The Lute Player by Norah Lofts Page B

Let him think it had been burned. The other I kept openly. And next time I found him alone I produced it and said, ‘Maria’s wedding gown! She will look beautiful.’ I hoped that would make him laugh, and it did.
    ‘I thought I burned it,’ he said.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Just an idea I had. A sort of mangonel but improved. You see, I thought that if the stone were projected from here , instead of here , as is customary, it would fall with greater force. The tendency of everything is to fall and this way it works with the pulley instead of against it. I don’t suppose you know anything about mangonels…’
    ‘I can see what you mean. Like this…’ I took up two balls of the tapestry wool and threw them, one after one fashion, one after the other.
    ‘That’s it exactly,’ he said, delighted by my readiness to understand.
    ‘You shouldn’t have thrown this away. I shall show it to Father. It’s virtually a new weapon and the man who brought it to bear against his enemy would have the advantage.’
    ‘May I see it again?’ Innocently I handed it to him and he looked at it for a second and then with a movement that I could not forestall laid it on the very heart of the fire.
    ‘You silly young fool,’ I cried, bitterly angry because I had imagined Father taking him out of the bower, installing him in the armoury, lavishing favours and rewards on him. ‘Oh, why did you do such a cursed, stupid thing?’
    ‘I thought I had burnt it,’ he said. ‘It was just the idle work of an idle moment. I was only curious to see if the idea were good or not.’
    ‘And it was. Even I, ignorant as I am, could understand it… Oh well,’ I said, recovering my composure, ‘you can easily draw it again. I’m sure Father would be delighted with it.’
    ‘Please,’ he said, ‘forget all about it.’
    ‘Why should I? A mangonel of that pattern throwing a lead ball or a great stone would be far more deadly than the old kind.’
    ‘And who but the devil would wish to make a tool that made war more bloody than it is already?’
    ‘Anybody but a fool. There’s a righteous side in every war.’
    ‘And could you always be certain that your new tool was in the hands of the righteous, even if you were competent to judge the comparative claims to righteousness?’
    ‘I suppose not always. But Father—this war in Aragon, for example—’
    ‘But the Aragonese think their cause is righteous. Otherwise they wouldn’t fight. No nation of people ever went to war believing they were wrong. How could they?’
    ‘Well, then, what about the crusades?’
    ‘They seem righteous to us because we are Christians but I daresay that to those who follow Mahomet—’
    ‘Be careful,’ I said. ‘In another minute you’ll be guilty of heresy.’ I spoke in the rallying tone which one uses when arguing with someone one loves. But he stopped and looked down at his hands in obvious confusion. I then became a little confused myself and took refuge in blunt speech.
    ‘About wars, right or wrong, I know very little. But one thing I do know, Blondel, and that is that it is very wrong for a man of your quality and attainments to waste his life playing sentimental tunes and winding wools and drawing wedding dresses.’
    Hot angry blood flew to his face but he said quite calmly: ‘Don’t we pray for contentment in the state to which God has called us? It may be virtue in me.’
    ‘And it may be that in the confusion of our minds we fail to distinguish between the will of God and our own wishes.’
    At that moment Berengaria and Maria entered the solar; Maria carried Blondel’s drawing. Berengaria was saying:
    ‘But think how dreadful it would be if they refused to marry you because they disapproved of your dress!’
    ‘They couldn’t make me take it off, could they? Not in church. Besides, the bishop often games with my father and owed him a thousand crowns when last I heard the reckoning. It would ill become him to complain. My mother