Almodis (32 page)

Ramon and I are onboard ship heading to Narbonne, taking Adalmoda to Toulouse for her marriage to Pierre, the son of the Count of Mergueil, and also to attend the investiture of Hughie as Abbot of Saint Gilles. We have, with some concern, left Pere in command of Barcelona in our absence. I recall that it is thirteen years since I made my escape from Toulouse and Pons. Thinking on it I slip my hand into my husband’s and he smiles at my touch. Before we left we received news that Guillem of Besalú had been assassinated by his own servants. I shudder to remember that I would have wed Lucia to such a monster. How cold and callous my own problems had made me, but then, I think, perhaps my comfort now with Ramon makes me soft and complacent. I take my hand out of his and grip the edge of the ship, breathing in the rush of cold, salty air, the breeze whipping strands of my hair into my mouth.

Adalmoda’s wedding is a joyful day, as is Hugh’s investiture as abbot the following week. Raingarde is at both events and I am so happy to spend time with her and to introduce her properly to my husband. She tells me about her daughter, Adelais’ betrothal to the Count of Cerdanya which she has just contracted in the village of Davejean in the Pyrenees. ‘Your old friend, Berenger of Narbonne, came with us as one of the witnesses. I’ve left her there,’ she says, ‘and her husband will conduct her to her new home. All my children gone now.’

‘I still have two more daughters to go,’ I say, telling her about Inés, who is ten, and Sancha, who is eight.

‘Well, I suppose children will keep coming if you have yourself three husbands and not one, Almodis,’ she teases me. I tell her something too, of my concerns regarding Pere.

Ramon and I travel on to spend some time with Raymond in Saint Gilles where I sign a grant to Moissac with Guillaume, and another to Cluny with Raymond. Raymond’s wife has recently presented him with a son, Bertrand, so I have four
grandchildren
now. News comes that William of Normandy has invaded England and become its new king.

‘I am thinking to set aside Mathilde,’ Guillaume tells me. ‘She gives me no children. I have opened negotiations for Emma of Mortain, William the Conqueror’s niece.’

I nod with approbation at this move. Yes, he must get heirs. ‘Be kind to Mathilde,’ I say to him. ‘Offer her the choice of a nunnery, another marriage, or going home to her family. Let her choose.’

‘Very well, Mother,’ he says, ‘for your sake, I will do as you ask.’

Raymond snorts at him and at me. He is happy in his marriage with his cousin Bertranda despite the pope’s opprobrium.

‘My Lady,’ Bernadette begins hesitantly, interrupting my reading.

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘I’ve found something out.’

‘Well, what is it Bernadette?’ I am growing impatient with all this delay.

‘I think it’s Piers,’ she blurts out, and starts crying.

‘Piers? What do you mean?’

‘I think he’s here in the dungeons. Been there a long time. He’s my boy’s father after all.’

I open my mouth and close it several times. ‘Well, let’s go and see.’

She looks at me in horror. ‘I can’t go down in no dungeons, Lady. I just thought I should tell you. Mayhap you would see your way to forgive him.’

‘Well I must see first if what you say is true. If you will not come with me then I will go and look alone.’ I walk swiftly through the castle to the dungeons. Bernadette tags along reluctantly behind me. There is a guard on the gate. ‘Open the gate.’

‘Begging your pardon, my Lady. I must obey the commands of Count Raymond only regarding this gate,’ says the guard, who is a youth, and looks very alarmed to see his usually boring guard duty disturbed in this way.

‘As you well know, boy, I am the mother of Count Raymond, I am the dowager Countess of Toulouse and Saint Gilles and the Countess of Barcelona. You will open the gate now or I will ensure that you are thrust behind it yourself.’

His eyes goggle at that and he swallows, looks at Bernadette, fiddles with an enormous bunch of keys at his waist and opens the gate for me with great difficulty. ‘There’s nobody in there, Lady, but one man,’ he says. ‘I give him his supper and water …’

I push him out of my way, take a lit torch that is set in the wall and move down into the darkness, hearing the scattering of small creatures in the dark as I move forward. I turn to look back and see that the guard and Bernadette are still huddled at the gateway watching me. At the end of the narrow passage is an arched entry to a dank stone chamber and here are the remains of the trencher and water jug. Rats run off the crumbs at my approach and black beetles scuttle back into the damp walls. I step over the jug and into the space beyond. There is a grate high above my head, letting in a little light and against the far wall I can just see a wooden palette and the huddled shape of a man. ‘Hello,’ I say tentatively. There is no response. Perhaps he is dead. I move a little closer and hold the torch to try to see the prisoner. I see that he is filthy and in rags, manacles around his ankles attach him by a long, heavy chain to the wall. It would give him scope to reach the jug at the archway and to drag himself around this space, but no more. His arm is flung over his face and I cannot see it. I am loathe to go any closer but I must know if it is indeed Piers. ‘Piers?’ I say. The shape shifts at that. He moves his arm away and reveals a grime-covered, aged face. Not Piers then. He sits up slowly and with obvious pain and shrinks further against the wall. Poor man but perhaps he has deserved such punishment. ‘What
is your name?’ I ask gently. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ although in truth I am afraid myself. If he is a murderer or a madman the chain would not stop him from suddenly throttling me. I move back a few paces, anxiously. ‘What is your name?’ I insist.

‘Water,’ he croaks out at last.

I reach back for the jug which still has some liquid in it and pass it to him, trying not to think of the rats and the bugs that have supped on it before him. His hands are black with grime and there is a stench coming from him that makes me gasp when he moves.

‘You don’t know me?’

‘No, I …’ I stop. A cloud has cleared the sun and a ray of light hits the massive stone blocks above his head, where he is leaning. His eyes. His eyes are pale blue and I do know them. I am filled with a great grief and cannot speak for a long time, just looking on him. ‘Oh Piers,’ I say eventually. Images of us as
children
fighting in the stable in Aquitaine, his silky brown hair, his wenching, his skill with horses, hounds and falcons, rush through my head. ‘Piers.’

‘Lady Almodis.’ I take the jug from him and his voice has gained some strength, so that I recognise his voice now too, but this is a wreck of a man I am looking at, not the handsome knave who accompanied me into Toulouse for the Easter Assembly so long ago, before I ever married, before Hugh and Pons and Ramon. ‘Piers.’ I don’t know what to say except keep repeating his name. An image of my father, flashes before me and in the shape of his head, his eyes, even in this wretched condition, I see my father’s echo. I always knew it was there. ‘Oh, Piers, I am so sorry to find you so wretched. I will take care of you now. It was Bernadette who found out that you were here and sent me to you,’ I say. ‘How long?’ I am afraid to hear his answer. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘I hardly know that,’ he says. ‘I kept some tally sticks in the beginning,’ he gestures to a pile of whittled sticks by the bed, ‘but couldn’t go on eventually. I hardly know mistress.’

‘When did you enter in here?’

‘When your old husband died, Lady, and your son became the lord here.’

Six years I think but do not say it aloud. ‘It has been hard for you,’ I say inadequately. What words can comprehend it?

‘The cold sucked me into sleep night after night,’ he says, ‘but I wanted to stay awake to see how dark dark is.’

‘Bernadette,’ I yell, ‘get down here now!’

Piers looks afraid.

‘It’s alright,’ I soothe him. ‘I am going to find the key for these manacles and to bring you out of here, but I don’t want you left alone whilst I do that.’

His eyes are huge in his wasted face. ‘Out?’ he says and my heart knots in my chest.

‘Bernadette!’

She is coming through the arch with the boy-guard holding her hand and a torch above his head, and she is staring
open-mouthed
at Piers.

‘Do you have the key to these manacles?’ I demand of the boy.

‘No Lady. That’s the Lord Raymond that has them.’

‘Very well. I will go and fetch them. Bernadette, you will stay here and talk with Piers for a while. Tell him of your son.’ She is shaking her head and weeping and wailing but I grip her by the shoulders and sit her down on the bug-infested bed beside him, this poor skeleton. ‘Bernadette!’ I slap her lightly round the face and she looks at me shocked. ‘Take care of him!’ I tell her firmly. ‘Boy, go and fetch a jug of clean water for him, bring another man and a stretcher.’

‘Yes, Lady.’

‘Leave the torch here for them and the door open. Bernadette, if you desert him, I will dismiss you,’ I say firmly and then in a gentler voice: ‘I will be back, Piers.’

In the hall, I pause to send Dia to fetch a doctor to my chambers and to send a messenger to my son, Abbot Hugh, to please come to me quickly and then pass swiftly up the hall to Raymond.

‘Mother?’

‘I need the key to Piers’ manacles.’

‘What?’ he says, rising to his feet.

‘Now, Raymond, I appreciate that you did it for me and that Piers should have been punished for his treachery but six years
is enough. He is dying and I intend for him to die in peace and comfort, with my forgiveness.’

‘He is my prisoner and I will see fit …’ he begins, but then thinks better of it, looking at my face. ‘He does not deserve your forgiveness,’ he says, handing the key to me.

I do not reply but turn on my heel and go back to the dungeon where Bernadette, bless her, has forgotten her fears of the dark and the spiders and is wiping Piers’ face with her best white apron and holding the water jug for him.

‘Oh Lady, he’s very ill,’ she says, looking up at my entrance.

‘Yes.’ I unlock the manacles and remove them as gently as I can, trying not to retch at the stench of the wounds underneath. The young guard is back with the stretcher and Rostagnus, and they lift Piers up and carry him to my chamber. There Bernadette and Dia prepare a bath tub, padded with soft clothes, set before the fire. Rostagnus lifts him from the bed and into the tub as if he were a feather, and holds his head above the water, for he has no strength at all. He lets out a groan as the warm water stings his wounds, but after a while he looks up at me and attempts a grin, that old, blue-eyed grin. Oh the change, the ruin of his beauty is so great I can hardly bear to see it, but I grin back and hold onto my tears. ‘Welcome back to the world, Piers, you knave,’ I say.

His face is serious now. ‘Forgive me Almodis? I have regretted it and not only because your son threw me in that hole.’

‘I do forgive you,’ I say, and then in a low voice I ask him, ‘and will you forgive me?’

He looks at me uncomprehending.

‘I should have acknowledged that you are my half-brother, Piers. My father should have acknowledged it, but when he did not, I should have done so.’

I look at his decimated mouth, so beautiful once, that had kissed so many foolish maids. ‘Oh Piers, I am so sorry. What have we done to each other, brother?’ Tears trickle over the bones of his cheeks when I call him that name.

My son, Abbot Hugh arrives. So strange to see my boy with his tonsure and his habit, but also with a great authority and
cheerfulness
about him. ‘My Lady Mother,’ he says, kissing me on the forehead, ‘what trouble are you in now? Last time you had me
crawling through tunnels and swimming a river. Some more of the same?’ He glances with concern at Piers who is being lifted back onto the bed, where Dia begins to lay salve on his wounds.

I take Piers’ hand. ‘You will be well again,’ I tell him, though I know I lie.

And so does he. ‘What traces am I leaving in the world, Almodis? A few strands of hair, drops of my sweat, ongoing
resonances
and vibrations of sounds I made in that dungeon, my thoughts of another chance at life still there, absorbed and stored by the rocks like a stony library. My absence is waiting there for me, mistress, like the negative space left by lead in a mine, like my open grave.’

‘No,’ I say to him firmly. ‘No.’

Hugh has taken Piers back to the abbey now where he will care for him. Bernadette told Piers that he has a son, a lovely strong son, Charles, and he smiled at that and called her ‘little Bernadette, little Parisienne’.

Raymond thinks I am too soft. ‘I would have strung him up if I’d known you’d come along and let him out,’ he says.

‘He will not live,’ I say, ‘and he is my kin, your kin.’

‘Would he have come and let you out of that anchorite cell my father intended to put you in?’

We have been back in Barcelona barely a week, when a letter follows us from Raingarde, sent by fast messengers:

Most likely my own sons, I think, especially Raymond.
Carcassonne
is the lynchpin of all the trade routes. It will be a rich prize and yes, she is right, they will all seek to take it from her. Things are changing. Men challenge the right of women to rule now and the church argues against it. There is likely to be war and instability.

I read all this and I think, oh yes, sister, I must help you and your daughters, I owe you that and much more besides. I put aside my anger with Guillaume: to seduce his cousin and then abandon her to her fate because he has a rich wedding on the horizon with the niece of William, King of England, Duke of Normandy! What is to be done to undo all this? I have ideas and stand to begin to implement them, but then I still myself. This time, I will speak with Ramon, act with him, ask his counsel and try to follow it if it should differ from mine. Do my best at least. Well I will listen to it at any rate.

When I returned from my escapades in Lusignan he could have greatly resented my lies and defiance of him, but he did not. Another husband would have taken a rod to a wife who acted as I did. He would have been within his rights. Of course our marriage would have been over for me if he had, but he did not. Instead he forgave me, laughed and marvelled at my adventures, commiserated me on my losses, was impressed by my
resourcefulness
. ‘Don’t do it again, though,’ he’d said to me. ‘I did not know what to do with myself each day you were away. I was in such terrible anxiety for you.’

I go to seek out my husband and discuss my sister’s dilemma with him.

‘I don’t want Cerdanya laying claim to Carcassonne, building up a new power-base for himself,’ he says. ‘Clearly your sister is right, Ermengard and Raymond Bernard Trencavel, should take the city, but they will be beset with counter-claims that will be supported in arms.’

‘You, yourself, are one of the potential heirs, through Ermessende.’

‘I don’t intend to lay claim to it, against your sister.’

‘I have a plan,’ I tell him, and he raises his eyebrows. ‘See what you think of it.’

Happily Ramon has concurred with my plan, for if he had not I suspect my new-found wifely obedience would have dissipated fast. Ramon sent an emissary with a heavy guard to Cerdanya carrying bags of gold, 4,000
mancusos
, and the emissary has returned with my niece, Adelais, who is big with child, and with a quit-claim on Carcassonne signed by the count.

‘Well, that was quite easy,’ says Ramon, congratulating me on my strategem.

Adelais begins greatly ashamed when she first arrives but I tell her that to love a man and to bear a child is no shame, it is the way of the body of a woman. I am not so kind in a letter to my son, who claims that he has no way to know that the child is actually his and is proceeding with his marriage plans to Emma of Mortain. When Adelais’ child is born, I will send them back to Raingarde and she must make shift to live with her abandonment. ‘Your mother and I will take care of you,’ I soothe her, ‘I will have five grandchildren now.’ But she knows that her reputation is irretrievably damaged and her child will be an unacknowledged bastard.

Bernadette tells me that Pere’s court contingency are
whispering
in corners that my niece is a whore, like her aunt. I do my best to shield Adelais from these calumnies, although it is clear from the cold way that some courtiers look at her, what they are thinking. I resist the temptation to retaliate by pointing out to Pere that his own wife’s belly remains flat and girlish.

Raingarde has drawn up formal charters acknowledging Ramon and myself as the overlords of Carcassonne. Guillaume and
Raymond
have objected of course, since Carcassonne was at least nominally in their suzerein. Guillaume, I have silenced with the pressure of his guilt over Adelais and the promise of some gold. I have written to Raymond to tell him that Ramon and I intend to take possession of the city and install our son Ramon Towhead as
count. He has not replied. He knows that a Barcelonese garrison in the city would not be so easy a target as my sister presented alone. Raymond has allied himself with Archbishop Guifred and together they are eeking out their domains little by little.

The other contenders to Carcassonne will have heard of the changed situation and will, I hope, draw back and decide that though rich, Carcassonne, is not worth a confrontation with us. I have sent another letter to Guillaume and Raymond making them a very generous offer of a share each in the trade routes and rights through the city. I hope this will work. The thought of
warring
with my own sons is not a pleasant one and I sense that once in the battlefield, Raymond might show the resilience of his
mentor
, Geoffrey. Everything depends on our acting quickly, with decision and on a show of force. Our garrison troops are already assembled in the city and Ramon and I will travel there next year to take the oaths of allegiance from all the main castellans on the routes between here and Carcassonne.

On the first day of March 1068 Ramon and I invested Ermengard and Raymond Bernard Trencavel as viscounts of Carcassonne, with the condition that the
usufruct
of the city’s rights remain with my sister. We have had to pay off her Carcassonne nephews but they came a great deal cheaper than the Count of Cerdanya.

Ramon is pleased to advance the Barcelonese frontier in Languedoc beyond Narbonne and to have his trade routes thus assisted. I think there will be some benefit too in demonstrating to Pere that he will indeed inherit Barcelona if my sons are
suitably
invested with rights elsewhere. Raingarde has grown very fond of Towhead during his time of training in the region and is not displeased to see her nephew take up her husband’s and her son’s title.

‘Though I have doubts about Pere, Almodis,’ Ramon says to me.

‘Doubts?’ I have plenty of doubts too, but it is not for me to criticise his son.

‘I do not know that he will rule Barcelona well.’

I stay silent for a while. ‘It is his right; he is the heir. We must help him to learn to rule well.’

We are due to begin our journey to Carcassonne when a great tragedy befalls us and delays our departure. Our son, Arnau, has died. Ramon and I are inconsolable together. Now I am like Raingarde again: we have both lost our sons this year, and I long to be with her. Ramon understands my longing and resumes the plans for our journey. The doctors can give us no explanation. Arnau was well and then suddenly he complained of pains in his stomach and was dead so quickly.

‘It could be poison,’ Dia tells me when we are alone and I am done crying, cried dry.

‘Poison? No. Why would anyone poison Arnau, a little boy?’

‘For practice,’ says Dia.