Amour de Loin

In the beginning was the poem

The August sunlight was adding auras to the saints on the stained-glass window. The hair on a girl saint's head was getting a golden shade.

I had always wondered if the many people gathered in the church for sermon were actually listening to every word of it. In my mind there was always a mass of impressions during and after church. I had only a vague idea of what they were supposed to say in church and what we were supposed to do. Most of the information was coming from what I had been told at home. We were not the most religious of families. We did, however, show respect to religious customs and met in church with the other families and members of the community. To me it was more of a custom rather than of anything spiritual. My attention was always stolen by those we met there. I could always hardly concentrate and had little to no idea at all what the sermon had been about.

My younger sister would find the sermon time just right for her to notice what the ladies were wearing, from dresses to shoes, from jewelry to hairdos, and then she would copy them on her dolls. I would profit of the occasion to exchange a few words with my friends Marion and Eleonore. They would always have interesting stories to tell about their elder sisters who were trying their luck at the court of Henry II in England. So many rumours, romances, passionate affairs and interests, as well as fights for power were going on at court. The stories of the fights among lovers and the fights to seduce were even more intriguing than those to conquer new territories.

Sermon time was more of a formality for us and an occasion to socialize. It was also an occasion for my father to take a break from copying manuscripts. For my mother, to take care of house chores. Managing servants is, after all, quite some effort and requires lots of patience. Servants can be difficult to discipline.

I noticed Marie, one of the girls in the village, trying to sneak out to exchange a few words with her lover. I guess I was not the only one. Her husband probably had known it for some time, too, along with the other people that had gathered in the church. I wondered how she could be so careless about it all. Or maybe she had reached a certain state of despair when she realized that nothing more could be done to make some changes in her life to be happy? That was what lovers were doing in love romances I had been reading. Perhaps Marie had nothing left anymore for her to hold on to and just left it all crumble around her... I wondered if she was going to be executed in public. And I also wondered why she did not run away with her lover, far away from here.

L'amour de loin. I had read many poems about ideal and out of reach love. I had wondered if we are actually blessed to find love so easily and within our reach. Is happiness waiting for us just across the street? Or just across the arrangements parents and other relatives make for us to suit their own interests?

Helene had confided in me once after sermon that she had come to feel attached to her husband after some months of marriage. Gisele was still hiding the poems she received from her amant courtois in her jewelry box. I wondered for how long those would go unnoticed. She told me she was planning to memorize them and afterwards burn them. The way her heart burned for her amant courtois.

At the end of the day, as I was getting undressed, I heard a rustle in one of my dress pockets. I took out a small folded piece of paper. After the servant went away, I read a few lines from a poem, written on it. I wondered who had slipped it in my pocket. I would ask Gisele in a few days when I would get to meet her if it was hers.