Almodis (23 page)

‘We might,’ I say, unlacing the ties of his shirt.

I wake before him at first light and look at the tufts of his blond
hair and his brown eyelashes against the brown and pink blush of his face on the pillow beside me. I sit on the edge of the bed and put my shift on quickly, scooping up my jewels with one hand, wanting to get back to my room before anyone else in the
household
awakens.

‘Almodis?’

‘I must go quickly.’

He raises himself on one elbow, ‘Sweet Almodis. You are like your birthland in the Limousin: strong as granite, secret as the bosky woods, modest as the mountains.’ I smile politely to him and start to stand but he holds me back. ‘Tell me, if I had asked you to marry me all those years ago in Toulouse, would you have said yes?’

‘No,’ I say, watching the smile extinguished in his eyes. ‘I was betrothed on my father’s oath. Our lives are not for our desiring.’ I neglect to mention how I had desired Hugh of Lusignan at that time, my chimera.

‘And now?’

I do not reply.

‘We can find a way, Almodis, if you wish it.’

‘I don’t have time for conversation, Ramon, I must go.’

I move swiftly to the door and hear him jump out of bed behind me. He comes around me, holding his shirt comically to his groin, and opens the door gallantly for me.

‘Another time, then?’ he says.

Later that morning I go down to the dock with Berenger to see Ramon off on his journey to Rome. He leans close to kiss me goodbye on both cheeks. ‘My love,’ he says in my ear. He has given me a thick gold ring that I am wearing on my little finger, but only for today. Inside it is engraved with the words: ‘I am wholly yours’. When I turn back for a last sight of him I see that his hand is still cupped, in the same position, as when I left his embrace, cupped to the shape of my hip, to the shape of my absence. I smile at that and turn away. A boy. He is a sweet boy still, and I am glad that I have stolen one beautiful night for myself.

I pace my room, horrified. There is no doubt. I am with child.
Pons has not lain with me for over two years. I could birth the child in secret and send it away. Or I must expose it in the forest as poor mothers do, so that it dies of cold or is eaten by animals. I pull my lips in tightly and begin to weep silently to myself. If I send word to Ramon what good would that do? He is betrothed and he will wed Blanca. He must now. He told me in Narbonne that he had betrothed himself to Blanca in despair at my
rejection
at the Troubadour Court but then found that he could not forget me, could not marry her. He has found excuses each year to put the marriage off: a military expedition last year, a
pilgrimage
to Rome this year. ‘I will keep finding excuses, Almodis,’ he said, ‘until you marry me.’ What nonsense he speaks. What did he expect? That I would leave my husband and marry him? We would be disowned by everyone, our people, our families,
everyone
. My sons would be shamed. My sister, my poor sister: she would not be able to show her face anywhere. People would spit on her, mistaking her for me, the Count of Barcelona’s whore, a woman of unbridled lust. No one would recognise a marriage between us. He would lose all the respect he has earned so hard over the last years. He is ridiculous. He still thinks like a boy! Because he wants something he thinks he can have it, he can have me with none of this weight of the world mattering. Now if I tell Ramon of this child what would he do? He will not own a bastard got on the wife of another lord. I am undone. Ramon could not risk war between Barcelona and Toulouse for my sake.

I sit hugging myself and weeping for a long time. In my head I chant Dia’s litany of contraceptive herbs: birthwort, Queen Anne’s lace, lupine, pepper, myrrh, licorice, pennyroyal, rue, parsley, cypress. Unfortunately I used none of them. Dia is
outside
the door calling to me. ‘Leave me be now,’ I call back and her footsteps retreat down the passage. Perhaps I will miscarry in my misery. Perhaps Dia can help me miscarry. Must I pay so hard for one small pleasure?

I stamp my foot. I have only to look at a man and I am
pregnant
! I am so tired of carrying children: the pains in my ankles and back, the swellings and unswellings, the difficulty of sleeping in the late stages, and now I must sleep with Pons to conceal my infidelity and stop him from making me a nun. I dash my pink
glass to the ground at that horrible thought and cry some more, realising that it is the glass Ramon gave me for my wedding to Hugh. How I have loved the way it fitted into my hand. I cry for it as if it were a dear friend, ruined and shattered on the cold ground.

‘My Lady?’ Bernadette comes in looking anxiously from me to the pink shards.

‘It’s nothing. An accident. Clear it up.’ I wipe my face and shake my head. ‘It’s nothing.’

I try to write a letter to Ramon to tell him of my predicament and ask him for his help. I begin with a quotation from Dhuoda:
If sky and meadows were unfurled through the air like a scroll of parchment and if all the gulfs of the sea were transformed, tinged like inks of many colours I could walk across this floating parchment like a bridge, crossing the inky sea to you
… Ridiculous. Love is ridiculous and not real. I scrunch up the blotched sheet of paper and throw it in the fire.

Pons and I have travelled by boat up the Tarn to the abbey at Moissac where we will sign a charter to join the abbey to Cluny. It was my idea and greatly welcomed in letters to me by Abbot Durand. We are shown into the abbot’s office. Durand de Bredon is very tall, taller even than me and thin, so that he gives an
overall
impression of longness. His face is long, his nose is long, his fingers, held out to us in blessing, are very long. He is a fanatic, talking to us of a return to the rigours of the early church, of the need for self-deprivation.

‘You will be interested to know that we are preparing for the beatification of a saint here, my Lady,’ he says, ‘a sister of great faith.’

‘Oh?’

‘Sister Dolores. She lived in utter solitude for nigh on twenty years, not touching a living soul, not speaking except to
whisper
her visions to us, wonderful visions of the angels and seraphims.’

I try to look impressed but recoil at his description. I do not believe that God wishes such self-deprivations. God made us and the world that we live in. It and we, I think, cannot be all as bad as some preach.

‘Come and see her cell,’ he says. ‘It is quite extraordinary.’

I am not at all interested to see a nun’s cell but politely I must feign my fascination. Pons, on the other hand, is intrigued. ‘
Imagine
that,’ he says to me pointedly, ‘not touching a living soul for years.’

When I step over the threshold into the church time seems to slow and stop, partly because of the weight of history here, but also because of the sheer volume of still air. The columns, buttresses and vaults rise up around me like a great stone forest. Demons cavort in its stained glass windows, an orchestra of angels play their instruments in the ceiling above the choir. Inside the church are forty carvings of green men and outside, hideous gargoyles funnel rainwater away from the walls.

The abbot leads us on to the cloisters where birds are singing in the green square. Monks pace the quadrangle underneath the intricate stone latticework of the fan-vaulted ceilings, or are seated at the stone carols contemplating the enclosed garden through a colonnade of arched windows. The order is mostly silent so the church is the sounding space where voices can burst out. The abbot brings us to a place mid-way down one side of the quad and turning his back on the grass and sunshine, faces the wall, declaring with relish, ‘Here it is!’

I am confused. There is no nun’s cell here. I see two
rectangular
openings in the wall, one above the other.

‘This one here,’ he says, ‘placing his hand at the top opening, ‘was at eye-level, so that she could see out, and then this one,’ he gestures at the larger opening below, ‘was for her prayer books and letters.’ It takes me a moment to understand him.

‘She was walled up here?’ I say slowly. ‘Inside this wall.’

‘Yes. Astonishing isn’t it? She was a true saint.’

I feel sick and turn away from the wall. Unspeakable.

‘Would you like to try it my Lady? The access is from the side here …’

‘No. I would not.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Pons says. ‘She would love to try it.’ He takes my arm tightly, bruising it. ‘Try it,’ he hisses at me.

‘No need to be afraid.’ The abbot is humorous. ‘We won’t leave you in there, will we count?’

‘Oh certainly not. How would I cope without my wife?’ There is an opening and Pons thrusts me into it so that I am tightly encased front and back by stone.

‘You have to sidle sideways, countess, to get to it. Yes that’s right, down that way, until you reach the stone that she perched on. That’s it.’

The narrow stone passage opens out into a room that is only slightly wider. In the middle is a stone bench long enough to stretch out on and suspended on the far wall, a large, dark
crucifix
. A chamber pot and a water jug are the only objects in this sliver of a room. If I sit on the bench with my back to Pons and Durand, facing towards the church, I can see through a squint hole where I have a view of the altar. She would have been able to hear mass and the music of the choir. If I swing my legs over and face out to the cloisters I have a narrow framed rectangular view. The lintel I had stepped over would have been bricked up when Sister Dolores occupied this living grave, mortifying her flesh, in hope of paradise. A small hatch beneath the crucifix would have allowed her servant to take her pot and pass through her water and food. Sister Dolores would have stayed here with not even room to pace on either side of the bench for twenty years. I am doing my best not to imagine it.

My hands are at the opening now and my eyes at the eyehole. I try to slow my breathing. I am overwhelmingly hot. ‘Of course Sister Dolores was smaller than you,’ the abbot rattles on.

I imagine the long, long years. I imagine spiders weaving strands of my hair into their webs.

Pons is standing in the line of my vision, enjoying himself hugely. ‘Suits you,’ he says nastily. He thrusts his hand into the lower hole poking about my lap. ‘Is this how she was fed?’

I bat his hand away. There is barely room to bend my arm and raise it to my mouth. Her muscles must have wasted, her bones must have ached. She would see the monks coming and going on their way to mass. She would see a butterfly or dragonfly skid across the green quad. She would see snow fall and leaves fall, year in, year out. The horror of it. Only a loss of her mind could have sustained her, only a feverish dwelling in visions. I scuttle sideways back out.

‘Mind your dress, my dear.’

I lean my back against the wall, outside, taking deep breaths.
I ignore Pons’ grins and stare at the abbot. He stares back at me, stony, long. I say, ‘And does God wish this, Father?’

‘Sister Dolores will be beatified in a matter of weeks,’ he says in a tone that disapproves of my challenge. ‘Female flesh, in
particular
, requires mortification, driven as it is by godless female itches,’ he says, his eyes on my heaving breasts which are already starting to fill out with milk for Ramon’s child in my womb.

‘You are quite pale, dear,’ says Pons, clearly pleased.

I walk quickly down the cloister needing to escape the sight and thought of the anchorite cell. I am disgusted. In the guest chamber Bernadette rushes to find a bowl for me but she’s too late and I have to vomit into one of Abbot Durand’s ornate vases decorating the room. I order Bernadette not to clean it.

I have returned to Toulouse, and Pons to Saint Gilles. My sister, Lucia, has come to stay with me. The muggy, hot weather has broken and I lie in bed listening to the sound of summer rain beating down hard on the cobbles and roofs. It is not light yet. The sound must have woken me. I relish the warmth of my bed, of my body, and the fact that I need not get up just yet.

‘My Lady!’ Bernadette is through the door with her words. Something is wrong. I sit up, pulling my shift up my shoulders, blinking against the candlelight that she has brought in with her.

‘What is it? Is it Raingarde? One of the children?’ But not
Raingarde
. I would have felt her long before anyone came to give me news of her. Is it my mother?

‘It’s Alienor, Lady!’

I struggle for a moment trying to place Alienor in my
household
. I am still half asleep. ‘Alienor?’ I repeat.

‘She’s outside and begs urgent audience with you.’

‘In the middle of the night?’ Is Pons dead? Hope rises in me. ‘Quickly, show her in and bring us some water.’

‘Big with child she is,’ Bernadette, says her eyes round. ‘And wet through with the rain. Shall I light the fire? She’s in an awful state.’

‘Yes, light the fire.’

The commotion has woken Dia and she comes in just behind Alienor and helps her take off her wet cloak and hood, but the clothes underneath are soaking wet too.

‘Get Alienor some clothes from my chest, Dia. You mustn’t stay in those,’ I tell her.

Bernadette helps her to strip. As the mound of her belly is exposed she is looking at me mutely, her eyes wide and afraid and I begin to fear too. When she is clothed in my gown and has stopped shaking with cold I say, ‘Sit here on the bed, Alienor and put this blanket around you too. What has possessed you to ride here in the middle of the night in this terrible storm?’ I settle the blanket around her.

‘He’s thrown me out,’ she says, ‘and you can see why. He said he would run me through the town naked if I didn’t do what I was told. Said he didn’t want to know nothing of my bastard.
My
bastard,’ she says indignant. ‘Well it’s his, isn’t it my Lady?’

‘Yes,’ I soothe her, drying her hair. ‘Never mind him, Alienor. You are safe now. You have served me well and I will take good care of you and your child.’

‘That’s just it,’ she says. ‘You won’t. Not if his plans and plots all go to schedule. I thought me and the babe would be done for if I didn’t get word to you in time.’

‘What plans do you mean?’

‘I heard him talking with Piers.’ I glance up at Bernadette at that and she looks anxious.

‘He’s meaning to put you away, Lady. Lock you up. You wouldn’t be able to help any of us then.’

I sit back against my pillows. ‘Tell me what you heard.’ ‘I thought he loved me just a little,’ Alienor sniffs. ‘I thought he might like a babe of mine to dandle on his knees and give him a job as a cook when he’s old enough.’

I wait as patiently as I can for her to tell her story.

‘He was going to ship me off to the nuns in the morning. “I’ve got you a good place as convent servant at Saint Gilles,” he says to me. Me! With nuns! I don’t think so. Had to leave in the
middle
of the night, didn’t I?’ She looks around the room at Dia and Bernadette, gesturing dramatically.

‘Half those nuns are former prostitutes, anyway,’ mutters Bernadette.

Warming to her story, Alienor continues, ‘I picked up these letters that were waiting for Piers in case they help.’ She reaches
for her saddlebag and gives me two letters with Pons’ seal. ‘I don’t know what they say. They might not be the right ones. He says to Piers, the bit I heard, my Lady, the sleeping draught will make it easy till you can get the countess to the boat.’

I swallow hard at that and look at Dia and Bernadette huddled close together in the dark room lit only with one candle and the young fire. This is very bad. The fire is still struggling with the frigid night air and our breath comes white before our faces.

‘Then he says,’ continues Alienor, ‘“keep her bound and gagged on the boat, Piers. It will be the only way.”’

Dia and Bernadette exclaim at this and I feel cold to my bones.

‘“Durand will meet you at …” But I couldn’t hear that part clearly. Maybe it says something in the letters. It was something beginning with M. Piers was shuffling papers and I couldn’t hear it.’

‘Did you hear anything else?’

‘No, that’s it. But he’s said to me many times in the last months, “I’m going to put her in a nunnery. That’s where she belongs with her books. Time for a new wife.”’

‘You have done well,’ I tell her quietly, calmly. ‘Bring me the letter knife, Bernadette.’ I slice open one of the letters.

‘From the Count of Toulouse to Eli, Captain of
The Tarn Trader,
’ I read out.

‘I’ve seen that boat at the pier,’ says Dia. ‘It plies salt and the like up and down the Tarn.’

‘My servant, Piers, delivers to you the cargo I spoke about with you. I charge you, as we discussed, to ship it to Moissac, with all haste and deliver it to Durand de Bredon.’

I pause and Bernadette is exclaiming, ‘Moissac! He means to incarcerate you with those stone demons!’; and Dia is saying at the same time, ‘Durand de Bredon, Almodis! They mean to do worse than make you a nun’; and I am thinking, ‘Ship the cargo’. I take a deep breath.

‘What time is it, Bernadette?’

‘The sun’s not showing yet,’ she says, peering out of the
window
. ‘Must be an hour yet or more before sunrise.’

‘Wake the groom and saddle our horses. We will ride to my
sister in Carcassonne. Alienor, you will come with us. You will be safe there and Raingarde will give you a position in her
household
. Wake the girls, Bernadette: Lucia, Melisende, Adalmoda, and also Hughie. We must all go and before first light when Piers will discover his letters missing and Alienor fled, and he will be hard on her heels then.’ Bernadette stumbles out into the dark of the corridor. ‘You have done so well, Alienor.’ I press her hands warmly and she is smiling brightly at me, with tears on her cheeks. I wipe her face with a corner of my bedsheet.

‘The second letter, Almodis?’ asks Dia.

I slice it open. ‘From Pons, Count of Toulouse to Durand de Bredon, Abbot at Moissac. My dear friend, I am in your debt for this service you do me. My wife is greatly in need of God’s enlightenment. She has grown unwomanly and unchristian in her overweaning pride.’

I stop at that, wanting to rip the letter in two, to have Pons’ ugly head between my hands that I might bounce it against the stones of the wall.

‘Dia will you take Alienor to get a bite to eat before we ride out. She looks in need of it.’

Alienor starts to shake her head, but Dia coaxes her out. I swing my feet to the cold floor, the letter gripped in my hands and Bernadette is back now.

‘They’re all up and getting dressed in haste. I’ll get your clothes. What’s it say?’

I don’t reply but read the rest of the letter to myself.
Bernadette
fusses around me pulling on my hose and boots, laying out gowns and my riding cloak.
Some time with you
, Pons continues to his dear friend,
in the anchorite’s cell
… I feel nauseous at that but read on …
will be the salvation of the Countess’ soul
.

‘They mean to wall me up in a living grave!’

Bernadette clamps her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh Lord, oh Lord!’ she says, wringing her hands. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

‘Be calm. Alienor has given us two or three hours. I am forewarned now, but we will need protection. I’ll finish dressing. Dress yourself and find the Sergeant at Arms. Send him to me.’

‘What should we take with us? Your jewels? Your clothes?

‘We’ll worry about that later. For now we need to think of our hides.’

She dashes off and I finish the letter. Pons writes to the abbot that he should keep me in the cell with whatever spiritual
instruction
he deems necessary for as long as it seems needy. I
remember
Durand’s long, stern face and my hands are shaking.
If she should show true repentance,
writes my dear husband,
perhaps one day you might release her to a suitable closed community of nuns, but have a care and full judgement for she may never show true humility and she will attempt to trick and manipulate you.
I fold the letter up, and then again, and again; I fold it until it is a tiny square, and I secure it in the purse at my girdle. I have to make an effort to calm my fury and
finish
dressing. I smooth the folds of my skirt over my growing belly. Oh and what would happen to you little Ramon in such a scenario? I could not hide you for long from my monk inquisitors. They would see my swelling and my sin would be confirmed in their eyes. They would rip you from me as soon as you were born and expose you or discard you, and I would suffer the fate of a wife proven to be faithless in every sense. I shudder, feeling Geoffrey’s hand crushing mine, smelling the stench of his mother’s burning flesh. I swallow hard and stride to the door.

In the courtyard my household is assembling. Despite the
summer
season, the weather is still wet and gloomy with low cloud grazing the rooftops. Splendid cream and brown snails have come out to slip across the rain-slicked pavement and long pale bloated worms have been washed into cracks between the cobbles and appear like the marks of an unknown language.

Raingarde is running out, frightened to see me here in Carcassonne, unannounced, with all my household, and I am in her embrace.

‘I knew there was something wrong,’ she says looking
enquiringly
into my face. ‘What has happened?’

‘Let’s go in.’

This is just a temporary respite. I can’t stay here. He means to repudiate me, to incarcerate me and if he cannot do it in the night by subterfuge and violence, then he will seek to do it with
the law and with bribes, and all the while, my belly will begin to betray me.

There is a pheasant in the orchard this morning, strutting
inquisitively
amidst Raingarde’s herbs and fruit trees. Yesterday an eagle soared and circled above me as I stood looking out across the valley from the castle parapet. These birds are some portents but I don’t know what they mean. I don’t know what anything means anymore. There is nothing and no one on the road to the north, where Pons is, and nothing and no one on the road to the south, to Ramon. I picture Ramon hand in hand with his new wife, Blanca. Garsenda came last night to stay for a few days and Berenger with her, though he did not stay. He escorted her here and is gone now.

‘A word with you in private, Countess,’ he murmured in my ear, as my sister and Garsenda were greeting each other loudly by the hearth.

I rose quietly and took him to my chamber, gesturing to a stool. ‘Please.’ Yes Ramon would send word to me through him. He knows he can trust him. But his information was not from Barcelona.

‘I am perplexed by some news I have heard, Countess, and I know not whether this will be of value to you, in which case I would wish to impart it, for I am your servant, Almodis,’ he says with great sincerity (and I believe him), ‘or perhaps this news is idle gossip and will only irritate you and have no grounds.’

My thoughts tumble through the possibilities.

‘It is a sound source,’ says Berenger, watching the expressions on my face, so I struggle to control them, to present a bland mask.

‘Please tell me your news, Count. I will not hang the
messenger
,’ I smile and he laughs lightly.

‘My correspondent is in the Court of Aragon,’ he says, ‘in attendance on King Ramiro.’

Now I am bewildered and shake my head, raising my eyebrows, asking him to continue.

‘Your lord, Count Pons, is in a delicate negotiation with Ramiro it seems.’ Berenger stops.

‘I know nothing of this,’ I say. ‘Pray continue. What is the nature of this negotiation?’

‘It is concerning Ramiro’s youngest daughter, Dona Infanta Sancha, concerning a marriage.’ Berenger halts again, looking to me with anxiety on his face. ‘A negotiation of marriage,’ he repeats, to ensure that I have understood him. ‘Perhaps it is on behalf of your son, Guillaume?’ he ventures. ‘Sancha is young. Thirteen or so.’

I clear my throat, trying to gain control of my voice before I speak. ‘Yes, perhaps,’ I say. ‘Thank you, Viscount. This news is of value to me.’ We look at each other. We both know that Pons is not negotiating marriage with the thirteen-year-old princess of Aragon on behalf of my son. Even if Pons does put me aside and get more heirs on this child, he will not disinherit my sons. They are near men now and he will not be able to displace them or wish to expose his house to the vulnerability of a child heir; and Audebert and Geoffrey would give Guillaume and Raymond their military support to enforce their rights if it were necessary. I rise and convey Lord Berenger back to the company where he takes his leave. I know Pons’ plan in full now but what is mine? For once, I am a blank, an empty vessel. I must resolve on some course of action. I cannot remain in this state of limbo. My head aches and is full of fug. My side aches. I have not slept for three nights.

Three days comforted with Raingarde, safe for now. I have told no one, not even my sister, of my condition. She knows I am holding something back.

‘Can I help you Almodis? Please tell me what you are not
telling
me.’

But I cannot. It will not help to let go of my secret. It will just make me mope and feel sorry for myself and I can’t afford that.

‘A messenger is here,’ Dia comes in quickly, ‘from Lord Ramon.’

‘Show him in,’ I say feigning calm. The man she brings in has the look of a sailor and is a musulman, his skin dark brown like stained wood. He introduces himself as a captain in the service of the Emir of Tortosa.

‘Please sit,’ I say. ‘Bring us sweetmeats and wine, Bernadette.’

She circles him at a distance as if he is a wild cat that will pounce on her suddenly if she comes within his reach. She places his wineglass so far from him that even stretching he could not reach it. I know, in her xenophobic little mind, she is thinking ‘long ways, long lies’. I frown at her and move the glass to his hand.