Anna and Alicia had been smitten at once. Joanna kept a hawk’s eye on the girls, but she reluctantly admitted that Raimond had so far handled their infatuation very deftly, neither laughing at their clumsy attempts at flirtation nor encouraging them. To Joanna’s vexation, he and Mariam had acted as if they were kindred spirits from their first meeting, and by the time they parted from Alfonso and Sancha at Arles, he’d also won over Dame Beatrix. Even Berengaria’s straitlaced Spanish ladies were not immune to that smile and seductive voice; they expressed proper horror at his heretical views, but Joanna noticed that they watched him surreptitiously from the corners of their eyes and blushed whenever he glanced their way.
Joanna realized that she was just as guilty as Berengaria’s women, for although she kept her distance from Count Raimond, she could not keep her eyes from seeking him out. He was a chameleon, she concluded disapprovingly, changing his colors to match his audience. With the bewitched girls, he was gravely gallant. With the forthright Beatrix, he was respectful. He flirted shamelessly with Mariam, but not with Berengaria. With her, he employed a more subtle approach, asking her to tell him of Richard’s exploits in the Holy Land. Joanna was sure he did not give a flying fig for Richard or his triumphs, but Berengaria’s pride in her husband prevailed over her initial wariness, and Joanna was sure that she frequently forgot this was a man suspected of the most serious of sins.
Raimond seemed determined to make their journey as pleasurable as possible. In Arles, he’d taken them to see the ancient Roman amphitheater and the Baths of Constantine. From Arles, they’d traveled to St Gilles, the count’s birthplace, and he’d entertained them with stories of that celebrated saint, a hermit who’d lived for years in the forest near N?mes with only a red deer for company. When the king’s hunters had pursued the hind, he’d tried to save her and had been wounded himself by a hunter’s arrow. The king had been so impressed by the recluse that he’d built a great abbey for him, named in his honor, which was now the first stop for those making the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Gilles was the patron saint of cripples, Raimond told the women, as well as the saint of lepers, beggars, and Christ’s poor. But when he added that St Gilles had never eaten the flesh of animals, consuming only vegetables and fruits, Cardinal Melior stiffened and excused himself. He later told Joanna and Berengaria that the Cathars also refused to eat meat and accused Raimond of deliberately baiting him with the story of this gentle saint. Even to Joanna, who was actively looking for reasons to find fault with Raimond, that seemed to be a stretch, and she and Berengaria agreed that they would try to keep the count and the cardinal apart whenever possible, for they had hundreds of miles still to go.
After leaving St Gilles, they stopped next at Montpelier, before continuing on to the walled town of Béziers. Although its viscount, Roger Trencavel, was not present, they were warmly welcomed by the citizens. Cardinal Melior still insisted that they limit their stay to a single night, for Béziers was said to be a haven for heretics. From Béziers, they rode west to Narbonne. When Eleanor and Berengaria had traveled from Navarre to join Richard in Sicily three years earlier, the Lady Ermengard, the Viscountess of Narbonne, had entertained them lavishly during their stay in her city, and Berengaria had been impressed by Ermengard, a woman who’d ruled without a man for more than fifty years. She was shocked now to discover that Ermengard had been deposed and forced to flee Narbonne by her own nephew, Pedro de Lara. Neither she nor Joanna was comfortable accepting the hospitality of the usurper viscount, but Pedro was insistent that they pass a few days as his guests. So was Cardinal Melior, for he wanted to meet with the Archbishop of Narbonne, and they soon found themselves settled into the riverside palace that had once been Ermengard’s.
JOANNA AND BERENGARIA HOPED to be able to depart Narbonne by the week’s end, but then Mariam suffered a mishap on an excursion with Raimond to visit the suburb across the river known as the Bourg. Joanna had declined to accompany them, then found herself watching from a palace window as they headed toward the old Roman bridge. They were back sooner than she’d expected, the women fluttering about like brightly colored butterflies and Mariam’s face white with pain as Raimond carried her into the palace and then up the stairs to the bedchamber she was sharing with Joanna. Mariam insisted they were all making much ado over nothing, but once Joanna shooed the others from the chamber, she saw that the ankle was badly swollen.