Song Hereafter

by Jean Gill

  ‘If I survive, my Lord.’ The moneyer went to kneel by the tree.

  ‘You can stand,’ Estela told him.

  ‘Joy upon joy,’ he said, but his misery was that of a comedian and his eyes danced with mischief, as fired up with the dangerous game as Dragonetz himself. In truth, it was an easy way to win the riches of a lifetime. Or die.

  ‘If she kills you, your family shall have two diamonds. You have my word.’

  ‘Just as well they don’t know that then,’ quipped Halfpenny, through the side of his mouth, watching Estela judge both distance and aim.

  ‘Shut your eyes,’ advised Dragonetz. ‘The instinct to duck a weapon aimed at you is more likely to kill you than the weapon in this instance.’

  Halfpenny didn’t have to be asked twice.

  Once more the dagger flew true, crumbling bark into the hair of its human target as it quivered in the trunk, inches above him.

  ‘I do think I’ve pissed myself,’ observed Halfpenny but his companions ignored him.

  Estela was flushed with pride as she reclaimed her dagger and checked the blade.

  ‘I need a wet stone,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll look for one at the next river we cross,’ agreed Dragonetz, ‘and sharpen all the blades.’

  ‘That will make me feel much better,’ said Halfpenny. ‘I will feel better still if there are no trees from here on.’

  He did not get his wish. However, he did gain several denarii and provide much amusement for Dragonetz, who pointed out several times that Estela’s skills could be useful on the road. And unexpected. She would be their secret weapon.

  John Halfpenny took every opportunity to glean information from people heading south. He explained to one and all that he was heading home to England and wanted to know how the land lay. His working man’s clothes and foreign accent testified to the truth of his story, and he relayed the gossip he acquired to Dragonetz and Estela. Thus, they learned that while Aliénor was in Angers, her husband Henri was once more fighting on English soil to claim his crown.

  Increasing numbers of folk warned that another town approached or rather, as Dragonetz forced himself to realise, they were about to enter a town. Not just any town. They had reached Angers. Where a fiery Queen awaited their arrival, and where they must throw off the simplicity of travel for the sophistication of court.

  Estela was adamant. ‘Before you announce our arrival to anyone, I want new clothes and a bath! I am not attending court like this and you are not going without me.’

  Lodgings

  The advantage of lodging on the ground floor of an inn is that a bath can easily be brought to your room and the hot water required will not have lost its heat during a journey upstairs. Servants will more readily replenish the water should you wish to restore your aching body after a long journey. The wise traveller will have packed a small bottle of lavender oil and will add three drops of this healing medicament to the water, to soothe muscles, prevent infection should there be any minor cuts acquired on the road, and to perfume the body.

  A change of clothing is desirable as it is quite likely that you have spent weeks, nay months, in the same riding attire. If you have two days’ grace in one lodging, the soiled garments can be now be given to the washerwoman. Instruct that no starch should be used as little is more uncomfortable on horseback than stiff clothing. When these garments are returned, clean and dry, fold them neatly, pressing out all air to make them as small as possible and pack them carefully in your saddlebag. There is no knowing how soon you will be travelling again, or with how little notice.

  Chapter 11

  ‘What is she doing here?’ Aliénor demanded, two hectic spots of colour in her white cheeks.

  Not make-up, decided Estela, risking a glance upwards, assessing the full belly and breasts that could not be hidden by the Duchesse’s voluminous gown. Not just Duchesse but Queen again, Estela reminded herself, and like all queens, she wanted an heir. This time for England, not for France. The reason for Aliénor’s seclusion in Angers was reaching full term, if Estela was any judge. But that was not the reason for her anger. Estela and Dragonetz remained on their knees, eyes on the stone flags.

  The question had been flung at Dragonetz but, if she did nothing, Estela could see herself being banished from the ante-chamber and that was not going to happen if she could help it. Heaven knew what decisions would be taken without her in a private exchange between Dragonetz and Aliénor.

  ‘My Lady,’ she said softly, ‘I bear witness to my Lord Dragonetz’ loyalty in your service. He is not, and never was, an oath-breaker.’ She peeked up at Aliénor but the Queen’s gaze was fixed on Dragonetz, burning holes in him.

  He said nothing.

  ‘I needed you and you didn’t come!’ Aliénor’s voice cracked, as if she were an ordinary woman. But she wasn’t.

  Regal, she continued, ‘The messenger who never found you has received the payment he merits.’ Estela shivered. ‘But you should have made it your business to know what was happening in Aquitaine! Instead, you were seduced by Provence and forgot about us.’

  Dragonetz opened his mouth to speak but was silenced with one gesture. ‘No, there is nothing you can say. But you can act. I have summoned you here because I have a use for you.’

  Not because I need you. Estela’s knees could feel the stone’s cold through the linen of her new gown. What must it be like if you were old and had audience with Aliénor? Would she show pity for aching knees? Estela sneaked another look at the Queen’s face. The lines had hardened in the last three years. Strands of unruly red hair rebelled against the demure coif but the late stages of pregnancy added to an impression of goodwife. No sign of the passionate crusader or of ‘the whore of Antioch’. But no sign of pity either. A woman can be many things in one life-time.

  As if sensing Estela’s thoughts, or perhaps the babe’s movements, Aliénor put her hand on her belly in that protective gesture common to all pregnant women, and said, ‘You may stand.’

  She herself was seated in a carved wooden chair with arms, a chair for a queen. Estela pictured another Aliénor on a different throne. The birthing chair makes all women queens and all queens women. Her knees thanked her as she flexed them, standing, but carefully thinking herself invisible so there was no further suggestion that she leave the audience.

  Aliénor spoke only to Dragonetz. ‘The King my husband is in England to claim his crown. This he will do. And we will make our kingdom great so that my son’s fame will be trumpeted throughout Christendom.’

  If it’s a boy this time, thought Estela, remembering the disappointment of Aliénor’s two previous babies, both daughters. At least Petronilla had never been considered a disappointment.

  ‘Do you remember Bledri coming to our court?’

  Dragonetz nodded. ‘The bard from Gwalia? With tales of knights and monsters?’

  ‘Yes. He told me much about his country and its people.’ She hesitated, which was unusual enough to make Estela concentrate hard and keep very still. ‘I believe that the King underestimates the importance of Gwalia. He has many concerns, and he sees the Welsh as weak barbarians easily kept in place by the Marcher Lords. This is not the picture Bledri painted.

  Barbarians or not, the Welsh leaders could be important allies – or enemies – once we take our place on the throne of England. I want you to go to the leader in the south of Gwalia, and win him to Henri’s cause. The north is already predisposed to support us but the south could become a thorn in Henri’s side. Make yourself useful so that your counsel is trusted by them, win them to our cause. Find out all you can and report back to me.’

  There was stunned silence.

  Estela bit her tongue. She must not speak when Dragonetz was being asked – no, ordered – to give service to his Liege. She knew how much it would mean to him to clear his name of that accusation, oath-breaker, which clung to him even though it was untrue. Only Aliénor’s favour could restore his honour in his own country. But a voyage t
o the Isles of Albion? Where griffins and dragons lurked? He would need an army of three hundred men at least. Whatever the practicalities, he could not say no, and her heart sank.

  ‘I am yours to command,’ Dragonetz said, as he must, without hesitation. He knelt and kissed Aliénor’s hand. ‘I will return to Zaragoza and organize an army. I’m sure the Comte de Barcelone will allow me a hundred mercenaries, in addition to my men.’ He was calculating the total. ‘How many do you give me?’

  ‘None,’ replied the Queen. ‘My husband would never condone such a venture nor such expenditure.’ Was there bitterness? Already? ‘You go as a troubadour to visit a people famed for their music. As such, you will be made welcome. You were taken by a longing to visit the land of Bledri’s legends or some such romantic sentiment.’ Aliénor waved an airy hand as she condemned Dragonetz to a solitary quest more dangerous than any pilgrimage.

  ‘As a spy, then,’ stated Dragonetz, without any inflexion. ‘So be it. I shall ‘make myself useful’ and try to win these men to your – our – cause.’

  ‘Don’t try, Dragonetz. Succeed or stay there.’

  Estela tasted blood from biting her lip but she kept her peace.

  Dragonetz merely replied, ‘I shall escort my Lady back to Zaragoza and then embark by sea for wherever takes me closest to your destination. I will need some more details from you.’

  ‘No,’ said Aliénor. ‘You must go now. And I will arrange for your Lady’s return home. She must be eager to see her child once more.’

  Musca. Estela looked at her lover’s set jaw, imagined him riding away, leaving her again. Imagined going home, to Musca’s dimpled grin, Nici chasing his tail, her dispensary, proper bathing. Musca. Dragonetz was his own man, a warrior who always came home. She’d accepted that before. Why should this time be any different?

  ‘You may leave us to prepare for your journey, while Dragonetz and I talk politics,’ said the Queen, the woman who’d left her own toddler to lead Aquitaine’s armies to the Holy Land.

  It hurt more than her knees, but Estela knelt once more. ‘My Lady, I owe you a debt that can only be paid by offering you the same service you ask of Dragonetz. I beg you to hear me out!’

  Estela could only imagine the oaths that her lover was swearing, none of them fit for his Liege’s ears and she was grateful he couldn’t speak his mind. While he was working out what he could say politely, Aliénor nodded for her to continue.

  ‘You rescued me, you saved my life and you gave me a noble position, outside the control of those who wished me harm, and now I have the chance to repay you. Surely you will honour me by accepting my service?’ She rushed on, wanting to make her points before either of the others cut her off. ‘I am the troubadour you allowed me to become, not without reputation, and if I travel with Dragonetz it will be obvious even to suspicious minds that our journey is not military in objective. I also have healing skills, which could be useful.

  And,’ she finished, ‘my child is but young, the same age as when you put duty before your little one’s need of you, and you took the cross. My son is well cared for, and if I can serve the realm, then a few months’ absence will be as nothing.’ There! Dragonetz could hardly argue that she should be with Musca or he’d be insulting Aliénor. His drawn brows suggested he knew that and was not happy.

  ‘So be it.’ Aliénor wasted no more words on such a trivial matter, accepted Estela’s kiss of fealty and motioned her to stand. ‘Go you both. You leave tomorrow and ride to Barfleur, where a boat is waiting. The captain or his men can no doubt tell you how to continue the journey but you should seek the rulers of Cantref Mawr, the son of Gryffydd ap Rhys, in south Gwalia. Avoid the Marcher Lords or you will have no welcome from the Welsh. My husband knows well enough the bellicose disposition of the barons – they are not your affair.’

  ‘The more we know, the better, if we are travelling in this land,’ Dragonetz pointed out and Aliénor told them what she knew, or what she chose to tell, of relationships in her new kingdom. She was old in statecraft, heiress to Aquitaine from birth and Queen of France by her first marriage, and her depiction of Albion was an eye-opener to Estela. No innocent in politics herself, Estela knew nothing of the north, and if half of what she heard were true, dragons and griffins would be the least of their problems.

  When they were finally dismissed, Dragonetz asked, ‘Would you like your troubadour to sing for you tonight?’ He indicated Estela. ‘Or both your troubadours?’

  Aliénor stood and, from the dais, was tall enough to look the knight in the eyes as she told him, ‘I have a new troubadour. I replaced you with somebody better.’

  Dragonetz took the hit without any change in demeanor, bowed, took Estela’s arm and they left.

  As soon as the door swung to behind them, they looked at each other and said, ‘Ventadorn!’

  ‘So, you shall get the chance to hear your favourite troubadour,’ Dragonetz teased.

  ‘It has been a long time since I languished for a minstrel of quality,’ she responded in kind.

  He drew her into a dark recess, kissed her fiercely on the mouth. ‘Are you languishing yet?’ he asked her, low, urgent.

  She took his face between her hands, saw the shadows of his eyes, his cheekbones. She traced the tilt of his mouth but it was no longer smiling. ‘I know you’re angry,’ she whispered. ‘But in a few years Musca will need a father more than a mother. You are more likely to come back from this alive if I am there, to make you seem harmless, to tend to you if you are ill or wounded. And I can’t bear you going off again without me. Not so soon after...’

  He trapped her hands in his own, pulled her to him. ‘You think I’m harmless when you’re with me?’ he said. ‘Well, my Lady, you have a lot to learn.’

  A coughing fit alerted them to people coming their way and they separated, to walk sedately across the rooftop. If Estela was a little flushed as she passed a gaggle of Aliénor’s ladies inside the castle, the dark passageways left nobody the wiser.

  Dragonetz led her up one flight of spiral stairs to a doorway. She gasped as the door swung open onto the castle gardens, a green refuge above the hurly-burly below.

  An audience with a queen and a garden: but where the gardens in the Palace of Joy had pebbled patterns and channeled water, Angers had squares hedged by rosemary, filled by roses in bare earth, flouncing their scarlet and vermilion.

  She breathed in the heady sweetness. ‘The roses of Provence are the best for placing amongst clothes,’ she murmured, ‘when dried in August and sieved so that the worms fall through the holes.’

  Dragonetz took her hands. ‘This is no rose harvest, Estela, and the worms can kill. I shall worry about you all the time.’

  ‘We had this conversation in Zaragoza. If I don’t go, I shall worry about you all the time. And we are safer together. I meant what I said to Aliénor.’

  He shook his head but more in exasperation than in denial. He was not going to naysay her. Her complaint that she had been treated as a child must have made an impression. ‘It is another ten days on horseback.’ He paused. ‘And a sea crossing from Barfleur. I’ve heard the English Sea is beset with storms, choppy seas...’

  Estela’s stomach roiled just at the thought. ‘Then I will get used to rough seas,’ she said, remembering more of the Gyptian’s forked words. A straight path until you cross the sea. Maybe the sea voyage from Marselha to Barcelone had not been what the cards foretold. Not into calmer waters but into more troubles. Seas or troubles... real water. Then you will use Pathfinder to help make your choice. I see gold... no, not for you directly. Your lord should beware gold.

  Estela reached instinctively for the Runic brooch she wore as a buckle. Pathfinder, a gift from a Viking Prince, its runes suggesting the crossroads of life and its powers helping the bearer choose well. Nonsense, of course. All nonsense. But she wondered about the embroidered brocade she had left in Mary’s Sanctuary in Zaragoza. And she thought about gold.

  ‘Has Aliénor offered
you gold for this mission?’ she asked.

  His puzzled look answered her. ‘No. She is my Liege and has the right to demand service. Besides, we have gold enough.’ He frowned. ‘Do you feel we need more?’

  ‘No, indeed,’ she reassured him hastily. You expect him to share his thoughts with you and yet you hide so much? her conscience chid her. ‘In truth,’ she said, ‘you remember the fortune-teller? The Gyptian I saw again in a cave in les Baux? Who told Hugues des Baux of his grand lineage and made him a happy man? I did not want to worry you with all that she said, about me, about us...’

  And so she told him all: the prediction that he would be named Oath-breaker, how she’d dismissed it as impossible and yet, it had come true, in a fashion. She told him all the Gyptian’s words and described her own find in the dark tunnel, the symbol that linked the fabric with her oud and a Moorish palace wall, her offering.

  His face was dark, brooding. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You were busy with more important things. And I wanted to protect you from any worries.’ And deal with things myself she thought. Having opened up, she couldn’t stop without speaking her worst fear. ‘What if there is something terrible, something I don’t know about my parents? About my blood? Something awful that I have given to Musca without knowing? Something that would make it impossible for you and me?’

  He laughed.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ she told him.

  ‘It is. There is nothing you could discover that would change who we are. What did you fear?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘That’s the problem. I have no idea. What if...’ she searched for horrible possibilities, ‘what if we were brother and sister?’

  ‘Now you mention it, we do think much alike on some matters...’ His eyes danced and she glared at him for teasing her.