Authors: Norah Lofts
‘Well,’ Berengaria said, ‘I can’t think why on earth you dragged us here, Anna. There’s nothing to see—’
Oh dear. Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor, whom God wanted, who was struck down on the road to Damascus and rose up blind but converted, who regained his sight and went out to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. Paul, the scholar, who could meet and defeat in argument the great sages of that time. Paul, who made that proud, astonishing statement, “I am a Roman citizen,” and stood by his rights and demanded that the Emperor should judge him here in this very city. Paul; who said, “I die daily.” His adventurous, cantankerous, unsentimental spirit had been set free on the very spot where the little dog had lifted his leg.
But there was nothing to see!
I was relieved when, dawdling back through the street of shops, we found a mercer’s and a roll of yellow silk.
‘Richard did give his consent,’ Joanna said; ‘it wouldn’t be premature to start on my wedding gown, would it?’
After that they were busy stitching and embroidering and I was free. Often I went out for the whole day, buying food when I was hungry, sitting down when I was tired. The shops alone in this city had an infinite fascination; there was nothing that could not be found in them for they catered to visitors from the very ends of the earth, pilgrims and men of all nations who came on business with His Holiness. I never tried to buy an elephant in Rome but I am quite sure that if I had attempted to do so it would have been produced either immediately or within the shortest possible time.
One day just before sunset I was on my way home, loitering through a street where there were many shops, reluctant to go back and engage in female chatter and discuss whether the embroidery should be repeated on the sleeves of the gown or confined to the hem of the skirt. I paused by the window of a goldsmith’s shop. At home in Pamplona no goldsmith would have displayed his wares; you knew where he lived and if you wanted anything of him you went in at the door, made known your requirements and were shown what he had—which was very little, since there most things were made to order. But here in Rome the goldsmith, like everyone else, was set upon tempting the passer-by. And very cunningly too. There was the open window in the wall and, jutting out into the street, there was a stout iron railing, studded with sharp spikes as a pomander ball is studded with cloves. Within the window was a sloping table covered with velvet just the colour of the night sky and scattered upon the dark blue surface, like stars upon the night, were the lovely things which were for sale.
Certainly no thought of purchase was in my mind. I never carried more money on those expeditions than would buy me a bite of food, a sup to drink, and I certainly had all the jewels I needed; but I halted by the window, fascinated by the display and the cunning way in which it was protected.
Jewels made for ears, necks, fingers. What a rich city this is, I thought, that one shopkeeper should set out such a display of wealth each morning and shutter it to safety each evening. And an emerald, I thought… Not as fine as mine, of course, but very fine, green in the fading light; and how that ruby glows, blood-red, answering the sunset; oh, lovely, lovely! Then, like a hound that has just scented its quarry, I stood still and stiffened.
In the centre of the blue velvet lay the belt which Berengaria had made for Richard while she was waiting for him to marry her. I recognised every stitch of it, every single jewel. And I remembered how oddly touched he had seemed when she gave it to him—surprised, a little embarrassed but pleased, saying that he now had two treasures—with a glance at his gloves.
What was that belt doing here?
I hobbled into the shop which was just like a cage. An old man, rather finely dressed, rose up behind a line of iron bars and opened a grille. I mustered my Latin and my cunning and said that I was interested in the belt in the window. He said perhaps I would like to look at it more closely. Indeed, I said, I should. He laid it in my hands with a remark about the fineness of the sapphires and the beautiful diamond buckle, showing me how it fastened. And I remembered how I had been the one to suggest that fastening; it had been made from one of Berengaria’s brooches.
I tried to find out where the belt had come from. Quite frankly, so far as I could see, the old man said that he had bought it at a sale of precious things last month in the market. Objects of value came in from many places and were sold, auctioned. It was an expensive way of buying things because each purchase was taxed—oh, very heavily. It was like buying slaves; public auction was much the worst way! But just occasionally there were things of such value and beauty that one could not resist…
Undeterred, I pressed on with my questions. I said that I wanted the belt for a cousin come back from crusade. I said I would have liked a belt of Eastern workmanship—for the sake of association. Oh, this belt, he said, was not of Eastern origin—anyone experienced could tell that at a glance; besides, nowadays, with the crusade ended, so much Eastern stuff was coming in—flooding the market, in fact—that it was always auctioned separately, on different days. This belt’s origin? A little difficult to say. Stones were cut in much the same fashion the world over but the holes which had been made in the sapphires were rather roughly bored—countrywork, he would surmise—and the pattern of the embroidery showed Moorish influence, Spanish perhaps. Had a Spaniard then put it into the auction sale? Ah, but who could say! Any vendor with a thing of value could put it into the sale and collect what it fetched—minus charges for the sale and minus the tax—oh yes, vendors also paid tax, isn’t it iniquitous? Tax on the seller, tax on the buyer and then people wondered that things were so expensive!
Propped against the little open grille, I talked, I should think, for half an hour, asking, probing, seeking one enlightening word, one thread of a clue as to how Richard Plantagenet’s belt should now be on sale in Rome. But I gained nothing. And presently the gathering dusk and the scent of food cooking in some fastness behind the shop reminded the old man that business was business. About the belt now?
I would buy it, I said. I had not my purse with me but I would come back first thing in the morning and complete the purchase.
With that the haze of academic interest lifted; he looked through his grille and saw a plainly dressed hunchbacked woman who had wasted his time. His manner cooled. He was not angered; he was saddened. I knew as I left his shop that he never expected to see me again. So doubtless he was pleasantly surprised when next morning, early, with gold in my purse, I went back and bought the belt.
When it was in my hands I did not know what to do. I didn’t even know at that moment why I had bought it. Richard Plantagenet had most curious ideas about money and possessions; it was quite possible that he had sold the belt long ago in order to buy some baggage mules or some casks of beef. Or it could have been stolen from him. Taken from his dead body…
And Blondel?
I went back to where Berengaria and Joanna were bent over the embroidery; they had decided without my help that it should be applied to the sleeves as well. And I talked about embroidery until I had drawn the conversation round to the belt.
‘He always wore it,’ Berengaria said. ‘Even on that last day when he was trying to look like an ordinary poor traveller, he had it under his leather one, under his tunic.’
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Did you see it?’
‘Yes, he showed me. He opened his tunic and said, “You see, I wear your gift,” and there it was.’
Was that true? Or said for the benefit of Joanna and Egidio who were there at the time?
And suppose I produced the belt now! I could just imagine the tears and confusion, the
pointless
fuss.
I said nothing. I left them to their embroidery and I went back to the shop where I said that I should like to see the auction; where was it held and on what day? Having bought the belt, I was restored in the old man’s esteem, allowed my little peculiarities. There were sales every day. He directed me carefully to the place where they were held.
In the old days, in that bygone time which is only recoverable by an effort of the imagination, it had been an amphitheatre. The tiers of seats—were they of stone or marble? Marble, I think; I imagine them white and cold. I imagine people taking cushions or spreading their cloaks—they were all gone now. But there was the circular slope running down to an open space. Gladiators wrestling, fighting with spears—“The Christians to the lions!” I could see it all as I stumbled down the broken steps that led from the street to the lower level where the auctions were in full swing.
Here again everything was on sale: slaves, donkeys, bales of silk and linen, spices, vegetables, fruit, sheep and oxen, little monkeys, hounds, dogs for petting, hides, corn, everything in the world. The noise was deafening but there was a certain order in the crowd. Few people were there merely to watch; most had business and knew exactly where and what their business was. Without much difficulty I found the place where a swarthy young man was auctioning small and precious things. A broken column stood behind him and beyond that an arched opening filled with rubbish. My shopkeeper had mentioned an old pillar and I knew I had found my objective but even then I looked beyond to the blocked archway and thought about gladiators and lions.
I stood and watched until the young man had finished his sale; today he had little to sell and the bidding was slow and apathetic. Then a man in papal livery came forward with an abacus and a slave accountant. Taxes, I thought. Finally I stepped forward and said, ‘I wonder if you could tell me something.’ He reverted to the jocular manner in which he had been cheering and jeering the crowd, a manner which had vanished completely while he dealt with the tax gatherer.
‘I could tell you anything
you’re
likely to need to know, lady,’ he said. And his eye swept over me, not unkindly but with a look I knew and was resigned to because, after all, if I had been straight and comely I shouldn’t have been able to walk about in strange cities—in any city—alone, free as a bird.
‘Then tell me, if you can, where this came from,’ I said, and I shook the belt out of the piece of linen in which the shopkeeper had wrapped it.
‘That’s very easy,’ said the young man cheerfully. And then, swift and definite as the drawing of a curtain, I saw doubt and suspicion blot out the shallow, vulgar good humour of his gaze. ‘I sold it here last month to Emilio, the goldsmith,’ he said, as though continuing with his sentence.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know. I bought it at his shop this morning. But we had an argument about its origin. It’s silly,’ I said, ‘but I do like to prove my point. It’s beautiful, of course, and I don’t grudge what I paid for it—but you couldn’t call it Eastern work, could you?’
‘If Emilio said that was Eastern work he must be in his dotage! Here, let’s have another look.’ He took the belt from me and put up quite a little show of esoteric judgement, cracking his thumbnail against the sapphires, breathing on the gold and silver thread and then rubbing it with his finger.
‘Vienna,’ he said pontifically. ‘That’s where that came from, if you really want to know.’
‘Oh,’ I said, taking back the belt and assuming an air of bright interest. ‘How interesting. How clever of you to be able to tell so quickly! How did you know?’
‘Just part of the job,’ he replied airily but flattered all the same. ‘Why, just the way those holes are bored shows me they were done in Vienna.’
There must be some reason, I thought, why, out of all the towns in the world where the belt was
not
made, he should have picked on Vienna; something other than the way those holes were bored had led him to that conclusion. But I still hesitated to ask the point-blank question because that might put him on his guard and defeat my object; a thing of such value might have been stolen.
‘I’ve never been in Rome before,’ I said conversationally, ‘and of all the things I have seen this market, full of things drawn from the four corners of the earth, has impressed me most, I think. Imagine this’—I touched the belt ‘coming all the way from Vienna!’
‘That’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Why, the man who brought that in for me to sell had been farther afield than Vienna. He’ll buy anything, anything salable, but mainly he trades in furs. Last month he’d just got back from a place called Minsk away up near Lithuania and a lovely lot of furs he had for sale, besides several things like that belt that he’d picked up in a casual way from Vienna and Innsbruck and Padua on his way home.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Lithuania—why, that’s the very edge of the world! Holy Mother! How I would like to see a man who has been on such a journey. Is he in the market now, do you think?’
The auctioneer laughed. ‘You’re a funny lady, you are,’ he said. ‘Fancy wanting to see a man because he’d been to Lithuania! I’m downright sorry I can’t point him out to you; he’d laugh! And he’d tell you some tall tales about bears and wolves and frosts hard enough to crack great branches off trees. What a pity his tongue and your ears can’t get together! But he’s off again into the wild lands. He’s an afflicted man—itching palms and itching feet—that’s what he suffers from!’ He laughed heartily at his joke and elaborated it. ‘His palms itch for money and his feet itch for strange roads. This time—so he said—he was going to push farther than Lithuania, going on to Russia where furs are better and cheaper, he reckoned. He won’t be back here till next year if he ever gets back.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, and there was no need to put false regret into my voice. I had been working towards this moment ever since I came into the market, and now I was but little better off. ‘Still,’ I said more brightly, ‘I might be here next year too. I shall look out for him and with more interest than ever if he has been to
Russia
and got back alive. What is he like? And what is his name?’
‘You’d know him if you saw him, lady; he’s short, kind of bent over; he’s—’ The young man looked at me and broke off. ‘But as strong as two men and active as a flea,’ he went on a little embarrassed. ‘His name, if I remember rightly, is Peter. But we call him nicknames; for one thing, he squints.’
Peter the Hunchback; Peter Squint-eye. I saw him very clearly: I saw him plodding away on his road to Russia, bearing the information I needed, carelessly, unwittingly, uselessly locked in his brain.