The Song of the Troubadour

by Stephanie Cook

  “What are her symptoms?”

  “She will not tell me anything or let me see her nakedness, but she smells badly,” said Gauda. “It is only these last days.”

  “Maybe she has contracted a fever of the bowels?” said Azalais. “I fear that many will succumb to fevers before this madness ends.”

  “Yes, that could be,” said Gauda. “But she does not seem feverish. In fact, she acts as if all were normal - apart from the fact that she smells of the marshes or the stables.”

  “I will make a tea for her,” said Azalais. “Angelica, I think, to promote digestion and cure flatulence and borage to make her sweat. And thistle is good for the bowels as well. She should apply a poultice of foul-smelling weeds at dawn and dusk to chase away the foul humors.”

  Azalais began searching for the herbs in her glass jars and took them down from the shelf.

  “Tell me about the song you are working on,” said Azalais. “The pleasure of a chanson is one earthly pleasure I am not yet denied.”

  So Gauda told Azalais of her work. Azalais helped her with some difficult phrases, just like she did when Gauda was a girl and just learning her craft. The time passed swiftly and soon the rays of the setting sun were blinding Azalais at the worktable. Gauda jumped up.

  “I have been too long,” she said. “I will be punished for sure.”

  “It was good for you, Gauda,” said Azalais. “It will be worth the punishment, whatever it is your nasty cousin thinks of next. You should come more often. And keep working on your songs. Your face lights up when you speak of them.”

  Azalais handed Gauda two packets.

  “The larger is for your cousin. See that she follows the regimen exactly. The smaller is for you. It is balm for tea. It will help you feel calm. You must not let these earthly concerns consume you. For many things will pass and all of our earthly bodies will be destroyed by the worms. All that will endure will be our souls and our words.”

  Gauda kissed Azalais on the cheek and left. Azalais watched her go and realized how much better Gauda had made her feel and how much more badly she missed Constance than she could ever imagine.

  DAY 7 OF THE SIEGE OF CARCASSONNE

  Friday, August 7, 1209

  Constance

  Friday, August 7, noon

  Constance and Guillaume sat in the stifling room at the top of the mason's house, right under the eaves. A small window looked out to the northwest and they could see the Crusader army entrenched on the banks of the river. Constance greedily eyed the cool waters of the Aude, wanting nothing more than to dive into their depths and feel the coolness rush over her. A fly buzzed around their lunch, aged goat cheese and a fresh loaf of bread. They drank new wine in mugs. While water was short in the Castellar, the mason and his wife had laid in plenty of stores before the siege and they took good care of their apprentices and workers. Constance and Guillaume had escaped the throng of boys and men eating on the ground floor and come up to the room where the mason's small children slept in the heat of the afternoon sun. There were three of them. Aude was a pretty little girl of five years old. Her little brother Jacques was a very active 2 year-old who had all the energy and spirit of his father. The baby boy Jean was only 6 months old. Beatritz had nursed them all herself, for she believed that the milk of a wet nurse would sicken a child and kill it. Constance thought back to all the tiny infants who had died at her mother's breasts and thought Beatritz might be right.

  “The good woman Azalais would frown on all this procreation,” said Constance.

  “Is that why you left?” asked Guillaume.

  “No, well, not exactly,” said Constance. “I felt that the good woman Azalais always doubted my purity and my commitment to the life.”

  “So you found her way of life to be unholy?” asked Guillaume. He smiled at Constance.

  “No, she is the most holy and wise woman I know,” said Constance. She felt a little angry at Guillaume. “You do not know what she did for me, for all of us. She leads a life of spiritual perfection. She truly wants to be let free of this earthly cage. It's just that she does not think anyone else capable of her level of purity. She always believes the worst.”

  “And what did she believe of you?” asked Guillaume.

  Constance felt her face grow warm.

  “I cannot tell you,” she said. “Nothing, except that it was not true. You must believe that. I have left the house of good women, but I still want to live a life of purity. I have lied, and I may no longer call myself a good woman, but I strive to live as many of the ideals as I can. I want to lie no longer. I have done it these past few days and, at first, it was intoxicating, like a honey wine, but now it just makes me sick.”

  Guillaume looked away from her.

  “Now you, Guillaume, know much of me, but I know nothing of you, other than that you come from Béziers and have only your brother as family,” said Constance. “Tell me of yourself. What did you do in Béziers?”

  Guillaume cleared his throat and stood. He began to walk around the room.

  “I am sorry if I have brought back memories that cause you pain,” said Constance. “Please forgive me.”

  “No, it is not that,” said Guillaume. “I worked with my hands before. I cleared fields and planted crops. I knew when to sow and when to reap. I loved the feel of the earth on my fingers. I kept bees and collected their honey. It was a good life. We lived simply and close to God. I miss it badly.”

  Guillaume stopped his pacing and looked out the window. Suddenly, he pointed.

  “Look, over there, you can see them. They have almost finished working on the cat,” Guillaume said.

  Constance stood as well, but slowly, feeling her legs and arms heavy and weak with the exertion of the last few days. Never would she take the water carriers' labors for granted again.

  Just past the river bank, men were hammering newly-fallen and hewn tree trunks into a structure that looked much like the covered wooden galleries that stood atop the walls. It was large enough to hold maybe twenty men and mounted on four wheels, like a wagon. The noise of hammers and swearing filled the air. The earth and river seemed to shimmer in the noonday heat.

  “They will use the cat to get close the walls of the Castellar,” said Guillaume. “The mason told me of this device. Under its protection, the sappers can come to the walls of the Castellar and dig them out, replacing them with a wooden structure and straw. When they are done, they light the straw and burn the structure. The wall usually falls down in that spot or is so weakened that it can be easily breached.”

  “And the men inside the cat?” Constance said.

  “They are not knights, so their lives are not considered to be worth as much, but most will escape in the confusion of the attack.”

  They heard screams from the river. Constance thought another battle had broken out, but then realized that she knew those sounds from the slaughterhouse. She looked closer. The crusaders were killing their pack animals, the butchers taking the skins off the animals and carrying them over to the cat. They placed the bloody skins inside out all over the exterior of the structure and men began to climb into the cat, carrying picks and shovels.

  “They are protecting the cat from fire with the bloody skins,” Guillaume said. “They will attack soon. Do you hear?”

  Constance realized that she had not heard a single stone crashing into a roof or wall for the whole time they had been eating. Now that she noticed it, the lull in the attack and the silence was eerie.

  “Hear what?” said Constance. “I do not hear anything.”

  “Exactly,” said Guillaume. “They must be preparing to move the siege engines closer to the walls. They will need to provide a distraction while the cat moves close to the walls.”

  They quickly finished their meal in silence and hurried past the sleeping children down the stairs. They would be needed at the walls.

  Gauda

  Friday, August 7, afternoon

  I was reading to Agnes in the a
fternoon when the Viscount's man came for me. A tall, thin, bald man, I recognized him from the Viscount's hall, but did not know his name. I thought him a lowly servant, but could not be sure.

  “Please come with me, Lady Gauda,” said the man. “I am Pons, Lord Trencavel's clerk.”

  Agnes immediately protested. We were in the middle of one of her favorite romances, and she could not finish the book without me, as she could not read. I was glad for once of her interference. I did not know why I was wanted, but could not imagine it would be good news for me.

  “You have no right to take my lady-in-waiting,” said Agnes. “I will send her to you when I am done with her.”

  “I am very sorry, Viscountess,” said the man. “But, it is the Viscount Trencavel's direct orders that she come right now.”

  Now I was definitely worried. It was the middle of the day during a siege. The Viscount could not be calling me to play for him or to come to his bed. He never called for me during the day. I was at his beck and call during the nights and at his wife's during the days. It had been like this since I had arrived.

  I began to feel sweaty. Had Trencavel discovered my treachery? But how could he have? I had been so careful. No one could think anything of the correspondence between two troubadours. And I had sent nothing since the siege began. It could not be that. But, I felt my legs shake as I stood and placed the book carefully to one side marking where I had stopped reading with a feather.

  Agnes glared at me as I stood and I could feel her angry gaze on my back as I left the room. I followed the servant down the hallway, but we did not turn towards Trencavel's quarters as I had supposed.

  “Are we not going to see Lord Trencavel?” I asked the man.

  “The Lord Trencavel is preparing to repulse the invaders. Just follow me and don't ask any more questions,” said the man.

  Now I did not know what to think. Who was this servant to address me in such a manner? I made to reprimand the man, but something in his manner prevented me. I did as I was told and continued to follow him about the castle. Men were pouring from the corridors, their squires hurrying behind and carrying their heavy armor. We had to stop many times, our backs pressed to the corridor wall, to allow them to pass. As we made our way into the guest quarters of the palace, the halls became emptier. I had seldom been to this portion of the castle, but I knew this was where Trencavel's most powerful vassals would be honored with a bed and chamber of their own. The regular knights made due with bedrolls on the floor of the hall and the foot soldiers camped out in the courtyard.

  We rounded a corner to a dead end. We walked up to a door at the end of the corridor. No squire or servant stood guard outside it, which seemed strange to me. Pons walked quietly up to the door, opened it, and peered cautiously inside. He turned around and beckoned me anxiously inside. I quickly followed, completely baffled by this charade. When we finally entered the bed chamber and the door had been shut, I turned to Pons and spoke to him in a hushed voice.

  “What is going on? Where are we?” I asked.

  “We are in the chamber of the Lord Cabaret,” said Pons.

  He drew a long key from a sack at his belt and proceeded to unlock a heavy oak chest that stood at the foot of the bed.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “We are going to examine the Lord Cabaret's papers to make sure that he is no more than he pretends to be,” said Pons.

  He began to remove letters from the chest, moving quickly, but carefully. He handed me the first pile of letters.

  “You are to read these,” he said. “Scan them quickly, but thoroughly. Look for anything that seems out of the ordinary.”

  “But, why I am to do this?”

  “You read more quickly than any of the men who the Viscount trusts for these tasks,” said Pons. “You may call us spies, but I prefer to be known as a most loyal retainer, willing to go anywhere and do anything for my lord.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. I knew the risks a spy ran before I became one, but I had never thought to be doing anything as physically daring as this. My experience to spying ran more to following idle gossip.

  “But where are the Lord Cabaret's guards? Where is he?” I asked.

  “The Lord's guards have been overtaken by a sudden stomach ailment,” said Pons. “And the Lord himself is at the side of his feudal lord, the Viscount. The Crusaders are advancing with their siege engines and the cat. They will be quite occupied for the next few hours.”

  Pons took more letters out of the chest, carefully laying them on the bed in the order that he took them from the chest.

  “Enough questions,” said Pons. “You have a lot of reading to do, no matter how fast it is you can do it. Get to work. For the sooner we are done here, the better. If the Lord Cabaret returns to find us thumbing through his personal affairs, you will taste the lash.”

  “But surely, the Lord Trencavel will not allow us to be punished when we do his bidding,” I said.

  Pons laughed.

  “You are a naive fool, my lady,” he said. “If the Lord Cabaret finds us here, the Lord Trencavel will have no choice but to have us tried and punished as common thieves. Do you think he would risk a rupture with one of his strongest vassals to save our necks?”

  I spoke no more and bent to my task with an urgent determination, my spine prickling at the least sound. I forced myself to focus as the sweat poured down my back. I wished more than anything for this to be over. The documents were difficult to read, mainly land grants or court cases, correspondence with merchants and inventories of farms or equipment. The handwriting was often crabbed, though fortunately most of the documents were written in our tongue, rather than Latin. I brushed through most of these quickly, handing them back to Pons, who neatly rearranged them in the exact order they had been taken from the chest. Thinking of my own experience, I slowed down, wondering if any of these innocuous-seeming documents could be written in a code. However, if they were I would never be able to figure it out in these few minutes, and I felt myself relax despite the situation, knowing that my own missives would seem just as innocent to any random interceptor.

  We began to hear more sounds from the Castellar, shouts and the renewed bombardment from the catapults. Another attack on the Castellar must be underway. I could only hope that it kept the Lord Cabaret and his men preoccupied and away from this room for as long as possible.

  Trencavel

  Friday, August 7, evening

  Trencavel stood with Cabaret on the walls overlooking the approach to the Castellar. Men and women were loading trebuchets with stones and starting to let them fly at the advancing cat. Most wildly missed their mark.

  “These catapults are good for destroying stationary objects,” said Cabaret. “But they do not work when the missile throwers try to hit a small, moving object like the cat.”

  “Well, what else do you suggest that we do?” asked Trencavel.

  “You have got to destroy it before they make it to the walls. Try to burn it,” said Cabaret. “Better yet, we need Greek Fire.”

  Trencavel did not want to order his archers to light their arrows. The wind was strong today and he did not want to burn his city down trying to defend it. Even the Crusaders had avoided attacking with fire. Trencavel supposed they regretted the burning of Béziers, for there was no plunder left to take in the smoldering ashes of the town. But the cat continued to advance slowly, but steadily and shakily, blood dripping down the sides of the pelt-covered gallery. The Crusaders launched volley after volley from their catapults, trying to distract the defenders and provide cover for the cat. The monks lined up along the river, first a few and then more joining, and began their chant. Trencavel had to try to stop it any way that he could. He finally ordered the archers to unleash a flock of burning arrows on the cat, but those that fell on the gore-covered roof sizzled out in a smell of burning flesh and hair.

  The men in the cat made it up to the wall of the Castellar, despite the bombardment of the defenders.
Only a few bodies of those who had fallen to the stone and arrow bombardment lay mangled on the ground between the Crusader camp and the walls of the Castellar. Now, the attack truly began. Trencavel could hear the pick-axes and grunting of the men as they attacked the foundations of the wall of the Castellar. He ordered the guards on the walls to throw down stones, fire, large branches, roof tiles, anything in an effort to break the cover of the sappers trying to dig into their wall. The noise was overwhelming: iron banging on stone, men shrieking in pain, and, always, droning in the distance the chanting monks. Five men maneuvered a large stone up onto the ramparts and pushed it over. It crashed through the roof of the north side of the cat, tearing away the hide-covered roof on that part and shifting the south side of the cat up in the air. Several men fell from the elevated portion and were immediately fired on by archers. Their screams mixed with those who had been partially crushed by the large stone and who lay unable to move, trapped under its weight.

  But the sappers kept on working. Trencavel was shocked at how quickly they worked. They were well aware that their only hope of survival was to dig into the wall deep enough to protect themselves from above before the cat completely disintegrated under the strength of the defenders' bombardment. The pace of the pickaxes and hammers became even more frenzied as the men felt their time slipping away. The people of the Castellar began stripping the tiles off of houses, and ripping the stones from the walkways of the suburb, searching for anything to throw at the cat before it was too late.

  Trencavel ordered more soldiers to carry a second large stone, this one a cornerstone of a house from the look of it, up to the wall. They strained to carry it up the steps to the battlement on the wall, slipping once. Trencavel was sure they would all fall down the stairs, crushing the people below them, but somehow they managed to keep their balance and continued up. This time they walked to the exact center of the remaining roof on the cat and pushed their missile. It landed squarely on the structure and crashed through, obliterating the roof and crushing the two remaining wheels. Trencavel looked down, expecting to hear the screams of the men, but only heard silence. Even the monks stopped chanting as all waited to see the outcome. Finally, the dust settled and then Trencavel again heard the sound, first a small strike of pickaxe on stone and then many more. The crusaders on the banks of the Aude cheered and the monks started their chanting again.