by Jean Gill
He presented her with the great gold clasp and she gasped at the weight of it. ‘It is the rune of signs,’ he told her and when she looked at it close-up she could see that the design was circular but with signposts like the spokes of a wheel or the feathers of arrows stuck in a wheel.
‘Wherever you go, you will never be lost,’ he told her. ‘When you seek direction, the Pathfinder rune will answer you. Odin and Thor will recognize you from now on.’
Overcome, Estela stammered thanks. When she raised her head, it was to seek out Dragonetz, who was already surrounded by Ladies but who caught her eye. ‘Well done,’ he mouthed and her stomach warmed as with wine, but he had already bent to whisper some obscenity in a pretty ear and she could hear the tinkling laughter in response. Marcabru was also surrounded, by men wanting to discuss vers clos and technicalities of form, from what Estela could hear of the conversation. And so, of course, she joined them.
Chapter 9.
Dragonetz was aware of Estela leaving the Hall, Arnaut and - inexplicably - a large white dog at her side. Whether she slept with either was none of his business, he told himself, twice. Young, idealistic, beautiful Arnaut. It was a toss-up which had been the more dog-like in devotion during the evening, the hairy white hound or Arnaut, but it was none of his business. His thoughts wandered freely while his mouth responded automatically to coy feminine comments on his choice of songs or on the other singers.
‘Such a miserable man, that Marcabru,’ commented Marie or Sylvie. He found them all the same.
Losing patience, Dragonetz said shortly, ‘He is a genius. Excuse me, my Lady Aliénor needs me.’ He had indeed been summoned, which saved him from inventing an excuse to escape.
Aliénor was clearly pleased with herself and with her troubadours but after lavishing compliments she drew him out of earshot and got to the heart of what she wanted.
‘I need to know more about Ermengarda, bind her closer or know how far she’ll go. I want you to tell her that I was the one who had Toulouse disposed of, poisoned, for her sake, and I want you to tell me how she reacts. Obviously you won’t tell her that I sent you. You will make it seem part of your own search for information.’
‘Obviously.’ Dragonetz smiled and nodded for public view, as if she were still paying him compliments and pointed out, ‘That won’t be easy, given that I’m supposed to think she’s trying to murder you.’
‘You’ll think of something,’ was the airy reply and Aliénor dismissed him with a gracious nod.
Dragonetz was still mulling over the implications of this conversation when he finally went to bed, alone. Alphonse, the father of the current Comte de Toulouse was called ‘Jourdain’ because he was born to his crusading father in the Holy Land and allegedly baptised in the River Jordan. As an adult, he returned to rule Toulouse. Like Aliénor, Alphose Jourdain had accepted the cross from Bernard de Clairvaux in 1146 and was ready to follow in his father's footsteps as a soldier of Christ. He met up with King Louis, Aliénor and their allies, and went with them to the Council of Acre. Dragonetz steeled his mind away from events following that and from his own part in them. After the disastrous battles, Alphonse had gone on to Caesarea, where he had died in 1148, poisoned. Dragonetz put the question to himself that he had not asked Aliénor. It was not the sort of question that people answered honestly. Had she murdered Alphonse Jourdain?
There was no doubt of her hatred, not just for him but for any Comte de Toulouse, usurpers of her birthright, all of them. She had even talked the King into laying siege to Toulouse to win it back for her but he had not succeeded, one more nail in the coffin of their marriage. With Jourdain dead, only his thirteen year old son stood between Aliénor and Toulouse itself and rumours had certainly accused her - or credited her, depending your viewpoint. Dragonetz didn’t doubt for a minute Aliénor’s capacity for a politic murder but she was not the only suspect. And she had not benefited. Two years later, she was no nearer claiming Toulouse in more than words at a banquet.
Top suspect on most gossips’ list was the Queen of Jerusalem, to gain control over Tripoli for herself and her sixteen-year-old son, already King of Jerusalem jointly with his mother. If the motive were not gain but mere vengeance for long-standing quarrels, then you could add the Comte de Barcelone and the Comte de Béziers, and even Roger and Raimon Trencavel of Carcassonne. And, of course, Ermengarda herself. What enemy more implacable than an ex-wife?
Dragonetz contemplated the early history of the golden ruler of Narbonne. Viscomtesse at four years old, swept into marriage to this same Alphonse, Comte de Toulouse, when she was twelve. This allowed Toulouse to claim Narbonne and then one year later, in 1143, he became the target of every Narbonne ally striving to support the young heiress in getting rid of this same parasitical husband. Whether from support of Ermengarda or from concerns over the fast extending power of Toulouse, action was swift and effective. Alphonse was ousted while he was away from home, backed into a corner by the Catalan alliance that left him only too happy to agree to the divorce. He could not outface the armies gathered against him and he retreated to Toulouse, to lick his wounds and fill his son’s head with his hunger for Narbonne, stolen from him when he had it in his grasp.
What if Ermengarda, now grown into her power, had taken the quickest route to eliminate declarations in Toulouse of its rights to Narbonne? Was her arm long enough to reach Caesarea? Undoubtedly. The ruler of the greatest trading state on the Mediterranean could reach wherever there were spices, carpets and silks. Had she gained from it? Not politically, if the young Comte de Toulouse fulfilled his promise of being twice the tyrant his father was, with the title of Narbonne as loudly proclaimed in his city streets as was the title of Toulouse proclaimed hers by Aliénor. But personally? That depended on how deeply the marriage had touched the young Ermengarda, a marriage that had supposedly touched her so little it could be dissolved for non-consummation. But you never knew. Alphonse would have accepted any terms and Ermengarda was hardly likely to protest a convenient lie. Besides which, she was quickly married again, this time a wise alliance to Bernard d’Anduze, a respectable nonentity who left the city as soon after the marriage as possible, leaving Ermengarda the freedom of a married woman without the inconveniences. Oh, how Aliénor must envy that! D’Anduze’s brother, the Archbishop of Narbonne, might be less enthusiastic about the freedom given to his sister-in-law.
Dragonetz chased the speculations in circles. Why did Aliénor now want to raise the spectre of Alphonse between her and Ermengarda, with himself in the middle? He sighed and shifted sleepless position one more time, no nearer untangling the knots. Perhaps sleep would bring counsel if he ceased to worry at the problem. He willed his brain to leave the day behind, bring on the void, but as soon as he let his thoughts drift, they homed to the one place he dared not go. In a giant wave sweeping him under, he smelled lavender on wet skin, he felt the weight of black hair running through his fingers, he saw the welt of a scar and his own words ‘just a woman’ moved beside him on the bed until he rolled over and took what comfort he could from his own imagination.
His last thoughts before he finally slept were that Raoulf might be right, and he was going crazy from doing without a woman. He would choose among the Maries and the Sylvies, someone dispensable, someone who knew the rules. And the interview with Ermengarda would give him the answer to a question of his own as well as to Aliénor’s, With Ermengarda’s help, he would no longer have to wonder what to do about Estela to keep her safe. It cannot happen again. I won’t let it happen again.
Dragonetz spent the day at the mill, putting as many miles between himself and Estela as he could. Every turn of the wheel and every hammer-drop had smoothed one more wrinkle from his brow until Palace politics was as irrelevant as a woman’s touch. All that mattered was the exact calibration of a mechanical system and the best way to use it to produce paper.
‘It’s ingenious,’ he told al-Hisba, who had also given music lessons a wide berth.
�
��The brothers used one at Douzens to wake them for midnight mass. One of the brothers was in charge of maintaining the water in the system and that’s all it takes to keep it going.’
‘A water-powered timepiece,’ Dragonetz mused, on his knees, inspecting the bowlful of water with the levels marked for the hours. ‘How did you fix the markers?’
‘I calibrated them with the markers on a sundial. This is a simple version. The one at Douzens used a gear to ring a bell for wake-up and I have heard of more complicated movements activated by the water level dropping.’
‘Same as our hammer system.’
‘Similar,’ agreed al-Hisba. ‘As we have no shortage of water this is an easy way to work out the timing of the hammers, and to keep a record - or at least it would be easy if anyone here had been taught some basic arithmetic and recording! So this is what I have found.’ He picked up a charred stick and wrote in the earth. ‘Ten,’ he told them.
Raoulf held up ten fingers and looked with disbelief at the ground. ‘A stick and a wheel!’ he said. ‘It doesn’t even look like ten! And he’s been writing this sort of Arabic in the ground all the time and expecting us to understand it. I’ve told him to get an abacus like any civilized person but no, he says that one day we will understand Al-Khwarizmi’s geometry if we only persevere. I tell you, Dragonetz, I don’t mind helping with the stones but this is going too far into foreign ways!’
‘You see,’ al-Hisba looked at Dragonetz and shrugged his shoulders. Sighing, he told Raoulf, ‘This, the stick, represents the number one….’
‘A minute ago it was the number ten! Next you’ll tell me that the wheel,’ he scuffed his foot near the circle, ‘magics the one into a ten.’
‘Something like that,’ Dragonetz laughed and cut off Raoulf’s spluttered reply. ‘Never mind the magic, Raoulf, just listen. So, ten what?’ he asked al-Hisba.
‘I calculate that there are ten turns of the wheel - ’
Everyone ignored Raoulf’s pained, ‘I told you that was a wheel - ’
‘- every minute.’
Dragonetz took the charred stick. ‘So every rotation has the three hammers fall twice, because there are two cams per hammer.’ He scored the sum in the dirt,
3 + 3
6
‘So one rotation has 6 hammerfalls and there are ten hammerfalls each minute.’ Dragonetz used his stick again.
‘So that’s 60 hammerfalls each minute.’
‘As you say,’ al-Hisba bowed his head, acknowledging the other man’s education, while Raoulf crossed himself and shook his head.
Dragonetz gave his own men the chance to redeem themselves. ‘So what would improve this? Arnaut? Raoulf?’
‘Faster of course!’ Raoulf was contemptuous. ‘Why didn’t you just ask me that in the first place! If the hammers go faster they’ll do more work. Same as men.’
‘Yes, but without al-Hisba’s calculation you wouldn’t know how fast they are going now and you wouldn’t be able to measure the difference and see what happens.’
Never one to give up easily, Raoulf grumbled, ‘You can see how fast the hammers move and you can see if they speed up!’
‘Not if you’re in Aquitaine, you can’t! With al-Hisba’s measure anyone can check up on the hammer-speed and we can make comparisons, even if we’re not here.’
‘So,’ Arnaut chipped in, ‘the question is how we speed up the hammers.’
‘Lighter hammers,’ suggested Raoulf.
Arnaut shook his head. ‘No difference. It’s the wheel that sets the turning time and the water turns the wheel. We could take the river directly into the wheel, then when there’s floods and rapids it would speed up?’
‘Too dangerous. No, we have to stick with the culvert and channel, which gives us control of the water. So it has to be us who speed up the water… Raise it? Start with a wide channel and narrow it over a drop in height to increase the flow and move the wheel faster. I know, we could put a drop-gate in the channel, raise it to decrease the flow, lower it to increase it. Al-Hisba, will it work?’
The Moor bowed. ‘My people have been doing this for thousands of years to irrigate the crops, Yes, it will work.’
‘So, show me how we can organize this drop-gate. Where shall we put it?’ In his eagerness, Dragonetz was already walking along the cut which channeled the water from the river to the wheel and the others had no option but to scurry in his wake.
By the time he found himself outside Ermengarda’s chamber, keeping the appointment made earlier that day, Dragonetz felt thoroughly refreshed, as much by cogitations on cogs as by a long soak in a hot tub, where he kept his thoughts firmly on paper-making. He had eaten with the men at the mill, stayed away from Palace people and felt all the readier to face what was likely to be a delicate conversation. The very fact that Ermengarda had arranged it for late evening, in her ante-chamber, suggested that she too was prepared for a very private exchange.
His light knock was answered straight away and he slipped into the room. The torchlight flickered over draped stools, emblazoned with fleur de lys, rich navies and reds, their mistress poker-straight and still, standing, waiting for him to enter.
‘Dragonetz,’ she said simply and sat down, indicating a stool in front of her, lower than hers he noted.
‘My Lady.’
‘You wanted to see me,’ she began. ‘Was this to tell me about your paper-making mill in my domain?’ He took a sharp breath while she continued. ‘To claim a reward for killing a Jew? Or to claim a reward for saving the lives of the Jews I’d have had to hang if you’d made the murder attempt public? No? Then perhaps you want to check whether I intend to repeat my attempt to murder Aliénor, as she would have me believe you see me as the most likely suspect?’
Dragonetz stood up to leave. ‘Your spies are efficient and you seem to have covered it all,’ he said, ‘so perhaps I should go.’
‘Of course I know what happens in Narbonne! Sit down, Dragonetz.’ He sat. ‘Just don’t play me for a fool.’
Then he did meet her eyes, grey, measuring him. If he had doubted his best way through this maze of a meeting, he no longer hesitated. ‘You know I never suspected you.’ She waited but he had no intention of exposing Aliénor’s subterfuges. Or at least, not those ones. ‘So we won’t waste time on that. But you are nearest the mark with your last suggestion.’ One finely plucked eyebrow, the fair hairs barely visible, was raised. ‘I would indeed like to talk of a real suspect, the menace in the south-west…’
‘Toulouse,’ Ermengarda acknowledged. ‘Go on…’
‘A young viper it seems, likely to bite those who take him to their bosom as well as spit his venom further afield. I have the impression that my Lady Aliénor regrets that his father’s death has not removed this poison from her life and yours. She hoped so very very much, for your sake, that the removal of Alphonse Jourdain would remove this threat to Narbonne once and for all, and all unpleasant memories with it.’ Dragonetz waited and watched.
‘So I am to believe that poison was a just means to remove poison, is that it Dragonetz?’ He gave no response but waited. ‘And it was just because it was by Aliénor’s hand, you would tell me, for my sake what’s more, not because Aliénor calls herself Toulouse by right.’ Her tone was light and ironic but grew less controlled. ‘And I am implicated because I had no reason to love the dear first husband who saw his chance at Narbonne through marrying a young girl and stealing her birthright. The Toulouse claim now frets away at me like a half-healed wound and no, Dragonetz, I did not mourn Alphonse Jourdain. Do I wish his son dead? Is that what Aliénor wishes my connivance at? Or even that I should take the name without the act?’
Dragonetz schooled his face and his thoughts to give nothing away but his heart jumped when she took both his hands in her own and held his gaze. ‘Dragonetz los Pros, if Narbonne truly needed the death of Raymond de Toulouse, I would have it done tomorrow, as surely as I would sentence twenty innocent Jews to the gallows to preserve the peace of my ci
ty. You know this already and you would do the same. You have done the same, or worse.’
His eyes dropped but she would not let his hands escape. ‘This is what we do, what we must do, our birthright and our burden. But I do not poison men on a whim! Only a fool takes a sword and cuts through the knots in a rope, and loses the rope along with the knot. Raymond creates knots I must untangle but I would have to kill a great many men to cut through all my knots. And, as you said, the death of Alphonse Jourdain created as many problems as it solved so,’ she gripped his hand firmly before she released him, ‘I want no part of any murder. And you can tell Aliénor that.’
‘My Lady,’ he murmured, knowing the question she would put to him.
‘This is a puppet-show, Dragonetz. Let us stop competing to pull the strings. Was it Aliénor? Did she have Alphonse poisoned?’ Ermengarda asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ Dragonetz admitted, honestly, holding nothing back. If he had not already sworn his oath of fealty to another, he would have been on his knees offering his sword. The least he could offer was the truth. ‘It angers her that Louis’ attempt to regain Toulouse for her was as feeble and half-hearted as everything he does. Alphonse was alongside us in Constantinople, in Acre, fretting at her like a half-healed wound.’ Ermengarda acknowledged the reference. ‘And he was not a man to underplay either his petty triumphs or his great ones. Yes, he got under Aliénor’s skin and although he was miles away when he died, in Caesarea, Aliénor could have reached that far. I don’t know whether she did.’
‘And Aliénor will tell you what suits her from one moment to the
