Almodis

by Tracey Warr

  Don’t care if they do, I think to myself. Well the fat lord at any rate. His belly’s bigger than my Lady’s and he’s only got hot air and wine in it. When he forced himself on her in Saint Gilles, after she’d just birthed baby Guillaume, I felt like sinking a dagger into that rotund belly, but then I imagined my feet jigging up and down at the end of a hangman’s noose like I’d seen on the gibbet outside town and felt all cold and shivery. My Lady though, I thought, when she’d recovered from the birthing weepiness and the shock of what he did to her, she’d as like drive her dagger into him and she’d go for his privates if I know her. I’d resolved then and there to keep an eye on her. I didn’t want her swinging for that dirty old lord.

  Well that’s another epic dinner over with and I’m putting my feet up, getting a bit of rest in my Lady’s chambers where we’ve retired so’s we can get in some good gossiping.

  ‘Tell me of your husband, Raingarde. You spoke fondly of him in your letters to me in Lusignan.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Raingarde responds all enthusiastic. ‘You will meet Pierre soon, Almodis, and you will adore him too. He is a kind man.’ She stops there and we all wait expectantly for more but in vain.

  ‘Well,’ asks Almodis, fishing for something, anything, ‘umm, does he like music?’

  Raingarde looks at her puzzled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And riding?’

  ‘Not so much,’ says Raingarde, looking down at her hands, so now we are getting to the nub of it, for we are all thinking and can’t say, how is it at twenty-one that Almodis, her twin, is on her second husband and fifth baby, whilst Raingarde is still the slim, childless, young girl who left La Marche. That’s the obvious difference between them after all! She’s been wed three years and no child.

  Almodis is looking worried that she has discomfited Raingarde with her question. ‘He is away from home a great deal on business, perhaps,’ she says gently.

  ‘I know what it is you mean,’ says Raingarde, looking miserable and glancing around at Dia, Carlotta and me.

  ‘Shall I dismiss them?’ Almodis asks abruptly and I’m desperately thinking no, no! Raingarde doesn’t answer for a while but looks at the flames dancing in the grate.

  ‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘Carlotta knows all my business and I have no need to have secrets from old friends,’ she glances up at me and Dia, but I see that there are tears in her eyes and I’m thinking about where is the nearest clean handkerchief. ‘You mean, Almodis, that I have no child as yet.’

  Almodis simply looks at her neutrally.

  ‘I love my husband,’ Raingarde goes on, looking earnestly into my Lady’s face. ‘He loves me also.’

  ‘Oh I am glad of it,’ Almodis bursts out and we all recall what she has had to bear in Lusignan and understand her relief that it’s not her sister’s lot.

  ‘I do not despair of a child, not yet,’ Raingarde tells her.

  ‘No, no. Of course not.’

  ‘If you are so fertile, then perhaps I will be too, eventually, if God wills it.’ She clams up again and Almodis clasps her hand affectionately, not asking, just waiting. I pretend to be about my sewing and Dia rises to poke the fire and put another log in the flames.

  When Dia is seated, Raingarde decides to speak again. ‘Pierre has a condition,’ she says hesitantly and I suppress the urge to yell: well what is it?

  ‘A condition …?’ asks Almodis.

  ‘A skin condition. It flares up and becomes very painful and he can’t move or do anything as usual when it is in that state. All over his body like a carapace,’ she tries to explain it to Almodis, gesturing at her own arms and legs and head. ‘It’s like a shell. He can’t ride, can’t move …’ she peters out.

  ‘What do the doctors say?’ asks my Lady.

  ‘It is a family illness, inherited from his grandfather. There is no cure but there are respites when it’s not so bad.’ After a while she adds, ‘So he tells me. And we are waiting for that.’

  Almodis looks up at Dia and me, frowning, anxious for her sister.

  ‘I believe I know of this condition,’ says Dia. We all turn to her.

  ‘Dia has studied medicine with the healers in Italy,’ Almodis tells Raingarde. ‘Do you know a cure, Dia?’

  ‘No, there is none as Lady Raingarde says, but tell me is your husband’s skin sometimes white and patchy on his elbows, knees, scalp, buttocks and sides?’ Raingarde nods. ‘And at its worse it becomes red, hard, tight, shell-like?’ Raingarde nods again. ‘Yes, I know this,’ Dia says decidedly. ‘It passes usually through the males of a family and skips a generation. Your own sons will be well. Exposure to sunlight is very good for this condition. You must persuade Lord Pierre to expose his skin to the sun every day for two hours at least and I can make you a sweet-smelling unguent and teach you how to apply it to give him ease.’

  Raingarde is delighted. ‘Truly, Dia! Oh I am so grateful. The doctors only bleed him and shake their heads and make him feel worse.’

  ‘Excellent,’ says Almodis, ‘but have you consummated the marriage?’ My Lady could show more tact sometimes.

  ‘Yes, of course!’ says Raingarde, ‘but we cannot lie together as often as we wish.’ I see grief cross my own Lady’s face at that. Her problems have been of an altogether different cast here in Toulouse. ‘And your husband, Almodis?’

  ‘You have met my husband,’ she retorts, ‘and I think none of us wish to speak of him. We are having a nice evening together. Raingarde when my child is birthed, in a few months, Dia and I can come to visit you and Dia can speak with your husband herself. Do you have news from home, Raingarde?’ asks Almodis.

  ‘Yes, Audebert and Ponce have an heir to La Marche, named Boson,’ says Raingarde. ‘Mother writes to me that the baby is in excellent health and that Ponce is a fine organiser for Audebert, but she leaves little room for mother to have a useful role now. She talks of setting up her own household with our sisters, Lucia and Agnes who are seven and six, but Audebert won’t hear of it. He says it is too much expense.’

  ‘Mother has her own lands and castles. She could live independently if she wished to. She should,’ Almodis says decisively.

  ‘Well, then, perhaps it is not all Audebert’s reluctance.’

  ‘Mothers and daughters-in-law!’ declares Almodis, casting up her eyes at the memory of Audearde. ‘It never works. At least I have none of that here.’

  ‘Well I do!’ laughs Raingarde, ‘but Lady Garsendis and I get along well enough.’

  ‘She tells you what to do in your own household and you do it, no doubt,’ replies Almodis, knowing her sister’s gentle character.

  ‘She has a lot of good advice for me,’ Raingarde says dryly.

  ‘Does she speak of her sister-in-law, Ermessende, in Barcelona?’ asks Dia. Almodis develops a strong interest in the fire as Raingarde responds: ‘Yes they correspond quite often.’

  I notice from the corner of my eye that my Lady sits up a little straighter, shifts the weight of her belly and finds the view out of the window quite fascinating: stars and dark as far as I can see.

  ‘What is the latest news from Barcelona?’ asks Dia on her behalf.

  ‘The young Count Ramon is married you know and already has two sons and his wife so young too,’ says Raingarde, and Almodis stops pretending to be uninterested now.

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Elisabet was just thirteen when they married so she is fifteen now,’ Raingarde tells her.

  ‘Well,’ Almodis laughs a false laugh, ‘and we are such old women, Raingarde, at twenty-one.’ Then after thinking on it a little longer. ‘Of course if Ramon’s wife is young, a pliable child, it means that Lady Ermessende can try to hold onto her regency for longer.’

  ‘Countess Ermessende wrote to Lady Garsendis that the boys are named Berenger and Arnau. Ermessende is still regent since Lord Ramon is not yet of age, but he is already winning great military renown in campaigns against rebellious neighbours in Cerdanya.’

  Dia strums her inst
rument and sings quietly, as if she is rehearsing:

  How I wish just once I could caress

  that chevalier with my bare arms,

  for he would be in ecstasy

  if I’d just let him lean his head against my breast.

  Handsome friend, charming and kind,

  when shall I have you in my power?

  If only I could lie beside you for an hour

  and embrace you lovingly –

  know this, that I’d give almost anything

  to have you in my husband’s place,

  but only under the condition

  that you swear to do my bidding.

  The nurse comes in with little Guillaume who is a fat baby, not yet a year old. Raingarde puts out her arms to hold him and jiggles him up and down on her knee, singing him a rhyme: ‘Under the water, under the sea, catching tiddlers for my tea, up, down and around!’ The baby giggles and I wonder if he knows that she is not his mother but I suppose he does somehow. ‘How proud father would have been of you, Almodis.’

  ‘Really,’ says my Lady, ‘and I wonder what he would think of my charming husband.’ The bitterness in her voice and words are searing and Raingarde sits back looking scorched. Almodis paces the room in her discomfort, then sits down again next to her sister.

  ‘Are you not happy?’ whispers Raingarde.

  ‘How could I be?’ my Lady whispers back, leaning her forehead against her sister’s, reaching across the obstructions of her belly and her child on Raingarde’s lap. ‘I can’t feel anything, Raingarde. I miss feeling. I would rather hurt than have this blank nothing.’

  I see differences growing now between the sisters. My Lady has an adamantine lustre mixed with the spring green of her eye, she has a polish, where before she had a bounce. I remember the hope of her just before she married Hugh.

  Ten days later and there is another boy child fitted along her arm, his tiny head cupped in her hand and his toes pushing on the crook of her elbow. ‘He is named Raymond,’ she tells us, ‘and my boys and I have a deal of work cut out for us, don’t we?’ She looks to Guillaume who is perched on his aunt’s lap and then she stares into Raymond’s questing green eyes.

  ‘You and the baby need rest now, Almodis,’ Raingarde tells her sensibly. ‘You need to sleep.’

  ‘Sleep,’ snorts Almodis, ‘that is a short activity carried out in hours of darkness. No, we shall start immediately, well tomorrow at least,’ she laughs as Raingarde begins to protest.

  ‘What is it you mean to do?’ asks Dia, nevertheless, tucking in the bed tightly as if she fears Almodis might leap out straight away and begin strapping on her hunting clothes. I take the baby, lay him in the cradle and rock him there.

  ‘I mean to persuade Pons to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostela,’ she tells us, her eyes glittering and indeed we are all impressed with that. ‘He needs to atone for setting aside his poor first wife, Majora,’ she tells us mischievously, ‘and to give thanks that he has two fine heirs, Guillaume and Raymond.’

  ‘And such a clever wife,’ murmurs Dia.

  ‘That’s not all though,’ says Almodis with triumph. ‘I am going to announce a prize for the best poem in the Occitan language. I have a goldsmith in the city, Amoravis, who is fashioning a violet made all in gold as the prize, and Dia will spread the word to troubadours everywhere and they will come here to compete for my prize!’

  ‘Wonderful!’ says Raingarde, truly amazed.

  Sounds like a lot of work, says I, in the privacy of my own head. Golden violets and troubadours indeed. There’ll be pregnant maids and broken marriages like as not. I can’t stop myself from tutting out loud but Almodis merely smiles at me, amused at my disapproval as usual.

  24

  Bernadette: Midsummer 1044

  ‘If all the world were paper, and all the sea were ink …’ Lady Almodis always begins her lessons with her children this way and they shout it with her, giving me a headache. It’s a quotation from Dhuoda.

  We are on an outing and the twins Hugh and Jourdain are fighting as usual. They are a deal of trouble for me to look after and keep from irritating the master. Not all twins love each other it seems. These two are not alike, as my Lady and Raingarde are. At five they are already showing a difference in size. It seems that Hugh got all the nourishment in the womb and Jourdain less. Hugh likes to bully his brother and Jourdain is of a gentle cast of mind. Of all of them, he follows his mother in her liking for dusty old books. My Lady says that he will go to the monks at Lusignan Priory when he is seven, if he wishes. She says it is clear that his brother will not share power in Lusignan when he grows up, and so that would only store up trouble for them both when they are men. She is teaching all her children to read and write. I can’t see the point myself. Hugh will be Lord of Lusignan, Guillaume will be Lord of Toulouse and Raymond of Saint Gilles, so what’s the reason? I told her that lords don’t need to read and write where I come from. They have scribes to get their fingers inky but she told me and the children, ‘An unlettered ruler is an ass. That is what Fulk Count of Anjou wrote to old King Louis of France, and it was twice a joke since the King could not even read the message’. She said I could learn with them but I haven’t got time to fill my head with alphabets and numbers when I’ve got five little children to keep out of Pons’ way and my Lady to look after.

  ‘You are brothers knit together with my blood,’ she tells Hugh, Jourdain, Guillaume and Raymond often. The sons of Hugh and the sons of Pons. ‘When you are all grown up, you will swear your oaths using my name, I Hugh, son of Almodis or I, Raymond, son of Almodis and you will swear allegiance to each other, to support and help each other.’ They love her stories of what will happen when they grow up.

  ‘What about me mother?’ says Melisende.

  ‘We shall find you a beautiful and kind lord to marry,’ says Almodis, ‘and you will be the chatelaine of your own castle and have many sweet children.’

  Today, she says is a maths lesson. ‘See, here is our lesson!’ Almodis declares, throwing her arm up towards a steep path that winds up a cliff face to the priory perched high above the village of Ambialet and the meandering River Tarn. The children are frothing excited around her. They spread outwards from her knees, five blond heads of varying heights, looking all the world like an extension of the gold lace train of her dress: Hugh and Jourdain, Guillaume, Raymond and Melisende with her long curls, just like her mother’s. I am not looking forward to huffing and puffing up that steep path, no doubt having to carry three-year-old Raymond, some of the way, and he’s already solid muscle and heavy so I will start to feel his weight walking uphill on a hot summer’s day. The sun shines, dancing on the river, over to our left. How could a hot hill climb be a maths lesson, I wonder, and how can the children be so delighted at the idea of a maths lesson anyway?

  ‘Shall I wait here for you, my Lady?’ I ask hopefully, gesturing towards a wooden bench at the foot of the hill.

  ‘No, no, Bernadette, you may learn some maths too today,’ she says, making the children laugh.

  ‘Where’s the maths, Mother?’ Hugh shouts and they all chime in noisily as his chorus, chanting his question, over and over. ‘Where’s the maths, Mother! Where’s the maths, Mother!’ they yell.

  ‘Follow me!’ she lifts the hem of her skirts in one hand, skirts I’ll be cleaning tomorrow, and sets off up the path with them running around in front, behind, skipping, shouting, and me, trying to keep up. Tiny brown lizards zigzag up the rocks away from us.

  ‘Don’t go near that one!’ Almodis warns Raymond, as he makes towards a larger green lizard. ‘The big ones bite and they clamp on and they don’t let go of your arm or finger until you kill them or give them beer, and we haven’t got any beer with us.’

  ‘Got my knife, though,’ he says, lifting the little scabbard hanging from his belt, to show her.

  ‘Still,’ she tells him, ‘today is maths, lizard hunting is another day!’

  ‘Where�
�s the maths! Where’s the maths!’ they start again, and my head is aching and my face is hot and sweaty. The hill is very steep. I think if I stand still and look up towards the sky and the priory I might topple backwards, there is such a gradient. The path winds back and forth on itself. As we round a bend, a tall, silver pole rears up in front of us, set in a grassy niche. At the top is a finely wrought image of our Lord Jesus being condemned to death by the wicked Pontius Pilate.

  ‘Number one!’ yells Almodis and then starts running ‘Where’s number two?’ and they all start running to catch up with her.

  I give up, I think to myself, exhausted already. I will get to the top in my own time. Another bench is placed opposite the silver pole and I sit myself down to catch my breath. The blasphemy of it! We should be meditating on our Lord’s suffering on the Via Crucis, not doing maths! I’ve only been sitting, puffing, for a moment when Guillaume comes scambling back down the path and starts heaving on my arm.

  ‘Come on Bernadette. Mother says you are to keep up and you need to do maths.’

  The cheek of it, but I know she’ll only be embarrassing me in front of the children if I don’t comply so I get to my feet and trudge up behind the boy, to join them all gathered around ‘number two’, the second silver pole with a rectangular silver plaque at the top embossed with an image of Our Lord being given his cross, his knees bending at the awful weight of it, and his poor head dripping with blood from his crown of thorns.

  ‘So the Roman governor of Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate, ordered that he carry his own cross up a hill as steep as this,’ Almodis finishes telling the children. ‘So what do you think might happen in number three? Help Bernadette, Jourdain!’ and off they all go again, with Jourdain pushing me from behind while I hold Raymond tight in both arms, alarmed now at the precipice to my left and the craggy unevenness of the path. This is no place to be carrying the baby of a count. What is she thinking? And no place to be tripping around laughing with four other children either. The sun beats hot on my shoulders and back. At number three I croak ‘I need water!’ and Almodis hands around the water skin that she is carrying slung over her shoulder and we all take a sip.