Troubadour

by Isolde Martyn

  ‘Let’s hear the rest, shall we?’ Richart nodded to the messenger to continue.

  ‘They put a rope halter about my lord’s neck and bade him kneel before the relics on the altar and then Brother Milo scourged him.’

  ‘Per Crist!’ Richart winced. His left hand unwittingly rose to his throat. Nor was he the only man in the room to be shocked by the humiliation of the lord to whom they owed fealty. Some of the councillors with Cathar families were looking pale.

  ‘Any fool can see this is meant as a warning to the whole of Occitan,’ Seguinus declared, eyeing them as though he already smelled the bonfires. ‘So, sir knight, is your master fully pardoned now?’

  ‘Yes, my lord bishop. When the shaming was over, Brother Milo declared the excommunication was lifted and my lord was led down to kneel and confess his penitence before the tomb.’

  ‘Tomb?’ exclaimed Tibaut.

  ‘Why, yes, sir, the new saint and martyr’s tomb.’

  Richart suppressed an oath, exchanging a glance with his castellan.

  ‘And what day was this?’ Henri asked.

  ‘Two days ago, sir. I have nothing more to tell.’

  Richart set a hand upon the man’s shoulder. ‘You have our thanks. I will give you letters to carry back to Lord Raymon later.’

  After the door had closed behind the knight, most of the councillors of Mirascon stood stunned. Thank God for Alys! Richart thought, sensing their fear. His strategy in travelling to England had borne some fruit. He now had John as an alternative overlord.

  ‘How could they shame so great a lord?’ the provost was muttering. ‘I have every respect for Holy Church, but to humiliate a ruler in the common gaze is to weaken people’s respect for temporal authority.’

  ‘True, but there is a precedent,’ Castellan Henri pointed out. ‘King Henry, the English king’s father, was made to do penance for the murder of his archbishop, Thomas Becket, even though he denied he gave the order.’

  ‘Eggs and omelettes,’ Tibaut muttered. ‘There’s wisdom in it, see. By going to Lyons all freshly blessed and pardoned, Lord Raymon hopes he may forestall the crusade.’

  ‘Then God give him eloquence!’ the provost exclaimed, and there was a mutter of assent around the chamber.

  Richart frowned. ‘A goodly hope, Provost, but I do not believe for an instant that the crusaders will turn tail and take their war machines home. Imagine great boulders and rubble tumbling down a mountainside. How do you stop that? These northern louts are bellowing for loot and blood. The question is, whose?’

  ‘Ours!’ Seguinus’s fine robes slithered loudly as he turned to look Richart in the face. ‘You must give the order to expel the heretics from Mirascon before it’s too late!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed someone else. ‘You’ve delayed long enough already, my lord.’

  You want me to lose half our people?

  ‘Perhaps it will be for the greater good of Mirascon if we do leave,’ mumbled one of the merchants, whose wife and sons were Cathars. That started an uproar.

  Richart slammed his fist upon the board. ‘Listen to me! As I have said before, the pope and his cardinals may see this as a war on heretics, but the mercenaries and routiers following the cross want all our lands and our riches. That is why I have made this alliance with King John to safeguard Mirascon.’

  ‘Then you should wed Lady Alys as soon as possible and dispense with all these frivolous festivities,’ muttered Seguinus.

  ‘The joust will bring all the knights in Mirascon together, Uncle, and yes,’ Richart murmured, remembering the pleasure of Alys’s beautiful body against his, ‘the wedding shall be brought forward.’

  Chapter Twelve

  But how dear did my curiosity cost me!

  Héloïse to Peter Abelard

  She was to be taken to the dungeons? Then she realised it was to be an act of charity.

  ‘Demoiselles, I wish I had been consulted,’ she complained in Norman French. ‘Surely there are lepers to visit. They are more deserving than thieves.’

  While the young women were immediately all compliance, the dwarf’s eyes glittered with impatience. ‘The gaoler is expecting you, madame,’ he insisted. ‘He’s even dusted.’

  Only Adela recognised the vicious fins and teeth below the mild words. Was he forcing her to see the cruel manacles and shackles that would weigh her down before she was hanged or worse?

  ‘Very well,’ she declared, ‘but there is no need for you to escort me, Derwent. I’ll not have you making fun of any poor wretches.’ His face did not change, yet the swift intake of breath betrayed his annoyance. ‘What is this truly about?’ she challenged in English.

  His lips became pouty, he drew her aside and beckoning her to bend down, whispered, ‘When Lord Richart fought together with Hugh de Lusignan against King John, there were prisoners taken. The king asked me to find out if any of his men are being held here.’ Then falling on his knees, he fulsomely kissed her shoes. ‘Stop looking so squeamish, sweetheart. I thought you sprang off dangerous precipices without a qualm. Let’s gambol down to Hell, shall we?’

  It was needful to look amused and in control: the soldiers and demoiselles had been watching the exchange with puzzled expressions.

  ‘So you are John’s spy?’

  ‘No, I am a fool, but if there are poor wretches here, perhaps their release is negotiable before you take their place. Satisfied?’

  ‘Well,’ conceded Adela, gesturing to the gaoler to lead her into the darkness of the keep, ‘at least I’ll discover which way is out.’

  Despite the plentiful droppings left by the traffic of vermin across a decade of compacted straw, the spiders cobwebbing the mortar crevices, and the stink (a combination of piss, excrement, torch smoke and the unwashed), it was better than she expected. Many cells were empty. There were no cages, no naked felons hanging by their wrists from slime-oozing walls, and the captive foot soldiers, though flea-bitten and very hairy, were not living skeletons, more like overfed barn fowl. She promised to intercede for them.

  The rest of the prisoners seemed to be local men. Two were demented. One fellow informed her he was part of the Holy Trinity. Another reckoned he was St Peter. Some of the wretches’ stories were heartbreaking and she found herself promising to beg the vicomte to release a father of ten. Meagre chance, she thought sadly, as the poor man kissed her hem in gratitude, she’d probably be joining him.

  Derwent looked to be growing bored. Well, a pox on that! But as soon as everyone had climbed up to courtyard level again, he tugged at her sleeve. ‘I’ve heard whisper of a special prisoner in the tower,’ he murmured. He was eyeing another coil of steps leading off the passageway. A young soldier in helmet and hauberk stood guarding the bottom stair.

  Adela sighed. ‘You may be right, Derwent, but I think we have all had enough.’ Her demoiselles were checking their draperies for stowaways. However, the tiresome dwarf edged behind her. ‘Insist we go up, my sweet, or I will betray you to your high and mighty bridegroom this instant. Make your choice.’

  ‘I hope you get a hundred fleas from this.’ With a façade of a smile, she gestured her intention to climb the other stairs.

  ‘Not possible!’ The sergeant and gaoler insisted unhappily. A flood of Occitan reasoning poured forth and seeing their noble lady still uncomprehending, the young soldier twirled a finger at his temple. ‘He says it’s just a madman,’ Adela muttered in English, ‘and I’ve already met the Holy Ghost this morning.’

  The sergeant changed from his broad local dialect to a limping Norman French. ‘A long way up, hein? You get tired. We take the bread up for you, yes, madame? You eez finished now?’

  A sharp dig of elbow from the dwarf forced her to proclaim: ‘No, a lunatic is as deserving as the rest. However, so many of us will no doubt unnerve him. Demoiselles, you may wait outside.’ Relieved, the maidens passed the basket to Derwent and fled to fresher, saner air.

  ‘My lord, ’e not pleased, bona domna,’ warned the sergean
t, but seeing Adela’s resolute expression, he gave orders for the gaoler and other soldiers present to remain below, and then lighting a fresh torch of pitch and twigs from the nearest flambard, he passed it to the younger guard to lead the way up the light-starved stairwell.

  Up indeed! This would be the highest Adela had ever climbed, higher than Corfe’s keep, and cursed perilous, too, in her kirtle and petticotes. Her breath became short and she kept the sergeant queued behind her as she paused by one of the arrow-slit embrasures. ‘Afraid I’ll push you down?’ she gasped at Derwent as he waited on the whorl of steps beyond her head.

  ‘Out of practice, are we, darling? Shall I find a king to chase you?’

  Adela made a face at him and once her heart was beating reasonably, she recommenced her ascent. Curiosity climbed with her. Who was Richart de Mirascon holding in this tower? Maybe Derwent was right, there was an important secret here.

  The spiral finally yielded to a small landing and the spluttering torchlight revealed a single, iron-plated door.

  ‘E! You careful weeth this one, yes,’ the sergeant panted as he passed his pike to the younger guard while he found the key.

  Adela managed a stately nod although every instinct was urging her to retreat. Derwent, bowing and smirky, waited for her to precede him. The honest anxiety of the two soldiers unnerved her further. Here be dragons!

  The sudden assault of sunlight was unexpected; the whitewashed walls were dazzling, but her blood ran cold as she saw the iron cage.

  It took up most of the circular floor. Inside, at a small writing table, below the horizontal iron bars, a man sat hunched over a book. He was clad in a worn leather brigandine. Long greasy grey hair hid his face and he made no attempt to look up. The skin of his pale hands, resting beside the book, was freckled with age blemishes, and where the man’s sleeves were pushed back, small red blotches—bites from fleas and bed mites—stippled his bony arms. It was like staring at a stiffened corpse. Was the man alive?

  He had to be. There was a platter of gruel, quite decent from the look of it, barely congealed at his feet. Was the prisoner starving himself? One of the man’s ankles bore a manacle and from it snaked a long, iron chain, which tethered him to the wooden floor but enabled him to reach a straw palliasse. Beside him stood a winter brazier, empty of coals. Above the cage, the whitewash around the ceiling’s louvre was stained by smoke. The shutters of the window grilles either side of the tower stood open but the room stank of fresh excrement from a pail on the far side of the cage.

  If this was a violent madman, who in the name of Heaven was he? One of Richart’s family?

  Derwent recovered his astonishment. ‘Good of you to invite us in, sirrah,’ he muttered. He hooked out an empty wooden platter that was lying upside down. Still transfixed by the horror of the cage, Adela fumbled in the basket, dropped the largest piece of remaining bread onto the plate and carried it round to face the prisoner. ‘Good morrow!’ she said, manoeuvring it sideways through the bars.

  The captive raised his head and stared disparagingly at her as though she was yet more vermin come to defecate upon his floor.

  ‘Don’t think much of the hospitality, do you?’ murmured Derwent, keeping his distance.

  ‘Ma domna,’ begged the sergeant, joining her. ‘You come away now, yes?’

  Yes, before she retched. ‘White bread,’ she managed in Occitan and turned to leave.

  ‘Go piss on your white bread, you harlot!’

  The unexpected snarl of Norman French halted her. It was all too much. Like a bowstring too worn, too strained, her temper snapped. ‘Then go hungry, you pathetic cur!’ she swore in English.

  Shock momentarily lashed the prisoner then he rallied. ‘Wait, madame!’ He rose to his feet. Irony serrated his rusty tone: ‘It’s not often that I entertain a lady. What is an Englishwoman doing in the arsehole of France?’

  She could see the fellow’s features better now, the saggy patches of ashen skin edging out from his jowls, the pouches beneath the reddened eyes and—God ha’ mercy—the smooth, hairless cheeks. The prisoner was a woman!

  Why? Even Derwent seemed stunned.

  ‘Lost your tongue, little English girl? Who are you?’ The marble-vein eyes were trying to terrify her. Beside her, the younger soldier shifted his grip on the pikestaff with menace, but she gestured the youth to stay back.

  ‘This is Lady Alys, Mirascon’s future vicomtesse,’ the sergeant proclaimed in Occitan.

  The iron links clanked as the madwoman strained forwards, craning her neck in curious fashion as though she wanted to unroll her tongue like some monstrous toad and flick one of them through the bars and down her gullet.

  ‘A-And what is your name?’ Adela asked in Norman French, trying not to wince at the stale odour as the woman moved.

  ‘Take your pick. L’Aiguille, Jeanne d’Athée. Like my brothers, I have—had—my own band of mercenaries.’ Beast-like, she curled back her lip and hissed at the two soldiers. ‘Spilling blood was a family calling.’ Her stare found Adela again. ‘Heard of me, have you, little madame?’

  ‘One of the Athée!’ Adela caught her breath and exchanged glances with Derwent. Girard d’Athée’s family were the most notorious mercenaries in Christendom, King John’s cruellest captains. Even her forgiving father had spoken of them with venom. In King Richard’s time, it was said that mothers in Paris had whispered to unruly infants that Girard would spike them on his sword if they did not behave.

  ‘One of King John’s forgotten friends, madame.’ The bitterness in the woman’s voice would have soured the ocean to bile. ‘A curse on John Softsword!’ she spat. ‘May his tongue shrivel and his prick fall into the fires of Satan.’

  Well, Adela could agree with that. ‘I do not understand how you come to be here.’

  ‘Sold by de Lusignan to the old vicomte like a side of beef at market.’

  Expensive beef. This must be about ransom, a lucrative practice by brigands and princes; the Holy Roman Emperor had purchased King Richard from Duke Leopold of Austria and bled England of all its gold.

  ‘But surely your family must be rich enough to ransom you? Girard d’Athée is one of King John’s seneschals.’

  ‘Your future husband doesn’t want to ransom me. No one knows I’m here.’

  ‘Madame.’ The soldiers were fidgeting to leave. Conscious of her duty as Lady Alys, Adela asked why the prisoner did not have garments appropriate to her gender.

  ‘What!’ L’Aiguille filled the room with an ungrateful cackle of laughter. ‘I’m a soldier, madame. I gave up foolish skirts when I was twelve.’

  The scorn, as though any woman who wore feminine clothes was a milksop, felt like a slap across the face. In reply, ‘Lady Alys’ tried for hauteur. ‘Farewell, then. I shall pray for you, even though your family have rivalled Death in ending so many lives.’

  ‘Pray for me?’ The mercenary’s eyes burned. Springing forwards, she uttered such an indignant yell of fury that Adela sprang back. The young guard readied the staff.

  ‘No!’ Adela ordered, staying his arm.

  An ugly chortle broke from the prisoner. ‘These lads can kick, too. Don’t you want to see them break my ribs, pretty Alys?’

  ‘Not particularly. Let me send a chaplain to you and if you show true contrition,’ she added, ignoring the prisoner’s upright finger, ‘maybe the vicomte may lower your ransom.’

  ‘Oh, Devil take you, will you make me spew? That hellspawn? The firking cur that you’re about to open your legs for? I-am-not-up-for-ransom, did you not hear me? Pah, if you want to show mercy, girl, ask the bastard to release me as your morning gift! Ask him when he’s nuzzling your paps.’

  ‘I certainly shan’t be thinking of you at that moment,’ Adela answered dryly, trying not to show that the insults had drawn blood. ‘And all this raving earns you little sympathy.’

  ‘Then piss off, you rich whore! I don’t want your pity OR YOUR BREAD!’ The woman returned to the table and stooped. Her bowl h
urtled through the air and crashed against the bars but its contents knew no limits.

  ‘Ohhh!’ Not fast enough, Adela stared down in astonished dismay at the globs of meat and gravy staining her gorgeous kirtle, and still the prisoner was not done. Jabbing a finger, with hate seething in every syllable, L’Aiguille snarled, ‘I curse you, you trollop! May you bring Richart de Mirascon nothing save sorrow and a barren cradle!’

  The venomous words might have trickled off the real Alys, but Adela’s guilty mind was already providing grooves and pits to harbour the poison. ‘Perhaps if you had not spent a lifetime killing people,’ she whipped back over her shoulder as she headed for the door, ‘then God might hear your anguish.’

  L’Aiguille answered with an insulting thrust of pelvis.

  Alys would leave! As Adela reached the threshold, the sergeant gave a snarling order. He was opening the cage.

  ‘No!’ Adela shouted, running back as the soldier charged in and drove the blunt end of his pike into L’Aiguille’s belly. As the woman staggered back in pain, he cracked the staff across her shoulders, sending her sprawling, face first. Now he was aiming his boot at the creature’s ribs.

  ‘Enough!’ Adela charged into the cage and pitched herself against him. The sergeant was trying to pull her back and L’Aiguille had grabbed the end of the staff.

  A male curse ripped the air and it wasn’t the sergeant or Derwent that seized Adela by the waist and hauled her from the struggle but a furious Richart de Mirascon. He gave an appalled look at her dishevelled state and snarled at Derwent, ‘Escort my lady down! GO!’ and turned on his men. ‘As for you,’ he growled, ‘lock the cage! Now!’

  Outside the door, Adela, shaken from the violence, leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths of air. Why had she not listened to her instincts? The image of L’Aiguille’s fingers scraping like claws upon the boards stayed with her.

  ‘At least it’s fresh gruel,’ muttered Derwent, tugging her sleeve tippet towards to the stairs. ‘If this was Corfe, the bitch would be dead from hunger.’