FullReads

The Bishop tugged at his beard. “A boy, little maid! Would you give up your blue eyes and your soft skin to be a roystering lad?”

“My father wishes for a son,” she had replied and the cloud that was over the Castle shadowed the Bishop’s eyes.

“It would not be well,” he replied, “to tamper with the works of the Almighty. Pray rather for this miracle, that your father’s heart be turned toward you and toward the lady, your mother.”

So during much of the night she had asked this boon steadfastly. But clearly she had not been heard.

“Back to your bed!” said her father, and turned his face away.

So she went as far as the leather curtain which hung in the doorway and there she turned.

“Why do they sing?” she had asked the Bishop, of the blacksmith and the others, and he had replied into his beard, “To soften the hard of heart.”

So she turned in the doorway and sang in her reedy little voice, much thinned by the cold, sang to soften her young father’s heart.

“The Light of Light Divine,
True Brightness undefined.
He bears for us the shame of sin,
A holy, spotless Child.”

But the song failed. Perhaps it was the wrong hour, or perhaps it was because she had not slept in the manger and brought forth the gift of voice.

“Blood of the martyrs!” shouted her father, and raised himself on his elbow. “Are you mad? Get back to your bed. I shall have a word with someone for this.”

Whether it had softened him or not it had stirred him, so she made her plea.

“It is His birthday. I want to see my mother.”

Then she ducked under the curtain and ran as fast as she could back to where she belonged. Terror winged her feet. She had spoken a forbidden word.

All sleep was gone from Charles the Fair. He lay on his elbow in his bed and thought of things that he wished to forget: of the wife he had put away because in eight years she had borne him no son; of his great lands that would go to his cousin, Philip of the Black Beard, whom he hated; of girls in the plain who wooed him with soft eyes and whom he passed by; of a Jew who lay in a dungeon beneath the Castle because of usury and other things.

After a time he slept again, but lightly, for the sun came in through the deep, unshaded window and fell on his face and on the rushes that covered the floor. And in his sleep the grimness was gone, and the pride. And his mouth, which was sad, contended with the firmness of his chin.

Clotilde went back to her bed and tucked her feet under her to warm them. In the next room her nurse lay on a bed asleep, with her mouth open; outside in the stone corridor a page slept on a skin, with a corner over him against the draught.

She thought things over while she warmed her feet. It was clear that singing did not soften all hearts. Perhaps she did not sing very well. But the Bishop had said that after one had done a good act one might pray with hope. She decided to do a good act and then to pray to see her mother; she would pray also to become a boy so that her father might care for her. But the Bishop considered it a little late for such a prayer.

She made terms with the Almighty, sitting on her bed.

“I shall do a good act,” she said, “on this the birthday of Thy Son, and after that I shall ask for the thing Thou knowest of.”

After much thinking, she decided to free the Jew. And being, after all, her father’s own child, she acted at once.

It was a matter of many cold stone steps and much fumbling with bars. But Guillem the gaoler had crept up to the hall and lay sleeping by the fire, with a dozen dogs about him. It was the time of the Truce of God, and vigilance was relaxed. Also Guillem was in love with a girl of the village and there was talk that the seigneur, in his loneliness, had seen that she was beautiful. So Guillem slept to forget, and the Jew lay awake because of rats and anxiety.