9781532020209

A lone tree dominated the hillside overlooking Carcassonne.

The city was shrouded with a clinging haze from the pitch-pots bombarding the walls night and day. The shattered, once-elegant suburbs were littered with broken equipment, bodies, and rubble. The Franks continued with a determination to find a chink in the defenses, some point where the walls could either be scaled or brought down. But despite their best efforts, the city remained tantalizingly unattainable within its fortifications, topped with the interloping spears of Saragossa.

With the setting sun against his back, Roland knelt beneath the tree and observed the Frank pickets’ movements between crumbling buildings. Sulayman’s horsemen clattered through the streets to monitor the gates, assuring that the Saragossans remained caged within and unable to sally forth and wreak havoc among the Frank bivouacs. Roland tugged the wool cloak about his shoulders. The evening breeze held a chill.

He was troubled.

The siege threatened to sap momentum from the Franks’ southern offensive. That Marsilion had been able to lead a sizable enough force around Barcelona was an embarrassment to the king, and his champion felt the barb acutely. Roland had heard the whispers among the campfires comparing the emir to legendary Hannibal—and he had been quick to point out to the gossipers how well soldiers can be motivated with a lash and harsh words. The champion promised them that that sort of fighting spirit usually evaporated in the thick of battle.

But for days the Franks had beat against Carcassonne, and to no avail.

Roland clenched his fist and scanned the walls yet again.

Nearby, a squad of troopers led a scraggly band of chained prisoners to priests waiting by a trickle of water to baptize them in the Latin rites. Haunting chants reached his ears as if on the wings of a dream, a dream of someone far away that deserved more of his thoughts than the war with Saragossa would allow. Alone, Roland assured her with words that were spoken only in his mind, carried on a whisper more sacred than prayer.

My love, I’d write if I could—if I knew how to make letters speak. He closed his eyes, allowing his mind to wander northward.

Aude strolled through the imperial garden at Aachen among waving flowers and ornamental trees. Deep inside her skirt pocket she bore the small bottle to remind her of a promise, even a duty, to her far-off husband. She had visited many shops since his departure, searching for the apothecary who originally mixed the toxic brew, but her efforts thus far had been fruitless. All around her, the women from court took leisure among the court’s many fineries. She hardly noticed the warm summer days amid the chattering trivialities of the other women while minstrels strummed and sang of ancient heroes. Frankly their shallow preoccupations sickened her. As unpalatable as it was, though, she had to admit they were alike in at least one way—they were all lovers torn apart by wars and intrigue.

Aude thought of the dispatches that almost daily captured the attention of the court. She had been spending many hours with Gisela, poring over the letters for mentions of Roland, his skirmishes, his battles, and his efforts to cage the wily emir of Saragossa, and then she would wander through the garden with a smile that never quite reached her eyes to a bench beneath a tree. Today the sunlight filtered brightly through the foliage, making its worn surface slightly warm to the touch when she sat. She stretched her face up into a beam of sunlight, closing her eyes and half-speaking out loud to her knight so far away.

“What would you write, if you could, my love? Of daring knights and exotic cities, I’m sure—of places that smell of jasmine and other exotic perfumes. You must know that I would read your words over and over, a feast for my famished heart.”

Roland shifted his repose and leaned back against the tree, recalling an ambush in a nameless village outside Carcassonne. Oliver had fought at his side, Halteclare glittering in the summer sun and spattering droplets of blood like rubies. The marchmen had formed up around them to fend off the arrows raining down from the edges of a ramshackle market square. In the midst of the ambush, unprotected civilians had screamed as the razor-sharp missiles sliced through them. But the volley did little harm to the heavily armored Franks. The marchmen had risen up as one, pushing aside the ravaged villagers to surge forward with swords like scythes reaping a harvest in Marsilion’s archers. Arrows had hissed again, much more ragged this time, to be shrugged off by the marchmen’s warding shields. Nevertheless, cowering men, women, and children had died with feathered shafts protruding from their bodies.

“I’d tell you all the happenings of this war,” he mused. “How we fought through ankle-deep blood in the struggle to protect our kingdom.”

After soaking up the light for a time, Aude stirred, rose, and completed her circuit of the garden. Then she wandered beyond the gardens to the palace, passing guards and courtiers alike, and took to the plaza beyond the main gate. Hawkers of food and trinkets crowded the plaza, which was rimmed with resplendent imperial buildings and monuments long dreamed of by holy men since the time of Augustine—a city upon a hill, bustling with new learning that many had thought dead with the final emperor to call Rome his home.

Aude passed merchant carts near the main thoroughfare and breathed the smells of fresh breads and smoked meats. Beyond the plaza, she came to the great cathedral rising high above the city, a place where she felt close both to God and her distant knight. Drifting toward the edifice, she noticed, with a slight catch in her breath, two lovers in the shadow of a house. The girl smiled and touched her full red lips to the boy’s cheek gilded by barely noticeable blond down. They linked into a tender embrace. Aude lowered her eyes and hurried past, and within a few steps the imposing cathedral’s sweeping buttresses drew her eyes heavenward.

How far away you must be, she thought. I wonder if your words would bring you closer. Would each letter bear your face—each sentence speak in your voice? I fear some days the war will silence my knight. And I couldn’t bear it if you were taken.

The Saragossan cavalry rode hard, fleeing before the onslaught of the veteran marchmen. Roland stood at the edge of the village, Durendal still dripping in his hand, amidst the torn and still bodies of enemy troopers. Oliver clapped him on the back, and Kennick admonished Otun and the marchmen to remain in formation while in the growing distance the enemy scattered in a dusty cloud up the road.

“Many of their men fall to us,” Roland murmured to his beloved. “Yet Carcassonne remains in their hands, taunting us with its high walls and thick gates.”

Within the cathedral, Aude genuflected, her fingers reverently touching each point of the cross upon her breast, then silently made her way through the long nave. The sun sparkled through the windows high up in the clerestory and brilliantly illumined the checkered walls and columns. At the altar, she gathered her skirts and knelt to whisper a few words of prayer.

A cluster of women entered through the transept, the whole lot of them sobbing and wailing to the heavens. Their attire spoke of riches and station. The priest accompanying them tried to sooth their grief. Behind them followed a pair of altar boys who carried two battered shields, one blue and charged with a swallow, the other blazoned with checkered diamonds. They lay the warboards at the altar then scurried away.

And the fallen, Aude thought in concert with her prayers. Her eyes traced the chipped paint and torn leather covering the shields. Their brave deeds must be enough to fill volumes in the greatest of the world’s libraries. Minstrels already sing their timeless songs to comfort those left behind.

In that tiny village, where the ambush killed so many, life had returned as the Franks and Barcelonans brought supplies and patrolled the dusty roads to protect against Saragossan reprisals. In a nearby field, peasants shed tears while lowering their dead into the ground. Roland, Oliver, and Saleem had taken some marchmen into the summer heat to deliver supplies to the mob assembling in the village square. The men had laughed and teased a gaggle of children who watched them as they tossed seemingly endless grain sacks into neat rows under the hot sun.

Then a shriek interrupted the rhythm of their labor. Grabbing weapons and racing across the square, the three men found a local merchant in the barest of homespun running out of a stable with tears streaming down his face. They followed his pointing finger inside where agitated animals stomped and snorted to the sound of rough demands and sobbing pleas. They searched quickly through the dusty light and found a stall on the far end where a Frank knight stood, trousers open, groping a young girl while another knight held her pinned and gagged. Discarded surcoats, one blue and charged with a swallow, the other blazoned with checkered diamonds, lay flung across a haystack.

Saleem guffawed at the sight as if the situation were remarkably funny, but Roland’s fury burst forth, and Durendal dispensed swift justice at the champion’s hand.

Roland shuddered at the memory of the blood of the condemned splattering across the girl’s bare skin.

Saleem, standing near the champion in that dirty, small stall, had appeared truly dumbfounded.

Honor is a convenient garment for some, Roland mused on the memory, for those without strength take it off at their leisure. Saint Michael as my witness, when we lose our honor, we are as bad as the heathen …

Aude, a world away from her knight, lifted her head from her contemplations. She pushed her flaxen hair from her face then stood and wrapped the women in her arms as they poured their souls out to the Virgin. She shed tears with them.

When the sobs subsided, she left them in the ethereal interior of the cathedral and emerged into the dying day.

Roland raised his eyes to the distant city. His duty remained before him. He scrambled to his knees, lifting his hands in supplication to God and to his love. I plead with God, he thought, for the strength to remain true. Oh, Aude, if only I could write, you would know of my love for you. It’s been so long, and God only knows when this will end.

In the nearer distance, another Frank patrol thundered across the outskirts of Carcassonne, horses resplendent in gleaming armor and leather, riders tall and plumed with shimmering iron and steel. Roland hefted Durendal, buckled it to his hip, and walked back to the camp.