All Things Are Lights | Page 7

sat beside Roland's sister, Fiorela, but tonight, for some
reason, she had placed her chair next to Roland's. He was aware of a

tingling excitement in his limbs.
It was partly anticipation of the songs of the great troubadour, Cardenal.
But Roland knew these strange feelings had also to do with the slender
girl, only nine years old, who sat beside him, her hair so red that it
seemed afire.
"Will you sing for Peire Cardenal?" she asked him.
He felt as though a rock from a stone gun had gone right through him.
"Why would the greatest troubadour in the land want to hear me?"
Roland shrank his skinny frame down behind the trestle table, as if
someone had already called on him to play. "I am lucky just to be
hearing him." The Combret jongleur, Guacelm, who had taught him the
lute and promised to start him on the vielle had said Roland's was a gift
from God. But how much could Guacelm know? He was only a
jongleur, not a troubadour.
Roland worked as hard as he could under Guacelm, but he never
admitted, even to his teacher, that sometimes, alone in the hills, singing
to rocks and trees, he dreamed of being a troubadour. He saw himself
commanding words and verses as kings commanded their barons,
holding seigneurs and their ladies fascinated by the power of his voice,
drawing intricate music from lute and lyre and gittern by the skill in his
fingers. Sometimes he forgot he was the son of a hunted outlaw and
imagined himself welcomed and honored everywhere.
"I think your music is lovely." Diane's green eyes held his. He loved
Diane as much as he loved Fiorela. She was another sister to him, a
sister whose fragile beauty inspired protectiveness. But more: when he
looked at Diane he understood why men wanted to be knights.
His sister would grow up and marry and part from him. Diane need
never part from him.
The servants had cleared away the bread and meats and were bringing
around silver basins so that all could wash their hands after dinner.

The Sire Etienne de Combret asked Peire Cardenal, seated at his right
at the high table, if he would favor them with a song. Cardenal took his
place in the center of the hall. He was a stocky man with iron-gray hair
and a battered nose that spread over his seamed face. He beckoned, and
Guacelm came out and sat with a vielle between his knees. The hall fell
silent, and Cardenal sang a lament for a lady who had died young. The
sweet notes of his voice soared above Guacelm's bowed
accompaniment, and when the song died away at last, Roland glanced
at Diane and saw there were tears in her eyes.
The applause was vigorous, but Cardenal smiled and cleared his throat.
"I get merrier as we go along," he said, and everyone laughed.
And he did. He sang songs of heroic deeds in battle, and comic songs.
A servant placed a silver goblet set with jewels on the table within his
reach and kept it refilled, Cardenal drinking deeply after each song. He
began to sing sirventes about happenings of the day, about the rumor
that the widowed Queen Mother of the present King of France had
taken the Count of Champagne as a lover, about the Pope threatening to
excommunicate Frederic, the Holy Roman Emperor, for failing to lead
a crusade to the Holy Land. He sang a tenson with Guacelm, a debate
on whether a man could truly love two women at once. Cardenal took
the affirmative, and the applause of the de Combrets' guests declared
him the winner. Much as he admired Cardenal, Roland, who shyly
abstained from applauding either side, was sure that a man could love -
truly love - only one woman. Roland's own father, he knew, had never
loved anyone but his mother.
The wine affected Cardenal's singing not at all. If anything, it
sweetened his baritone voice. He sang a duet with Diane's mother,
Madame Maretta, who wrote poems of her own and had taught the
forms of rhyme and meter to Roland.
Then Cardenal sang of love, songs which, Roland knew, were of his
own making. He sang of love that lasted forever, love that defied
human laws and even the commands of God, love that consumed men
and women like a fire, love that blinded with its light.

Roland found his hand tightly gripping Diane's delicate fingers.
When Cardenal had sung his last song, the applause was muted, but
only because all were so moved. Roland felt limp, drained. His hand,
still holding Diane's, trembled. Reluctantly he released her, afraid
someone might see, and tease him.
After a silence Sire Etienne pushed the jeweled goblet across