“Papiol,
Go forthright singing—Anhes, Cembelins.
There is a throat; ah, there are two white hands;
There is a trellis full of early roses,
And all my heart is bound about with love.
Where am I come with compound flatteries—
What doors are open to fine compliment?”
And every one half jealous of Maent?
He wrote the catch to pit their jealousies
Against her, give her pride in them?
Take his own speech, make what you will of it—
And still the knot, the first knot, of Maent?
Is it a love poem? Did he sing of war?
Is it an intrigue to run subtly out,
Born of a jongleur’s tongue, freely to pass
Up and about and in and out the land,
Mark him a craftsman and a strategist?
(St. Leider had done as much at Polhonac,
Singing a different stave, as closely hidden.)
Oh, there is precedent, legal tradition,
To sing one thing when your song means another,
“Et albirar ab lor bordon—”
Foix’ count knew that. What is Sir Bertrans’ singing?
Maent, Maent, and yet again Maent,
Or war and broken heaumes and politics?
II
End fact. Try fiction, Let us say we see
En Bertrans, a tower-room at Hautefort,
Sunset, the ribbon-like road lies, in red cross-light,
South toward Montaignac, and he bends at a table
Scribbling, swearing between his teeth, by his left hand
Lie little strips of parchment covered over,
Scratched and erased with al and ochaisos.
Testing his list of rhymes, a lean man? Bilious?
With a red straggling beard?
And the green cat’s-eye lifts toward Montaignac.
Or take his “magnet” singer setting out,
Dodging his way past Aubeterre, singing at Chalais
In the vaulted hall,
Or, by a lichened tree at Rochechouart
Aimlessly watching a hawk above the valleys,
Waiting his turn in the mid-summer evening,
Thinking of Aelis, whom he loved heart and soul ...
To find her half alone, Montfort away,
And a brown, placid, hated woman visiting her,
Spoiling his visit, with a year before the next one.
Little enough?
Or carry him forward. “Go through all the courts,
My Magnet,” Bertrand had said.
We came to Ventadour
In the mid love court, he sings out the canzon,
No one hears save Arrimon Luc D’Esparo—
No one hears aught save the gracious sound of compliments.
Sir Arrimon counts on his fingers, Montfort,
Rochechouart, Chalais, the rest, the tactic,
Malemort, guesses beneath, sends word to Cœur de Lion:
The compact, de Born smoked out, trees felled
About his castle, cattle driven out!
Or no one sees it, and En Bertrans prospered?