‘I have dreamed these ten years and more of my return. Yet now that I am here…’
Again he turned away. ‘How can I tell my mother, who lies abed, unable to contain such joy – or my father, who even now plans the slaughter of his fatted calves – that I have come to steal their love with lies?’
‘You mean, you’re not really Guido at all?’
‘Oh, I’m their son, if ever they had a son. But not the Guido, the gallant knight, who left them – an age ago – to fight the infidel in Spain. My company all gave their lives, you see, in the taking of Granada; but I had left them long before.’
He rose to his feet, leaving the lute on the wall, and strode up and down in agitation.
‘Why should I kill for the country which binds my Sicily in chains? My father holds his land in fee from Aragon, but his father’s fathers were free men all.’
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He stopped and turned to her once more. ‘I did not fight. For this long age I’ve roamed the countries of the world, to every corner of the old Empire and beyond, singing my songs to earn my bread: a minstrel, loved by some, despised by many. And to my father, if not my mother, that must be the action of a traitor; a traitor and a coward. And who’s to say he’d not be right?’
He was near enough to Sarah for her to see the glisten of the tears in his eyes.
‘But surely…’ She stopped, not knowing what to say.
She tried again: ‘Let’s face it, they’re over the moon to have you back; I mean, they’re so pleased that they wouldn’t mind if you’d been a beggar or a – a horse thief, or something. If you explained why, they’d understand, I’m sure.’
He smiled ruefully and shook his head. ‘My father prizes his honour beyond rubies. He’d hound me from his gates like the vagabond that I’ve become.’
‘And wouldn’t even that be better?’ said Sarah passionately. ‘Could you live a lie, be a lie, for the rest of your life?’
He didn’t answer. Then he sighed and walked over to pick up his lute. ‘What’s your name, lad?’
‘Jack. Jack Smith.’
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‘An honest name; a name to bear with pride. You are young still, Jack, and –’
‘I’m not as young as I look,’ said Sarah, her own heartache buried beneath the desperate desire to help his anguish.
It was almost as if she could see m the darkness of his eyes a yearning for the innocence he had once known, for a time when the choices life offered had seemed quite simple.
‘It was a foolish dream,’ he said, and walked past her through the arch and across the grass;