by Jean Gill
‘So you admit it!’
‘It does sound possible, when you string it all together like that. And how exactly do you propose to stop me?’
‘Your payment!’ Estela was triumphant. ‘I’ll denounce you to Ermengarda as we’re in Narbonne, and if she traces back your jewels, your income, it will prove who is behind this!’
‘Very good, child. You are right - I am a spy. And you are right that I have good reason to kill Dragonetz but it’s not money. You see, he is the only one who knows my secret so if I killed him, that would remove the threat to my peace of mind that he represents.’
Estela had stopped breathing. The water bubbled in the silence left after Sancha stopped speaking and a black redstart trilled as it flirted its scarlet at a mate before flying off. This was everything she’d hoped for. Wait till she told Dragonetz! Sancha took Estela’s hand and in the craziness of the moment, sensing no danger, Estela let her hand be guided into the other woman’s under-shift, across her lower body and placed firmly on male private parts. Flinching as if scalded, Estela’s hand withdrew of its own volition to be clasped firmly in its partner. She couldn’t move, could only listen to Sancha’s incomprehensible words as she - he? - stood up to leave.
‘So now you know my secret too, which means of course that I must kill you too.’ Estela didn’t budge one inch on the seat. ‘The problem being, my dear, that if you trace back my income, you will find it comes from Dragonetz, and much as he deserves death sometimes, I love that boy stupidly and, as you can understand, it is unrequited so yes, I have found it difficult to like you - pure envy, my dear girl, pure envy.
If I had been born the way other women are, if I looked like you, or had half your talent... But envy is not green enough to take me near a public bathchamber! So, you can either spend your days expecting me to murder you or you can figure out that we’re on the same side, and you might give a bit more thought to events in Toulouse and Carcassonne. I think we’ve had enough melodrama for one day so I am going back to the embroidery circle. Good day.’ Sancha dropped a mock curtsey and left Estela to muse on a million re-bubblings of water in the pond.
Finally, she rinsed her hands in the cool water, over and over.
Dragonetz looked at Sancha, trying to see her as if he’d just found out what she hid beneath her skirts. There were so many clues, when you knew. A squarish jaw, the hint of prominence to the adam’s apple, the muscular tendencies of her arms and above all the way she tried too hard in her feminity, as is the way of men-women and ageing beauties, into both of which categories she fell. When Dragonetz found out that this Queen’s Lady was not what she seemed, there had been no time for squeamish revulsion. In the massacre caused by Aliénor’s worst misjudgment Oltra mar, a minor tragedy went un-noticed - except by those involved.
A husband, cornered by turbaned assailants, shielded his wife with his sword and his body, slipping on his own blood to his inevitable death by five scimitars, exposing his lady to the opening move of traditional entertainment. Still dripping with her husband’s blood, a blade laid more delicate route from bodice to hem, ripping open the vision of nakedness that the Moors had hoped to slake more than battle lust upon. What they saw gave them enough pause to allow Dragonetz the advantage, as he whirled to a woman’s scream, saw her husband crumple, saw the body exposed and reacted with the same instinct he would have had if it were his own mother’s body assaulted.
Over six dead or dying human bodies, he gazed steadily at Sancha’s naked body and said, ‘That is the most remarkable distraction I have ever been offered by a comrade but it has served its purpose now,’ and he had thrown her a blanket ripped from his horse, that stood wide-eyed and trembling but waiting on his master. Trembling more than the horse, she had stumbled towards him, been thrown on the horse and returned to the huddle of Ladies with Aliénor, holding the blanket as tight as if her very bones would disintegrate otherwise.
Perhaps, he thought, if he had realised the ambiguity of this woman’s body in some other way, in another time and place, he would have found it shocking. But at the time it had seemed such a little thing and once known, accepted, part of what he needed to know to understand this useful underling who placed herself under his direction as his eyes and ears in the women’s quarters.
There were women who found a marital partner once and once only; Sancha’s chance of finding another mate was as likely as fish playing hop-skotch in the meadows and it was unspoken between her and Dragonetz that her status as widow was permanent and ideal for her work. It was one of the mysteries on which Dragonetz refused to dwell, as to how exactly Sancha had found a marital relationship in the first place.
‘You did the right thing,’ he told her, smiling vacantly around the hall. What could be more innocuous than a flirtation between the voracious widow and the debonair troubadour, in full view of all who passed through on palace business? ‘Estela is young and naive but not stupid.’
‘She doesn’t lack guts,’ Sancha admitted, grudgingly, ‘but she has the subtlety of a boot up the arse.’
This time, Dragonetz’ laugh was genuine. ‘So you’re going to make peace and teach her a little more subtlety. Along the lines of your little revelation?’
Sancha ignored his irony and nodded. ‘Someone has to! If she accepts me.’
Dragonetz looked at her steadily then. ‘What’s to accept?’ And he meant it. He was old enough to have met and mixed with all kinds of humanity, to know that oddness and glitter faded equally with long acquaintance, stripped to some harder and more complicated essence of character than ‘that’s Lady Sancha, man dressed as woman.’
‘She might be chasing the wrong hare but she’s in the right wood, your Estela,’ mused Sancha.
‘Meaning?’
‘One of the Ladies is waist-deep in this business and it’s likely someone with a personal grudge against Estela as well as political against you. Possibly personal grudge against you, too. A discarded lover?’ she looked the question at Dragonetz.
Affronted, he returned, ‘Don’t expect me to remember names and faces! All of them, I should think!’
‘So, political motive remains our best line. By marriage or birth, every one of the Ladies is related to Toulouse, Aquitaine, Templars, white friars, the Archbishop, even to Clairvaux! And once again, Estela is in the right that all of these would like Milord Dragonetz disposed of.’
‘Instinct? Who do you suspect?’
‘All of them and none of them!’ Her frustration showed. ‘Someone must be very clever indeed to seem as innocuous and stupid as they all seem - I don’t know why Aliénor puts up with them.’
‘Same reason we do - their connections and the news we get through them.’
Sancha sighed. ‘No news from Carcassonne at present as Alis has gone to her Trencavel uncle’s funeral. Young Toulouse is continuing to grow in size and venom but it’s directed against Jews and Cathars at present, rather than in some desire to confront Aliénor head on - after all he is the one in situ so her fun with his title is merely an irritant. His desire to regain Narbonne for the Comté is perhaps more of a threat and that’s where Carcassonne becomes interesting.’
‘With Raimon Trencavel at Carcassonne, Toulouse might find a stepping stone to Narbonne.’ Dragonetz completed the thought. ‘But Toulouse and Raymond have been at odds since Raymond accepted the Barcelone connection for his other titles.’
‘Self-interest quickly repairs quarrels.’
‘So Carcassonne is no longer safe. And the monks? And the Brothers?’
‘Clairvaux hates Aliénor, both personally and politically. The white friars would do anything for their sainted leader. Any attempt against Aliénor would have them at the top of my suspect list. The Templars are hand in glove with the white friars, allowing a little leeway for wealthy sidetracking. There again, Estela was nearly right - follow the financial gain. Tell me, what is this business of a mill that makes you so hated.’
‘A project of mine, that’s all.’ Dra
gonetz waved the question aside. ‘And the Archbishop stands where in all this?’
‘Against Ermengarda, who steals his money - as he sees it - and corrupts men’s hearts with her decadent court and her tolerance of heathens.’
‘So there might be truck between the Archbishop and Toulouse? He must look with favour on the Christian cleansing there.’
‘I would guess so but there’s not much chance of women’s gossip from the Archbishop’s Quarters! You must find that out yourself.’
‘And Aliénor?’
‘Blooming. Recovering the roses she lost week by week in Paris, and thriving on Narbonne intrigue.’
‘But she will have to go back soon.’
‘Yes. No talk of it as yet but there are physical limits on how late she can leave it - another month, two months.’
‘Then we shall be on top of the civilised world.’
‘Or bottom of a very dreary one.’
‘I must to the apex of our hopes, right now,’ Dragonetz bowed an elegant leave-taking, ‘but this has been most useful. My thanks will find their way to you in the usual manner.’
Sancha gave a small nod of acknowledgement but Dragonetz was already on his way. He would rather have re-played the three challenges of the Prince of Orkney, and with his head tied in a sack, than face this conversation with Aliénor, but needs must. And, sadly for Dragonetz’ prospects of light relief, Jarl Rognvaldr Kali Kollsson had upped ship, sailing on to his destiny Oltra mar, with a saga in his heart dedicated in several suitably euphemistic verses to the cool goddess who had claimed his heart by a foreign shore.
Dragonetz stood stock still while an alabaster elephant hurtled past him and dinted its trunk in stone walls too thick to care what a queen threw next. It was going better than he’d expected. Two feverish spots in her cheeks were not the only signs of a royal rage in the red-head’s livid skin.
‘How dare you!’ she screeched at him, ‘I’ll have you bastinadoed, flayed and quartered if you leave me!’
‘That would be one way of keeping me,’ agreed Draonetz calmly but this time he ducked, noting that Aliénor was running out of ornaments as a wooden trinket box with the Arabic ‘good luck’ motto on its lid, followed the elephant. She took to hurling words instead.
‘Mill-keeper!’ The occupation was injected with as much contempt as if Dragonetz had announced his intention to hire his body out on the streets of Narbonne. The Duchesse paced the chamber, kicking a chair that displeased her as she passed. ‘As well put a destrier to pasture, a wolf by the fireside as a man like you turn pot-bellied merchant. No, Dragonetz, I won’t have it!’ He hadn’t said one word but stood, grave and patient, exasperatingly so it seemed. ‘And don’t pull that face either! Does your oath mean nothing to you? Do you desert Aquitaine in her hour of greatest need?’ And suddenly she sat, her hands on her hidden belly, her face crumpling into that commonplace, a woman abandoned.
Dragonetz was not foolish enough to sit and draw her wrath again but he had to steel himself not to kneel at her feet, to reassure her, to play once again the scene she wrote for him. Good as she was, a glance risked from under her long lashes, checking for his reaction, bolstered his resolve and he waited, silent.
‘Don’t you remember, my friend, what we have been through together, carnage and... gentler moments?’ Although she touched so lightly on the past, she knew exactly where to press. ‘Do you remember laying your bright sword in my lap?’ The delicate pause allowed time for them both to read into the phrase and remember. ‘And is that sword to rust by a mill-wheel? For Narbonne!’ She spat the last word and allowed him to see that the hurt in her eyes was genuine. So she knew about Ermengarda. It was inevitable. She had played all her cards and she leaned back in her chair, exhausted and tearful. ‘Don’t leave me, Dragonetz, please.’
Then he knelt before her and took her hands in his own. ‘I serve Aquitaine and its Lady, always, wherever in the world I should be. I too remember a young knight, dazzled by beauty brighter than his sword. But my sword and my spirit are dull with too much blood. I want to build, not destroy. I want to create something for the future not watch men’s eyes as they die.’
And women’s, and children’s, he didn’t say.
‘Now you sound like my milksop mewling baby of a husband! You, a miller!’ The fire was back in Aliénor’s voice. ‘And even Louis can cope with a righteous war, with God on our side! We must re-take Edessa! It is our duty as Christians to fight the Infidels and God help me, I won’t be found wanting! I need time to produce this kingling,’ she patted her belly, ‘and then I shall be rallying the forces for the next Crusade. I want you leading my army! You can’t say me nay! You don’t have the right.’
‘I can buy the right,’ he pointed out gently, referring to the system of scutage whereby a knight could send payment instead of services demanded by his liege lord.
‘By God, you’ll pay dear if you refuse me!’ sparked Aliénor, tearing her hands out of Dragonetz’ grasp and slapping his face.
He merely looked back at her, still on his knees. There was no point answering her crusading zeal, nor explaining that this was exactly what sickened him. ‘Let the future decide the future,’ he closed that subject, leaving her to hope. ‘And I am leading your army, here, now, looking for this threat that dogs us here and now, in Narbonne. I am hoping we can draw out the culprit and deal with him, very soon. You know you can use trusted eyes and ears in the south when you go back to Paris. All I am asking you,’ he was tactful, ‘is that I stay here when you go back.’ They both knew that he wasn’t asking.
‘Leave me,’ she said abruptly, ironically in the circumstances. He stood and bowed, about to leave. Then she remembered something. ‘I want your services tonight. The Viscomtesse and I wish to visit a person in the city, incognito, and I want you with us for security. And we’re taking your protegée with us too.’
Dragonetz could have told her the folly of risking her life and that of the unborn heir to the throne for who knows what madcap adventure, not to mention the unnecessary risk to his own life as one man against the combined forces of evil in the whole of Narbonne but he knew the response he would get and resigned himself to the inevitable, making himself a promise that he would take Arnaut with him.
‘You don’t make my life easy, do you,’ was all he said.
‘I thought that was what you liked,’ she responded but her heart wasn’t in the banter and he left her sitting hunched in her chair, a foreshadowing of the old woman she would one day become.
Chapter 13.
Estela had excused herself from duties among Aliénor’s Ladies to see Guillelma but she had no interest whatsoever in veils, gloves and gowns. She would rather have been following her self-appointed task of distinguishing one Lady from the other, recording mentally the cross-connections and political implications of every chance word. She would not be happy until she could add place to name for every woman among them and she had made a good start, helped discreetly by Lady Sancha.
Estela rebuked herself. Lady Sancha de Provence, she told her ill-disciplined thoughts. Which meant that she could have links with Raymond and Stephanie of les Baux, self-proclaimed rulers of Provence. The rulers of les Baux cast greedy eyes on Narbonne from the east, just as Raymond de Toulouse from the west. Ostensibly it was the husband who led the righteous campaigns to regain Provence on his wife’s behalf but everyone knew that Stephanie called the tune. And their allies were equally well-known. Les Baux’ niggling Baussenque Wars against Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelone, for sovereignty of Provence, were supported by Toulouse.
Despite, or rather because of, the friendship between Narbonne and Ramon Berenguer IV, Comte de Barcelone, Prince of Aragon and Overlord of Provence, relations between Narbonne and the Lordlings actually holding Provence were strained at best, likely to erupt into outright military dispute at some stage if Stephanie and her Raymond put a booted foot on Narbonne soil, and any Lady de Provence must be doubly suspect, by birth and by alliance.<
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Excepting, of course, Lady Sancha. Estela had now come to accept Dragonetz’ judgement, although she was trying so hard not to stare at Sancha and think of what lay beneath her under-shift, that anyone watching closely would have thought Estela either hated or loved the other woman. If only Sancha could be trusted not to catch her eye and wink at her, Estela might be able to control the tell-tale blushes. In other ways, Estela was now sure that Sancha could be trusted, so that wrote the other two Ladies de Provence out of the reckoning. Sancha knew everything about them from the chickens bred by their grandparents to the stone-mason who extended their castles.
Next on Estela’s list was the de Rouen, Aimée, What if it wasn’t a southern conspiracy at all but a Norman one? What if there was some connection with the Angevins and their ambitions to add France to their kingdoms in England and Normandy? Would they gain from killing Dragonetz? The attempts and threats seemed to suggest a network of enemies, to Dragonetz or to Aliénor, or both. Not to mention some personal animosity against Estela herself. If there was a Norman conspiracy, it made no sense to spring it in Occitania, where Normans were as sparse on the ground as bishops in a brothel, rather than in Paris. It all seemed a bit far-fetched and the more time Estela spent with Aimée, the more she was convinced that the girl’s innocent expression was exactly that. No, it just didn’t fit. So that ruled out the other northerners in principle, too.
‘Much as I enjoy your company, I do have other work to do.’ Guillelma was eyeing her quizzically, as she sat on a high settle swinging her feet absent-mindedly, forgetting that Guillelma was repairing a fancy on a shoe buckle. ‘In theory, it’s easier when the shoe is held still by someone else.’
‘Sorry.’ For a moment, Guillelma had Estela’s full attention. ‘’Don’t you mind always looking after other people?’
The capable arms didn’t stop working, the doughy flesh on the forearms wobbling.
