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Page 307
Chrétien de Troyes and Andreas Cappelanus' Tractatus. Simon had learned the conventions in his youth and he unfolded that fragile and lovely plaything of the idle for the child he loved, who did not believe in idleness. He made a fairyland memory for her to hold and to look at when his letters came back across the seas and mountains breathing of war and disease and death and despair, and perhaps, at last, to hold when his letters ceased to come.
It was as well, Alinor thought, as she wiped up her tears with the corner of her wimple, that they had not had more time. That last kiss Simon had bestowed upon her in a shadowy corner of the Great Hall was not in the least courtly. Of course, she should not have crept from the women's chambers before dawn and taken him by surprise to have one more private moment with him. They had said their farewells the night before in proper form. Alinor thought back over the week past and sighed. It was so beautiful. Just like the exquisite paintings that Brother Philip made in the books of saints' livesand just as far removed from real life. What was real was Simon's last brutal kiss, his mouth hard and demanding, his teeth bruising her lips.
She had one more sight of him, as unreal but much more frightening than her fairytale week. At Tours, where the Queen had gone to see her son and his army ride off, Alinor had a glimpse of Simon looking like the portrait of a Crusader in his white tabard with its large red cross. She had never seen him dressed in anything but gray. It was his affectation and marked him well among men who customarily dressed in far more brilliant hues. Seeing him so altered chilled her blood. It almost seemed he could not look more strange and remote if he were already dead. The impression was heightened because his eyes did not at first find her and, seeking among the ladies with the Queen, gave his face a rapt expression of intensity.
The horrible chill of foreboding was over in an in-

 
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