Song at Dawn: 1150 in Provence (The Troubadours Quartet) Read online

  Book 1 of ‘The Troubadours Quartet’

  Winner of Global Ebooks Award for Best Historical Fiction

  ‘Believable, page-turning and memorable’ - Lela Michael, S.P.Review

  ‘Song at Dawn with its mix of historical romance, intrigue, and adventure completely captured my heart and imagination’ - Autumn Birt, Born of Water

  ‘Jean Gill is the master of historical intrigue’ - C.M.T. Stibbe, Chasing Pharoahs

  ‘As soon as I finished this novel, I longed for the next in the series and can’t wait to read more from this extremely talented author’ - Deb McEwan, Beyond Death

  ‘A great book! The story is so engaging, full of political issues, enemies armed with crossbow, poison and fire, hot gossip from the ladies-in-waiting, the list is endles’ - Molly Gambiza, A Woman’s Weakness

  ‘This story has it all from history to love’ - Shirley McLain, Dobyn’s Chronicles

  For a FREE copy of ‘One Sixth of a Gill’, a collection of shorts, finalist in the Wishing Shelf and SpASpa Awards, and for news of Jean’s books, sign up for her newsletter

  Song at Dawn

  Jean Gill

  Copyright Jean Gill 2011

  Kindle Edition

  This book is available in print at most online retailers

  First published in 2011

  Cover design by Jessica Bell

  Cover images © LadyMary, Gordana Sermek, Jean Gill

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  Historical Note and Historical Characters

  for Kaye and her John

  who know the meaning of Romance

  and who will find no derring-don't in this book

  Chapter 1.

  She woke with a throbbing headache, cramp in her legs and a curious sensation of warmth along her back. The warmth moved against her as she stretched her stiff limbs along the constraints of the ditch. She took her time before opening her eyes, heavy with too little sleep. The sun was already two hours high in the sky and she was waking to painful proof that her choice of sleeping quarters had been forced.

  ‘I am still alive. I am here. I am no-one,’ she whispered. She remembered that she had a plan but the girl who made that plan was dead. Had to be dead and stay dead. So who was she now? She needed a name.

  A groan beside her attracted her attention. The strange warmth along her back, with accompanying thick white fur and the smell of damp wool, was easily identified. The girl pushed against a solid mass of giant dog, which shifted enough to let her get herself out of the ditch, where they had curved together into the sides. She recognized him well enough even though she had no idea when he had joined her in the dirt. A regular scrounger at table with the other curs, all named ‘Out of my way’ or worse. You couldn’t mistake this one though, one of the mountain dogs bred to guard the sheep, his own coat shaggy white with brindled parts on his back and ears. Only he wouldn’t stay with the flock, whatever anyone tried with him. He’d visit the fields happily enough but at the first opportunity he’d be back at the chateau. Perhaps he thought she was heading out to check on the sheep and that he’d tag along to see what he was missing.

  ‘Useless dog,’ she gave a feeble kick in his general direction. ‘Can’t even do one simple job. They say you’re too fond of people to stay in the field with the sheep. Well, I’ve got news for you about people, you big stupid bastard of a useless dog. Nobody wants you.’ She felt tears pricking and smeared them across her cheeks with an impatient, muddy hand. ‘And if you’ve broken this, you’ll really feel my boot.’ She knelt on the edge of the ditch to retrieve an object completely hidden in a swathe of brocade.

  She had counted on having the night to get away but by now there would be a search on. If Gilles had done a good job, they would find her bloody remnants well before there was any risk of them finding her living, angry self. If he had hidden the clues too well, they might keep searching until they really did find her. And if the false trail was found but too obvious, then there would be no let-up, ever. And she would never see Gilles again. She shivered, although the day was already promising the spring warmth typical of the south. She would never see Gilles again anyway, she told herself. He knew the risks as well as she did. And if it had to be done, then she was her mother’s daughter and would never - ‘Never!’ she said aloud - forget that, whoever tried to make her. She was no longer a child but sixteen summers.

  All around her, the sun was casting long shadows on the bare vineyards, buds showing on the pruned vine-stumps but no leaves yet. Like rows of wizened cats tortured on wires, the gnarled stumps bided their time. How morbid she had become these last months! Too long a winter and spent in company who considered torture-methods an amusing topic of conversation. Better to look forward. In a matter of weeks, the vines would start to green, and in another two months, the spectacular summer growth would shoot upwards and outwards but for now, all was still wintry grey.

  There was no shelter in the April vineyards and the road stretched forward to Narbonne and back towards Carcassonne, pitted with the holes gouged by the severe winter of 1149. Along this road east-west, and the Via Domitia north-south, flowed the life-blood of the region, the trade and treaties, the marriage-parties and the armies, the hired escorts sent by the Viscomtesse de Narbonne and the murderers they were protection against. The girl knew all this and could list fifty fates worse than death, which were not only possible but a likely outcome of a night in a ditch. What she had forgotten was that as soon as she stood up in this open landscape, in daylight, she could see for miles - and be seen.

  She looked back towards Carcassonne and chewed her lip. It was already too late. The most important reason why she should not have slept in a ditch beside the road came back to her along with the growing clatter of a large party of horse and, from the sound of it, wagons. The waking and walking was likely to be even more dangerous than the sleeping and it was upon her already.

  The girl stood up straight, brushed down her muddy skirts and clutched her brocade parcel to her breast. She knew that following her instinct to run would serve for nothing against the wild mercenaries or, at best, suspicious merchants, who were surely heading towards her. She was lucky to have passed a tranquil night - or so the night now seemed compared with the bleak prospect in front of her. What a fool to rush from one danger straight into another, forgetting the basic rules of survival on the open road. To run now would make her prey so she searched desperately for another option. In her common habit, bedraggled and dirty, she was as invisible as she could hope to be. No thief would look twice at her, nor think she had a purse to cut, far less a ransom waiting at home. No reason to bother her.

  What she could not disguise was that, common or not, she was young, female and alone, and the consequences of that had been beaten into her when she was five years old and followed a cat into the forest. Not, of course, that anything bad happened in the forest, where she had lost sight of the cat but instead seen a rabbit’s white scut vanishing behind a tree, as she tried to tell her father when he found her. His hard hand cut off her words, to teach her obedience for her own good, punctuated with a graphic description of the horrors she had escaped.

  All that had not happened in the dappled light and crackling twigs beneath the canopy of le
aves and green needles, visited her nightmares instead, with gashed faces and shuddering laughter as she ran and hid, always discovered. Until now, she had obeyed, and it had not been for her own good. Fool that she had been. But no more. Now she would run and hide, and not be discovered.

  She drew herself up straight and tall. No, bad idea. Instead, she slumped, as ordinary as she could make herself, and felt through the slit in her dress, just below her right hip, for her other option should a quick tongue fail her. The handle fitted snugly into her hand and her fingers closed round it, reassured. The dagger was safe in its sheath, neatly attached to her under-shift with the calico ties she had laboriously sewn into the fabric in secret candle-light. She had full confidence in its blade, knowing well the meticulous care her brother gave his weapons. As to her capacity to use it, let the occasion be judge. And after that, God would be, one way or another.

  By now, the oncoming chink of harness and thud of hooves was so loud that she could hardly hear the low growl beside her. The dog was on his feet, facing the danger. He threw back his head and gave the deep bark of his kind against the wolf. The girl crossed herself and the first horse came into sight.

  Dragonetz considered their progress. They had been seven days on the road since Poitiers, and many had objected to the undignified haste. Such a procession of litters, wagons and horse inevitably travelled slowly but they had kept overnight stops as simple as possible, resting at the Abbey and with loyal vassals, strengthening the ties. Apart from Toulouse of course, where Aliénor had insisted on a ‘courtesy visit’, her smile as polite as a dog baring its teeth. It had taken all his diplomacy to talk her out of instructing her herald to announce ‘Comtesse de Toulouse’ among her many titles and she had found a thousand other ways to throw her embroidered glove in the young Comte’s face.

  It was no easy matter to be in the service of Aliénor, Queen of France, but he would say this for her; it was never dull. The Lord be thanked that she had decided to insult Toulouse by the brevity of her stay or he could not answer for the casualties that would have ensued. Two more days of travel should see them in Narbonne and safe with Ermengarda and then he could relax his guard to the usual twenty-four hour check on every movement near Aliénor.

  He was aware of the bustle behind him, wheels stopping, voices raised, and he slowed his horse almost to a standstill, anticipating the imperious voice beside him. Aliénor had tired of the litter and, mounted on her favourite palfrey, reined in beside him. He declined his head. ‘My Lady.’ Queen of France she might be but like all born in Aquitaine, he had sworn fealty to Aquitaine and its Duchesse, and France came second.

  ‘Amuse me,’ Aliénor instructed her companion, her pearl ear-rings spinning. The Queen’s idea of dressing down for travelling might have included one less bracelet, a touch less rouge on her exquisitely painted face, and a switch of jeweled circlet, but there was little other compromise. The fur edging her dress could have been traded for a mercenary army. And that was exactly as it should be, she would have told him, had he questioned the wisdom of flaunting her status on the open road. She might have been spoiled as a child but she had been taught that a Lord of Aquitaine commanded respect as much through display and largesse as through a mailed fist, and she had learned the lesson well. In Aquitaine, she was adored. France, however, was a different country and they did things differently there.

  ‘Once,’ he began, ‘there was a beautiful lady with red-gold hair, riding a white palfrey between Carcassonne and Narbonne, unaware of the danger lurking on the road ahead…’

  She laughed. The pearls on her circlet gleamed and the matching ear-rings danced. Some red-gold hair escaped its net and coils under her veil. Everything about Aliénor was impatient for action. ‘We have travelled more dangerous roads than this, my friend.’ She was referring to their trek two years earlier, when they took the cross and the road to Damascus, the road paved with good intentions and finishing as surely in hell as anything either of them had ever known. A Crusade started in all enthusiasm and finished in shame. Each of them had good reason to bury what they had shared and he said nothing.

  She rallied. ‘Wouldn’t you love to deal with monsters, dragons and ogres instead of Toulouse and his wet-nurses?’ Her smile clouded over again. ‘Or the Frankish vultures, flapping their Christian piety over me. Do you know how Paris seems to me? Black, white and grey, the northern skies, the drab clothes, the drab minds. All the colour is being leeched out of my life, month by month and I cannot continue like this.’

  ‘You must, my Lady. It is your birthright and your birth curse. You know this.’

  ‘I cannot exercise my birthright when I am relegated to embroidery and garden design. It is insufferable.’

  ‘Power does not always shout its presence, my Lady, and each of the two hundred men armed behind you on this road represent a thousand more ready to die at your command. Every word you speak has the weight of those men.’

  ‘Tell that to my husband, the Monk!’ was the bitter reply. Her companion knew better than to reply to treason, especially when it came from a wife’s mouth. ‘Oh to be free of Sackcloth and Ashes, to hear a lute without seeing a pursed mouth or hearing that bony friar Clairvaux invoke God’s punishment on the ways of Satan.’

  ‘Clairvaux,’ her companion mused, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux, now what was that story about him? No, I mustn’t say, not to a lady.’

  ‘But you must, my wicked friend, that’s exactly what I need, gossip. The more scurrilous the better.’

  ‘Scurrilous gossip? About the saintly Clairvaux? How could that be possible? Anyway it’s an old tale so you’ll have heard it before,’ he teased.

  ‘I want to hear it again,’ she ordered.

  ‘As my Lady commands. But don’t blame me if you have nightmares.’

  ‘I already have nightmares. And Clairvaux is the least of it, curse his skinny, goose-pimpled arse.’

  ‘You’ve stolen the best of my tale, my Lady, for it does indeed concern his skinny, goose-pimpled arse.’

  ‘Tell anyway.’

  ‘Once -’

  She cut him off. ‘No troubadour tricks. No romancing the rogue. He doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘So then, even Bernard was once a young man and his body was supple, muscled, toned, bronzed and - ’

  ‘For shame!’

  ‘You prefer I leave out some of the detail of a young man’s body? I’ve only just started.’

  ‘The only toned bit of that man’s body is his knees, for he is always on them, and it was ever so, whatever age he was. No, I shall have no description of him as a beautiful young man. Next part of the story, if you will.’

  ‘I have to mention one part of the young man’s anatomy, my Lady, for therein lies the story and the problem, from Bernard’s point of view. He had stopped at an Inn and was served by a beautiful young serving girl, skin transparent as lace, hair golden as - ’

  ‘Yes, yes, a pretty girl. On!’

  ‘ - and poor Bernard found that part of his anatomy preferred to follow its own will rather than God’s. Horrified at this inappropriate rectitude in the only situation where he would rather have been less rigid, he raced out the Inn as one possessed by a Demon, tore off his clothes and jumped into the freezing water of the village fountain, extinguishing all rebellious behaviour from his shivering, goose-pimpled body. And so ended the one and only moment when Bernard of Clairvaux wondered what a warm body would be like against his own. From then on, his body was ruled by icy regime.’

  ‘It’s not true.’ Aliénor was rueful. ‘He never took his clothes off.’

  ‘My Lady, how can you doubt my word?’

  ‘Your word as my Knight or your word as a troubadour, teller of outrageous tales?’

  ‘The latter, my Lady,’ he concurred sighing. ‘But don’t you think it makes a satisfying portrait - the shivering, naked monk in the fountain?’

  ‘To the life,’ she agreed. ‘But I am no Bernard of Clairvaux and there are times, I too wonder wh
at it would be like to hold a warm body against my own.’ If this were an invitation, he gave no sign of taking it as such and she returned to the more entertaining subject. ‘And did you hear the other one, how he ran into the street shouting that someone was trying to rob him -’

  ‘ - and it was some sinner after his virginity!’

  ‘Must have been a blind, desperate sinner!’ Aliénor called over her shoulder to the four Ladies-in-waiting keeping a discreet distance. ‘Ladies, come join us. We are engaged in character destruction and the more the merrier.’ As the other horses were jostled near enough to take turn-about beside the Queen, her companion’s attention shifted to the road ahead, where a slight movement stabilized into an unmistakably human figure.

  ‘Sire?’ the alert came from one of his men up front.

  No longer teasing, he ordered, ‘My lady, you must fall back with your women. Keep to the middle. No-one sane walks this road alone and there is likely a trap ahead.’ He had already moved ahead, throwing orders behind him as he caught up with his hand-picked vanguard. He glanced over his shoulder, satisfied that Aliénor was already invisible in the middle of a thick shield of armoured men.

  Swords out, reins tight in one hand, they advanced on the lone figure standing at the roadside, who seemed to get smaller as they grew nearer.

  ‘It’s a woman, Sire!’ his man exclaimed.

  ‘Be on guard, Danton, a woman can have a band of cut-throats on hand as easily as a man,’ but there was as much chance of hiding men in the open vineyards around them as behind a molehill. He sheathed his sword, and a signal passed back along the line in a wave of relief.