Guy Kay - A Song for Arbonne

By way of reply to her knocking, a reflective, mellifluous voice could be heard singing:

Alone am I and sorrowful for love has gone away,

Gone away on a white horse and left me here to mourn…

She smiled and opened the door. Aurelian, indeed alone, was sitting on one of the two beds, leaning back against the wall as he fingered his lute. His shirt was open at the throat and he had taken off his boots. His long legs extended well out over the side of the bed. He gave her a grave smile of welcome and, still singing, indicated with a motion of his head the table where an open bottle of wine stood, a number of glasses beside it. There was a rumpled scattering of clothes on the other bed and Lisseut saw blood on a shirt. She poured herself some wine, took a quick, much-needed drink, and carried the bottle over to refill Aurelian's goblet as well. There was one small window in the room. She walked to it and looked down. It overlooked the alley; there was no one below, but she could hear sounds from the street and Evrard's music drifting up from the downstairs room. Aurelian continued his own quiet singing, another son, the same theme:

My heart is lonely and brim-full of grief

When I remember the nights that are past,

When my sweet love would offer me

Delights beyond all earthly measure…

"I've never liked that verse," he said, breaking off abruptly, "but it isn't much good trying to talk to Jourdain about anything he's written, is it? I don't even know why I keep singing it."

"The tune," said Lisseut absently, still gazing out the window. "I've told you that before. Jourdain's always better at the music than the words."

Aurelian chuckled. "Fine. You be the one to tell him that." He paused; behind her she could almost feel his scrutiny. "You're too pensive for a Carnival night, my dear. You do know that Valery is recovering?"

" What?" She spun around. "I didn't… he's all right. How?"

"The High Priestess was in Tavernel tonight, don't ask this ignorant troubadour why. Affairs among the great. Valery should probably tithe the goddess from what he earns of Bertran for the rest of his life. She was able to deal with the poison, and the wound itself was minor. He'll be fine, they told us at the temple. So most of us came back here in a wonderful mood. Can't you hear? There are a great many people you know celebrating downstairs, why don't you go down?"

"Why don't you?" She and Aurelian knew each other very well.

He reached for his goblet. "There's only so much carousing I can take these days, even at Midsummer. Am I getting old, Lisseut?"

Lisseut made a face at him. "I don't know, most venerable sage. Are you?" Aurelian was, in fact, only two or three years older than she was, but he'd always been the quietest of them all, slightly removed from the wilder elements of the troubadour life.

"Where is Remy?" she asked, a natural extension of that last thought. She looked at the second, disordered bed, and back to Aurelian.

He arched one eyebrow elaborately. "Silly question. Rather depends on the hour, I'd imagine. He had a few assignations arranged."

"How is he?"

"Wounded pride. Nothing more, but a good deal of that. He'll probably drink himself into a fury tonight. We'd all best tread warily for a few days."

Lisseut shook her head. "Not I. He owes me for a hat and a shirt. Not to mention my own pride. I've no intention whatever of being nice to him. I plan to tell him that he looked like a sulky little boy when En Bertran was chastising him."

Aurelian winced. "The women of Vezét… what is it, do you think? The olive oil? Something about its sweetness that makes you all so fierce, to compensate?"

From the room below, the insistent voice of Evrard penetrated, still invoking Rian in the same tired ways. Feeling suddenly tired herself, Lisseut smiled wanly, laid her glass aside and sat beside Aurelian on the bed, leaning against his shoulder. Obligingly, he shifted a little and put a long arm around her.

"I don't feel very fierce," she said. "It's been a difficult night." He squeezed her arm. "I didn't like that Arimondan," she said after a moment.

"Or the northerner, I saw. But don't think about them. It has nothing to do with us. Think about your song. Alain's downstairs, by the way, happy as a crow in a grainfield. They're all talking about it, you know, even with everything else that happened."

"Are they? Oh, good, I'm so happy for Alain."

"Be happy for his joglar, Lisseut. And don't sign any contracts tomorrow without talking to me first—you're worth a great deal more now than you were this afternoon. Believe it."

"Then why don't you offer me a job?" An old tease, though his news was genuinely exciting. Too much had happened though, she couldn't reach through to any clear emotion, even for something like this.

Characteristically, he chose to take her seriously. "If I write a woman's song like Alain did, trust me, it will be yours. But for the rest, I'm not proud, my dear… I sing my own work still. I started on the roads as a joglar, and I'll end as one, I expect."

She squeezed his knee. "I wasn't being serious, Aurelian." One of the first rank of the troubadours, Aurelian was probably the very best of the joglars, with the possible exception of Bertran's own Ramir, who was getting old now and on the roads far less than he used to be.

Polite applause floated up from below. A new performer began tuning his instrument. Aurelian and Lisseut exchanged wry glances of relief, and then laughed quietly together. She lifted her head and kissed him on the cheek. "How many years in a row now?" she asked, knowing the answer very well.

"Together at Carnival? I am aggrieved and affronted that the nights are etched on my heart while you can't even remember. Four, now, my dear. Does that make us a tradition?"

"Would you like to be one?" she asked. His hand had moved upwards, stroking the nape of her neck. He had a gentle touch; he was a gentle man.

"I would like to know you and be your friend for the rest of my life," said Aurelian quietly. His dark head came down and they kissed.

Feeling a physical sense of release, and a genuine comfort on a night when she needed exactly that, Lisseut slid slowly back down on the bed and laced her fingers through his black, thick hair, pulling him down to her. They made love as they had before, three years running on this night… with tenderness and some laughter, and an awareness of shaping a still place together amid the wildness outside and the music below and the wheeling of the summer stars about the axis of the year.

Some time later, her head on his chest, his arm around her again, the two of them listened to a voice singing one of the oldest tunes, Anselme of Cauvas's most tender song. In The Liensenne someone always came back to it on Midsummer Eve:

When all the world is dark as night

There is, where she dwells, a shining light…

Softly, not entirely certain why she was asking, Lisseut said, "Aurelian, what do you know about Lucianna Delonghi?"

"Enough to avoid her. It's Lucianna d'Andoria now, actually, since she's remarried, but no one but her husband's family will ever call her that. I would not place any sizable wager on Borsiard d'Andoria's long life or domestic happiness."

"Then why did he marry her? He's a powerful man, isn't he? Why would he invite the Delonghi into Andoria?"

Aurelian laughed quietly. "Why do men and women ever do anything less than rational? Why do the teachings of the metaphysicians of the university not guide us all in our actions? Shall we call it the influence of Rian on hearts and souls? The reason we love music more than rhetoric?"

This wasn't what she wanted to know.

"Is she beautiful, Aurelian?"