The Viking Hostage, page 33
‘Yes.’
‘Is she well?’
‘Yes, she is very well. We should not keep your brother waiting, Guy.’ As I rise to my feet, I turn him affectionately around to face in the direction of the door. ‘I’m just coming.’ I turn the key in the casket and follow him to the door, feeling the coils of the serpent swirling cold around my limbs and neck, entrammelling me in lies.
* * *
I try to keep my face neutral as I listen with impatience to Bishop Hilduin, who is blaming the problems of Limoges on sin as usual.
‘It is near a thousand years since Christ was born and died for us,’ says Hilduin. ‘The End Time approaches. The earth is worn out and overcrowded. The world is saturated with people and nature has grown old. The cosmos is senile and the world will soon end. The dead and the quick will be judged. Many are not ready to meet their maker, steeped as they are in sin.’
Hilduin speaks of Hugh Capet’s death last year and how his son Robert has been crowned as king. ‘The new King Robert repudiated his first wife, Rozala and has illegally married his cousin, Berthe, widow of the count of Blois and mother of the child heir to Blois.’ Hilduin’s voice is laced with disapproval.
‘Yes,’ says Guy. ‘What of it? Rozala was his father’s choice and too old for Robert. Berthe is a beauty and fertile. Besides, Robert now has control of the rich county of Blois too. It was an astute marriage.’
‘She is his cousin,’ Hilduin says with heavy disgust. ‘The Pope intends to excommunicate the king and queen for it. And this is your own sin, Brother, and that of your wife.’
Guy looks at Hilduin in surprise and I turn to concentrate on Hilduin’s words, having previously only listened to his rant with half an ear.
‘The Pope has instructed King Robert to set aside his wife, Queen Berthe, who is his second cousin, since this is offensive to God,’ Hilduin says with satisfaction.
The hall goes suddenly still as everyone else stops their gossip or what they are doing to listen to Hilduin’s words. I look at Hilduin with distaste. He pours vinegar on my husband’s troubles, instead of balm, and only I know how ridiculous his implication is and cannot say so.
‘My marriage to Aina …’ Guy begins.
‘Your first cousin,’ interrupts Hilduin, with a pained look at me.
‘Was sanctioned by Bishop Hildegaire, as you know, and we’ll not discuss this further.’
Hilduin frowns at the mention of his brother and predecessor’s name. The memory of Hildegaire’s impieties is still fresh in the minds of the Limoges clergy. Hilduin himself, given to the church as an oblate at a young age, is a conservative and a purist in all his views and actions, but he will not go so far as to pronounce a former bishop’s ruling as wrong.
‘Guy, we need some fresh air,’ I say, when Hilduin has departed and taken his self-righteous atmosphere with him. We ride out of the city for some distance and draw rein to look down together on the countryside, which is just waking from the long cold winter. I describe the splashes of colour to Guy, where new growth and early flowers are beginning to bloom.
‘The Romans named this land Aquitainia,’ he says to me, ‘because it is threaded with so many great rivers and tumbling streams.’
I smile at his words.
‘I read in a book,’ he says, ‘that the spring in Aquitaine comes flying from the west in a swirl of flowers, with summer hard on its heels, pursuing it by the rivers and catching up with it on the ridges. Thank you for letting me see that with your vivid descriptions, Aina, my drop of dew,’ he says playfully, referring to the tale I have told him of my conversation with Fulayh earlier. ‘And know, Wife, that whatever Hilduin says, or even the Pope, I will never repudiate you.’
* * *
It is a busy day and night has fallen when I get a chance to return to my chamber and read Aina’s letter in privacy. I light the candles in the room and by their glow and the flickering firelight, I lift the lid of my casket again, tracing my finger on the glint of the serpent and remembering, thinking of Thorgils’ face and Aina’s. I open the letter and read the words.
No, oh no. After all this, after I have convinced Guy of my love, borne him three sons: Ademar, Geraud, Pierre and another child coming, managed this household, now after all this, I will be exposed, shamed, rejected when Olafr’s letter arrives to tell my husband of my great deceit. I retrieve the warning letter from Aina from the floor where I have dropped it in my distress, and read it through one more time to be sure I have fully understood and then I throw it on the fire. If I can intercept Olafr’s letter, I can burn his words also. Should I burn all Aina’s letters, destroy my hammer and my serpent so there is no material proof, but I cannot bear to part with the serpent. I am grieved to hear of Olafr’s fury breaking against my brother, but know we have been lucky he did not take a greater vengeance.
The duke of Normandy might write to tell my husband of my shame or he might visit in person, or his duchess perhaps. If a letter, I may be able to see it before my husband and deal with it, but if a visit, there will be nothing I can do. Should I confess? I am so afraid now to lose my husband and my children. Aina writes that Thorgils tells me to run away and he will come to find me in time, but how can I do that? How can I abandon my life? In the morning, I will give orders to the steward to bring all letters to me first and to give me notice of any approaching visitors. What if the communication slips by me? Guy’s words to me this afternoon haunt me: know, Wife, that I will never repudiate you. Even when you discover the truth, I ask him in my head. When you know that I am not Aina but a Norse slave who has deceived you for many years?
27
Gençay, July 997
‘Il pleut comme un vache qui pisse – it’s raining as hard as a pissing cow,’ Audebert said to Fulk, peering out of the tent flap. Rain was not good for war. Audebert preferred sweat to mud.
The old duke died in the monastery of Saint Maixent last year, Duchess Emma was ageing and her son responded slowly and ineffectually to challenges from castellans, such as Hugh of Lusignan and Jordan of Chabannais. While Fulk imposed order with his fist and the stone castles he built in his lands, Guillaume appeared impotent. Audebert and Fulk chose that moment to strike.
Audebert had swept all before him in the swathe he drew on Fulk’s map years before. Gençay fell easily and then Poitiers itself, as Audebert proved himself to be a captain who could take any town, no matter how well fortified or defended it might be. Audebert had camped two miles outside the solid walls of Poitiers to wait for reinforcements. Those walls, built by the Romans, were ten metres high and six metres wide spiked with seventy towers, and the new Duke Guillaume was safe behind them, but foolishly he had thought to take the advantage while Audebert waited without a full force. Guillaume rashly sent his troops sallying out, and they were roundly defeated by Audebert, who then laid siege to the city. Guillaume had been compelled to flee for his life as his garrison, appalled at the extreme loss of life, had surrendered. It was a paltry victory, thought Audebert, when the opponent was such a cowardly fool.
While Abo Drutus, Audebert’s castellan at Bellac, held it against Guillaume’s attempt to attack him behind his back and kept Adalmode and their small son Bernard safe, Audebert marched his men north to join with Fulk and take Tours. That siege was harder. The defenders knew their business and stripped the countryside of forage so that Audebert struggled to keep his soldiers and horses fed. The city’s catapult thumped, continuously throwing crushing boulders as his men crossed the killing ground between their tents and the castle walls. Audebert kept up a relentless process of sapping the walls, storming the defences. His own catapult crews worked day and night without let, hearing the dull thud of the massive missiles and screams inside the city. He varied his tactics daily: some days, they threw a great battering ram repeatedly at the gates, their shields held aloft to protect them from rocks and scalding tar thrown from the walls; some days twelve men rushed with fifteen-foot scaling ladders and threatened the walls, reaching the parapets in places before Audebert sounded a retreat unwilling to lose too many men in each effort. He ordered the construction of mobile siege towers so his soldiers and their ladders could approach the walls with less loss of life. The crossbowmen in the Tours belfries were good and punched holes in the attackers’ line, but the swarm of Audebert’s army far outnumbered the defenders, and there was no one like him for keeping men disciplined and motivated. Fulk’s men feared their count’s brutal temper and admired his intelligent tactics, while Audebert, always fighting in the front and the thick of battle, was loved and followed blindly by his warriors. Together, they made an unstoppable combination, although Guillaume and Eudes of Blois had gained help from King Robert Capet himself.
Audebert met the newly crowned king on the battlefield. He came briefly to contest with Audebert and Fulk outside Tours, but his troop of untried young men in their polished armour were no match for Audebert’s seasoned warriors. As the king’s men fell around him, Audebert hauled on the reins of the Robert’s horse and the king rolled in the dust, avoiding the crushing weight of his falling mount. Quickly he found his feet, drew his sword to face Audebert. His bright blue shield, with its golden fleur de lys, rolled uselessly beyond his reach. The king was twenty-five, the same age as Fulk, and should have had the advantage of youth over Audebert. A thick gold band encrusted with jewels surmounted his conical helmet. The helmet grazed Robert’s eyebrows and had one of the new-fangled nose protectors, and light metal flaps protecting his neck. The king was encased in a long chain mail dress reaching from his shoulders to below his knees, where the rich red fabric of his tunic was just visible beneath. His silver forearm shields shone in the sunlight. His leather upper-arm protectors clustered in well-wrought tongues like dense feathers. ‘Who made you count?’ he snarled at Audebert, remembering Guillaume’s tale of how Audebert acknowledged no overlord and had not bent his knee in homage for his counties as custom demanded, but then the king’s face showed surprise as Audebert broke into a hearty laugh.
‘Who made you king?’ Audebert demanded, striking the sword easily from Robert’s hand, knocking his shoulder with the flat of his weapon so that the king fell once more to his knees in the dirt. The armour looked as if it had just arrived from the craftsmen. The red and green jewelled crown tilted precariously, and the king glared. ‘Get him away from here!’ Audebert yelled to three of the king’s men, who were approaching cautiously. It was beneath Audebert to kill such incompetence.
Celebrating their day in the command tent that evening, and hearing Audebert’s tale, Fulk growled, ‘You should have struck his head from his lily neck, then we could have taken the crown along with their cities and their lands.’
Audebert shrugged. ‘We don’t want crowns!’ He assumed Fulk was joking, but saw, by his friend’s grim expression, there was some truth in Fulk’s complaint.
Fulk, seeing perplexity on Audebert’s face, rallied to the humour of the story, raised his brimming goblet, shouting over and over to the laughing, triumphant men, ‘Who made you king!’ ‘Who made you king!’
No food entered Tours for weeks and the water supply was dammed or poisoned, and so Audebert’s blockade outlasted the garrison and the city surrendered to them. Now they were riding back to secure Poitiers and made camp near Gençay.
Looking out at the rain, Fulk nodded. ‘Tomorrow, we will discuss a division of the conquered territories between us.’ Fulk would take Tours, vastly increasing his territory around Anjou, and if they were successful now, Audebert would take Poitiers and, with it, rule of all Aquitaine.
Audebert pointed to where the red flag of Aquitaine with its golden lion flew again over the ruins of Gençay. ‘He’s sneaked back while we were busy in the north and retaken it. We’ll make it clear who owns this ground.’
The constant rain was turning the ground to a mud bath. Soldiers were wading, their ankles slowed in the thick mire, leading war-horses similarly slavered in muck and shivering with cold. Men struggled to erect tents in the slime and to hammer posts securely into the liquid ground to tether the beasts. A messenger sloshed through the mud and made his way to Audebert’s tent to deliver grave news from his brother Boson, from Bellac. Guillaume had captured their brother Gausbert and blinded him in retribution for Helie’s crime against the priest Benedict.
‘God’s teeth,’ Audebert swore, throwing the letter away from him.
‘What is it?’ Fulk asked.
‘Read it,’ Audebert said, disgusted, and watched Fulk’s face as he took in the words.
‘The vindictive, cowardly little shite!’ Fulk exclaimed. ‘He makes no headway with the real enemy, us, and so he attacks the more vulnerable to make himself a mean victory.’
‘Yes.’ Audebert sat morose for some time with the awful news. ‘Gausbert did not deserve this.’ If Helie were still alive, Audebert would kill him himself for the griefs he had visited upon his brothers.
‘Gausbert will have to go into a monastery.’
Audebert nodded. ‘Guillaume takes vengeance for the crime that Helie committed more than twenty years ago. Unbelievable!’
‘That’s not the reason,’ Fulk stated, and he and Audebert exchanged a glance of understanding.
‘No,’ Audebert said. ‘It’s Adalmode. Well, I will show him no mercy now.’
Taking Gençay a second time posed no difficulties, since its defences had not been fully rebuilt. The huge door, the wooden staircase and great beams supporting the five storeys of the thirty-foot stone tower had been burnt out in Audebert’s first attack and the tower still stood but it was a useless husk, perched on the summit of the hill known to the locals as Roc. Why did that bastard Guillaume hang out his pennant on the tower of the Tour de Moncabie if he could not be bothered to at least make some useful defences there? He had not even cleared away the debris from Audebert’s first attack. It was typical of his military inability and petty behaviour.
Audebert strides to his tent and shrugs off his sweaty armour and grimy gambeson, calling to the squire for wine. The arrow comes from the trees. Audebert turns to the sound of its flight, raises his hand to shield his eyes and catches a glimpse of sunlight on a polished bow, is not sure if he feels or simply hears the thud of the arrow in his side, that knocks his breath from him and drops him to his knees. He looks at the arrow protruding from his body in disbelief. Blood wells around the buried shaft. He hears shouts as his men realise what has happened, some running toward him, others running in the direction of the assassin.
‘Audebert, Audebert,’ Fulk is crying, ‘no!’ He reaches Audebert and holds him, his head resting on Fulk’s knee.
Audebert looks up at a grey sky and breathes shallowly against the searing pain in his chest, the vivid blue of his eyes growing dull.
‘No!’ Fulk says again in anguish, wiping his hand across his face, leaving a smear of Audebert’s blood there. ‘Oh no!’ Others are running and crowding. ‘He needs air! He needs a surgeon! Bring the litter! We will make for Charroux.’
Fulk is organising well as usual, Audebert thinks with satisfaction, but then ignores the panic happening around him and concentrates instead on the mirage of Adalmode’s beautiful face bending over him, her golden hair tickling his forehead, strands softly caressing his mouth like whispers. ‘Take care of my son, Fulk, as I took care of you,’ he gasps hoarsely, ‘and take care of Adalmode.’
28
Fécamp, 997
In the palace of Fécamp, Richard I, duke of Normandy, experienced relief from the pains he had felt for many weeks. His vision blurred, and he fought for his last few breaths. He had been failing in strength for some time and had withdrawn from Bayeux to his favourite residence here on the coast, looking out to the sea. He had named his successor. A splendid stone sarcophagus waited for him in the neighbouring shrine and he had ordered his affairs. The priest droned the words of the last rites, thumbed a cross onto his clammy forehead in oil. Perhaps he should have sacrificed to Odinn as his Christianised ancestor, Rollo, did on his deathbed. Was it the wings of ravens that he could hear, or the skirts of the valkyrie?
Richard’s great sword lay on the quilt at his side, and Gunnora gently held her husband’s hand to the hilt. The sword’s hard brightness belied the passing of time and the battles it had witnessed, contrasting sadly with the wasted muscles of Richard’s long arm.
Bjarni, a young servant in the household newly arrived from Denmark, dithered on the threshold of the room, watching the duke spasm and begin a gurgling death rattle, which ceased abruptly, was followed by a moment’s silence and then by a high-pitched keening from the duchess and the cries and wailing of the duke’s sons and daughters who stood around the bed. Bjarni backed out of the room quietly. This was not the time to bother the family with delivery of the letter in his hand. He set the letter down on the chest that stood outside the door to the duke’s chamber. He would find a better time, later, to bring it to the attention of the duchess or the new duke.
The following morning, Bjarni was sent with three other servants to wash and lay out the duke’s body. He had never seen or handled a lifeless corpse before. The look of it, the heavy cold feel of it, would stay with him forever he thought, like handling a gleaming dead fish newly caught from the sea, that seemed as if it might suddenly squirm back to life again if you poured water over it, and yet so surprisingly inanimate at the same time. Bjarni shook his wet hands above the bowl and reached for a towel, staring again at the body on the bed. A few weeks ago this long, cold husk had been the enormous and powerful duke of Normandy, guffawing at bawdy jokes, swilling ale, eyeing young women, but Bjarni could not see it as a person at all anymore. It was a thing, no longer housing the duke. Where was the duke’s spirit now then? In the Christian Heaven or fiery Hell, or in Odinn’s Feasting Hall, in the depths of Niflheim, the cold underworld, or just nowhere? Bjarni swallowed on the thought that he too would come to this one day. He moved out to the chest by the door, where he meant to collect the letter and complete his duty, but the letter was gone. The duchess or the new duke had already collected it.
