Almodis (25 page)

The rowers bring us alongside a cog: a round, tub-like
merchant’s
ship with a single bank of thirty-two oars and a square sail. ‘Attracts less attention than a warship,’ Alfaric grins at me,
handing
me carefully to the knotted rope ladder that dangles against the side of the swaying ship. I swallow, feeling gray with
exhaustion
, desperately trying to muster the mental energy for the climb.
My arms and legs feel powerless as I climb but I hang on. I feel stabbing pains in my womb and fear that I will miscarry my child. Nearing the top, grinning faces crowd the edge of the ship, and strong arms and hands reach down to haul me up. I lean, gasping on the ship’s rail, nodding at the sailors, unable to speak.

Alfaric comes up beside me. ‘We are only days, perhaps hours, ahead of the bad weather when all ships take to the harbours for the winter, but never fear, Lady, we shall get you to your
destination
.’ The sailors are swarming around us, tying ropes, unfurling sails, setting the oars. There is barely any wind and they row us towards the narrow mouth of the harbour. It seems to take
forever
as the ship creaks and lumbers but steadily picks up speed. I look back towards the harbour front and the towers of the city, straining to see any signs of pursuit.

‘Lay down, Lady, quickly,’ Alfaric says urgently. I do so and a blanket falls over me. The ponderous rhythm of the boat slows and stalls again. I hear voices: Alfaric calling out his business to an interrogator, giving plausible replies to someone on a boat guarding the harbour mouth. I lie still and silent, breathing damp wool and wood and the faintly acrid scent of a man who has lain recently in this blanket. I think we are moving again but I am disorientated and uncertain. We may be going backwards or
forwards
or it may only be the rock of the sea that I detect.

Alfaric lifts the blanket from my head and I blink like a
woodlouse
found under a log. ‘We’re safe,’ he says, pointing to the harbour mouth, dimly discernible and now behind us. He takes my hands and lifts me to my feet, conveys me to a narrow cabin with a bed piled high with blankets and pillows, a flagon of wine and a basket of bread and meat on the table.

‘This looks like heaven,’ I say. ‘I am greatly in your debt Captain Alfaric.’

‘No, Lady. I am honoured to serve you. You look very tired and I will leave you to rest.’

He’s right. I fall back on the soft pillows, too exhausted to reach out my hand and eat, too exhausted to close my eyes and sleep.

I wake, my back aching, to a dull, overcast morning and an expanse of open sea all around us. This grey sky, this grey sea,
look beautiful to me; they look like freedom. I taste the salt in the air and it is freedom. I watch curious as the sailors try to use a board with the shadow of the sun to find the way. They navigate without sight of land. ‘And in fog and heavy cloud?’ I ask Alfaric, when he approaches me.

‘We have a sun-stone,’ he says, mysteriously. ‘It shows us north. Or failing that, we have these ravens,’ he says pointing to three birds staring at me fiercely from a cage. I shake my head, not comprehending. ‘We release them and follow them till they find land. That works,’ he says cheerfully. He hands me a packet. ‘For you, Lady, from the Count of Barcelona.’ He bows and leaves me.

Inside there is a short letter:
Dearest Almodis, I trust you are safe with the sea-captain of my ally Tortosa. He will bring you to me.
I am a cargo again, I think. Me and my unborn child.
Know Almodis that I would give every river in Catalonia and risk all if you will have me.
I sit up straight. Not a paramour then?
I ask you for your hand in marriage. I do not sue for you to your brother or your mother, for you are your own captain and will answer for yourself.
I am smiling now. Ramon! He knows me.
If you will have me, radiant Almodis,
(again I smile, he was ever full of flattery and hyperbole)
I will endeavour to make each of your days, henceforth, happy ones. I await you and your reply. Ramon Berenger, Conde de Barcelona.
Almodis, Condessa de Barcelona, I think, rolling it aloud on my tongue. It sounds good.

There is more: a scroll on fine vellum with the seal of
Barcelona
depicting a walled city by the sea. I break the seal and begin to unroll it. It is a contract of betrothal. A memory of my
marriage
contract with Hugh flashes in my mind: me, a girl laughing in the kitchen, reading it to the cooks, scolded by my mother. This contract begins with the arms of La Marche and Barcelona entwined. Ramon has signed it at the bottom and there is a place for me to sign.

Not yet. I will savour a few more days when I belong to no man. I watch the sailors swinging the sail to find the wind. I roll the contract up carefully and stow it back in its packing. I, and the child in my belly, are lulled by the rhythm and roll of the sea.

Yet still I doubt him. Is he not also betrothed to Blanca and does he not treat that betrothal lightly?

I sit on the pink marble window-seat in my new chambers in the Comital Palace, bathing in the early morning sun that streams into the room. ‘Good morning world,’ I say aloud. I close my eyes, breathe in the citrus smells of Barcelona, knowing that to the north, in Toulouse, winter is closing in. The caws of seagulls mingle with the bells of the city’s towers, the honking of geese, and the hammers and shouts of workmen at the cathedral
building
site next door. I open my eyes again and look about me. Ramon has prepared these rooms for me with great care. Cheerful ceramic tiles cover the floor, decorated with pictures of
salamanders
. Twenty or more pitchers stand about the room filled with white and red roses. ‘The flower of submission,’ he said. A large platter on the seat beside me is heaped with green apples, purple plums and oranges. I pick up an apple, savour its scent and bite into it. The view from the window is glorious: immediately below is a walled garden lined with lemon and fig trees with paths made from tiny shells, and then I can look out across the maze of city streets to the blue of the sea beyond and the shimmer of heat rising.

When I arrived last night, the wooden wharf was lit by a
hundred
torches and lamps, revealing the pale stone of the high city walls in the near-distance, and close by, the massive shipyards where the war fleet was being variously built, repaired, docked, for the winter. Myriad merchant ships were rocking at anchor in the harbour, their riggings clanging and whizzing in the high
night wind. Ramon stood on the wharf and handed me off the ship. He took me in a long embrace and then straightened out his arms to hold me back and look at me.

‘Thank God and his saints. Are you alright?’

‘It is your child, my Lord,’ I said, seeing him eyeing my
stomach
, and not bothering to give the evident answer to his
question
.

‘My child?’ he said, looking at me with wonder in his face, ‘and you did not write to tell me so?’

I made no reply. I was tired and inexplicably cross with him.

‘Well,’ he said eventually, necessitated by the awkward silence, ‘I am doubly delighted and amazed. Welcome to your new home, my Lady, my Countess?’ he said.

Is he laughing at me, I thought. I am bedraggled, filthy and fat. Stubbornly, I kept my silence. I am alone in a strange land, stripped of my household, made vulnerable by my pregnancy and my flight from convention. I hate the notion that I am dependent on him.

He handed me to a carriage that took us to the palace. We passed through the gate of the new walls and then, soon after, another gateway in the old Roman wall that rings the centre of the city. On the journey I had to break my silence: ‘Raingarde? Have you news?’

‘She is safe in Carcassonne. Her husband was at Moissac, waiting to rescue her from that stone cell. I understand that she gave the abbot a red-hot telling-off.’

I smiled at the thought of Raingarde, indignant with that long hound-faced Abbot.

‘Your children and women are safe too in Narbonne. They will come on to Barcelona as soon as the sailing season begins again.’

Inside the entrance to the palace, there was a small, brown-eyed girl curtseying to me. ‘This is your maid, Marta,’ he said. ‘She will take care of you until Bernadette arrives. It is late and perhaps you would wish to retire now, or,’ he hesitated, ‘would you grace me with a short visit later?’ he said hopefully.

‘I am very tired my Lord and need to bathe after my journey.’ I indicated my clothes which were the same maid’s clothes I had
been wearing since I left Lagrasse. I had done what I could to keep them fresh but they were tattered and grimy nevertheless. Looking down at them, I felt humiliated. ‘I beg you, that we might speak tomorrow.’

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you will find everything you need in your chambers. I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are here and safe, Almodis.’

In my sunny window-seat I am lost in reverie, wondering at my cold behaviour to him last night, when he was so
courteous
to me, so that Marta’s appearance in the doorway makes me jump. ‘Count Ramon asks to visit you this morning my Lady, if he may?’

‘Please show him in.’ I feel more myself now and sit up straight in anticipation. He takes me by surprise, dispensing with small talk: ‘May I ask Lady Almodis why you didn’t write and tell me of the child? What would you have done? Passed the child off as Pons’?’

‘Perhaps,’ I say with irritation. ‘In truth, I hadn’t yet decided what I would do.’

He looks flabbergasted. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t write and tell me!’

‘I assumed that you could not, would not, act. That you would have to marry Blanca.’

He looks distressed. ‘You assume too much.’ He rearranges his face into an expression of tenderness. ‘It is possible to be
too
independent you know, Almodis.’ He reaches out a hand to stroke my cheek with the back of one finger, and I feel a little softened at his touch.

‘Nobody looked after me from when I was five,’ I say. ‘I felt the loss of Raingarde like a wound when I was a child. I grew used to surviving without help, to nursing my own troubles.’

‘Well now you will have to grow used to a smothering love instead,’ he jokes.

I smile wanly. For some reason I cannot explain to myself I am holding out against him. We don’t really know each other. I have thrown myself into a strange place. I am a scandal and a repudiated wife. I am stripped of my possessions, my rights, my children. Ramon reassures me that he intends to negotiate
all for me and everything will be well, but I cannot stop myself from thinking that perhaps he weds me only because he must, a shamed fugitive from my life because of one moment of
weakness
with him.

‘Will you meet my son?’ he asks.

I smile at that. ‘Yes of course, I would be delighted to meet him.’

He gestures to Marta who returns five minutes later with Pere, a tall, gangly, ten year old. He has black hair and brown eyes, perhaps like his mother. He looks around the room as if he is searching for something. He is quiet and when he does speak he is a little surly. ‘This is my mother’s room,’ he says to me, a hint of challenge in his voice. It will take time for him to get used to me, and he clearly resents that I am encroaching on his father’s attention. ‘Will you show me your horse and falcon?’ I ask him trying to win him around.

‘Tomorrow, perhaps,’ he says.

Ramon shrugs cheerfully. ‘He misses his mother.’

I would like to hold Pere, kiss his soft cheek, inhale his
child-scent
to remind me of my own absent children, but it is clear that he would not welcome any such attention from me.

‘I have arranged for us to wed at the monastery of Sant Cugat in two days time,’ Ramon says, ‘if it pleases you.’ He looks
uncomfortable
, uncertain.

‘Two days,’ I say, surprised.

‘Does it not please you?’ There is irritation in his voice now.

‘Such haste,’ I say after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Should we not rather delay it until next week so that we might invite your allies to attend?’

He looks at me with admiration. ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘We shall do just that.’

I ask Marta to bring us two goblets of Vin d’Orange and we toast our betrothal.

Pere sits silently in the window-seat that I have vacated,
swinging
his legs, staring at me.

I arrived with nothing and Ramon has given me a queen’s
trousseau
and along with it, a new horse, falcon, and groomsman,
which makes me think bitterly of Piers’ betrayal. When Ramon and Pere have left me, Marta shows me a yellow wedding dress with very fine Spanish lace, and this reminds me of my lost
husband
, Hugh. Perhaps it is the pregnancy that is making me so emotional and yet so cold and lacklustre to Ramon. I am clearly puzzling him, and myself too. He has given me betrothal gifts that took my breath away with their beauty: a shoulder brooch made from gold, tiny pearls and emeralds; a gold and black enamel cross pendant; a ring set with a turquoise which Marta tells me protects against riding accidents, poison and drowning; a minature padlock of gold and white enamel engraved with the words: ‘of all my heart’.

In the days before my marriage I talk to Marta and sometimes to Ramon to find out as much as I can about my new home. I savour the distinctive smell of almonds as I enter the kitchen, on a tour of inspection of the palace. Everything is in good order and this is quite unlike my arrival in Toulouse. Barcelona has four gates, two of which belong to Ramon and two to the bishop. The market takes place next to one of Ramon’s gates and brings in a great deal of income. I put on plain clothes and a maid’s apron and accompany Marta there that I might see the place and listen to the Catalan, subtly different to my Occitan. I go arm in arm with her down narrow winding streets with houses rising up high on either side, colourful laundry strung above our heads, birds swaying in cages, children and grandmothers dressed in black, sitting on doorsteps. The market is bustling and we stroll past stalls with sacks of buckwheat and peas, jars of olive oil, baskets of garlic and cabbages, bags of prunes. One stall is hung with rabbit and squirrel furs and the pelts of cats, wolves and ermine. Everything is here, from small to large, from scissors and needles to masts, oars and anchors.

Barcelona was a Muslim city before it was conquered by the Frankish king Charlemagne and there are signs of its mixed
heritage
everywhere around me. The city is surrounded by vineyards, and farmland where the harvest is just beginning. A water
channel
flows along the route of the old Roman aqueduct from the Besòs River. Commerce flourishes alongside the walls of the city and also in the new part known as the Born. Merchants,
moneylenders, craftsmen, shopkeepers cram into these spaces selling and buying hides, iron, food, cloth, spices, silver, skins. Ramon tells me that there are near 4,000 people living here. Ramon’s vicar, who is called a
vaguer
here, collects his taxes and tributes for him, managing his mint, market, mills, ovens and water mills.

‘Our domain extends along the Llobrigat and Cardener Rivers, as far as the Montsec Mountains,’ Ramon tells me. ‘The main trade routes are the spice route and the route of the islands, from the Balearics, Sicily and Sardinia. Barcelonese merchants compete along these routes with the Genoese, Pisans and Toulousains. We hold an annual trade fair in July and have to build a special
compound
for all the visiting merchants,’ he says. ‘The city exports fustian and linen cloth, cereals, olive oil, wine, figs, leather,
woollen
cloth from Languedoc, naval supplies and weapons from Southern Spain and Italy. And,’ he says, ‘we import cumin, goat hides, fruit from Maghrib in North Africa and ginger, cinnamon, pepper, dyes and alum from the East. Our shipyards are famous, our wood apparently impervious to rot and insects.’

I laugh at his humorous, hyperbolic descriptions, amazing myself with the sound of my own laughter that it seems I have not heard in ages.

He explains that his military campaigns to the south have resulted in annual tribute being paid in gold by the Taifa lords from Lleida, Tortosa and Saragossa in exchange for peace and protection. The city’s advocates and judges use a book of Visigothic legislation handed down from the sixth century, the
Liber Iudiciorum
. The people take an afternoon siesta and live life at a slower pace caused by the heat of the sun and the brighter bluer light. One afternoon, Ramon came into my rooms at siesta time and Marta scuttled out. ‘Might I stay with you?’ he asked and, at my nod, climbed onto the bed, behind me. He put his arms around me and his body against mine and kissed the back of my neck lightly. I felt a shiver of pleasure but stubbornly did not turn to him.

‘Well, Marta, if I am to be a bride we must make some preparations.’

She bites her lip cheerfully, all smiles and anticipation. The night before my wedding I have her mix up the ingredients of Dia’s recipe for golden hair: boxwood, broom, crocus and egg yolk cooked in water. Marta anoints my hair with the froth that collects on the top of this concoction. She lays out the yellow wedding dress with silver lace around the edges and a silver
ribbon
tying it up at the front. It flares out under the breasts in full folds so that my pregnancy is concealed. Ramon has given me a pair of gold filigree basket earrings that I put on and Marta admires. My slippers are gold and silver, but I put them in my saddlebag for the ride to the monastery and pull on the old riding boots that I arrived in. Ramon is looking splendid in a dark red velvet tunic with a jewelled sword at his waist. His buttons are fine enamels and his cap is adorned with a peacock feather.
People
line our route to the monastery cheering and waving flowers and hats. We are a romantic couple: the dashing count and his stolen bride.

‘The counts of Barcelona are always married at Sant Cugat,’ he tells me.

I try to respond to his conversation but find myself struck mute. He must think that he is marrying the most miserable woman in the world. We are wed with a blessing from Abbot Guitard. Now I have given my assent and am no longer Countess of Toulouse, but Countess of Barcelona.

We return to the city for the wedding feast in the Great Hall of the palace attended by his allies, including William, Lord of Montpellier, who I made an ally when I was in Toulouse. He gives me a tactful version of how my departure from Occitania and Toulouse has been received by my old neighbours there. The halls at Chateau Narbonnais and at Saint Gilles were enormous spaces full of people and bustle, but this Barcelonese court is even bigger, perhaps three times bigger and jammed full with visitors. Everywhere I look I see gold and silver thread, glinting in bright candlelight, faces that I do not know looking at me with
curiosity
. This court is dripping with prosperity. Unlike Toulouse and Lusignan, there is no obvious task of reorganisation necessary for me here. The people’s warmth of feeling for their count is genuine. The great fire is tended by red-faced boys. Occasionally
the log burns a brighter red and lets out a sudden bang and spark and the boys rush to ensure that the embers do not catch alight as they hit the sweet-smelling rushes.