by Tracey Warr
‘It’s so strange here,’ I say to Piers as he traces the contours of my face and neck with his finger. ‘I can’t understand what anyone is saying. I don’t understand the speech of Raingarde, Audebert and Count Bernard.’
Piers’ finger has strayed down to trace the outline of my breast through the thick layers of my clothes and now it reaches my nipple. I slap away his hand. ‘Are you listening or just groping?’
‘Oh definitely listening, sweet Bernadette. Are we so different from you northerners then?’
‘As different as ducks from chickens!’
His smiling lips are wide and wet against the silky brown of his beard and I long to kiss them; but my mother gave me a very long lecture on men before I left home. Looking into Piers’ face I know that I am looking at the trap she described. ‘They love you. They leave you with child. You lose your place. You and the child starve to death,’ she’d told me over and over again, until it was like a nursery rhyme in my head. Piers has a long, large face framed by floppy brown hair. His eyebrows are thick and black above pale blue eyes. The blue is relegated to the edges now as his pupils are huge with desire for me.
Piers is the only real friend I have here. He and Almodis are the only people who can speak my northern French – Langue d’Oil – as well as their native Langue d’Oc. The Aquitaine Court was bilingual, facing in both directions, north and south. But here in the La Marche household, everyone speaks only Langue d’Oc, the language of the South. Piers told me that Occitan requires the mouth to be in a different shape to northern speech. I spent days listening to and imitating the sounds of the other servants shouting and singing: ‘burb b burb b burb b,’ I sang to myself with my mouth in what I imagined to be an Occitan shape as I wandered around the castle, doing my work. I will have to master it eventually but for now every conversation in this alien tongue feels like a catechism to me and I am tired out trying to understand it. These conversations with Piers in my own language are my only chance to relax.
‘You will grow to love the South,’ he says. ‘The mountains are beautiful. As beautiful as you. And you will get used to the Occitan eventually, the accent chantant.’
I screw up my nose. Who cares about beautiful mountains? They are cold and rainy. There are no markets and few people to talk with. The conversation of rural folk is hardly to my liking after what I was used to in my mother’s tavern in Paris. I couldn’t care less about pigs and weather and crops.
Piers’ rude finger wobbles my protruding bottom lip. ‘You are pouting, Bernadette brown eyes,’ he teases me.
‘Well what is so exciting about some cold mountain?’
‘Roccamolten Castle is not on just some cold mountain!’ he laughs. ‘La Marche is the frontier country. The count holds the frontier of Occitania against you northern French as his father and grandfather did before him. We are a proud race of warriors.’
He kisses me again and starts to undo the clasp of one of my shoulder-brooches that fasten my gown.
‘You rush me, Piers,’ I say, pushing away his hands.
‘You rush me, Bernadette,’ he says laughing. ‘So let’s find somewhere warmer and talk.’ He pulls me into a part of the ruin that is more intact, where there is some protection from the cold wind, but the ground we sit on is cold and hard even with his cloak spread beneath us.
‘How goes it with your mistress?’ he asks, continuing his work on my brooch. One side of my gown falls down and I am embarrassed to see my breast emerge with its red nipple erect in the cold air. His hand closes over my breast and warms me. I know I should stop this now. I try vainly to recall my mother’s advice but the feelings coursing through my body as his mouth covers my nipple are overwhelming. With an effort I push him away and hold my gown up against me.
‘Piers stop that. My mistress talks to me harshly and expects me to turn her out like a queen when she behaves like a stable boy,’ I say, hoping to distract him with what I know is his favourite conversation.
‘Aye, she ignores and is rude to me too, little Bernadette.’
‘And most ladies don’t go gallivanting in their best gowns in the mud at all hours. I’m sure Raingarde doesn’t,’ I say.
‘Aye, they two are different alright. Like as can be to look at, except for Almodis’ scars, but different as can be in temper.’
‘What scars?’ I ask. I’ve bathed my Lady often enough in her padded tub and I’ve seen no scars on that perfect body. Piers reddens and I wonder if he has been peeking somewhere he shouldn’t.
‘On her left hand,’ he says. ‘Three small scars between her knuckles.’
I’ve never noticed them myself and wonder why he has.
‘All that time she spent as a hostage at the Aquitaine Court has gone right to her head and she thinks she is the very Queen of the Franks, the very Queen of Charlemagne himself. I never saw such self-assurance in a young woman in my life,’ I say to him, but as I say it, I realise that I’m starting to feel just a bit impressed with her. The count has still made no move to acknowledge Piers as his bastard and he projects his bitterness at this onto my mistress. ‘She is more like a man than a woman with all her reading, hunting, talking politics and striding around in boots with her brothers.’
‘Aye,’ says Piers, his hand now roaming on my knee and pushing up my skirts. ‘She is that. Mannish.’
The sensation of his hand on the soft inside of my bare thigh, above my hose, is glorious. I try to squeeze my legs together and squash his hand away but that only seems to increase the pleasure for both of us. Instead of removing his hand I am wriggling against it and feeling hot waves of desire. I pull myself away from his hand, sitting up against a sharp rock behind us. I should leave now.
‘She will have to mend her ways when she is a wife,’ I say, a little breathlessly. ‘She will have to be obedient and submissive, then.’
‘Yes, but I doubt that Hugh is the man to tame Almodis and put her right,’ says Piers, his mouth on my neck and ear and his hand undoing my other shoulder brooch. My gown slides down exposing both my breasts to the cold night air.
‘You think him weak?’ I gasp in a last vain attempt to distract him and stem the desire coursing through me, but he does not answer and I can say no more as he pulls me down on the ground, pulls up my skirts and mounts me and I am moaning now in pleasure.
It is full dark when I walk home. He has waited behind for a while so that we should not be seen returning together. I feel the dampness and soreness from him between my legs. I worry that I might be with child, but then Piers will marry me and I will have myself a fine husband with noble blood. I look doubtfully at the cheap tin bangle on my arm. I take it off and put it in my pocket.
8
Hugh the Fair
For our feast before I leave home for my marriage, I am seated next to Hugh and sharing his trencher. He helps me politely to food. My father and then my brother are seated to Hugh’s right. My other brother is away from home, training at the Court of Périgord. My mother is sitting on my other side. Raingarde has been veiled and banished to the children’s table lower down the hall, out of sight. The servants have cleared away the first courses of the meal and now they are parading in with the roasted hare and lamb.
‘Well, here you are my child, the Peaceweaver,’ says father, looking with satisfaction at the bowls of pink and black sauce in front of him. ‘As you know, Lord Hugh, there have been many years of fighting between our three families: Aquitaine, La Marche and Lusignan. First one of us encroached on another’s territory or took another’s castle or killed a kinsman and then there were the needful revenges. Those arguments went on for two generations, back and forth, but now this joining of you and my daughter will put an end to it.’
I have grown familiar with my father’s gesture of leaning back to savour his wine, and his stories of old times. It is expected at a wedding feast, to tell something of the stories of our kin.
‘Your ancestors, Lord Hugh, and mine, were bodyguards to King Charlemagne himse
lf,’ father says, ‘and we hold our lands proudly, independently. Since Charlemagne, there has been no central power and each man has put his trust in his own sword.’
My father is tempering his language for Hugh’s sake. Usually he is forcefully abusive about his neighbours but now he is choosing his words carefully in order not to re-open old wounds and revive old arguments. Eye for eye, kin for kin vendettas have been the way for decades between our three families. Peace was ever precarious.
‘My father invaded Aquitaine, intending to dispossess Duke Guillaume V of Aquitaine, old Guillaume the Great, but my father took an arrow after the battle of Gencais and died of his wound at Charroux. The troops captured his brother, Gausbert, and cruelly blinded him for good measure. My mother, Adalmode, held out against the duke for weeks right here in the castle of Roccamolten but when he finally took the fortress she was forced to marry him and abandon me here under the guardianship of my uncle Boson. I was a mere babe at the time.’
I smile at that. It is hard to imagine my burly, battle-scarred father as a baby. He wipes his greasy fingers on the tablecloth and continues his story. ‘My mother willed her inheritance of Limoges to my first-born daughter, Almodis here, in order to protect Limoges and La Marche from the ambitions of the Aquitaine family. And then on your side, sire, your family were great castle builders.’ Father pauses politely to let Hugh take up the story.
‘Yes, my great-grandfather, Hugh II, built the castle of Lusignan which is the largest in all Aquitaine, Lady,’ Hugh says addressing me. I nod encouragingly but he says no more.
‘According to some doctors,’ Audebert interrupts, yelling a little too loudly down the table and holding up his brimming beaker, ‘wine will give you good blood, good colour, strengthen your bodily virtues and make you happy, good-natured and well-spoken.’ He raises his cup to Hugh who nods politely but makes no rejoinder to Audebert’s humour. Hugh is drinking slowly, taking small mouthfuls and, unlike Father and Audebert, he is mixing water with his wine. It is a very good wine from Burgundy so it can’t be the taste that is causing him to be so moderate. Perhaps he is being careful in potentially antagonistic company.
‘Your father, Hugh the Brown, now he fought hard for his rights against both Aquitaine and myself.’ Father pauses again to see if Hugh wants to give his own account of his notoriously bellicose and land-hungry father but he still says nothing so father goes on. ‘He fought for many years with me and had many arguments and resentments with Aquitaine and others too.’
‘Yes,’ says Hugh, ‘but these arguments seem most complex and difficult to unravel, with Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, the Vicomtes of Limoges and Geoffrey of Thouars also involved.’
‘Oh they were complex alright,’ yells father, laughing down the table in the direction of Audebert. I shift in my seat, hoping that father will not get carried away with his stories of old battles and say something to offend Hugh.
‘Your father claimed the lands of Thouars as his but Guillaume of Aquitaine, that wily old bastard, he thwarted your father at every turn,’ father says.
‘So I understand,’ says Hugh. ‘My father used to tell me how the Duke of Aquitaine said to him, “If all the world were mine I would not give you what I could lift with my finger”’.
‘Your father threw Thouars’ men from the keep in one of the battles,’ father says, ‘and so Geoffrey of Thouars burned your father’s fortress at Mouzeil, captured his horsemen and cut off their hands.’
A pained expression creases Hugh’s forehead, but he still seems uninterested in giving his own version of his father’s exploits.
‘Then your father was trying to lay claim to Vivonne and to Civray, which were mine, of course,’ father continues. ‘Guillaume forced your father against his will to give me allegiance. The duke said to your father, “You are so dependent on me that if I told you to make a peasant your lord, you ought to have done it”. That’s when Duke Guillaume required four hostages of me as surety for my good behaviour. So I sent my little Almodis here and three others. He demanded her specifically of course because of her inheritance. Your father was incensed when I regained Civray and he demanded my hostages from Guillaume in recompense. Thankfully the old duke did not hand her over.’ He caresses my hand.
‘So how did the betrothal come about?’ asks Audebert politely. We all know the answer, but this telling of the story at the wedding feast is also expected.
‘Guillaume insisted on a truce between us at the court assembly at Blaye. I got word of this truce rather late,’ father says, somewhat fudging the facts. ‘I was besieging your mother, I’m afraid Hugh, in your family’s fortress at Confolens, so Guillaume insisted then that my daughter Almodis, should be betrothed to you, to make the peace. I was obliged to leave Almodis continuing as a hostage at the Aquitaine Court after the betrothal, as a surety that I would hold to my promises.’
‘Peace is what we should all wish for,’ says Hugh, finally speaking out. ‘I have subscribed my name to Le Trêve de Dieu – the Truce of God. There has been too much fighting and bloodshed.’
‘Aye, aye,’ says my father, sitting there with his face a patchwork of livid battle scars. He and Audebert exchange glances.
‘What is the Truce of God?’ I ask.
‘It is the initiative of Bishop Clermont Etienne and Bishop Bégon. It imposes constraints on the private wars between lords, on those bellatores whose way of life is war,’ Hugh tells me. ‘The Pope has blessed the truce against these bad customs.’
I regard my husband-to-be. He looks like a warrior and yet he is none. He looks like a strong man and yet he talks like a monk. Peace is good but not if there is reason against it. I would not sign such a pact. There are those who would sign it in hypocrisy, and take advantage of the false security it promised to others.
‘It’s true enough that we have seen plenty of battle with foreign raiders, without continually stoking the battle between ourselves as well,’ says Audebert and Hugh nods his head in agreement.
In the decades before my birth France and Occitania suffered continual and brutal invasions from Muslims in the South, from Hungarian Magyars in the East, and from Viking attacks on settlements on the coasts and up rivers. Intensive castle building and fortification of towns and villages has been the result.
‘The country bristles with walls and palisades that are the visible symbol of our great anguish,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ says father. ‘The times of order and security that we knew under the Romans and then under Charlemagne are long gone.’
‘But they will come again with the Truce of God,’ says Hugh.
‘Amen to that,’ says my mother.
Father, Audebert and I hold our tongues and avoid looking at each other. The La Marche family has not succeeded for so long in holding the embattled frontier by succumbing to such feeble wishful thinking. I take a spoonful of quivering custard tart. ‘The dariole is very good,’ I tell Hugh.
‘What of the Capetians, Lusignan?’ Father asks.
‘They seem to have no ambitions to the South and confine themselves to the northern country.’
Henri, the Capetian king rules France, north of the Loire. In the South, in Occitania and Catalonia, we have no king. Instead we have the independent dukes and counts: Gascogne, Provence, Auvergne, Aquitaine, La Marche, Toulouse, Barcelona and Carcassonne amongst them.
‘My father met Hugh Capet and his son, Robert,’ father announces and Hugh turns to him with interest.
‘They expected him to bow down to them: Audebert, Count of La Marche!’ Father guffaws. ‘They were mightily surprised when he just said to them, “And who made you kings?”’ Father, Audebert and I laugh heartily at our ancestor’s famous quip. ‘Who made you kings?’ Father repeats, louder.
Hugh is not laughing. ‘But might not a unification of north and south under the Capetian king bring us peace,’ he says, ‘and put an end to this constant rivalry between the southern lords?’
Father stops laughing.
&nb
sp; ‘Unification!’ splutters Audebert, too infuriated to be polite. ‘Don’t be stupid, man. The North is another country with its own tongue and culture. There is no possibility of unification. That would only be the death and the end of us: the South, Langue d’Oc, Occitania! When the Moors captured Barcelona, Hugh Capet showed his colours and refused to give the city any assistance. The counts of Barcelona and Auvergne have refused to acknowledge the authority of the Capetians and rightly so.’
Hugh is silent again, and mother skilfully turns the talk towards less controversial topics. The rest of the feast passes in friendly but dull talk of the foundation of new abbeys and monasteries in the region. Hugh is more animated on this topic. What need of a peaceweaver if my husband is already such a man of peace?
9
May 1038
I am stepping into the Abbey of Saint Martial in Limoges and a sudden silence descends on the crowd of large men clad in dark leather that I see ahead of me, looking incongruous against the loops of fragile May flowers adorning the church. My usual confidence deserts me. I feel tiny in this soaring stone vault. I imagine that I am sitting on one of the huge beams far overhead looking down on my miniscule, distant self, weighed down in this heavy wedding dress, stared at by strangers.
If I had to speak right now nothing would emerge from my mouth. I try to swallow down the gag that seems to be filling my throat. Goosebumps rise on my arms and legs as I contemplate the necessity of walking alone up this long aisle to be wed. I scan the faces of these men looking for the one I know: my brother, Audebert.
‘Ah, and here is the bride,’ my brother’s voice identifies his position.
I swallow down the fear in my throat and look in his direction. Eudes, the new Duke of Aquitaine, stands next to Audebert smiling at me. Both my father and my uncle Guillaume died a few months ago so that everything familiar is now strange. I feel angry with myself for this sudden and ridiculous timidity. Why should I, Almodis of La Marche, feel timid and small. What can I be afraid of? When I spoke of my coming marriage at home, when my father was still alive, it seemed like a good game and I was in control of it but now it is a concrete reality. I must have this man, Hugh, in my bed, in my body. I will have to render my marriage debt to him and I will have to give birth to his children. I know that in time I will make a fine new game of all this too but for now I am miserable at the loss of my mountain home and, above all, the loss of my sister, like a limb hacked off, a raw absence at my side.
