Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

“Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes

Set anz tuz pleins ad estet in Espaigne

Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne

Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne

Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre . . .”

Christopher caught his breath. The Song of Roland. Natil had chosen the most glittering of the old chansons de geste, the one most weighted with mystique, most fraught with luminous image and valorous act. In quaint, limpid French that was at once two and a half centuries out of date and all the more compelling for exactly that reason, Natil began the account of the betrayal of Charlemagne and the death of Roland and the peers of France. It was a martial tale, a man's tale, but somehow, even the harper's maidenly voice contributed a fitting energy and a passionate drive to her song.

Christopher could have stopped her with a gesture, but he sat, rigid, listening. An hour went by, two hours, laisse after laisse chanted and plucked masterfully by the slender woman who was as much an actor as a harper, for with her voice and a hand she freed occasionally and momentarily from the strings, she added interpretation and gesture to the music and the words; and he did not ask her to stop.

If music was magic, this was it. If a maid's voice could touch with splendor a world that had fallen into leaden dullness, this was it. The Saracen plot. The glitter of the French battalions. Lives of valor, the breaths of which were edged in bright color. Listening to Natil, Christopher saw it all as though it blazed forth in the stained glass of a cathedral.

And yet, through the splendor, he saw the charade, too. It was not Roland's piety that distinguished him, but rather his single-minded, belligerent pursuit of an abstraction that he himself had created. The lives were valorous, true, but only because the men who lived them ignored everything else. Natil made no effort to disguise either, and yet she sang on, telling of the charge, the fighting, her voice now grating with frantic determination as Oliver and Roland and Turpin battled desperately, now turning soft and sweet as Oliver and Roland met for the last time and took hands in the midst of the slaughter.

But even though they had died for nothing, they had died believing in themselves. That, Christopher considered, was something, at least. It was a small something, to be sure,w hen weighed against all the needless death, but it gave back to the tawdry little tale of pigheadedness something of a sense of grace. Roland might have been an idiot, but unlike the current baron of Aurverelle, he was at least a consistent idiot.

“'Sire cumpainz, faites le vus de gred?

Ja est ço Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer.'”

The sentiment was curt, monosyllabic, and Christopher, filled with the memories of the absurdity that had taken place on the plateaus of Bulgaria, could well imagine the feelings behind Roland's words. Men about him, dead and dying, more Saracens closing in, Oliver—or maybe it was Coucy or Philippe de Bar or Odard de Chasseron: the memories pressed about Christopher, and for an instant, he did not know where he was—blind with blood and wounds and lashing out at anything that came within reach. And yet, with despair hovering over him like a dark angel, still Roland—or Christopher, perhaps?—had spoken with affection: Sir Friend, did you strike me on purpose?

And that look from Coucy as Bayazet had swept in. . . .

Despite Nicopolis, despite madness, despite a bitterness that had driven a stake of wormwood through his heart, Christopher found that he was weeping. Yes, they had believed in themselves and their actions. And how much did he himself believe in Christopher delAurvre?

I am the master of Aurverelle.

Master of what?

The Chanson was a long tale, and no harper regardless of skill or endurance could hope to finish it in a single night. The custom had always been to end the first evening with the death of Roland, and to take up Charlemagne's revenge, the Moors' defeat, and Ganelon's execution on the second. So Natil appeared to be intending, for her music and her voice soared up plaintively as she sang of Roland's care of the dying Oliver, and then finally of the count's own death.

“Devers Espaigne gist en un pui agut

A l'une main si ad sun piz batut . . .”

And perhaps that was for the best, after all. Roland had played his part, and he would never have wanted to finish out his days in France, an old man in his dotage, planting peach trees in the garden. No, he would die a conqueror, his face toward Spain, his arrogance and his pigheadedness undiminished. Smaller, lesser men would come after, pick up the pieces, fit together some sort of an accommodation that would hobble along until another Roland rose up and ground it into the earth.

Christopher wept. But it was late, and Natil was drawing her song to a close.

“Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut

Angle del ciel I descendent a lui.

Aoi.”

Christopher lifted his head. Natil sang on:

“Sun destre guant a deu en puroffrit

E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris;

Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin

Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin.

Deus li tramist sun angle cerubin

E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril

Ensemble od els Seinze Gabriels I vint

L'anme del cunte portent en pareis.

Aoi.”

Natil's final cry rose up, filled the space beneath the vaulting of the hall and, with a shimmer of harpstrings, faded to silence.

No one in the hall moved. Christopher was prepared to believe that no one, including himself, was even breathing, and he saw that he was not the only one with tears on his face. Old Jerome, dried up and pragmatic, had covered his face with his hands and was sobbing, and Pytor had fallen to his knees. Raffalda had left off her spinning and was crying openly, and even Ranulf, veteran of a thousand battles, noble and