Viking Hostage

by Warr, Tracey;

  In truth, I feel some trepidation on my own account. Wherever Aina goes for her marriage, it is likely that I will go too. I think with regret of how much I like living in Ségur, how fond Ademar and Melisende are of me and how they tacitly allow my stubborn resistance to Christianity. I will not find such toleration anywhere else. I still tell myself that Thorgils will find me but I believe it less and less.

  The dinner bell sounds in the hall below and I stand and clasp Aina’s hands briefly in encouragement. We move towards the door and the stairwell. The hall this night does nothing to meet Aina’s relentless expectation. It looks and sounds every inch the same as it always has, day in, day out. Apart from the high feast days of Christmas and Easter and the very occasional visitor, things are always much the same. The cook is good at everything except puddings which are never quite right. Robert the serving boy always trips over one of the dogs and slops the sauce. The fire always crackles and smokes. Old Louis who had polished the horse harnesses for Ademar’s father and is now too old for much except poking the fire, always falls asleep half-way through the meal and begins snoring gently and everyone smiles when he does. Merry, the cook’s assistant, always tries to get Oliver the stable boy to look at her, smoothing her apron over her stomach and hips, but he won’t because he likes Millicent who minds the fishpond. And Ademar always looks fondly on Melisende and Aina, and Aina always heaves a loud sigh by the time they get to the entremets because everything is always the same. Despite the steward Renaud’s quantity of gossip, beneath the daily surface of minor events, a profound calm lies across the days of Ségur.

  Things are so peaceful here that in the summer a duck made her nest in the doorway to the hall, and raised a brood of ducklings. Tonight the snow is laying thick on the ground outside, the ponds are frozen over, and the fire is burning bright red against the frigid white night beyond the hall. Tonight Aina is wearing her best green gown and sitting up very straight and can hardly eat, wearing her excitement visibly like a second over-gown.

  ‘My daughter,’ Ademar takes Aina’s hand and the moment has come when he will tell my mistress of the betrothal decision. ‘As you know, you are my heir, and carry all our hopes and honour of the family.’

  ‘Yes father.’

  Her mother smiles reassurance to her.

  ‘It is time you were married and that our wealth and long lineage should be allied to a family of stature.’

  ‘Yes father, I would wish to do my duty,’ says Aina. ‘I know that marriage will take me from home,’ she adds in a tone that implies she has no actual problem with that prospect.

  ‘We are in agreement that come the next assembly at Easter, my dear, you will be married to Guy of Limoges.’ Her father smiles broadly. ‘As you know we have had offers for you from much further afield, carrying such wealth as you do, but you will be happier in a place that you know, with people you know, and we will be close to you.’

  Aina’s protest dies on her lips. What can she say? She would not wish to disappoint her parents who dote on her – their only child and yet she is bitterly disappointed: that her marriage would take her a few miles away and no more, that everything would continue the same except that she would be a wife. I glance at Aina with compassion, feeling relief for myself. My observations of Guy suggest that he will make her a good husband and be a kind master to me.

  Aina and I rise to leave and Ademar holds out a hand to me and says in a low voice, ‘I wanted to ask you something too, Sigrid.’ We both sit down again. ‘You will also soon be of a marriageable age and Melisende and I have been talking of it.’

  ‘Sigrid can’t get married, Papa. She has to stay with me.’

  ‘Be quiet for a moment Aina.’ He turns back to me. ‘We have always thought of you as our child too,’ he says smiling, ‘our Northchild. As Aina says, you could go with her when she marries Guy and you will be of great assistance to her in running the Limoges household, but we also want to make sure we are considering your happiness. Here in Ségur, Phillippe would be glad to take you as his wife if you prefer to stay. We would free you, of course, and I will provide you with a handsome dowry.’

  ‘Phillippe is an old man, Father!’

  Ademar warns Aina to silence again with his eyebrows and takes my hand. ‘Phillippe is older than you, Sigrid, but so it is with many husbands. Tell me what you would prefer, not what my bossy daughter wishes.’

  Aina is frowning, grimacing and rolling her eyes at me, so that I have great difficulty not to laugh. I look down at the table top to consider.

  ‘Ah,’ says Aina, ‘so now we have a famous long Sigrid think.’ I can hear from the tone of her voice that she is confident what choice I will make.

  ‘Aina,’ her father warns her again.

  I like Phillippe but I think of him more as an uncle or older brother. I am flattered by his interest. He is a comely and friendly man, much respected by Ademar and by the rest of the servants and he will no doubt prosper. I am twelve and he thirty. I look to where he sits on the long table his goblet raised to his bushy beard and do my best to ignore Aina looking at him too and grimacing some more. Ademar will not rush me. It would be two years or more before he would allow a marriage to go ahead. I think sadly of Ademar’s illness and that he is trying to take care of Aina and I while he still can. I like Phillippe, I think, but if I were married it would be a kind of chain. I would owe obedience to him. I look at Aina who puffs out her cheeks and then deflates them through the round rosebud of her mouth to show what she thinks of how long I have considered and that I have even considered it at all.

  ‘Thank you, Lord Ademar,’ I say, ‘but I would rather stay with my Lady Aina and help her.’

  ‘Very well,’ he says.

  ‘Well, of course,’ says Aina, rising from the table and grabbing my hand. ‘Phillippe! How ridiculous!’ she exclaims, stomping up the steps ahead of me to her chamber, our breath visible before our faces in the sudden chill of the stone stairway. Thinking of him, I hope that he will not be too disappointed by my refusal.

  Aina pulls off her veil and throws herself on the bed, with a sullen face. ‘God’s teeth! I will just be a fat wife to Guy, Sigrid, breeding children, down the road. Wives are subjugated to husbands. Along with modesty, wives lose freedom. No exotic adventures. What’s the point of anything if that is all there is in my future? I want to be free, Sigrid, and to travel the seas and see strange lands.’

  ‘Free!’ I say angrily. ‘It means a different thing to you than to me.’

  Aina takes my hand. ‘Oh don’t be angry with me,’ she says, ‘I know, I’m sorry. It was tactless of me. You know that father would set you free in a minute if you just learnt to say the Lord’s Prayer and were baptised.’

  I shake my head stubbornly. ‘I am a Northwoman. A Northwoman slave.’

  ‘Yet, Sigrid,’ she says, ‘don’t you see that it is akin to slavery to give your life over to another, to have to do what you don’t want to do day in and day out and only that?’

  I touch her cheek by way of reply. I do sympathise with her resistance to the marriage, but I know that things could be so much worse for her. A fire burns hard in the grate here too, with a dull red glow smothering the detail of the room. The window shutters are barred against the snow and hail beyond, but we can hear the wind howling.

  The slave and the heiress climb into the big, soft bed together to sleep with our red hair splayed around us like the rays of an intense sunset. Before she closes her eyes, Aina looks up to the yellow fabric draping the top of her bed, and sets her full lips tight and determined against each other, so that they crinkle like a crushed rose, and says, ‘I will not marry Guy. That cannot be my future.’

  8

  Limoges

  Spring 976

  Viscount Gerard and Viscountess Rothilde sat at the High Table in the Motte castle of Limoges with their sons and daughters ranged on either side of them, interspersed with the senior household staff and two nursemaids who had charge of the smallest chi
ldren at the end of the table. Hilduin was visiting from the monastery to make the family group complete. The Viscount’s men at arms and household servants were greatly increased in number and seated at the long tables in the hall. There was a din of talk, clattering plates, laughter and a smell of wood smoke and food. Adalmode, as always, sat at Guy’s side.

  ‘I have news for you, children,’ Gerard pronounced and a hush fell on the talk and joking below the dais, since news for the family of the Viscount was news for all the household.

  ‘As you know,’ said Gerard, ‘I waited a long time for my birthright and now thanks to the astute advice of my eldest son, Guy, I and all of us are in our rightful place.’ Gerard paused dramatically, waiting for the cheers of agreement to die down and the raised drinking horns to be emptied and replaced on the table. ‘My sons, you have all waited overlong for your inheritances, but now your mother and I, from our negotiations, have resolved your positions.’

  Heads were nodding at this. Everyone knew that so many full-grown sons in a household was over-many.

  ‘Guy is my heir to the Viscounty and betrothed to marry Aina, heiress to Ségur.’

  ‘But she is his second cousin,’ interrupted Hildegaire, ‘surely this is consanguinous?’

  Adalmode saw that Hilduin was nodding his head in agreement and had probably put these words into Hildegaire’s mouth.

  ‘Silence …’ thundered Gerard, appalled to have the drama of his announcements so rudely interrupted before he had barely begun. The family shifted and settled again, recovering from the shock of Gerard’s angry volume.

  ‘Lady Aina is the daughter of our neighbour,’ said Gerard, struggling to inject calm back into his voice, but the residue of his fury was still audible. ‘She brings a great fortune with her and the lands adjoining ours. The marriage is the command of the Duke of Aquitaine,’ he said emphatically, staring at Hildegaire, ‘and a command that I am more than happy to see realised.’

  Hildegaire said nothing more, but Guy could hear him breathing heavily through his nose, suppressing his anger at being publicly reprimanded.

  ‘She is very pretty too,’ said Aimery, characteristically lightening the mood and trying to dispel the tension, balancing like a skilled boatman on the treacherous currents in the exchanges between his father and older brothers.

  ‘Indeed, she is,’ agreed their mother.

  ‘She has beautiful red hair and grey eyes,’ said Adalmode, for Guy’s benefit.

  ‘She is young yet,’ Guy said to his father.

  ‘Twelve summers,’ responded Gerard. ‘You can take her soon enough and get us some heirs eh?’ he clapped Guy’s shoulder and Guy braced himself as soon as he heard the lift in his father’s voice indicating that the shoulder slap was coming.

  ‘What of the rest of us?’ risked Hildegaire.

  ‘I’m coming to that,’ said Gerard shortly, not mollified yet with his second son. ‘Aimery, I am giving you the viscounty of Rochechouart.’

  ‘Thank you father!’ exclaimed Aimery. It was much more than he had expected as the third son. He was ready to leave the teeming household and make his own and now he could look around for his own bride, as pretty, if not as rich as Guy’s.

  ‘These decisions,’ said Gerard, ‘I will announce at the Easter Assembly next week and when they have been formally ratified, then you may act upon them. Geraud,’ he said moving his gaze to his fourth son, who looked up surprised from his soup and a lump of meat fell from his spoon splashing back into the bowl.

  ‘Me, father?’ At eighteen Geraud was not expecting promotion from boy to man yet.

  ‘You will be appointed as Lord of Argenton at the Assembly, son. Your mother will travel with you to the hall to help you begin your duties there.’

  A look of surprised delight spread slowly across the young man’s face. He had feared his father might send him to the Church and he worked hard to show his abilities with weapons and contribute to the overseeing of agriculture and trade in the city, hoping to thwart this possibility. Hilduin was rising in the ranks of the Abbey and the two youngest boys, Geoffrey and Hugh, were already novices at Saint Martial. Secular independence so soon was much more than Geraud had hoped for.

  ‘And you, Hildegaire‚ you are the strongest-minded of my sons,’ said the Viscount raising his voice to stifle the anxious query that Hildegaire was already voicing, and Guy knew that his father was about to say something his brother would not like. ‘I have arranged for you to take the Bishopric of Limoges.’ Gerard sat back, his arms folded and a smug look on his face. His wife patted his arm, avoiding Hildegaire’s eyes.

  Adalmode watched Hildegaire, expecting an explosion, but was surprised instead to see him clamp his hand over his mouth and drop his eyes to the table. He was calculating his income as Bishop perhaps, and it would be vast.

  ‘And Tisalga, daughter, you will be betrothed to the son of Lady Blanche of Anjou,’ said Gerard.

  Adalmode looked reassuringly to her thirteen year old sister who was taken aback by their father’s abrupt announcement on her future.

  Gerard had to wait so long to reclaim his birthright, living out his own prime years caretaking Montignac, his pleas for reinstatement refused, whilst other men grew rich on the tithes and tolls that should have been his. Now that forgiveness had finally come, he was an old man, but at least he could enjoy seeing his sons’ futures unfold. Gerard lent to Guy’s ear. ‘Aina of Ségur is your second cousin. You will need special dispensation to marry her … from the Bishop of Limoges.’ He raised his eyebrows to Guy.

  ‘Ah,’ said Guy, in the impressed tone his father wanted to hear, but this news made him feel even more doubtful regarding Hildegaire. Bullying his brother into taking holy orders, as his father intended to do, would only store up problems for the future and Hildegaire would be a scandalous Bishop. He loved wenching, wine, gambling and fighting, and Guy could not imagine that any holy transformation would overcome him. The words that Bishop Ebles spoke a while back from the pulpit occurred to Guy: ‘No priest shall keep a woman at home, or allow one to enter a cellar or secret place for the sake of fornication.’

  ‘Ah and Adalmode,’ Gerard said as an afterthought, ‘we have received an offer of marriage for you from the Duke of Aquitaine.’

  For a moment Adalmode imagined with horror that this offer was from the old Duke himself. His appetite for young women was famous. ‘He seeks your hand for his son. You will be betrothed at Easter.’

  Adalmode felt panic rising inside her but she knew better than to attempt to argue with her father at table, nevertheless she had no wish to be betrothed to that chubby child and every hope of marrying the man in her father’s dungeon. She looked anxiously to Guy who squeezed her hand reassuringly beneath the trestle. Could he help her avoid this?

  Hildegaire, however, did not know her caution. ‘I have no intention of being a Bishop, father,’ he pronounced loudly and resolutely.

  Gerard uncrossed his arms and lent forward staring fiercely at his handsome, burly second son. ‘You will do as you are bid.’

  ‘I am a soldier, father, not a priest.’

  ‘The Bishopric of Limoges holds as much power and income as the viscounty,’ said Gerard, ‘perhaps more.’ Historically the Bishop ruled the town with its rich merchants and visitors, and the Viscount ruled the Abbey and Castle. In the recent past there had been conflict between the two over the lucrative trade from the Compostela pilgrims coming through Limoges and over the tolls on the Roman Saint Martial Bridge crossing the river Vienne. ‘You and Guy could work together in harmony.’

  An unlikely idea, thought Adalmode.

  ‘Let Guy take the Bishopric,’ said Hildegaire. ‘He is more fit to be a priest.’

  ‘Guy is my heir and that’s an end of it,’ said Gerard, rising to his feet, so that the entire hall must follow suit.

  Guy walked from the hall at his father’s side. He decided to bide his time to discuss the matters of Hildegaire and Adalmode with his father in private
. Nothing would be gained by countering him in front of his retinue. Hildegaire would not thrive as a Bishop. It would be better to give that to one of his brothers already in orders, Hilduin probably. Perhaps Hildegaire could be given Brosse. Of course it was important not to offend the Duke of Aquitaine who offered for his son for Adalmode, but the Viscount had two other daughters he could give to the child heir, nearer his age. Guy would see what he could do to change his father’s decisions, but he was pleased for his own part, with an impending marriage to the heiress of Ségur.

  Making his way some time later to his bed, Guy could see from the dimness and the lack of light at the end of the narrow stone passageway that someone stood blocking his way. Hildegaire waited until Guy was almost nose to nose with him. ‘You’re not competent to be Viscount,’ he said.

  ‘Let me pass, Hildegaire.’

  ‘You know you’re not and sooner or later Father will see it.’ He stepped out of the way and Guy felt Hildegaire’s hot breath brush his neck as he squeezed past.

  Guy latched the door to his chamber behind him, and fetched his Annals out from where they now lay under his own bed. He and his sister were no longer children, who could roam at will in and out of each other’s chambers. He set the magnifying water glass, ink, quill, erasing knife and gathered parchments up on the lectern with a candle to light his work. It was much better to write in the daylight, but this was a momentous time and he wanted to record it now. As was his habit he read through the previous entries before settling on the composition of the next.

  Annals of Guy of Limoges Book II

  + 973 In this year Helie of La Marche, escaped from the dungeon of Montignac, aided by a dishonest jailor, who also fled. Otto the Great, Holy Roman Emperor died and was succeeded by his son Otto II.