Free Almodis by Tracey Warr Page A

father against his will to give me allegiance. The duke said to your father, “You are so dependent on me that if I told you to make a peasant your lord, you ought to have done it”. That’s when Duke Guillaume required four hostages of me as surety for my good behaviour. So I sent my little Almodis here and three others. He demanded her specifically of course because of her inheritance. Your father was incensed when I regained Civray and he demanded my hostages from Guillaume in recompense. Thankfully the old duke did not hand her over.’ He caresses my hand.
    ‘So how did the betrothal come about?’ asks Audebert politely. We all know the answer, but this telling of the story at the wedding feast is also expected.
    ‘Guillaume insisted on a truce between us at the court assembly at Blaye. I got word of this truce rather late,’ father says, somewhat fudging the facts. ‘I was besieging your mother, I’m afraid Hugh, in your family’s fortress at Confolens, so Guillaume insisted then that my daughter Almodis, should be betrothed to you, to make the peace. I was obliged to leave Almodis continuing as a hostage at the Aquitaine Court after the betrothal, as a surety that I would hold to my promises.’
    ‘Peace is what we should all wish for,’ says Hugh, finally speaking out. ‘I have subscribed my name to Le Trêve de Dieu – the Truce of God. There has been too much fighting and bloodshed.’
    ‘Aye, aye,’ says my father, sitting there with his face a patchwork of livid battle scars. He and Audebert exchange glances.
    ‘What is the Truce of God?’ I ask.
    ‘It is the initiative of Bishop Clermont Etienne and Bishop Bégon. It imposes constraints on the private wars between lords, on those bellatores whose way of life is war,’ Hugh tells me. ‘The Pope has blessed the truce against these bad customs.’
    I regard my husband-to-be. He looks like a warrior and yet he is none. He looks like a strong man and yet he talks like a monk. Peace is good but not if there is reason against it. I would not sign such a pact. There are those who would sign it in hypocrisy, and take advantage of the false security it promised to others.
    ‘It’s true enough that we have seen plenty of battle with foreign raiders, without continually stoking the battle between ourselves as well,’ says Audebert and Hugh nods his head in agreement.
    In the decades before my birth France and Occitania suffered continual and brutal invasions from Muslims in the South, from Hungarian Magyars in the East, and from Viking attacks on settlements on the coasts and up rivers. Intensive castle building and fortification of towns and villages has been the result.
    ‘The country bristles with walls and palisades that are the visible symbol of our great anguish,’ I say.
    ‘Yes,’ says father. ‘The times of order and security that we knew under the Romans and then under Charlemagne are long gone.’
    ‘But they will come again with the Truce of God,’ says Hugh.
    ‘Amen to that,’ says my mother.
    Father, Audebert and I hold our tongues and avoid looking ateach other. The La Marche family has not succeeded for so long in holding the embattled frontier by succumbing to such feeble wishful thinking. I take a spoonful of quivering custard tart. ‘The dariole is very good,’ I tell Hugh.
    ‘What of the Capetians, Lusignan?’ Father asks.
    ‘They seem to have no ambitions to the South and confine themselves to the northern country.’
    Henri, the Capetian king rules France, north of the Loire. In the South, in Occitania and Catalonia, we have no king. Instead we have the independent dukes and counts: Gascogne, Provence, Auvergne, Aquitaine, La Marche, Toulouse, Barcelona and Carcassonne amongst them.
    ‘My father met Hugh Capet and his son, Robert,’ father announces and Hugh turns to him with interest.
    ‘They expected him to bow down to them: Audebert, Count of La Marche!’ Father guffaws. ‘They were mightily surprised when he