by Jean Gill
‘But, you see, the world is a long way from Carcassonne and Toulouse would reduce the city’s new walls to powder before El Sant of Barcelone even heard of it. Our Liege’s solution is to sit quivering inside those city walls and to send others on his behalf, whether to Toulouse or to Barcelone. And here I am.’ He bowed with a flourish.
Estela was impatient. ‘I know all this! What about our family?’
Content at forcing her response, Miquel told her, ‘They’re dead. Your father died of dysentery, your beloved stepmother died from the consequences of a difficult childbirth. There is only me, now.’
Nothing. Estela felt nothing. You were supposed to grieve when a father died but how could she? He had not been her father since her mother died. And her stepmother? She crossed herself, murmured ‘Peace be with them,’ so as not to think about how glad she was that Costansa had left the world, so as to hide from her own thought, I hope it hurt! Perhaps she and her brother were alike.
He was saying something else. She tried to concentrate.
‘...the child.’
‘The child lives?’
‘Disappointed? Costansa’s child is a beautiful boy and, of course, my heir.’ If rumours were true, the baby was closer than a mere heir to Miquel. ‘You may console me for my losses or congratulate me on becoming the Lord of Montbrun, or both.’
‘It matters not,’ Estela tried to marshal her thoughts, if not her feelings. ‘I have revoked all claim, formally, with witnesses.’
‘I’m so glad you still feel that way. Otherwise my visit might have taken a less friendly turn.’
‘Not while I live!’ Gilles could no longer hold his tongue but Estela put his arm on his.
‘It is not our business, Gilles. I’m sure Miquel is keen to go home, to exercise his new duties. Our paths need not cross again. In fact, you could come to our house, share a drink for old times’ sake,’ her anger grew into folly, ‘perhaps stroke my dog? He always remembers old friends.’
His half-face greened and crumpled, then wiped blank, but too late. She’d seen his fear, and that he knew she’d seen it. He would never forgive her. But then, had he forgiven her for what Nici had done to his face? She doubted it. Let it be over, was all she asked.
‘That was tactless of me, wasn’t it,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’m sure you want nothing more than to put the past behind you. As do I. Montbrun is yours and... your heir’s.’ The hesitation made him glare at her sharply and she was starting to enjoy herself, beyond fear.
She even relaxed enough to ask the one question she wanted to ask her dead father. ‘As Lord of Montbrun, you should be aware that I possess two heirlooms; our mother’s oud and a scarf, both bearing the same Moorish symbol. Do you know anything of their provenance?’
He looked irritated. ‘No. And you can keep them.’
She didn’t waste time protesting his right to decide. ‘If you do find their history at... in Montbrun,’ she could not call it home and her stomach knotted with a sharp pain, to be diagnosed later, ‘perhaps among our mother’s things,’ another pang, ‘then I would appreciate being informed. And I would be suitably grateful.’
‘I don’t want money from the Commander’s whore,’ he threw at her.
‘Enough, Roxie,’ said Gilles, taking her arm.
Tight-lipped, she nodded and turned her back on her brother, feeling his stare skewer her back, twisting in her entrails, gutting her. She had not congratulated him on becoming Lord of Montbrun. Or on fatherhood.
Chapter 6
‘You can’t trust him, Roxie. You have to forget the boy you grew up with – he doesn’t exist anymore.’
‘I know,’ Estela told Gilles, as she struggled to keep up. They didn’t have to explain the urgency with which they headed home. She did know, better even than Gilles. A stable-boy’s corpse swinging in the dark, just because he’d known her. A sword-blade swinging near a baby’s head, her baby’s head. Foiled by fire and Nici. Neither weapon would ever be forgiven and if fire was immortal, Nici was not. Words that slashed were the least of it if Miquel reached any of her family.
The moment Estela crossed the threshold, she sent curt orders in every direction. ‘We leave for Zaragoza today.’ If eyebrows were raised at this sudden haste, no comments were made, and Estela’s household was nothing if not efficient. Servants had already packed chests in preparation for the Court’s imminent removal to the Summer Palace, and the stable master had horses and wagons reserved. Nobody would query the Queen’s troubadour leaving in advance of the royal party. The Queen certainly wouldn’t care, Estela thought. Messengers scurried in every direction and, much to his loud annoyance, Nici was shut in a room so he could be found when they were ready to leave.
Estela’s household was almost too efficient. Prima could organise the little boys’ belongings and travel needs without any input from her so Estela found herself supervising the boys themselves. They were playing with each other and there was a lull in questions and orders, so Estela sat on a stool like Cassandra watching Troy burn. A woman alone.
‘Estela!’ Gilles had entered without her even noticing, so deep she was in black thoughts.
‘I wish Dragonetz was here,’ she told him simply.
‘And he should be! If it wasn’t for his mad notions of honour, he’d have told you about de Rançon. He wouldn’t be wearing a hair-shirt and walking miles in the dust!’ Gilles stopped dead, white-faced but it couldn’t be unsaid.
‘He’s not wearing a hair shirt,’ Estela replied automatically. Then, with the inevitability of Troy’s fall, ‘What about de Rançon?’
‘He’ll kill me,’ Gilles stated.
‘Then he’ll kill you. Are you his man or mine?’ Estela stood up, attracting the toddlers’ interest briefly. They glanced at the adults but Uncle Gilles talking to Musca’s mother was ordinary, however serious they both looked. The boys returned to pat-a-cake, with the variation of some cold ashes from beside the fire.
Gilles was gruff. ‘He was wrong not to tell you. I told him so in the Holy Land and I told him so in Les Baux but he thought he could keep it to himself and not hurt you.’
‘Keep what to himself?’ Estela wanted to wring the truth out of him now, with both hands, and a lot of screaming, but she could feel that he would speak if she just waited.
And what if she regretted asking? Then this would be the moment before she knew the truth. She remained very still, contemplating the moment, the boys playing, the shaft of sunlight piercing the window-slit, the raised green nap on a square cushion, and her unshakeable love for Dragonetz. Unshakeable.
Then Gilles shook it. He told of treachery, double-dealing, lies. And of a boy’s murder.
‘How do you know?’ she asked, not believing.
‘I was there at the dye-yard in Jerusalem, when de Rançon tried to kill Dragonetz. Until then I thought as you did, nay, more. I thought that de Rançon was a noble knight, generous in forgiving all grudges against his ‘friend’ Dragonetz. By then, you and I trusted de Rançon, and had good reason to doubt Dragonetz. If he’d spoken against De Rançon, would we have believed him? We were both played by an expert!’
Estela dropped back to the stool, clasped shaking hands. ‘He was my friend,’ she repeated.
‘You were a means to hurt Dragonetz.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ But that’s what Dragonetz had thought she’d say. That’s why he hadn’t told her the truth. ‘Why would he hate Dragonetz so much?’
‘Some business of fathers and fairness. Don’t expect me to understand! What makes Miquel so full of hate? You’re the doctor – you tell me.’
‘Bile,’ she said. ‘Imbalance in the humours so bile dominates. But de Rançon showed no bile.’ She’d talked into the night with him. He’d saved her from seasickness. They’d ridden camels together. She’d kissed him.
‘Muganni,’ she said, a name that cut her tongue. An Arab boy with an angel’s voice.
‘De Rançon had Muganni’s diamond. Dragonetz made hi
m confess. Would have killed him if God hadn’t taken the lying bastard first.’
‘Why didn’t he tell me?’ Estela didn’t mean Geoffroi.
‘That’s why.’ Gilles nodded at her. ‘How you are now. He wanted to spare you.’ White-knuckled, stomach cramping worse than any sea-sickness, Estela could only imagine the picture she presented.
‘I made it worse,’ she whispered. ‘I grieved for a man who didn’t exist.’
‘You couldn’t know if you weren’t told!’
‘I know now.’ Estela stood up again. ‘And you should have told me before! You will make amends by guarding my family en route to Zaragoza and God help you if anything happens to so much as a hair of Nici’s head, never mind Musca’s! Tell Raoulf and Dragonetz’ men, you’re moving out and I will join you in a few days.’
‘You can’t–’
She silenced him with a glance. ‘I most certainly can! This whole mess is because Dragonetz and you have treated me like spun sugar. You have your orders. You may go.’
He stood, with the stubbornness of a man who’d known her as a little girl.
She relented enough to say, ‘I’m going after Dragonetz and this I will do alone!’
His mouth was thin in disapproval but he merely nodded.
Stomach churning, Estela gathered her usual accoutrements for healing, and changed into riding skirt and travelling boots. By the time she reached the stables, she’d already decided what was due to a lady who’d been treated badly and her request brooked no refusal. Saddled up, stirrups shortened, her mount was readied. She accepted the proffered help mounting and took a deep breath before she tugged on the left rein lightly and looked to the left. That was all the direction needed.
When Estela left the stable, and Barcelone, she was riding Sadeek. As it turned out, she wasn’t alone. Outside the city wall there was no camouflage for the white shape dogging them.
ALREADY, DRAGONETZ had lost interest in what day it might be or how long he must walk before he even reached the pilgrims’ path, the Camino de Santiago. Once he’d filled his leather skin with fresh water from well or stream, and bartered for bread and cheese, he had only to set one foot in front of the other, let his thoughts gallop, unbridled. He’d chopped wood for a peasant family the day before, slept in the barn and been paid with roast chicken, so today promised fair.
Sleeping on the open road was no hardship in early summer but he took the chance of a straw bed when it was offered. His labour could always buy shelter for a night and the generosity of his hosts humbled him. As a commander, he had requisitioned food and lodging for an army, as needed, and although he’d taken with restraint, he’d still taken. Now, as a simple pilgrim, he was offered sustenance, even by those who had little enough to give.
When travelling to the Holy Land, as a young man, he’d seen the countryside ravaged by the Crusading armies – the friendly countryside, where their own people had been forced to give up their harvests for the good cause. Where the people had starved to death after the German armies had passed through, leaving nothing. Dragonetz had learned hard lessons about the cost of war and Ramon had shown other ways of fighting for peace, but never before had he been invited into a family’s rough cottage, to sup pottage with them, in the additional company of a goat, a dog and some hens. Precious beasts.
His feet had purpose but his thoughts meandered far from the route he’d planned. The pilgrim life was seductive in its simplicity. He’d been invited to join the Templars, or the Hospitallers, more than once. He could have relinquished the world, as a knight or in cloisters. He wouldn’t be the first troubadour who’d ended his days in the quiet discipline of an abbey. How peaceful it must be to let go of all responsibilities, to obey. To sing the set hours, rise before dawn, sleep peacefully with a clear conscience. Such peace. A guilty thought for a man like him.
Although others would say he was not yet on the pilgrim route, Dragonetz knew he was. The name of the road did not determine the pilgrim’s state of grace, or lack of, and he had been praying, open-hearted, from the moment he’d left Barcelone. His prayers shaped no spoken words but only music, always music. He heard the blended voices of his opium dreams and although the melody was the same, the lyric was changing. He listened as he walked and felt the music playing through him.
Sometimes he’d sit, take out his lute and sing, not the heavenly music but the songs that bound him to his other life, to Estela. When he sang, men stopped instead of passing by. They smiled, tears in their eyes, and old loves softening their hearts and opening their purses. They threw him a coin or a crust, gave him a sip of wine. A sour party of black-clad pilgrims cried shame on him for licentious frivolity. He bowed his head, wished them Godspeed when he’d finished singing. Men might walk the same road but see it differently.
The more he tried to think of de Rançon, the more his thoughts turned slippery as eels. Nobody was asking him to read a sentence from the Usatges that fitted such a twisted man. Nobody was asking him to judge whether he could have been that man himself. All he needed to know was that he was not. All that was asked of him was to watch Estela grieve for the man who’d been her friend. To spare her the pain of grieving for a boy and his murder, by the friend who was no friend.
If he’d been stronger, she’d have healed more quickly, but it was so hard to hide his true feelings from her. His music played, took him to the times when they shared everything.
HOW FAR COULD A MAN walk in a week? Estela asked herself. Too damned far was always the answer! She hadn’t ridden as far in a long time but at least she was prepared for her knees giving way at the end of the day. She’d been scouting a suitable company as daylight faded and she stopped with relief the moment she saw the encampment of what seemed to be a party of travelling merchants, to judge by their pack-horses. Sleeping would be safer beside a larger group, probably; possibly; hopefully.
Although Estela’s travelling attire was simplest dun linen and her valuables well hidden, she could not hide the biggest attraction to thieves: Sadeek. Neither could she hide the biggest deterrent. Nici had loped in and out of sight as she rode, but, the moment she set up camp, he slumped to the ground by her saddle-bags and blanket.
‘Bite anybody who comes near you,’ she whispered softly in his ear, then shared her bread and water with him. His eyes followed her as she checked that Sadeek was comfortable and secure.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, stroking the aristocratic nose, up to the tuft of mane on his forehead. He whickered. No wonder Dragonetz loved this horse so much, more than he loved her she had teased him, and the question had never been answered. Malik’s gift moved with compressed energy, a smooth trot from powerful quarters. She’d concentrated so hard on his every move through the city that her forehead was probably pleated for life. If she felt his attention wander, she nudged for a change of direction and she spoke to him in Arabic.
Whether he was accustomed to lines of love poetry or not, the stallion responded to her touch, his mouth so soft she felt she only had to think what she wanted from him and it was done. The river of pedestrians divided in two around the rider and continued as one after the horse’s passage.
When a boy stumbled into their path, Sadeek danced gracefully sideways. Dragonetz had always said Sadeek could turn on a denarius and Estela remembered the stories of their display in the Holy Land. She had no such ambitions and prayed to all the saints that they could avoid any amorous mares or competitive peers.
Once out of the city, she’d relaxed. The white shadow was all the protection she needed and could track them at his own pace. Sadeek had lengthened his gait to something magical that was like a trot but felt like floating. Estela had no idea what she should do in response so just sat, kept her balance, and felt the horse’s joy in movement become her own joy.
Arabic sang itself into Occitan phrases and snippets of melody, that she would write down later in the day. A float of black mane, ears flicked forward to the road ahead then back to listen to her very thou
ghts, Sadeek was not the means but the meaning.
By the time Estela broke for food, she had lost all fear in her love of riding with Sadeek. Though it was she who gave him his head or brought him to a stop, shifting her weight back in the saddle, she no longer felt she was riding on a horse. If she felt like this in one day, what must Dragonetz feel?
One of the merchants in the night camp passed her, leading two pack-mares towards the stream and carefully giving Nici a wide berth. Good thought Estela as she bade him a polite ‘Good evening.’ Maybe Dragonetz had joined such a company and maybe these men had passed him on the road. It didn’t hurt to ask but as she searched for words to describe him, she suddenly realised how anonymous he would be. It was a pity Nici wasn’t travelling with Dragonetz instead. Then she’d find them easily enough. As it was, she had little hope of any useful response but she approached a group seated on tussocks, preparing their bedrolls.
Her description of a tall black-haired knight, on pilgrimage, bearing a fine sword, brought curious glances but no hint of recognition. What a fool she was! He would hardly be waving his sword and he would be in ordinary attire. She had no way of identifying him. Dragonetz could be anywhere along the road and if he took shelter she could ride past him without knowing. Then all she could do would be to ride the Camino herself, wait for perhaps a year until Dragonetz showed up at Sant Iago’s shrine. Could she guarantee she wouldn’t miss him there? Heavy-hearted she knew there was only one sensible thing to do: go home.
Dragonetz. If only she could show the image in her mind to these travellers, eyes black as Sadeek’s coat, shining with passion; hands long-fingered and delicate. She knew every callus made by plucking his lute and every pore on her body knew his touch.