Adela! Richart bleakly rubbed a hand across his eyes and turned. The dwarf had eased himself to sitting, dangling his short legs over the wooden vine leaves. He brazenly flicked a scuff of dust towards Henri.
‘Why, you—’
Richart held up a calming hand. ‘Tell us why you and Adela visited the prisoner in the tower against my orders.’
The little man’s heels danced against the wooden latch. ‘I persuaded Adela that a lunatic was worthy of her charity. As to why?’ His lower lip jugged, he stared up at the arms of Mirascon painted on the wall. ‘Curiosity. “Knowledge is power” as I told Adela. Is not luck making an informed guess?’ A grin at Henri. ‘Ah, I read obtuseness in your eyes, soldier.’
‘You contemptuous little runt,’ growled the castellan. ‘Give him a good whippin’, I reckon.’
Derwent’s eyes gleamed. ‘You think I helped rescue the mercenary, my lord Vicomte? That I’m John Plantagenet’s agent? No, not I! This is what I think of L’Aiguille, her bloody-handed kinsmen and the godless King of England.’
And he spat.
A brothel? was her first thought as she was emptied out of the sack. However, it looked to be the porter’s chamber of a gatehouse. They had been on the road for several days, a company of some half-dozen horsemen, and the rest clad as priests, with L’Aiguille in their midst, still garbed as a nun. Yesterday the company had divided and now only Giso and his servant had charge of Adela and they had brought her into a city. Could this be Lyons?
‘Journey’s end,’ Giso informed her as he tossed a coin at the porter. His religious garments had been replaced with dark leggings and an ale-brown tunic edged with braid—more the travelling merchant now with his beaked hat, riding boots and several days’ stubble.
He gestured to his so-called servant to cut her bonds.
Damp from the rain, feeble from starvation and half-choked from the gag that had silenced her for days, Adela had neither voice nor strength to protest as Giso’s burly-boned servant forced her to follow his master across the puddled bailey of a castle into a one-storey building—a kitchen? Why?
The heat inside was oppressive, a miasma of wood smoke, greasy steam and fulsome garlic. Two great hearths on opposite walls glowed with red-hot embers and the spits were threaded with fowls for midday dinner. The struggling aroma of fresh bread caused a celebration in Adela’s belly, but her hope fled instantly; this was a place of servitude. The stench of fear hung in the air and the lowest menials, some dozen or so, seemed like wizened plants deprived of sun and nourishment.
The working trestles looked to be poorly scrubbed, dusty skins of onions, house leeks and garlic flaked the flagstones, and the only creatures concerned with clearing scraps were a couple of leggy dogs. One of them was licking the foot of a beef carcass, which lay sprawled across a chopping block with a peloton of flies feeding off its skin.
‘Well, well, Giso de Ponthieu!’ A large mastiff of a man swaggered unsteadily forward. A swipe of palm on his haunches and he flung out a welcoming hand. ‘Haven’t seen you here in … in a long while, you plaguey rogue. Who are you working for now, the Holy Roman Emperor or the Lord of Darkness?’
‘Master Bernart, I serve whoever pays best and at the moment it is, shall we say, an abbess. Excellent to see you in such good health, and in your usual happy state,’ he added dryly. ‘I have a long day’s ride ahead of me and must be brief. I am here to call in a favour! I have a new serving wench for you.’
Adela trembled, horrified. She struggled to break free, but the servant had moved his vicious grip to her tumbled braid.
The master cook rocked on his feet, his bleary gaze unimpressed. ‘F-favour indeed, friend. You think me a scabbard short of a sword, do yer? Worm-fodder by the look of ’er, an’ wi’ his lordship away, there’s no need for any extras.’
‘What’s he asking, Bernart?’ Like a fox scenting a juicy rabbit, a shag-haired man left his bench. Inky fingers suggested he was the clerk of the kitchen. ‘You had better make it worth our while, stranger!’
‘I am not adverse to that.’ Giso took a moneybag from his satchel. ‘Providing certain orders are obeyed. Over there, shall we?’
‘No!’ Adela screamed. ‘For the love of Heaven, don’t listen to—’ But she was hurled to the floor. Knuckles nudged the air inches from her lips. ‘Want your teeth smashed in, you stupid whore?’ grunted Giso’s servant, reasserting his hold on her hair. ‘Nah. Thought not.’ He hauled her up again amidst the scullions’ laughter.
The negotiation, conducted out of earshot, was swift and onesided on her captor’s part. A bag of coins was given; hands were shaken. Returning to face her, Giso set his riding crop beneath her chin. ‘Two things to remember, you little slut. Don’t try to leave and don’t speak with any of the others here! Master Bernart has a good flogging arm for those who disobey him, especially when he’s well stoked. Isn’t that right, my friend?’
The cook grinned. ‘I’ll tame the little cow, eh, lovekin?’
‘Lay a hand on me, yer whoreson, and I’ll kill you,’ Adela snarled through her teeth. ‘I’m a free woman.’
‘Not anymore, yer not.’ Bernart grabbed her by the waist and swung her up onto the nearby trestle as though she was a Saracen slave for purchase. ‘Harken all,’ he announced, his hand an oily manacle around her ankle. ‘This wench is a foreigner and a thieving whore, and the poxy cow is fortunate not to have had her tongue ripped out an’ …’ Giso nodded at him to finish. ‘But the noble lord what she offended is merciful an’ ’e’s thick as thieves wi’ our lord, so she is to serve in this ’ere kitchen for the rest of ’er miserable life and, by the Devil’s cock,’ he tightened his grip, digging his nails in, ‘I’ll make it so.’
‘Indeed,’ Giso offered an addendum. ‘Orders are that no one is to befriend her so that means ignore her, no truck at all, not a word. She is the living dead if you value your nether parts.’
Ask the sun not to set! Adela knew utter despair. She would be violated by all of them.
‘You did not mention that,’ protested the clerk.
‘Aye, he didn’t,’ muttered Bernart, swivelling to confront Giso. ‘And why not?’
‘She’ll give you the crabs, that’s why.’
Crabs? Adela closed her eyes, pitifully grateful for that mercy.
One of the menials tittered. ‘Gave a great lord more than he wanted, did she?’
‘I’m the messenger,’ Giso snarled. ‘Not a cunny-fumbling quack. No more questions. Farewell to you.’
‘Wait, Master Giso,’ Bernard called after him. ‘Has she a name?’
Adela heard the spurred heels halt; a pause before the answer.
‘Does she need one?’
Bernart wasted no time. ‘Lay her head on the board!’
Adela screamed and struggled as willing hands dragged her from off the trestle and forced her face against the tabletop. Were the men going to rape her as some vicious initiation to the kitchen hierarchy? Bernart shook the cleaver before her terrified eyes.
‘Hold her quiet, yer lousy numbskulls.’ Why were they stretching out her braids? Trembling, she heard the hiss of air, felt the tug on her scalp as the cleaver fell.
‘Kitchen rules, my little cabbage! Our lord and master, God love him, don’t appreciate hairs in the pottage.’ Released, she stared in misery as Bernart shook the plaits in her face. ‘Fetch a good sum, this will.’
‘God curse—’
The clerk’s fierce blow to her ear set her head ringing. ‘None o’ that!’
The guffaws around her suddenly hushed as a clanging bell echoed from up the stairs.
‘Lordy, we’re a-goin’ be late again,’ Bernart whined and began to roar orders in all directions. ‘As for you, darlin’.’ He seized her by the ear.
‘A morsel to eat, I beg you,’ Adela pleaded as he lugged her towards the row of troughs along the wall.
‘Earn it!’ But then he relented as though he could see she would collapse with hunger. ‘You’ll find t
he scraps over there!’
It was a bin beside the outer door, waiting to be carried out to the midden. Adela stared into the mess with distaste. By all the saints! Had she been reduced to this, her a priest’s child, a gentlewoman’s daughter, the erstwhile Lady of Mirascon?
Yes.
Driven by her desperate hunger, she reached in.
She soon learned the borders of her prison. Bernart had caught her creeping past the buttery to reach the small flight of stairs to the great hall and her shoulder still ached from being flung against the wall. She was not allowed into the yard like the other kitcheners either, but it spared her the chore of carrying in water pails or taking out her piss bucket.
Besides gorbellied Bernart and the cur of a clerk, the kitchen was manned by six men, two women and a spit boy. Several times Adela tried to question the women but they would not look at her.
She managed to corner the older of the two in the larder and learned that Bernart was only a sous-chef who took over when the head cook was away travelling with the lord. She was about to discover who the lord was when Bernart caught them whispering.
‘You heard the orders, you snivellin’ heretic!’ he snarled, dealing the woman a slap. ‘Talk to this slut again an’ I’ll stick you headfirst in your own dung. An’ that goes for all of you!’
At nightfall, after the fire embers had been covered, the woman quickly pushed an empty sack into Adela’s hands and fled. Desperately tired, Adela crawled in between the bench trestles that supported one of the boards. It was a meagre fortress against assault, but better than curling up in the open by a wall. Was this to be her life from now on? Before she fell asleep, her unkind conscience decreed that this was a just punishment for striving to rise beyond her lowly rank. That she could argue with. Death would have been kinder.
Next morning, she was kicked awake and screamed at to go hither and thither, chore after chore. The worst was after midday, heaving iron pots into the wash trough and scouring their greasy sides with sand and coarse grass in the almost boiling water.
Only her thoughts were free of servitude, yet the ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ were like a pernicious pestilence in her mind. Had L’Aiguille’s rescue and her own abduction been planned by Seguinus and Jaufré or had it merely been opportune? Her recall was wind-blown, even the encounter in the barn seemed blurred. What was breaking her heart was the memory of Richart’s indifference to her as they had parted. Had the entire family conspired to be rid of her?
It was possible. Her old prejudice, the belief in the heartlessness of the nobility, was taking over her thinking again. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. And that’s what had been done; the black sheep, which might infect the flock, had been given to the wolves.
Maud had been right. Fortunate, wise, Maud! Wherever you are, may the saints safeguard you, dearest friend.
Now she was as lonely as the Pole Star and as weary as a treadmill mule. The other kitcheners kept an arm’s length from her—except for the clerk, Onfroi. She could tell from the hungry, covert glances that he intended rape. Several times he passed close to her when Bernart had his back turned, and after noon when the master cook was gone to the cellar, he came up behind her at the trough and rubbed against her, his bony fingers groping her breasts. ‘Into the buttery now!’ he hissed, his breath foul upon her cheek.
‘You want the clap?’ Adela’s hand fastened round a shorthandled ladle beneath the surface of the water.
‘The buttery now, you bawd!’
Adela had no hesitation. The ladle of steaming water rose. But the screams afterwards were hers as he furiously slammed his hand into the side of her head, smashing her sideways towards the nearest trestle.
‘I’ll show you, you she-devil!’ Grabbing her by the waist, he rammed her into the end of the board, knocking the air out of her. She swore, tried to twist, to claw his face, as he threw up her skirt. And then he was arguing with someone and she felt her body released.
Bernart had dragged him off. ‘Are yer out of yer wits, Onfroi?’ he snorted. ‘Yer want yer cock covered in sores? Nah, I thought not.’
Adela subsided on the bench, tears of shame and anger pouring down her cheeks. Her only consolation was that her attacker’s face and neck bore livid scald marks from the seething water.
Stern-faced, Bernart surveyed his kingdom, the watching faces. ‘No fornicatin’ in my kitchen, any of you, or by my father’s soul, I’ll beat you to a pulp! Understand!’ Then he glared at Adela. ‘As for you, you dirty whore, you can starve for the rest of the day.’
To plead injustice was a waste of breath. Adela lifted her head proudly and walked back to the trough as though she was a princess. At her back, Onfroi hurled curses and ribald threats, but she did not flinch.
Bernart grabbed up his cleaver from the board and brandished it. ‘What are yer waiting for, you lazy begets of Beelzebub—the Second Coming?’ he sneered. ‘Back to your tasks! Dinner’s been late all this week and the castellan ain’t chirping merrily abaht it.’
Adela, her face to the wall, let her breathing settle. Next time she might not be so lucky. She needed a knife or a hook to defend herself, some sharp object of steel or iron that would not be missed and which she could hide about her person. Just that small ambition occupied her thoughts for the rest of the day, and that night when she lay down hungry and exhausted, she had a small ladle hidden in her skirt. Although its iron handle would hardly prevent a beating, she could jab it at someone’s eye.
Next day she found a canvas bag with a few dried peas left inside. She ripped the bag into a kerchief of sorts to cover her ragged hair and bestow some sort of dignity. She also snatched up a small knife with a horn handle and hid it in the folds of her bedsack.
It seemed sensible to scratch a daily nick on the trestle leg where she slept, yet after two more weeks, she started to forget when she had made the last mark and after a month she felt herself weakening day by day, not just from the hunger and the endless labour but from utter hopelessness within.
She is the living dead.
Living dead.
Travelling jongleurs, usually the ones with little talent and no money, sometimes called at the kitchen door, craving food in return for a song or some new-baked gossip. Mostly, they were known to Bernart, but at last Adela, too, recognised one of them—Lisette—and after weeks of enslavement, her hope of freedom soared. The troubaritz was evidently known at the castle because Bernart greeted her in exuberant Gallic fashion.
Could Lisette help her? Adela, weary after a day’s labour, knew she must somehow snare the troubaritz’s attention without bringing trouble on both of them. However, each attempt to approach the singer was met with a fierce cuff.
However, the woman finally sang a song she recognised, the song that Richart had sung to her, and as Lisette finished the last verse, Adela sang the last couplet. Her voice was rusty, too soft at first, but she managed more loudly with the second line before the under-cook boxed her on the ear.
Lisette had heard her. The woman’s hands stilled as she slid her timbrel into her shoulder pack. Intelligent enough not to stare, she turned slowly, her gaze languid, unseeking.
‘Alys.’ Adela mouthed, tapping her heart. ‘Help me.’
Chapter Twenty-one
Are you so mad that you think yourself wiser than all the faithful of the universal Church?
Pope Innocent III
Mirascon, July
The bezoar, a gift from Yolande, made a glop sound as it fell into the goblet. With his thumb firmly on the gold chain that harnessed it, Richart swirled the wine around the stone as he stood at the casement in the great chamber. Why anything that had been through a unicorn’s belly could be an antidote to poison was open to question, let alone whether such beasts existed in the first place. Mind, he had seen a crocodilus in a horse trough at Compostela drawing more attention than Saint-Jacques’ shrine in the unfinished cathedral. Adela would have enjoyed that irony. Adela. Her name was a
sigh in his mind. If he had not insisted the handfasting go ahead, he might have been able to safeguard her even if it meant sending her away.
Seguinus had declared her death was Heaven’s punishment for attempting to thwart the natural order and, after giving him penance, Père Arbert had gently lectured that Divine Love was more important than carnal desire. Yet it had been more than that. Richart tried not to feel the grief; despair was no luxury for a ruler. He needed to coffin away the remembering, yet sorrow continued to steal upon him, announcing itself in moments of solitude or even in company: a certain fragrance, the slither of a woman’s silken kirtle.
What he had learned was that he must never show weakness again. Love had seduced him, made him a liar, and it hurt worse than any battle wound, a bitter hollowness within his ribs, in his belly, in his thighs. Desire plucked away the steel mesh of duty, love ripped off the helm of reason. Richart, Lord of Mirascon, would be armoured against love from now on. He knew what his people required of him: the announcement that he would negotiate for a new bride in order to beget a son. Yes, he needed a lawful son. Otherwise, Jaufré would inherit.
Tomorrow, he would write some letters. Not today. The prickling sensation in his hands and feet had become tiresome, his physician had muttered about the darkness of his urine and he sometimes felt nauseous and thirsty. In the last week, his thoughts had felt like they were struggling through mountain fog. He had questioned his food taster, but the lad had shown no similar symptoms.
He swirled the wine some more and then he noticed the tiny air bubbles. Hooking out the stone, he carried it to the open casement. Oval, walnut-like, mundane, the bezoar looked as magical as a deer turd on a rainy day. Only the gold chain lent it interest. However, as he scuffed his thumb over its surface, he noticed for the first time a small, perfect groove about its waist. Prising it with his nail did not work. Drying it helped, and the two halves twisted apart, revealing a cavity and the damp residue of powder that looked familiar.
Troubadour Page 30
