Audebert smiled wryly to himself, surveying the visitors to this ‘Peace’ council. It was a copy of another such council called by Fulk’s uncle, Bishop Guy, in the Auvergne. Bishop Guy was up to his neck himself in Fulk’s military intentions and these meetings merely provided opportunities to discuss strategy. Audebert had left his brothers in charge of his holdings, Boson at Roccamolten and Gausbert at Bellac. Since he had inherited two counties his lands were extensive and the business of managing them, dispensing justice, improving his fortifications, building up his army kept him busy, moving back and forth between his castles. He installed his youngest brother, Martin, as aide to the Bishop in Périgueux, and he was as much a soldier as the rest of the siblings. Audebert knew he could rely on his brothers to keep his men training and his network of information active. He noticed Adalmode’s brother Guy as the crowd moved and opened for a moment but could not see her there. He moved towards Guy but there was no sign of her.
‘Might I speak with you on the matter of your sister?’ asked Audebert.
‘It is too soon now, after our father’s death, to discuss such a matter.’
‘Of course,’ Audebert said graciously, although he could not keep his disappointment from his face. ‘May I visit Limoges in a month’s time?’
‘Please do,’ Guy said vaguely and moved off. Audebert had assumed her brother would be supportive of their marriage and looked after him perplexed. War was coming and he needed to get his marriage concluded before that happened. He would wait a few weeks, rather than a month, before he rode to Limoges.
Guillaume sat silent, listening to the men at the table and his mother arguing, with Archbishop Gunbaldus making the occasional interjection to calm the discussion or decide on the order of who should speak when. His mother had insisted on representing his father who was sick again, and she had no difficulty at all in contending with these men and making her views known, and so he, Guillaume, was effectively muted.
The discussions began stormy with Audebert of La Marche vexed that the measures seemed aimed at him. ‘You forget, that it was my brother, who was wont to blind priests and plunder churches, and not I,’ he shouted angrily. ‘Do you see me committing any such crimes?’
The Archbishop held up a pacifying hand and mollified the Count so that discussion could continue calmly. At the end of a long day, with scant provision of wine Guillaume thought, the bishops reached agreement that non-combatants who could not defend themselves, that is the peasants and the clergy, would be granted immunity from violence and that excommunication would be the punishment for anyone attacking or robbing a church, robbing peasants, or robbing, striking or seizing a priest or clergyman. Audebert insisted on an addition to the terms so that they read ‘a priest or clergyman who was not bearing arms.’ The clerks scratched out the copies of the agreement and Guillaume listened, his teeth on edge, to the unpleasant and prolonged noise of the scribing.
Archbishop Gunbaldus lifted the document to read it to the assembly in a resounding voice. ‘Splendid is the name of peace!’ he began, ‘as the venerated Bishop Hilary of Poitiers himself declared many generations before us. My lords we must consider the Court of Heaven! The evils that have fouled the fair countenance of the holy church of God will be struck down by anathemas!’
Guillaume considered that this part could turn out to be long-winded and hoped the rumbling of his stomach could not be heard by his neighbours over the Bishop’s words.
The hubbub of agreement died down and the Bishop continued. ‘We have assembled to root out the criminal actions – the noxia – that have sprouted up through evil habit in our dioceses. We have reached an historic concord that we shall all swear to uphold on our knees before the marvellous relic of Charroux Abbey – the Holy Prepuce.’
Guillaume suppressed a smirk. Christ’s foreskin was rumoured to be in several other places too. There was no knowing whose foreskin it was that they were bowing and scraping to in this Abbey. The churchmen and nobles filed past, signing their names and making their marks on the parchment. His name should have been there too, but his mother preempted him again.
Still at last the feast could get under way and Guillaume’s stomach would be filled and perhaps the wine would flow more now that peace had been reached. Guillaume was seated at the trestle below the High Table on the dais where Audebert presided. Guillaume should have been allowed to handle this important Council meeting on behalf of his father now that he was twenty, but his mother insisted she would represent the Duke. She, instead of Guillaume, sat at the High Table in the place of honour, next to the Archbishop, surrounded by the splendidly dressed bishops.
Guillaume rose from the feasting and walked unsteadily towards his bedchamber late that night. He was a little the worse for wine perhaps. His costly purple and blue robes did not conceal his rotund figure. In the bedchamber a girl was waiting for him, his latest attempt to find a serving wench with at least some semblance of Adalmode about her. She was seated on his bed, wearing a white shift, one naked foot swinging above the floor. The swinging stopped when she looked up and saw him in the doorway and she faked a smile in his direction. Yes, from here there was something of Adalmode about her – blonde hair, green eyes, but she was too young, too skinny, her skin too pale he realised, as he came closer. He scowled and saw a flash of fear on the girl’s face. Well that was something at least.
‘Wine!’ he said, and she stood quickly to pour him wine from a jug on the small table next to the bed. As she bent to her task her skinny shanks were visible through the thin covering of her shift. Nothing at all like Adalmode. Guillaume sat on the bed, on the warm patch where the girl had been sitting and took the wine goblet from her. ‘Shoes.’ She knelt and took off his shoes, looking up for her next instruction. ‘More wine.’ He felt bored with her already. She refilled the goblet and Guillaume saw her hand was shaking as she held the jug, from its weight or from fear of him? She put the jug down and stepped back.
Guillaume thought of his mother this evening, speaking with the Bishop and the other nobles as if she were the Duke, embarrassing him with her disagreements. He stated his opposition to the continuing acceptance of Hugh Capet as King, since the man was an upstart, but his mother reminded him, in front of everyone gathered there, that Hugh’s wife, Queen Adelaide was his aunt, his father’s sister, and was he not proud of that, she asked him loudly. Why should he be? What had a woman to do with the matter? She was merely a breeding ground for a man’s heirs.
He had been slowly and carefully unfolding his thoughts to Count Fulk of Anjou on methods of building in stone, and the Count he thought was listening with a fascinated expression when his mother suddenly retorted, ‘Oh for goodness sake, Guillaume! Get to the point. If we all have to listen to you meandering forever these new stone buildings you speak of will be lying in ruins, overgrown with grass and weeds like the monuments of the Romans!’
He watched, silently furious, as Fulk suppressed a smile. The Count of Anjou was a boy, younger than he, and his mother shamed him before this youth. Oblivious to the serving girl standing in front of him, Guillaume clenched his teeth and screwed up his face imagining himself forcing a gag into his mother’s wrinkled mouth.
‘Lord?’ the girl said in a quavering voice, thinking the anger on his face was a response to her.
He could take it out on her. He had done it on a few occasions before with other serving wenches. This one might be a virgin like the others, found for him by his steward. He could hurt her. Make her cry and send her back to her father soiled and dishevelled with silver coins in her palm, but Guillaume suddenly felt deflated. He would be Duke soon! He would be all powerful and yet his mother and other men laughed at him and he had nothing he wanted.
He had a sudden idea. He could go on pilgrimages – often, long ones. His mother would not wish to accompany him due to the pain she suffered in her joints. The idea grew on him. It was genius. He could be rid of her and he could appear then before other men as a Duke’s heir, rathe
r than as his mother’s mewling son which was always the effect of her presence. He would plan a journey right away to Rome and begin creating his own allegiances along the way, unencumbered by her.
‘Just get out,’ he said, waving a hand at the girl. ‘Get out.’
‘Lord?’ Her expression was bewildered.
‘Get out before I change my mind.’
She was out the door faster than a frightened hind leaping from its cover in the thicket, and as she disappeared in a flurry of white shift and blonde hair, Guillaume imagined that he glimpsed Adalmode fleeing from him.
17
Poitiers
Easter 990
It was over a year since Guy had received the terrible news of Aina’s kidnap by Vikings and continued to suffer the disappointment of his long thwarted marriage. They heard rumours of a lady held hostage by Vikings who had raided an Aquitainian monastery which might be Aina, but still there was no definite news that she lived or a ransom demand. Adalmode sat next to Guy at the trestle, watching the bustle of the morning hall. Their mother and unwed sisters, Aldiarde and Calva, had gone to live in Aimery’s household and for now, Adalmode did service as the lady of Guy’s household. ‘We are a sorry old maid and an old bachelor, Guy.’ She and Guy had been expecting a visit from Audebert for some months now, since her brother’s encounter with him at Charroux, but he had not arrived and they received no news of him. ‘But Aina will be returned to you soon, I know she will.’
Guy smiled tightly. He was thirty-five and kept a mistress in a fine house in the city. There was a real affection between them and it could get difficult in that quarter if his betrothed wife were ever to be returned. Adalmode, on the other hand, was nearing thirty and had no means of the consolation that Guy was able to take.
‘We must go to this Easter Assembly in Poitiers, Adalmode. We should set out tomorrow if we are to take the journey at a pleasant pace and stay a night in Ségur with Lady Melisende.’
Guy needed to gain confirmation of his succession to the Viscounty and to give his fealty to the Duke.
‘I can’t go with you Guy. What about the Duke’s son Guillaume and this mooted marriage?’
‘We won’t let that happen,’ he said, ‘but I need your assistance in this visit. It will be our opportunity to gloss over any slight the Duchess has felt at your earlier failure to answer her summons, but we will stop short at agreeing to any marriage for you. I promise you this. If her son must have a Limoges girl to wife then it will have to be Aldiarde or Calva and not you.’
She nodded her agreement reluctantly.
The ride to Ségur took less than two hours but they stopped overnight so that Guy could do his best to comfort Aina’s mother and assure Melisende her daughter was too precious a prize for the marauders to harm her. ‘As soon as I receive the ransom demand I will pay it in a blink of an eye,’ he said, ‘and I will retrieve her.’
They found the Aquitaine court in turmoil, following the recent return of the Duchess. Anxious for his succession and the state of his health, the Duke had brought about another reconciliation with his wife. Emma had been in high dudgeon at her husband’s debauchery and abandoned his court, but now Aldearde was wed to the Count of Angoulême and safely out of the way, the Duchess had deigned to return. The effect of her presence was felt by everyone. Her iron hand was on the tiller. She dismissed her husband’s drunken doctor, Madelme, and retrieved back lands her husband had given to his friends. She formalised peace with several of the lords of Poitou whom her husband had been unable to quell. After the Peace Council at Charroux, her new Abbey at Mallezais was consecrated by the assembled bishops and the Duke gave Emma a very substantial gift of land to bestow on the new foundation. Now she had started to build another new abbey at Bourgeuil.
Adalmode watched Emma’s face as she sat on the dais with the Duke, waiting for his pronouncement on Guy’s request for the confirmation of his title. Adalmode remembered the vivacious, brown-haired young woman who had first spoken with her mother of betrothing her to the baby heir, sixteen years ago, and was shocked to see the tracks that time had left on Emma’s face. Or perhaps time was not the culprit. Guy always said the worst thing about being an unpleasant person, must be having to live with yourself. The Duchess’ bitterness and anger were living on and under the seamed skin of her forehead and cheeks.
The Duke’s heir, Guillaume, was transformed from the chubby, sticky boy Adalmode remembered into a strongly-built, well-padded, blond twenty year old who stared at length at her. He cannot want me still surely, she thought, I am an old woman to him now, nine years his senior. She felt discomfited by his stare and regretted coming to Poitiers.
‘I will confirm your title to Limoges provisionally,’ the Duke told Guy, ‘but it was granted back to your family on condition that you marry Ademar’s heiress and that condition still stands. If the girl is not returned by the pagans and the marriage does not take place I will have to reconsider.’
Guy bowed his head and they withdrew, talking as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘We must be satisfied with this, Guy,’ Adalmode told him as they walked from the hall, ‘and we have to ensure that your marriage to Aina does take place.’
‘We don’t have a ransom letter from her abductors yet,’ Guy said. ‘We don’t know who her abductors are even. Where she is. If she is still alive.’
‘We will soon know all this and I’m sure she is alive.’ Adalmode injected certainty into her voice to reassure her brother.
Lady Blanche had been reconciled with the Duke and Duchess, and was attending the Assembly and Adalmode gladly went to visit her friend in her chamber. Blanche’s reception was warmly affectionate. ‘But darling twenty-nine years old and the sun shines out of your beautiful face still, and yet you remain unmarried? How is this?’
‘I am happy to keep company with my brother.’ This was Adalmode’s stock response to such enquiries but then looking into Blanche’s affectionate face, she felt an urge to elaborate. ‘You know that I love a man and he me, but my father would not countenance the marriage.’
Blanche leant forward avidly. ‘Darling! Still the Count of La Marche?’
Adalmode hesitated but was there any need to be secret now? Wouldn’t Guy agree to the marriage next time Audebert asked for her which he had every year for the last thirteen years. Adalmode sighed. When she first looked with desire at Audebert as a thirteen year old girl she had no idea she would wait the same number of years longing for him. ‘Yes, still Audebert of La Marche and Périgord,’ she told Blanche who clapped her hands together in delight.
‘Darling, yes. He is gorgeous. I heard that he asked for you long ago and was refused. But still? He is still asking for you?’ Blanche sounded doubtful and her expression had fallen. Adalmode knew what she was thinking. Why would Audebert not take a younger wife now.
‘He …,’ Adalmode faltered, suddenly uncertain herself. ‘He asked for me last year, yes.’
‘But darling,’ Blanche said, ‘surely now that he is aware your father has died?’ Then seeing the distress on Adalmode’s face she went on rapidly, ‘Yes, of course, he is giving you time to grieve before he asks again. Will your brother agree?’
‘I think so. We haven’t spoken of it lately as he has had a lot of his own concerns with the kidnapping.’
‘How lucky you are in your brother,’ said Blanche. ‘Mine cared nothing for my feelings in the marriages he traded me into. But tell me about the kidnapping, about these cruel Northmen.’ She was avid again for the new topic.
After a while Adalmode took her leave and returned to the chamber she shared with Guy who was pacing up and down. ‘I was waiting for you,’ he began.
‘What is it? Have you news of Aina?’
‘No. Duchess Emma and her son, Guillaume, were here. You just missed them.’
‘Good,’ said Adalmode sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘Adalmode, Guillaume is offering for you.’
She looked up at him blankly.
‘In marriage,’ Guy added. ‘I didn’t know what to say. I thanked them …’
‘Guy, no,’ Adalmode suddenly burst in realising what he was saying. ‘You did not agree? You must not agree. You promised me.’
‘No, I just thanked them and said I would discuss the proposal with you.’
‘We must leave immediately.’
‘What? We can’t do that. The Duke will be greatly offended. They might take away the Viscounty, Adalmode. We can’t do that.’
‘Guy, as you love me, we must leave now. We must avoid it. Leave word that I am taken very ill.’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘Guy you know how I feel about Audebert. You might give your permission now. You must!’ Adalmode’s voice was desperate.
He frowned but agreed to leave surreptitously. They packed hurriedly and instructed the servants to discreetly bring the horses out into the courtyard. Night was falling and they could leave just before the city gates were closed and perhaps no one would know of it until the morning. Guy left an apologetic note for the Duke, to be delivered at noon the following day.
Adalmode walked swiftly from the doorway towards her horse, her hood raised over her hair. In her peripheral vision she saw two figures in the courtyard standing by the well: a man and a woman, but she kept her head down and her face concealed. She stepped into the stirrup and rose easily into the saddle, her motion inadvertently dislodging her hood. In the instant the hood fell back from her fair hair, the man and woman at the well turned and caught sight of her: Lady Blanche and young Lord Guillaume. Adalmode pulled her hood back into place and kicked her horse towards the gate but Guillaume stepped out and grasped her bridle.
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