Plaint for Provence Page 5

  ‘There are five ways to reach the bottom of Roucas. The main route is from the south, over the pass and across the marshes. They’re worst with storm rain but if you stick to the path, they’re not as bad as further west when the Ròse floods. That’s the way my mother would expect Barcelone to go.’ Thanks to the messenger Dragonetz had sent to Les Baux, Etiennette would be forewarned of Barcelone’s approach and of her son’s, although innocent of the reason for Hugues’ delay.

  ‘I suppose Tarascon offers him a safe night and a chance to consolidate his hold there.’

  ‘I think so too,’ Dragonetz pondered. ‘It was his base in the wars with your mother and he might need it again.’

  Hugues gave his slow smile. ‘He might,’ was his only comment.

  ‘And he is right to worry about his safety en route to Les Baux.’

  The smile grew larger. ‘It was kind of him to choose the northern route. We have the small look-out posts you saw earlier in these mountains,’ Hugues continued his description, ‘the Alpilles.’ Hugues had made sure the men at the look-outs knew their comrades were back in their terrain and what their plan was.

  Dragonetz nodded. ‘We want the men there to try - but fail - to rescue Barcelone in his time of trouble. And they’ll be helpful in signalling his approach, to your mother and to us. That would be the natural response, no?’

  ‘Barcelone will be lucky to avoid a flight of arrows with a troop that size and no warning.’

  Dragonetz was emphatic. Barcelone was no stripling to gift them mistakes but a victorious overlord come to demand oaths of fealty more binding than ink. ‘He’ll send clear warning of his approach, just before he comes. He won’t risk giving excuse for bloodshed to eager men.’

  ‘He might send a Porcelet ahead to warn the look-out,’ Hugues said hopefully.

  ‘Who might be mistaken for a brigand.’ Dragonetz laughed. Even if Barcelone was naïve enough, the Porcelets were wiser. ‘No, my friend, you must resign yourself to whatever fun we have in the chase tomorrow as the Pons family must be seen in public to host their guests in an honest manner, which does not include killing half their number en route! You signed a truce!’

  ‘I know. With my father still warm in some unknown grave in Barcelone.’ Hugues face darkened. Then he continued. ‘From the west is a way that follows a permanent stream along the marshes. The water is useful.’ Dragonetz nodded again. ‘The marshes themselves protect us but men underestimate them at their peril and many have gone missing there, man and horse swallowed in the sinking mud. Even those of us who grew up here keep to the known tracks.

  There are two paths from the east, going different sides of the Méjan hill, with water at some times, dry at others.

  And of course the Aurelian road from the old times, a straight road that skirts the valley east-west. We have men in the settlements at Les Caisses, Le Castellas, La Tène, Le Mont Paon.’

  Dragonetz added all the detail to his mental map. The next day would show whether they were indeed lucky that Barcelone had chosen the difficult northern approach.

  Waiting was always the hardest part of an ambush. Assuming you lost no men during it. For the millionth time, Dragonetz ran through their scheme in his mind, knowing only too well that no plan was foolproof and that the best commanders were always those who could react to change - just as the best men were those whose obedience was instinctive.

  ‘They’re coming!’ Hugues’ exclamation was unnecessary as everyone heard the hunting horn from the look-out post, which would also tell Etiennette that her guests were on their way. The throaty ripple of frogs’ mating calls reverberated down the hillside from the pass, along the route through which Barcelone’s company must travel to the cave which hid the band.

  As each scout in turn took up the love song of Provençal marshland, the rest of Hugues’ men took up their positions, hidden behind rocks in the valley, on either side of the narrow route to Les Baux and right beside the cavernous entrance to a complex of caves.

  After the frogsong came the sound of a cavalcade: the jingle of horses’ tack; curt instructions; the more leisurely pace of travel talk; creaking wheels and wagons; laughter and sweeter-voiced pleasantries. Hugues’ men let the vanguard go by, double file for riders and then the first wagons, taking up the whole width of the track with no room for side-riders. The men of Les Baux awaited the signal, steadying their restless horses.

  Dragonetz watched for the wagons in mid-train and assessed each one quickly, its weight and handling, its guards or lack of. Clothes, he thought, of one; women, of another, obvious enough from the high-pitched chatter inside.

  Then a smaller cart, its wheel-ruts digging deeper, chains fastening the tarpaulin over its stacked contents, the drivers clearly armed, no peasants. ‘Now!’ he shouted leading the attack on the heavy-laden treasure-wagon.

  Throwing his reins to Hugues, Dragonetz leapt from the black destrier, which had learned trickier moves on the sands of Damascus and still kept its balance. The knight landed on a tangle of drivers, pushing one off his perch onto the roadside, while a comrade dealt with the other.

  Too surprised to offer resistance, the drivers were dragged behind rocks by Hugues’ men, who’d been instructed to bind them not kill them. Anonymous helmets, mail coifs, hauberks and speed provided all the disguise needed to keep the men of Les Baux safe from later identification, and humiliation was always more gratifying to mete out than death. So removing the drivers’ clothes seemed to be an improvement on the original plan and they were then tied up, together, as instructed.

  Other Pons men sliced through the harness of the wagon following the one ahead of the target, and dealt with their drivers. These weaponless peasants saved the ambushers the trouble and tied themselves up with every gesture of surrender known to scared men. The loose horses blocked the attempt by Barcelone’s men to rally round their mid-section and the general panic was encouraged by the circling and whoops of the ambushers.

  While dust and riders whirled around the three wagons, the devil took the reins and the middle cart disappeared. At least this was the story told later by Barcelone’s men, as they crossed themselves. How else could the cart have disappeared in broad daylight? And then the men too.

  Caves, the locals suggested when they heard the tale, but the indignant soldiers told how they had seen the entrance to a cavern and gone in to check it for their ambushers and stolen goods but nothing was there, not so much as a bat. Then the locals crossed themselves and whispered of ‘the devil’s cave’, a place to avoid. If some of these locals had a smile on their face and some Barcelone loot in their pouches, the foreign soldiers were too upset by the day’s events to notice.

  If he’d chosen to, Dragonetz could have given a different version. Under cover of dust and panic, with all six drivers safely removed and trussed, and none of Barcelone’s cohort close enough to see what was happening, he’d taken the drivers’ place. Hugues had come back on foot to lead the carthorses off the road and into the cave entrance.

  Slicing through the harness, Hugues freed the pair of workhorses and drove them back onto the road, while his men took their place, and, with sweat and muscle, wheeled the cart past the mouth and apparent back wall, behind which was a cavern big enough to hide an army.

  At first it was difficult to get enough hands to the cart to get it moving but once it had started rolling, the momentum and slight downhill slope rendered the task less of a strain. All easy enough for someone who’d known the caves since boyhood, Hugues declared, his eyes dancing and his cheeks smeared black with sweat and grease.

  Wiping out the tracks with brushwood, the men of Les Baux stacked some rocks in the inner entrance, to add to the illusion of wall. Then they assembled in the deeper caves, as far back as they could go, re-uniting and reassuring the horses.

  Once again it was a waiting game but this time success lent patience to the ambushers. They heard Barcelone’s men report the cave empty, the shouts echoing strangely through the caverns. It
was impossible to keep the horses silent but whatever whinnies and snorts escaped must have echoed as oddly to those outside as the sounds there did to those holding their breath in the cave. Horses on the road made their share of panicked noise as presumably the loose ones were re-captured.

  Then silence. And only imagination to indicate when it would be safe to come out. Barcelone would want his drivers found, untied and questioned. They should be found quickly enough as they’d been left ungagged. They could reveal nothing but that men in armour had assaulted them. Whatever Barcelone suspected, he could prove nothing. When he reached Les Baux, Etiennette’s surprise would be real enough on hearing of the terrible robbery suffered by her guest.

  Hugues’ men would withdraw back up to the Sarragan Pass for the night, and the next day they would back-track enough to approach Les Baux from the south, flying the red and yellow banners of Provence, and trumpeting their innocent return home.

  Treasure-cart? What treasure-cart? How terrible that such a thing should befall Barcelone on Pons land! Hugues rehearsed their innocence with his men until laughter drew tears. Dragonetz withdrew just enough to make sure all eyes were on Hugues. He smiled to himself as he stroked the black silk of his stallion’s neck. It was a good beginning.

  Only one minor thing troubled him: a young woman’s voice calling in distress, ‘My parents’ portrait! It’s in the wagon!’ and the deep-voiced reply, ‘They cannot take your memories, my Queen, whatever things are stolen. They are just things and we are more than that.’ Petronilla and Barcelone. It had to be. But what stayed with Dragonetz, even more than a woman’s distress, was the tone and tenor of her husband’s words. It might not be so easy to dislike Ramon Berenguer, the Comte de Barcelone.

  Dragonetz found a moment to speak quietly with Hugues, then broke into the treasure wagon with two of the men, who memorised the contents they could see. Dragonetz himself searched methodically until he found a coffer of women’s jewellery and in it, wrapped in black velvet and framed in gold, a miniature portrait of a nobleman and woman, set-faced and serious.

  The painting was unremarkable, as were the subjects’ long faces but Dragonetz was struck by the family resemblance in Petronilla’s mother to a woman he knew very well. Red hair, the white skin that often accompanies it and something about the determined jut of the chin were common features to them both. But where Aliénor, Duchesse d’Aquitaine was all fire and vivacity, this woman - her aunt perhaps? - was quiet-eyed and the so-similar features composed for lumpy plainness where the niece’s pleased with their symmetry.

  Presumably the artist had used the usual tricks of his trade to beautify the subject, making her forehead higher, clearing the skin of blemishes and in colour, in which case Petronilla’s mother had indeed been very plain. The father’s expression verged between sour and saintly so in some ways the couple seemed well matched although there was no sense of connection between them. Dragonetz wondered if in the future an artist might dare to show a couple’s feelings for each other, as he did when composing songs, but even the thought was unseemly. Still, a daughter’s love saw beauty where art showed none.

  Unseen, Dragonetz slipped the package into his pouch and returned the coffer to its place. The men secured the treasure-cart once more and listed the contents to Hugues, who arranged the guards until such time the treasure could be retrieved safely.

  Chapter 5

  Note that when a woman is in the beginning of her pregnancy, care ought to be taken that nothing is named in front of her which she is not able to have, because if she sets her mind on it and it is not given to her, this occasions miscarriage.

  The Trotula, On the Regimen of Pregnant Women

  Estela sighed over an embroidered letter M which had turned into a crooked H through no fault of her own, or so she would have sworn. Even though she used a palm protector, her left hand was pricked raw from all the moments when she’d lost concentration and the needle had found her through the fine lawn.

  ‘Is there some nobleman with the initial H?’ she asked Sancha, who sat beside her, perfecting a delicate flower in three colours and chain stitch. ‘Then I need not unpick it.’ They were slightly apart from the other ladies, the better to talk in confidence, but so far Estela had learned only what she knew already, including how badly she sewed.

  With mouth pursed, Sancha mutely held out a hand, and Estela passed over the unfortunate letter for re-working. ‘I wish you could visit the baths at Ais!’

  ‘I don’t think public baths are appropriate for me,’ murmured Sancha, head bowed over her sewing, surprisingly deft for such a large-boned woman.

  Estela flashed a look at her friend, knowing full well the secret proclaimed by Sancha’s Adam’s apple for those who were perceptive about human anatomy. Most people saw no further than Sancha’s strident gown and flamboyant headwear, her make-up and plucked eyebrows. If her voice held husky notes and her build was large, then the difference between one individual and another was sufficient reason. Estela however knew why Sancha needed privacy for bathing.

  ‘You could use the private room we’ve created. It’s curtained off,’ Estela told her, then was struck by another potential problem. ‘And it would be best if you came on the women’s day. After all, you would be entering the baths in a gown, whatever you look like without one.’

  ‘Estela!’ Sancha winced at the bald, but honest, judgement and glanced around but no-one had heard. Estela was careful enough to make sure of that and was continuing blithely with her own obsession.

  ‘That is the only thing I miss from coming here. I know that the project is advancing without me and I’m sure Dana will use the perforated chair for basic regulation of a woman’s flowers but if I were there, I would test some of the more complex instructions in The Trotula.

  When I accompanied the midwife in Die, there was a case after miscarriage where I’m sure the woman had an ulcerous womb. Now I know to check for blackish fluid with a horrible stench, and I could treat her with a diet of cold ingredients - I remember deadly nightshade and white of egg were among them but I’d have to look the others up. I would love to cure a woman in such a manner!’

  ‘Could you give me less detail, please, dear,’ Sancha said faintly as she bit through a length of embroidery silk. ‘It’s all so …unfeminine.’

  Undeterred, Estela continued tartly, ‘It’s actually very feminine, like so many other horrible ailments!’ She relented. ‘But there are many scripts on men’s diseases too…’

  ‘No,’ warned Sancha. ‘I really do not want to know.’

  ‘What I would like most of all would be to carry out surgery.’ Estela’s voice turned dreamy. ‘Imagine, if I could repair a man’s arm.’

  Sancha looked at the mangled letter M on her lap, the crooked stitching already coming undone at the start. ‘I’m imagining,’ she said.

  ‘Like Malik did for Nici. I watched and I know with a bit of practice I could do it too. He cleans the needle first, you know, and I would never have thought of that if I hadn’t seen him do it. He uses lavender oil. If only the priests didn’t fill people’s heads with nonsense against Arab learning, we could help so many people!’

  ‘Nici?’ queried Sancha.

  ‘The dog.’

  ‘Perhaps you could practise on dogs,’ suggested Sancha, grateful on behalf of the human race for the possibility. There was no way of gauging Estela’s response as the friends were interrupted by a messenger, wearing red and yellow stripes.

  ‘What is the point of wearing a master’s colours if all the houses bear the same?!’ Estela complained. ‘Provence, Barcelone - one of them should choose something different.’

  ‘That, my dear, is the problem in a nutshell,’ murmured Sancha at the same time as the page announced his mistress’ request for Lady Estela to join her in the ante-chamber reserved for the guests from Barcelone. Questioned further, the boy denied any knowledge of what Queen Petronilla might want with Etiennette’s latest troubadour. Whatever her misgivings, Este
la had no option but to obey and at least she had an excuse to drop her embroidery into the basket ‘for later’.

  Her pattens clicking on the flagstones as she followed the page, Estela rehearsed all the reasons she hated Petronilla. Born into the rich inheritance of Aragon, and betrothed to Barcelone from babyhood, what excuse could there be for usurping Etiennette’s right to Provence? Land hungry, power hungry, usurper and tyrant. According to Sancha, Etiennette’s lord had died ‘mysteriously’ on his enforced truce visit to Barcelone. In Estela’s mind, there was no doubt; Petronilla was accessory to murder. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Petronilla had carried out the murder, possibly without her husband’s knowledge. After all, ‘mysterious’ death was most likely poison, the weapon of Saracens and women. Ramon Berenguer himself might be innocent of this terrible betrayal. And if the Comte de Barcelone had been manipulated and lied to by his scheming wife, perhaps Malik’s respect for the man was not completely ill-founded. To the catalogue of Petronilla’s known crimes, Estela added a few personal qualities; arrogant and spiteful (or why else pay this visit, rubbing the Baux family noses in their defeat), ill-favoured and ill-mannered.

  Satisfied that she had the measure of the heir to Aragon, Estela flounced through the door held open to her and curtseyed with a finely judged degree of both formality and insolence. Then she took a long, level look at the girl who stood in front of her. For she was just a girl. Plainly dressed, far too plainly Estela thought, fingering her own bright silk. Rank should be displayed or how would the rabble see the distinction between themselves and a queen?

  Beetle-browed and pock-marked, Petronilla was every bit as plain as her clothing. Speaking quietly, the Queen thanked Estela for responding to her invitation (as if there were any choice!) and dismissed her entourage quietly. The ladies-in-waiting glided out of the ante-chamber without hesitation. Estela waited, as she must, for Petronilla to divulge the reason she’d been summoned. The silence stretched as Petronilla flushed, walked to the window, turned her back on Estela and finally spoke.