Troubadour Read online

  ‘Huguet,’ said Gui. ‘Yes, of course. Take the joglar my greetings. And the child. And any other friend you find there.’

  As Bertran rode away, Gui watched him go, fingering the handkerchief in his jerkin, which was now tattered and stained.

  The troubadour journeyed slowly eastwards, avoiding every sign of French activity. From Cabaret, he skirted Minerve, now in French hands, and went on to Narbonne. There the Viscount told him about Clara and Alys and how they had left his court the previous spring. Bertran did not stay long; the court was too full of Frenchmen.

  When he reached Béziers, he drew up his horse and sat for a long time contemplating the ruins and thinking of Perrin. He wondered where Nahum the Jew was now, and whether he still kept the key to his house of ashes. The charred skeleton of the cathedral of Saint-Nazaire stood stark against the sky. From here Bertran chose the low road, on which he had travelled as a prisoner with the Papal Legate two years before. But after Montpellier, he turned further south along the canal and into the marshes, wanting to keep a good distance between him and Saint-Gilles where he had been rescued from prison by the joglars and joglaresas and where he had witnessed the Count’s humiliation.

  It was a lean few weeks, since the low-lying land was home only to wading birds and reed-cutters, and it took a long time to get through the delta and into Provensa. By the time Bertran reached Marseille it was nearly winter.

  The cold weather seeped into his bones but after a few nights’ rest he carried on along the coast road. Then a racking cough engulfed him and he decided he must overwinter in some sympathetic noble’s court.

  By the time Iseut’s baby daughter arrived in the depths of winter, Elinor was Lady of Selva. She had married Alessandro in Chivasso, with the Marchese of Monferrato standing in place of her father. Alys was her only bridal attendant and there were tears mixed with the joy of all three women from Sévignan as they missed the people who should have been there.

  But for Alessandro the happiness was unalloyed. He gave his bride a beautiful grey mare as his wedding gift; Elinor had long outgrown Mackerel, who was now more of a mount for Peire. She stroked the horse’s soft white nose and thanked her new lord.

  ‘What can I give you, Sandro, to match such bounty?’ she asked. ‘You have known from the beginning that I have no dowry, if Sévignan is lost.’

  ‘I want no dowry,’ said Alessandro. ‘Just you to be my lady for ever.’

  He had persuaded Elinor to bring her mother and sister with her to the court where he was now lord. But he had to let her go again for Iseut’s confinement. Their castles were only one day’s ride apart.

  And Elinor would not have missed it.

  ‘You have what the Marchesa of Monferrato would call a treasure,’ said Elinor to her exhausted friend, cradling the warm soft newborn in her arms.

  Iseut smiled weakly. ‘I hope Berenger won’t be too disappointed,’ she said.

  ‘He will be delighted that you and the baby both survived the birth,’ said Elinor. ‘What shall you call her?’

  ‘She looks so peaceful,’ said Iseut. ‘I’d like to call her Serena. But perhaps her second name could be Leonora?’

  That was Elinor’s new name in Selva; the servants had all converted it to a form easier on Piedmontese tongues.

  So when Berenger was allowed to meet his daughter, he was introduced to her as Serena Leonora. And he thought she was as beautiful as her mother.

  A few days later, Elinor was back in her own castle. As she arrived on the grey mare who had been her bridal gift, she rode into the bailey scarcely able to believe her luck. Of all the futures open to her when she had left Sévignan four years earlier, she would never have guessed that she would be married to an Italian lord, let alone one she could love. Alessandro had heard the horse’s hooves in the courtyard and came running out to meet her like an eager boy; Elinor saw more than one castle servant turn aside to hide their indulgent smiles. The young Lord was popular and his people had taken Donna Leonora to their hearts.

  ‘How is Lady Iseut?’ asked Alessandro, after he had kissed her. ‘And the baby?’

  ‘Iseut and Berenger have a healthy daughter,’ said Elinor. And it counted entirely in Alessandro’s favour that he didn’t look disappointed – even by proxy.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind a little girl?’ she asked him, smiling.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Alessandro.

  ‘Good,’ said Elinor. ‘Because I cannot guarantee that I am carrying a son for you.’

  It was perhaps not how he should have been told, out on the cobblestones, with his wife smiling down on him from the fine mare he had given her, but Alessandro was far too happy to mind.

  Bertran got to Piedmont in the spring. He was much thinner and had barely survived his marsh fever of the winter. But the warm sunshine helped heal him faster than any poultice or tisane. He rode the same horse he had bought after his rescue from Saint-Gilles. She had seen him well through raids and battles and his long journey through the Camargue.

  And now they were approaching a fine-looking castle, where Bertran hoped to receive a good welcome. Italy had been kind to him so far and he was glad to have left the troubles of the Midi behind him. He knew there had been fierce fighting between rebels and Frenchmen through the winter but it all seemed far away and dreamlike now.

  There was no longer any pretence that the Count of Toulouse was on the French side though his great city of Toulouse remained technically in his hands. But Bertran, who had once been willing to fight for Raimon as his overlord, no longer cared what happened to the traitor count. Still, he was glad that the rose-pink city had not yet fallen.

  He pulled his mind back to his present situation. As he approached the castle, he asked a passer-by what bastide it was.

  ‘Selva, Sire,’ was the answer. ‘In the Seigneury of Lord Alessandro.’

  The names meant nothing to Bertran but he announced himself at the gate as a troubadour from the Midi and was courteously admitted. Once he had stabled his horse, he asked if there were other troubadours and joglars at court and was taken to where the musicians were housed.

  There he received a warm welcome; although there were dancers and musicians, there was no resident poet currently.

  ‘The Lady herself writes poetry,’ said one of the joglars.

  ‘Who is your domna?’ asked Bertran. ‘And what sort of lady is she?’

  ‘Lady Leonora da Selva,’ said the joglar. ‘Married to the young Lord only a few months. As for her sort, the very best – young, beautiful and very favourable to our calling.’

  ‘So I shall not find it hard to compose a song for her?’ said Bertran, smiling.

  ‘I think not,’ said the joglar.

  Bertran decided to compose a new poem. There was something about the atmosphere at Selva that lifted his heart. Perhaps because he was so near Monferrato, he thought of a poem by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, who had been the old Marchese’s favourite troubadour:

  ‘All good usage rules in your court: generosity and courting, elegant clothing and handsome armour, trumpets and games and rebecs and songs, and at dinner-time it has never pleased you to have a keeper at the door.’

  Now he set himself to think of a new canso. He hadn’t yet set eyes on the Lady of Selva but that never presented a problem for a troubadour. As he started to compose, Bertran thought of all the women he had written love songs for, the domnas of so many castles and bastides. They had never been written from the heart but were more exercises of his skills.

  And then Bertran began to think of Elinor. He wondered where she could be now and whether he would find her at Monferrato. Gradually thoughts of her began to influence his choice of words and he found himself writing for a dark lady.

  After two days, the canso was ready and Bertran had given it to a joglar to put to music. There were several
standard tunes that could be used for new love songs.

  Until then, he had not attended dinner in the great hall, though the Lord had sent him a message of welcome and a servant with specially chosen delicacies.

  When he entered the hall, his eyes were dazzled for a while by all the candles and torches but it was a cheerful place. It reminded Bertran of Sévignan, before the war came. He looked at the nobles gathered at the main table and identified the Lady whose praises he had written for the joglar to sing. He was relieved to see that she was not only very beautiful but also dark.

  Bertran rubbed his hand over his eyes and wondered if the marsh fever were returning. He kept thinking he saw people he knew. Perhaps it was just his memories of Sévignan but he thought briefly that the Lady Clara was there, and Huguet.

  Elinor had recognised him straight away. Her heart tilted to see how much grey there was now in his dark hair. But something stopped her from sending for him. She waited until after the platters were cleared away and the musicians had played. Then a joglar stepped forward and indicated the troubadour. He took up his rebec and sang the new canso.

  Elinor listened to the praises of the dark domna; it was just as beautiful as the love song she had wished for when she was thirteen. But it was like a distant view of a high mountain – something fine and admirable but remote.

  The court was very pleased with it; they applauded both Bertran and the joglar. And then Huguet came down and embraced him and took him over to Lady Clara and Alys. Bertran was bewildered.

  ‘It is wonderful to see you, my ladies,’ said Bertran. ‘But why are you all here? How do you know the Lord of Selva?’

  ‘He is my husband, Bertran,’ said the Lady of Selva, coming down to take his hand.

  Bertran did not know her at first and then he saw the brooch. Elinor always wore it on her dress, in memory of her first love and her old life.

  When the troubadour saw it, he knew at last who Lady Leonora must be.

  ‘It was for you,’ he said quietly. ‘It was your own song, no one else’s.’

  Elinor thanked him with a full heart.

  ‘And now let me present you to my lord,’ she said.

  .

  EPILOGUE

  Third Time Lucky

  Toulouse, June 1218

  .

  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:

  .

  Like the candle

  which consumes itself

  to provide light for others,

  I sing, suffering,

  Not for my own pleasure.

  .

  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.

  .

  .

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  .

  .

  Troubadours and Cathars

  There was a period of a few decades in the thirteenth century in Southern France when noble women were regarded as almost equal to men under the law. They could inherit property from fathers or husbands and received a bride price, rather than having to pay a dowry on marriage.

  This coincided with the middle period of the troubadours, aristocratic songwriter-poets, who composed (mainly) platonic love poetry and songs, dedicated to the wives of their l
iege lords. (They are not to be confused with joglars, or minstrels, usually of a lower social rank, who were performers of songs and other types of entertainment. Their female equivalents were joglaresas.)

  And at this time some aristocratic women, highly articulate and educated, wrote their own love songs and debate poems. These women were trobairitz, or female troubadours. However, they did not idealise men in the way that the troubadours idealised women and they wrote some pretty straightforward verse about the pains and pleasures of love.

  Some of this took place in the south of France, in the area today known as Languedoc, where many of the noble families were Cathars, that is to say they were dualists, who believed in the separation of good and evil forces and did not believe in the Incarnation of God as Jesus Christ. They did not call themselves ‘Cathars’ but Credentes (Believers) or True Christians. The most advanced of them (those who became monks and nuns or preachers) were known as Perfects or bons hommes and bonnes femmes – ‘good men and women.’ Even ordinary Believers aspired to become Perfects at their deaths.

  .

  The Albigensian Crusade

  The inciting incident for the whole Albigensian Crusade, as the war against the Cathars was called, was the murder of the Legate, Pierre of Castelnau, but it is my invention that the crime was witnessed by a troubadour. (And that the same troubadour was witness to many other terrible things recorded in the course of this book.)

  From 1209 to 1229 the Cathars were ruthlessly persecuted by the Pope, who promised their lands to any Northern Frenchman who would fight forty days in the crusade against them. This was a lot easier than travelling to the Middle East to gain land and fortune. Many thousands of Cathars and non-Cathars alike were slaughtered in the rush to cash in and take their lands and wealth. They showed little resistance, being pacifists. Later, some were offered the opportunity to renounce their beliefs and become good Catholics but in the beginning there was no mercy.

  What happened at Béziers I have recounted truly. The Abbot wrote to the Pope, ‘Today, Your Holiness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword, regardless of rank.’ It was a thriving and prosperous fortified city run efficiently by Viscount Trencavel, who lived in the bigger city of Carcassonne to the west.