Viking Hostage

by Warr, Tracey;

  29

  Roccamolten

  998

  Adalmode looked down at her widow’s weeds. She would give anything to undo death. Only the needs of her son kept her breathing and moving around, going through the motions of life. Fulk told her the details of Audebert’s death: how he suspected the assassin had come from Guillaume of Aquitaine. How her husband had lasted in pain for several hours, lost to fever, talking of her, or to her, Fulk thought. The doctor removed the arrow and bandaged the deep wound but Audebert was unconscious by then and did not open his eyes again.

  She had loved Audebert all her life but she had been his wife for a mere seven years and seen little enough of him as he campaigned with Fulk to the north and west most summers, only coming home to her in the winters when the fighting season was over. One evening as they lay in bed together she told him she hated the night because darkness fell and there was no longer enough light for her to look at him, but he rolled towards her in the bed, cupping her hip, and said, ‘No, sweet Adalmode, we cannot hate the night, for we have this, and we can trace with our fingertips what we can no longer see.’ Yes, he was right, she had loved the days and the nights with him, and the early mornings, watching him rise from their bed to open the shutters, seeing him in the new sun, turning to her with such happiness in his face.

  Adalmode cried for days when the news came and yet she had expected it almost from the first day of their married life together. She rode to Saint Sauveur Abbey in Charroux to kiss his face one last time and to give a large donation for prayers for Audebert’s soul. Looking on his cold corpse made her grief worse, seeing that truly he had gone from her. The scenes of their life played through her mind. Their first encounter when he was in the dungeon pit with Helie and both she and he were still so young. She felt the anger that he had spoken of. If only her father had allowed her to marry him when he was first released, when he was nineteen. They could have had twenty years together before this and maybe twenty years would have slaked her thirst for him, twenty years might have gentled the beating of her heart every time he turned his blue gaze on her or placed his hand on her hair. But no, she shook her head. Twenty years, forty years, she would have loved him as hard no matter how long they had together. Now she would wake bleak every morning that he was not beside her. Adalmode buried her face in her hands and wept inconsolably, the tears running over and between her fingers, her face as sodden as her husband’s last morning.

  Audebert’s brother, Boson, had accompanied her to the burial and he touched her shoulder, as she knelt beside Audebert’s grave, close to the Abbey’s altar. ‘Sister, we must return to Roccamolten. Guillaume of Aquitaine and King Robert Capet ride against us. We must get behind our walls at the fortress.’

  She ran her fingertips one last time around the letters of his name carved in the stone: Audebert, Comte de La Marche et Périgord. Their little son, Bernard, was in Roccamolten and she must go there, leave her husband here. She rose and swallowed on the taste of salt. Her eyes were hot, itchy, blurred from days of crying. She would return to Audebert’s grave, to be with him, as soon as she had the chance. Perhaps she could talk to him when no one was by, as she had talked to him in the dungeon, but it was she who needed words of comfort now and he would not reply, except perhaps in her dreams. ‘I will be buried here next to you, my love,’ she murmured, ‘to lie waiting with you for Judgement Day and then we will find each other in the next life.’

  ‘Come, sister, now,’ Boson urged her.

  She looked at Boson dazed, pulled back from the grief and memories of her husband, to action that must be taken in the here and now. Boson, the third of the old Count’s five sons, looked nothing like Audebert. He was considerably shorter and his brown hair lay flat on his head and swiped across his forehead in an overlong fringe. His frame was slender as a young girl’s. He would hold the counties of La Marche and Périgord now, until Audebert’s son was of age.

  Two months had gone by since she buried Audebert. Duke Guillaume, King Robert and the Duke of Angoulême besieged the two La Marche strongholds, swarming like uncovered ant nests around Bellac and Roccamolten, swirling uselessly around the great stone curtains of the fortresses. Fulk and Guy harried the attacking forces from behind their encampments. Audebert’s walls would never fall and their supplies inside the citidels held out. Only the wind had ever forced its way into Audebert’s strongholds. The walls of Roccamolten held Guillaume from her, but Adalmode was under attack from within too. Boson, puffed up with his new power, sent his wife and sons to her family for safety, and alone with Adalmode, he flirted relentlessly with her. During the early months of her marriage and her assumption of duties in the Audebert’s household, she had observed how Boson ached with irrational jealousies of Audebert and Gausbert, how he resented his siblings.

  ‘Brother,’ she told him, exasperated, removing his hand for the third time from her thigh, ‘why do you behave so. You know how well I loved your brother. I have no intention of taking a second husband – ever.’

  Boson laughed unpleasantly. ‘I already have a wife, sweet sister,’ he put his hand back again but higher than before so that his fingertips pushed where they should not be, and she shifted angrily away from him, ‘but I intend to take you as my concubine, darling. You are wasted as a widow.’

  Adalmode drew an angry breath. She was not afraid of Boson. If necessary, she would run him through. It was what Audebert would want her to do. ‘I am a Princess of Limoges,’ she said, her voice laden with disgust at him, ‘and dowager Countess of La Marche and Périgord. I have protectors – my brothers, the Count of Anjou, even Duke Guillaume, would be appalled at your behavior and will chastise you for it.’

  ‘They, my love, are not here, inside these impregnable walls.’

  ‘Boson, touch me again and I will put on the valour of my husband and slice your ugly head from your neck.’

  He looked askance at her and Adalmode took advantage of his surprise to rise and stalk quickly from the hall. In her chamber she hugged Bernard to her in distress until he wriggled away uncomprehending. She moved around the chamber searching for Audebert’s daggers and found three. She hung one, with an elaborate brown embossed scabbard, from her belt; a second with a slender blade and a grip that fitted well to her hand, she concealed beneath her skirts, strapped high on her calf just below her knee. The third, a plain, long dagger, she placed unsheathed under her pillow. ‘Oh Audebert,’ she whispered, ‘I need you.’

  Guillaume stared with loathing at the walls of Roccamolten, perched precariously, but evidently not precariously enough, above his head. The fortress appeared to be growing directly out of the rock spur, its ragged, erratic walls and crenellations blending with the weathered granite and straggles of green vegetation clinging to vertiginous slopes.

  King Robert reined his horse alongside Guillaume. ‘No good, Duke, winter is coming fast upon us and we will have to withdraw. Perhaps we will make another attempt at the Mayfield muster next year eh? Or perhaps there is another way to win your bride?’

  Guillaume shrugged his shoulders, made a grunt of affirmation and assumed a stoic expression but inside his fury festered. First there had been the insult of Audebert’s marriage to his woman, to Adalmode, then the humiliation of Audebert’s rout of him at Poitiers and now this, even with the King’s help he could not broach the walls of one simple castle and get at what was his – Adalmode and with her, her son’s rights to La Marche and Périgord. Guillaume blamed his mother for all of it, for keeping him away from his father’s court where he might have learnt more of war and women and less of piety and righteousness, for undermining his youthful attempts at authority at every turn.

  Guillaume and Robert besieged the walls for three months and Boson besieged Adalmode but she held on, and so did the walls. It was not only her own virtue that had to be defended from Boson, for given the opportunity he would harm her little son, that he might keep hold of Audebert’s inheritance rather than merely act as Bernard’s Regent.
Boson insinuated that her compliance would purchase Bernard’s safety.

  Pale morning sunlight streamed into the hall and Boson joined her and Bernard at the trestle. ‘They’re gone,’ he announced, ‘withdrawn, given up. So now you and I can really discuss our future together,’ he placed his hand on hers.

  Adalmode extracted her hand angrily. ‘I’ve told you before, and I meant it …’ but then she looked up as the steward cleared his throat and bowed before them.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘Viscount Guy of Limoges and Count Fulk of Anjou are at the gate and ask leave to enter.’

  Adalmode tried to contain her relief but it would not be suppressed, and she beamed a smile of triumph on Boson as she answered the steward. ‘I command the gates be opened to them,’ she said, rising, flicking her wrist rudely to dismiss Boson’s protests that she should usurp his authority.

  She walked outside swiftly, calling Bernard to come stand beside her, smoothing her gown, tucking tendrils of hair behind her ears, and stood straight to receive her brother and Audebert’s friend. They would protect her and Bernard from Boson, she could go to live with Guy and Aina in Limoges now, where she would have the peace she craved to focus on her loss of Audebert.

  Adalmode was feeding the birds at her bedroom window as she did every morning. She whispered to Bernard who had clambered onto the window seat beside her to be very still and quiet. She put a finger to her lips, smiling at him. He nodded, his blue eyes large and round, thick black tufts of hair standing awry on his small head. She put crumbs and seeds on the ledge and sat back, pulling her shawl closer around her shoulders, and watched them come: tiny green finches, bluetits and a blackbird. Today there was a robin too. Audebert always laughed at her when she fed the birds, telling her she was like a forest hermit. Bernard was grinning with his teeth gently biting on his bottom lip to ensure that he made no sound and sent them flurrying away. Adalmode glanced over to the bed and imagined Audebert there. There was a tap at the door and Guy came in.

  ‘Uncle Guy,’ exclaimed Bernard, ‘you’ve scared away the birds!’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Guy said throwing wide his arms in exaggeratedly comic remorse.

  ‘They will come again tomorrow,’ Adalmode told her son. ‘Come in Guy. Sit by me. I cannot tell you how glad I was yesterday to see you arrive in this sad hall.’

  ‘Sister,’ Guy said, approaching her, and bringing a stool to sit close to her at the window. She saw that something serious was clouding his expression. ‘I must speak with you Adalmode. It would be best if we were alone.’

  Bernard frowned and began to protest. ‘No, Bernard,’ Adalmode said firmly. ‘Go to find your nurse. She will give you breakfast.’

  He pouted but climbed down from the window seat to do as she told him, Guy ruffling his black hair as he passed.

  Guy sat and took Adalmode’s hands in his, his vague brown eyes peering into her face, their knees touching as they had often sat together in their childhood, and he began to speak. He told her that Boson had come to terms with Duke Guilliaume, agreeing to found a monastery at Moutier d’Ahun and to go on a penitential pilgrimage to Rome, and he told her that she must marry Duke Guillaume.

  Adalmode looked at her brother in shocked horror. ‘No, Guy, I won’t. I can’t. Don’t you understand that I can still feel Audebert’s warmth in the bed beside me. I can still feel his hands on my face.’

  Guy’s expression was deeply sad but resolute. ‘There is no other way, sister. I’m sorry for it and I understand, as I know how you loved him, but if you stay here, Boson will make you his concubine and usurp Bernard’s rights, and I cannot protect you from that. If I take you with me to Limoges it would only be a short time before Guillaume came in force to demand you. It is his right, as my overlord, to dispose of you, a widow. If I refuse then he will war with me again and I do not have the limitless resources that he and the King can command. Limoges is exhausted by this war and I must make peace with him now. He is hungering for you and always has. He will not let go. If Audebert had lived … but Fulk and I between us cannot hold off Aquitaine when Guillaume, Boson, King Robert are all against us. Fulk needs to return to his holdings in the north.’

  ‘Holdings won and kept for him by Audebert,’ Adalmode said bitterly.

  Fulk walked in on her words. ‘You are right, Lady Adalmode,’ he said softly, ‘I owe Audebert so much and I loved him, as you did, but this is the best way forward for your safety, for your son. Guillaume has sworn to give Bernard Audebert’s lands and titles when he is of age and to protect you both in the meantime.’

  ‘Aina and I will take Bernard as our foster-son, Adalmode. We will love him dearly in your stead and Audebert’s,’ Guy said.

  Adalmode swallowed at the thought of being separated from her little son who looked so like Audebert, and being left bereft and alone with Guillaume. ‘I cannot take the Duke to husband,’ Adalmode said. ‘I will not.’ But she knew that she must and she would.

  30

  Llanteulyddog

  999

  Thorgils made Aina a splendid ocean-going vessel with a stem in the shape of Sigrid’s serpent brooch and they named the ship Sigrid. It furnished them with the means to escape to Vinland if Olafr’s wrath threatened them. They laid up provisions for the voyage and waited for news. ‘Perhaps we don’t need to go,’ Aina begged, but Thorgils shook his head. He would not risk Olafr’s anger, yet it seemed Olafr was busy in Norway and had no time for fury with them. Their preparations for departure from Kelda Ey were interrupted by an urgent summons from King Maredudd.

  ‘I’ll only be gone a few days,’ Thorgils told Aina. ‘We will leave on my return.’

  ‘Watch out for Myrddin the wild man! Ask him when I shall see Sigrid,’ she called out, and he laughed and waved to her from the boat as the anchor was hefted up and he left the island. Myrddin was a former warrior who was rumoured to be living wild in the forest near Llanteulyddog, talking to apple trees and pigs and foretelling the future, but Thorgils saw no sign of him and got no news of his sister on this journey.

  Thorgils rode fast along the old Roman road, the Via Julia, towards the town, and news of the king’s health along the way grew more and more alarming. The king was dying and his nephews Edwin and Cadell were gathering an army to secure their inheritance. When Maredudd first asked for Thorgils’ support they had been victorious, beating back Edwin with his English forces to the borderlands, but the aging king had little respite. The following year he was attacked by the sons of Meurig ab Idwal in Gwynedd and had been unable to send word to Thorgils in time. Maredudd lost that battle, his kingdom of Gwynedd, and his nephew Tewdwr killed into the bargain. Still Thorgils would do what he could to support the old man now.

  Thorgils screwed his eyes against the sun to look ahead to Llanteulyddog set on the flatlands of the river Towy that cut its deep, meandering route through the surrounding meadows, hurrying on its final twist to the sea. The ruins of the ramparts and earthworks of the old Roman fort and amphitheatre were visible, against the blue sky. Thorgils turned his horse’s head towards a steep path that led down to the river bank where he could ford across a shallow stretch. Emerging from the river, he urged the horse up the far bank with his knees and twitched the reins in the direction of the Clas, the Priory building, guessing that the king was being cared for there.

  Shown into the king’s bedchamber, Thorgils recoiled at the smell of sickness that greeted him at the door.

  ‘Jarl Thorgils!’ Maredudd, propped in the great bed, reached out a wasted hand and Thorgils did his best not to show his own fear of such a death. ‘Leave, everyone,’ Maredudd croaked. With reluctance and slowly everyone left the room, excepting one serving woman who was wringing out a soiled cloth in a bowl of water. ‘And you!’ the king groaned. The woman looked up alarmed and scurried from the room, lifting her skirts, too unnerved to think to close the door behind her. Thorgils took two steps from the bed to the door and closed it softly, returning to the bedside and looking down
on a man he had grown to respect.

  ‘I have a last mission for you, my friend,’ Maredudd said, his voice barely more than a whisper, ‘if you will.’

  ‘Name it, Lord,’ Thorgils responded without hesitation.

  ‘My daughter Angharad,’ Maredudd said, and then could say no more for some time as he struggled for breath, his chest heaving, and Thorgils wondered whether this signified the end before he could voice his request, but eventually Maredudd regained calmer breaths. ‘My daughter needs to be got to a place of safety and I would entrust her to you.’

  ‘I will undertake this, King.’ Thorgils’ compliance was immediate.

  Maredudd stared up at him with watery, fading eyes. ‘Take her to Powys. She will be safe there.’