Almodis (18 page)

‘Have a care Almodis,’ warns Dia, but I don’t think it’s the sin she is warning her about. Dia used to have her own small house in the city as she did in Lusignan, but after that Christmas in Saint Gilles, Lady Almodis persuaded her to move into the chateau. She has her own little room where she sleeps and composes.

When His Ugliness comes banging on my Lady’s door she sends out Dia who says, ‘It’s her menses’ or ‘It is a holy day’ or ‘She is sick in the stomach and puking’, or sometimes they let
him in and ply him with a drink laced with Dia’s concoctions so that he falls asleep on the instant or, she tells us, ‘He gropes me desperately but cannot have me. I prefer the sleep herbs Dia!’

Sometimes these excuses work and he stomps off swearing and I keep out of his way in case his lascivious eye should turn to me, but other times he’ll have none of their excuses or their potions and Dia and I have to hurry out as he mounts her with no patience or gentleness, like the bull in the field, and we sit in the next room having to listen to the concussions of a man and a woman and him groaning and yelling in his horrible ardour for her.

‘Perhaps all this coyness and denial makes it worse?’ I suggest to her when she is sitting in her bath, but they take no notice of me. They like their system, and anyway, I suppose she must get heirs.

‘There is another remedy for your problem, Almodis,’ says Dia one day. We all know what problem she means. Almodis and I look up from our stitching.

‘I have seen a whore on the waterfront, of good quality, who looks a little like you, named Alienor. We could employ her in the chateau and she could put herself in Pons’ way, become his concubine, take his attention away from you.’

I stare at Dia with my mouth open. Her subtleties are surely sinful and no wife would do such a thing.

‘Do it,’ I hear my Lady say with great satisfaction.

I cross myself and look back down to my embroidery.

‘Come along Bernadette,’ says Dia.

‘I’m not going amongst whores,’ I say appalled.

‘Do as you are bid,’ my Lady orders me crossly.

I’ve a good mind to tell Piers how I’ve been sent down that Comminges Street, infested with prostitutes, but I know he is carrying tales to Pons so I resist the urge. I like bedding Piers but I know he would hurt her if he could and if he harms her seriously then it will harm me too, so we lie and lie with each other. I feed him stories for Pons that Almodis, Dia and I invent together. Due to practising a thing, my mother used to say, we become skilful thereof.

Pons has set up that town whore and treats her like the
pampered
lady she isn’t. Once a month Alienor comes to see Dia and Almodis. Dia gives her silver and Alienor gives them a report on him, too fulsome sometimes for my Lady’s liking. ‘We don’t need a blow by blow account of your bedding and the state of his prick,’ she declares, impatient, although I’d been quite enjoying Alienor’s story myself. ‘I need to know what he has said of me, of my children, of affairs of state.’ So this way we go on.

Dia has letters from Barcelona and the air always shifts when this happens with my Lady’s anxiety to hear the news of Count Ramon, although she won’t admit to it. Dia is frowning greatly and the news does not look good.

‘Dia?’ Almodis asks, unable to wait any longer. ‘What is it?’

‘Bad news from Barcelona, Almodis,’ she looks up from the letter. ‘Two of Ramon’s little sons have died of a fever.’

‘Oh no!’ she exclaims and glances quickly to her own five
children
playing on the floor. ‘Oh, poor, poor, Ramon. Poor boy.’

‘He is a man now Almodis, not a boy,’ Dia tells her.

‘Yes,’ she answers distracted by her own thoughts, ‘but I always think of the boy I met here. It seems so long ago but it is only five years. But yes, if nothing else has done so, this grief will turn him from boy to man.’

‘The boy is an astute man, Lady Almodis. My friends tell me that gold and silver are pouring into Barcelona with the new
trading
he has stimulated and the tribute he is exacting from the Lords of Lerida and Tortosa, the musulmen.’

Almodis nods. ‘Yes I have heard that also. Does he not have a third son?’

‘Yes. It is the eldest two who have died: Berenger and Arnau. His youngest child, Pere, is still a babe in arms and he has
survived
it.’

‘That is something, but how sad for Elisabet, for Ramon. I will write to them,’ she says and sets about it straight away.

‘Take care of Piers, Lady. I think he is doing a job of spying on you for the count, like Alienor is doing for us.’ I had seen him sneaking beneath her window again this morning and
disappearing in his black leather jerkin through a hole in the hedge.

‘Oh I know Bernadette,’ she says. ‘I know Piers well. I have given him preferment and he has given me his oath. If he
seriously
trespasses on that oath, I shall punish him. Don’t worry.’ But I do. She has me and Dia check regularly that there is nobody listening at our doors or happening to be examining his shoe buckle under our window, where I caught him another time.

‘Why don’t you dismiss him, Almodis?’ Dia asks. ‘It would be safest.’

I see her considering it but she has some soft spot for him. ‘I keep him for my father’s sake. He can’t do us any real harm. We can use him to feed what we want to Pons.’

But Piers is smart as a snake and I do fear that he might harm her. I decide I will do a job of spying on him, like Alienor does for us, and he does for Pons. Besides he is handsome and my bed is cold and empty too often. The heart has its reasons that reason ignores. Dia can give me contraceptive herbs and I can sin along with my mistress.

I am watching my children playing in the spring sunshine in the courtyard. Melisende is sitting on a bench next to the well twisting a spinning top and Jourdain sits next to her, drawing on a slate. Hugh, Guillaume and Raymond are noisily chasing each other. Raymond has the red cloth in his hand and is trying to catch his older brothers. Hugh is eight, Guillaume is seven and Raymond is six but there is not a great difference in their sizes. All my children have my own thick, dark blonde hair. Hugh has outstripped his twin Jourdain in growth and boisterousness. Although Raymond is younger than Guillaume he could be his twin and has begged that I let him go early to train with Hugh and Guillaume. When I said no, he and Guillaume gave me an arm wrestling display to show how strong Raymond is, with Guillaume obligingly allowing Raymond to win in order to prove the point. The bond between these three is tight. If I separate Raymond and Guillaume,
Raymond
may grow up to challenge his brother’s authority and
Raymond
is not destined for the church; he is clearly going to be a warrior, not a monk. Raymond crashes into Guillaume sending him sprawling against an irritated Jourdain whose stylus flies out of his hand and the red rag passes to Guillaume.

‘Come on Jourdain, join us,’ shouts Hugh but Jourdain shakes his head, retrieving his stylus and settling into a different corner. Hugh deliberately crashes into an exasperated Jourdain again as Guillaume catches him.

‘Jourdain,’ I call, ‘come and draw with me in my chamber. You
will get some peace there.’ I move to the stairway and, reaching the top, call down: ‘Raymond I’ve decided that you can go to training early along with your brothers.’

He lets out a yelp of triumph and rushes into a hugging scrum with Hugh and Guillaume. Jourdain joins me at the top of the stairs and takes my hand. ‘Then we will all get some peace and quiet eh?’ I say to him.

‘They are totally mad,’ says Jourdain, watching his three
brothers
jumping up and down with their arms around each others’ shoulders, their heads banging together.

In my chamber he gets all our spare sandals from the chest: mine, Dia’s, Bernadette’s and all the children’s, and arranges them in a circle, with some tipped and propped up on pebbles as if they are dancing. We laugh at his arrangement together. ‘Are you happy, my sweet son or do you wish that you also were going to train as a knight?’

Jourdain turns to me aghast. ‘No Mother, please, I want to decorate books and manuscripts as Father Benedict has been showing me with coloured inks and gold leaf, and I want to read every book in the library of the Priory of Lusignan!’

‘Alright,’ I squeeze his hand, ‘I just needed to be sure what you wanted.’

Accompanied by Dia and the boys, I am embarking on the
journey
back to Lusignan and La Marche. It is ten years since I saw Roccamolten and I am excited at the prospect. My emotions
concerning
Lusignan are more mixed. The time has come to lose my boys, all four of them at one stroke. I am taking Jourdain to become a novice at the Priory of Lusignan and then Hugh, Guillaume and Raymond are going to train with Geoffrey of Anjou. Pons objected to my choice of the Count of Anjou to stand as foster father to our sons at first. He wanted them to go to one of his cronies in Languedoc. Why can’t they go somewhere nearby he said. I told him if they could survive in the crucible of Geoffrey’s warrior court, they can survive anywhere. He will teach them
proeza
, prowess. They will return to us as formidable knights to rule Toulouse and Saint Gilles. I did not tell him that I want my sons bound to me and to each other, and not to him
or one of his local lords. Of course Agnes of Mâcon will not be their foster mother. I would never subject them to what I had to tolerate in my own childhood. It was when I heard the news that Geoffrey had repudiated her last year that I determined to send them to Anjou. I thought at first of sending them to my brother Audebert in La Marche but he does not stick his nose outside his own territories. He maintains his frontiers and is content with that. My grandfather’s blood, the blood of exhilaration and risk, runs in my veins and not in his.

We will travel as far as Bordeaux, by boat, on the river Garonne two or three days, and from Bordeaux we will continue to the
fortress
of Lusignan on horseback: another two days. After visiting Lusignan and leaving Jourdain there, the rest of us will journey on to La Marche where Geoffrey will come to collect my three trainee knights. They are all mightily pleased to be setting off on their life’s journeys. Melisende, though, is standing on the pier with Bernadette looking miserable. ‘Don’t fret, honey. By the time I return,’ I say, laying my hand on my stomach, ‘there will be a new baby for you to help me with.’ She nods her head and smiles feebly at that, still pouting her mouth at the boys strutting and packing. I kiss the top of her head. ‘Oh Melisende, you don’t know how glad I am that I will keep you with me. I will return soon and you will take care of Bernadette in the meantime.’

Servants are carrying supplies down to the boat which is large with a flat bottom as the river is shallow in parts, and it is named
Hearth Bound.
It has a big, yellow sail with the badge of Toulouse on it and at the prow of the boat is a bare-breasted woman with fish in her tangled hair, which Raymond and Hugh are giggling at together.

Eventually everything is loaded and we step onto the boat. We wave to Melisende and Bernadette until they are out of sight. As we journey up river I watch the steep sides of the valley give way to fields of crops growing close to the water and the occasional village where people stop to wave their hats as we glide past.

I wake the next morning in a nest of blankets on the deck and we are making haste towards Bordeaux. Several times along the way the sailors pull the boat into the bank and we stop to eat and talk of the boys’ future. ‘A squire’s training concentrates on
strength, fitness and skill with various weapons,’ I tell the circle of their avid faces. ‘Individual training is only part of it. A knight must also know how to fight as part of a team of horsemen.’ I glance surreptitiously to Jourdain to see if he is showing any signs of misery at being excluded from this military coterie but he is looking happy with his nose in a book.

The river journey passes without incident and we step off the boat in Bordeaux three days after leaving Toulouse. Piers, who leads my escort, sends some of the soldiers to search for horses and provisions. We spend the night in the guest house of the abbey where Dia and I share a bed and the boys sleep on palettes on the floor.

After the first day’s riding, we camp in the forest and the
soldiers
build a fire and teach the boys drinking songs. There are two men on watch throughout the night. I wake briefly when the soldier next to me is shaken awake to take over the guard. There is a full moon overhead so I can see the sleeping forms of my companions huddled around the fire, and the horses snorting cold breath through their nostrils at the edge of the camp. I see the two soldiers on guard exchanging words and mugs of hot ale and the two who have just finished their watch
squirming
and hunkering down into their cloaks to sleep as best they can on the hard ground. I hear an owl calling repeatedly and the occasional crack of twigs and branches. Little creatures scurry in the undergrowth.

Late the following afternoon we ride into the town of Saintes and find an inn. The soldiers are obliged to sleep in the stables with the horses, but they seem happy to have a night of
drinking
, playing dice, singing songs and no doubt kissing the serving wenches. Next morning we are up early and heading for Niort. ‘After that,’ we will be within spitting distance of Lusignan,’ says Piers, and my heart tumbles at the name.

At Niort we are the guests of the lord and lady. They offer us food and wine in front of the fire and then warm and comfortable beds without bedbugs. Hugh is itching all over from the inn beds and has little red spots up and down his arms, round his ankles and in his hair.

‘Try rubbing this liniment in,’ Dia tells him, producing a small,
round tin from her pocket filled with an oily, bad-smelling cream. Hugh rubs it all over his lice bites and then we all have to move some distance from him and his stench.

‘If you get any more bites,’ says Jourdain, ‘they will join up and you will just be one gigantic smelly red lump.’

In the morning, Piers tells us to saddle up for the last leg of the journey. Three hours riding through forest and we will reach Lusignan.

The castle rears up ahead of us: that once familiar sight of pale turrets and walls surrounded by vineyards. I had thought never to see this place or its lord again. I remember that day when I was repudiated and birthed Melisende all in a moment, and that terrible parting from Hugh and going to a new husband I knew I would not like. Yet my worst imaginings did not do Pons
justice
. I do not want to see Hugh again. The wounds will reopen and I will find Pons all the harder to bear but I had to come for my boys’ sake. We rein horse to look at the view. ‘Your new home, Jourdain, the Priory, is close to the castle walls, and one day, Hugh, you will rule this land that we are riding through.’ I spur my horse forward again, steeling myself for this meeting. At least Audearde is gone now, cold in her grave that she rehearsed for all her life.

The gates creak open and we ride through. There is bustle in the courtyard, maids craning their heads from windows or setting down pails to stop and stare at us. This courtyard is so familiar to me and its memories rush at me. It was here that I greeted Geoffrey and Agnes when they came to claim our fealty, here that my brother and Hugh had to carry me in labour, after my repudiation. And here he is, his hair a little streaked with grey but it suits him, still Hugh the Fair. He looks pleased to see me and overjoyed to see his sons. He greets Dia warmly and is friendly to Guillaume and Raymond too. What a good father he would have made. Why could he not have been a good husband? I had imagined, distant from him, that perhaps my earlier feelings were just the romantic moonings of an adolescent girl, but I have to take this idea back, now that I confront him as a woman, seven years on, and my eyes still hanker to linger on him. I reflect that perhaps I was lucky after all that our marriage had difficulties,
for I know that Audebert would have pressured me to take Pons even if I had been happily married to Hugh. How much harder it would have been to be forced to leave him if my love had been returned and I were a happy wife.

Our son Hugh will inherit Lusignan and he needs to know the twists and turns of alliances and enmities hereabouts, to live and breathe them. The southern air of Toulouse politics would be of little use to him. Hugh is a handful. He has my temper, not his father’s, my determination, my pride. He will make a fine ruler. His nickname is already Hugh the Devilish, not Hugh the Pious like his father or Hugh the Brown or even Hugh the
Loving
, like his ancestors! Ah well, if he is devilish it is from me and it will serve him and he will serve Lusignan with his temperament. He will do things, I think, looking admiringly at him as he struts around the new household like a king.

Times are changing with regard to the succession in families. In times gone by a division of rights and properties was made between all children, including daughters, and it was only the title that was handed down to the first-born son if there was one, and if not to the first-born daughter. Now, more and more, because of the weakening of holdings that these divisions have caused, everything is focussed on the first-born son and second sons, like Jourdain, usually go to the church or at least do not wed in order to keep all the family’s rights concentrated on the one strong lord.

My former husband asks after Melisende and I describe her beauty and gentle character to him. ‘We might look about us for a lord in this neighbourhood for her betrothal,’ I say, and he begins to think about that. I glimpse for a moment a vision of he and I growing old together, just here in Lusignan, taking care of our children and our grandchildren.

When the children have gone to bed he pours us one more glass of wine, takes my hand and kisses it, and I feel the rapid burn of desire that I thought never to feel again. ‘In time to come no one will remember my time as Lord of Lusignan,’ he says, ‘except in that I married you and you have given me such fine children.’ I look into his black eyes. If he asked me to bed now I would go with him, but, of course, he does not.

The following morning we prepare to take Jourdain to the priory. With my four sons assembled, I give Jourdain a beautiful psalter. The room feels crowded and cosy as the boys bend their blond heads close together to look at the book with its red-leather cover and the gold on the edges of every page. The pages are thick
vellum
made from calf’s skin and there are exquisite illustrations in gold, blue and red.

‘Dia, tell us again about Melusine,’ clamours young Hugh, when a book and sitting still become too boring.

‘Melusine became the fairy Queen of the forest of Colombiers in the French region of Poitou.’

‘Here!’ says Hugh.

‘That’s right. She married Lord Raymond, with one condition: that he would never see her on a Saturday. She built the fortress of Lusignan in a single night. She and Lord Raymond had ten children, but each child was flawed. Urion had ears like the
handles
of a vase and one red eye and one blue one.’ The boys
giggle
. ‘The second child, Odon, had one ear bigger than the other. Guion had one eye higher than the other; Anthony had a lion’s foot on his cheek.’ We all gasp. ‘Regnald,’ Dia continues, ‘had one eye,’ and she screws one eye shut and glowers at us comically out of her other. ‘Geoffrey had a tooth that protruded out more than an inch.’ The boys are snickering at Raymond who is sticking one of his front teeth out at them over his lip.