Almodis

by Tracey Warr

  Audebert and Eudes, these young untried men are the rulers now. I know that my marriage will make important bonds in this new regime between La Marche, Aquitaine and Lusignan. I know that by marrying this man, Hugh, I will seem to please them all but I will please myself. I will make my family safe in La Marche. How far away home is. How strange and cold is this vast church. I see boys swinging censors on long chains. I hear the burr of a bird’s wings high up in the roof.

  I find a way to force myself forward. I focus on Eudes, holding his gaze, lift my stiff skirts with one hand and walk straight ahead to stand in front of him, not thinking about or looking at the others. I know that if I glance to either side or do anything other than fixate on the duke I will turn and bolt back out of the door behind me, that I will run to the stables, leap onto my horse and ride out of this place at a gallop. I am wondering if I can do it. Could I? I watch my feet in their white slippers stepping on the jewels of red-and blue-coloured light that play on the floor as the sun filters through the stained glass windows. I am arrived already in front of Eudes. I feel a smile curving my lips that only seconds before had trembled as I crossed the threshold. ‘My Lord Eudes,’ I say, standing before him, lowering my eyes demurely.

  ‘Ah, lovely cousin, Almodis,’ he takes my hand and strokes it as if he might be my new husband instead. Then I feel him place my hand into another hand, a large, cold hand and the panic begins to rise again. I am suddenly conscious that I have not looked at Lusignan at all yet.

  I look up at Eudes, then at Audebert, who is smiling encouragement to me. Our two tow heads stand out in a sea of dark brown hair and beards. I try to keep the panic out of my eyes. I am glad of the thick white veil covering my face and hair. I find myself rolling my lips inwards on themselves and stop and pout them out again. I swivel my neck to look straight at him. I am not afraid. I am not. Hugh is looking directly at me through my veil. I register the startling solid black of his eyes. I look at my hand in his. I am pleased to find there is no trembling in my loyal hand. I cannot say the same for my knees but nobody can see them.

  I will not be afraid of him, not I, but I do wish that my sister were here. My brother has judged that Raingarde must stay at home with my mother who is unwell. Raingarde will be travelling soon to her own marriage, affording Audebert another opportunity to strengthen his alliances as the new Count of La Marche. My mother told Audebert that he must avoid reminding Hugh of his superstitions about two girls who look the same, who do everything together – except this. Raingarde! I say in my mind, and fear that I might have said it aloud.

  The bishop blesses us and begins the words of the marriage ceremony. I can’t focus on the words that the bishop and then the man holding my hand are starting to say because I am still trying to decide whether or not to flee. Would I trip in this enormous gold and white dress with its stiff layers of dense embroidery? Could I extract my hand quickly enough to take them by surprise? Will they catch me before I reach the door, or before the stable, before I am struggling to rise into the saddle? Would it be best to shrug off the dress at the door and make my escape in my linen? Images of escape and possible captures flash in my mind and I see nothing with my eyes. The sound of the bishop speaking my name recalls me to the scene in front of me.

  ‘Almodis of La Marche, do you consent to marry Hugh, Lord of Lusignan?’

  A silence descends on the abbey. I smell damp. I hear a chink of metal on metal as someone shifts their position. I notice that the speaking has stopped and that the duke and Lusignan are looking at me expectantly. My brother’s boot nudges the tip of my slipper quite hard.

  ‘Oh, I do,’ I say. Why did I say that! Tears of frustration and confusion spill off the edge of one of my eyelids and trickle down my cheek. Just a few. They reach the bottom of my chin and hang there, getting unpleasantly cold. I feel a strong need to sniff but I know that my brother would be mortified if I did such a thing in the middle of my wedding in front of all these nobles and rivals. The bishop is sprinkling Hugh and myself with holy water.

  The question of my bolting is still hovering in my head, like a loose thread, a name I can’t quite remember that is on the tip of my tongue and then, so quickly, the ceremony is over and Hugh lifts up my veil. His big hand holds my wet chin and tilts my face up towards him and he kisses me. He moves his mouth and face away from mine and I find myself smiling at him. His mouth is soft and red in his dark beard. I lift my eyebrows and open my mouth a little in surprise to find myself married.

  10

  Morgengebe

  The door to the bedchamber stands open, as it must, so that the wedding party might, at least symbolically, appear to be witnesses to the consummation. The ruckus of drunken guests, with my brother and Duke Eudes among them, has withdrawn back to the Hall of Lusignan Castle and the bedchamber is suddenly silent and still. The room is brightly lit with many tall candles. The bishop made the sign of the cross on our foreheads and over the bed. I am naked on the bed and I shiver. Hugh has also been stripped by the carousing guests and sits on the other side of the bed. The expanse between us seems substantial. I feel a damp patch of holy water under my thigh. I swallow and turn to look at my husband. I am conscious of my thick, golden hair loosed down my back and soft on my shoulders. Hugh is not looking at me but instead has his eyes fixed down on the bedcover. I am proud of my embroidery but aren’t I a better feast for his eyes? It took me two years to sew that quilt. My sister would have sewn such an item in a solid three months of patience and skill. She has taken four such bedcovers with her to Carcassonne and many other items of her beautiful needlework, but I picked this bedcover up and put it down repeatedly in irritation over the last two years. My needlework is fine enough but it bores me after a while and I rarely finish anything. My mother and sister had to help me with the final stages of this cover.

  Since Hugh isn’t looking at me I can allow my eyes to stray over him. His skin is a smooth olive brown sliding over the prominent muscles of his arms and thighs. In the centre of his chest there is a disk of curling black hair. His body is cupped to itself protectively. Should I touch him? I have no fear of coupling. I have watched horses and dogs mating. I inadvertently came across Piers once tupping a maid against a wall while we were still in Poitiers. I stayed and spied on them, curious, intrigued at the expression on the maid’s face and the sounds she made and the rhythmic thrusting of Piers’ buttocks. I want to bear strong sons, to be an excellent wife and chatelaine. I want to help the fortunes of my husband’s family rise.

  Hugh clears his throat. ‘You do me great honour, Lady. You are indeed beautiful.’

  I am a little irritated at this formula, especially since he hasn’t looked at me yet. I have begun to realise that my husband, habitually, says little. Communication with him is not easy. If he were not so beautiful it would be possible to sometimes feel that he is barely present.

  ‘Would you have me lie down, my Lord?’ I ask tentatively. His mouth twitches and he clears his throat again. My confidence is beginning to desert me. I do not understand the tension I feel in the air. I cannot read it.

  ‘The priests say that new married couples should abjure carnal relations for the first three days,’ he says looking up at me briefly and then back down at the bedcover.

  I am momentarily dumb-founded. If I do not produce the evidence in the morning that he has taken my virginity, what will my brother say, Duke Eudes, my mother-in-law Audearde? They will all blame me. ‘And yet, my Lord,’ I say gently, ‘is it not our duty to get an heir for Lusignan?’

  He nods but his whole body speaks of dejection not desire. I feel desperate with disappointment and fear of being shamed, but I cannot give up.

  ‘Shall I blow out the candles and put the curtains warm about us?’

  He nods again and I rise swaying carefully to display my naked body as well I might. Approaching the last candle I see that his eyes are raised at last, but not to me. Instead he looks to the large crucifix on the wall.

  Dawn b
egins to seep into the bedchamber as I lie listening to the cockerel crowing and the soft breathing of the man beside me. I sit up and begin to pull on my shift, cloak and slippers. Hugh stirs behind me. I speak with my back to him. ‘I believe it would be best if our guests understand that the consummation has taken place and that the morning gift can be given. Do you agree?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘I will take care of it.’ I stand abruptly and move to the door without looking at him. Walking down the dim passage beyond the chamber my misery and resolve mingle. In the privacy of the passage I allow emotion to melt the forced serenity of my face. As I emerge into the early sunshine in the bailey I see Bernadette at the well, and the emotion is instantly erased again and I assume a smile of greeting. Could I trust Bernadette with the task? No. I can trust no-one. I wave away her enquiry and move towards the falconry mews. Let Piers not be there yet, I pray. Let his head be as sore as a bear’s arse from last night’s ‘celebrations’. My prayer is answered and only the unblinking golden eyes of ten falcons turn to my entry. I make straight for the feeding tray where Piers has laid out freshly dead mice, rats and small birds. What would bleed enough? What would Piers not miss? I pick one of the larger rats up by its tail and quickly fold it into the cloth I have carried from the bedchamber. I push the other rats a little to conceal the gap and turn back, hearing my peregrine cry hungry behind me.

  Later in the great hall I smile and smile as Audebert and Eudes clap Hugh on the back. The muscles of my face ache. ‘May we remove this now my Lord,’ I ask gesturing to the bloodied sheet that Piers and Bernadette have been holding up for all to see, and remembering Hugh’s look of horror as I slit open the belly of the rat above the sheet in the bedchamber.

  ‘It’ll be twins, I wager,’ Eudes tells Hugh. ‘And what will you give your Lady in return for her virginity?’

  Hugh gestures to a servant who comes forward and sets a small box in front of me, and the bedsheet is at last rolled up and stowed away. I open the box and exclaim with delight as I pull out an intricate green and blue jewel on a very fine gold chain. It is a tiny mermaid. I lift out and read a parchment from the box and find that Hugh has given me the deeds to the castle vineyard as my morgengebe, my morning gift. I thank him for his gifts.

  ‘And maybe another little gift already, eh, Hugh?’ laughs Audebert.

  My mind is racing. What will I do if I cannot mate with my husband and prove my fertility. I will be put away in a nunnery as a sterile wife. I clench my fists and bite my lip at the unfairness of it. I do not want to be a nun! A marriage could be dissolved if impotency were proved but that would be humiliating for both of us. There must be another way. I could find another man to get me with child. I could ask Piers. I close my eyes briefly, appalled with myself. I must entice my husband, that is all. Once the guests have gone we can take time to get to know each other. I will have to guard against the jealous prying of my mother-in-law who has a fierce contempus mundi, a contempt of the world that I cannot share with her. I wonder how Raingarde has fared on her wedding night and pray that she is happy.

  My brother has left to return to Roccamolten and Duke Eudes hurried back to Poitiers alarmed by news that Agnes and Geoffrey are mustering an army in the north. With the guests gone and less need for a sustained charade of married bliss I feel more at ease. I still have to keep a serene face to Hugh’s mother, Audearde, and his two brothers, Rorgon, who is a priest, and the youngest brother, Renaud. I like Renaud. He is open and lively and near my own age. We ride and take our hawks out together most days. I feel Audearde and Rorgon watching me, looking for errors, for chinks in my armour. She is of the opinion, which she likes to tell us all often, that the world is not our real home, that living is a fraction of existence, a blink of an eye, whilst death is eternal, life merely interrupts the continuity of death. Audearde was regent for Hugh for five years after her husband’s death and has never really let go of the reins. Hugh, my gentle Hugh, demurs to her opinions. Audearde is walking bitter envy of my possession of her son.

  ‘Every utterance, Daughter,’ she says to me, ‘is an indictment of humanity.’

  ‘No, Mother,’ I counter, ‘every utterance is a statement of presence in this beautiful, God-given, world.’

  A week after my marriage, I am sitting breaking my fast on the raised platform in the hall. Audearde sits next to me and we watch Hugh and Renaud leave. They are going hunting together this morning. Audearde and I rise from the table and step towards the edge of the dais. I wait until she has stepped down from the platform, whilst I remain on it. ‘The castle keys, Mother …’ I begin.

  Audearde turns to me with a kindly smile on her wrinkled face. ‘You have a great deal on your mind at the moment, Daughter, getting used to a new place and your new position as wife to my son. I will take care of the household for now as usual whilst you make yourself at ease here.’ She starts briskly down the hall, the chatelaine keys clinking at her hip.

  ‘Thank you madame.’ My voice rings down the hall arresting Audearde’s progress and forcing her to turn back to face me. ‘You are very kind. Nevertheless I will take the castle keys and my responsibilities now.’ I inject the steel of command into my voice and hold out my hand. I have spent my childhood around the Aquitaine family who carry themselves as royalty and I have watched how my father commands his men. Audearde opens her mouth to protest, ‘My dear …’

  I interrupt her immediately bringing a new note of imperious irritation into my words, ‘I will take them, now, Mother.’ I say the last word as if it were a threatening insult. I have already resolved that if she gives me trouble I will find a way to give her her heart’s desire: a cell in a nunnery. Audearde cannot turn to Hugh for support since I have deliberately waited for him to leave the hall. My mother-in-law walks slowly back towards me, her face betraying her failing attempts to find a convincing reason for refusal. She arrives in front of me with anger plain in her frown and the purse of her mouth. She unclips the heavy bunch of keys from her girdle and slaps them into my palm. I nod graciously in thanks as if she has volunteered them cheerfully. She turns abruptly and walks back down the hall, her girdle looking empty now with just her needles and threads suspended from it. Whilst her back is turned, I allow my mouth to curve up in a brief smile for my own benefit. I know that I will have to engage in such skirmishes with my mother-in-law over the coming weeks and I know that I will always win them.

  It began as soon as I arrived, when I was carefully unpacking my books in my chamber with Bernadette. I was thinking that now I am a wife with my own lands and wealth I can buy more books. Audearde came into the chamber behind us.

  ‘Books, Daughter,’ she said, as if she was looking at a pile of steaming horse dung. ‘You will have no need of them as wife of my son. I will arrange for someone from the priory to come and collect these. A monastery is a castle built against Satan.’

  I curbed my anger and made my face bland before turning to her. ‘No you will not,’ I said simply. ‘Orders regarding my possessions, whatever they are – my books, my servants, my lands, my tithes, will be made by me, Mother, and not by you or anybody else.’

  ‘Your husband will give orders regarding all this,’ Audearde told me smugly.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘he will not. Or you, and he, will find that I will be returning to Roccamolten and my wealth and possessions with me. My brother and the Duke of Aquitaine will hardly be pleased should I find the necessity for that.’ I lifted one eyebrow and stared my mother-in-law down.

  She stepped back to the doorway as if I had slapped her, and then left. I learnt early that bullies often respond best to being bullied. They live in the security that no one will dare treat them as they treat others, so that if you do surprise them with just that, they turn instantly into cowards. Over the next few days I had shown Audearde the bare minimum of respect and the flash of my temper at the slightest contradiction. The tactics seem to be working. On the occasion of my books, I had to resist the urge to celebr
ate my win with Bernadette who was grinning gleefully at me. That would not have been dignified. I returned to my unpacking and gradually quelled the shaking of my hands.

  Now I look down at my new trophy, the bunch of keys and the chatelaine seal of the Lady of Lusignan. On one side the seal depicts the castle. On its other side there is a curious design of a sinuous serpent’s head with a woman’s face, rearing up out of the castle moat. Time to show the household how I mean to run things, to make some changes and establish my control!

  I call Bernadette to come with me and then I go directly to the kitchen to examine the supplies and give orders to the servants, following the advice my mother gave me at home in Roccamolten. The kitchen is hot and full of people who turn surprised eyes upon me. I tour around with Bernadette, finding out who does what here. High piles of wood have been neatly stacked against the wall by the souffleur whose job it is to mind the fire. Servants are struggling in from the well with pails and pails of water. I speak kindly with everyone and see that they are amazed. After the great black shroud of Audearde weighing them down, I am like the early summer sun streaming through the window.