Troubadour Read online

  Perhaps the ‘revolutionaries’ of Cuneo were just being realistic and accepting that the old systems must change. But the Marchesa was clearly certain that her husband should take arms against this unconventional town.

  And so was Alessandro, thought Elinor. Perhaps he will die in what he thinks is a just cause, wearing my token, and he will never know how I felt about him.

  Simon de Montfort was riding high again. His wife’s arrival with reinforcements in the spring had acted like a tonic on his spirits. And winning back so many castles had restored him to optimism. These heretics might take a long time to crush but, if the Pope approved fresh forces every spring, then he could do it. He no longer bothered to confer with the Abbot of Cîteaux, who had started out as leader of the crusade.

  But he thought it was time to turn his attention to the three rebel castles of Minerve, Termes and Cabaret, and he began with Minerve. It was defended by steep gorges on three sides and de Montfort brought his biggest siege engines to bear on the walls. He had a new one, called La Malvoisine, ‘the bad neighbour’.

  When the defenders saw the huge trebuchet being trundled into place, their hearts sank. It was aimed at their main water supply and there were three others positioned to rain boulders on the village. The bombardment went on for six weeks.

  ‘There’s only one thing to do,’ said the Viscount of Minerve at last. ‘We must launch a sortie, catch them by surprise and destroy that bad neighbour of theirs.’

  There were only two hundred men in the garrison and it was a small party that set out by night, creeping round the north of the village on the far side of the ravine. They had brought bales of straw and wodges of animal fat with them which they packed round the giant machine and quickly set fire to.

  The bad neighbour had just begun to catch when an unfortunate soldier came out of his tent to relieve himself. He was quickly silenced with a lance but his initial cry of horror on seeing the flames licking round the trebuchet brought the rest of the French besiegers down on the party and they fled back to the walls.

  Their one chance of surviving the siege had gone up in smoke, unlike the mighty Malvoisine. Their water supply had been cut off and the citadel shattered; the Viscount saw nothing for it but to negotiate a surrender. He had heard of the horrors at Bram earlier in the year; messengers had come from Termes where the last of the mutilated men were dying, so he was not feeling brave or hopeful when he entered de Montfort’s tent.

  It was a tricky problem for the French leader too. If he let the entire garrison go, it would hardly be an example to the other rebel bastides at Cabaret and Termes. But conventions of war demanded that a free surrender should be accepted and the inhabitants of the besieged city spared.

  And then de Montfort had a piece of luck: the Abbot arrived. With relief, he handed the problem over to him. But the Papal Legate, who had not been at all squeamish at Béziers, where the city had resisted the army, balked at killing men who had raised a white flag of surrender.

  Still, he had a trump card to play.

  ‘We will spare all the heretics who agree to convert,’ he said.

  There was some muttering among the crusaders about this because they thought the heretics would just pretend to give up their barbarous beliefs. But the Frenchmen still knew nothing about the Perfects, men and women, of the south. The Legates went through the ruined streets of the citadel knocking on doors and calling on heretics to repent and save themselves from the fire.

  The clergy led the army, singing the ‘Te Deum’ and carrying a huge gold cross. But the Perfects of Minerve took no more notice of it than they had of La Malvoisine; their time had come.

  ‘One hundred and forty of them, men and women,’ said the Viscount’s messenger, who had taken the news to Termes. ‘Only three went over to the Roman Church. The rest were burned. Some of them leapt joyfully into the flames and none resisted.’

  ‘We’ll be next,’ said the Lord of Termes grimly. ‘Now that they have destroyed one rebel stronghold, the French will not stop there.’

  And Bertran was glad that he had sent Huguet and the boy away. But Gui had not yet returned and he wondered if the knight had found Elinor.

  At Montpellier, Clara and Alys had a rare piece of luck: they found Lucatz. The Lady Maria, still clinging on to her title and her little son, had made them welcome and when they asked about the troupe that had left Sévignan more than two years earlier, she remembered the boy who had sung the lay of Tristan and Iseut.

  ‘Their troubadour is here again now,’ she said. ‘But with different joglars. I’ll command him to have them play in your honour tonight.’

  Alys was overcome with joy but her mother was nervous. It was the first time she had met a dependant of her old court since she had ridden away from its occupied walls and the winter had sapped her of her spirit.

  But she need not have worried. Lucatz was delighted to see his old domna and her daughter, though soon sad again when they told him what had happened in their bastide.

  He ordered his new youngest joglar to sing a planh for Sévignan, its lord and the heir to its title and lands.

  After dinner, he was invited to come and sit with the ladies and Maria enquired after the joglar who had sung for her at little Jacques’ baptism celebrations.

  ‘Young Esteve?’ said Lucatz. ‘There was always a bit of a mystery about him. We came across him shortly after we left Sévignan, saying he had lost his troubadour. But I ran into Ademar last summer and he’d never heard of him.’

  ‘Where did you last see him?’ asked Lady Clara, unable to believe there might at last be news of Elinor. ‘He, he took a pony from our stables,’ she added, to explain her interest.

  ‘I knew that dapple grey looked familiar!’ said Lucatz. ‘I left the boy at Saint-Jacques. The Lady Iseut there was very taken with him and asked him to stay and learn the poems she and her friend were writing. He seemed a good lad – I can’t believe he was a common horse-thief.’

  ‘What about Perrin and Huguet?’ asked Alys. ‘I see you have all new joglars.’

  ‘Ah, they left me when I went into Italy,’ said Lucatz. ‘They headed back west and I don’t know what happened to them.’

  ‘Why did you not stay in Italy yourself?’ asked Clara. ‘You have heard what has been happening. We at Sévignan were not the only ones to lose everything.’

  Lucatz bowed. ‘I know, my lady. There is material in the south for a whole boxful of laments. But I had to see for myself. And now that I have, I think I shall return east. It is becoming harder and harder for a troubadour to remain in his native land – especially,’ he lowered his voice, ‘when some people think all of us are heretics.’

  While the troubadour was talking to the nobles, one of his joglaresas was eavesdropping. She was a dark, strong-faced woman who was familiar to both Alys and Clara from the days in their old home, though they had not seen her for over two years. She gave a secret signal to Alys, who soon made an excuse to leave the table and met her in the corridor outside.

  ‘You are looking for news of your sister, are you not?’ said Pelegrina.

  ‘Of course!’ said Alys. ‘You knew of her disguise! Tell me how she was when you last saw her.’

  ‘She turned back into a woman,’ said Pelegrina. ‘The Lady Iseut’s friend saw through her disguise and she stayed on with them in Saint-Jacques.’

  ‘So we should ask for her as Elinor again when we travel east?’

  Pelegrina shifted uncomfortably. ‘Lucatz doesn’t know, but we heard the French had set fire to Saint-Jacques.’

  Alys clutched her throat. ‘Not Elinor too,’ she whispered.

  ‘Don’t despair, lady,’ said the joglaresa. ‘I remember when we were at the Lady Iseut’s court that she was advised to travel east if troubles came. If you find Saint-Jacques in ruins, my advice is to seek the Marchese of Mo
nferrato.’

  .

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Lodestone

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ exclaimed the Lord of Cabaret when the message reached him.

  Simon de Montfort, after his victory at Minerve, had left his mighty siege engines outside Carcassonne. They were packed into ox-carts, ready to roll on to his next target. It was too good a chance for the rebels to pass up. The giant catapults stood, with a small detachment of guards, like a child’s abandoned toys, not put away at night by the nursemaid.

  In the darkest part of the night, the raiding party from Cabaret fell upon the siege train that was slowly trundling the trebuchets towards Termes. Peire-Roger himself led the attack before the machines were out of sight of the walls of Carcassonne. And the rebels were spotted; soldiers ran out of the garrison and chased them away.

  But the Cabaret rebels were like hyenas, which run away when the lion approaches but return to the carcass as soon as the more powerful beast sleeps. At dawn, they attacked the train again and set fire to the machines. And they almost got away with it. But the crusaders came to the defence of the siege train again and soon they had pressed Peire-Roger and his men back to the river.

  Casualties were heavy and the water ran red.

  ‘How did you escape?’ asked Peire-Roger’s men when he made his way back to Cabaret with only a handful of wounded rebels. Their lord was soaking wet and in a very bad mood, stinging from dozens of small wounds, but his face split into a big smile at the question.

  ‘I rode through the city and out the other side, shouting “Montfort, Montfort!”’ he said. ‘And they thought I was a Frenchman!’

  Peire-Roger had not succeeded in capturing de Montfort’s siege engines but he had held them up and when the crusade’s leader arrived with most of his army at his next target, Termes, they were not there. He reached the heavily-fortified city in mid-August.

  The massive castle stood on a sheer rock above the village and had a reputation for being impregnable. It was certainly a daunting sight to the Frenchmen.

  The Lord of Termes had made good use of the time bought for him by the Cabaret rebels’ raids. The castle was well stocked and had taken in many mercenaries to give extra manpower to the rebels. Now they looked down from the walls at the crusaders, as overwhelmed by the size of the army as the Frenchmen were by their castle.

  ‘So, it has come at last,’ said the Lord to his band of close advisors. ‘I’m glad you were back in time to join us for it, Gui.’ He clapped the young knight on the shoulder.

  ‘So am I,’ said le Viguier grimly. He had no intention of being taken prisoner.

  Bertran saw him touch for the hundredth time the lady’s handkerchief he wore in his jerkin. The troubadour was sure it was Elinor’s but, although the knight had given them a full account of the long journey to Saint-Jacques and beyond to Monferrato, where he had safely left the boys, of the lady of Sévignan he had said only that he saw her and told her of the fate of her home and family.

  Bertran had almost as much of a death wish as the young knight. He was now fully-armed and prepared to defend Termes, the castle that had given him shelter, and its lord, who shared his religion. He had given up the pretence of being Jules; it didn’t matter now who knew him as the troubadour-spy. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

  From the very beginning, two and a half years ago, he had tried to put things right, riding hard after Pierre of Castelnau’s assassin, and then warning all the lords of the south about the coming storm. But now, besieged in Lord Raimon of Termes’ castle, he was just another fighting man and not a very experienced one at that.

  He hoped to die honourably and closed his mind to the atrocities the French had done to the men of Bram and in many other places. But he had to think what he would do if Termes were forced to surrender and de Montfort offered the same terms to the Perfects and Believers that had been given to them at Minerve. There were only a few Perfects within the keep at Termes and none of the ordinary Believers at Minerve had chosen the bonfires. But Bertran felt that if he were prepared to die on the battlements for the right to practise his own religion, he should logically be ready to perish in the flames rather than give it up in order to gain mercy.

  In Chivasso, the Marchese and his army were still away and Elinor found the time lay heavily on her hands. She tried to compose but had no encouragement from Iseut, who also seemed weary of poetry. The weather was oppressively hot and the whole court seemed to be holding its breath, as if waiting for something momentous to happen.

  Peire was thriving. The days when his eyes clouded over and he seemed to be remembering his earlier life grew fewer and fewer. He had attached himself to Iseut and for that Elinor was glad. Her friend needed someone to love, she decided – she who had lost husband, child, friends and home – and the boy needed someone to love him.

  He was about the age that the baby Iseut had lost would have been if he had survived and he was a comfort to her. She never thought about him as a farmer’s son, a peasant – only as a lost child who needed mothering.

  And if Peire was like a son to Iseut, Huguet was a brother to Elinor. Not one like Aimeric, so much older and stronger, but someone who had been a friend and companion and suffered such terrible griefs that the two of them did not need to talk; it was enough to sit quietly together and remember.

  Sometimes they played music or Huguet taught her his new planhs and Elinor taught him the one she had written for Iseut’s words. It seemed as if all her thoughts were turned towards sadness and loss now. She felt like an old woman who had been deprived of all her family but she was still only sixteen.

  The Marchesa was friendly to her but busy fussing over her newborn daughter, Beatrix, her first after three boys.

  ‘You will see, Elinor,’ she said comfortably. ‘When you are married. It is good to have boys first – it will make your husband happy. But a girl is a present for the wife, a child you can always treasure.’

  But Elinor did not think she would ever have a husband now; she was getting a bit old to marry and she had no dowry. And she did not know if Alessandro of Selva would return from the war or whether, if he did, he would still like her.

  Nor did she think her mother had ever regarded her as a treasure! Alys maybe, but not difficult, disobedient, awkward Elinor. She wished now that she had been a better daughter.

  Then, one day in high summer, the Marchesa sent to say that the ladies of Saint-Jacques had a visitor. Neither of them could imagine who it could possibly be.

  ‘Someone with news of my mother, perhaps?’ said Elinor.

  But it was a man who waited for them in the Marchesa’s receiving room and a familiar figure. Iseut cried out and moved towards him.

  ‘Lord Berenger!’ she exclaimed. ‘How wonderful to see you! We thought you had perished at Digne.’

  Her eyes sparkled with an energy Elinor hadn’t seen in her for months.

  Berenger came forward and kissed both their hands. He looked long and hard at Elinor.

  ‘I am so glad to find you both safe,’ he said. ‘When I saw what was left of Saint-Jacques, I thought the worst. It has taken me all this time to find you.’

  He was touched by the warmth of Iseut’s welcome. His eyes kept shifting between the two women and, suddenly, Elinor saw with great clarity what had happened. A bubble of laughter floated up inside her and spilled out; there was nothing she could do to stop it. She held her hands to her mouth but the laugh and the words came out together.

  ‘You spoke to Garsenda, didn’t you?’

  Berenger looked embarrassed.

  ‘What is it, Elinor?’ asked the Marchesa, who dearly loved a joke.

  ‘It is a silly thing,’ said Elinor, striving to straighten her face and anxious to preserve Berenger’s dignity. She too had been impressed by how happy Iseut was to see him. ‘
It is just that a meddlesome maid of Lady Iseut’s thought that I . . . that she . . . that I might be a young man in disguise!’

  Now the whole court laughed and Elinor realised how very much she had changed since she could pass herself off as a boy.

  Berenger was unsure whether to join in. But here was Iseut, whom he had loved for so many years, smiling lovingly back at him and looking even more beautiful than he remembered. And there was her ‘secret lover’, so obviously female.

  ‘What would Ser Alessandro have to say if you were?’ said the Marchesa, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.

  And that made Elinor feel good too, to know that the heir of Selva was acknowledged to be her suitor still.

  So it was a merrier party at dinner than had gathered at Monferrato for some time.

  Berenger told them his story. It was true that the French had besieged his castle at Digne and had caused some damage. But his garrison had fought back bravely. Although he had been forced to flee, he had gained time enough to gather money and valuables and set off through mountain paths the crusaders could not follow. He had doubled back alone to Saint-Jacques and seen the ruins smoking from a distance.

  ‘And then I thought that you had fared worse than me, lady,’ he said to Iseut.

  ‘I did it myself,’ said Iseut quietly. ‘I couldn’t bear to see it in French hands.’

  Reinforcements were slow in joining de Montfort’s encampment at Termes. Large though his army was, it wasn’t big enough to surround the walls and some of the soldiers were beginning to drift back to their harvests, their forty days’ service completed.

  And when small groups travelled to join the French force they were often set upon by Cabaret raiders and sent on to Termes horribly mutilated and unfit to fight.

  Bertran sometimes saw these disfigured Frenchmen from the walls and despaired. It was bad enough to be standing on the edge of the abyss, wondering merely what type of death he and the garrison would shortly meet. But to see that their fellow rebels had been so corrupted by French cruelty that they resorted to the same atrocities made him sadder than anything that had happened in the last two years.