Languedoc, in the south of what is now France. 1229 AD.

Ideally, our stage is in the round. The set is minimal: blocks or other easily moveable pieces that can create chateau halls, gardens, and other spaces.  All other sense of time and place comes from light and sound. 

The company is on stage as often as is useful, blending in and out of scenes, changing roles onstage but always feeling present. 

Rotation around the stage may help with scene transitions and to show passage of time. Like moving around a clock, or a wheel. 

MAGALI, stands center stage looking out.  SIX figures surround her, casting shadows.  

SOPHIA - A Mother

BERTRAND - A Scholar

JACQUES - A Musician

RIXENDE - A Companion

PIERRE - A Soldier

RAYMOND - A Leader 

Magali’s face is lit with firelight as she watches something through the fourth wall that we can’t see.   

From the Six there are cries of ecstasy, pain, horror.

She watches. 

She looks away. Crumpling into herself and collapsing onto the bed that dominates center stage. A bed chamber. 

She thrashes and cries out. Ecstasy. Horror. Pain. 

They watch. She wakes. A dream.

As the dream fades into Jacques’ song, the cast moves, transforming the bed into a dais and becoming guests at a wedding feast.

Magali sits on the dais beside BERTRAND, her much older husband and lord.  JACQUES, a troubadour about Magali’s age performs for them. He is lit in such a way as to shine brighter than anyone else on the stage and Magali is entranced. 

JACQUES
(sings)
“Lovers arise” the watchman cries
Tearing me from your arms
Lamenting the loss of long winter nights
With lovers charms wrapped against the chill
To the rush of spring’s early first lights
And the flights that break hearts with their thrill
“Come back to bed” my beauty sighs
Turning toward me with a smile
“Discovery is not a thing we need fear
So linger awhile, and hold me this way
My husband already knows you’re here
Since dear, you wed me yourself yesterday

The guests laugh and Jacques gives an elaborate bow. He’s all charm and flair. 

BERTRAND
Quite the wit young man, was it your own?

JACQUES
Of course m’lord! I am no mere jongleur, a true troubadour performs only his own songs. 

BERTRAND
Then you’ve your own experience of the marriage bed?

JACQUES
Sadly not my lord, I said the composition was my own, not the experience. So if it’s advice you’re seeking, I’ve little to offer. 
(Chuckles)
But then again, you have done this before.

Bertrand frowns and the crowd murmurs. Magali puts her hand on Bertrand’s and he smiles at her.

BERTRAND
It is a common folly of youth to overvalue wit when it is experience that teaches empathy.  

Thoughts bubble forth from Magali. 

MAGALI
Though it demonstrated discretion as well as cleverness to write an alba that inserted romance into matrimony rather than placing them in opposition--

Now she has Jacques’s attention. 

JACQUES
Composed especially for the happy occasion of your nuptials!  That was rather clever wasn’t it?

She realizes she may have spoken out of turn but Bertrand gives her a fatherly smile and continues his sparring. 

BERTRAND
Finding flattery more profitable than truth--  

JACQUES
In most courts yes, though I do enjoy a challenge. 

BERTRAND
Then I challenge you to move us next time as well as amuse.   

Jacques looks straight at Magali. The attraction between the musician and his new bride is not lost on Bertrand, but this is the birthplace of courtly love. 

JACQUES
With the right muse, I have no doubt I shall capture the truth that you request and no heart will prove immovable.  

Off the word immovable, everything shifts again.  Back to a bedchamber. The wedding night. Bertrand and Magali sit on the bed. 

BERTRAND
Has your mother told you what to expect?

MAGALI
Yes, my lord. 

BERTRAND
Magali, I am happy for your only lord to be our God. Please call me Bertrand.  At least in this room. 

She looks up at him. 

MAGALI
Bertrand. 

BERTRAND
I know this is not what you wished.  And I told your father I had serious reservations about taking a young wife.  Our plan had been for you to marry my son, if I had been so blessed.  But sadly--

MAGALI
I am sorry for your lady’s death. 

BERTRAND
As am I.  Her absences is still deeply felt, and I want you to know that I--left to my own desires, I would not have married again. 

MAGALI
You must have loved her very much. 

BERTRAND
We...were well suited.  She understood things about me that very few wives do and I expect you may not.  And had we been blessed with children who could inherit our lands and carry on our sacred legacy--

MAGALI
She was also of our blood then?

BERTRAND
Of course, that’s the only reason I--The blood of the grail has already been thinned over the generations.  Spread between several great houses, some of which have probably forgotten they even have it.  Not to mention the splashes on other sides of the blanket or in the servant class. But if we expect our Lord to be born again into the holy line we have to keep our lineage as strong as we possibly can.  We have to know whose blood will strengthen our own and ensure it survives into the next generation.  

MAGALI
I understand my duty, Bertrand.  

BERTRAND
I’m sure you do.  I’m sorry, this is--more wine perhaps?
(She nods.  He serves. )
Experience doesn’t always outmatch wit as I am demonstrating.  What I am trying to say is that I will care for you, but probably never desire you as you would hope a lover to do.  I have found ways of doing my duty, and even perhaps to make it not an unpleasant experience in time. Though as you have seen, they have yet to bear fruit.  But--I just want you to know that whatever happens, it isn’t your failing.  And that you will never owe anything to me beyond what we both owe to our God.  We will be partners in that.  And I hope someday friends, but you are free to give your heart elsewhere.  So long as we know that any child you conceive is certainly mine, I will have no claims upon your time nor desire to know how you spend it. 

MAGALI
What are you saying?

BERTRAND
Too much perhaps. In my passion for honestly I may have raced past reason.  

MAGALI
I think you are more nervous than I am.

BERTRAND
I’m sure that I am.  I do not wish to hurt you, Magali.  

MAGALI
Mamà says the pain passes.  And that love and marriage are two very different things.  The Greeks had at least four words for love. Love of God, passion for the flesh, love of family, and love between equals, perhaps a friendship as you said. 

BERTRAND
Agape, eros, storge, and philia. You’ve studied Greek?

MAGALI
A bit.  And Latin of course, and French, but I only really write in Occitan. 

BERTRAND
Is it possible I’ve found my own Elenor of Aquitaine? 

MAGALI
She was older than her husband, and you didn’t have to steal me from a French King. But she did have 8 children. Her son Richard had none.

Beat.  (Playwright’s note: Richard was bisexual. Maybe. And he did have an illegitimate son. But Lion in Winter is great and the joke stays!)

BERTRAND
Perhaps you should have been named for wisdom rather than beauty.

MAGALI
My mother already holds that title. 

BERTRAND
And yet, your own name was one of her few indiscretions. 

MAGALI
She named me for the evening star. 

BERTRAND
In Occitan. In Aramaic, your name means Tower. 

MAGALI
Would you prefer to think of me as a fortress then? 

BERTRAND
I am an admirer of Venus, that’s her there in that tapestry, but--

MAGALI
Perhaps I should follow her example and remove my dress.

BERTRAND
I mean no disrespect to your body when I say I may find more of interest in your mind. 

MAGALI
But my mind can not give you a child as Zeus’s did. 

BERTRAND
Did your mother instruct you to woo me with knowledge of the classics?

MAGALI
She said you would not mind a woman who could read. 

BERTRAND
I will show you my library tomorrow. If we are still speaking. 

MAGALI
There is still much I need to learn. 

She leans into him or perhaps he pulls her close.  We do not see them kiss, but should assume some form of intimacy eventually occurs.