I hate the French. I hate their city, I hate their weather, and especially I hate their King – an arrogant two-faced prig who thinks that because he’s had three wives he’s better than everyone else in the whole country.

Mind, in France that wouldn’t be difficult. Mind, in the Isle of France that wouldn’t be difficult.

Yes, the Isle of France they call it, though I reckon my father holds bigger sandbanks in the Gironde; I mean, it’s just the bit left over between Normandy, Picardy, Champagne and the Orleanais; you could ride from one end to the other in five days and still have time to curse Paris on the way. How did this pocket-handkerchief come to have a King?

I admit that when my Leo first floated the idea of moving to Paris I was quite enthusiastic – well, I could see that my Leo saw it as his big chance, and that would have been enough in itself; but also, it meant I moved out of reach of my parents – oh, don’t get me wrong; I love my parents dearly; but… they say absence makes the heart grow fonder? Especially as they never really approved of Leo, and anyway they are typical Aquitanians – a bit narrow minded. You know the tale of the Aquitanian who went to confession because he’d let his bull mount his cows on a Sunday? They would have sympathised.

I hadn’t considered then that Paris is the capital of France, and that therefore Paris is inhabited by the French.

Anyway, there we were in Paris, me and my Leo and little Peter, and because Leo, as choir-master – sorry, succentor – was ranked as a Canon of the Cathedral (insofar as it existed) we were allotted a lodging in the Cathedral Close – that is, in the smelliest part of Paris right next to the building site of the new cathedral. Mind, it did have room enough for us all – even Martina had a tiny room up in the roof – a servant with her own room! Interesting, though, when you think about it: we were automatically given lodgings big enough for Leo and a wife and children and a maidservant, when my Leo is in minor orders and therefore officially celibate.

It would never have happened in Aquitaine.

Anyway, the first day was spent telling the archbishop’s office and the chamberlain’s office and the dean’s office and the archdeacon’s office that we’d arrived, finding our lodging, unpacking, trying to calm little Peter down and generally getting settled in. And discovering another little perk: we got free lunches and dinners from the Cathedral refectory – well, Leo and I did; they were fine about celibate clergy’s women but not about their five-year-old children. It was good to know that even the French drew the line somewhere: surprising, but good.

Next day my Leo went off to find his choristers while little Peter and I went off exploring the markets with Martina as my porter. Little Peter got a bit overwhelmed, though, so I sent him back with Martina to our lodgings for a lie-down, while I went to look round what there was of the new cathedral – and believe me, it is huge. There’s only a piece of the chancel so far, but that alone is far bigger than any church I’ve ever seen – far bigger even than the Viscount’s great hall in Limoges. I walked round it twice trying to find the refectory for my lunch: it turned out to be a sort of giant tent tucked in on the foundations of the tower, with its kitchen end against the masons’ yard. Smelly, dusty and hot, but well organised, so no problem to eat in, even for a woman by herself – even for an Aquitanian woman by herself. There was a cluster of other women lunching in one corner, so I walked over to them to try and make friends.

At that point I discovered another thing I hate about the French. I hate their patois.

I went off shopping again in the afternoon, then got back to our lodgings, finished unpacking, got Martina properly organised, put little Peter to bed, sent Martina to the refectory to bring our dinner over, and settled down to doze in front of the fire and wait for my Leo. I didn’t have long to wait – but his kiss woke me up.

“Sweet!” I exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”

He shrugged.

“No, tell me! Have you met the choir? Are they useless? Was it the Precentor? Or the Dean? Are they trying to block your appointment? Tell me!”

He shrugged again, and gave me another – very half-hearted – kiss. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “It’s the building. The new cathedral. You can’t hear the music.”

Presumably I looked puzzled.

“It’s so big, so echoey, everything just smears out. You can hear the individual notes, in fact you can still hear them well after you’ve stopped singing them, but it’s just a great squodge of sound; you can’t hear how it fits together – you can’t hear the melody, the rhythm, the movement, the structure – you can’t hear the music.”

This wasn’t something I could really help with except by listening – at least till we got to bed.

“And no, the choir aren’t co-operating – I wanted to try a few things to see if they made it any better, but they just said that wasn’t how you should sing. The Precentor wouldn’t listen to me, either – he’s an arrogant priggish snob; treats me as if I’m a nasty smell from the mason’s yard.”

I couldn’t help with the technicalities, and I probably couldn’t help with the choir; but I could at least have a go with the Precentor. The man in charge of organising all the services for a royal cathedral may be too snooty to listen to a mere Limousin choir-master, but by Saint Valeria he’ll listen to the daughter of an Aquitanian Sieur whose forebears were lords when Paris was a gaggle of mud huts!

So next morning, after a successful but not totally satisfying night, I passed little Peter on to Martina and my Leo and I went into the great new chancel. My footsteps crunched on the mason’s dust as I walked a decorous step behind him over to the north side where the choir were waiting.

“Who’s that?” I whispered.

“Which one?” whispered Leo back.

“The Benedictine. The one with a frown on his face that would curdle milk.”

“That’s the Precentor, Brother Dionysius! Sh!”

The Precentor jerked round as my Leo walked up, flicking the tail of his sleeve into the face of another, younger Benedictine a pace or so behind him – presumably his clerk. That meant the Precentor saw me: he reared up to his full height and snorted at my Leo.

“Why have you brought your whore with you when you perform your sacred duties?” he snapped.

“Why not?” I said. “You’ve brought yours!”

I really thought he was going to hit me. Instead he snapped round to glance at his frozen clerk, then spun right round, turning his back on me, my Leo and the choristers, and swept out. His genuflection to the temporary altar was an obvious afterthought. As he went, his clerk glanced at me with a look of pure loathing, opened his mouth as if to say something, then toddled out after his boss.

The choir seemed somewhat cowed by these events; at least they showed no open signs of rebellion like Leo had described. But I could certainly hear the problem: that huge high roof, those thin distant walls, they mixed the notes together so much that the music just couldn’t register. It was indeed just a great squodge of sound, muddy, smudged, cold, ugly and shapeless.

Just like Paris.

I hung around for a bit, then wandered off to do some shopping, which took me nicely to lunchtime.

The refectory was as stone-dusty and hot and smelly as it had been the day before, but also crowded almost to capacity. I’d hoped for a chance to sit with some of the other women I’d met yesterday, but the best I could do was to perch on one corner of a bench by a gaggle of clerics – more Benedictines. They ignored me, which was a plus after the morning.

After a couple of minutes the one next to me stood up to go, and another quickly grabbed his place – he’d actually sat down before either of us recognised each other: it was the Precentor’s clerk.

“Tu!” he hissed in that appalling patois of theirs. “La dame si cruelle! Por quoi –” He pulled himself together, mopped up the gruel he’d split and started again in proper Latin. “How could you! How could you be so cruel to me! What had I done! I’d never met you – didn’t even know you existed! Why – tell me why you were so cruel!”

The sheer hatred in his words took me aback for a moment. I’d insulted him, yes, and quite strongly; but this venom?

“To destroy in one word all my hopes – all I ever dream of! How could you – and how could you know!”

I suddenly realised what was going on. “You mean,” I said, “You’re not his – his delight, but you desperately want to be? I didn’t know! Truly! I swear, by Our Lady and Saint Martial and Saint Valeria I swear I never even guessed!” My heart was pounding through a mishmash of guilt, shock and Aquitanian propriety. I would never ever have had a conversation like this back in Aquitaine, hardly even with a woman, and certainly not even in Limoges, at least not in earshot of people who might tell my parents – and now I was talking of such things to a man! A strange man!

“I wouldn’t’ve needed that. I only wanted him to notice me – to treat me as a friend. That would have been enough. Just for him to call me Pérotin and me to call him Dionin, I didn’t need more. I dreamed of more, of course I did, but it would’ve been enough. And now you’ve – you – just in one word, all my hopes, all I’d ever hoped.” Tears were trickling down his face, but in that dust half the men had tears dripping down anyway.

I was sitting in a Paris refectory, but mentally I was in Aquitaine. I knew what I ought to say – I knew what any well-brought-up Aquitanian lady would say – or gentleman for that matter. But I remembered my parents saying it to me when I first began with my Leo, before I’d even spoken to him, just going to listen to his singing in the Abbey.

I remembered how much it hurt me then, and the memory hurt me now. I couldn’t say it. The words would not come out.

But I didn’t know what I should say. I didn’t know what to do. I could hear his words, hear his pain, but it was all so confused, so muddy, smudged, cold, ugly and shapeless – I could hear the notes, but I couldn’t hear the music.

With one hand I ate my gruel, with the other I touched my rosary through the cloth of my pocket. What would Mother Mary have done? She went with the Christ-child from Bethlehem to Egypt. Could I imitate her? Could I go from Aquitaine to France with my Leo, in spirit as well as in body?

The little silence between us stretched and stretched and stretched.

I suddenly remembered Brother Dionysius turning to glance at his clerk when I’d said what I said. I had seen it with my head’s Aquitanian eyes – now I saw it with my mind’s French eyes. Maybe Our Lady, our Blessed Mother Mary had opened them for me? This was her cathedral, after all. Maybe she had brought me from Aquitaine to France at last?

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that now my way was no longer muddy; it was clear and pure. And it left me with no choice at all.

“Brother Dionysius is a priest here, as well as at your abbey?”

He jumped. “Er yes, yes of course.”

“So he hears confessions here? Where? When?”

“Third bay on the north side. The hour before nones. But please –” His face was a mask of horror.

“Oh, I will say nothing of this. But I have sinned, and I must be shriven.” I paused. “I swear to say nothing to anyone else but – I should tell my Leo what happened. He can be trusted to keep silent, and he is my man.”

“They say Aquitanians are…”

“Tight about such matters, and about their women talking to strangers. Yes. Not as bad as the Tolosans, they don’t approve even of married couples kissing. And we once had a visitor from Albi, and he wouldn’t even speak to any married woman – not even to my mother who was his hostess – because they had ‘debased the purity of their spirit with the contamination of the material world.’ But yes. Leo ought to know what I’ve been doing.”

Brother Dionysius was struck dumb when I presented myself to be shriven by him, but his vows held – he could not refuse. Obviously I’m not going to tell you what I said in Confession, but I did keep my promise – not even the slightest suggestion that I had said anything to anyone. All I did was to drop in the assumption that he would be going to – or maybe already had – spoken to his clerk about the incident. I didn’t even let on I knew his clerk’s name.

Leo was even greyer than he’d been the last night, but we split a tasson of ale between us, and he perked up quite a bit – I think it might’ve been the dust as much as anything else. He perked up a lot more when I told him about my lunch; in fact he laughed so much ale came out of his nose.

So next morning once again my Leo and I walked into the great new chancel. This time we’d got in before Brother Dionysius; but Leo was still chalking the music out on the staveboard when he arrived. And this time with a smile on his face that lit up the whole chancel, and with his clerk equally beaming, a pace or so in front.

“Now as I said yesterday!” My Leo was haranguing the choir. “Try! Stre-etch from each group to the next, and hit its first note clean and hard!”

“It’s not how we do it in France!” sulked one of the choristers loudly – an oldish man. “We do the opposite! We have always done the opposite! What you are saying is not French; it is –”

“What he is saying is right!” Brother Dionysius cut in. “Why would we bring in a new succentor all the way from Aquitaine if the French way of singing worked in here? Now I want to hear you doing exactly what he tells you to, I want to see you paying proper respect to him and to this his good woman, or else you can give up your nice comfortable office here and go back to your parishes and live again on the pittance they will pay you. Excuse me, Brother Succentor, I interrupted you; please carry on.”

“Nothing to excuse, Brother Precentor.” My Leo turned to the choir. “So. Stre-etch and hit!”

“How much do we stretch it by?” The face was sulky, but accepting the inevitable.

“Oh, a long way – maybe even double or – yes, go for double. Got it? Last note of each group stretched to double length and the first note of the next group hit pin-clean. Sing!”

But I was looking at the clerk. He was smiling almost round his head: he stepped sideways out of the others’ eyelines and whispered to me.

“Nos – nos avons – jo sui Pérotin a son Dionin! Par Nostre Dame et Saint Rémi, jo sui tousjours – I am for ever in your debt, beloved Lady. For ever in the ages of ages!”

I smiled back, remembering – remembering when I first kissed my Leo. But that was back in Aquitaine, and now I was in France, truly in France, with my Leo and his melodies that were lifting me far above my memories, far above the now, the muddy, smudged, cold, ugly and shapeless now, to the truth that is clear and warm and pure for ever in the ages of ages.

I looked at my Leo; I listened to the singing.

And I could hear the music.