His unusual garb drew laughs and jabs. Normans were rare enough that far south, and usually trouveurs would ape their southern counterparts, whose poetry was seen as more refined. But tonight that garb was all the better.
“A sonnet” he announced. He knew lieder and lais, flemish ballads and oc stanzas, and a few breton songs although the later were no longer fashionable or even prudent. But of all forms he preferred the sonnet.
En revenant à son repaire
Un lion brave et fort de jadis
Vit son enfant mort. Je le dis,
Il rugit son courroux de père.
"J'ignore, quoi que je le flaire
Qui scella le sort de mon fils
Mais quiconque en tira profits
Est digne objet de ma colère"
Un autre entend ce qu'il subit,
Déplore son malheur subit
Et n'en conçoit pas douleur moindre.
"À bon droit", Dit, furieux et fier,
Le père "C'est à toi de craindre
Et ne savoir à qui te fier" [1][2]
At first the nobles had made fun of his accent and the unusual, northern form of sonnet he was using. But by the time he was done there were no more laughs, no more talk, not so much as a straight look toward him. Apparently they had gotten the point.
The mourning duke of Burgundy had grown livid and was staring at his emperor. Three years before Maurice had sung at the wedding of his elder daughter with the Crown Prince of the Normans, a superb match even for as rich a family as the Bourgogne. The emperor had been noticeably absent but few people had thought that he would act on this displeasure, until now. Maybe he should have slipped in a verse of two about the what parts the stone had crushed, or about the cries, or all the blood. But the sonnet, as far as he could tell, was pretty clear already.
“An interesting piece” the emperor slowly said, his face an expressionless mask. “I suppose you have already been paid for it. Have you not?”
“Yes, your grace.” Maurice answered, although he had spent the last of it on a whores and wine the night before.
“Have you ever seen a real lion, sonneeter?”
Lions? The poet blemished.
“A stuffed one. In Arras.” With insight he would later thought that it would have been a smarter answer to answer that he was seeing one at the moment.
“Not a real one, then? Neither has your patron, it seems. Well, ride back to him, with a message. Lions -the live ones- do not step on other lion’s territory. A model he would be wise to ponder.”
The emperor snapped his fingers.
“That will be all.”
Maurice sighed of relief as they ushered him out.
[1]I won't go in detail over the particularities of the French sonnet (Google can explain it better than me). Note, however, that all masculine rimes in this particular one are so-called (and in modern French, faulty) Norman rimes: they end in a consonne that is pronounced in one term ("fils", pronounced "fee-ss") and not in the other ("profits", pronounced "pro-fee").
A (very) rough translation would be :
Coming back to his lair
A strong and bold lion from yore
Found his cub dead. So I say,
He roared his father's wrath.
"I don't know (although I have strong suspicions)
Who was responsible for my son's fate
But whoever profited from it
Is a worthy object of my anger"
An other one hears what happens to him,
Laments his sudden misfortune
And grieves no less [than him] over it.
"Rightly so", the father, furious and proud,
Says "It's your turn to fear
And be wary of everybody".
[2]the attentive reader will notice that, at this point, only two sovereigns in Europe have lions in their arms : Leon and Burgundy.