Adalmode could feel her father’s eyes on her but she kept her own downcast, trying to gather herself.
‘You know what this means,’ said Rothilde, excited. ‘We shall have two weddings in the family this Spring!’ Guy’s marriage to Aina was due to take place in a few weeks’ time. They were waiting for her to arrive now from the monastery of Saint Michel en l’Herm and Lady Melisende was on the road to them from Ségur.
‘Don’t rush ahead of yourself, Rothilde,’ Gerard said, ‘but one wedding and a betrothal, certainly, seem likely. Well, what do you say Adalmode? The Duke’s heir is a man now and that was always your concern before wasn’t it? He’s full nineteen and a strapping lad.’
Adalmode swallowed. One moment she had been innocently indulging a little vanity looking at her hair and thinking about how much Audebert admired it, and now suddenly her world was focussed down into this moment, into how she could handle, evade this, or else her life would be something other, something she did not want. ‘Father, I am not inclined to wed Lord Guillaume, no matter his age. I am inclined to wed the Count of La Marche and Périgord who offers for me and who has equally rich holdings, adjacent to our own lands.’ She looked up passionately into her father’s face. ‘You married the woman you wished to Father, against opinion, against law even.’ She would try truth now, for persuasion, cajolement and excuses had yielded her nothing. ‘I want to marry Audebert with all my heart Father. I beg you to give your permission and send my sisters to Poitiers instead for the Duchess’ choosing.’
Guy nodded his head to her in approprobation. Her mother was nervously knitting her fingers around and around each other. Adalmode’s three sisters had finished their own breakfasts and were quietly clearly away plates and glasses, but they stilled their movements and waited for their father’s response. An old servant sitting by the fire cleared the phlegm from his throat and spat it sizzling into the fire.
Adalmode lifted her chin and looked her father in the face. It was an ominous face promising her only storm and battle.
‘I have refused my permission for your marriage to La Marche and that is final.’ He paused and took a gulp of wine, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘You will go to Poitiers and that is final. Guy will escort you there today and he will hear what the Duchess wants with you and if it is a marriage offer to her son he will accept it on my behalf.’ He stood up and her mother rose with him.
Adalmode looked desperately to Guy who lifted his shoulders to her, his expression helpless. Her father turned his back and made his way towards the door. Adalmode opened her mouth to beg further but Guy shook his head and told her in a low voice, ‘It will do you no good.’ She closed her mouth on bitter distress. ‘Are you ready to travel, Adalmode?’ he asked gently. ‘We must go today I’m afraid, if I am to make it back in time for my marriage.’
Adalmode nodded miserably.
Less than an hour later, she and Guy passed through the city gates and out onto the road. Adalmode reined her horse at the crossroads and Guy drew up alongside her, with a querying look on his face. The road north led to Bellac and to Audebert who had been forbidden to her, and beyond him, to Poitiers, where Guillaume waited for her. She had no doubt that if she went to Poitiers now she would return as Guillaume’s betrothed bride.
‘Help me, Guy. I can’t go there. You know what will happen.’
‘What then?’
‘Countess Blanche writes to me that she is with child and wishes I were with her. Could I not go to her? Make excuse of her sudden need of me with the birth?’
‘In Aix-en-Provence! That’s an enormous journey, Adalmode. I wouldn’t make it back in time for my own wedding!’
‘No, not in Aix. She is in Brioude, visiting with her sons and will have the child there. That is not much further than Poitiers itself.’ Adalmode reached her hand to Guy’s on his horse’s pommel. ‘Please, Guy. Perhaps you could just convey me part of the way.’
‘No, you know I won’t do that. I won’t leave you to travel unaccompanied. The Duchess will be mightily displeased if we do not arrive in Poitiers. I read her letter to Father and it was not a request.’
‘Blanche will smooth it over.’
‘Duchess Emma is not so well inclined to Blanche since she got herself proclaimed Queen of Aquitaine for a short time in her place.’
‘That is over now and Blanche has great powers of persuasion. The Duchess is not well inclined to anyone in any case.’
Guy regarded Adalmode for some time, sighed a mighty sigh and nodded his consent.
Adalmode broke into smiles. ‘Oh Guy thank you. This is the best course. I cannot give myself to Aquitaine. I just cannot.’
‘I will have to leave you there to get back for Aina’s arrival in Limoges.’
‘I know. Blanche’s servants will escort me home when the time is right. I will wait for the storm to blow over, with Father, with the Duchess and perhaps when we do not arrive she will cast around and find him another bride at this Assembly.’
‘You will miss my wedding then?’
‘I’m sorry Guy, I so want to be there for you, but not at the cost of incurring such an unwelcome marriage for myself.’
He nodded again and Adalmode could see from the slump of his shoulders and his self-absorbed frown that he was already worrying about how to deal with their father’s inevitable fury at this disobedience. They turned their horses east towards Clermont-Ferrand and the road to Brioude.
Adalmode’s reception at Brioude was all that she could have hoped for. Blanche was delighted to see them, sorry that Guy could not stay more than one night, greatly relieved to have Adalmode’s company for the birth, thrilled to have the task of writing a convincing and soothing letter to Emma and even more pleased to be thwarting the Duchess. ‘I know what unwanted marriages are, my darling, through and through, and I’ll not have you sold into one if I can help it,’ she exclaimed after they had waved Guy goodbye and good wishes for his marriage to Aina.
Adalmode knew Guy was sorely disappointed that she would not be there to support him. ‘Aina will become your support now,’ Adalmode said, but Guy had grimaced wryly, telling her: ‘I don’t think that is likely to be Aina’s mode.’
‘Your brother can take care of himself,’ Blanche reassured her. ‘All men speak well of him, of his government of Limoges.’
‘Yes.’
‘How shall we while away the time waiting for this baby?’ Blanche said looking down with an indulgent expression at the huge swell of her stomach, swathed in a voluminous pale and dark green silk gown. The child would come this week or the next. Blanche’s bump looked impossibly large and round in contrast to the rest of her body which retained its slenderness. She lent back against a pile of brown brocade cushions. Adalmode glanced around the opulent room. The bedcover and drapes were dusky pink. Silver candlesticks and slavers shone on every surface. A large tapestry on one wall was shot through with silver, green and pink thread depicting a scene of musicians and dancers, their faces joyful, their hands outstretched to one another.
‘You must tell me the stories of your marriages,’ Adalmode said, ‘for I only know parts and have not heard it all from you directly.’
Blanche looked delighted at the idea. ‘Yes, indeed,’ she said, looking ostentatiously over her shoulder to ensure that her sons from her first marriage and none of the servants were in earshot. She lent close to Adalmode who admired again the vivacious beauty of this woman – four times married and coming to her seventh childbed but still a woman who could charm birds from trees and certainly men from high horses or anywhere else.
‘My first marriage here in Brioude was terribly unhappy for me,’ she began in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I was not lucky in my early childhood. I did not have a warm and loving family and especially a caring brother as you have. My mother died when I was three and my father when I was ten. My brother Geoffrey succeeded as Count of Anjou and he was barely fifteen, but still he had plenty of ideas and plans even then.
One of the first things he did was marry me off for an advantageous alliance.’
‘At ten?’ Adalmode asked. ‘You were betrothed?’
‘No darling, I was married at ten to Etienne of Brioude here, who was a mere fifty years old to my dolls and puppies!’
Adalmode looked down at her hands. Perhaps she was being selfish and self-indulgent in resisting this marriage her parents wanted after all. She looked back to Blanche and saw the child who had been so carelessly disposed of still there, in her eager face. ‘Was the marriage consummated at so tender an age?’
‘No, no, there was that at least. He waited for a few years but still that just meant we were both a little older. As you can imagine it was not a pleasant thing to be bedded by a man who could have been my grandfather.’ Blanche pulled a face of disgust.
‘I put up with it then. I thought I had to. I had three children by him when I was still a child myself.’
‘And then he died?’ Adalmode said.
‘Well, yes he did die eventually but that wasn’t the reason for the end of our marriage. Didn’t you know? I suppose you were too young to know or understand that scandal.’
Adalmode laughed at Blanche in admiration. ‘Another scandal? I thought the scandal of King Louis was your only one.’
Blanche laughed, rocking backwards in her chair and helplessly throwing up her slender, white hands. ‘No, love. I’ve been a scandal all my life. It’s a wonder any man wants to marry me really!’
‘What happened?’
‘I met the Count of Toulouse – Raymond – and well to cut a long story short he was a handsome, younger man, much more to my liking and I determined that I needed to get out of my marriage to Etienne. Raymond was enamoured with me,’ she lifted her chin, tucked a bright strand of hair behind her small ear, raising one eyebrow, and Adalmode had no difficulty in imagining that. Blanche’s voice dropped to a whisper: ‘I became pregnant by him!’
‘What!’ said Adalmode. ‘What did you …?’
‘He was avid for me and his wife wasn’t producing children so he repudiated her, I left Etienne who repudiated me and I married Raymond.’
Adalmode regarded Blanche, astonished. ‘Was there not opprobrium? From your brother? From the Church?’
‘Of course,’ Blanche said carelessly, ‘I listened to a few lectures from both. Nobody on the other hand felt the need to lecture Raymond I noticed. Then when I felt I’d listened enough and done enough penances he and I just got on with our lives and took no more notice.’
‘Were you happy with him?’
‘Yes, happy enough. Happier.’
‘And then what?’
‘Well I had two children with Raymond, a son and daughter, and after Etienne died I became Regent for my son here too, so I was kept busy running between the two households, taking care of it all.’
Adalmode knew that despite Blanche’s frothy façade, she was judged an astute manager and politician and had taken care of it all, as she put it, very well.
‘Then Raymond died too. I am a black widow spider, you see. My husbands die shortly after marrying me! So I was twice widowed, still only twenty-nine, with five children and two great estates to manage! I won’t lie to you Adalmode. I enjoyed it. I was good at it.’
Adamode nodded and smiled at the enthuasiasm of her friend. ‘You are still managing them all I think, as well as your newest husband’s household.’
‘Yes!’ Blanche laughed with amusement at her own competence and scandalousness.
‘But what induced you to move from being a widow to marrying the royal boy, Louis?’
‘Hmm, yes,’ said Blanche, switching to a theatrical expression of dissatisfaction. ‘That was a complete error on my part, I admit it. It was my brother’s idea again, seeking great advancement for himself and our house, but I had no need to do it and I shouldn’t have done it. I allowed myself to be swayed by him against my better judgement.’
‘Did you want to be Queen?’ Adalmode ventured.
‘Well, no that wasn’t it,’ Blanche responded. ‘I was already Countess of most of southern France. It was more that Geoffrey represented it to me as my duty to him, to the house of Anjou and to the line of Charlemagne that was in danger of dying out. I told him a fifteen year old boy would not want a wife twice his age but he told me Louis needed managing, and he was right in that. He said I was proven fertile, and King Lothaire was desperate I should agree. Well, I was foolishly persuaded.’ She sat back and took a sip of wine, frowning.
‘Do you regret not being Queen or the mother of the next Carolingian King? If you had borne a child to Louis, Hugh Capet could not have seized the throne.’
‘Not at all! I could not stand that boy Louis in my bed, let alone bear him a child, and I had borne an old man bedding me before as you remember. And who is to say that Hugh Capet would not have murdered me and a child in any case, as he surely murdered my brother and that fool Louis?’
‘Hush, Blanche!’ Adalmode said in alarm. ‘If you are heard …’
‘What then? I have my husband and sons now to protect me from my own rashnesses.’
Adalmode saw the child emerge in the woman’s face again.
‘So, as you know, my marriage to Prince Louis was a disaster and I abandoned the boy when he raised his hand to me because I would not give him control of the purse strings, and my purse and money it was. It wasn’t my bed or his heir that he was wanting.’ She paused again. ‘I was grateful for the help your family gave me, so offering you refuge now in your time of need is the least I can do in return.’
Guy had persuaded their father to aid Blanche when she fled from Louis to the Abbey of Saint Martial outside the walls of Limoges, and there had been a stand-off that lasted long enough to allow Lothaire to find he had more pressing problems in the north and to ride away with his shamed son. Nevertheless Blanche would have been an embarrassment on Gerard and Guy’s hands if it were not for the convenient serendipity that Guy’s friend, the young Count of Provence who had willingly assisted in opposing Lothaire, had been enthralled by the beleagured Queen and married her himself.
‘There is no end to your bewitchments!’ Adalmode laughed. ‘And are you happy enough with your new husband or will you be leaving him sometime soon for a fifth husband?’
‘Sshh!’ Blanche rocked with stifled laughter again and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘No,’ she said, her expression sobering, ‘Adalmode, I have to tell you that I am in love this time! Who would not be. Perhaps you should rethink your rejection of a younger husband. I can recommend it now!’
‘In your case perhaps,’ said Adalmode, ‘but my heart has been set for many years. Every fibre of me is committed and already in imagination married to Audebert. To marry another would be torture and the death of my soul.’
Blanche lent forward and patted her hand. ‘We can’t have that,’ she said. ‘If necessary I shall just keep having babies and keep you here until such time as your Count Audebert can come and get you. But why does he not do so? Your father, after all, kidnapped your mother. It’s common enough.’
Adalmode nodded. ‘I think it may come to that soon, but he tells me he has to build up his forces for the war there will be if he commits such an act, and he does not want to expose his people to the ravages of war until he is ready to defend them fully.’
‘This does him great credit,’ said Blanche, her face unusually and briefly serious.
‘Do you believe that Hugh Capet has stolen the throne and unjustly claims overlordship for himself and his son where he has none?’ Adalmode asked in a low voice.
Blanche shook her head and was silent for a while as if she would not answer.
‘Well that is certainly the view of Lothaire’s brother, Charles of Lorraine, who leads a rebellion against King Hugh.’ She paused again, clearly more reluctant to speak on this topic than on the vagaries of her marriages. ‘It’s true enough that any of the other lords had as much claim to the throne when Louis died – Emma’s bro
ther in Blois, my nephew in Anjou, your Duke in Aquitaine. But well Hugh Capet is King.’ Blanche closed her mouth deliberately and looked at Adalmode.
‘Did you hear that Aldearde d’Aulnay remarried?’ Adalmode said, seeing that a change of topic would be best.
‘I did,’ Blanche responded. ‘To the Count of Angoulême but that was a record brief marriage wasn’t it, since he took the cowl only a few months later. He was in ill health before the marriage. No doubt the Duke did not want a virile husband for his beloved mistress.’
‘She is still his mistress?
‘Oh yes.’
The following week, Blanche was easily delivered of a healthy girl and named her Constance. She sent word to her husband in Aixen-Provence and she pushed herself up in bed, to dictate a letter to her clerk to be sent to Duchess Emma in Poitiers:
‘Beloved friend, Emma of Blois, Duchess of all Aquitaine, I greet you, Blanche of Anjou, Marquessa of Provence, Dowager Countess of Gévaudan and Toulouse. I heard of your new concord with your husband, the Duke, and of your return to Poitiers, and am glad of it and that you can continue with your plans for the Abbey of Maillezais. I must beg forgiveness from you already as if you were the Mother Abbess of such a great foundation. Forgive me my dear friend. I have just risen from childbed for the seventh time and brought forth a daughter named Constance for my husband at great labours and pains.’
Blanche paused in her dictation and raised her eyebrows expressively in the direction of the midwife and Adalmode who both knew there had been no such thing. ‘An easier birth I never witnessed,’ muttered the midwife and Blanche’s laugh chimed contagiously. She continued her dictation:
‘… great labours and pains, which I know that you, as the mother of sons, will commiserate with me upon. And here is my trespass. I had great need, in my fearful time, of my dear friend, Lady Adalmode of Limoges but she told me she could not come for you had commanded her presence. Will you forgive me? I wept and wailed and wrung my hands and said I should be dead in childbed if she did not come and so she did. With all felicitations etc etc, fill that part in.’
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