Song at Dawn: 1150 in Provence (The Troubadours Quartet)

by Jean Gill

  She felt her skirt thrown up, her underthings parted so the fabric rubbed one side of her sore as the battering commenced, a blind search to force a way into her. Weighed down, trying to breathe, concentrating on a tube of straw that had bent at an angle of exactly forty-five degrees, that reminded her of the discussions at the watermill, she was shocked beyond thought by a sharp pain, by her brain screaming ‘No, no, no - take it out!’ though her mouth remained obstinately silent and instead of relief, there was duller, accelerating pain that culminated in the feeling that she would explode into particles, a crossbow bolt hooked through her vitals.

  She gathered from Piere’s groans and the change in his breathing that it was over and she clutched at this thought when, after one last intense pain, the weight lifted from her back and she felt the boy move away, stand up, lean panting against the stable wall. She had a sudden image of herself lying on the straw with her skirts and under-shift around her neck, her dagger exposed and disabled, the miserable proof of her womanhood soiling her underclothes and skin. She had never felt so lonely, so motherless. Be careful what you wish for, she mouthed her mother’s words, and straightened her clothes, stood and looked at a sweaty stranger, whose eyes flicked around the byre, resting anywhere but on her.

  Estela held her head straight and high. She would play this scene to the end. She took an emerald pin from the front of her gown, all part of her marriage coffer. She blew the chaff off it and polished it absent-mindedly against her skirt before fixing the boy with a clear, unashamed gaze. He could not meet her eyes and stayed as far away from her as the byre would allow. When she approached to give him the jewel, he shrank back and she was suddenly aware of what he risked.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she told him. ‘You have only obeyed orders. I will not demand such a service again.’ Her lips curled and her hand shook, despite herself. ‘This is in acknowledgement.’ She had nearly said ‘payment’ but knew that he would have accepted the word with the same reaction he gave now - gratitude - and that, she could not have stomached. ‘I believe it is time for mid-day meal. You must be hungry,’ she said, stupidly and with an attempt at hauteur left the place, pausing to blink in the sunlight and hold back the tears as she faced the last person in the world that she wanted to see.

  His eyes searching her face, dark and cold with slow-fuse anger, Dragonetz had his hand on his sword-hilt. He said, ‘I shall kill him.’

  ‘No!’ she said sharply and he just stood, looking at her, reading her. She watched the planes of his cheekbones, sharply defined in the harsh sun, the sardonic mouth that turned a lopsided witticism as easily as a scathing put-down, or even a compliment, and she felt that for the first time in her life, she was going to faint. His expression shifted once more and he took her arm, supporting her.

  ‘My Lady Estela,’ said Dragonetz. ‘Allow me to accompany you back to your room. If I may,’ Hiding her from public view with his own tall body, he dropped her arm and blocked her way long enough to pick some straw out of her not-so-neatly coiled hair and to tuck some wild strands back into place. If a mine direct to the pits of hell had opened in the courtyard, Estela would have dived into it rather than face the solicitous attention she was getting. ‘It seems,’ he said gently, ‘that my role in your life consists of lady’s maid. Sancha tells me you have interesting gossip of Henri d'Anjou.’

  She allowed politics to carry her back into the Palace, protected from curious eyes by their known relationship, by the status of Dragonetz himself, a man beyond question, but the whole time she was conscious of the sticky wrongness of her blood and the boy’s stuff fouling her body. She would never be the same again. She wished he were dead.

  They were now alone in the passageways leading to Estela’s chamber and as if he read her mind, Dragonetz demanded, ‘Why, Estela? Why rutting with a stable-hand, for God’s sake?! It shouldn’t have been like that!’

  ‘And how should it have been? With silver goblets, golden hair and the magnificent arms of Narbonne all round you I suppose!’ she fired back without stopping to think. ‘What would you know! At least you’ll find my singing has more maturity now! Oh, go to hell!’

  They had reached her chamber and she’d already shrugged off his arm but she wasn’t going to run away. She’d faced enough demons today not to crumple in front of some fancy-singing sword-swinger. Her chin jutted, she glared at him and his black eyes, fathomless as the pool below the waterfall at

  Montbrun, reflected her own image in duplicate.

  ‘Only you,’ he murmured inexplicably, his apparent exasperation barely covering something else. He knelt in front of her, took her hand and kissed it, formally. ‘To hell I duly go,’ he assured her and ‘I should have killed him,’ he muttered to the wall as he left.

  Wishing that she had a private bath-tub, Estela forced herself to make the journey to the bathroom, where she scrubbed her skin raw and red. Then she donned fresh clothing and sent every expensive stitch she had worn that morning to be burned. She told herself it was over. She had never felt more lonely in her life and, somehow, not being a virgin made only the wrong sort of difference.

  Chapter 16.

  In the time it took a small Jewish boy to deliver a breathless message to the Captain of the City Guard, remembering carefully that his mother’s life depended on him not saying that the sender was Dragonetz los Pros, Dragonetz himself was already heading for the Jewish Quarter wearing mail hauberk and sword, no time for more. He had already wasted valuable minutes in dispatching trusted messengers to Danton, the knight likely to be closest and with the best chance of organising men quickly, and to Raoulf and Arnaut.

  More precious time had of course been wasted in threatening the mother of his less-trusted messenger, to encourage his loyalty. Dragonetz reflected grimly on the message from Raavad, panted out in private by the barefoot lad whose mother’s life might very well depend on what Dragonetz could do next, for all he knew. The problem, from Dragonetz’ viewpoint, was that he had absolutely no idea what he could do to prevent a small-scale battle of Christians versus Jews turning into full-scale carnage. He very much doubted that it was small-scale enough for him to kill them all and cry ‘Assassins’. Not this time. Raavad’s message had inevitably been terse and the only information he had to go on was ‘Three Jews. Ten Christians. Murder. My street. Now. Come, please. In force.’

  As Dragonetz heard the familiar sounds of a riot, steel and shouting, screams and bangs, multiple voices, men, women, children, he heard his knight’s oath mocking his brain with its impossible requirements to protect and defend the innocent. A suicide oath.

  ‘I have come in force,’ he muttered, drawing his sword as he turned the last wind of a narrow street. He hoped to the God of all oaths that his little message-boy had succeeded and his half a chance of fire-fighting would come off, then he charged in to fan the flames, running through from behind an anonymous body that crumpled on the cobbles, still gripping the stone with which its hand was smashing the face of another male frame. The man opened his mouth to thank Dragonetz but the words turned to spluttered blood as the knight’s sword found another target, true in aim and dirty as war. He might not kill them all but he was going to have a good try.

  Whirling his sword, hurling abuse in five languages, regretting his helmet and shield, Dragonetz found a space clearing around him, which gave him enough time to take in the scene. The women, thank God, were not on the street but hanging out of windows, hurling frying-pans and chamber-pots, with no regard to whether the latter were full or empty. In fact, it seemed to give more satisfaction to these wives and mothers turned harpies, if contents hit a target rather than the chamber-pot itself. Men were grappling with fists and whatever heavy objects they had grabbed as a weapon.

  Hammers, shears, dividers, nippers, chisels, trowels, tongs, baskets and of course knives were all clashing, metal ringing, wood cracking and stone thudding in the wild echoes of the narrow street. There were a few swords, Christians’ certainly, but otherwise the
mass of incensed humanity was indistinguishable, enraged workers lost to reason.

  Dragonetz’ pause was over; a gang of a dozen, including the swordsmen, were circling him edgily, a couple feinting distraction and yelling names, while five were trying to sneak behind him. He backed hastily against a house wall, praying that neither door nor window would allow a sneak stab from within the house and that the leaning wall jutted out enough to protect him from the pleasures of a chamberpot on the head.

  There was a short discussion between his would-be aggressors and Dragonetz noted the fact that they seemed to be organised, clearly knew each other, and had some control over their actions, even in the midst of this riot. He wondered if they were Raavad’s ‘ten Christians’ and then there was no time for wondering. It didn’t take a genius to realise that twelve against one was good odds if they rushed him.

  It took all Dragonetz’ experience to resist the first onslaught but he had been well taught, and tried against sword and scimitar from Occitania to Damascus. His true talent was unpredictability. The swordsmen against him were plodding, unable to do more than jab at him for fear of hitting each other if they approached together and quickly aware that to approach singly was suicide.

  The brute workers with them were more of a threat, particularly as a swordsman continued to lunge hopefully, harassing Dragonetz enough to make it difficult to parry and duck as stones were flung or a hammer swung on the off-chance, connecting by bad luck with Dragonetz’ left leg as he changed stance. Seeing him wince boosted the gang’s morale and efforts doubled. Another hit, this time a flung stone catching Dragonetz’ forehead, trailing blood into his mouth, a trickle of iron. Confidence high, the man Dragonetz had identified as their leader yelled at him from well behind four of his thugs.

  Tufts of ginger poked out round his mail coif, and red moustache bristled round his blackening teeth as he spoke. ‘Well met, my Lord. We were hoping you would come. And of course, go.’ He shouted, ‘Now!’ and his men rushed Dragonetz in full force, intending to use their own bodies as weapons, knowing that one man’s corpse full on the sword would disable the swordsman completely. When he felt the door give behind his back at the same moment the assailants rushed him, Dragonetz fully expected to be impaled in both directions, like an abused catamite he thought as he collapsed backwards across the threshold and the door was closed and bolted against a thud of men and weapons.

  From his position on the floor, definitely without a knife in his back, Dragonetz looked up at the distinctive cap and locks of Makhir ben Habibi, the Kabbalah expert who had been with the fortune-teller.

  ‘The door will not hold long,’ the Jew told him. ‘Follow me.’ If the men on the street had looked up, they would have seen a man reaching out of an attic window, where the houses leaned so close to each other they seemed to be having a neighbourly chat. They would have seen another man in the window opposite and a game of knotted sheets and flying men that resulted in the complete disappearance of the knight they were chasing.

  When they finally hacked their way through an oak door twelve inches thick, there was no sign of either Dragonetz los Pros nor of anyone else. They rushed out a back door into a tiny courtyard and over the wall into another back street. By the time they were resigned to the fact they’d lost him, Dragonetz was standing once more exactly where they had attacked him, but this time he could see Raoulf, Arnaut and fifty armour-clad men-at-arms wearing the red livery of Aliénor.

  He could also see appRoxiemately the same number of armour-clad City Guard wearing the silver on blue of Ermengarda. And the two forces were fighting each other, accidentally dispatching any civilian who came between them. Exactly as Dragonetz had ordered. Not that the Commander of the City Guard realised this and it was presumably that same Commander, plumed and looking for trouble, who was heading straight towards Dragonetz with all the deliberation of thirty pounds of armour, reduced to the basics. The silver beast of Gévaudan stretched its rampant claws towards Dragonetz on a sea of blue silk, rippling across the armour beneath but there was no hiding the steel point heading his way, nor the expression in a face beetroot with rage.

  Fortunately the Commander’s sword skills were mediocre and reduced by his temper so Dragonetz was able to parry the wild thrusts, despite his fatigue. The words hurled at him were equally wild and insulted his mother in particular and his origins in general, with the fervent wish that he would return to them forthwith, preferably dead. Manoeuvring always backwards until he was at the end of the street, all the fighting ahead of him or in neighbouring alleyways, Dragonetz patiently blocked and dodged, saving his breath until the verbal and physical attack both slowed. Then he took advantage of the pause to give a high whistle, distinctively modulated. If Sicres de Narbonne had looked behind him, he would have seen red figures melting away like mice when the kitchen door opens but he didn’t take his eyes off Dragonetz.

  ‘The fight is over. Put up your sword,’ Dragonetz suggested, skipping sideways as the response aimed for his left side. Then the other man stood, panting, sweat rolling down his cheeks in grimy crimson channels.

  ‘By God, you have a nerve! And don’t think my Lady’s favour will get you out of this one!’ The sword rose again but half-heartedly as Sicres’ temper cooled and he registered his opponent’s stone-walling. The blade dropped again,

  ‘My men have gone. I can hardly fight off a hundred men-at arms.’ Dragonetz dropped his own guard and sheathed his sword.

  ‘And take me from behind as soon as my back’s turned! I don’t think so.’ Sicres glared at Dragonetz, ignoring the classic feint of his hostage’s gaze going beyond his left shoulder to something approaching his rear. Except that it wasn’t a feint.

  ‘The cowardly bastards have run for it, Sire,’ announced one of the City Guard. His Commander jumped but kept Dragonetz in his sights as he spoke.

  ‘Have we lost anyone?’

  ‘Two. Tibaut and Simo.’

  ‘And them?’

  ‘One.’ Dragonetz felt his chest contract. Three men too many. Who? Who had died a soldier’s death for the good of Narbonne? He moved the thought to somewhere it could not affect his judgement, to be revisited later.

  Sicres’ eyes narrowed to pin-pricks of hate. ‘Citizens of Narbonne?’ he hurled the question over his shoulder to his man.

  ‘We’ve seen seven bodies, so far. One wearing armour.’ His voice conveyed puzzlement. ‘The others I’d guess were three Jews, three Christians, judging by their clothes.’ Correction, thought Dragonetz, nine men too many and one of the band of thugs who’d set on him, the ones he was convinced were mercenaries, paid to strike the tinderbox to civil war and to kill him in the midst of it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sicres.’ He met the other man’s eyes squarely. ‘I was under orders. The Queen felt that her army was losing shape in the stews and taverns of Narbonne and that we needed testing. She insisted that we sharpen our edge against Narbonne’s finest.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It seems she was right and that your men had the better of mine. No-one was supposed to die but it happens, even in the practice-fields.’ Another shoulder shrug, one leader to another, one who obeyed crazy orders from some mad woman to another such. Dragonetz was sorry but he could not gift Sicres with the truth of what they’d achieved without throwing away the achievement.

  ‘It does seem that your men are rusty, my Lord Dragonetz.’ No-one mentioned a death score of two to one. ‘And what are you going to do about it? Organize another pitched battle between my men and yours in the streets of Narbonne? In my city streets.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. With my Lady’s permission, we quit the city for a week’s training in the wild. My men will wish yours had them instead of me by the end of it.’

  ‘Your Lady’s permission?’ Sicres queried, a mocking note in his voice.

  Dragonetz could imagine well enough the rumours round the city. ‘My Lady Aliénor,’ he clarified, ‘who will have only a handful of my men left for her protection, and who needs
to rely on your skills, which you have proved today. And also as you so rightly imply, your Lady, who must forgive our rude soldiers’ behaviour and excuse our absence.’

  ‘I am sure, Lord Dragonetz los Pros, that your absence will be felt... deeply by my Lady Ermengarda.’ There was a stifled chuckle from behind Sicres but nothing in Dragonetz’ expression showed that he had scored a point, however cheap. Another thought to be filed somewhere, for later consideration, not to interfere with a satisfactory conclusion to a messy business. Dragonetz prayed to God that messages had reached their various recipients and that they were the messages he had intended.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Dragonetz bowed and turned his back on the street and its figures of blue and silver, joined now by the householders recovering whole chamberpots and saucepans, cleaning up the smashed debris, attending to small wounds. Then the keening started that meant they had discovered their dead.

  Dragonetz strode grim and alone back to the courtyard outside the Palace, where a hundred and ninety-two tired men in red waited in formation on their horses, one empty saddle at their head. He swung onto the horse that Arnaut held for him, grunted approval and chided his disobedient heart for its relief that Arnaut, Raoulf and Danton were all there. Some mother, wife, children, whoever it might be, would be grieving tonight, wondering how a soldier could die at the hand of his fellows in a backstreet of Narbonne, after surviving the scimitars and bladed wheels in barbarian Oltra mar. He had no right to feel relieved to see his lieutenants in place but he had no right to grieve either, for anyone.

  He sent a message to Aliénor with one of the men detailed to remain as her bodyguard. It was too risky to send to Emengarda in case Sicres intercepted any such contact but he could rely on her intelligence to put two and two together from Raavad’s message and her Commander’s report. He smiled at the thought of that report. Then he gave another whistle, one of the commands perfected in the midst of sand flying like smoke when Saracen hordes appeared from nowhere, their eyes barely showing through the swathes of material wrapped round their heads and covering their faces. Impeccably controlled, his men kicked their horses into a walk, leaving the city in what could have been mistaken for a triumphant procession rather than a shameful retreat, if you didn’t know any better.