Winter Song Read Online Free PDF

for
her. Lady Jeannette was truly delighted.
    Raymond was equally delighted. He did not care how often he
married Alys. He liked parties. His father, he realized, might not be equally
pleased with the expense, but he would certainly agree that the benefits—Lady
Jeannette’s cheerful acceptance of the marriage and the homage ceremony—would
make it worthwhile. Moreover, the aide would cover the cost, no doubt.
    Mutually content, mother and son embraced again, and in the
glow of good feeling, Raymond said, “Will you do me a favor, Mother?”
    “Anything, my love,” Jeannette responded.
    “Will you see that the woman Lucie is married to…to, ah, yes,
Gregoire the huntsman. I know you do not know the man, I cannot recall myself
just who he is—”
    “Married? Why should Lucie be married? She is a good weaver,
and Fenice and Enid—”
    “It has nothing to do with Fenice and Enid. They can stay
here in the care of the other women. As for the weaving, Lucie can come and
work here each day if you like. However, I will not use her again, and there is
no reason why the woman should not have a life of her own. She seems to favor
this Gregoire, and I would like her to be content.”
    “But… Oh, very well, if that is what you desire.”
    “If it is too much trouble, Mother, I will see to it myself.”
    “No, no, not at all, Raymond. I will see to it. Do not give
the matter another thought. I will arrange it all, I assure you. And now, since
you have so little time to spend with us, do listen to the new lute song Margot
has written. It is the prettiest thing imaginable.”
    Raymond hesitated, surprised by the eagerness his mother
displayed to accommodate him. Usually she was not at all willing to do anything
that would require more than one or two words to give an order. Then he told
himself she was trying to make up for having displeased him, so he dutifully
stifled a sigh and composed his features to an expression of pleasure. One
thing Alys would never inflict on him was the duty of listening to tinkling
love lyrics on a lute. She could not, as far as he knew, play a note on any
instrument and had never spoken of poetry except to ridicule the “asses” who
quoted it at her instead of making sensible conversation.
     
    In the court of King Henry of England, Alys’s emotions
mirrored Raymond’s. She, too, was wishing that no one could play a note and
that poetry had never been devised. Nonetheless, Alys pretended to listen with
enjoyment to the lady who was entertaining the select group in Queen Eleanor’s
chambers. She had been scolded with startling severity by her gentle stepmother
for fidgeting and sighing during the previous “entertainment” of this type to
which she had been summoned. Alys’s eyes wandered from the singer to her father’s
second wife. There was true pleasure in Elizabeth’s piquant face, and her large
greenish eyes held a soft mist of tears.
    Most of the others, Alys noted, allowing her eyes to roam
cautiously to other faces, also responded to the sweet sentiments of the song.
Was there something lacking in her? she wondered. Was she incapable of love?
That thought brought Raymond to her mind, and immediately she was suffused with
warmth and tenderness. Nonetheless, she had not the smallest desire to hear “sweet
words like pearls fall from his lips”. At least, the sweet words she wanted to
hear were that Raymond’s father found her dower sufficient and that it would be
satisfactory for her to bring only two personal maids with her and, perhaps, a
few men-at-arms.
    In fact it was Raymond’s complete disinclination to chant “Thou
lily white/ My sweet lady, bright of brow/ Sweeter than a grape art thou” and
similar nonsense that made him so attractive to her. If someone else began to
tell her about how “sweet thy footfall, sweet thine eyes”, Alys thought impatiently,
she was going to forget all about Elizabeth’s lecture and throw up right in the
sighing swain’s face. As