You could say that, de Nesle replied; or at least, relativity does come into it. This Blondel was, among other things, the finest poet and musician of his age, and it was for this reason that he was so welcome at Richard's court. Before the Crusade drove all other concerns from his mind, the King's favourite occupation had been to sing duets with the Duke (Richard had a voice remarkably like a dying pig, but one does not mention such things to a feudal magnate who can split an anvil with one stroke of his sword) and one evening, probably after rather too much mead, the King had confided to Blondel his fear of being kidnapped. Holding kings to ransom was, after all, a substantial industry in the twelfth century; and King Richard, though not a collector's item like the Holy Roman Emperor, knew his own worth. He made Blondel promise that if ever he was abducted, Blondel would find him and help him escape; he was d.a.m.ned if his subjects' hard-earned money would be wasted paying ransoms, said the King (hiccoughing, probably), when a little courage and determination and forty feet of rope ladder could get him out of any castle in Christendom.

To this Blondel replied that that was all very well, but what if whoever had kidnapped him locked him up in a remote castle and refused to say where he was? Richard (we a.s.sume) smiled, and said that he'd thought of that, and that was where Blondel came in. Blondel could go round all the castles in Christendom (at the time, there were at least fifteen thousand castles in Christendom, give or take a few, but perhaps Richard didn't know that) and in each one he should sing one verse of that song they'd been singing just now, the one with Tristan in it. L'Amours Dont Sui Epris? Yes, that's the one. Good song, that. Anyway, Blondel should sing the first verse; and when Richard heard him singing it, he'd sing the second verse - he had a good loud voice, so Blondel should have no trouble hearing him. No indeed, no trouble at all - and then Blondel could sing the third verse, which would be a secret sign between them that Blondel would be waiting under the postern gate forty-eight hours later with a good, stout rope ladder and two horses. Blondel agreed that that was a perfectly splendid idea, and if it was all the same to his Majesty, Blondel wouldn't mind going and getting some sleep now, as it had got rather late.

Blondel was as good as his word. For years he wandered through France and the Empire, singing under the walls of castles, until at last his money was all spent and he had nothing left to sell or mortgage. He was sitting in abject despair in a small inn in Lombardy when he happened to get into conversation with a small group of travelling merchants. Pardon their asking, they said, but were they right in thinking that he was the celebrated Blondel?

Tired though he was, Blondel knew an artist's duty to his public and forced a smile on to his face. The merchants bought him a drink and said that they had long been admirers of his work. They thought he had originality and flair and what do you call it, that thing, relevance. They all thought he had a lot of relevance, and did he have an agent?

'What's an agent?'

The eldest merchant broke the silence first. He leaned ever so slightly forward, smiled in that way people do when they're appalled but fascinated, and said, 'It's like this ...'

Blondel raised a polite eyebrow. He wasn't really all that interested, but it does no harm to listen.

'Look,' said the merchant, 'there's you, right, all creative, thinking high thoughts, goofing about humming and saying to yourself, Isn't the colour of my true love's hair just a dead ringer for a field of sun-ripened corn? That's great, absolutely. What you don't want to be bothered with is hiring a hall, getting your posters out, fiddling around with the popcorn concessions and getting the parking organised. That's where an agent comes in.'

Blondel thought for a moment. 'Like a steward or something?'

The merchant blinked. 'Well,' he said, 'yes. Sort of. Anyway, the main thing is, you'll be free to exercise your whatsit, artistic integrity, absolutely safe in the knowledge that the ticket office will be manned and the warm-up band'll be there on time.'

'How do you mean?' Blondel asked.

The merchants looked at each other.

'When you do your gigs,' one of them said. 'Concerts.'

'What's a concert?'

There was a long silence. It was as if G.o.d had said Let there be light, and the void had replied, Sorry?

'Um,' said the eldest merchant. 'It's like, lots of people gathered together in one place to listen to you singing.'

Blondel arched his brows. 'That sounds nice,' he said, uncertainly. 'Would they want to be paid, or do you think they'd make do with a cup of wine and something to eat?'

The youngest merchant said something very quietly under his breath, but the only word Blondel could catch was Idiot. 'I don't think so,' said the eldest, in a rather strained voice. 'In fact, they'd probably pay you ...'

'A token fee, of course,' one of the others added. 'Just a sort of little thank you, really...'

'I don't know,' Blondel said. 'It sounds a bit, well, you know. Accepting money from strangers. Not quite the thing, really.'

'Covers expenses, though,' said the eldest merchant quickly. 'And a man as shrewd as you are, you'll see in a flash that that's got to be a good idea. I mean, you can get your message across to a wider audience, fulfil your destiny, all that sort of thing, and it won't cost you a penny. In fact, there might even be something in it at the end of the day, after expenses have been paid. You know, like ten per cent -'Five per cent,' said one of the others quickly.

'Five per cent of the net takings, all for you, to spend on what you like. We'd take care of all the rest of it for you.'

'Really?'

'No worries,' said the eldest merchant. The middle partner, who had been writing something on the back of the wine list, nudged him and pointed at what he'd written. The merchant nodded. 'By the way,' he said, 'my partner here would like your, um, autograph. Not for himself, you understand, for his wife. She's a fan.'

Blondel frowned; it seemed a curious way to describe someone - flat, with crinkly edges, swaying backwards and forwards. Then the penny dropped and he realised that the man had meant a fan- bearer. One of those people who stood beside you and waved one of those big carpet-beater things. King Richard had had two of them in Cyprus, where it got very hot around midday.

'Certainly,' he said. 'Where shall I sign?' He squinted. 'Will underneath all this small writing do?'

The merchants a.s.sured him that that would do perfectly.

To his surprise, the Blondel Grand European Tour (as the merchants described it) was a tremendous success, and

Blondel was able to carry on singing under the walls of all the castles in Christendom, frequently to audiences of well over ten thousand, without having to contribute a penny to expenses. For their part the merchants never seemed to grow tired of following him about and finding him castles to sing under, and if they insisted on him singing a lot of other songs as well as L'Amours Dont Sui Epris, Blondel didn't mind that in the least. He liked singing and was always making up new songs.

Eventually, however, Blondel found that he had sung under every castle in Christendom, and still he hadn't found the King. When he mentioned this to the merchants, they said that that was too bad, but they'd been thinking for some time now that the acoustics under castle walls didn't do him justice anyway, and what did he think to having a nice large arena built somewhere central with good parking facilities, proper acoustics and a seating capacity of, say, fifty to sixty thousand? It would, they said, take his mind off not being able to find King Richard.

And then, after Blondel had been singing to capacity crowds in the special arena for a month or so, a messenger came to see him. A great deal of detail can be omitted here; suffice to say that the messenger confirmed that Richard was alive and well, and was indeed being held captive in a castle. The problem was that the castle was very difficult to get to.

Blondel replied that he didn't care; he'd given his word to the King, and he wasn't going to give up now.

The messenger shrugged his shoulders and said that that was all laudable, but Richard hadn't been abducted by the King of France or the Holy Roman Emperor or any one of those small-time outfits. He was in the dungeons of the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes.

'So what?' Blondel asked. 'Where is the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes?'

'Good question,' said the messenger.

Blondel then requested the messenger to stop mucking about.

The Chastel des Larmes Chaudes, said the messenger, was hidden. Not only was it hidden in s.p.a.ce, it was also hidden in time; it could be in the present, the past or even the future. Also, could Blondel please let go of his throat, as he was having difficulty breathing?

The messenger departed in search of witch hazel for his neck, leaving Blondel even more despondent than before. After all, time was time; n.o.body could travel to the past or the future. Nevertheless, he said to himself, he had come a long way and he wasn't going to let something like this stand in his way. The least he could do would be to put the problem to his agents (or rather his management company; they had incorporated under the name of the Beaumont Street Agency) and see if they could come up with anything.

'No problem,' they said ...

'And that,' Blondel said, 'is how it happened. More or less.'

'More or less,' Guy repeated. 'Are you saying that you're...'

Blondel nodded. If his hand instinctively reached for something to sign his autograph on, his brain checked the impulse.

'You're telling me,' Guy went on, blundering through the words like a man in a darkened room, 'that you're nine hundred years old.'

To do him credit, Blondel simply nodded. Guy closed his eyes.

'Um,' he said. 'Mr... Monsieur ...

'Call me Blondel,' Blondel said.

'Thank you, yes,' Guy replied. 'Blondel, do you have a bathroom in this, er, castle?'

'Bathroom?'

'A privy,' Guy said. 'A latrine. Er.'