All Things Are Lights | Page 8

room.
Arnaut de Vency, his dark face creased in a smile, beckoned. Roland sat paralyzed.
"Go, Roland," Diane whispered. "You must go."
Dragging his feet, he went to where the men stood. Peire Cardenal fixed him with fierce eyes.
"I am told you are learning to sing and play, my lad. Are you any good at it?"
"Indifferent, Monseigneur," said Roland in a small voice.
"Do not 'Monseigneur' me, boy," Cardenal growled. "I am a baker's son, nothing more. What claim to respect I have is here and here." He touched his hand to his forehead and his throat.
"To me, that means a good deal more than gentle birth," said Arnaut de Vency. Embarrassed, Roland could not look at his father.
"Too many of our good troubadours spend their lives ? and lose their lives - fighting the so-called crusaders who have invaded Languedoc," said Cardenal. "There are but two or three practicing the art now. We need new blood. Let us hear what you can do, boy."
Roland's mother, Dame Adalys, joined the group. "Roland, sing a song of your own - the one about the pines."
Roland thought he would rather face a host of Frankish crusaders with drawn swords.
Sire Etienne called for silence, and everyone sat down to listen. Guacelm thrust the lute and a plectrum into Roland's hands, and his father gave him a gentle tug, starting him toward the center of the floor. He had to walk around the table. He passed Diane.
She squeezed his arm and whispered, "You will be wonderful!"
In a semi-trance he walked out into the center of the room, the lute big and heavy in his hands. With his head lifted as Cardenal had held himself moments ago, he stood briefly silent as he strove to collect his wits. He prayed he would remember all the words to his own song. He had sung it, mostly without audience, many times, but still he felt unsure. He let the melody begin rippling through his mind. Then, holding the plectrum tight between thumb and forefinger, he picked out the introductory notes.
He looked at Diane, her green eyes shining in the candlelight. He took a deep breath and began to sing. His fingers moved on the lute of their own accord. His soprano voice vibrated in his throat. He let his gaze sweep the room, but he sang for Diane alone.
"The trees on the mountains in summer are green But are stripped of their robes in the fall. When the snow shrouds the hills, Then the whole world seems dead, But the pines remain green through it all."
It was a short song, only three verses, and even as he sang them he felt he could hear with Cardenal's ears the echoes of other tunes, the trite lyrics. But when he thought he could not go on, he looked at Diane and felt better about his song.
The applause and cheers were louder and longer than he had expected. They are kind to me because am Arnaut's son, he told himself. He bowed deeply.
He left the lute and plectrum on the table. He was too embarrassed to face even Guacelm. People were starting to talk to one another again. Mercifully, his song was forgotten.
He hurried through a side door and up a spiral stair to a battlemented lookout tower two stories above the main hall. There he went out and breathed deeply of the cool air, scented of the sea whose shore was not far from Chateau de Combret. He leaned against the hard edge of a merlon.
The oak door creaked behind him. A broad figure appeared in the starlight.
"Well, what the devil did you rush off like that for, boy? Think yourself too good for us?"
Roland shrank inside. "I could never be as good as you, Master Peire. "
"To the devil with comparisons. I do not know how good I am, and neither do you. The thing is to know yourself good enough to be a troubadour."
"But how can I know that?"
Cardenal's face came close to Roland's, and Roland smelled the wine on his breath. "You know you are because I tell you, and it takes a troubadour to recognize another troubadour."
The stocky man clapped him on the shoulder. The heavy blow hurt, but it made him think of the moment when, at the touch of his seigneur's sword, a squire becomes a knight.
"I could be a troubadour?" Roland felt light-headed, as if he were floating above the balcony, drifting toward the stars.
Cardenal snorted. "Do not be so quickly overjoyed, boy. It is not an easy life. Singing for your supper, that is what it comes down to."
"Yes," said Roland in a small voice, wanting to disagree but afraid to.
"There is something more important to a troubadour than singing and playing," Cardenal went on.
"What is that?"
"Love. Even before he is a maker of songs,