A King's Ransom (53 page)

B
ERENGARIA AND
J
OANNA WANTED
to find out all they could about Raimond de St Gilles since they’d be spending so many weeks in his company. Cardinal Melior was only too happy to repeat the stories he’d heard of Count Raimond’s transgressions. When the count was not keeping company with heretics, he was chasing after women; he’d had two wives, the cardinal related disapprovingly, and bastard-born children beyond counting. He had a subversive sense of humor that often bordered on sacrilege and the troubadours who flocked to his court were just as impious. Sadly, the man was very popular with his father’s subjects, which only confirmed the cardinal’s dark suspicions about the people of these sun-blessed southern lands.

Joanna and Berengaria then sought out Sancha, who had a keen ear for gossip and enjoyed sharing it. “I do not know Raimond well,” she confided, “but he and Alfonso are good friends. He is one of those men with more charm than the law should allow, and I daresay he could seduce a mother abbess if he truly tried. His first wife was some years older than he was; he was just sixteen at the time of their marriage. When she died four years later, he inherited her county of Melgueil. He then married the sister of the Viscount of Béziers—”

“You mean he wed the daughter of the murdered viscount, the one believed to have been slain by Count Raimond’s father? Good heavens!”

“They are a practical lot, these southerners. Raimond’s sister married into the Trencavel family, too. The idea was to patch up a peace between Toulouse and the Trencavel viscounts. Raimond and Beatrice have had only one child, a daughter, whom he named Constance after his mother.” Sancha smiled wryly. “This did not please Raimond’s father very much. He treated Constance so badly that she finally left him and fled to the court of her brother, the French king—the one who was once wed to your mother. It was a great scandal, for Constance was with child at the time, later giving birth to another son in Paris. She adamantly refused to return to Toulouse, dying a few years ago.”

“How old was Raimond when his mother sought refuge in France?” Joanna asked, and Sancha paused to consider the question.

“Raimond is close in age to your brother Richard, so he’d have been about ten at the time.”

“So he never saw her again? How sad.” Joanna found herself approving of at least one thing Count Raimond had done; naming his daughter after his mother honored her memory while expressing his disapproval of her maltreatment. “Does he have as many base-born children as the cardinal claims?”

“I know of only three, a son and two daughters. Alfonso says he was quick to acknowledge them and provides generously for them, too, which is to his credit, for not all men bother to look after their bastards.”

So far, Joanna had heard nothing particularly damning about Raimond de St Gilles from Sancha, for most of the men in her social class kept mistresses and had children born out of wedlock; her father had sired several of his own. “What of the cardinal’s other accusation, that he is a heretic? Do you believe it?”

“No . . . Alfonso insists he is not a Cathar.”

Joanna caught the dubious note in the other woman’s voice and prodded. “But . . . ?”

“It is just that he is strangely indulgent when it comes to the religious faith of others. He actually seems to think that it is none of his concern, that their beliefs are between them and God!”

Berengaria had been listening in silence, but at that, she shook her head, saying that to tolerate heresy was surely to encourage it. Joanna had a more nuanced view, for she’d come of age in Sicily, where Arabic was one of the official languages, her husband had been served by Saracen physicians and astrologers, and Jews were not segregated from society as they were in other Christian countries. She did not argue with Berengaria, though, not wanting to shock her with yet another example of Angevin insouciance; she knew that she and Richard had often disconcerted his sheltered Spanish wife with their candor and irreverent humor. But even if she could acquit Raimond de St Gilles of the most serious charge against him—heresy—he was still not to be trusted, for her House and his had been enemies for as long as she could remember, and she liked being in his debt no more than her sister-in-law did. There was nothing either of them could do about it, though.

T
HERE WAS SO MUCH TENSION
over Raimond de St Gilles’s impending arrival that Mariam joked privately to Joanna, “It is as if we are expecting the Antichrist.” Joanna smiled sourly, for her sense of humor seemed to have decamped as soon as she’d learned of Alfonso’s double cross, as that was how she saw his surprise. Soon afterward, she found herself seated on the dais with Alfonso, Sancha, and Berengaria, awaiting the Antichrist’s entrance.

There was a stir as he entered the hall, for he was accompanied by a rising troubadour star, Raimon de Miraval. Joanna never noticed the troubadour, though, for she saw only Raimond de St Gilles. He was taller than average, with a lean build and the easy grace of a man comfortable in his own body. She had never seen hair so dark—as glossy and black as a raven’s wing—or eyes so blue, all the more striking because his face was so deeply tanned by the southern sun. He was clean-shaven, with sharply sculptured cheekbones and a well-shaped, sensual mouth that curved slightly at the corners, as if he were suppressing a smile. He was not as conventionally handsome as her brothers or her husband, but as she watched him approach the dais, Joanna’s breath caught in her throat, for the first time understanding what the troubadours meant when they sang of “a fire in the blood.”

He knelt respectfully before Alfonso, saying smoothly, “As always, it gladdens my eyes to see you and your lovely lady, my liege.” Joanna bit her lip; naturally the wretched man would sound like one of God’s fallen angels. Low-pitched, with a slight huskiness, it was a voice meant for hot summer nights and honeyed wine and those sweet sins that paved the road to Hell.

Rising, Raimond gallantly kissed Sancha’s hand, and as Alfonso introduced him to the others, he acknowledged Cardinal Melior’s frigid greeting with elaborate courtesy that held undertones of mockery. He seemed sincere, though, when he kissed Berengaria’s hand and offered his sympathies for her husband’s misfortunes, saying that it was shameful to hold captive a man who’d taken the cross. Surprised, Berengaria favored him with a warm smile that faltered when she remembered this amiable, attractive man was suspect in the eyes of Holy Church.

“My lady Joanna.” Bowing gracefully, Raimond reached for her hand and Joanna felt a physical frisson at the touch of his fingers upon hers. His breath was hot on her skin and his kiss burned like a brand. She recoiled, jerking her hand from his, a gesture that was as involuntary as it was ill-mannered. She blushed deeply then, embarrassed by her own bad behavior. One of Raimond’s dark brows arched, ever so slightly, but he did not otherwise acknowledge her rudeness, continuing to regard her with a smile. Joanna sank back in her chair, no longer meeting his gaze. Never had she reacted to a man’s presence like this and, as flustered as she was by her body’s treacherous betrayal, what was even worse was that she was convinced Raimond de St Gilles was fully aware of the forbidden feelings causing her such distress.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

AUGUST 1193

Arles, Provence

J
oanna had presided over one of the most sophisticated courts in Christendom, learning at an early age to submerge the woman in the queen. Moreover, she was accustomed to attracting male attention and was an accomplished flirt. But much to her chagrin, she felt like a raw, green girl in the presence of Raimond de St Gilles. Suddenly tongue-tied and ill at ease, she could not banter with him as she’d done with men since she was fifteen. Because she was so disquieted, she barely managed icy civility, and her anger with herself intensified her discomfiture. She took some small measure of comfort that she was not the only one behaving badly in Raimond’s company. The worldly, elegant cardinal who’d accompanied them from Rome had become a man smoldering with anger; his courtesy was grudgingly given and he always seemed to be biting his tongue to keep from bursting out with accusations and recriminations. But he and Joanna were the only holdouts against the count’s easy charm.

Anna and Alicia had been smitten at once. Joanna kept a hawk’s eye on the girls, but she reluctantly admitted that Raimond had so far handled their infatuation very deftly, neither laughing at their clumsy attempts at flirtation nor encouraging them. To Joanna’s vexation, he and Mariam had acted as if they were kindred spirits from their first meeting, and by the time they parted from Alfonso and Sancha at Arles, he’d also won over Dame Beatrix. Even Berengaria’s straitlaced Spanish ladies were not immune to that smile and seductive voice; they expressed proper horror at his heretical views, but Joanna noticed that they watched him surreptitiously from the corners of their eyes and blushed whenever he glanced their way.

Joanna realized that she was just as guilty as Berengaria’s women, for although she kept her distance from Count Raimond, she could not keep her eyes from seeking him out. He was a chameleon, she concluded disapprovingly, changing his colors to match his audience. With the bewitched girls, he was gravely gallant. With the forthright Beatrix, he was respectful. He flirted shamelessly with Mariam, but not with Berengaria. With her, he employed a more subtle approach, asking her to tell him of Richard’s exploits in the Holy Land. Joanna was sure he did not give a flying fig for Richard or his triumphs, but Berengaria’s pride in her husband prevailed over her initial wariness, and Joanna was sure that she frequently forgot this was a man suspected of the most serious of sins.

Raimond seemed determined to make their journey as pleasurable as possible. In Arles, he’d taken them to see the ancient Roman amphitheater and the Baths of Constantine. From Arles, they’d traveled to St Gilles, the count’s birthplace, and he’d entertained them with stories of that celebrated saint, a hermit who’d lived for years in the forest near Nîmes with only a red deer for company. When the king’s hunters had pursued the hind, he’d tried to save her and had been wounded himself by a hunter’s arrow. The king had been so impressed by the recluse that he’d built a great abbey for him, named in his honor, which was now the first stop for those making the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Gilles was the patron saint of cripples, Raimond told the women, as well as the saint of lepers, beggars, and Christ’s poor. But when he added that St Gilles had never eaten the flesh of animals, consuming only vegetables and fruits, Cardinal Melior stiffened and excused himself. He later told Joanna and Berengaria that the Cathars also refused to eat meat and accused Raimond of deliberately baiting him with the story of this gentle saint. Even to Joanna, who was actively looking for reasons to find fault with Raimond, that seemed to be a stretch, and she and Berengaria agreed that they would try to keep the count and the cardinal apart whenever possible, for they had hundreds of miles still to go.

After leaving St Gilles, they stopped next at Montpelier, before continuing on to the walled town of Béziers. Although its viscount, Roger Trencavel, was not present, they were warmly welcomed by the citizens. Cardinal Melior still insisted that they limit their stay to a single night, for Béziers was said to be a haven for heretics. From Béziers, they rode west to Narbonne. When Eleanor and Berengaria had traveled from Navarre to join Richard in Sicily three years earlier, the Lady Ermengard, the Viscountess of Narbonne, had entertained them lavishly during their stay in her city, and Berengaria had been impressed by Ermengard, a woman who’d ruled without a man for more than fifty years. She was shocked now to discover that Ermengard had been deposed and forced to flee Narbonne by her own nephew, Pedro de Lara. Neither she nor Joanna was comfortable accepting the hospitality of the usurper viscount, but Pedro was insistent that they pass a few days as his guests. So was Cardinal Melior, for he wanted to meet with the Archbishop of Narbonne, and they soon found themselves settled into the riverside palace that had once been Ermengard’s.