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EPILOGUE
Third Time Lucky
Toulouse, June 1218
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The women sweated and strained to lift the huge blocks of masonry into the bucket of the trebuchet. They were standing on a platform in the Bourg outside the city. Toulouse had been under siege by the crusaders since Count Raimon had returned the previous September. But it had not gone well for the French leaders, who had spent a miserable winter in the gloomy Roman fort of the Château Narbonnais outside the city walls, while Raimon and his supporters were warm and well fed within the city.
In May, de Montfort’s wife Alice had brought reinforcements again and his brother Gui was leading part of the army. But the Count had also received reinforcements and Toulouse continued to resist. In desperation to take this prize, Simon de Montfort was building a ‘cat’, an enormous wooden shelter on wheels that would enable an assault party to move right up to the walls in safety.
And then the Toulouse defenders scored a direct hit; a lucky shot from a trebuchet within the walls crushed the ‘cat’ and killed many Frenchmen inside it. The next day while it was being repaired by the carpenters, de Montfort was hearing Mass in his tent, praying for a speedy end to the interminable siege. His prayers were about to be answered but not in the way he hoped.
By then, the women were heaving their blocks into the trebuchet and two parties from Toulouse launched a joint sortie on the carpenters’ compound. De Montfort ran to the battle where he found his brother bleeding from a bad wound, his horse dead beneath him.
‘To the gate, to the gate! To me! De Montfort!’ yelled Simon, urging his men to block the gate out of which more defenders were pouring.
And then the women on the trebuchet found their mark.
De Montfort, who had seemed blessed with the luck of the devil till now, took a direct hit to the head with a chunk of stone and was killed immediately.
There was a pause in the battle as the French, appalled, realised what had happened. And then the cry went up from the rose-pink city ‘Lo lop es mort!’ – ‘The wolf is dead!’ Church bells were rung and the streets resounded with drums, cymbals and trumpets. The wolf was dead indeed, lying under a blue cape, his head and face smashed by the women of Toulouse, and the crusaders defeated – for the time being.
Elinor and Iseut both greeted the news with relief, for their people and for the families they had now. Iseut had a second child, a son, named Jacopo, in memory of Saint-Jacques and in honour of the Pilgrim Way to Compostela. And Elinor had borne Alessandro three sons – Corrado, Ranieri and Alvise – before getting her own ‘treasure’, a daughter named Pelegrina.
But Bertran was not there to hear the news. He had stayed two years at Selva, long enough to hold Ranieri in his arms and write a song for his baptism but had died soon after from a fever. Huguet, answering the troubadour’s dearest wish, found him a Perfect to administer the consolamentum before he died.
He was buried in the cemetery of the church at Selva, even though he had never taken the Eucharist there. Elinor had a tombstone erected with words from an earlier troubadour:
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Like the candle
which consumes itself
to provide light for others,
I sing, suffering,
Not for my own pleasure.
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She was in the habit of visiting his grave whenever there was important news to impart. So on the day she heard the news of Simon de Montfort’s death, in late August, she went to sit near his tombstone, with Pelegrina on her lap.
The child reached up to grab the red brooch her mother always wore and managed to dislodge it. It fell on the stone and Elinor heard it split.
‘Oh no,’ she said, jumping up to retrieve it. ‘There, there, don’t cry, little one. I’m not cross. Let Mama get her brooch.’
The dull metal of the setting had cracked away, revealing bright gold hidden underneath. Elinor had worn this brooch for twelve years and never known its secret.
She showed it to Alessandro who sent for a jeweller from Turin. It took a while for him to reach Selva and by then Elinor could see that not just the mount but the stone itself had a false exterior.
The jeweller, once he had carefully removed the brooch’s outer layers of pewter and red glass, sighed contentedly.
‘One of the best rubies I’ve ever handled,’ he said. ‘And the size of a pigeon’s egg.’
‘Ruby?’ said Elinor stupidly. She had always assumed that Bertran’s token had sentimental value only.
‘Oh yes, my lady,’ said the jeweller. ‘And a ruby of that size would be owned by only the richest crowned heads of Europe. I am not surprised you wear it always. It is a great treasure, worth a small city, I would guess.’
It soothed something in Elinor to know that Bertran’s gift had such a great value and she wore it still, in its newly revealed glory. But she did not value it more now that she knew what it was worth in the world’s eyes. And she never sold it. She kept it as an heirloom for her other treasure.