And so it was now. Though the Lady’s uncanny mood at the firing of Saint-Jacques had unnerved her, Elinor had in some ways shared it. It was as if the two women had died in the flames themselves and were now in a kind of limbo, waiting for their fates to be determined. Would they find paradise at the end of their journey or more flames – the eternal kind?
But for most of the time, the travellers tried not to think of this or anything else, but just concentrated on keeping to the path and taking care that their mounts did not pick up stones or thistles in their hooves. They saw only to their bodily needs – food, rest, refreshment and sleep – and did not talk of religion, or armies, or titles.
Very occasionally, when she spotted a distant castle up in the gentle hills, Iseut would sigh and Elinor would know what she was thinking.
Nicolas was a great source of strength to both of them. When they were out of earshot of other people, he would encourage Elinor to sing and the music she made to accompany their journey became a part of it. Sometimes Iseut would compose aloud – something she would never have done without parchment and ink in her own castle – and Elinor would fit the new words to old tunes. But no more laments; they would keep till safer times.
And so they came to Alba and rested for a while before continuing on to try their fortune at Chivasso. The broad-leaved trees were turning golden as they approached, in contrast to the pines and cypresses that kept their dark green spires pointed at the sky.
‘There is a poem in that contrast,’ said Iseut. ‘Why some trees are evergreens and others lose their leaves. It is an image that could be applied to people.’
They were staying at an inn in Alba, having supped on duck with white truffles. The Lady had two rather hectic red circles on her white cheeks and Elinor thought she looked feverish.
‘How so, my lady?’ asked Elinor.
‘Well, some people are unchanging. They continue on the same year after year and it is a shock to us when they die – even if it is at a great age – because they have never shown any sign of weakness or decline. People like Nicolas here, so stalwart and true.’
‘So Nicolas is a cypress tree,’ said Elinor, who did not like the melancholy that was creeping into Iseut’s voice. ‘What are we?’
‘We are like little holm oaks,’ said Iseut dreamily. ‘This autumn has stripped everything from us and we are as bare as their leafless branches.’
‘But that means we shall recover in the spring, surely?’ said Elinor.
‘Perhaps we will,’ said Iseut. ‘Though perhaps we shall just be wind-blasted and never see green again.’
‘Then we must just hope that birds don’t come and make their nests in us or woodsmen chop us down for timber,’ said Elinor, casting anxious looks at Nicolas and talking nonsense just to keep Iseut from dwelling on dark thoughts. But her image was ill chosen.
‘Chop us for timber,’ echoed Iseut. ‘Like the faggots I lit in my hall. Or the ones that burned the Believers. I wonder if Berenger is safe?’
Her thoughts really did seem to be wandering now and Elinor hastened to get her into bed in their chamber. Iseut was icy cold and Elinor chafed her hands and feet and piled all the clothes they had in their saddlebags on to the bed to warm her. She sent Nicolas to get fire for the logs in their grate, cursing her own thoughtlessness.
But as the night wore on, Iseut was hot again and cast all the coverings off and Elinor stayed up all night bathing her face with a cloth soaked in cold water.
Towards dawn, Iseut opened her eyes and asked for Elinor, though she called her Azalais in her fever.
‘I’m here, my lady. It’s Elinor.’
‘Ah yes, the maid,’ rambled Iseut. ‘No, that was Garsenda. If I die, Elinor, you must go on to . . . to . . . where is it we are going?’
‘Monferrato, lady and you will not die,’ said Elinor fiercely, blinking back tears.
‘But if I do, you must promise to go on without me. Swear it, Elinor.’
‘I will swear if that is what you wish. But what should I do without you? I will not let you die.’
‘I am burning like my castle,’ said Iseut. ‘What is left will be ashes.’
‘No, no,’ said Elinor, weeping over her friend. ‘You will not. You will be a tree back in leaf, remember? One that comes back in the spring. I promise. We will wear green together.’
And eventually sleep came to both of them, though it was not a peaceful one, but full of nightmares.
.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A New Lord
The band of soldiers in Termes rapidly became a resistance force like the one at Cabaret. The Lord of Termes kept good healers and they were busy night and day tending the wounded who had been well enough to walk or ride into the castle. They were all desperate men, like Gui, who had seen terrible things.
Those who were uninjured, or who had recovered enough to wield a weapon, went out on raiding parties, harrying the French. Killing soldiers, stripping weapons to restock the armoury, even torturing prisoners for information – these became daily events. So war changes men, quickly and without question.
The news from captured Frenchmen was that the Abbot’s force was reduced to about thirty knights and he had sent to the Pope for reinforcements. The French nobility were heading back north in droves, intent on getting their reward for forty days’ service and looking after the grape harvest.
But the rabble of ribauts and hundreds of foot soldiers stayed on; they had no land to harvest or vines to tend and they were still living richly in the south. And there were plenty of empty castles to winter in.
So small groups of Frenchmen often ran into desperate faidits or some of the rebels from Termes, Minerve and Cabaret. And then it did not go well for the northerners.
‘They’ll never take Cabaret,’ said the Lord of Termes. ‘It’s three castles in one and Lord Peire-Roger knows what he’s doing.’
‘They’ll not have Termes either, my lord, while there are knights left to defend it,’ said Gui le Viguier, who had rapidly become one of the Lord’s most trusted fighters. His wounds were healing, though his arm would never straighten again.
Bertran did not go out with the raiding parties. He still felt responsible for the people he had led out of Carcassonne and not many of them were fit enough to fight. Huguet and Peire became his special concern. The little boy had accepted his new name and they never found out what his parents had called him. He regarded Huguet as not just his saviour but a sort of older brother and Bertran as a substitute father.
The troubadour went to great pains to keep Peire innocent of the many cruelties still stalking the land. He was not allowed outside the castle walls and was only rarely permitted up on to the battlements. But he considered himself one of the fighting force nevertheless and was never seen without his wooden dagger.
One day a ragged man came to Termes and begged entrance. The porter let him in when he said he came from the Viguier bastide.
‘It’s the first word I’ve had of my family,’ said Gui, as soon as he heard. ‘I doubt it will be good, but send him to me.’
Once the man had been fed and washed, he came to Gui, who recognised his father’s manservant under the emaciated form. The man fell on his knees but Gui lifted him up awkwardly, clasping him with his injured arm.
‘What news, Sicart?’ Gui asked gently. ‘What of my father?’
Iseut was ill for two weeks and as soon as she was recovered, Elinor took the fever from her and burned and froze as badly as her friend. Then the Lady, still weak, played servant to the woman who was supposed to be her maid. Without Nicolas, who appeared to have the constitution of an ox, they would never have got through this time.
Tirelessly, he procured herbs and remedies and brought healers to the inn. He ordered broth for the invalid and nourishing food for the convales
cent. And he made sure that the fire in the women’s room was kept well stoked. Even though sometimes the patient begged for it to be put out and the windows thrown open.
It was November before they were well enough to leave Alba and by then they were seriously worried about getting to Chivasso before winter really set in. Iseut was anxious to make good time on the road north but they could not press the pace too hard, as both women were still thin and weak.
‘We must stop overnight at inns on our route,’ insisted Nicolas. ‘It is already too cold to spend nights in the open, especially since you’ve been so ill.’
Iseut chafed at the advice but took it. Since their fevers, both women had come to rely on Nicolas and he had become much more than a servant. They travelled as lady, maid and serving-man but when they were on the road they were just three companions and all thought of social degree was put to one side.
As they got nearer to the court of Monferrato, each of them had separate fears and worries about what they would find at the end of their journey. Iseut clung on to the reassurances that Taddeo the pilgrim had given her about the court there. Monferrato was famous even in the Midi for the welcome given to troubadours.
‘The last Marchese and his troubadour were so close,’ said Iseut, ‘that they died side by side in battle.’
‘Were they not on the same crusade as Lord Jaufre?’ asked Nicolas.
‘Yes but, unlike my lord, we know what happened to them,’ said Iseut.
‘They died in the Holy Land?’ asked Elinor.
‘No, the crusade was over. They were in Thessaloniki. It was only two years ago. A raiding party from Bulgaria killed the Marchese and sent his head to their Tsar.’
Elinor shuddered. Sometimes it was easy to believe that merciless cruelty had begun with the French invasion of the south but she was learning that the world had always been a harsher place than she had realised when she was donzela of Sévignan. Now she knew Iseut was suffering again, thinking that her own husband’s fate could have been just as brutal.
‘So the current Marchese has not held the title for very long?’ asked Nicolas.
‘I believe that his father gave up the title to him when he left for the crusade,’ said Iseut. ‘Taddeo told me that Guglielmo has been the effective ruler for the last five years.’
‘So if he were not going to continue in his father’s tradition as a patron of poetry and music, Taddeo would have known about that,’ said Elinor.
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have suggested going there if he had known any such thing,’ said Nicolas.
‘Well, we shall soon find out,’ said Iseut. ‘We’ll be there tomorrow.’
Sicart’s tale was brief. Thibaut le Viguier had taken the opposite line to the Lord of Sévignan.
‘Once he heard what had happened at Béziers, your father said there was no way to keep the French out,’ began the servant. ‘So we packed up all we could manage to take with us and rode out into the hills, leaving the gates open and enough goods in the city to stop the army from pursuing us.’
‘And my brothers?’ asked Gui. ‘Were they content to do as my father ordered?’
‘No, sire. They wanted to stay and fight. But Lord Thibaut insisted they would do better to leave with their arms and horses. They went to Cabaret and are serving with Peire-Roger.’
‘Good, I am glad to hear it. And where is my father now?’ asked Gui.
The man shook his head. ‘I am not sure, sire. He sent me away when he heard of the forces at Minerve and Termes. He wanted me to find you or at least find news of you. No one knew what had happened at Sévignan.’
‘That is a story for another day,’ said Gui. ‘So my father is a faidit, wandering in the south, keeping hidden from the French marauders. Well, I can at least kill as many of them as possible to make fewer to cause him trouble.’ He turned to Bertran, who had been listening to the man’s account. ‘You see? Lady Elinor would not have been any safer in my father’s bastide than her own. She would now be wandering landless and ragged with him – and that if she were lucky. That’s no life for a woman.’
‘But life, all the same,’ said Bertran. ‘You must be glad that your father and brothers live.’
But he noticed that this was the second time Gui’s thoughts had flown to Elinor. Perhaps it was the son who should have been proposed as a husband for her, not the father? He couldn’t help wondering whether Elinor would have been so ready to flee from the handsome young knight as from the old widower.
The towers of the castle at Chivasso in Monferrato gleamed in the distance and the little party’s hearts lifted as they saw them. It was more than two months since they had lived behind the protection of battlements at Saint-Jacques and, although they had encountered no worse danger on the road than an attack by fever, they were all eager to sleep again within such a shelter.
The gatekeeper had an easy life compared with his counterparts in the Midi; there were no hordes of armed militia threatening to besiege the castle, no mobs of refugees or looters, and only the occasional unexpected visitor.
So it was with interest that he inspected the three travellers from Saint-Jacques and called a small boy to take their names to the Marchese.
‘Lady Iseut, the Senhor of Saint-Jacques, Lady Elinor of Sévignan and Nicolas the senescal,’ he drummed into the boy’s head until he could repeat it back perfectly. He didn’t suggest by so much as a glance that the ladies hardly lived up to their titles after two months on the road.
They were dusty, dishevelled and as thin as a pair of stray cats. But they sat their horses well, with heads held high.
Evidently the boy had passed on his message well for the Marchese’s own senescal came to the gate to welcome the visitors, acknowledging Nicolas warmly, once he had courteously greeted the ladies.
‘My master bids me to take you to a chamber where you may refresh yourselves after your long journey,’ he said. ‘And he will send the Marchesa’s own maid to attend you.’
This was soothing to both women’s nerves. They were shown to a richly hung chamber, while Nicolas took their horses to be stabled, and were brought hot water and soft towels. A serving-woman, better dressed than either of them, came to bathe them and dress their hair. She said nothing disrespectful but Elinor could tell from her eyes that she had not expected ladies to travel so ill-attended and so poorly dressed.
They took the two best gowns from the saddlebags that Nicolas brought up to the room, pale rose for Iseut and dark blue for Elinor.
Iseut sent the maid away once they had bathed and washed the dust from their hair and with a tiny pair of scissors snipped at the hems that Garsenda had sewed so long ago.
‘I don’t remember what was hidden and in what parts,’ she said. ‘We will have to hope the gems will match our gowns.’
With clumsy fingers, Elinor stitched the hems up again, once Iseut had extracted a pair of diamond earrings and a pearl collar for her own ornament. For her own wear Elinor would accept nothing more than a fine silver chain for her neck and even then not the cross that went with it; that would have seemed disloyal both to her father and Bertran. But she had his brooch to wear on her dress and it gave her courage.
By the time the maid came back to brush their hair, the two women already looked much finer than when they had arrived and the serving-girl looked with satisfaction at her handiwork as they left to meet the Marchese. True that younger woman’s hair was short for someone her age but it was a fine glossy brown and the older lady had such pretty blonde locks that they made a handsome pair.
Nicolas agonised for a while over whether to stay and guard the saddlebags or attend his mistress but in the end reasoned that even the meanest servant in the employ of so rich a marquisate would not need to pilfer, so he hastily washed his hands and face and hurried after the women.
On entering the Marchese?
??s great hall, Nicolas had to swell out his chest and pretend to be the whole retinue of servants that Iseut deserved and should have had – would still have had if it hadn’t been for the cursed French. At the head of the hall sat Marchese Guglielmo and his Marchesa, Berta, richly robed, on carved wooden chairs, as if King and Queen of their own Kingdom. And in a way they were. Monferrato was large enough to be a small kingdom and the noble family that ruled it went back generations – perhaps further than those of some monarchies.
But while the senescal noted with approval the richness of the hangings and the plate, Elinor was completely absorbed by the sight of the troupe of musicians and dancers. There were so many more than she had ever seen, even at the court of Maria of Montpellier.
The two best dressed, without instruments, must be troubadours, she reasoned, but there were others with fiddles, rebecs, flutes and tambours as well as a dizzying coloured swirl of joglaresas and acrobats. It made Elinor intensely homesick, not just for Sévignan or Saint-Jacques but for the travelling life she had led as Esteve.
The Marchese was courtesy itself, rising and coming forward to greet the women and leading them to seats beside him and his wife.
‘Welcome to the court of Monferrato,’ said Guglielmo. ‘What brings my lady and her companion so far away from home?’
‘I have no home, Marchese,’ said Iseut, clearly and firmly so that all the court could hear. ‘I left Saint-Jacques a prey to the French army – though they will have had scant joy of its strong towers and thick walls.’
Elinor found that she had been holding her breath; now she let it out very slowly. She had forgotten that Iseut was a poet. She was going to tell her story now and everyone in the court would be gripped by it.
While two women and their senescal had come to roost in Italy, Clara of Sévignan, her remaining daughter and their servant had found no such resting place. For weeks they had been wandering the hills of the Midi without any aim, except to escape the French. As time went by, they ventured further on the road by day and saw fewer signs of any soldiers.