"A Widow's Crusade": Chapter 6

Monfort, GalileeOctober 1212

           Emilie sent word that Abelard had arrived the evening before and would be at dinner. Blanche, who was already dressed, sank down onto the bed paralyzed. Then glancing up an anxious-looking Claire she announced. "I can't go down like this. I must bathe and wash my hair and--"
          "Of course, my lady!" Claire broke into a smile that seemed to obliter­ate all her acne-scars and age-lines.
          Although Emilie had taken Blanche to use the bath built under the mill the day after her arrival at Montfort, Blanche would not risk going down there now. Instead, Claire organised a tub and water, which they had no time to heat. Wincing at the cold but in a hurry, Blanche crouched in the cork lined tub and let Claire pour the water over her and then soap her down with lilac-scented soap brought all the way from France. She washed even her long hair and then Claire poured water over her again to rinse her off.
          Although the days were turning astonishingly cool, Blanche insisted on wearing her best silk. Claire tied her as firmly as possible into her corset and rolled silk stockings up over her knee to be fastened with a leather garter. Claire next slipped the lilac coloured silk gown over her head and shoved the over-long sleeves back up over her wrist and pulled the lacings tight so they were fashionably bunched along her forearm. Over this came a high-waisted purple surcoat with sleeves that fell from the shoulder growing ever wider until the underside peaked at the floor. The revealed lining of the sleeves was a shimmering silver silk, powered with gold stars. A band of golden embroidery stretched across her bodice and ran around the outer cuffs of the sleeves. At her hips, she wore an embroidered band as a belt tied over itself at her left hip. Last but not least, Claire braided Blanche's still damp hair and then fitted a veil made of the same silver silk as lined her sleeves over her head. The veil crossed under her chin then was draped back to the top her head where it was pinned tightly under flat embroidered cap before the ends fell down her back to her waist. The effect was to cover her ageing throat and sagging chin, framing her still youthful face.
          Blanche had given her daughter Jacquette most of the jewellery she had from Gouzon, but she had kept for herself those things she had inherited from her mother. For this purple gown, she had amethyst earrings that fell in three large drops from each ear. She also wore an amethyst ring with a single dark stone set in smaller, lighter stones. She had worn both years ago when she still lived in her father's house.
          Finished at last, she let Claire inspect her critically and apply just a touch of rouge to her cheek-bones and lips.
          "Isn't this ridiculous?" Blanche asked, exasperat­ed with herself. "You'd think I was 15 and about to meet the King."
          "I would much rather be meeting Sir Abelard again than any King," Claire declared with so much feeling that Blanche glanced sharply at her waiting maid. Claire averted her face but she was blushing. With sudden clarity, Blanche remembered that Claire had always cheered for Abelard and taken his part against her other suitors. It was Claire who had kept his cloak all those years ago, and Claire who had encouraged her to seek him out. And despite the dangers and the hardships, Claire had insisted on accompanying her. How could she have been blind before?  Claire had been in love with him too. "Hurry, Claire. You must change too - wear your marigold gown and the saffron stripped surcoat - it suits you well. Here, I'll help."
          "No, my lady, I don't need to look my best --"
          "Of course you do!" Blanche insisted. Claire would never be pretty, but she had the right to feel good about herself.
          Claire collapsed before Blanche's determination and hurried to strip, rinse herself with the still wet wash-cloth and then dress in the stripped surcoat she had purchased in a rare extravagant fling in Acre. She had set her heart so on the cloth that Sergeant Lestelle had bargained with the shop-keeper for a good ten minutes to get the price down to one Claire could afford. As Claire finished dressing and was wrapping her cotton wimple, Blanche took one of her own linen hats with a stiff crown of green-and-orange embroi­dery and fit it over the veils.
          "Oh, I shouldn't!" Claire protested, but she blushed with delight.
          "It suits you much better than it does me." Blanche declared definitively. "Now, the two of us had better go, or we'll be late for dinner."
          Indeed, they were late already. The household was gathered and waiting rather impatiently. Emilie and the almoner, Father Claude, were seated at the high table. But there was no sign of Sir Abelard. Claire and Simone took their places at one of the lower tables with Lady Emilie's waiting woman, and Blanche continued alone to the high table, trying not to show how nervous she was.
          "Forgive me for keeping you waiting. I lost track of the time."
          Emilie could smell the soap and her damp hair and the gown was one she had not seen before. She understood and it distressed her to think that Blanche had gone to such trouble. While she made a conventional reply about not minding the wait, her eyes went toward the entrance to the hall. Abelard had said he would come, but -- given the evident depth of his antipathy -- she couldn't help wondering if he wouldn't change his mind at the last minute.
          Lord Hughes' high backed chair was not used in his absence, but was shoved back from the table out of the way. Emilie sat in the centre with her almoner on her right and Blanche on her left. A chair beyond Blanche was left vacant for Abelard. Emilie glanced nervously toward the magnificent jewelled goblet that was placed strategically to the left of Blanche's setting, ready to be shared by both of them.
          The pages were offering the silver finger bowls, and Blanche washed her hands and dried them on the linen towel. She wanted to ask Emilie where Abelard was, but the words stuck in her throat. And then she saw him. He was advancing up the hall between the lower-tables, and Blanche had to grip the arms of her chair.
          The worst of it was that she recognised him instantly. His features were so familiar, despite the ravages of time, that she fancied she would have recognised him any where and even if she had not been expecting and watching for him. But the cherished features had now been brutally eroded, tearing away any vestige of softness, and they perched above a haggard body far too thin for its length. He wore his hair cropped in a manner totally unfashionable in France, or indeed anywhere, and his short beard was flecked with grey. His shoulders were broad for a man so thin, but his legs were skeletal. He wore a chainmail hauberk over leather hose and soft-leather shoes that came to his ankle. His loose sleeveless surcoat, was belted at the waist with a simple leather belt unadorned with jewels or enamel work or even silver. The surcoat was slit up the front for convenience riding and opened from armpits to waist at the sides as was common, but the skirts hung to mid-calf as had been the fashion in their youth rather than ending just below the knee as knights preferred nowadays. It made him seem even older.
          Blanche's heart was pumping in her chest and she was chilled and sweating both. Abelard kept his eyes directed at Emilie as he advanced. He came around the far end of the table, bowed first to her, kissed the priest's ring and then bowed to Blanche. "Madame. I was astonished to hear you were here in Palestine. Did you have a pleasant journey?"
          How often had he rehearsed those words in his head? He must have said it a thousand times since Emilie warned him Blanche was here. It was a short enough phrase so he could neither forget nor stumble over his own tongue. And yet he was surprised that the words came out as fluently and coolly as he had planned. She was so near in that moment, so strikingly beautiful with her straight black brows, her high cheekbones and the long nose that swept elegantly down to turn up just above moist, parted lips. He could smell lilacs as he bent over her hand, and the jewels on her ears glittered in the light filtering through the windows. The silver silk framing her still lovely face shimmered in the candlelight. She was both more enchanting and more inaccessible than ever.
          He did not meet her eyes. He did not dare. He could not bear to see the shock, disgust or pity in her eyes. He busied himself with taking his seat, and pouring her wine without looking at her.
          Emilie was talking nervously, trying to warm the icy atmo­sphere on her left with her own hot air. Father Claude came eagerly to her assistance, relating the latest reports that had reached them concerning the tragic end to the "Children’s Crusade." There were now confirmed reports of large numbers of Christian children being sold in Alexandria, Cairo and even Damascus. There could be no doubt that the Italians had betrayed them all. Not one ship had put into Palestine.
          "Will you try to take Simone home to her own family when you return to France, Lady Blanche?" Emilie turned to her directly. She couldn't bear to see her new friend paralysed.
          Blanche was so overwhelmed by the intensity and implacability of Abelard's evident hostility, that Emilie's question took her by surprise. She had no time to think of some polite response. She blurted out the truth before she knew what she was saying. "Simone's father was burned for heresy, and her widowed mother cannot support her. Sir Everard asked me to give her a home, which I will do."
          "The girl's father was an Albigensian?" The priest asked in horror with an appalled glance toward Simone.
          "So Sir Everard told me." Blanche managed to get out the words though her whole mind and body was consumed with the realisation that Abelard hated her, resented her and wished her to hell. God, in his infinite wisdom, was rebuking her for her pride, her vanity, and her arrogance. She could not even claim she did not deserve it. Who but a vain woman would travel all the way to Palestine not for the sake of her soul, but to seek an earthly lover she had once rejected? How infinite her arrogance had been to assume that he would want anything to do with her now? She would have laughed had she been alone. The joke was divine.
          "My lord husband rescued a girl whose mother preferred the flames to returning to the Church." Emilie related, trying desperately to think of some way to distract her guest from the unmistakable and merciless rejection that Abelard had delivered. As she glanced over at them, she saw Abelard was wearing his impene­trable mask and Blanche was bright red with shame. For the hundredth time Emilie wished there was something she could do, but there was nothing.

* * * * *
          After that first dinner, Abelard managed to avoid Blanche for the next three days altogether. But then Sir Hughes came home.          A harbinger brought the word to Montfort on a lathered horse. Sir Hughes with his travelling household was just two hours away ― and, as usual, was in a hurry to get home. The household was thrown into a frenzy of preparations. Emilie, usually so calm on the outside, was openly flustered. She started trying to get a meal organised, and then it occurred to her that the stable was over-crowed because of a party of pilgrims who had been given the hospitality of the house, and when Abelard assured her the stable was already cleared, she remembered that she'd promised the Bishop of Tyre to give Hughes a letter "the moment he arrived" and she couldn't even remember where she'd put, but she also had to get changed. Hughes hated to find her wearing simple linen gowns, but they were so practical because it didn't matter if they got dirty in the course of the day, and where in the Name of Abraham was Yvonne?
          The last question was left answered for the trumpets sounded and a shout went up along the ramparts while Emilie was still half naked. By the time she had finished dressing and reached the head of the stairway, she was looking down into a ward in turmoil and at a man bounding up the stairs with a triumphantly squealing child on his shoulders.
          Later, at dinner, Abelard watched his lord and lady through new eyes. Hughes was tanned by the Palestinian sun and his hair was bleached. He wore it to his shoulders as once Abelard had done. Abelard knew that in the two years he campaigned with the Lionheart he had looked much the same ― and he was certain that such a golden knight, vibrating with health and vitality was what Blanche had expected to find.
          A glance at her confirmed his suspicions. She was smiling with open favour upon Lord Hughes as he bounced his daughter on his knee. When Hughes tired of Yvonne's babble, he sent his daughter off to bed without a qualm, and concentrated his attention on his wife and his guest.
          Hughes, Abelard noted, paid particular attention to Blanche, especially her observations about her trip through the Languedoc. Her criticism of the poverty and immorality that de Montfort left in his wake did not offend Hughes de Hebron. He nodded, put pointed questions to Blanche, and readily agreed that de Montfort's war was no longer religious. "Unfortunately, he still has the backing of Innocent the Megalomaniac." Hughes remarked sharply, taking his wife's hand to soothe her prim shock at such impiety. "This ‘Children’s Crusade’ is no less Leo's fault that the sack of Constantinople, and the barbarous war against the cultivated people of the Languedoc. If ever an Anti-Christ wore the tiara it is Leo III!"
          "Hughes! Don't say things like that!" Emilie protested, remembering that Blanche was related by marriage to the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand.
          "But he is right," Blanche agreed without hesitation.
          Abelard could see the smile that passed between them, and he glanced hastily at Emilie. He could see that she too was aware of the empathy between her husband and his latest guest. Emilie looked wounded, almost as if she had been slapped.
          But Emilie was not capable of jealousy ― not when Blanche was so markedly superior in every way. Emilie was too much of a realist to match herself against a woman as clever and well-bred as Blanche. But it hurt all the same. Blanche was Hughes equal, his match. Emilie looked down at her hand, at the simple gold wedding band that Hughes, back then, had barely been able to afford, while Blanche wore a wedding band of emeralds and diamonds. Still, it wasn't her wealth and breeding that mattered most, it was the way she could parry Hughes teasing provocation, and make him laugh with a quick play on words. And she was beautiful.
          Quite unexpectedly Hughes glanced from Blanche to Emilie, and his face softened as he pulled Emilie into the circle of his arm. "Are you feeling left out, my lady love? I do apologise ― but it is a rare pleasure to meet such a sharp-witted lady as Madame de Gouzon. I hope you have invited her to stay for the winter. You say you are related to my insufferable squire, Bert?"
          "His half-brother is married to my daughter."
          "Ah." Hughes responded uncertainly. The bonds were far too tenuous and distant to warrant such a long and dangerous journey, and so left him wondering what to think.
          Blanche seemed to read his thoughts. "I needed some excuse to escape my daily existence. I was suffocating from boredom, and my step-sons were being particularly distasteful because I'd just won a law suit which confirmed my control over my father's stud farm."
          "And you've left it at their mercy!?"
          "I sold it to the Templars."
          Hughes threw back his head and laughed. "But only after they'd put a galley at your disposal and brought you all the way here. Madame, it is a rare person ― man or woman ― who can strike such a hard bargain with the Temple. My compliments." He raised his glass to her.
          She bowed her head in demur thanks for the compliment, and then glanced for some indescribable reason over her shoulder toward Abelard and caught him looking at her in that instant before he looked away. The hatred in his eyes stabbed her heart.

 * * * * *
          Later, when Hughes retired with Emilie to bed, she ventured to remark on how much he liked Lady Blanche. Hughes had been bending over to release his spurs, but he heard the undertone of jealousy in Emilie's voice and stopped. He sat up and gazed at her. She had her back to him and was fussing with the curtains of the bed. Hughes stood up and, coming up behind her, enclosed her in his arms, his hands on her breasts. She gave a cry of surprise. "Are you jealous, my love?"          "No, of course not. Lady Blanche is ― is everything one would want in a lady."
          "I dare say. But we'd make a poor couple, don't you think?"
          "Why do you say that? She is more your match. She comes from a good family―"
          Hughes cut her words off with a kiss, turning her to face him. He was already aroused and impatient, but he pulled back and held her face in his hands to speak to her. " I don't think Lady Blanche is the kind of woman to take the ‘obedience’ part of the wedding vows very seriously. My bet is that she was spoilt by her father, spoilt by her husband and spoilt by her son. No, Em, you don't have to be afraid of Blanche. I think she's highly entertaining ― and come to think of it she's probably not bad in bed ― " Emilie stiffened and tried to pull away, but Hughes laughed and too late she realised she was only being teased.
          Hughes softened, regretting his little joke. He could never quite get used to the fact that Emilie was so vulnerable, so insecure even now. He covered her face with kisses. "Don't pay any attention to me, Em. I'm here because there is no where else I want to be. You couldn't keep me against my will, you know?"
          "I know." Her voice was so choked with tears, it was almost inaudible.
          "Smile, silly! Don't you see? I'm here and not with Blanche or that wraith like child she brought with her or our buxom nurse Berthe! I love you, Emilie ― and you have to admit that it can't be for the sake of that mortgaged, run-down, provincial back-water you brought as a dowry either!"
          Emilie couldn't keep back the tears any longer. She knew he meant what he was saying ― all the more for the fact that he couldn't be entirely serious. She knew he loved her and it filled her with so much gratitude it hurt. She just didn't understand why, and that frightened her. If it wasn't Blanche today, than it would be someone else tomorrow. And it would kill her. She would never be able to live without him.
          Hughes was kissing away the tears. "I'm sorry, Em. Don't cry, sweetheart. I know you love Betz. I didn't mean it like that. But I do love you for what you are and not what you have."