Viking Hostage

by Warr, Tracey;

  ‘My Lady, you are riding out so late?’ he asked, but addressed his question to Guy. Blanche approached, curious, and smiled up at Adalmode.

  ‘My sister is unwell and I have decided to take her home,’ Guy said staunchly. Blanche, who had seen Adalmode shortly before in the best of health, studied her with query in her eyes.

  ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ Guillaume said. ‘Then will you give me an answer now?’ he asked Guy.

  Guy glanced at Adalmode. ‘I cannot at present.’

  Adalmode looked desperately to Blanche.

  ‘Dear Adalmode is as a daughter to me, Lord Guillaume,’ she said suddenly. ‘Tell me of your question and perhaps I can help but do not delay her. You might injure her health.’

  ‘I would not do that for anything,’ he bowed gallantly to Adalmode, smiling. ‘I would expand the waters of the Rhine to marry your beautiful “daughter,” Lady Blanche,’ the young man declared dramatically.

  Adalmode’s heart sank. She was trapped.

  Blanche looked in surprise to Adalmode and saw in an instant the distress on her face and knew why. ‘Ah but you must let the lady go now Lord Guillaume,’ she said gently.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I must obey the commands of two beautiful ladies.’ His smile had become close to an angry sneer and his tone was petulant.

  Adalmode and Guy rode out of Poitiers and Adalmode hoped fervently never to return or at least to return as the Countess of La Marche.

  The ransom demand arrived soon after their return to Limoges and came by way of a messenger from the Duke of Normandy, who gave the hand of friendship to the pagans. Guy ripped open the letter. ‘She lives!’ he exclaimed, but then Adalmode watched a horrified expression develop on his face as he read on. ‘3,000 pounds of silver! Where am I to get such a sum?’

  ‘Send word back quickly that you mean to pay a ransom for the lady, that you can only pay 1,000 pounds, but you can pay it now,’ Adalmode said. ‘They will rather have the coin quickly.’

  ‘But even 1,000 pounds?’

  ‘You send the reply and I will find the silver.’

  The messenger set off with Guy’s reply and Adalmode set a clerk to concentrate on the task of amassing the ransom. He emptied Guy’s coffers and weighed that pile of silver. Melisende sent 500 pounds and Adalmode diverted all silver from the tolls and markets to this clerk. She combed through her chests and boxes and gave over to the clerk all of her own silver ornaments and coins too for weighing.

  ‘A total of 992 pounds,’ the clerk pronounced to Guy and Adalmode the following week.

  Adalmode smiled brightly to Guy. ‘So if they will negotiate we can send this very soon and regain her.’

  The following week, the messenger returned with a refusal of the offer of 1,000 pounds and a restatement of the original 3,000 pounds of silver for Aina’s release. The letter was signed Olafr Tryggvason. The Duke of Normandy enclosed a note of reassurance to Guy telling him this Olafr was a member of a Norwegian royal clan, he would treat Lady Aina well, but Guy should not delay in paying the ransom.

  ‘No wife and no heir, Guy,’ Hildegaire said to him, over dinner. ‘You should draw up a testament making me your heir as a safeguard. To be sure that the viscounty stays with our family, after father fought so hard to regain it.’

  ‘No need for that at present,’ Guy said irritated.

  ‘The clerk and I will start working on what we can sell of lands and rights,’ said Adalmode, ‘and I will send requests to all the Abbots and Lords hereabouts for donations to help us.’

  Their sales were more profitable than the requests and now the coffer weighed out at 2,000 pounds of silver. Guy kept it under his bed and set two guards on his door day and night. He sent a fast messenger to the Duke of Normandy asking that Olafr Tryggvason accept 2,000 pounds for the return of his betrothed wife.

  No word had come from Audebert and Adalmode decided she had to act. ‘Lord Audebert,’ she wrote, ‘my father has died and my brother would look kindly on a match between us, but Guillaume, heir to Aquitaine has offered for me. I beg you to renew your offer now and quickly if you still mean it. If you are long past wanting me to wife, tell me so and I intend, in that case, to take a nun’s veil.’

  Adalmode set down her stylus and read back her words. She had not seen him for so long. Perhaps their marriage was just a fantasy of youth now to him. Perhaps he never thought about her anymore. He could be negotiating for another bride somewhere.

  Guillaume rode through the sun-streaked forest, staring morosely at the ram-rod straight back of his mother riding ahead of him. The woman was impossible. The first time she left his father over his affair with Aldearde, and took him away from Poitiers with her, he had been too young to offer resistance. His mother ruled all around her with an imperious presence and her certainty of a God-given rightness in her decisions and actions. She had screamed at his father, ‘You gulp down sin like vintage wine! Your head is whitening as you sit upon a throne stained from top to bottom with adultery!’ They had only been returned to the court of Aquitaine for two weeks when his mother discovered her husband was still sneaking away to consort with his mistress and so here they were, leaving again, on the way to his uncle’s holdings in Blois.

  ‘I am the political glue connecting the two great houses of Blois and Poitiers, who have oftentimes been in conflict in the past,’ Emma told her son. ‘I adopted and accepted that role through a negotiated agreement, which involved both parties contracting into marriage as it is understood by the Church, in order to foster peace and reconciliation and to strengthen both our kin. Your father, despite my entreaties to him and my tears, has not upheld his side of the contract and that sacred duty and has therefore weakened and well-nigh eradicated my ability to continue to be that glue. I must do as God bids me. I have prayed and he bids me take the path that I am taking.’

  Guillaume resisted this time. ‘I am sorry for your pain, mother,’ he told her, ‘but I will remain here at court with my father. I need to learn my business for the future and perhaps I can prevail upon Father to obey his marriage vows in your absence.’

  ‘You will not remain here,’ his mother retorted. ‘I will not leave you amongst debauchery at your impressionable age. Your saddle bags are packed and you will accompany me now.’

  He attempted further remonstrance but the maids sat in the corner tittering behind their hands at his mother’s tongue-lashing and in the end it seemed he would save more face if he did as he was told. Now as he rode behind her, which was after all not correct – she should ride behind him, he wished he had simply dug in his heels or appealed to his father that he might stay at court. His mother both impressed and repulsed him. When he was small, he tried to love her but she turned his love away, telling him not to be girlish. Since she kept him in her retinue with no entourage of his own he had few male compatriots. Guillaume resolved to change the situation. He was the heir to Aquitaine. He was twenty-one! Of age! It was ridiculous really.

  The group of riders were heavily guarded with a troop of his mother’s ten best fighters, mercenaries recruited from the Northmen in Normandy. They were all huge and Guillaume felt inadequate in their presence, a good six inches shorter than all of them. They joked with him good-humouredly: ‘You’re well rounded, Lord Guillaume,’ ‘You’re wearing your dinner well, Lord Guillaume,’ but their jokes cut him to the quick. He wanted to be tall, hard and spare as they were. He was encumbered and embarrassed by the rolls of fat around his waist. His mother told him it would fall away as he grew older, but she was wrong.

  Then there was the matter of Adalmode of Limoges rankling in his mind. Guillaume’s mouth turned down at the corners thinking of it. When he succeeded his father he would be the richest and most powerful man in Aquitaine and such a chit had defied and so far evaded accepting his offer of marriage. He knew the stories of the Count of La Marche’s repeated requests for Adalmode and her father’s repeated denials. Could that be the reason? That renegade count, who his father
said was the biggest threat to the coherence of the Duchy. All the other lords in Aquitaine gave his father their allegiance, some a little reluctantly and skimpily perhaps, but still all, except this Audebert, did so. Since he was a child Guillaume had looked on Adalmode as his betrothed wife and relished the thought of entering manhood, taking her to his bed and breast. He imagined it over and over. She would have to accept him. He and his mother were at least in agreement in that, but why had Adalmode not been more grateful for his attentions? She had not looked ill when she had ridden out of Poitiers evading his proposal. Indeed she looked splendid as usual. Guillaume’s cock began to harden at the thought of her golden hair and her golden limbs in his bed, her pride and disinterest subsumed to his pleasure.

  There was a shout up ahead and Guillaume tore himself away from his developing fantasy of Adalmode to see what was going on. The front horsemen had halted to make way for a small party of riders coming in the opposite direction and needing to pass them on the narrow road. Guillaume rode forward to have a look at them and heard his mother’s voice raised in anger. ‘You will halt and make way for me!’

  The riders were three women, a noblewoman and two maids from the look of their clothing. Perhaps the women were good-looking. He moved closer to see. The noblewoman threw back her hood and revealed herself as Aldearde d’Aulnay. She was fifty-one, an ageing lady with fine cheekbones and still beautiful eyes, but her once brown hair was threaded with grey. Guillaume rather admired the affection between her and his father. That he had stuck to her so long, and as she aged, spoke of more than a sexual liaison. It suggested love and perhaps that was why his mother had such an unquenchable hatred for the woman. It was unusual for a lady of her stature to be riding without a male armed escort and then Guillaume realised why she was moving so secretly on this road. She must be on her way to meet with his father. Perhaps at the hunting lodge not far back on the road. His mother had also jumped to this surmise.

  ‘You must rub my face in your sin!’ his mother shouted.

  Aldearde looked at Emma of Blois calmly. ‘There is no call for this anger and abuse,’ she said. ‘I will be on my way in peace.’

  ‘Abuse!’ screamed his mother, standing in her stirrups, her face red, the cords of her neck taut and ugly. ‘This is not abuse enough for your crimes, but I will see that you do receive the punishment you merit as a great whore.’

  Guillaume swallowed. His father would convulse with anger at his mother for this display. Why could she just not let it go. Many noblemen had mistresses. Even Aldearde’s husbands had taken her long affair with his father in good part.

  ‘Mother,’ he thought to intervene, ‘let us …’

  ‘Take her!’ his mother commanded the mercenary leader. ‘Take her and her maids and show them what it is to be a whore.’ The man grinned.

  Aldearde knitted her brow and then gasped, astonished, as two men hauled her from the saddle and others were giving her maids similar treatment.

  ‘Mother!’ Guillaume exclaimed, appalled. ‘You cannot! Mother!’

  His mother turned a face to him that he did not recognise, so distorted was it with fury and a horrible joy. ‘Watch me,’ she said. ‘Watch or join in if you like, if you are man enough.’

  Guillaume gulped on his shock. The mercenaries were dragging the screaming women into the woods. Briefly he considered the possibility of following them and at least taking one of the maids, but Lady Aldearde would tell his father of it. Controlling the nervous prancing of his horse, he heard their screams increase and then die out, leaving a disquieting silence, ruptured only by the occasional bird twitter.

  ‘Mother, father will never forgive you for this.’

  ‘I do not need his forgiveness. It is he who will go to hell for his fornications. My anger is virtuous, my zeal is righteous for I am fighting against evil.’

  ‘And what of the Count of Angoulême? Aldearde’s step-son. How will he react to such appalling treatment of her?’

  ‘I care not,’ she said. ‘She has been punished for her crimes. Her husband should have burnt her for adultery.’ There was a rustling of leaves ahead and Guillaume watched the Northmen emerge from the trees, brushing aside leafy branches, adjusting their hose and slapping each other on the back. ‘Be quick, about it,’ Emma called to them. ‘Ride on,’ she said to Guillaume.

  Guillaume considered going to Lady Aldearde’s aid but would his father see him as complicit with this terrible punishment meted out to his concubine? He was caught between his parents as usual and shrugged his shoulders. He kicked his horse, determining that his own marriage to Adalmode would be of a very different calibre. She would love him and bear him sons, and he would honour her with his fidelity. He restarted his fantasy, conjuring Adalmode with her golden hair and her green eyes before him again, telling him how dear he was to her.

  18

  Limoges

  990

  Two weeks and Adalmode had received no reply from Audebert, nor had Guy received any offer for her. She was nearly thirty years old and Audebert thirty-five. He had to wait one year too many perhaps she said to herself, and grief welled up inside her at the thought that she would never have him as her husband. A messenger strode into the hall and Adalmode’s heart beat fast as she watched Guy reading the letter. Was it from Audebert?

  ‘It’s from Paris,’ Guy said, looking at her with a shocked face. Adalmode raised her eyebrows in query. She knew their brother Hildegaire had gone to Paris to a Council of Bishops there. It had been a scandal because Hildegaire had stripped Saint Martial Abbey of many fine gold and silver ornaments that he had taken with him to enhance the ostentation of his entourage, and the monks were in high anxiety whether they would ever see them again. ‘Hildegaire has died,’ Guy told her in a flat voice.

  ‘Hildegaire? So young, so suddenly?’ Adalmode reached for Guy’s hand. They sat for some time in silence, remembering their brother, hunting through their memories of childhood and recent years amongst the bad for the few shards of good.

  ‘The Abbey’s treasure?’ she asked.

  ‘Hildegaire bequeathed it to Saint Denis in Paris, as intercession for his soul, as he lay dying.’ Adalmode frowned at the image of her brother’s desperation at the prospect of God’s judgement, and at the consternation there would doubtless be at Saint Martial’s at the news that their treasure was lost.

  ‘Our brother, Hilduin, should be his successor,’ Adalmode said eventually and Guy nodded. He rose to call for a clerk, but paused at the clatter of more hooves in the courtyard as new messengers or visitors arrived.

  Adalmode rises slowly to her feet as Audebert strides up the hall, with his brothers, Gausbert and Boson, and ten of his men behind him. All of them wear partial armour, black leather jerkins and swords. They have clearly ridden hard and fast. Audebert’s thick black hair is cut close to his head and his beard too is trimmed short. He stops at the edge of the dais looking up at her. She realises her mouth is open and slowly presses her lips together in a welcoming smile. Audebert’s face is smeared here and there with dust from the road and amongst the grime his blue gaze is intense.

  ‘Viscount Guy,’ he nods briefly to her brother before turning his eyes back to her face. ‘My lady.’ His voice gentles after the momentum with which he entered the hall. ‘May I speak with your sister?’ Audebert asks Guy, without taking his eyes from Adalmode’s own, and she hears Guy give his agreement.

  He is going to tell me he cannot marry me, Adalmode thinks. If he had come to ask for me as his wife, he would just ask Guy now. Audebert reaches out a gauntleted hand to her and she places her slender white fingers on the gritty black leather and steps down to him. His men bow politely as she passes. They are all observing that I am an old woman, Adalmode thinks. She is conscious she is wearing her shabbiest gown, her faded red velvet, since today is wash day and all her best dresses are with the laundress.

  Audebert leads her outside to the courtyard where servants and grooms are running around taking care of h
is horses, and as she had guessed, the sweat and foam on their flanks show the signs of a hard ride. ‘My lord,’ she says recovering her manners, ‘I apologise. I have offered you no sustenance.’ The grooms have the care of the horses well in hand and she does not doubt that Guy will see to the needs of Audebert’s brothers and men. ‘You have ridden hard and far?’ She raises her eyebrows in query. ‘Some wine?’

  Audebert grips the shoulder of a boy passing with a pitcher of water for the horses, stopping him in his tracks. He takes the pitcher with both hands and drinks several gulps from it before handing it back and sending the boy on his way. She can feel Audebert’s damaged, dangerous energy, cracking the air around them.

  ‘Wine in a while, thank you, but I must have speech with you first.’

  Adalmode’s heart sinks again. Why else? He must be here to break off all hopes of marriage. I will have to take the veil she thinks, and that idea is swiftly displaced by grief engulfing her at the loss of this man.

  ‘Is there a quiet place we can talk?’

  ‘Yes,’ she leads him towards the staircase to the battlements, desperately wondering how she can change his mind. She is not past childbearing yet, she will tell him. The sky is clear blue with a cool breeze. It will be pleasant on the ramparts. She goes ahead, emerging into the sunshine and the wind whips off her head veil. From the top step behind her, he laughs and leaps, trying to catch at the flimsy veil waving tantalisingly at them in the slight wind, but it slips through his gloved fingers and is gone. Adalmode stands with her hands gripping the battlements watching it fly and feels Audebert approach close behind her.

  He turns her around to face him, his knee pressed to hers, and she smells the acrid sweat on him. He pulls off his gloves and lets them drop to the ground. He places both his hands on her head, slowly stroking down the length of her hair. ‘Thread of gold,’ he murmurs, and he leans to kiss the top of her head. She is suddenly a shy girl again, embarrassed by his admiration and by her own desire. He takes her hand and kisses it, holds her face in his hands. ‘My love,’ he says and Adalmode feels the years and the anxieties drop from her.