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CHAPTER TWO

Parting

The sky was still streaked with red when Bertran saddled up his horse to ride out of the castle. Only Perrin was up early enough to say goodbye. Before the troubadour mounted, he undid the brooch from his hat and gave it to his joglar.

‘A present?’ asked Perrin, grinning.

‘Not for you,’ said Bertran. ‘Take it to the Lady Elinor and give it to her privately.’

‘A love token?’

‘You know that it can’t be that. But there would be no great harm if she took it that way,’ said Bertran.

‘You must be mad!’ said Perrin. ‘No harm? You know how the donzela feels about you. This will just encourage her.’

‘I am sorry for her,’ said Bertran seriously. ‘She has no idea that her life and the lives of all of us are about to change. I may never see her again. Would it hurt for her to nurture the fancies of her heart a little longer? Before her family is plunged into bloodshed and war?’

Perrin bowed his head in obedience and took the brooch. He had no arguments against these. Bertran patted him affectionately on the shoulder.

‘Stay safe, my friend,’ he said. ‘And go east in the spring. It may be that your path should take you to Italy.’

‘And you?’ asked Perrin, overwhelmed by fear that the poet would be riding into danger.

‘My road lies west,’ said the troubadour. ‘I must take the warning to our brothers and sisters of the storm that is coming.’ He embraced Perrin warmly then stood back and placed his two palms together, the fingers pointing upwards – the secret sign of greeting and farewell in their religion. The joglar did the same.

Then the poet leapt into his saddle and rode out of the castle of Sévignan.

Elinor was watching, dry-eyed, from a window slit as his horse picked its way down the hillside. It was a picture she would keep in her mind for years.

It took some weeks for the news of Pierre of Castelnau’s murder to reach the Pope in Rome. Innocent III was hearing an embassy from Navarre when the messenger was shown in and he pursed his lips at the interruption. But the man was so nervous that Innocent became sure he brought urgent and terrible news.

He hadn’t dreamed how terrible though, and he sank his head in his hands as soon as he had understood what had happened.

He gestured to the Navarrese Ambassador to join him in prayer and the two men knelt on the bare floor just as they were.

‘May his soul rest in peace,’ said the Pope, getting creakily to his feet. And that was the last peaceful thought he had for a long time.

‘As for the Count of Toulouse,’ he said to the messenger, ‘you say he has done nothing to apprehend the murderer?’

‘No, Holiness,’ said the man. ‘The rumour is that he knows the culprit but will not act against him.’

‘And there were no witnesses apart from the monks and the ferryman?’

‘One, Holiness, a nobleman, but he rode off in pursuit of the attacker and has not been heard of since.’

‘And he was?’

‘I do not have that information.’

‘Send to see what can be found out. I should like to talk to that man.’ The Pope sat lost in thought, then suddenly asked, ‘And where is Pierre’s body now?’

‘At Saint-Gilles, Holiness. The monks thought it best to take him back. There was a solemn Requiem Mass said by the Bishop and he has been interred in the Abbey, with full ceremony.’

‘He shall be Saint Pierre before long,’ vowed the Pope. ‘And Raimon of Toulouse shall be excommunicated again.’

Giving orders right and left, he swept out of his apartments to pray at the church in Rome named after the first Saint Peter. But his heart was full of hatred for the heretics and their supporters.

It was a simple pewter brooch with a stone set in it that looked like red glass. But it might have been the finest ruby in Europe, so pleased was Elinor to receive it.

It hadn’t taken Perrin long to find an opportunity to give it to her; Elinor’s sleepless night made her crave something sharp and savoury to eat and she was soon in the kitchen cajoling Hugo the cook into giving her a strip of salted venison. When she left to nibble it in private on the battlements, the joglar had seen her and slipped after her to give her Bertran’s token.

‘But what did he say?’ she asked, thrilled.

Perrin improvised. ‘He said . . . that he had to go away for a long time and . . . you were not to forget him.’

‘Forget him?’ said Elinor, hugging the brooch to her, in spite of its spiky fastening. ‘I could never do that. But is he to be away for very long? Will he not come in the spring as usual?’

Perrin shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, lady.’

‘Lady Elinor, Lady Elinor!’ echoed a shrill voice. It was Lady Clara’s maid, puffing her way up to the top of the wall. ‘Ah, there you are, my lady. Your mother said I might find you here. She wants to see you at once.’

The maid leaned against the rampart, to get her breath back. She was neither young nor slender and Elinor knew that Lady Clara employed her partly because her mother was vain and the servant provided such a contrast to the lady’s own still-admired beauty.

Elinor had jumped guiltily and tried to hide the brooch in her sleeve. But the maid’s eyes were sharp, even if her body was sluggish.

‘You are discovered, lady,’ said Perrin lightly, reaching out and taking the strip of venison from her, his body masking what she was doing with the brooch. Elinor blushed to the roots of her brown hair. The maid looked at the meat with interest and the danger passed.

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t eat my father’s own food,’ said Elinor sulkily, keeping up the pretence. ‘Everything in the kitchen is his.’

‘Well, there’s no time for more eating now,’ said the maid firmly. ‘Lady Clara is waiting.’

Perrin shrugged as Elinor passed him on her way down the stone stairs and began to chew on the venison strip. I wonder what the domna is on the warpath about now, he thought.

‘Your behaviour last night was quite unacceptable,’ said Lady Clara.

In the long history of their battles with each other Elinor had never known her mother to sound so cold. And this time she did not know what she was supposed to have done wrong.

‘But I did what you said,’ she protested. ‘I didn’t stumble at all. I listened to the music and let myself enjoy it.’

Her mother sighed with exasperation.

‘With Bertran de Miramont! With the troubadour!’ she said.

‘I . . . I didn’t know that was wrong,’ said Elinor. ‘Is it not allowed to dance with troubadours?’

‘Dancing is one thing,’ said her mother. ‘Flinging your arms round him like the lovesick girl you are is quite another!’

Elinor felt suddenly reckless. She felt the pin of the red brooch pressing into her arm.

‘And what if I do love him?’ she said boldly. ‘He is the nicest, handsomest man I have ever met. And he was kind to me. And he is a nobleman too. What is wrong with loving him?’

Lady Clara looked horrified. ‘It is worse than I thought,’ she said. ‘Has he said anything to you?’

Elinor hesitated. ‘No, not exactly. And he has gone.’

Her mother stiffened with shock.

‘When? And how do you know?’

‘At first light. I saw him from the window. I couldn’t sleep. Perrin says he will stay away a long time.’ She could not hold her voice quite steady.

‘This has to end now,’ said Lady Clara. ‘Bertran de Miramont is not for you. I shall speak to your father today. It is best you marry straight away.’

‘You’re just jealous!’ Elinor burst out hotly. ‘Because I am young and you are old and Bertran has to write his poems for you when it’s me he loves!’

‘Enough!’ said her mother in a voice that cracked like a whip across Elinor’s face. Two round red spots burned on Lady Clara’s cheeks. Elinor had gone too far. She knew she ought to beg her mother’s pardon but her blood was up and she didn’t feel sorry. She ran on further, making it worse with every word.

‘I suppose it would be all right to like Gui?’ she said. ‘Or some other loutish knight. But Gui went too fast for me in the saltarello. He wanted me to fall. It was Bertran who showed cortesia.’

Her mother came and stood right up close to her so that Elinor felt her words hiss breath on to her face.

‘You are to forget Bertran de Miramont! He will never marry. Not you or anyone else. The way things are, he will be lucky to be alive this time next year. You are a foolish, moonstruck child dabbling in things you don’t understand. Now . . . leave my sight!’

Bertran’s path first took him southward, along the River Orb. He had to get to Béziers and pass on his news to the Believers there. The town was under the rule of young Viscount Trencavel, who was sympathetic to the Believers, but he did not live in Béziers. Bertran would have to find someone else to spread the word.

The troubadour rode up the hill into the city and made his way to the cathedral of Saint-Nazaire. He was about to do something very dangerous and needed some advice. Three years ago the Papal Legates had ordered the Bishop, Guilhem, to come down hard on the heretics and he had refused. He was killed for his pains and a new bishop installed. This Bishop, Ermengaud, was still an unknown quantity to Bertran, who had been in Béziers only a few times in recent years, and the troubadour was not going to show him his hand without finding out something about him first.

As soon as he reached the cathedral, Bertran branched off towards the Jewish quarter, where he had a good contact. Nahum was a trader in spices, one of a large number of his people living in the city. The Jews sympathised with Bertran and those of his faith, because they were no more popular with the Church than were the heretics. Nahum would know what sort of man the new Bishop was.

Nahum’s house was a warm and welcoming place and Bertran felt himself relax for the first time since he had left Sévignan. He sat in front of the fire with a cup of hot spiced wine in his hand and told the trader his news.

‘This will go ill for the Believers,’ said Nahum gravely.

‘Yes,’ said Bertran. ‘The Pope is sure to blame Raimon of Toulouse since he parted on such bad terms with the Legate.’

‘Would he accuse him of murder?’

‘Oh, not the actual act,’ said Bertran wearily. ‘I saw the murderer myself, remember, and he was no nobleman. But he could have been acting on orders from Toulouse. More likely though, he just hoped to rise in the Count’s favour by ridding him of an enemy.’

‘What do you think the Pope will do?’ asked Nahum, refilling the troubadour’s cup.

‘Well, he’s bound to renew the Count’s excommunication. But Toulouse will be lucky to get away with just that. I’m sure he’ll try to placate the authorities in some way – perhaps he’ll even hand the murderer over. Who knows? But a storm is on the way that can’t be averted by anything the Count can do.’

Nahum shook his head. ‘Then that assassin – whoever he was – did you no favours at all.’

‘No, he’s just made everything harder for the Believers,’ said Bertran. ‘But tell me about the Bishop. Is he likely to be as sympathetic to us as the Count and Viscount Trencavel are?’

Nahum looked serious. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘From what I’ve heard of him, he’s as fanatically against your religion as Pope Innocent himself is. And I can tell you that he doesn’t like my people either.’

‘What does the Viscount think?’ asked Bertran.

‘Oh, he follows the courtesies,’ said Nahum. ‘But he is worried. I have heard that he was very upset by the death of Bishop Guilhem. It was a sign that Rome would come down hard on the heretics. And the young Viscount has always been a good friend to my people. He made my cousin Samuel his bailiff.’

Bertran stretched his long legs towards the fire and sighed.

‘Well, I must seek out the leaders of our religion here and warn them what is likely to come. I think I should visit the Bishop too.’

‘Be careful,’ said Nahum.

‘I am always careful,’ said the troubadour.

Relations between Elinor and her mother were still strained. Elinor stomped round the castle in a foul mood, refusing to attend dance lessons or to do tapestry. Her only relief from gloomy ideas about the future was the time she spent with the joglars and musicians. Huguet was teaching her to play the flute and to her surprise she was rather good at it.

‘You have a natural gift,’ said Huguet. ‘A good ear and a good sense of rhythm.’

Elinor was astonished; that was not something the dancing master had ever discovered about her. She thought perhaps her ease with the instrument might be because no one looked at a musician; they were all but invisible. They sat in corners of great halls, obscure in the flickering torchlight, and provided the background to other people as they danced or sang or ate or flirted.

She was beginning to think that, if she had been a boy, it might have been more fun to be a joglar than a knight. But it was no good; she wasn’t a boy and she would have to marry soon and then the music would stop. With these thoughts the gloom would descend again.

Lady Clara became more and more remote from her daughter’s ill humour. She ignored her. All Elinor’s frowns and glares and sullen remarks bounced off her elegant composure like rain off armour. And this just made Elinor crosser and more depressed. She now knew just how little power and influence the donzela of a castle wielded.

The winter days stretched drearily in front of her with not even the prospect of seeing Bertran in the spring to look forward to. She felt like an animal in hibernation – a toad maybe, crouched in a hole, in a state of suspended animation, just waiting for something to warm her into life.

But when that something came it wasn’t pleasant at all. Anything less like a ray of sunshine than Thibaut le Viguier would have been hard to imagine. He was a thin, grey man well into his forties, a widower with three daughters. And he had sons too: Gui, who had so humiliated Elinor in the saltarello, was one of them.

She wondered if she had summoned Thibaut into her mother’s mind by her comparison of Gui to Bertran. For now Thibaut was at the castle, seemingly to visit his sons but actually, Elinor was sure, to be offered to her as a possible husband. And he had brought his daughters with him.

As soon as the daughters realised what was in the wind, they made themselves as unpleasant to Elinor as possible. They were all older than her, though the youngest was only a few months so. The oldest was married and the middle one was betrothed, so only Blandina would still be living in her father’s bastide by the time Thibaut brought his new bride home.

But Elinor realised that she could not bear that situation even for a few months. Thibaut himself did not seem a bad man, though he was more like a grandfather than a husband, but Blandina was a sharp-tongued and vicious girl who was instantly Elinor’s enemy.

‘Our late mother’ was all Blandina’s theme. That lady had been a paragon of all the virtues, according to her daughter. A scholar, musician, needlewoman, she had also been an exemplary wife and household manager.

‘And to see her dance,’ said Blandina pointedly, ‘you would think an angel had alighted on the earth, so graceful were her movements.’

Elinor was sure that Blandina had been talking to Gui and that they had been laughing at her together.

‘Then she will feel all the more at home in heaven among all the other angels,’ Elinor said tartly.

This provoked a fit of weeping in Blandina, who ran to her father to say that Elinor had been cruel to her and irreverent towards her mother’s memory. If Thibaut minded this, he gave no sign. He was always courteous and friendly to Elinor but she simply couldn’t imagine being his wife and sharing his bed. Then, sometimes, she could and the thought put her off even more.

The next time Blandina tried to provoke her, Elinor said as calmly as she could manage, ‘I have no more desire to marry your father than you have to endure me as your stepmother.’

But that made the girl indignant on her father’s behalf.

‘I suppose you think yourself too good for a Viguier?’ she fumed. ‘Just because your father owns more land.’

‘Not at all,’ said Elinor. ‘I should merely like to marry someone closer to me in age. Or perhaps not marry at all.’

And Blandina had gone this time not to her father but to Elinor’s.

Lanval sent for her the same afternoon. He looked unusually stern.

‘I gather you understand why Thibaut le Viguier has come here?’ he said, going straight to the heart of the matter.

‘I believe so, Paire,’ she said.

‘And it does not please you?’

Elinor did not answer but shook her head dumbly.

‘Well, it pleases me,’ said Lanval. ‘I want to see you married as soon as possible and Thibaut has a well-fortified and provisioned bastide. You will be as safe there as here, perhaps safer.’

‘This sounds more like war than a marriage proposal,’ said Elinor, remembering Bertran’s new poem.

Lanval looked up at her sharply. ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘There are difficult times coming and I want to see you established.’

‘But must it be with old Thibaut, Paire?’ Elinor pleaded. She knew she was her father’s favourite and she had never been made to do anything she didn’t like by him before.

But it was no good. On this, the most important event in her life so far, he was obdurate.

‘This is not a time for girlish frets and fancies,’ he said. ‘Thibaut will make a respectable offer, giving a good bride price.’

Elinor couldn’t help herself. ‘So I am to be sold to him, like a pig in the market?’

‘You are to be given to him as his legal wife, to become the domna of your own castle,’ said her father. ‘And you should consider what you bring to the marriage that he should be so desirous to marry you. At the moment I think you are getting the better side of the bargain.’

Every word from the father who had never spoken so severely to her before was like a lash from a hunting whip. She bowed her head as if in submission and bit her lip so as not to let him see her real thoughts.

In that moment Elinor decided that she would rather do anything than marry Thibaut le Viguier – anything at all.