Alys Clare - The Paths of the Air

‘Were you an only child?’ Helewise asked.

‘No. I have a younger sister’ — Helewise detected by the tone of voice that there was no great affection between the sisters — ‘but she was not as marriageable as I, for she was an awkward child and she has grown into an introspective woman who makes little of her looks and has a spiteful and self-seeking nature. My parents soon abandoned their attempts to encourage her, for they had me,’ she went on bitterly, ‘and already my mother had singled out the man whom she wanted me to marry.’

‘You did not care for him?’

‘No, my lady Abbess, I did not care for him at all. Let me describe him to you. I was first presented to him in the summer preceding my sixteenth birthday. He was a man a little past his prime. He was a native Armenian prince of Edessa; extremely rich, extremely powerful; and an alliance between his family and mine would have been highly advantageous to my father.’

‘I did not realize there were such marriages between the Christians and the local nobility.’

‘Indeed so, my lady. Moreover, this prince — his name is Leo Rubenid Anavarza — is Christian and many such as he take wives from the ranks of the Frankish settlers. For some, the main attraction is the money,’ she added. ‘There are many among the local nobility, as you call them, who try to survive and maintain their dignity and their position on a title alone. I speak as one who knows,’ she added, ‘for before my mother enticed Leo Rubenid into her web, many such men were paraded in front of me.’

‘What did he look like, this Leo?’ Helewise asked, drawn to the story.

She smiled. ‘He was squat and swarthy. When we met, it was clear that I was considerably taller than him, and the next time he came he must have been wearing wedges in his shoes for suddenly he was only a hand’s breadth shorter.’ The smile developed into a laugh. ‘Even that was barely noticeable, for he wore a ridiculous puffed-up hat that added inches but also gave the impression that he had an abnormally huge head.’

She laughed again, a happy, musical sound. Then her face fell. ‘My lady, when I picture him now I see a figure of fun but, believe me, he is far from that. I could have persuaded myself that marriage to a man old enough to be my father with greasy hair, a sweaty, pockmarked face, several missing teeth and extremely bad breath was tolerable. There were advantages, after all; I would be a princess, I would be given the best of everything and my life would be one of pampered idleness. But I discovered something about Leo Rubenid that turned him in the blink of an eye from someone I just might have married into a man whom I would not have touched had he been the last man on earth and the survival of the human race up to the two of us.’

‘Goodness!’ Helewise exclaimed. ‘Whatever was it?’

‘I discovered that he was a monster,’ the young woman said calmly. ‘Let me tell you a little more about him. He was fifteen years older than me and he came from a family of many brothers. He had been wed before; he married young and his wife gave him four sons with a reputation for troublemaking. One took offence at some remark made by a prostitute in Ayas and he sliced off her lips. Another tried to raise a mercenary force to fight against his own father. These men and their brothers would have been my stepsons, even though I was but a year older than the eldest. My lady, you will have noted one factor in my mother’s choice of a husband for me?’

‘Yes,’ Helewise answered. ‘The preponderance of boy children in Leo’s line, which your mother must have hoped would spread to your own family when you wed.’

‘Yes, quite right. Leo was always son-hungry. His wife died giving birth to a fifth son conceived much too soon after the birth of the fourth. But Leo Rubenid is not a man to take a doctor’s or a midwife’s word that his wife has suffered internal injuries which must heal before he beds and impregnates her again. Had I agreed to marry him, he would have swept me off to his fortress in Cilicia, which is a hundred miles north-west of my family’s home and a turbulent land in which a cauldron of races and religions bubbles in constant enmity. Dwellings must be like Leo’s, for the only way to survive is behind high, stout walls. There is no urban sophistication whatsoever. Once inside my husband’s castle, there I should have stayed, reclining on my silken cushions and listening to the fountains splash into their copper bowls, all the time waiting for the moment when I should be summoned to my husband’s side. To his bed.’ She looked down.

‘You said you discovered that he was a monster?’ Helewise prompted.

‘Yes; yes, I did.’ The young woman seemed reluctant to go on. But then she raised her head and said, ‘There was a boy in my father’s employ. He was very sweet, very young — well, about my age, in fact, but he had not had my sophisticated childhood — and he was a jongleur. You know what that is, my lady?’

‘An entertainer, I believe.’

‘Yes. The jongleurs are professional entertainers who sing, play instruments, dance, tumble and juggle. The boy of whom I speak was a lute-player, a singer and a poet. He made up his own songs and he was very popular, for often the songs poked gentle fun at the great and the good. He-’ She blushed suddenly and once again looked down. ‘He thought he was in love with me, my lady. He wrote a love song for me, and when I made it clear that although I was flattered I did not and could not love him, he wrote another song that was a thinly veiled attack on Leo Rubenid.’ Her voice was shaking. ‘Leo got to hear about it — any number of his obsequious friends and acquaintances would have made sure of it — and his men waylaid my little lute-player as he ran an errand for my mother late one night. His body was found the next day. They had cut off his hands, my lady, and stuffed them in the opposite sleeves, as if to emphasize that he would never play the lute again. Then, so that he would never sing again either, they slit his throat.’

Helewise sat in stunned silence. Then she said, ‘You are in no doubt that Leo Rubenid was behind this atrocity?’

‘None at all. Without actually admitting anything, he made sure I knew that he ordered it and witnessed it. It was horrible!’ She dropped her face in her hands and her shoulders shook with silent sobs. Then, recovering, she straightened up and said, ‘Would you have accepted such a man as your husband?’

‘Of course not.’ An image of her dear Ivo swam before Helewise’s eyes. ‘My husband was a very different man and I loved him dearly.’ Noticing a sudden spark of interest in the young woman’s face, she added firmly, ‘But we are not here to speak of him. Could you not persuade your parents that Leo Rubenid was unsuitable? Surely if you had told them what you knew they would have viewed him with new eyes?’

‘My father, yes; for he has always been inclined to listen to me and believe what I say. But my mother had made up her mind and nobody, not even my father, can divert her from her path once that has happened. She is not a bad woman, my lady; it is simply that she sets herself a task and she will achieve that task, even when she realizes it was not the wise course she initially believed it to be. She is a very strong woman. She would say, I am sure, that she has had to be for she has borne a greater weight of responsibility for her family, its lands and its possessions than many a man.’

‘That is very often the case,’ Helewise remarked. ‘We are spoken of in disparaging terms as the weaker sex, the fragile vessel, and men proceed with their wars and their squabbles without so much as discussing them with us, never mind actually inviting our opinion. Yet do we not also live in this world? Should we not be a party to what is done upon it?’