Almodis

by Tracey Warr

  ‘I cannot give you audience now, here, Rodriguez,’ I say, before he can begin with some tiresome request. ‘Leave me and I will speak with you later today in the hall.’

  ‘I would wish to comply with your every order my dear Lady,’ he says, ‘but I cannot.’

  I stare at him. What does he mean? He must comply with my order. He does not drop his gaze. He stares back at me. Does he mean me harm? Surreptitously I feel for the hunting knife at my waist.

  ‘You won’t need that Almodis. You need have no fear of me, though I look most fearful.’ There is something about his voice. He is pulling off his hat and cowl and I step back and grip my knife now, assessing the position of my horse. What can he mean by this behaviour?

  ‘You will address me as Countess,’ I say in my coldest voice, ‘and you will leave me immediately, now. I want you gone from Toulouse altogether before I get back to the castle.’

  ‘Oh but I can’t do that,’ he persists. ‘What if I should be the winner of the violet?’

  I am frowning and begin to be afraid. His behaviour is impertinent in the extreme and he is shedding his clothes in an alarming fashion. I turn to run to the horse and he grabs me by the arm. He means rape.

  ‘Almodis, Almodis. No, it’s me. You know me.’

  I turn, sick in my stomach, to see if I can find a way to be free. I don’t know him. Is he mad? He holds my arm so that I cannot free my knife. How have I allowed this to happen?

  ‘Please, don’t be afraid. I’m so sorry to scare you. I could not come as myself and have any chance to speak with you.’

  I turn in wonder and see that his black beard is hanging loose from one side of his face. A false beard. Stripped of his cowl, his hair is golden. His hand on my arm is young and shapely. The clothes he has shed are his … his belly.

  ‘Ramon?’

  ‘Yes. I thought you would know me yesterday!’

  He is laughing and I remember his laugh and his blue eyes, the boy in the mews when I was still a girl. I am so relieved and amazed I cannot speak. He relaxes his grip but still holds my arm.

  ‘I’m sorry. I have really frightened you. Come into the lodge and sit down. We will break fast together and I can try to explain myself to you. Countess,’ he adds in mock politeness and I manage a feeble smile at that. My mind is blank. He has brought some fruit and wine but I cannot eat. A bee bumbles through the lodge, buzzing slowly. All the time I am taking quick glances at him and he is stripping himself of more and more of his ridiculous disguise. The hook nose, strips of cloth that padded his arms and stomach, the beard. At last there he is. Himself. With vestiges of glue hanging on his chin and cheek.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ I say, finally finding that I am angry with him. ‘Why must you come like this? Like an idiotic pantomime. You would be an honoured guest at my court as yourself.’

  ‘Yes, but where would be the fun in that?’ I frown and he sees that he must say more. ‘I am truly sorry that I scared you. I couldn’t think of another way to encounter you alone.’

  I shift along the bench, away from him. ‘And why should you wish to do that? Why this subterfuge and deceit?’

  ‘I wished to speak with you intimately, Almodis,’ he says shifting back towards me and taking my hand. I feel the cool warmth of his palm and admire the light golden skin of his hand on mine but then snatch my hand away. ‘And why can you not speak to me in my chambers or in the hall? This is ridiculous Ramon.’ His blue eyes smiling at me chime so strongly with my memories. A little mollified I add, ‘I am pleased to see you of course, after all this time.’

  ‘Eleven years,’ he says. ‘And four days.’

  I swallow at that and look at him again. He has changed, for now he is a man but still a young and beautiful one. I reach up and pull a piece of glue hanging from his cheek.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘You deserve a great deal of pain,’ I tell him, smiling reluctantly. ‘And by the way you won’t win the golden violet. Your poem was terrible.’

  ‘No, don’t say that! It wasn’t bad. Dia wrote it for me!’

  ‘What, Dia! She knew it was you and didn’t tell me!’

  ‘Don’t be unkind to her. It’s not her fault. The fault is all mine.’

  ‘Well, you have amused yourself with this game, Count Ramon,’ I say rising, ‘and now I must return to my serious business of running my assembly.’

  He rises with me and takes my hand again. ‘Almodis, let me speak first. I did not do this merely for a jape, though I admit it has been quite amusing.’ He pauses and grins lopsidedly at me, raising his eyebrows, but I do not bend.

  ‘Hmmph!’ I say.

  ‘I am come to speak with you seriously Almodis. You know that my wife has died?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I am so sorry for it Ramon. You have suffered a great deal with your family.’

  ‘Thank you, and yes. Fortune favours me in the field and in politics. Barcelona flourishes and you will love the city when you see her but I have not been so lucky in my family life.’

  ‘No doubt I will admire Barcelona,’ I say. ‘Perhaps I will come next year to your Easter Assembly.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Come now. Come with me. I want you as my wife Almodis. I wanted you eleven years and four days ago, but my grandmother would hear nothing of it and took me away before I could speak with you. Elisabet was a good wife to me but I don’t want just a dutiful wife, Almodis. I want you. I love you. I always have.’

  I pull my hand out of his with force. ‘What can you mean, Ramon? This is more nonsense.’

  ‘No.’ He sinks to his knees and crushes me and my skirts against him. ‘Please, Almodis, consider me and say yes. I know that you are not happy with Pons. I know how capable you are, but above all, I love you and I will make you happy, as you deserve. I will give you everything. You are more shining than snow. You are radiant Almodis, as radiant as the girl I met so long ago in the mews in her nightclothes and her hair loosed down her back.’

  ‘That was long ago,’ I try to pull away from him, but he holds fast. ‘I was a girl then and you were a boy. Now I am a woman and seven times a mother.’

  ‘You are the same to me. You are that girl,’ he says, a stubbornness creeping into his voice and the set of his mouth, a boyish stubbornness.

  I pull violently away from him and stumble back against the bench behind me, sitting down hard. ‘Ramon, you know that I am married and I am not free for you to speak to me in this way.’ I grip my knife again. Perhaps he does mean violence still? To abduct me? To take me by force?

  ‘Please, darling, be convinced that you do not need your knife,’ he is laughing, on his knees, holding out his palms to me. He rises to his feet again, conscious that he is making a spectacle of himself, but he holds me fast by the arms. ‘I am no threat to you. Forgive my passion. Forgive that I have made you afraid.’ He shifts now to sit on the floor at my feet and speaks gently, coaxingly to me, as I heard him speak to his falcon in the mews so long ago.

  ‘I have a ship at Narbonne. Come away with me now. Dia will send what you need on to Barcelona. Pons will bluster but he will do nothing. He will not take arms against me. I will make you Countess of Barcelona and you will make me the happiest man in the world.’

  ‘And my children?’ I say.

  ‘Dia can bring them to the ship tonight if I send word to her now.’

  I look to the window. The sun has broken through in full power and I blink in the light. The sky is solid blue. My falcon soars there. I feel that my heart might break in two.

  ‘No. No. I cannot do this.’

  ‘You do not love me? Like me, at least?’

  I do not answer.

  ‘Almodis?’

  ‘I am Countess of Toulouse. I am wife to Pons. I have work and a life here. I have responsibilities and duties and I carry the honour of my family’s name and I will not betray that. Thank you for your offer.’ I stand and move swiftly to the door and he is scrambling up behind me.

  ‘Pl
ease, Almodis. Wait then. Make no decision now. I can wait.’

  ‘In your ridiculous beard? No you must leave.’ He is moving towards me so I stop and look steadily at him and he halts. ‘You must leave now,’ I say, and I lift my skirts, turn and am running to my horse. I want to say more. I want to say how my heart sings at the escape he offers me, at his valuing of me, but I cannot trust my voice, my resolve, so I cannot speak all this to him. He runs out after me but I am in the saddle, my falcon flies to my arm and I spur my horse.

  ‘Goodbye Ramon. I wish you well,’ I call out but I cannot look back at him. I learnt in Lusignan that love is merely a poet’s word, a flimsy story, and that a woman’s life instead is breeding and managing, so I do not know why tears are streaming down my face. I see nothing, but my horse knows the way back. When I am far enough away from Ramon I sob aloud. Eventually, the gates of the city are ahead and I wipe my face dry. Inside the chateau I run to my rooms, furious with Dia for her deceit all these years and I tell her to pack her bags and depart by dawn tomorrow.

  She is white-faced and desolate with her apologies. ‘Almodis, he loves you so! I had to help him and I thought perhaps you …’

  ‘That’s enough,’ I say. ‘You have betrayed me and after all, you belong to him. You are his creature.’ I slam the door of my chamber, bar it and run to my bed where I lie for two days speaking to no one, allowing no one to enter. In my dreams I see Ramon, beautiful, golden, laughing and I am laughing with him and kissing him. When I wake now and then I listen to the sounds of the Toulouse Court outside my door. Dia has tried calling to me. Bernadette has called through the door and then I can hear her standing there telling all comers that I am taken ill and they must judge the competition without me and the Good Men must hear the justice cases without me. They must come back tomorrow. The countess cannot see you today, she says. I lay with my face wet, my hair and bedsheets tangled, falling in and out of sleep and dreams. But the following day I must rise and repair myself, present myself, the countess, the mother. My distress over Ramon is replaced by my sadness at parting from my sister and I begin to recover myself. I try not to think of Ramon, of his face, of his grasp on my legs, of his offer.

  ‘So Bernadette, is Dia gone?’ I am not my brisk self but I feign it. I feel weak and feeble.

  ‘No, Lady. She begs to speak with you one last time. And you must eat Lady. I insist.’

  I sigh. Yes, then, I will keep Dia with me for she is all I have now of him and I would miss her very much if she left me. I tell Bernadette and Raingarde nothing of what has happened and I forbid Dia to speak of it. If I do not discuss it with anyone then it will begin to fade and soon I will think that it may not have happened at all.

  Two months later and news comes that Ramon’s earlier betrothal to Blanca of Castile has been renewed. That dream is over then and he was not sincere. Dia sings pointed lyrics:

  You stayed a long time, friend,

  and then you left me,

  and it’s a hard, cruel thing you’ve done;

  for you promised and you swore

  that as long as you lived

  I’d be your only lady:

  if now another has your love

  you’ve slain me and betrayed me,

  for in you lay all my hopes

  of being loved without deceit.

  ‘Enough! Desist!’ I say to her in exasperation. I sometimes wonder if I had accepted either Geoffrey or Ramon’s proposal, what would have happened? As Bernadette would say: ‘If ifs and ands were pots and pans.’

  When Pons returns from pilgrimage touting his lead sea shell from the shrine of Saint James, I have another idea to keep him from me. ‘My Lord, for your birthday, I wish to make you a gift,’ I tell him. ‘There is a villa on my land, near Saint Gilles.’ I have been planning this for months now and my heart is pounding. I need this to go well. ‘I have decorated and furnished it, especially for you,’ I say.

  His eyes light up and he thrusts his hand up my skirts, gripping the bare flesh of my thigh. ‘Then we should take a little trip there together, eh?’ he says.

  I disengage myself, covering my shudders with smiles. ‘Oh no,’ I say, evading his hands, ‘it is your villa, all for you, your own private palace.’

  I succeed in persuading him to travel without me and wave him off the following morning, promising to come after him soon. I am wreathed in smiles, but saying in my head: ‘Goodbye. Don’t ever come back. Fall from your horse. May you be gnawed at by ringworms.’ When he gets to Saint Gilles he will find Alienor waiting there for him and all manner of luxuries and wines and amusements and I hope that she can keep him there for a long, long, time or give him an apoplexy with her enthusiastic ministrations.

  ‘Your Lord must be well pleased with his gift,’ murmurs Dia, her head down sewing.

  Pons has been gone now for three months. Alienor sends word that she keeps him drunk ‘as a lord’. He has tried to return twice but I found excuses to deter him. Chateau Narbonnais was in disarray, being redecorated, I told him. Another time I wrote to say that there was a heavy slate of justices to hear and would be glad of his assistance, and Alienor told me he received my message on the road and turned back to Saint Gilles, sending me his heartfelt apologies that he was unable to come at present. It cannot last forever and I cannot return to the previous tolerance of him.

  ‘When he does return,’ I say to Dia, ‘I mean to tell him that I have taken a vow for a mariage blanc.’

  She looks at me long. ‘That will not go well,’ she says simply and bows her head again.

  27

  Bernadette: Breaking Oath

  Alienor kept Count Pons in Saint Gilles for nearly a year but when he did return my Lady told him of her vow of a mariage blanc, which she has solemnly sworn in front of the new Bishop of Toulouse, Hugh (her bishop). My Lady is on a dangerous path now, denying the count her bed. He raged and kicked the furniture in her room, but she held her ground and I looked nervously at the knife at her belt. If he lays a finger on her now, I was thinking, it’s murder I will be defending her for. She prays each evening to St Uncumber who helps wives get rid of bad husbands and she does not care who hears her or who tells tales on her back to the count. I have had a hit with my plan to wheedle information from Piers. He told me in drunken pillow-talk that Pons has commissioned him to find a reason for him to repudiate Almodis and I, of course, tell this to my Lady.

  ‘Open this door! If you continue to behave like a nun I will ensure that you become one!’

  ‘His threat is real, Almodis,’ Dia tells her.

  She is looking down at her hands in her lap. ‘I know,’ she says quietly.

  I swallow fearfully at that. If she is put aside, then what will become of me? I’m not minded to become a nun neither.

  ‘He has his three boys,’ Dia says. ‘He has what he needed of you.’

  ‘Yes, I am a used and therefore useless wife, but he will find that they are my three boys and not his.’

  There is a powerlessness in that while they are young. Perhaps when they are older it will mean something. I know that she carries on a constant correspondence with Hugh and Jourdain, Guillaume and Raymond, that she binds her boys to her with love, loyalty and the wisdom of her strategies.

  ‘We must keep an eye on his correspondence, Dia. Send Bernadette to canoodle with his clerk or messenger, whatever works.’ Dia nods and I bridle. Canoodle indeed! I picture the count’s clerk and messenger. Well the messenger then.

  ‘If he has correspondence with any of the prioresses hereabouts I want to know of it. If he is writing to a noble family with a marriageable daughter I want to hear of that.’ Then she raises her head and looks at Dia. ‘No, more. I want you to intercept any such letters and bring them to me.’ Dia returns her look for a long silence. ‘I know,’ she says, ‘that this is a dangerous game but I must play it. I might keep him a short while longer by giving him access to me, but it is only a matter of time before he turns his desire to some young girl-chi
ld. Fresh, compliant meat.’ The air in the room tastes sour.

  Dia does not ask me to canoodle. Perhaps she is canoodling with the clerk herself. He has a flushed look about him these days.

  ‘Come in Bernadette and Dia,’ she says to us in a solemn voice and I am appalled to see the red and purple bruising on her cheek, circling one eye, and a cut on her swollen lip.

  ‘Oh my Lady,’ I gasp reaching a hand to her face.

  She swats away my hand. ‘Don’t touch me. You are here to bear witness.’

  Bear witness? To what? I am shaking now. She is so unlike herself. At the end of a ditch a somersault, I think, but keep my thoughts to myself. I look to Dia who nods calmly to me and steps to one side of the fire. I see I should do the same and stand on the other side. My Lady is wearing only her white shift and I see that her hands are shaking but I do not know if it is with fear or with fury. She holds in her hands a straw as if it were a golden sceptre. I cannot understand the purport of this. Is it witchcraft?

  ‘In the ritual of homage between men in the North,’ she tells us slowly, ‘a blow is considered the only good reason to break the oath of fealty.’ She pauses and looks at us. I am bewildered. What have men’s rituals to do with a man beating his wife? She takes one step towards us and the fire, holding the straw stretched out in the palm of one hand before her, and using her other hand to help shrug off the shift. It falls to her ankles and now we can see that it was not just the blow to her face that she is talking about. There are black and red marks about her back and buttocks and even across the soft mound of her stomach where she has carried so many babies. I gasp and put a hand to my mouth as she frowns silence to me. Tears trickle down my face. What monster would be so cruel to one so beautiful? Her breasts are pert like a girl’s, only their enlarged brown nipples betraying the fact that she has borne seven children.