Audebert’s existence in the hole had been eased by Adalmode’s occasional visits and gifts: blankets, food, balm for the sores on his fettered ankle, and he treasured the broken ivory comb she gave him, even though it was impossible to make much use of it on his matted hair and beard. It helped a little with the lice. He told himself stories about the frieze of people and animals carved along its top and then he told those stories to Adalmode and made her laugh. She confirmed his guess, that Helie had escaped, and was on his way to Rome to seek absolution. The marks scratched on the stone behind Audebert’s head were numerous now, so many that he tried not to let his glance graze against that wall too often. It had become like a suppurating wound, something he must avert his eyes from, and yet he must keep count. He set up a rhythm to get him through the days and nights, speaking softly to himself for company and to confirm his existence.
As the morning wore on the heat in the pit became stifling, still and stolid like an almost visible thing, the sun boiling up the sky’s bowl above his head and the stones soaking up and holding the brilliant rays, no breeze to give him relief. It was impossible to do anything except doze and feel leaden, lethargic. He tried to decide whether this was any better or worse than the bitter winter he had just shivered through, with hail clattering down against the stone and lingering in cracks and corners like frogspawn. It was hard to remember that cold now, in this heat. Audebert sat with his bare legs extended before him, thinking how thin and filthy they were, watching a slender line of sweat trickle down his arm towards his bony wrist, catching in his peripheral vision another bead of sweat dropping from his nose onto his chest. It would be best to sit here naked but then Adalmode might come and so he retained his ragged shirt and loincloth, not wanting to offend her with the sight of his exposed, emaciated body. He maintained his exercise regime in the early mornings when the temperature was cooler and it was possible to move without immediately becoming a waterfall of sweat, and worse, developing a terrible thirst that could not be slaked. It grieved him to see how little power he had left in his limbs. Perhaps he would die soon. Sometimes Adalmode came every day for a week and talked with him, sometimes she was gone for many more weeks and he wondered if she would ever come again.
‘Audebert!’
Her voice. He blinked up into the blinding sunlight. ‘Lady Adalmode, it is a great pleasure to see you, although I cannot actually see you at the moment,’ he said shielding his eyes from the glare, and slowly rising to his feet, to be a few inches nearer to her. ‘I have missed you these last twenty days.’ Audebert did his best to inject optimism and insouciance into his voice but he knew that she could hear the desperation in its timbre just as he could.
‘I’m sorry Audebert, to have left you alone so long. I was visiting a neighbouring family with my mother.’
‘Of course,’ smiled Audebert. ‘You have a life to lead.’ Again his cheerfulness rang false in his own ears.
‘It must be very hard now you are alone,’ said Adalmode, and he saw she was looking him over with concern.
‘Well, my brother was not the best of companions, but yes, he was a companion. Slightly more responsive than this rock I suppose.’
She laughed a little with him but then her expression suddenly sobered. ‘I want to ask you something Audebert.’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you actually blind and murder that priest as everyone says?’
There was a silence between them. Audebert sighed. ‘No, Lady. I was not there when my brother attacked the priest. As you know, some have taken advantage of the poor state of repair in the countryside and at the monasteries left in the wake of the invasions of the Northmen, and they have looted and rendered the ruination even worse.’ He paused. It was not a good thing to admit of his brother, but it was true, and he needed Adalmode to know the truth. ‘Helie thought to take treasure from the undefended monastery of Charroux, to gain independence that my father did not allow him, and he was angered by your father and brother’s defeat of him in a skirmish at Brosse. He wanted revenge. The priest Benedict came upon him and Helie blinded him, mistaking him for an armed man.’ Audebert spoke reluctantly of the crime that his brother had enacted. ‘When Helie realised with horror the sin he had committed he did not know what to do. He sent a messenger to me saying he had made an error and to come and help him. I didn’t know until I got there what the error was.’ Audebert paused again. ‘But I swear to you Adalmode, that Helie did not murder the priest. He lives still but in darkness in a monastery. The account that he was murdered is an exaggeration.’ The sun shifted so he could look up and see the concentration on Adalmode’s face as she listened to his story. ‘I had only been there for a short time, talking with Helie, telling him that he must go home to our father and confess his actions and seek penance, when your father and brother suddenly arrived and took us by surprise.’ He paused again. ‘This is the truth, Lady Adalmode.’
‘I know it,’ she said with conviction. ‘I pray for you to Saint Léonard of Noblat. I would not give you hope when I do not know of any, but perhaps this escape of your brother’s will in time lead to some change in your own circumstances.’
‘I try not to hope. My brother warned me against doing so, and yet I must, especially when I see your kind and lovely face, Adalmode.’
He could not be sure at this distance but he thought her cheeks reddened a little at his words. From down here in the hole he had watched her blooming from a girl to a young woman, a very lovely young woman. He caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. A small lizard was darting its way up from the pit towards Adalmode and Audebert willed it to reach that destination, that opening to freedom. Take her a gentle touch on her boot from me, he thought, if you reach that high.
‘Tell me something of the world, Lady Adalmode.’
‘What do you want to know about?’
‘What is happening at the courts of the great families?’
Adalmode considered for a moment. She knew some things that a peddlar had told her and Guy recently, but perhaps Audebert knew much more of the world than she, and she did not want to appear foolish. ‘Well, they say Hugh, the young Duke of France, is the power behind the throne of the weak King Lothaire,’ she ventured.
Audebert laughed shortly and Adalmode feared she had got things wrong. ‘Nothing much has changed then. His father before him was king in all but name. Charlemagne was a great king with a great empire and a long reign but it all began to be torn apart by his descendents the minute Charlemagne died, and now we just have the runts of his litter as our kings. They rule only the north-east corner of the Frankish lands now,’ he said dismissively.
Adalmode took a breath of relief. She had it right after all.
‘I’m sorry Audebert, my source is merely the peddlar who brings silks and needles for my mother to buy. I fear this is not a very good quality of news for you!’
Audebert shook his head. ‘Better than the spiders and rats who are all I have to hear from otherwise. Is Lothaire as weak a king as everyone thought he would be when the nobles sat him on his throne as a boy?’
‘He doesn’t seem to command a great deal of admiration. There are fears that his little son, Louis, may be witless too. My brother says the great nobles to the north – the Duke of France, the Counts of Normandy, Anjou, Blois and the others, that they vie for control of the king and the prince. The Duke of France’s sister, Emma, was married to the Viking Count Richard of Normandy but she has died and now they say he has taken his concubine, Gunnora as wife and legitimised their bastard children.’
Audebert nodded at the last piece of information which judging by the expression on his face was something he had not known.
‘Yes it’s a sad state of things when Charlemagne’s descendents have to give Frankish lands to Viking marauders because the northern lords are not strong enough to repel them.’
‘As you say,’ Adalmode went on, ‘we hear very little about the king here. The power in these lands is the Duk
e of Aquitaine, called Iron Arm.’
Audebert frowned but said, ‘Yes. My ancestors were appointed Counts by King Rudolph many years ago in an attempt to curb the power of that family.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Do you go to the Duke’s Assembly in Poitiers?’
‘I went once and my brother Guy goes most years.’
‘What news there then?’
‘The Duke’s sister, Adelais, is married to Hugh, the Duke of France, and Adelais has just borne a son.’ Adalmode tried to remember what else she had overheard at table or anything else the peddlar had told her mother. ‘Duke Guillaume of Aquitaine and his wife Emma have a baby son, but the Duke has a mistress, Lady Aldearde of Aulnay and Duchess Emma does not like it.’
Adalmode stopped, embarrassed again. Audebert was laughing. Of course he did not want to hear this tittle-tattle. He needed to know who was at war with who.
‘There is no news regarding La Marche that I know of. I suppose your brothers, Gausbert and Boson are holding it, whilst Helie is on pilgrimage to Rome.’
Audebert nodded. On her last visit Adalmode told him that before he died his father had done penance and offered a donation to a monastery in recompense for his son’s crime but it had come to nothing in relation to his own freedom.
‘My brother says the marriage of Emma of Blois to Guillaume of Aquitaine was engineered by her brother, the Count of Blois, to give some balance against the power of the Duke of France and that Geoffrey Count of Anjou is the other great power in the land. He has an heir named Fulk and the peddlar told us the Count’s sister, Blanche, who is married to the Count of Gévaudan, is a very great beauty.’
‘Indeed she is,’ Audebert said. ‘I saw her once when I went with my father to Angers, the year before I was captured, and it was a sorry thing to see such a lovely young woman yoked with the old Count of Gévaudan, who is many years her senior.’
Adalmode felt embarrassed again at her ignorance. She was dealing second-hand gossip about people that he had actually met.
‘Geoffrey of Anjou won a victory against Duke William this year at Les Roches,’ Adalmode faltered, trying hard to remember the details. ‘And the Duke conceded to Anjou lands south of the river Vienne and even rights in the Convent of the Holy Cross.’
‘In Poitiers! St Radegund’s Convent?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well that can’t please Guillaume to have this Count from Anjou holding rights in the very heart of the Duke’s own territory.’
Adalmode shook her head in agreement, pleased that she had managed to distract him for a while with her news, pleased that he was still interested in the world, despite his long confinement. ‘I brought you these things.’ She signalled to the jailor who was standing at a discreet distance out of Audebert’s line of sight and out of earshot, and a basket was lowered on a rope, a rope that was too flimsy to bear the weight of a man, even a starved one such as Audebert. He drew out the bundle inside and the basket was raised up again.
‘Thank you Lady.’
‘Won’t you see what it is?’
Audebert wiped his dusty hands one at a time on his shirt and unfolded the cloth revealing a small illuminated book, some good bread and cheese, a small bladder of wine. He smiled up his thanks to Adalmode. The book would keep him busy for hours. It was the third she had brought to him. He did his best to keep them clean and dry and returned each to her on the next visit, so that nobody would notice her illicit borrowings from the Montignac book chest.
‘Bless you Adalmode for your great kindness to me.’
‘It’s my birthday,’ she said. ‘I wanted to celebrate with you.’ He saw her hesitate before saying, ‘I am thirteen now. Of an age to be betrothed.’ She waited for his response.
‘My sincere good wishes on your birth day, Lady!’ Audebert would have liked to say more, but what could he say to her when he was down here, filthy and shamed. A priest occasionally came to look down into the hole and pronounce anathema against him: ‘Your arms are accursed, your horses are accursed. You will be refused Christian burial.’ Although he did not commit the crime, he must pay for the actions of his kin. He looked up at Adalmode perplexed. Her mention of betrothal was intentionally suggestive perhaps, but why, apart from Christian kindness, would she be interested in a half-dead criminal. He was familiar enough with her by now to know that she would not taunt him. He frowned an enquiry to her, ‘Adalmode …’ She was gazing anxiously at him with those beautiful green eyes, the colour of young grass after rain. If he were not in this dungeon, if he were restored, clean, well-fed, the brother of the Count of La Marche, perhaps he could ask for her hand in marriage, but now, in this hole, in this sorry condition? He heard a mutter from the jailor and knew that his time with Adalmode was up again.
‘I have to go,’ she said and raised her hand to him, her gaze lingering on his upturned face and the doubtful expression there.
5
Ségur
February 974
Aina and I are seated on the long wooden chest at the foot of her bed, and I am sewing together two pieces of cloth to make a skirt. Aina looks up as her mother, Lady Melisende, comes into the room.
‘Here is my new gown Aina, that your father bought for my birthday. What do you think?’ She twirls around, holding the train of the gown in one hand. It is a dark velvety brown with intricate golden embroidery at the hem, cuffs and neckline.
‘Lovely!’ exclaims Aina, ‘but whatever you do, Mother, don’t ask her opinion,’ she giggles, pointing at me.
I look up from my work, perplexed.
‘And why is that Aina?’ asks Melisende, with a look of mock disapproval on her face.
‘She will tell you the absolute truth, with no frills. She cannot tell a lie, even a kind one.’
I frown at this description of myself. Melisende draws a stool close to me, and sits down companionably close, glancing at the stitching in my hands. ‘Your sewing is very fine, my Northchild,’ she says and I am aware of Aina in my peripheral vision, scowling at her mother’s use of my petname.
‘Thank you, my Lady.’
‘And is this so, Sigrid? You cannot tell a lie.’
‘I can’t see any good reason to do so,’ I answer staunchly, ‘but I can keep a still tongue if that is a better route.’
Melisende smiles and cups her hand affectionately around mine. ‘Indeed!’ she says warmly, looking with an amused expression to her daughter. ‘Truth-saying is virtuous, Aina, and we should all admire Sigrid’s example.’
Aina tosses her thick red hair over her shoulder and laughs. ‘Mother, every silly maid in the place would be crying their hearts out and every man-servant would be too depressed to get out of bed and go to work, if Sigrid’s truths were spoken everywhere.’
Melisende shakes her head at her daughter and pats my knee before standing up. ‘You stick to your truths, Northchild. There is no malice in you, I know.’
‘I do like your new dress, Lady Melisende,’ I call out rapidly as she reaches the door, and turns back to me. I frown crossly at Aina. ‘The colour is so rich and becoming and the golden stitching is beautiful. I would like to copy it for the dress I am making for Aina.’
‘See!’ says Aina. ‘The truth, the absolute truth, Mama!’
They both laugh and Melisende wiggles her fingers to us as she goes out.
‘Forgive me, Sigrid, for teasing you,’ Aina says, sorry for only a fleeting moment. ‘Tell me the story of your arrival here again, won’t you?’
I look at her indulgently and draw a deep breath, poking my needle carefully into the fabric on my lap. I will need my hands to tell my story. I am famed in the household for storytelling. ‘I wintered in Aachen with your parents and I learnt my serving duties. When the spring came we began the long journey back here. After many, many days and weeks of travelling we saw a fortress on the horizon, etched grey against the pale morning sky, besieged by the black gnarled twists of vines and framed on either side by limestone cliffs tinted rose and lavender. In th
e nearby fields there were dark red cattle and I watched oxen plant their feet slowly, their eyes protected from the sun and flies by hemp rags. “Ségur!” Lord Ademar called to me. “Home!” But it was not my home then. Not yet. We rode past tall poplars alongside a fishy stream and the river held the trees up and then down in reflection. We rode through a village straggling and winding around the steep sides of the fortifications and the villagers came out to watch us and call greetings to Ademar and Melisende. Inside the walls of the castle the steward, Renaud, came to greet his master and mistress, and just behind him a young girl about the same age as me came tripping and skipping down pale stone steps.’
Aina laughs at this description of herself.
‘“Aina!” Lady Melisende called out gladly. The girl had thick red hair that hung and swung straight down her back like a gorgeous silk curtain, and I thought with regret of my own lost braid lying in the dust on the road somewhere near Quentovic.’ Though Aina is ten and a girl still, she should be wearing a veil over her hair but she rarely does what she should. I continue my description of my first meeting with her. ‘The girl had large grey eyes and a fine gown that was tucked short into her belt, showing her legs like a boy. In her hand she held a small, calf-bound white book. I had only ever seen Christian priests with books at home, trying to convert us. You stared at me Aina.’ I mimic her glare and she giggles. ‘“You brought a boy!” you said resentfully to your father.’
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