Near Perigord

A Perigord, pres del muralhTan que i puosch ’om gitar ab malh.

You’d have men’s hearts up from the dustAnd tell their secrets, Messire Cino,Right enough? Then read between the linesof Uc St. Cire,Solve me the riddle, for you know the tale.

Bertrans, En Bertrans, left a fine canzone:“Maent, I love you, you have turned me out.The voice at Montfort, Lady Agnes’ hair,Bel Miral’s stature, the vicountess’ throat,Set all together, are not worthy of you ...”And all the while you sing out that canzone,Think you that Maent lived at Montaignac,One at Chalais, another at MalemortHard over Brive--for every lady a castle,Each place strong.

Oh, is it easy enough?Tairiran held hall in Montaignac,His brother-in-law was all there was of powerIn Perigord, and this good unionGobbled all the land, and held it laterfor some hundreds years.And our En Bertrans was in Altafort,Hub of the wheel, the stirrer-up of strife,As caught by Dante in the last wallow of hell--The headless trunk “that made its head a lamp.”For separation wrought out separation,And he who set the strife between brother and brotherAnd had his way with the old English king,Viced in such torture for the “counterpass.”

How would you live, with neighbours set about you--Poictiers and Brive, untaken Rochechouart,Spread like the finger-tips of one frail hand;And you on that great mountain of a palm--Not a neat ledge, not Foix between its streams,But one huge back half-covered up with pine,Worked for and snatched from the string-purse of Born--The four round towers, four brothers--mostly fools:What could he do but play the desperate chess,And stir old grudges?“Pawn your castles, lords!Let the Jews pay.”And the great scene--(That, maybe, never happened!)Beaten at last,Before the hard old king:“Your son, ah, since he diedMy wit and worth are cobwebs brushed asideIn the full flare of grief. Do what you will.”

Take the whole man, and ravel out the story.He loved this lady in castle Montaignac?The castle flanked him--he had need of it.You read to-day, how long the overlords of Perigord,The Talleyrands, have held the place, it was no transient fiction.And Maent failed him? Or saw through the scheme?

And all his net-like thought of new alliance?Chalais is high, a-level with the poplars.Its lowest stones just meet the valley tipsWhere the low Dronne is filled with water-lilies.And Rochechouart can match it, stronger yet,The very spur’s end, built on sheerest cliff,And Malemort keeps its close hold on Brive,While Born his own close purse, his rabbit warren,His subterranean chamber with a dozen doors,A-bristle with antennae to feel roads,To sniff the traffic into Perigord.And that hard phalanx, that unbroken line,The ten good miles from thence to Maent’s castle,All of his flank--how could he do without her?And all the road to Cahors, to Toulouse?What would he do without her?

“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 jealousiesAgainst 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 passUp 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?