Viking Hostage

by Warr, Tracey;

  + 974 In this year the Viscounty of Limoges was restored to Gerard of Limoges by the Duke and Duchess of Aquitaine and his family rejoiced. His son, Guy of Limoges was betrothed to the heiress, Aina of Ségur.

  + 975 In this year Gerard, Viscount of Limoges was weighed down by sickness and lay ill for almost the whole of the summer. Charles of Lorraine, brother to King Lothaire, accused Queen Emma of adultery with Bishop Adalbero. The accusation was found unjust and the king’s brother was banished. Guy of Anjou, brother to Geoffrey Greymantle, was made Bishop of Le Puy and held a Council named The Peace of God to restore order to the conflict-ridden lands of the southern Franks. Blanche of Anjou, sister to Geoffrey Greymantle, left her husband Etienne of Gévaudan, and was repudiated by him and has married Raymond, Count of Toulouse.

  The shutters of Guy’s window were still open and he looked out for a moment at the still gloom of the evening gathering the final glimmers before dowsing this last pale light of the day into blackness.

  + 976 In this year Guy, son of Gerard, Viscount of Limoges and Rothilde of Brosse, was declared heir to the viscounty of the city and Hildegaire, his brother, was made Bishop of Limoges. Emma of Blois, Duchess of Aquitaine, ablaze with anger at her husband’s adultery, left Poitiers with her son and rode to the protection of her brother.

  He paused, with his quill above the paper. Nothing else was certain. Adalmode might find a way to evade marriage to Guillaume of Aquitaine. Perhaps even this entry so far was not correct. Perhaps Hildegaire would run away and offer himself as a mercenary to avoid becoming a Bishop. It was too early in the year to be writing its rubric. He blew on the ink to dry it before folding up the parchment and returning it to its hiding place.

  The argument with Hildegaire raged for days. Yesterday he had shouted, ‘Guy is as blind as a mole, Father, and you would risk our patrimony on that!’

  Adalmode watched the doubt spread over the obdurate set of her father’s features. Guy was worth all of her other brothers put together. His intelligence, generosity and humour would win anyone who talked with him at any length. He would be a hundred times a better viscount than their father, caring for the people and the city and not only for himself. But his near-sightedness made him awkward and strange in company. He seemed aloof because he did not look in the right place. He seemed judgmental because he screwed up his eyes in an effort to see and it looked like a mighty frown of disapproval.

  ‘Say something,’ she muttered to Guy.

  ‘You know that our patrimony will be safe in my hands, Father.’ Guy turned his face to where his father sat, hoping that a semblance of eye contact was occurring. ‘Was it not my advice that retrieved that patrimony? What you know of statecraft, I know. As you have advised, so I will do. I have been at your side in frays and parlays. The viscounty is rightfully mine and when you bequeath it to me, I will guard it and wield it well for the sake of my mother, my brothers and sisters, and my wife and sons.’ He did not mention that he also felt the viscount owed a duty to the people and city of Limoges, as he knew this was in no sense a paramount concern for his father.

  Viscount Gerard was reassured, recalling that Guy had given him sound counsel in many negotiations with the Duke of Aquitaine, the Counts of Anjou and La Marche, and other men of the region. Gerard was aware that whilst Guy was an intelligent and skilled strategist, Hildegaire was a self-indulgent hot-head, who might easily lose the family the viscount’s throne again.

  Audebert tracked the flight of a buzzard, trying to slow down the moment where he could see freedom and imagine himself up there with it, soaring, going somewhere else. He had been dozing in the thin spring sunlight and wiped a trickle of drool from the corner of his mouth. He swotted at the flies that landed on his bare legs, thinking him already a corpse. He held his arms out in front of him and thought yes, they seemed thinner now than before. His skin was closely wrapped around his bones and there was nothing left between the two anymore, no fat, no muscle. The light was suddenly blocked out by a head – not Adalmode’s head, and a thick rope snaked down to him. Had Helie come back for him after all? Or was this an invitation to climb to his own execution?

  Audebert’s hands were tied in front of him and lashed to the pommel of an old plodding horse. He was surrounded by ten armed men, all in armour and bristling with swords, knives, spears. Audebert felt like laughing. How did they think he – in his emaciated, rusted condition, akin to this old horse – could threaten them. The heavy rain fell incessantly and Audebert’s pale skin felt as if it might never warm again. His black hair was plastered to his head, neck and the edges of his face. He tried to suppress the fear that gripped his stomach at the image he had conjured of a noose. He looked about him. This was the first time for four years that he had seen any environment other than the close walls of the dungeon and perhaps it was the last. He must drink in every detail that he could see through the rain – the intense green of the grass, the smooth white bark of a tree and the brown-black gnarled trunk of another, the grey bleak sky weighted with loaded clouds.

  The ride was short. In less than an hour the castle of Montignac had disappeared from view and the impressive sight of the city of Limoges rose up before him. A public hanging in front of hundreds then? As they approached the walls, Audebert looked with grief as they passed by what he knew to be the road to Bellac, to home, only an hour away to the north. So Helie had not ransomed him. The party clattered through the gateway into the city and Audebert felt assaulted with noises, smells and the curious faces of many people. He could smell the tanneries and the butchers, stables and compost heaps. He could hear the shouts of shopkeepers in the colonnaded market square and looked up short flights of steps to glimpses through archways of more houses and cobbles beyond. He saw servants scurrying with baskets, sheltering from the heavy rain along covered walkways that fronted the tall, tightly packed brown and black timbered houses. ‘All brightness dissolves in the rain,’ he thought remembering a song composed here in the city, the lament of a swan, lost above an endless ocean. Awkwardly he used his bound hands to pull himself upright in the saddle. If he was going to die now, he was going to do it with defiance on his face, and at least he had seen the world one more time, and despite the rain, it was as he remembered it, as he had dreamed it for all these years, so beautiful, beautiful beyond bearing.

  Audebert sank with a gratitude verging on ecstasy into the warm bathwater but suppressed the urge to let out a great sigh of pleasure. No one including the sullen serving boy who had filled the bath and now stood in the corner, would be witness to Audebert’s joy at being out of the hole. Would they bother to allow him to bathe if they were going to hang him? Lulled by the warmth of the blissful water he dozed fitfully, waking to stretch a hand to the wooden beaker of wine perched on the rim of the bath, close to his ear. Wine. They wouldn’t give him wine surely? The serving boy was staring at the dense hair that furred Audebert’s chest, clinging now in wet black commas, and Audebert closed his eyes, ignoring the boy. He heard the door latch click and opened his eyes to an empty room and the water now grimy and cooling around him. Sighing at both the end of the bath and the feebleness of his arm muscles he pulled himself up out of the water.

  Audebert stood before the dais where Adalmode sat with her father, Viscount Gerard of Limoges and her mother, Lady Rothilde. Other nobles were seated there but he did not know them. To be out of the dungeon after four long years … He did his best to look insouciant and was grateful that the Viscount had seen fit to allow him a bath, a barber and a clean set of clothes before this audience. Audebert was a tall man with broad shoulders but this accentuated how stick-thin he was, and how his clothes hung from him like a scarecrow. The black hair rising from his chest, feathering his neck above his high, elegant shirt collar, contradicted the boyish air that he still exuded, despite the tortuous passing of time carved into him.

  ‘My Lord Audebert, Count of La Marche and Périgord, I greet you,’ a grey-haired man said formally but with a cordial note in
his voice. ‘I am Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, known as Greymantle, and this is my son, Fulk Nerra.’ He patted a small black-haired boy sitting next to him on the head.

  ‘Greetings my Lord,’ Audebert inclined his head, trying to conceal the confusion he felt at being endowed with the titles of his brother Helie and his uncle in Périgord. Clearly, despite the fact that this was Gerard’s court, this was the man in charge. ‘You name me Count sire?’

  ‘Indeed – and we will give you that news in due course. You know your hosts,’ said Geoffrey, pausing ironically on the word, ‘Gerard, Viscount of Limoges and his wife.’

  Audebert inclined his head again and although he longed to look at Adalmode, since he had never before been this close to her, he avoided her eyes. He did not want to be distracted from the undercurrents of whatever might be happening here. Did it mean his freedom, his death, or had they raised him from the pit to gloat and thrust him back in?

  ‘Please, sit and eat with us, Count,’ said Rothilde. She indicated a seat between herself and her daughter. So much for his intention not to be distracted, Audebert thought, realising that he would be sharing his trencher with Adalmode. Count Geoffrey had the seat of honour to the right of the Viscount.

  ‘Thank you, Lady.’ He moved with as much grace as his stiff limbs allowed to take his seat. For a while, there was no further speech as the servants presented many dishes with different coloured sauces and the people sitting around him spooned food onto their trenchers and ate.

  Apart from a brief smile, Audebert avoided looking directly at Adalmode, but he felt her leg alongside his under the trestle and part-way through a rabbit stew, he felt her fingers tracing the back of his hand lightly under cover of the cloth. He shook his head slightly at her and she removed her hand. He was aware of a smile being repressed with great difficulty at the corners of her mouth – constantly threatening to break free of her control. He watched her delicate long fingers peel a pomegranate. She loosened the brilliant jewelled fruit from its pale fleshy clasp and opened her mouth to receive the tiny sweet baubles. Her mouth was another jewel. Whenever his resolve failed him, and he inadvertantly glanced at her his swift impression was of green – her green eyes, and honey – the tendrils of her fair hair slipping from their gossamer net.

  In a bowl of water when the barber was shearing off the rancid tangle of his hair and beard, he had caught sight of his blurred reflection: his blue eyes huge, his red mouth too big in the gaunt face like an old man’s. Adalmode could not possibly be interested in him. He focussed on not allowing himself to feel his humiliation and anger. If he let that out of the box he had trapped it in, he feared the explosion might lay waste to everything and everyone in this hall, including himself. He was conscious of the eyes upon him: everyone wondering what it would be like if they had to spend four years in a pit, wondering how he was feeling, was he a broken man. He struggled not to eat rapidly and not to eat much since his stomach so long accustomed to so little, and only to bread and slops, would revolt at the rich food. He sipped at the good red wine and waited. He was skilled at waiting.

  Finally the business arrived. ‘Count Audebert, I have to tell you the sad news that your brother Helie, has recently died on pilgrimage to Rome and your uncle has died in Périgord. You, therefore, inherit the counties of La Marche and Périgord,’ said Geoffrey.

  His brother was dead. To everyone else in this room Helie was reduced to that single egregious act of blinding the priest, but to Audebert Helie was much more. He was the older brother he had played with, practised with, hunted alongside admiring his skill, the brother he had followed blindly into daring escapades intended to rile but also impress their father. His Helie, that boy, was dead. Audebert stared at the table. He, Audebert, was Count of La Marche, unless one of his younger brothers had usurped him? Boson might. Boson was always jealous of the two oldest brothers. He might. But Gausbert and Martin, his youngest brothers would not allow it, would loyally be holding the county, waiting for Audebert’s return?

  Geoffrey turned in his seat to Gerard. ‘It is my opinion, Viscount, that Count Audebert should be released. He is now of age and has already wasted four years of the prime of his life in your dungeon.’

  Not death then? They were debating his freedom. Audebert’s maternal uncles held Angoulême in the previous generation and the Count of La Marche and Périgord had the potential to be the major force in the region. This was, no doubt, what concerned the Count of Anjou, the undercurrent of what was occurring here. So much had happened whilst Audebert was in the pit: his parents had died and now his brother and uncle dead. He wondered – if he was permanently lifted from the pit – along with the recovery of his health and strength, would he be able to regain adequate knowledge and political acumen to deal with men such as this Count of Anjou. He felt like a great gasping fish suddenly landed on the bank, ripped into an alien world where he could not function.

  ‘I am sure he appreciates your concern for him,’ said Gerard, and Audebert, trying to process this sudden and significant news, heard the anger beneath his words. ‘Have you forgotten so quickly, my lord, that this man and his wolf-pack of brothers offended direly against the Peace of God. They should have hanged for their crime and indeed the Lord has taken the older brother and did not, it seems, hear his plea for forgiveness.’

  ‘It is not for us to say what offends God and whether or no he has forgiven,’ Geoffrey responded coldly. There was an awkward silence until Geoffrey continued in a more pleasant voice, ‘Four years in a dungeon for a count of noble blood is fit punishment for the crime, Gerard, but no more. After all, it was his brother Helie who actually committed the crime against Father Benedict and not Audebert here.’

  Audebert’s heart began to beat loudly in his ears and he could not refrain from gripping Adalmode’s hand beneath the cloth. The Count of Anjou was arguing for him.

  ‘He is my prisoner and it is I who decide how many years is fit punishment,’ said Gerard. ‘He may not have held the dagger himself but he is kin to the sinner and crimes must be paid for by kin. They both offended against the Peace of God as your own brother, Bishop Guy of Le Puy, made clear to us all last year.’

  For the sake of Adalmode, Audebert felt he must maintain politeness to her father, but he would like to run him through now with the knife he held in his hand, for the years of his life lost in Gerard’s dungeon, yet he was so weak his wrist could barely sustain the weight of the knife to eat with it, let alone run it into a man’s resisting flesh.

  ‘Of course keeping the Count of La Marche and Périgord penned up like a pig and unable to defend his lands and his birthright is precisely what suits you and the Aquitaine Court and coincides neatly with your conjectures as to God’s will,’ said Geoffrey smiling, and Audebert gulped at the extent of the insult he intended to the Viscount. Audebert looked around and saw that Anjou had brought a great many armed men with him to Gerard’s hall and each one of them now looked alert to the verbal confrontation and ready to act.

  ‘No such thing!’ denied Gerard.

  ‘Keeping the Count here any longer stinks to me of an intention to annexe his lands,’ declared Geoffrey, ‘and that, Viscount, I would regard as an act of war.’

  Audebert watched Rothilde’s hand trembling as she reached for her glass and he sat up straighter in his seat, looking around again. Nobody it seemed would wish to be at war with this Geoffrey Greymantle. The black-haired boy beside him was smiling smugly and watching everything with avid curiosity.

  Gerard’s face was white, his hand gripped tightly around his sauce-stained knife. ‘I will have to consult with the Duke of Aquitaine on the matter …’

  ‘Are you his lackey then?’ asked Geoffrey.

  Gerard rose angrily, pushing back his chair, and every Anjou man at arms reached to his sword-hilt. Why had Gerard allowed them to bear arms in his hall, Audebert wondered. The man was a fool. What price would Geoffrey of Anjou want to extract from him in payment for his support? He would gladly grant
almost anything in exchange for his freedom, as long as it did not involve harm to Adalmode.

  ‘While you think on it, my lord,’ said Geoffrey also rising slowly from his seat, allowing the tension to deflate a little with the modulation of his voice, playing the audience assembled in the hall like an expert musician, ‘I presume that you will extend your courtesy to Count Audebert?’

  Gerard swallowed his fury. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘my wife will see to the Count’s needs.’ No longer able to bear the shaming Geoffrey had delivered in front of his household, the Viscount moved to leave the hall, merely nodding abruptly to his guests. To cover his exit, Lady Rothilde rose and Adalmode with her. Rothilde extended her hand towards Audebert. ‘Please Count, come, I will show you to your quarters,’ she said and though Audebert longed to simply run at high speed down the hall and out into the mountains, still his slow progress to the tower room felt like a marvellous freedom too. He carefully avoided giving Rothilde any impression that he and Adalmode were on familiar terms.

  The following morning two guards came for Audebert and he was ashamed to find himself twitching and shaking, his whole body revolting at the idea of returning to the pit.

  ‘Viscount’s declared you have to do penance, while he’s mulling over your crimes,’ one man told him. They took away his shoes and gave him a rough wool tunic to put on in place of the fine linen tunic he had worn to supper in the hall the night before. They led him to the church door, and left him there, his hands manacled together and his ankles similarly chained and attached to a sturdy ring embedded in the ground. As soon as the guards were gone, servants and household members sidled up to ogle and pass comments on his sins. Audebert considered turning his back to them, leaning his head against the door with his eyes closed, but no, he was Count of La Marche and Périgord now and he would face them down. He slouched insouciantly with his back against the church door, his arms crossed, and scowled threateningly at them, so that their chatter began to lose its impetus. Please God, Audebert prayed, do not let Adalmode walk this way and look at me humiliated like this.