by Jean Gill
‘But you knew it.’
A humble nod. ‘Certain information comes my way. It is the nature of my work but I am not always at liberty to disclose what I know.’
‘Then what was al-Hisba doing here?’
Hugues’ smile was slow and sweet. ‘Is that what you call him? I think you must ask your Moorish Everyman for the answer.’ He winced and rubbed his thighs. ‘Stone and hard wood do me no favours these days.’
A week, Dragonetz had said he would take, then he could return to Narbonne and remove the question of al-Hisba from his unsolved mysteries. Two more days then. Time to go to Carcassonne. ‘Brother Hugues, I am wondering if I should visit the new Lord of Trencavel as I am so close but I am wary of the welcome likely to be given Aliénor’s Commander. I hear things have changed since Roger died.’
‘You mean that Carcassonne under Raimon has bowed to the nearer liege and Toulouse trumps Barcelone.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And the House of Toulouse holds no love for Dragonetz los Pros.’
‘So it seems,’ Dragonetz hesitated but what was there to lose? ‘It seems the Comte de Toulouse might go so far as to wish me, personally, dead.’
‘Of course,’ was the strange reply.
‘Of course?’ Dragonetz queried.
‘I told you I have been Oltra mar. My son, was there nothing you did there that lies heavy on your conscience, heavier than killing Infidels?’ He searched Dragonetz’ eyes, attempting to read their depths.
‘Too much to confess, Brother, in a week of Sundays. Like you, I vowed obedience and like you, I did what a higher authority required of me.’
‘Aliénor,’ nodded the priest. Dragonetz let his face be stone and his eyes reflect nothing but the kindly, puzzled face quizzing him. Hugues sighed, gave up, returned to the question Dragonetz had asked. ‘You are out of touch with Trencavel. He and a few other vassals went to pay allegiance to Toulouse a few weeks back and something happened. No-one knows what, but Trencavel came back changed. He will go to any lengths to stay within his new walls and avoid contact with Toulouse, and all talk of his daughter marrying young Raymond has stopped dead. He brought her back with him, quite ill.’ Dragonetz’ thoughts raced. That put Trencavel out of the picture for the puppeteer and although it made Carcassonne safer to visit, it also sounded less likely to offer results. To buy time and keep thinking, he prompted, ‘Raimon’s daughter?’
‘Alis,’ said Hugues, surprised. ‘But you know her. She joined Aliénor’s Ladies at Toulouse, where she’d been at Court for some months. And,’ he was patient, as with some dull schoolboy, ‘she was unofficially affianced to young Raymond until a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Then there’s no need for me to go to Carcassonne!’ Dragonetz could have saddled the nearest horse and galloped back to Narbonne to test out his theory.
Hugues took his response at face value. ‘Unless you want to see for yourself the relations between Carcassonne and Toulouse?’
‘No, I believe you! That’s been very very helpful.’
‘My pleasure.’ The priest stood, easing his stiff limbs back into use. ‘You said paper,’ he stated slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘I hear many things in my work, tending to the sick. Even the rich get sick. Even God’s workers get sick and speak out in fevers. Give up paper, my son. This Quest is beyond you. Paper is Muslim temptation, the work of the Devil corrupting Christian tradition. Imagine scribes being unnecessary, the Church cast to one side and people writing as and when they wish! This way lies chaos!’ Earnest brown eyes fixed Dragonetz.
‘Do you believe this?’ he countered.
The eyes didn’t falter. ‘What I think is worth less than the husk of an ear of corn. I am a little man who talked about herbs with the man you call al-Hisba. I belong to the Church and I have made my vows. My Church has a view about this new development of paper and the changes it will bring, and so it is. But I warn you it is not just about trade and competition. It is deep-rooted hatred of this heresy. Powerful men will finish you, my Lord Dragonetz. Very powerful men will protect this land from the heresy of paper and if you stand in their way, they will think nothing of protecting the world from you too. Think about what I’ve said. Find a Quest worthy of you.’
‘You won’t see Jersualem built here in your life-time,’ Dragonetz observed. ‘Will you give up laying the foundations?’
Hugues didn’t need to reply. ‘I am sorry. You carry such a weight on your conscience.’
‘You tried,’ Dragonetz assured him. ‘And you have helped me much more than you know.’ Dragonetz watched the stooping figure shamble his anonymous way out of the chapel. This was no little man. And as for the man Dragonetz called al-Hisba? Hugues then had another name for him. If the Moor had given his name to this Brother, that was no ordinary discussion of herbs between them. One more mystery to take back to Narbonne. Dragonetz whirled into action, rounded up his followers, organised packs, mounts and curtailed farewells, and was pounding dust up the trail back to Narbonne, cursing the slowness of hacks and wishing he had his own Seda beneath him once more.
Chapter 21.
Estela closed the door firmly behind the figure that swished her silk skirts into the room, then blocked it with her own body. ‘Alis,’ she said, wondering how she had not known.
All colour left the pale girl’s face and Sancha nodded, then ran her hands over the slight form, checking for weapons. Estela was conscious of her own dagger but Alis carried nothing. ‘Sit down.’ Sancha indicated a stool and Alis sat. ‘You may leave now,’ she told the neat, curious seamstress who scurried out, hiding her face from the poisonous looks thrown her way.
‘Ladies,’ Alis greeted them, wand-thin and straight-backed, dignified despite the green tinge to her face.
Estela’s professional response was instinctive; red meat to restore colour and garlic to fight demons. Her sympathy must have showed as she caught a sharp look from Sancha, who opened their planned interrogation. ‘Let’s not waste time. We know you paid this woman to drag my Lady Estela’s name through the mud in public.’
Alis made to stand up, shrugging the delicate shoulders, from which her gown hung in loose folds. ‘She’s used to being dragged through the mud.’ The sharp little voice was more like the Alis Estela had heard a hundred times, telling her stories of hangings and omens. Sancha pushed the girl back down onto the stool. She barely needed to touch her. It was as if she couldn’t really touch her. There was no more physical resistance than in a cushion. Estela had the impression that someone could have punched or kicked this silk cushion and it would have taken on the shape it was pushed into. She felt confused. Was this the enemy?
Sancha too seemed to be holding back more, cool in her questioning.
‘We know everything.’
‘Then I can leave.’ But this time Alis stayed still, waiting, only her sarcasm showing what spirit she had left. A creature clinging to frail spite.
‘You have tried to harm Estela before, with broken glass.’ Alis’ smile was confirmation enough. ‘You knew the Queen was with child and you, one of her trusted Ladies, had the Queen’s glass dosed with herbs that would endanger her baby - that isn’t just malice, that’s treason.’
‘Alis the Malice,’ the girl half-sang dreamily. ‘Why would I do such a thing?’
‘That,’ Sancha was grim again, ‘is what we are trying to find out. Let’s start with the easy bit. Why are you trying to harm my Lady Estela? She has done you no harm.’
Blue eyes opened wide, guileless and empty and in that same sing-song tone, Alis chanted, ‘Her father loved her dearly, her mother called her sweeting.’
‘But,’ Estela interrupted.
Sancha shook her head and mouthed, ‘This isn’t about you.’
‘Long hair, long gold hair, daddy’s little angel, full of promise,’ then her eyes flashed and, with bile in her voice, ‘Promises!’ She seemed to focus on them once more, or rather on Estela, and there was no mistaking
the hatred in her eyes. Why?
Estela instinctively shut her eyes and there it was, the precise mixture of musk and hate, a false apology after kicking her when she had first joined Aliénor’s company; the same scent and spite amid her triumphant début at the banquet.
‘I’ll tell you why.’ Gobbets of spittle flecked Alis’ rosebud mouth as she spat the words at Estela. ‘You have it all, don’t you! With your looks and your talent! Married! Free! Who wouldn’t hate you! Taking you down a peg would have been a pleasure but no! Your knight came riding to rescue you!’ Her laughter was a blade run along an open wound.
‘But,’ Estela tried again, unable to describe the loveless mess her life had been until Dragonetz came into it. Then it struck her. ‘But how could you feel like this when you first saw me?’ For she knew it was true. The dainty boot had been a statement of intent, against a stranger found in a ditch. It made no sense.
The blue eyes mocked. ‘As if you don’t know. As if you didn’t see the way he looked at you.’ Estela’s stomach lurched. She hadn’t seen. She hadn’t known. Was that too there from the start? ‘No-one has ever looked at me like that. And now no-one ever will.’
She turned to Sancha who listened, impassive. ‘Why should she have him? He didn’t even notice me! The chivalrous knight rescues the Lady! Well, it only seems to work for some Ladies. Her sort of Lady. You have no idea what it’s like!’
Estela winced but Sancha just replied, ‘More than you think. And the Queen?’
‘Why would I do such a thing? I have a secure place amongst Aliénor’s Ladies. Why would I risk that?’
Suddenly Estela had had enough. She felt sick herself, as if green worms lived in her most precious memories, eating them away. ‘Look at her,’ she told Sancha. ‘She can barely hold herself together. Forget the other things. She’s not capable of that. She’s probably telling the truth about the Queen. There’s no grand plan here, just petty spite turned vicious.’ She addressed Alis. ‘I’m sorry for you and you’re ill. I don’t know what you’ve been taking but you need help. I have herbs that could help.’
The girl flinched from Estela's pity as if lashed. ‘Keep your herbs. It was probably you that dosed the Queen!’ Then, retreating once more into her own world, she murmured to herself, ‘Too late now, too late.’
Sancha looked a question at Estela, who nodded. ‘Let her go. She is her own worst enemy now. She can’t be helped unless she seeks it.’
Sancha stood back to make it clear to Alis that she was free to leave but she warned her, ‘Any act against Estela, so much as one word, and Aliénor shall know all this sorry history and you can forget your secure post then.’
Alis smiled, singing to herself as she tripped down the steep staircase, ignoring the seamstress and ignoring Gilles, who had defied orders to wait at the end of the street and was passing the time of day with the cobbler, one eye and ear for noises upstairs, his one hand always at his mistress’ service.
No-one followed Alis, who click-clacked along the cobbled streets, past Ermengarda’s Palace and on to that of the Archbishop, who was expecting her.
Pierre d’Anduze, Archbishop of Narbonne, was used to making difficult decisions. As Papal Nuncio he had the direct authority of the Pope to make those decisions and of course the Pope had direct authority from on high, God being reinforced by the more earthly connection of Bernard de Clairvaux and the entire order of Cistercians. The Pisan-born priest now known as Pope Eugene III had become the first Cistercian to achieve such greatness and, as a former disciple of Bernard of Clairvaux, was only too willing to lend his office to Clairvaux’ direction.
The little matter in hand for the Archbishop of Narbonne this afternoon was a mere irritant compared with his delicate negotiations with the King of Sicily, which would shake the Western World and return the Pope to Rome, and of course also return some of the status to the Archbishop from the cursed Cistercians. There were certainly disadvantages to the appointment of a genuine innocent to the Papal throne, as Clairvaux himself had complained at the time, but needs must use those very qualities to advantage - as Clairvaux too had decided.
The Cistercian must be champing at the bit over the Pope’s warm support for Aliénor’s marriage. But for Eugene, the accusations of consanguinity would have won out and Clairvaux would have been rid of the whore. Not that a whore as Queen caused problems; a powerful, intelligent whore was another matter. He should know. He had another such in the neighbouring palace, chafing his daily duties, the whore to whom his brother had sold the family respectability in a marriage that mocked God daily.
A slight figure was escorted into the gloom of the side-chapel where he waited. He was too accustomed to the saints watching his movements to recognise the irony of Saint Brigit in her niche, offering a reminder of charity to all women. He sighed again, thinking back over the private message he had received that very morning from the Comte de Toulouse, and motioned his young acolyte to bring the girl to him. The mess was never-ending and not of his making, although he had to clear it up. He had of course made sure the messenger was dealt with but he did so hate the inefficiency of all this.
‘Father,’ she curtseyed low. ‘I have sinned.’
If the acolyte was surprised at the Prelate hearing confession himself from someone who by her dress was clearly one of the Palace women lambasted regularly from the Pulpit, he gave no sign but bowed silently and left them. It was common for confession to be taken with Priest and penitent side by side on a bench, like this, rather than screened, and no-one would have been surprised to see the young golden head bowed and tears falling while the old man beside her nodded sagely. Their words however might have aroused a different reaction.
‘I have tried to do everything the Comte asked,’ Alis was saying. Her voice faltering slightly on ‘everything’.
The Archbishop had a fair idea of what ‘everything’ might involve.
‘I am sure you tried your best,’ he reassured her.
‘It wasn’t my fault that someone saved Dragonetz from the crossbow. I did everything to make it work. I hired the man at Toulouse before we left, I put the safe pass in with documents Aliénor was signing for the Master at Douzens and then gave it to him afterwards. I sent the message with the password to Arnaut. That was easy enough to get - I might as well have been invisible round the camp! And it was all for nothing. Nothing!’
‘You were remarkably clever, my dear. I’m sure the young Comte de Toulouse understands,’ he soothed. To judge by the message he had received that morning, the young Comte de Toulouse understood completely. And so did he.
‘You don’t know him.’ Alis’ fear was rancid in the air and d’Anduze fought the urge to cover his nose with the fine lawn of his handkerchief. ‘I put the belladonna in the water. It should have killed him!’
‘Another unhappy accident spoilt your good work. I know, I was there, you remember.’
‘Yes, Father, and without your encouragement I should have taken my life there and then. But Raimon told me you would be at my side.’
‘Indeed, indeed. As I am now.’ The deep voice conveyed the security of stone foundations, the love of the father. Alis trusted fatherly love.
Alis’ voice sunk to a whisper. ‘I tried to kill the baby.’
Like the grand chapel bell, the Archbishop’s voice rang with assurance. ‘We live in the world and must sometimes do things that are not of God, for the greater good.’ And the real sin, my dear, was that you failed. Not once but in everything. He smiled at her.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she confessed. ‘Two of the Ladies are suspicious, Sancha and that whore of Dragonetz’ but I’ve played dumb for all but the pranks.’
‘What pranks?’ He saw straight away that the sharpness was a mistake and he put it right, smoothing the question. ‘For a minute I thought you had betrayed us but of course you mean girlish pranks.’
‘Exactly,’ she sweated relief. ‘But it made them curious about other things. It’s not safe any m
ore for me to try again. And anyway,’ her voice was blank with despair, ‘I don’t know what to try.’
‘Well now, you wipe up those tears because I have the answer.’
She dabbed damp hands across her smeared face, hope lighting her eyes. ‘You do?’
‘I believe so.’ He gave his most benevolent smile. ‘I think it is time for me to take over. You were given a burden too heavy for you and I can’t watch it burying you so it is time for you to let go. I will look after everything. All you have to do is forget about it.’ He gave his most benevolent smile and moved his hands in benediction as he offered formal absolution.
‘Is there hope for me, Father?’ Her upraised face reminded him of a snowdrop on its fragile stalk. When she opened her eyes, they shone with a vestige of the girl she once had been.
‘Of course, my child.’ He fed on her gratitude, a welcome reward for his priestly duties, and, as soon as she had been escorted out by the priest who’d responded to the little bell, he ordered incense to be shaken to remove the smell.
He had spoken the exact truth. He would now deal with everything and Alis would indeed forget all about it. That, he could ensure. He then summoned a mercenary in his pay, leader of a small band who had earned his displeasure for failing on a previous job and who would make every effort to ensure he was satisfied this time. And the next. And he could give the reward due for the morning’s work at the same time.
Travel-stained and sweat-streaked, Dragonetz waited for private audience with Aliénor, noting the bustle of servants as they carried crates and bundles from the Queen’s chambers out of the Palace. The return to Paris was then imminent and his revelation all the more urgent. If he was right, Aliénor would travel with one less Lady-in-waiting than she had arrived with. Two less, if you counted Estela.
His chest constricted by irrational panic, Dragonetz wasted no more than a quick obeisance to the Queen before demanding, ‘I need to see Lady Alis, Trencavel’s daughter. I think she arranged the attempts against us.’