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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 convalescent. 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.

Alys and her mother were still in such a state of shock that they hardly spoke. It had been bad enough seeing Aimeric shot down on the battlements but the sight of Lord Lanval climbing steadily on to the pyre had eclipsed even that. As far as Lady Clara was concerned she had but one child left and so certain was she that death or utter ruin would soon overtake them that she could not take thought even to protect that last human being who was dependent on her.

If their senescal hadn’t made them stop for food and rest, it is doubtful that they would have survived the first few terrible days. They had come to Béziers and seen it nothing but a heap of ruins. They reined their horses and looked out at the devastation.

‘I was married there,’ said Clara quietly. ‘In that cathedral that is now nothing but a wreck. Lanval and I stood at the altar in Saint-Nazaire and pledged ourselves to each other for life. That same altar where priests clung on to the crucifix and women and children hung on to the priests’ robes screaming while French ruffians speared and burned them.’

She turned to her daughter and her servant.

‘They did that in the name of my church to the Believers of my husband’s religion. And to their own. I think the whole world has gone mad.’

They rode on to Narbonne, which had surrendered so easily to the northerners. But there were hardly any there now, only a handful to guard it against rebels.

The senescal persuaded Lady Clara to go to the court of the Viscount and throw themselves on his hospitality. Viscount Aimery was a cipher now, left his title as a reward for his surrender but no longer true lord of his own city. Still, he received them kindly enough.

‘I should have believed Miramont when he came to see me last spring,’ he said bitterly, when Clara had told him of the events at Sévignan.

‘Our troubadour came here?’ asked Alys. It was the first thing she had taken any interest in since the death of her brother and father.

Lady Clara hesitated then shrugged. What harm could Bertran’s secret do any of them now? He was probably dead too.

‘He was a Believer, like your father,’ she told Alys. ‘He came to Sévignan to warn us after the Pope’s Legate was murdered.’

‘And to me,’ said the Viscount. ‘He said that the French would not stop at killing heretics and he was proved right – look what they did at Béziers!’

‘We passed it,’ said Clara wearily. ‘No church, no marketplace left, nothing of that thriving and busy town – just ashes and ruins.’

‘That is what Narbonne would have looked like if I hadn’t surrendered,’ said the Viscount. ‘I know there are those who think me a coward for not resisting but at least my city still exists, unlike Trencavel’s.’ He lowered his voice, even though there were no Frenchmen in the room. ‘And may one day again not be in foreign hands.’

‘I sent our knights and foster-sons to join the rebels,’ said Clara, ‘but I have no great hopes. So many have been killed and the French army outnumbers them so vastly.’

‘But most of the French have gone home,’ said the Viscount. ‘And though they may have reinforcements in the spring, our men have all the winter to regroup.’

‘Then let us hope they do,’ said Clara.

The court at Monferrato fell silent. Iseut had told them everything. They had heard of some of the disaster in the Midi: news of the massacre at Béziers had travelled far and fast. But that French soldiers had crossed back over the Rhône and sacked Digne and threatened Saint-Jacques was unexpected.

‘So you fired your own castle?’ asked Guglielmo. He was shocked and impressed in equal measure. He could not imagine being so desperate as to destroy any of his own castles.

‘You are very brave,’ said the Marchesa, her hand on her heart, picturing her own three little boys with the castle under siege. She was carrying her fourth child and her husband did not want her to be upset.

‘Come, enough of such tragic tales for one day,’ he said, taking Iseut by the hand. ‘You and your companions are welcome guests at Monferrato. Stay as long as you wish. In fact, it would please me very much to have you and the Lady Elinor become part of my court. My wife is not so rich in noblewomen to be her friends that she would not welcome two more such lovely additions to the court. And my senescal will make yours welcome too.’

He stood and clapped his hands.

‘We shall have music. And you can tell us the rest of your story over the coming days. For now we shall have feasting and dancing and push away all thoughts of warfare while we can.’