Almodis (30 page)

I mutter a blessing low and quiet, my heart thumping and then turn to look after her.

She is wearing a solid silver armoured vest that must have been made especially for her slender frame and to accommodate her breasts. Her hair is almost white with faded vestiges of its
fabulous
red clinging in places like old rust. It flies loose about her head and face, held in place only with a gold circlet. The chain mail of her hauberk comes down to her knees, skirting the tops of solid riding boots which sport wickedly spiked silver spurs. From the quick glimpse I saw of her face before averting my own, I saw that it was lined and deeply grooved at the corners of her sour mouth. We continue forwards, getting well out of the line of her vision. Where the rows of Aquitainian soldiers end, just out of the range of the bowmen lining the castle walls, there is a narrow strip of scrubby ground between the army and the outer wall of the castle. Over to the left is the barbican gate. There is a sudden flurry amongst the idling soldiers around us and sergeants start to bark orders.

‘What’s happening?’ says Hugh the Bishop.

I look to the barbican and see that the portcullis is rising and a group of horsemen are clustering to pass under it. A convoy of wheat carts is heading across the open ground, aiming to make a delivery to the Aquitaine encampment and the party of Lusignan riders are trying to make a daring sortie to intercept them.

‘Is it Hugh?’ Dia asks the question that is uppermost in my own mind. A detail of soldiers from Agnes’ army are ready and setting off to confront the raiders. The portcullis has clanged back down behind the Lusignan soldiers.

‘They will be slaughtered,’ I whisper into my cowl, shivering as a chill passes through me.

‘I don’t see a white flag,’ says Rostagnus in a worried voice.

The Lusignan horsemen are still on the path near the gate and look as if they have decided to go back in. They are looking at the
portcullis
but it is still firmly in place. Perhaps the mechanism has jammed. I can hear frantic shouts from inside the gatehouse. The Aquitainian troop is nearly upon them and the Lusignan soldiers turn their horses to face them, one man coming forward on a white horse. The blue and silver crest of Lusignan is blazoned on his armour.

‘Oh God, no,’ I say. It could be my oldest son, Hugh, or … I start running across the open ground.

‘Almodis, no!’ I hear Dia cry behind me. Swords and shields are clashing, a mace whizzes through the air, the horses are snorting in the narrow space near the gate. The fighting men are an
indistinguishable
melée. The portcullis is slowing rising again behind them and I can see that inside, the bailey is crowded with soldiers and my son, Hugh the Devil, is at the head of them, shouting with impatience to the men working the chains of the gate. The Aquitaine troop see that they are about to be swamped by the men inside and a horn sounds a retreat. The group of twenty or so Aquitainian horsemen are disentangling themselves and
coming
back fast towards me, so that I must swing myself around a post close to the gateway to avoid being crushed. I cower on the ground as they thunder dustily past me. I look round wildly for Hughie, Dia and Rostagnus and see that they are similarly crouched, taking refuge beside the post on the other side of the path. When the troop have passed I clamber back onto the path and move towards my eldest son who is kneeling in the dust next to a fallen man. Blood seeps into the ground around him and trickles in long lines down the incline towards me. As I get closer I see the fallen man’s visor is up and I see his face.

‘No!’ I’m running, pushing startled men out of my path to reach them. My cowl has slipped back and my hair is flying behind me. ‘No!’ I scream and throw myself down beside my beloved first husband, catching a glimpse of my son’s bewildered expression.

‘Mother?’

‘No,’ I whisper and touch my fingers to Hugh’s face. His eyes are open and afraid and he looks at me.

‘Mother?’

Dia, Rostagnus and Hughie come up behind me.

‘You probably don’t remember me,’ Hugh the Bishop says to Hugh the Devil, gasping for breath, ‘but I’m your half-brother, Hugh of Toulouse.’ They clasp hands above my head.

‘Dia, Dia, for God’s sake, help me get him inside so that you can staunch his wounds!’

Soldiers lift him up and he groans terribly. The pool of his blood left soaking into the ground is very large. I lift the skirts of my habit and run in beside him.

‘Mother, what are you doing here?’ asks Hugh the Devil, but
I ignore him. As he predicted, I am bewildered by all my Hughs suddenly together, and yet I am focussed on just one of them.

Hugh’s men carry him up the stairs and lay him on the bed, the same bed where I lost my maidenhead by slitting the stomach of a rat. His breathing is shallow and his skin a deathly pale. The doctor shakes his head to us. I send a messenger bearing a white flag and the news that the Sire of Lusignan is sorely wounded, to first send Jourdain from the monastery with a priest, and then go on to Parthenay and fetch Melisende. When Jourdain arrives, he looks at his father, kisses my forehead and eyelids, and orders that candles are lit at the foot and head of the bed. The priest gives Hugh the last sacraments but he remains unconscious, and
perhaps
hears nothing although I keep telling him, ‘I am here Hugh, I came back, I am here Hugh.’ The priest traces the cross in holy oil on my beloved’s eyes, ears, lips, nose, hands, feet and chest. Suddenly he opens his eyes and looks at me and I look into their gentle blackness once again. His hair is threaded with grey but he is not much changed. He is still beautiful. ‘I am here,’ I whisper and then he closes his eyes again and breathes no more. I fall
wailing
on his body. ‘No, no, no, oh no.’ If only I could have spoken with him one more time. I feel the grief drawing tight around my throat. I weep and wail over him for a long time.

My son Hugh begs me to desist. ‘You are making the men uneasy Mother. They think you are mad. You’re not even his wife,’ he says crossly when I continue wailing and ignore him.

Dia takes me gently by the shoulders, pulls me up and half carries me from the room. She gives me a potion in wine and I sleep. When I wake I go back into Hugh’s chamber. They have carried his body in his shroud to the priory. I climb into his bed and will not rise from it, staring blankly at the wall, knowing I am
indulging
my grief, but it seems that I have never given enough room to my emotions. The pain of my brief marriage to Hugh wells up inside me like a river compelled to travel underground and then finding itself burst free into the open air again.

In a desperate effort to shut up my continuous keening, my son Hugh marches in his wife, Hildegarde, with three little
children
. ‘Your grandchildren, Mother,’ he says brusquely, knowing that I will dry my eyes for them. They look at me, bewildered, a
mad, wailing woman in their grandfather’s bed. I swallow back tears, sniff and blow my nose on my sleeve. ‘Won’t you comb my ugly hair for me, little one,’ I say to the girl, the youngest.

‘She’s Yolande,’ Hugh says, putting an ivory comb in her hand. ‘Go on,’ he says, prodding her forwards, ‘Grandmother won’t bite. She just
looks
like a shaggy old dog.’

Yolande laughs and climbs up on the bed next to me, saying in her little voice, ‘Pretty hair, Grandmother, golden.’ The boys come forward to be introduced. Hugh (of course, again!) the
eldest
, is four, Rorgon is three and Yolande is two. They all have their grandfather’s dark hair and eyes. I am grateful to my son for forcing me to close up my misery and distracting me with my grand-kin.

My son is Lord of Lusignan now and he means to offer fealty to Aquitaine, which he must. Guillaume’s army have headed back to Toulouse to assist Raymond, so he has no allies here now. Audebert is clammed up tightly inside Roccamolten and will not venture out. The Duke of Aquitaine has returned to rejoin his army and his mother, camped all around Lusignan. From the
battlements
, I watch Agnes riding in her armour and wonder if she will give my son his life and his castle. Dia and I disguise ourselves as men. The chain mail I wear weighs heavy on my shoulders and breasts, but not as heavy as the weight of Hugh’s death. Black
pennants
fly from the castle towers to mark our mourning.

Agnes is with her son when he rides into Lusignan to take my son’s surrender and his homage. ‘I heard that your mother was here, Lord Hugh?’ she says.

‘No,’ he replies, lying smoothly. ‘I believe she is in Toulouse.’

‘I heard that she had left Toulouse and was coming here.’

‘Well she is quite conspicuous,’ says Hugh, enjoying himself. He throws his arms open. ‘Do you see her here?’

‘Oh yes, she would be noticeable,’ says Agnes. ‘Such a renowned lady.’ There is sarcastic venom in her ‘renowned’. I see that Hugh is rising to this bait and caution him to silence with my eyes. Agnes turns her head quickly seeing that he is glancing at someone behind her. I lower my eyes, but do not move. She would recognise my eyes. She walks over towards me. ‘Not here, my Lord Hugh?’ she says, standing right next to me.

‘No. In Toulouse,’ he says firmly.

Agnes casts another dissatisfied glance around the hall and will no doubt have her servants searching every room in the castle before nightfall.

‘We have to leave, immediately,’ I tell Hugh and Dia, when we are back in the safety of the solar. ‘She doesn’t believe you.’

‘She would not dare to harm you,’ Hugh says.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘she would. She incarcerated my uncle for five years in a dungeon. He was Duke of Aquitaine at the time.’

‘Is there any way out of the castle?’ asks Dia.

We stand in silence thinking of the routes we know but they are all closely guarded.

‘There’s the well,’ says Hugh finally, ‘but you can’t go that way. I did it when I was fourteen but I’d baulk at it now.’ He is looking doubtfully at me, but I gesture for him to tell me about it.

‘It’s a tunnel, hidden at the bottom of the well. It goes out under the wall, to the river. You’d never make it.’

‘It seems I must.’

‘Spiders, rats, dirty water, tight squeezes,’ he says looking anxious.

‘Psshh,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’

After dark, seven of us walk towards the stone dome arching above the well: myself, Dia, Rostagnus and four of my children: Hugh of Lusignan, Hughie of Toulouse, Jourdain and Melisende. We are leaving behind a clear night with a near-full moon haloed in rings of brown and yellow and the smaller bright white circle of Venus. A night-lit roiling blanket of earth and bumpy moss covers the warren-like tunnels beneath us. Preparing to go underground I gulp in the view of the sky.

Hugh and Jourdain lift off the heavy cover and hold up their lights so that we can look into the well, descending far down into the earth. The moonlight and the candlelight pick out the glint of metal rungs descending down one side. I select a stone and toss it in and the wait is very long, the splash almost indistinguishable.

‘Is the ladder safe?’ asks Dia.

‘No one has been down it to my knowledge since I did it four years ago,’ Hugh says. ‘It was alright then.’

The mouth of the well is protected with a heavy metal grate
that swings in the middle, so Hugh and Jourdain must hold it open while we each crouch under and in. I go first, then Hughie, then Dia, then Rostagnus. We estimate two hours of walking, wading, crouching, crawling in and out of the tunnel to get to the river and safety.

‘So,’ I say and prepare to start moving down the ladder.

‘A torch?’ whispers Hugh.

‘No, we need both hands. Dia has a flint for when we need a light later.’

‘Just before you reach the water,’ Hugh reminds me, ‘there is a wooden hatch to the left of the ladder’. He has given me the key. ‘The tunnel is very narrow in places. You will have to slide through parts on your belly. At the end of the tunnel you will have to swim the river and then get to cover without the garrison in the village seeing you.’

‘Is Melusine in the river?’ asks Hughie, half-joking, half-afraid.

‘No, or if she is she will give us a ride,’ says Dia.

I begin to move down the ladder, followed by the others. ‘Farewell, my Lusignan children. Rule well, Hugh, for your father’s sake.’

‘I will.’

The glint of Hugh and Melisende and Jourdain’s eyes and torches, and their soft calls, are soon gone. Everything is gone in dense blackness. There is only the rungs beneath my hands and feet. ‘Go slowly,’ I say quietly to Hughie above me. ‘Steady and careful.’ If the rungs can take my weight they can take his. At last I feel cold water around my ankles and call out, ‘Stop!’ and hear it passed up the line to Rostagnus. I grope to my left for the hatch and its lock. The key is in my pocket tied to my girdle. Carefully I balance myself with one hand gripping the ladder and grope over one-handed to fit the key into the latch. If I drop the key now in the water then all is lost. I feel the contours of the lock with my fingers and fit the key. The door creaks open.

‘What’s that?’ squeaks Hughie above me.

‘It’s the door to the tunnel,’ I whisper. ‘It’s alright. It right here as your brother said.’ I pass the key carefully to Hughie who passes it to Dia and she to Rostagnus who locks the door behind
us, when we are all safely transferred from the ladder to the
tunnel
. Dia strikes her flint and hands us each a small light.

I am wading knee-deep in water through the dramatic
subterranean
architecture. Our boots splash in concert. Behind me, Hughie has a deliberate and considered energy and a way of
moving
and being that is very comforting. Warnings are called down the line, our only verbal communication (apart from some
swearing
and anxious mutterings to ourselves): ‘deep hole to the left!’, ‘boulder under water!’, ‘rock protruding from the ceiling!’, ‘don’t touch the walls here!’.

The tighter parts of the tunnel where we have to crawl become harder and harder. I marvel at the astonishing geology around me, our lamps lighting up streaks and nubs of Galena and Quartz glittering in the dark rock. Every now and then we encounter a spectacular mineral-encrusted rockface: Ankerite, Calcite,
Cerussite
, Chalcanthite, Malachite, Namuwite, Sulphur. Jewels in dirt. We pass the calcifying remains of the tunnellers’ tools: wooden buckets and shutes. These old human objects are slowly being absorbed, becoming one with their wet, rocky surroundings, part of the slow flow of rocks. I try to imagine being a thing that always lives in the dark like the plants and insects down here. The adamantine hardness of the rock rubs against the soft fragility of our bodies. Footing and balance is difficult with the uneven ground. When we stop in a relatively open space to pass around water, we examine each others’ faces in silent communication.

It gets very hot as we squeeze through tunnels where we
cannot
stand. In places, loose stones litter the floor from previous cave-ins. At some junctions with two tunnels the wrong tunnel has been marked off with loose pieces of wood. Eventually we reach the hardest part: ten minutes of very low tunnel where we must crawl and slide on our stomachs, where the air thins with the four of us grunting, kneeling on razor sharp stones. Then we emerge into a wet tunnel where we can stand again.

I try to imagine the many
lieues
of rock above the ceiling over my head. Down here it is necessary to be totally in the present, to focus on what is happening right now. We have journeyed into the tunnel, but also into our own interiors. Our bodies come into sharp focus as we are intensely confronted with our dependency
on them. They are our only reference point and our vulnerability. I find it difficult to still my senses, to coalesce them to a point where I have enough control to use them. I am overwhelmed, disoriented.

The air is totally still and silent. Every tiny noise that we make reverberates in the clear acoustics: a sniff, a cough, a fart, a
nervous
hum, a throat clearing, a tapping of rocks together. Some of these noises are involuntary and some of them are nervous attempts to reassure ourselves that we are still alive. Down here, entombed in rock, thoughts of death and burial are inevitable but I feel surprisingly comfortable, whilst Dia’s anxiety is
palpable
. One by one our candles are exhausted and we go forward in complete darkness. Opening and closing my eyes makes no difference at all. Am I even awake? I can see images generated by my own eyes: wheels of light, tiny revolving suns, bright lines that cross and interlace, that roll up and make circles. The air smells and tastes like cold metal. Saltiness on my lips. Coldness on my face. I can hear the gentle shuffling of the others. Wafts of cold air grip me and I shiver uncontrollably for minutes but there are no draughts and no movements in the air.

‘I’ve found two more candles,’ Dia calls, and we pause while she strikes her flint again. Hughie points out a fabulous rockface of white and red crystals, a deep red sediment in the wall that we dip our fingertips into, a brilliant cold, tiny waterfall that he drinks from and I follow suit. He picks up a piece of wood, turns it over and finds a finely etched arrow there – a long-gone
tunneller’s
mark. He shows me all his finds. It is his way of reassuring me and I enjoy these moments of combined experience. I can look about me more now I know we are nearing the end. What goes in must come out, Bernadette would say.

When we begin to wade through knee-deep water again I know that we are in the last stretch of tunnel before the exit. Hughie indicates that I should blow out my candle and we are plunged into darkness again. I touch the wet wall to help me keep my
balance
, my sense of moving in the right direction. We progress up the tunnel, splashing rhythmically and the white light of the exit grows. The anticipation of emergence and the sun is enormous. There is another metal swing gate here. I hold it open for my son,
then Dia, then Rostagnus. Hughie takes the weight from me so that I can crouch under and out.

We are all outside, up, in the light. The light is extraordinary. We scrabble to rapidly undo and throw off our cumbersome, sweat-drenched cloaks. We are standing in early morning
sunshine
diffused through white mist. The low clouds hug the green, so green, land that waves and rises and dips like the sea. We gaze in amazement at each other, at the newly vivid world around us. The sound of the river is loud. Birds. It has been a frosty night. I touch the ice on the surface of a puddle and the frost on a lichened stone. I bury my face in frosted moss and smell it. Slowly we are grinning and clasping hands, hugging. Our faces are smeared with mud and sweat. Our fingers are grimed with the many materials of the tunnel. Our clothes are covered in gray, green, black, red streaks and smears. My eyes feel stripped,
clarified
, pinned open. The air smells terrific.

Quietly we wade into the cold water of the river suppressing our gasps and start to swim. I think of Dhuoda’s description of a herd of deer swimming across a river with turbulent currents: how one stag after another lays its head and horns on the back of the one in front and when the leading stag tires, he is replaced by the rearmost. The river however is placid enough. Hughie, Rostagnus and I are strong swimmers. Dia is less confident and we shepherd her across between us. Quickly we are out of the water and into the cover of the trees and make our escape from
Lusignan
. We are tottery with fatigue and adrenalin. Our wet, muddy clothes are beyond rescue, streaked with grey and green slime, red sediment and sweat, and we abandon them for new clothes we buy with the gold sewn into our belts. Gold will survive anything: tunnels, river-water, war, death and grief.

The journey from Lusignan to Cluny takes several days on horseback and this is a parting that is hurting me in prospect, for I may not see Hughie again.

‘Yes, you will, Mother,’ he insists, ‘because I intend to become the abbot of a great abbey within riding distance of Barcelona.’

‘Oh you do?’ I laugh, but am very pleased with him
nevertheless
. I had no qualms giving Jourdain to the church. I knew it was
what he wanted and that his twin would never share Lusignan with him, but with Hughie, perhaps because I have kept him with me about the court for longer, I worry.

‘Don’t Mother,’ he tells me. ‘I mean to be an abbot, if not a bishop, and I would not have anything like that much range if I were the secular third son, would I? Do you think that Guillaume and Raymond would share with me? I don’t.’

I know that he is right. Saint Gregory of Tours describes the bloody history of the royal Merovingians with brother killing brother. I don’t want that for my boys.

At the great monastery of Cluny, set in its lusciously green
valley
, I am received with great courtesy by Abbot Hugh (another Hugh!) and I see immediately that he and my son will get along. Rostagnus, Dia and I spend a night in the guest-house and in the morning I say farewell to my dear son. The abbot has arranged a boat to take us down the Rhone to Saint Gilles and then we travel by road to Toulouse where I find Guillaume and Raymond shouting at each other.

‘I
had
to promise to betroth my first-born daughter to his son,’ Guillaume is shouting, and talking of the Duke of Aquitaine.

‘Well, why didn’t you refuse?’ Raymond shouts back.

‘How could I? Those were the terms of the treaty. I had to agree.’

‘Ye gods!’ shouts Raymond and Guillaume crosses himself at this pagan outburst. ‘Are you a complete fool?’