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CHAPTER SIX

Honeysuckle

Innocent III celebrated Easter in Rome with the usual magnificence and pomp. By the end of Easter Sunday, he was tired and elated in equal measure. When he had disrobed and taken a light meal, he sat down to ponder the news that his messenger who had been sent to the Midi had brought him. The Pope had been thoughtful when he heard his information. What did the troubadour’s lack of enthusiasm for women mean? The ferryman had been sure he was not abnormal in his desires and perhaps he was just a clean-living man? As Pope and a celibate Christian himself, he could hardly condemn Bertran for that. But just possibly the troubadour was a heretic, who either was a Perfect already or was planning to become one before he died. That would account for his abstinence from female company.

But the life of a troubadour would not really be compatible with that of a Perfect; he would have to pray too many times a day to be at his lord’s beck and call for poetry and he’d have to eat whatever the lord he was serving put before him. So Bertran de Miramont was possibly just a Believer who was on the heretics’ side. But wasn’t it a bit too much of a coincidence that this troubadour should have been there at the very moment when the Pope’s Legate, acting against the heretics, had been murdered?

It was beginning to look like conspiracy. The murderer could have hidden in the wood and waited till he saw the ferry-boat coming, knowing that Pierre and his companions must cross the river by that route. And it could have been pre-arranged that the troubadour would travel in the first morning boat.

Then after the murder, he could have merely pretended to chase after the assassin, making sure that no one else did so. It made perfect sense. He must investigate this Guilhem de Porcelet named by the ferryman. It was clear that both de Porcelet and de Miramont knew something; they must be interrogated with the strictest rigour.

Innocent sighed heavily. He must now send out other men capable of tracking down the troubadour and carrying out the most severe kind of investigation. This business in the Midi was taking up more and more of his time. But it would be worth it if the heresy could be stamped out.

In Montpellier the joglars were having a successful Easter Monday. The market square was thronged with people, even more than on Holy Saturday, and the customers, after an hour or two of filling their baskets with cheeses and oatcakes, eggs and honey, were ready for some entertainment.

Lucatz stood at the side of the cart-platform, masterminding the troupe’s activities so that jugglers and acrobats were followed by dancers and singers. Perrin, Huguet and Esteve accompanied them all, with scarcely more than a moment to sip at the mugs of ale that market-traders bought for them.

One of the acrobats took round a velvet hat which was filled up often with silver pennies and the occasional larger coin from a rich trader, minted by the lords of Montpellier themselves. Lucatz was well pleased with their haul.

Many of the people who came to watch and listen had a special request for a particular canso or one of the longer chansons de gestes but the troubadour held back on most of the longer poems, knowing that they’d have to perform more of those at the court.

By the time they stopped at midday, Lucatz was able to give six pennies to every member of the troupe and the joglars got a solidus each.

‘He always pays the men more,’ grumbled Pelegrina.

‘Well, we have had to work the hardest,’ said Huguet, before Pelegrina could say anything that would reveal that one of the joglars wasn’t a male at all.

Elinor wondered if she should share her payment with the women but Perrin saw her thought before it flowered into action and shook his head.

They all had a free afternoon now until they were expected to assemble in the castle for the baby prince’s celebration. Elinor had never had so much money of her own to spend. As a nobleman’s daughter, everything had been provided for her and even though she had occasionally visited a market, she had never bought anything from a stall with her own coins, earned by her own work. It was an exhilarating feeling.

The first call on her purse was lunch and she went with Perrin and Huguet to a stall where balls of minced chicken and spices were being coated in batter and dropped into pans of sizzling oil. The smell was heavenly and Elinor nearly burned her mouth on the hot savoury fritter.

As she stood and ate her lunch in the middle of the teeming marketplace, hot juices dribbling down her chin, Elinor had never felt happier. She hadn’t been born a boy but this was the next best thing, to have all of a boy’s freedom and none of a man’s responsibilities.

The only tiny cloud in the blue sky of her new travelling life was that she had absolutely no idea what was going to happen to her in future. She had thought no further than finding Bertran and throwing herself on his mercy. Surely he wouldn’t have sent her his token if he hadn’t loved her? Beyond that she had no idea, not even of marriage to the handsome troubadour. She didn’t want to think about it.

‘Come on,’ said Perrin. ‘When you two have finished stuffing your faces, we should go and explore.’

The Lady of Montpellier knew how to put on a good feast. With her marriage in doubt, she now placed all her hopes of a happy future on her baby son, Jacques. He would be Senhor of Montpellier after her death, and today’s feast was all about proclaiming that fact, which was much more important to her than his inheritance of the throne of Aragon, which was far away over the Pyrenees. All the local nobles had been invited and more than twenty dishes prepared. And the entertainments would be equally splendid. It was a real piece of fortune that a new troubadour had turned up with his young joglar and promised to put on a fine show with his troupe at the end of the evening.

Maria of Montpellier put on her blue silk gown and got her maid to brush her hair till it crackled. She had wrested the lordship of the city back from her half-brother a few years ago and now she was enjoying being ruler. Marriage, pregnancy and childbirth had not got in her way. She had her two little daughters, Matilda and Petronilla, living with her in the castle and tonight they would join in the celebrations for their baby brother.

She hoped they would never be in bitter feud with him as she had with her half-brother Guilhem. They certainly seemed to dote on him now. Maria looked fondly down at the infant in his crib. How could anyone not love him? With his tiny pink fingernails and downy black hair? She shook herself and stood up extra straight. The Lady of Montpellier would not achieve her ends by sentiment but by skilful negotiations and political adroitness. She would write to the Pope about her son’s inheritance as soon as the Christening celebrations were over.

The great hall of the castle of Montpellier could hardly have been more different from the improvised stage in the market. Lucatz had made sure that all his troupe wore their best clothes, which would have been a problem for Elinor, who had only one boy’s outfit, but Huguet lent her a tight purple velvet surcoat and Perrin had bought her a pair of velvet slippers to match.

The joglaresas were magnificent in full-skirted dresses of crimson, green and yellow. They had all washed and curled their hair and every member of the troupe wore brightly coloured ribbons, some of them bought that day in the market.

As usual they would not eat till after the performance, but Lucatz told them that the Lady herself had given orders to the kitchen to hold back enough of every dish and course to feast the entertainers well.

They watched the diners from a minstrels’ gallery at the far end of the hall from the table where the Lady Maria sat.

‘Look at her,’ said her namesake, Maria the joglaresa. ‘Isn’t she beautiful? I hope I have a figure like hers after three children.’

‘Hah,’ said Pelegrina. ‘Worry about that when you have a man to give you some.’

‘Hush!’ said Bernardina. ‘Marriage and children aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Why, even the Lady herself, with her fine blue gown and her fine baby boy, is at loggerheads with her husband. And he’s her liege lord into the bargain.’

‘Stop gossiping,’ said Perrin. ‘We are the Lady’s guests tonight and we shan’t feel the lack of a lord. Look, I think the senescal is about to give the signal for the entertainments to begin.’

The little band of musicians who had been playing in the gallery throughout the dinner now yielded place to another group. Down below in the hall the acrobats and dancers of that troupe began a lively performance accompanied by their instrumentalists above.

‘They’re good,’ said Huguet. ‘You have to admit it.’

‘Very good,’ said Elinor, alarmed. Up in the gallery they had a boy singer of about her age, with a pure treble voice and with a presence to rival Esteve’s. To her surprise, Lucatz came and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Don’t compare yourself with others, Esteve,’ he said kindly. ‘I back my troupe against any in the Midi and, until we catch up with Ademar, you are part of my troupe.’

Their time came to perform and they passed the outgoing troupe who waved good-naturedly. Lucatz and the dancers, jugglers and acrobats went down into the great hall and the joglars and joglaresas positioned themselves to play and sing from the front of the gallery. Halfway through, the three joglaresas also went down into the hall, leaping and whooping among the other dancers, swinging their petticoats and clapping their hands.

But they weren’t as raucous and rowdy as Elinor had seen them in the villages. This was still Eastertide, after all, and the welcoming of a new soul into the family of the Church.

There was a pause in the dancing and the senescal brought a request from the Lady herself that they should perform the lay of Tristan and Iseut. Elinor was surprised. It was a sad story with no happy ending for the lovers but maybe it suited the Lady’s view of her present situation, though she had committed no adultery. Rumours had been rife in the market but all agreed it was King Pedro who had been the unfaithful party.

More importantly, this was a canso with a large part for the joglar with the highest singing register. So Esteve would have to be on the top of his form.

Elinor stepped forwards in her purple surcoat, feeling hot now and far from composed but she had memorised this lay, called ‘Chevrefeuille’ or ‘Honeysuckle’, among others by Marie de France, and as she started, the words began to work a kind of magic on her. Everyone was listening to the story – not to the individual joglar who sang it. Elinor or Esteve was just the vessel through which the sad tale passed.

Tristan was sent to woo the Lady Iseut for his uncle, King Mark, but had the misfortune to fall in love with her himself. His love was returned and the young couple pursued their affair in secret, not wishing for the King to discover it.

Elinor now came to the climax of the poem, where the banished Tristan carved a signal for Iseut into a hazel tree and a honeysuckle became entwined with it. The honeysuckle was so entangled with the hazel that either would die if the other were uprooted. And so it was with the two lovers, ‘Ni moi sans vous, ni vous sans moi’ – ‘Neither me without you nor you without me’.

Elinor thought of Bertran as she sang that part and it gave her voice more poignancy. She didn’t exactly feel that she couldn’t possibly live without him, like the honeysuckle and the hazel, but she could imagine what it would be like to feel that and for the duration of the song she did. She looked towards the Lady, who was listening to her so intently. Was she thinking of King Pedro? Elinor had gleaned from the gossip in the market that Pedro was fourteen years older than his wife – not as big a gap as between Iseut and King Mark but perhaps she was now yearning for a young Tristan to adore her. The Lady was still only twenty-two years old.

The lay of Chevrefeuille came to an end and Lady Maria led the applause. Elinor bowed and Lucatz clapped her on the back.

‘Well done, young joglar,’ he said. ‘You have made our fortune tonight.’

And indeed the senescal himself soon brought a goblet of hippocras especially for ‘the young joglar’ together with a velvet bag of coins. Elinor drank the spiced wine gratefully but handed the bag straight to Lucatz, without counting the coins. He appreciated her gesture but his eyes opened wide to see how much silver it contained. He stowed it away in his jacket but nodded to Elinor as if to say, ‘don’t worry – you’ll have some of it back.’

Some weeks after Elinor had brought tears to the eyes of Maria of Montpellier’s court as the young joglar Esteve, Bertran, quite ignorant of the donzela’s new life, at last reached Carcassonne. It was a city even more highly fortified than Minerve. Massive walls were punctuated by semicircular towers dating back to Roman times. There was a double gate to get through between the two suburbs outside the city, before the main road approaching the moated Château Comtal in the northeast corner, which had its own fortifications and towers.

Bertran was shown through all the gates and across the bridge to the château without challenge. The troubadour was a familiar figure in Carcassonne even though the young Viscount had poets and musicians enough of his own. Bertran was not kept waiting long before being shown into the presence of the Viscount himself.

Raimon-Roger Trencavel at twenty-four was younger than Bertran. But he looked tired, his face lined and sad. He brightened a bit when Bertran was shown in and, dispensing with the formalities, clasped the troubadour in his arms.

‘Well met, Miramont,’ he said. ‘It does me good to see you. Sit with me a while and let us drink a cup of wine together and put the world to rights.’

‘Ah, sire, if only we could put it to rights,’ said Bertran. ‘But I will willingly drink and talk with you, since there is much to talk about.’

‘Have you heard the latest news from the north?’ asked Trencavel, when the servants had gone and the two men were drinking companionably in the Viscount’s private room.

‘Tell me, sire,’ said Bertran.

‘The Pope has written direct to the nobles, asking them to take up arms against my uncle.’

‘I see,’ said Bertran. ‘What about King Philippe-Auguste?’

‘His Holiness has not written to him this time, they say. But I don’t imagine he will be happy if his barons take their soldiers and head south to please the Pope.’

‘What does your uncle say?’ asked Bertran.

‘I haven’t seen him. But he has brought this trouble on himself. He should never have promised the Legates that he would persecute the Believers. The Pope was bound to keep him to his word.’

The two men were silent for a while, drinking their wine and each thinking his own thoughts.

‘You heard about the murder of the Legate?’ asked Bertran.

The Viscount nodded. This was a delicate area. He could hardly tell the troubadour that his uncle had been responsible. But the fact was that Trencavel did not know the truth. He and his uncle, the Count of Toulouse, had not been on good terms for some time.

‘I was there,’ said Bertran. ‘I saw the murder and gave chase after the murderer. But I lost him.’

‘That is news indeed,’ said the Viscount. ‘I did not know you had been there.’

‘I am not proclaiming the fact,’ said Bertran. ‘It would have been all right if I had caught the villain but since he escaped me, there might be those, especially in Rome, who think I was in collusion with him.’

‘Surely not. You exaggerate the danger. Who would suspect you of such a heinous crime?’

‘That is not what matters anyway,’ said Bertran. ‘It is my belief that, if the Pope is successful in raising a northern army, it will not come only against Toulouse.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the Viscount. ‘His argument is with my uncle, no one else.’

‘His argument is with the people he calls heretics,’ said Bertran. ‘And with any lord who supports them and is sympathetic to their cause.’

‘But that is more or less every lord in the Midi,’ objected the Viscount. ‘None of our cities and bastides could manage without the Believers – or the Jews come to that.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ said Bertran. ‘And why I have been singing of war and battles in every hill town between here and Saint-Gilles. I do believe that, using this murder as an excuse, the Pope will do everything he can to wage war against every court in the south. Anyway, once there is an army on the rampage, they will not be precise about who is a heretic and who is not.’

They were both thinking about this when a servant knocked at the door and came and whispered something in the Viscount’s ear.

‘And now we have two more pieces of news,’ said Raimon-Roger, his face grave. ‘The Pope has excommunicated my uncle again.’

‘That is surely no surprise,’ said Bertran.

‘No, indeed, he must be getting used to it,’ said the Viscount.

‘If he were a heretic, to be banned from the Sacrament would not mean much to him,’ said Bertran cautiously.

‘Nor if he were just a not very devout man but a rebellious and ambitious spirit, as I know him to be,’ said the Viscount, evading the implied question.

Bertran bowed. He was not going to find out, even from this intelligent man that he counted his friend, whether he or his uncle shared the troubadour’s religion.

‘But I said there was another piece of news,’ said the Viscount. ‘My servant tells me that there is a Pope’s man at the outer gate. He seeks one Bertran de Miramont. He thinks that the troubadour might be here and wishes – this is the precise phrase – to “interrogate him”. What shall I do, Bertran? It seems you might be right in one of your surmises at least. The Pope is looking for you.’