Almodis (3 page)

I rein my horse at the top of the rise to wait for my companions and to look down on the walled city of Toulouse in the valley below. I bounce impatiently in my saddle, feeling that I am on the brink of life as well as on the brink of the steep incline. It is a beautiful crystal-clear morning with tiny wisps of cloud high up in an azure sky. I look back at the rest of the party. We have been riding for many days to arrive in time for the Easter
Assembly
and most of the group look bedraggled and exhausted. My Aunt Eustachie was forced to hand over the massive
ransom
to get her husband back. He more than earns his nickname: Guillaume ‘The Fat’. His fine clothes strain over his stomach and thighs. Four years in a dungeon has ruined his health and now he lacks the arrogant confidence that a Duke of Aquitaine needs.

I regard my uncle with candour. Guillaume, the sixth Duke of Aquitaine and third Count of Poitou, looks like an overstuffed cushion. He is at home on a sumptuous bed, and not on his muscled and massive horse. His black hair stands up on top of his head in lush waves and one curl hangs down his forehead. His mouth and eyes look tiny in their bed of lavish flesh and hanging chins. Eustachie, riding next to him, is as thin as he is fat. Her eyes and mouth are edged with a network of deep lines. Since Guillaume had been kept so long in captivity by Agnes and Geoffrey there has been no chance for Eustachie to conceive, and now perhaps with Guillaume ill and prematurely old, she never
will. Guillaume’s half-brother, Eudes, is the heir to Aquitaine and likely to remain so.

My gaze sweeps over the group of servants and focuses on my own two, Bernadette and Piers, riding side by side. Five years Bernadette has been with me and she is still having difficulty adjusting to our different southern ways. As usual, she is looking cross and complaining about something. Piers has a semblance of attentiveness fixed on his face as he leans towards her. Now that I am nearly of age perhaps I must get a new, more contented, maid. Bernadette is good at her work but I cannot abide her whining. Piers, my horse marshal and falconer, looks handsome with his brown hair and beard glinting in the early morning sunshine. He smiles, meeting my glance, sharing my pleasure in the ride.

I turn to look down again on the walled city with its red-tiled roofs and smoke rising from countless chimneys. Most of the city is on the near side of the great blue bend of the Garonne river. I can see the white and yellow sails of boats and tiny figures
moving
across the city’s two bridges. To my left, the dark pink walls of the castle of Toulouse, the Chateau Narbonnais, rise up near one of the city gates, towering above the other buildings. Close to another of the city gates, I can see the oval of the old Roman amphitheatre with its tiered seating. I am so excited to be here, close to this city that was the hub of the Roman and Visigoth Empires in the South. Somewhere down there is my family: my father, my brother and oh, my sister. I have not seen them for twelve long years.

I inhale the cold morning air. It smells of spring and wood smoke. I kick my horse and steer him with my knees toward the steep incline. We pick up speed and are soon travelling at breakneck pace down the hill. I hear startled shouts behind me and laugh aloud, relishing the rush of the cool breeze against my face.

As I wait again for the group to catch up with me at the St Étienne Gate, I watch the traffic of peasants, entering the city with their
tallage
, their tax payments in grain, chickens, cakes of beeswax, pigs. They file past the guards and occasionally make way for loud groups of noble visitors on horseback.

My aunt and uncle finally arrive and I listen with a fiction of a
demure, penitent face as Eustachie admonishes me for the
reckless
ride down the hill. I fall into line behind them as they prepare to enter the city with dignity. My uncle will be the most important visitor to the assembly. A servant straightens my uncle’s fur-lined red cloak around him on the horse. He pulls a coronet studded with green jewels out of a leather bag and passes it up to the duke who nests it precariously in the bouncing crest of his hair. Guillaume carefully nods his head in command and we all move forward towards the gate.

Once inside the city we pass the church of St Étienne and then ride straight down towards the river. Ahead, I can see boatmen unloading onto the crowded pier. Brightly painted pink, green and yellow houses line the opposite side of the river, with their lower levels in the water so that boats can pull directly into their basements. The upper storeys of the houses hang over, and are reflected in, the water’s surface. We turn left and follow the river towards the Narbonnais Gate. As we reach the huge sculpted gateway another group of nobles are approaching and at first attempt to force precedence. I exchange a horrified glance with Aunt Eustachie as I recognise Agnes of Mâcon and Geoffrey of Anjou. At the last moment, when I thought my uncle would have to exert his right to enter first, Geoffrey reins his horse and puts a holding hand out to Agnes. He bows sardonically to Guillaume as he passes and then I feel his eyes on me.

‘Good morning, my beautiful Lady Almodis of La Marche. A glorious morning.’ Geoffrey’s voice is loaded with self-satisfied sarcasm.

I merely nod my head without looking at him as I pass. I am not
your
beautiful lady, I think furiously. Geoffrey is quickly
forgotten
however as I emerge into the cobbled courtyard of the
bailey
and my excitement rises at the thought of being reunited with my family. Inside there is a scene of vast confusion as peasants queue with animals, and visitors are directed to their quarters.

A servant tells my uncle: ‘I have lodging in the east wing for you and your household, my Lord. I understand that I am to take Lady Almodis to the Count of La Marche’s lodgings?’

‘Yes,’ Guillaume answers, dismounting stiffly, puffing and groaning. The folds of his face are now an unhealthy and livid
red, with streaks of white at the sides of his nose. The fashion for short tunics and hose gartered below the knee so as to show off a finely shaped leg, does not, I observe, suit my uncle much.

Piers murmurs to me that he will take care of my horses and falcon. He disappears into the melée of people, moving in the direction of the stables with the reins of the horses in one hand and my treasured peregrine falcon balanced on his other gloved fist. I turn to Guillaume and Eustachie, trying to control the emotion tightening my throat. My eyes are welling with tears as I embrace them. Since I was five my grandfather, and then they, have been as parents to me. I cannot remember what my own mother and father look like.

‘There, child. Wipe your face,’ Eustachie tells me. ‘Don’t spoil those fine eyes. Your father will be looking on you soon enough. Go settle into your lodging with Bernadette, and we will speak with you later in the company of your father.’

I follow a servant into the hall, along narrow passageways and up winding stone staircases. This castle is like a maze. I cannot find my way back. I can only go forwards now.

I stand with Bernadette in the doorway to a small dormitory room on the upper floor. There is no one there, but clothes and travelling chests are dispersed around the room. Three curtained beds are crowded close together and there are straw pallets on the floor for the servants. I step into the room looking for signs of my sister.

An ivory tric-trac set, on top of a large chest of dark embossed wood, looks likely to belong to my father or brother. On the far side of the room, on the bed closest to the wall, I see a small gold casket. This must be Raingarde’s. I move over to it and run my fingertips across the gorgeous blue enamelled
carvings
. It is similar to my own casket, both of them made in the famous workshops of Limoges. The images on my sister’s casket tell the story of our great-aunt Emma who was kidnapped by Viking raiders but returned safely after three years when a
ransom
was paid. I smile at the carving on the lid showing Emma stepping from the Viking long boat to her husband, waiting on the shore. Two servants arrive in the doorway with my
travelling
chest and I direct them to place it next to my sister’s. Seeing the two similar caskets side by side fills me with inarticulate emotion.

Sunlight stripes into the empty room through the
meurtrières
, the narrow slits high up in the wall. Although they are not present, I can almost see the ghosts of my family, recently in this room, laying out the possessions they have brought with them from the eagles-nest castle of Roccamolten. I imagine them debating over who will take which bed. The one my sister has chosen, which I will share, is close to a window slit giving a narrow view of the green countryside beyond. I am tempted to open Raingarde’s casket and look for clues about the twelve lost years of our lives apart.

I sink suddenly onto the bed in despair. I don’t know these people: my father, Bernard, Count of La Marche; my brother Audebert, who is twenty now; my twin, Raingarde. What will they think of me? Will they be disappointed? Under my fingers I feel the thick brown fur of the bedcover. I know these furs come from Roccamolten. It is one of the few things I can remember:
snuggling
up with Raingarde on a freezing night, giggling as our frigid toes touch together and our warm breath caresses each other’s cold cheeks. My mother, Amelie, has not come to this assembly and is at home in La Marche. I strain with my eyes closed trying to remember her. The vague, pale face with yellow hair that swims into my mind is probably an image from a painting or a tapestry and not my mother’s face at all.

‘Why these tears, my Lady,’ asks Bernadette, ‘on this happy day when you will greet your father again after such a while?’ She dabs at my face delicately with a handkerchief.

I open my eyes and smile feebly at her. I take the handkerchief and blow my nose loudly. ‘Yes, you’re right.’ I spring up from the bed and wipe the last of my tears away. ‘I’ll go and see if I can find them while you unpack.’

At the doorway I hesitate. I have no idea of the layout of this castle, so different from the Aquitaine stronghold of Montreuil-Bonnin. I follow my instinct left, come to a narrow passageway cut into the cold, pale stone and slide into its slender darkness. It takes me to an open balcony where I can look down on the
continuing confusion in the courtyard. I see with satisfaction that Geoffrey and Agnes are still waiting for the servants to show them to their accommodation. Geoffrey’s angry impatience is being transferred into the nervous and dangerous prancing of his warhorse in the crowded space.

Safe in my unseen eyrie, I observe Geoffrey. The last time I saw him he was a young man. Now he is in his early thirties and powerfully built. His straight black hair is combed back from his pale face and cut short at the neck, soldier-fashion. His eyes are deeply set and an intense golden brown. They seem to bore into everything he looks at. His nose is large and curved. I have heard that he keeps three concubines besides Agnes. She must hate that. He is close friends with the northern French King, Henri. ‘Anjou,’ uncle Guillaume declares, ‘is a treacherous man in every respect, inflicting assaults and intolerable pressures on his
neighbours
.’ His clothes are plain black and brown but made from fine cloth. His only ornament is a great saucer brooch of Viking design, holding his cloak at one shoulder. The tense and ready way that he carries himself speaks more of his blood line than any fine clothes might.

Agnes, however, has tricked herself out like a queen. A
coronet
glints beneath her head-veil. Jewels hang from her ears. Her fur-lined cloak is held in place at the shoulders with two huge black brooches in the shape of eagles and a thick gold chain hangs between them. Agnes is a decade older than Geoffrey, but she is still a fine-looking woman with her dark red hair, yet her face looks well lived in. The worry over his philandering and her own ambition, perhaps.

Donkeys laden with goods are being led across the cobbles of the courtyard or are stubbornly leaning backwards, holding their place, as their owners pull and pull on the reins. Soldiers in livery with large horses clatter towards the stables. Maids run frantically from kitchen to hall with loaves of bread and flagons of wine. This is an important assembly with much business to be
conducted
. Apart from the usual paying of taxes and legal rulings, the new Count of Toulouse will be crowned; since I am seventeen and nearly of age, I will be formally handed back to my father; and my sister will be betrothed to Pierre, heir to Carcassonne.
The noble families from all across Occitania and Catalonia are gathering to witness these events.

I turn from the scene in the bailey and continue out of the
sunshine
and into the chill gloom of the narrow stone corridor,
impatient
now to find my family. I take a staircase that leads down into darkness. The steps wind round and round, worn unevenly in the centre by the passage of many feet. With one hand I hold up the hem of my dress and my other hand follows the cool contour of the spiralling wall. Then, with dismay, I see the top of a woman’s head below me. One of us must go all the way back up or down as there is no room to pass. The lady below is looking down at her feet and has not heard my steps. As we come face to face, hand to hand, bathed in bright light from an arrow slit, she exclaims ‘Oh!’ at the
unanticipated
encounter, and, after a moment of staring into my face, ‘Oh!’ again. I am looking into the loved and longed for face of my sister.

‘Raingarde!’

She moves up another step, as close as possible in the narrow and precarious stairwell and we hug each other tightly for a long time, as if we will never let go.

‘Almodis! I can hardly believe it’s really you, and not the
phantom
that I’ve hugged every night these many years!’

Then we are silent and regard each other without blinking, holding hands, until I pivot suddenly and begin to go back up the stairs, pulling Raingarde behind me.