by Tracey Warr
It greatly pleases me
When people say that it’s unseemly
For a lady to approach a man she likes
And hold him deep in conversation
And whoever says that isn’t very bright …’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘She’s warming up,’ Ramon says.
Dia clears her throat and sings a beautiful lay about my Aunt Emma kidnapped by Vikings, and than another about my grandmother Adalmode.
‘Are all your songs of women?’ I ask her.
‘Many are,’ says Dia. ‘I have songs about Brunhilde; Hildegarde, wife of Charlemagne; and the Empress Judith.’
I am delighted with Dia’s songs and with Dia herself. Ramon looks pleased with the encounter. ‘Fetch my book, Bernadette,’ I order. Bernadette opens a chest and draws out the heavy book wrapped in sacking. She carries it over to a small table underneath the light from a window slit and unwraps it. We step up to the table to look at the Adhémar de Chabannes book together. The thick wooden boards of its cover are decorated with silver plate and encrusted with coloured jewels. I turn the pages slowly and carefully.
After a while Dia exchanges a glance with Ramon and asks, ‘May I sing you one more story of a great lady?’
‘Yes please do.’
We resume our seats and Dia sings about Ramon’s grandmother, Ermessende of Carcassonne. She is acknowledged by all men of Catalonia and Occitania as a strong and just ruler, laying the foundations for the might of Barcelona today.
‘I have a rotulus, a scroll of my poems I would like to present to you as a gift if it pleases you, Lady Almodis,’ says Dia.
I say that I will be more than pleased to receive such a gift.
‘Perhaps your maid could accompany me to my chamber and bring it back to you as I must take my leave now? The Count of Toulouse has asked me to sing at the feast today.’
‘Yes, go with Mistress Dia, Bernadette. I am grateful for your gift and for your songs.’
Bernadette rises to follow Dia out of the room, but hesitates on the threshold when she sees that Ramon has not risen from his seat. She looks questioningly at me.
‘Don’t dither Bernadette!’ I say firmly. ‘You will lose Mistress Dia and then lose your way in the maze of passageways.’
Now Raingarde’s maid, Carlotta, is sitting in the corner of our chamber with a worried face, twisting her hands around and around in her apron, as I have just announced to my sister that I have a tremendous secret to tell her. Carlotta is just a simple country girl. Bernadette on the other hand is perched on the bed with us, hanging on our every word. Bernadette had left me alone with Count Ramon for half an hour or so whilst she went to fetch the scroll of poems from Dia.
‘You should have asked father or Audebert to be here, Almodis,’ Raingarde is telling me. ‘You shouldn’t receive strangers alone like that.’
I carry on with my story. ‘He is that tall, young, blond-haired boy. You know, the one we saw at the investiture with Ermessende of Carcassonne. He is really rather charming for a boy.’
‘Well, what did he want?’
‘We talked about the Aquitaine Court and about Geoffrey of Anjou and Agnes. He asked me what I think about Toulouse, and he told me about Barcelona and about how his grandmother had been regent for his father and now, for him. He said that he would need an effective woman like her as his countess soon. Those were his words! An effective woman!’
‘But isn’t it strange to be asking a girl such things?’ Raingarde asks.
‘Of course not. I had plenty to say on those subjects. But mostly I think he came to gawk at me. I have made a conquest of a toddler!’
I laugh at my own joke but Raingarde looks at me with consternation and asks, ‘Does he know you are betrothed to Hugh?’
‘Yes, he seemed to know all about that and he is betrothed as well – to Blanca of Castile he says – but she really is a toddler.’
‘Almodis, be careful! He may be only a boy but he is the Count of Barcelona all the same. You should not have seen him on your own. Promise me. At least I must be there another time.’ Raingarde sighs loudly at me.
‘And did you notice that ugly old Count of Toulouse staring at us in the investiture?’ I ask her.
‘Everybody stares at us Almodis,’ Raingarde replies.
‘Yes but he looked like he should like to lick our faces like two candied apples.’
‘Oh fie Almodis! You slander the poor man,’ Raingarde tells me.
I am laughing and shaking my head in disagreement, but then I become thoughtful and say, ‘You know, Raingarde, I do believe that the Count of Barcelona is intending to propose marriage to me.’
There is a long pause whilst they all take in this flabbergasting piece of information. Raingarde looks at Bernadette. Bernadette looks at Carlotta who looks at her apron. They all look back at me.
‘But Almodis you must tell father and Audebert now. It’s important.’
‘No, Raingarde.’ I am imperious suddenly. ‘And you will promise me not to speak of it to anyone. And you, Bernadette.’ (I do not bother to include Carlotta who can hardly string two words together anyway.) ‘I do not wish to embarrass Ramon. He is sweet and rash and he means nothing by it. He is just a child.’
‘I can’t see how your extra four years puts you in a position to patronise the Count of Barcelona so,’ says Raingarde. ‘He may be only thirteen now but he is going to be a very rich young man in a few years time. What answer would you give him if he does propose? You must tell father at once! He must deal with it.’
‘No need,’ I say. ‘I will thank him very graciously of course for the great honour he does me but assure him I cannot receive his proposals as I am solemnly contracted to Hugh, Lord of Lusignan, and will be married next month. I know that in betrothing me to Hugh, who is noble but yet not on a level with our own family, Aquitaine are seeking to control us, to keep La Marche from growing too proud and powerful. I know that. Look at you. You are marrying a count but I am merely marrying the Sire of Lugisnan and I am the heiress to Limoges, to our grandmother’s rights and fortune! I know that an alliance with Barcelona could be a great opportunity for me and for La Marche.’ I pause thoughtfully again and they all wait in suspense on my decision. ‘Yet I could never break my solemn vow to Lusignan. Ermessende holds the reins of Barcelona and Ramon will have a battle on his hands, like his father before him, to wrest that control from her. He may not succeed. I will have to tell him that I regard my oath of betrothal to Hugh of Lusignan as seriously as would any man swearing homage to his lord. That will convince him to desist,’ I finish with satisfaction.
‘But Almodis, father may wish to consider this proposal don’t you think? Barcelona is a great deal more powerful and rich than Lusignan and …’
‘I had no idea you were so mercenary, Raingarde,’ I interrupt. ‘We won’t speak of this anymore. Father would never countenance me breaking my troth and his oath. Next month I will be of age. I need a man, not a boy, for husband,’ I say, remembering the muscles of Hugh’s arms when he picked me up in Montreuil-Bonnin, his beautiful black hair and eyes, the red fullness of his mouth. To underline my statement, I sweep out of the room, feeling queenly, with my skirts swirling after me, wondering whether Raingarde will tell our father or whether she will keep faith with me, her twin.
The next day I feel foolish when we hear that Ramon and his grandmother left Toulouse at daybreak. No proposal came and I am a little disappointed to find myself wrong in my expectations, even though I had resolved to say no.
6
November 1037
He has arrived, my husband-to-be, Hugh, travelling up the steep, icy road to Roccamolten, but Raingarde would not let me stay outside to see him come.
‘It’s freezing out here. You will see him soon enough.’
‘He’s really beautiful, Raingarde,’ I tell her enthusiastically. ‘Imagine when someone you love holds you; it must be like riding fast in a cold wind: you feel you are.’
Now he walks up the aisle in the Great Hall towards us, the La Marches, sitting on the platform, and I am pleased again at his powerful build and his well-shaped face. My father invites him to take a seat and a servant places a bowl for him to wash his hands, and puts wine and bread on the table. My view of the Lord of Lusignan is partially blocked by my brother, mother and father seated between us.
‘My son, Audebert, will accompany Almodis to Limoges for the marriage,’ father is telling Hugh. ‘I must accompany her sister, Raingarde, to Carcassonne. It is all change now, in our family and I am sore at heart to lose my daughters.’ Mother pats Father’s hand.
‘It will be my part to take good care of your daughter now, sire.’ The interesting sound of Hugh’s voice distracts me from my sadness at parting again from my family. I lean forward to catch another glimpse of him and he is looking back at me, with a cup half-way to his mouth. He smiles at me, but then he frowns as his eyes stray past me to Raingarde. ‘I understand that she can read and write?’ Hugh says to my father.
And what can you do, my lord, scuff a cross with your foot in the dirt? I am cross that he speaks of me as if I am not sitting there, an intelligent being, not an inanimate piece of furniture.
‘Yes she reads and writes Latin, Langue d’Oc and Langue d’Oil,’ father responds proudly. Leaning slightly forward, I watch Hugh frown again at that information. I study his anxious features. He has two nicknames: Hugh the Fair and Hugh the Pious.
‘What say you, Count,’ he asks, ‘of these claims that twins are the seed of two men, of adultery, or that they are the offspring of the Devil’.
I feel my mother shift on the bench, and I squeeze my sister’s hand under the trestle, struggling to stay silent with my eyes downcast as I know my mother would wish.
‘Don’t be foolish, man,’ father responds. ‘Do they look like the seed of two men to you?’ He pauses and glances at us for dramatic effect. ‘What you are looking at here,’ his arm sweeps across in front of me and Raingarde, ‘are two fine heir breeding girls.’
I drop my head to conceal my amusement and hear a faint snicker escape from my sister. Beneath the trestle our joined hands clench and jiggle up and down on our knees, like laughter. My thigh is pressed tightly up against Raingarde’s. I have to work hard to compress the glee on my lips into a demure shape before raising my head to see how Lusignan is taking my father’s crude description of us. I wish then that I hadn’t looked up because the sight of his face, dark pink with embarrassment, threatens my barely controlled humour. He wants me. The recognition is sudden and pleasing. I feel the heat of my own face. But my father is going about this discussion in all the wrong way. I will have to help. ‘My Lord Hugh.’
My father, brother and Lusignan all turn towards me in surprise and Raingarde clutches my hand in warning. The ‘heir-breeder’ will speak.
‘I have debated this question of the godliness or no of twins myself with our chaplain,’ I say, fast and certain, before anyone can find the wit to stop me. My mother has placed a hand against her mouth as if to say ‘Be silent!’ I can feel Raingarde willing me to shut up, but Hugh is looking at me with interest.
‘Indeed? And what does your chaplain say of it?’
‘He has told me of twins in the bible who were blessed and of twins who have held holy office or been of noble birth and repute,’ I say, making it all up on the spot, my eyes wide with innocent earnestness. It is what he wants to hear, what he wants to see.
‘Indeed,’ Hugh says again.
I let go of Raingarde’s hand which has been tightly clutched inside my own, and shift my position so that our knees are no longer touching.
‘We have a shrine to Our Lady in the walled garden that I would show you.’ I point towards the door and allow a smile to bloom slowly on my mouth. ‘We could speak there of Father Jerome’s advice regarding twins.’
Hugh lurches abruptly to his feet, his eyes on my mouth. ‘Yes, let us speak of this further, my Lady.’
I exchange the slightest glance of understanding with my father who is looking surprised but impressed with my initiative. I rise serenely, nearly matching my suitor in height. I place my white hand, with its long shapely fingers and its near-invisible knuckle scars, on the blue linen of his sleeve and steer him towards the garden.
7
Bernadette: A Parisienne in Roccamolten
I’m so relieved to be staring at the curling parchment that my Lady Almodis is pinning down on cook’s floury table and reading out to me and Raingarde and all the assembled kitchen servants.
‘In the year 1037 Anno Domini, Hugh V of Lusignan, contracts to marry Almodis of La Marche, daughter of Bernard I of La Marche and Amelie of Montignac. For that I, Hugh, respecting the authority of the Scriptures, guided by the counsel and exhortation of my friends and aided by heavenly piety, defer to the general custom concerning marital association,’ she pauses to gulp in a breath and we are all laughing excitedly, and then she rushes on, ‘out of love, and according to ancient usage, I give you, my gentle and most gracious sponsa,’ she breathes again, and points a finger at herself nodding theatrically to us, ‘by the authority of this sponsalicium, by way of dowry the third of my estates.’ She draws that out emphatically, beams at us and then finishes in a great rush, ‘This is given with the agreement of my mother and brothers and given to you for your lifetime. After death these properties shall come back to the children who shall be born of us!’
I push cook’s hip out of the way so’s I can get a better look at Lord Hugh’s signature on the bottom of the document and Count Bernard’s, along with their coats of arms. The Lusignan badge is boring: just a shield shape with silver and blue stripes, but the House of La Marche has a regal-looking badge with three lions prancing along a red stripe with a blue background and golden fleur de lys.
The relief is obvious on Raingarde’s face, after the worry Almodis put us through at the Toulouse Easter Assembly over that Count of Barcelona. Well she is rich indeed now. A third of all of Lusignan, an eighth of Limoges inherited from her grandmother, and the gift of estates from her father too for her marriage. And it can’t be all bad for me, either, with such a wealthy mistress!
When I first arrived in La Marche, I couldn’t get over having to look at those two faces, Almodis and Raingarde, exactly the same and never knowing which was which. Now I’m used to it. More than that, now I can tell them apart by a difference in the aura that comes into the room with each of them. She, Almodis, my mistress, is all confidence. Swagger even. More like a lord than a lady. Raingarde, her sister, she’s much more timid and demure, like a lady should be. Piers says that Raingarde was sequestered properly with her mother and the women since she was twelve like a girl should be, but nobody at the Court of Aquitaine put a halter on Almodis when she was that age. She grew up with the freedoms and education of a young prince, Piers says, and it shows. When I first got here, I used to have to wait for one of them to do or say something before I could tell which was which. Sooner or later, she will say or do something that Raingarde just never would say or do. But now I can tell it from the different things they do to the air around them. I’m usually right.
Amelie, their mother, comes into the kitchen announced by the chinking of the keys and needles on the short chains of her chatelaine belt. She is followed by the nursemaid with my Lady’s two little sisters in hand, Lucia who is three and Agnes who is two. ‘There you both are! What are you doing with that marriage contract rolling around in grease and gravy Almodis? Roll it up at once and make sure you put it back in your father’s chest where it belongs. Now I need you all to help me with the preparations for tonight’s wedding feast. Bernadette, go and lay fresh rushes in the hall and clean covers on the trestles, and then come back here and I will show you which of the glass beakers to lay out on the high table.’
I gulp at that and look up at those beakers ranged on a high shelf. I’m not relishing the idea of being responsible for carrying those fragile beauties. The
re’s a bright blue glass drinking horn there in the middle of the shelf and on either side of it are pale green claw beakers. I’ve got a vision running through my head of them smashed in smithereens at my feet.
‘Come on, then, Bernadette! There’s lots to do,’ Almodis tells me. She picks up the rolled marriage contract and tugs me out of the kitchen with her, like I’m her pony.
I told him I’d meet him at the old ruin but now that I am here and he hasn’t arrived I wish I hadn’t come. The evening is drawing in. The cold is penetrating my thin cloak. It is the twilight hour – entre chien et loup – between dog and wolf. The black rooks are circling in the pale sky. From this side of the hill I have a clear view across to the castle perched on the mountain top like an eagle’s nest and the village clustered around it. The lower part of the village is shrouded in the rising evening mist. The buildings with their red roofs circle haphazardly around Roccamolten. In the far distance I can see more black mountains set against the darkening sky. How many mountains between me and Paris, my old home? I am just about making up my mind to leave when he arrives.
‘Bernadette,’ he calls to me softly picking his way carefully around the fallen stones in the long grass. ‘But you are freezing, darling,’ he says taking off his cloak and wrapping it around me. His mouth is on mine before I’ve had time to say a word. I open my mouth to his tongue. I am no longer cold in his arms. ‘I have a present for you,’ Piers says, his hand stroking my face and hair. From inside his tunic, he produces a tin bracelet with a decoration of blue glass and slips it onto my wrist. I turn my arm around and around, pretending to admire it, but I am disappointed. Only tin. It will tarnish and leave green marks on my white skin. I will never wear it after today.