Almodis (29 page)

I have intended to send my twins, Ramon Towhead and Beren, to Toulouse to train with Guillaume and Raymond, and it is long since time that Hughie made his way to his calling in Cluny. I see that everything might be achieved at once. I tell Dia my plans and she remonstrates with me but will do as I ask. She finds us plain clothing that we may travel incognito. Rostagnus will accompany us. Dia and I stitch money into strips of cloth that we can wear around our waists: silver
solidi
and a few gold
mancusos
, only for emergencies. If we bandy about gold we will be conspicuous. I write a note for Bernadette telling her to take care of Adalmoda, Arnau, Inés and Sancha while I am gone. I leave Ramon a note telling him that I am taking Towhead and Beren to Toulouse and Hughie to Cluny and then I will return, although in truth I have not decided on that last point as yet. I wait until Ramon is
sleeping
and I slip out of bed and join my party at the northern gate.
He
requires
me
!

In darkness we take the road towards the mountain monastery of Montserrat with its miraculous Black Virgin and then,
skirting
the mountain, we head on to Berga and the foothills of the Pyrenees. We ride past trills of water in peat. At dawn I pause at a stream to refill my water skin and the bouncy moss is moist under my fingers. On horseback we eat bread and cheese in the wind. Clouds love the mountains and flow into their gullies. We stay in monastery guest-houses and the boys think it is a great adventure. Ramon will have expected me to take ship at Barcelona harbour
and go to Toulouse via Narbonne. If he has realised that I would come this way then the realisation has come too late and there is no sign of pursuit.

We ride on and on, up and up into the mountains, getting colder and colder. I hear the distant sounds of dogs barking and donkeys braying in the clear air. Weather moves fast across the face of the mountain and then clouds swirl grey, shrouding us all before rain begins to lash us. The damp creeps into me. The rain eases and the mountain looks different after its washing: the brown is more prominent, the green refreshed, the white rock more vivid, and then there is a rainbow arching above it all. When night falls moonlight bathes the landscape, going in and out of cloud so that alternately there is inky blackness and then sparkling illuminated hills without any colour. We sleep in a farmhouse with pilgrims making their way towards Santiago de Compostela.

Next morning a herd of deer are silhouetted black on the horizon in the first light. Water runs down the mountain
looking
like white veins. Towards the end of this day’s riding we rein our horses to look at the view and the sunset with its pink-tipped clouds, and Dia exclaims, ‘It is too beautiful. I couldn’t write a poem here.’ The sky is variegated red and palest blue with black silhouettes of trees, and the reedbed reflects that vivid sky. At nightfall we approach Puigcerdà, a jewel of a town in the
darkening
valley.

We are up in the dark, breakfasting on burnt porridge, and I employ a boatman to take us in a small boat along the Ariège River into Occitania. The sun rises behind us. In the early stretches of the river we pass swiftly through the gorge with high granite and straggling trees and vegetation rising up on both sides and then the river banks begin to lower until we can see far across the countryside. We travel through Foix and Severdun, until the Ariège joins with the Garonne and flows into Toulouse. The river is in spring spate and we have made fast time.

There is a brooding, threatening sunrise when we arrive in Toulouse, and I find Raymond in charge. He has grown into a fine young man with a strong build and blond hair that he wears long to his collar, under a coronet. ‘Guillaume’s taken Bordeaux and declared himself Duke of Aquitaine,’ he tells me with relish.

‘Oh God and his saints, we must get him back here. Men
cannot
be regrown or reborn. This is folly.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous Mother. What do you know about it?’

‘Why has he done such a rash thing?’

‘He has taken the title Duke of Aquitaine and obviously Poitiers is not happy about that.’

‘Obviously,’ I say agog.

Raymond says, ‘I can hold Toulouse.’ He is seventeen years old and so absolutely certain. ‘Do not forget that the Poitiers family murdered your grandfather, and the northern king gave away our honours to them. You know that we are by right the ruling family of Occitania and Aquitaine.’

I am nodding at him dumbfounded. These are my words, told in childhood stories to them over and over again. Oh what have I done with my pride, with my stories of our greatness? I have put my boys, my young warriors, in jeopardy. They are so young and they underestimate their enemy.

‘They are a bastard race from generations back,’ he says.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Audebert.’

‘And is Audebert in the field with your brother?’ I demand, sceptical.

‘No, but Lord Hugh of Lusignan is. The first thing Guillaume of Aquitaine did was force Hugh to declare for him or for us, and he sided with us.’

Gentle, peace-loving Hugh was caught in a web of kin. He had no option. Our son, Hugh the Devil, trained by Geoffrey, growing up with Guillaume and Raymond, yes he would have urged this.

‘The Count of Poitiers is marching on Toulouse now,’ Ray-mond says eagerly, confident that he can repel an army.

‘We will lose all,’ I say.

‘No Mother, we will gain all.’

I must go on to Lusignan, try to persuade Hugh and my son, Guillaume, to seek a truce with Aquitaine. ‘This is madness. Toulouse is not prepared for real warfare. Look at the walls. It has not suffered siege for 150 years.’

‘I’m fixing the walls,’ he says irritated. ‘The city withstood
siege from Abd al-Rahman, the emir of Córdoba, and from the Magyars in the past. We are not fools or children. What do you think we were doing all this time with Count Geoffrey? Hugh, Guillaume and I are seasoned at warfare. Guillaume just killed 100 knights at Bordeaux.’

I nod at him and try to recalibrate, to acknowledge this
transformation
from a six year old to a ruling warrior, but what did I expect sending them to Geoffrey? I am drawn to look at Raymond over and over again, with a mixture of admiration,
disbelief
and loss of the small boy he was. I look at my Barcelona twins and see that the same transformation will take place with them, out of these pretty child chrysalises will come toughened men.

‘My father left a wonderful bequest to the Abbey of Moissac,’ Raymond says, trying to change the subject. ‘He left them his big toe nail.’

Now I am laughing and scrunching up my nose. ‘Eew, how lovely.’

At dinner Dia makes a song for Raymond’s pleasure:

Before I leave Toulouse, Raymond and I make a grant to Cluny as a gift for Hughie’s entry there as a monk. I leave the twins in Raymond’s care and travel on with Dia, Rostagnus and Hughie. Dia and I wear monk’s habits over our gowns. Raymond wanted to send a company of soldiers with me, but I told him we would be safer, travelling as an inconspicuous small group of clerics.

We continue on the Garonne all the way to Bordeaux and then up the great estuary and take ship north along the coast, past the enemy territory of Aquitaine and Poitou. Rostagnus treats with the sailors and the inn-keepers, to maintain our disguise. When we land again we are two days ride to Lusignan. ‘The problem will be how to get in, past the besieging army,’ I say.

I decide it would be best for us to head to the Monastery of Notre Dame and speak with Jourdain. Rostagnus is flummoxed by my suggestion.

‘But my Lady, we cannot practice deception on the monks. I mean, deceive them that two women are two monks – men!’ he stutters.

‘Don’t worry Rostagnus, I don’t mean for us to pass ourselves as brothers, but we need to speak with Jourdain.’

‘We could go into the church and then I could go in search of Jourdain,’ says Hugh the Bishop, ‘and bring him to speak with you there.’

Hugh’s idea is sound and so now Dia, Rostagnus and I wait in the church in our monks’ habits, trying to keep a low profile, whilst Hugh searches for his half-brother. He is soon back,
bringing
Jourdain with him, and I am overjoyed to see my dear son, my second-oldest son (by minutes).

‘He was in the scriptorium, as you said,’ Hugh tells me,
grinning
, pleased to acquire yet another big brother that he has never met before and one of his own calling.

Discreetly, in the shadow of a column, I embrace Jourdain and am glad to see that he looks well. I am growing accustomed to seeing my little boys transformed into men now. He has ink stains on the second figure of his right hand and a smudge on his left cheek-bone.

‘What are you doing here, Mother? No, I know
why
you are here, but what can you
do
?’

‘Tell me everything you know about the situation.’

‘Well, better than that, I will show you,’ he says and we follow him to the staircase that leads to the bell tower. At the top we have a clear view of the castle and the army gathered before it. From here the ground slopes up towards the promontory where Lusignan Castle stands in the great loop that the River Vonne throws around it. Hugh’s blue and silver crest flies on myriad flags set on the towers and along the allure, the walkway topping the pale stone of the walls. Steep valleys fall away on either side of the castle. The river protects the castle from assault on three sides so that it can only be approached from this side, across a very
narrow
neck of land formed by the meandering river. The army that
has marched the short distances from Poitiers and Montreuil-Bonnin is massed here, near the narrow neck of land, where the land broadens out, and where my former husband’s father built the Monastery of Notre Dame de Lusignan.

‘See,’ Jourdain points out to me, ‘the river is blockaded on either side of the castle, so that no supplies can get through. Obviously nothing can get through from here on the north side of the castle with the main Aquitaine encampment down there.’

I look to where he is gesturing, where the vast army is
gathered
: pennants and banners flying, spears bristling; their tents and pavilions planted on the meadows, trampling the fields of crops and the vineyards that I knew so well. ‘Their shining arms like glancing ice,’ I say, quoting a poet. From up here the thousands of soldiers moving around the camp swarm like ants. Two tall siege engines sporadically fire boulders at the great curtain wall of the castle and the relentless thud and thrum bounces in my head painfully. The wall is showing some damage, but there are two more layers of wall yet beyond the outer skin.

‘And then,’ Jourdain goes on, ‘behind the castle, on the other side of the river, there’s a big garrison of Aquitainian troops in Lusignan village. The castle walls will withstand the stone-guns for a long time yet, and their wells draw straight from the river so they won’t die of thirst, but their supplies of food must be getting very low now after two months of siege. They aim to defeat them by attrition.’

‘Have you heard anything from your father or brother?’ I ask.

‘No, nothing is getting in or out. Melisende was here to look, as you are, a few days ago but we could think of nothing except to hope that Father will treat for peace and Agnes will accept.’

‘Agnes!’ I say astonished.

‘Yes, she commands those troops down there, on behalf of her son, who is chasing your other son and my other brother,
Guillaume
, back to Toulouse.’

‘I need a closer look.’ They all look at me aghast. ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, ‘I will just look like a monk, passing through the soldiers.’

‘We,’ says Dia firmly. ‘You’re not going alone.’ In the event Rostagnus and Hugh the Bishop accompany me too. As we approach the back end of the Aquitainian host, we can see
small groups of other monks walking amongst them. We should be unremarkable, as long as Dia and I do not speak, keep our cowls covering our faces and hair, and our hands concealed in our sleeves. The back of the army consists of the baggage carts, women washing clothes, cooking; grubby children playing in
puddles
. There don’t appear to be any sentries posted and we pass through without any problem. Peasants are here with carts,
trading
food and other goods. We move inconspicuously forward, passing soldiers who are resting, playing cards, gossiping.

‘Got his young son in there,’ I hear one of them say. ‘Fine boy, trained by Geoffrey of Anjou. Be a shame if he up and dies ‘cos there’d be no heir then. His brother’s a monk up behind us.’ He gestures with his thumb to his companion in the direction of the monastery. ‘Got a sister somewhere, nearby, but that’s not much use.’

‘I suppose Lady Agnes wants that beauty of a castle for
herself
,’ the other soldier says.

I nudge Rostagnus.

‘Um, has the Duke and the Dowager Duchess of Aquitaine, offered Lord Hugh any terms of surrender, do you know?’ he asks, nervously.

‘Nope,’ says the soldier, nonchalantly. ‘Don’t intend to I reckon. She wants that castle and she’ll just string up the Sire of Lusignan and his boy when they surrender, I’d say.’

We pass on.

‘What about your brother, Audebert?’ Rostagnus whispers to me.

I snort humourlessly and keep my eyes on the ground. Rostagnus and Hughie give the odd soldier a brotherly greeting as we pass by. Soldiers are fitting feathers to arrows, greasing shield straps and helmets, loading boulders onto carts to move up to the siege engines. Nobody gives us a second look. A large red tent is pitched ahead of us. As I come around the corner of it I almost collide with Agnes of Mâcon.

‘Forgive me brother,’ she says, side-stepping around me and striding on.