Barely one year later, the Count of Toulouse was fighting in Vasconia and got captured by Adalric, the Basque duke. Arrangements were made to set the count free, but the count made certain concessions to the Basques for his liberty. Charles was not having that. He replaced the count with his own cousin, William, and made him a margrave with say over the counts in Septimania and all the coast to the Spanish March. By 790, William, the new Count of Toulouse, was raising an army to invade Vasconia.
Leibulf raised the army of Provence for his first time at twenty-five years of age. He would support William in Vasconia. Otto, who was completely bed ridden by then, wished him well. Genevieve and Angele could only watch as he rode off with his army to join William. Among others who joined them were the counts of Bordeaux, Clermont, and Septimania. They did not exactly have an overwhelming force, but they won their battle. Adalric was exiled from the land and Vasconia was subdued. Charles was much happier with that outcome.
Leibulf came home in 791 with a surprise. He married a girl named Oda. He was twenty-six. She was eighteen, roughly Olivia’s age, or a little older, and from Nimes which was practically next door to Arles. Apparently, they had been seeing each other on and off since she turned sixteen. Genevieve thought he made those regular trips to Arles to check on his property there and was surprised. Leibulf confessed he did not tell her sooner for fear of how she might tease him.
“I never would,” Genevieve told him, but she might have. She did not hold it against him.
Leibulf brought Oda to Aix so she could meet his father. He had a bad feeling that his father was not long for this world. He was right, but first Genevieve got a letter from William.
William praised Leibulf on the battlefield, though it was brief praise, and he concluded that Genevieve must have taught him well. He said he wanted to check up on her one last time before his duties in Toulouse took all of his time and attention. He wanted to visit with Leibulf and pay his respects to Otto, but his wife took sick with the pneumonia and passed away a month ago. Charles and the family already had a new wife picked out for him, and there is no avoiding it, he said, but he insisted that first he needed time to grieve. He escaped to Orange with the excuse of closing up his old home. He planned to stay in Orange until the spring bloomed. He knew it was asking too much, that she travel in the winter, but he would really like to see her again if at all possible.
Genevieve carried the letter around for two weeks, and Otto passed away. The house mourned, and all of Provence sent their condolences. It took two more weeks before he was buried. The Archbishop of Arles did the funeral and the Bishop of Aix assisted. The days dragged on, but basically, nothing much changed. Genevieve ruled in Provence, but Leibulf was beginning to take more and more responsibility. He sat down and wrote a large bequest to Lerins Abbey in his father’s name. He thought of his sister, Olivia, and wrote a note at the bottom, And for the convent in Cannes. The support of Lerins became a regular thing for Leibulf over the years, and his wife Oda went right along with him. She dearly loved Leibulf and he loved her right back.
Genevieve was happy about that, but she wrote to William and then packed her bag. She said she just wanted to get away for a bit, and Leibulf did not blame her. Captain Hector, now with some gray hair, took the duty upon himself to escort the Margravine with thirty soldiers to Orange where they arrived on the sixth of March. William greeted Genevieve warmly, and they spent two weeks together. They hugged and cried, and after two weeks, true to his word, on the spring equinox William reluctantly returned to Toulouse to marry.
Genevieve explained to Captain Hector. “He is my age, thirty-seven, soon to be thirty-eight. You are what, forty-eight?”
“About that.”
“For some reason William and I understand each other in ways it is hard to explain. Anyway, the loss of his wife, Cunegonde, was very hard for him. I think he is ready now to remarry. I only wish him well.”
“And what of you?”
Genevieve paused to think before she spoke, an unusual thing for her, but a habit she was developing as she aged. “The loss of Otto is hard, but I think in part it is because I spent so much time focusing on him over these last few years, especially when he got to where he could hardly get out of bed. I knew—we all knew it was only a matter of time, but it still came as a shock when it happened. I grieve for Otto. We had twenty good years together, but for me… Now, I don’t know what to do with myself. Now, I am left at a complete loss. Poor Leibulf has had to take over much of the running of the county since more and more of my time got spent on my husband. Poor Leibulf got the job whether he was ready for it or not. But for me, I don’t know. I imagine I will end up in some convent and fade away. Maybe I will go to be with Olivia.”
“Not so,” Hector responded. “I feel you still have much to do, and I felt that way since before I knew about your other lives and all your little ones that follow you around like lost puppies. The people of Provence could not love you more if you were their queen. They will grieve terribly when you fade away.”
“And you?”
This time, Captain Hector paused before answering. “I have loved you since the first moment I saw you. I will not deny that.” He stiffened his face and rode with his eyes straight ahead, not willing to look at her.
Genevieve chose not to respond to that. She knew it was so, but Hector was married and had five children, the eldest of which was a newly appointed member of the guard. She would never go there and spoke again only after a time of silence.
“Well,” she said. “William has moved on, and I have no doubt he will do great things under Charles’ son, Louis. He can be Louis’ Uncle Bernard and keep him pointed in the right direction. And I will go home and help Leibulf if he needs help, and encourage Oda to always love her husband, and find a suitable husband, eventually, for Angele, and let that be the end to it.”
Of course, that was not the end to it. Six weeks later, the midwife confirmed that she was pregnant. Leibulf kindly always accepted the child as his father Otto’s child, even if that meant Genevieve had the first eleven-month pregnancy in history. Leibulf would not hear otherwise, and Oda went right along with him. In some sense, Leibulf and Oda adopted the baby, and all the more as Genevieve aged and it looked like Leibulf and Oda would not have any children of their own.
Angele did not care about any of that. She was twelve and enamored with the whole idea of a baby.
Genevieve had a son, Guerin, a week before Christmas. She never wrote to William to tell him, though he eventually figured it out. Charles never questioned her. When he came through to confirm Leibulf in the position of Margrave of Provence, he said he was glad for her, though she complained that she was too old to have a baby. All the same, he was glad she had a son, and he played with the baby like a doting father. He never asked who the father might be, and she never told him.
Storyteller Tales & Thoughts 