by Anne O'Brien
As quickly as it had appeared, his anger faded. The satisfaction drained from his face, leaving it set in strained lines as his thoughts turned inward.
‘Did you fight well, my lord?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I did.’ Eyes flashing back to mine, surprise gave him a tremulous smile. ‘It was so simple. A sword was thrust in my hand and I fought.’
‘And de Lezay?’
Louis blinked at me. ‘He was guilty. I chopped off his hands. The punishment for theft, you see.’ He looked down at his own, turning them over, as if he would see blood on them. I tried not to shudder at the thought of those palms so recently framing my face. ‘I ordered my men to hold him—arms outstretched. I lifted my sword and I struck …’ Louis looked as shocked as I. ‘I’ve never spilt blood before.’ He swallowed heavily. ‘But I did what was expected of me—I punished a disobedient vassal. The rest will toe the line now. My father will be proud of me.’ Again he searched my face as if the answer there was all-important. ‘Are you proud of me, Eleanor? Do you approve? I reclaimed your castle. Your falcons …’
I saw my chance since my praise mattered so much to him.
‘More proud than you could ever imagine,’ I soothed. ‘How could a wife not be proud of the husband who won back her lands and her possessions? And her pride. You’ll make a magnificent king, Louis—when the time comes, of course.’
‘I shall!’
He was flushed, his eyes bright. Raising a hand, I touched his cheek with my fingertips. Followed by my lips. His skin was hot, the scent pungent of man and horse and outdoor living. A heady mixture. Even the pallor of religious life had been overlaid by the effects of the sun. I transferred my lips to his mouth in experimentation, a soft, virginal kiss.
With a grunt of pleasure, Louis banded his arms around me, pulling me hard against him, without thought for the sweat and dust and the effect of their proximity to my silks. His blood ran as hot as his skin—I could all but feel it as he trembled against me. His kisses rained down on my face—lips, cheeks, temple—undoubtedly extravagant but disappointingly without finesse.
‘I want you, Eleanor,’ he croaked. ‘I love you.’
And he was pushing me back onto my bed, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste, fumbling with the lacings of his chausses as he climbed beside me.
‘Wait, Louis …’ I tried.
But already he was dragging aside my robe and shift, parting my thighs with his knee, spreading himself over me with clumsy haste. At least he was erect, I observed as if I were not truly involved in this event, but aware of the hardness of him against my belly. Hopefully this time it would happen … A heave, a thrust, and he was inside me. I caught my breath at the dry pain that seemed to tear apart my body but Louis, his face buried between the pillows and my neck, oblivious to my own responses or lack of them, continued to thrust in increasing urgency to end in a final, tense, shudder and groan.
And that was it. All over before I had concentrated my mind to it, Louis spread-eagled still, heavy on my body, gasping for breath like a floundering plaice cast up on the fish dock at Bordeaux—an unfortunate thought in the circumstances—the heat of him all but suffocating me. Crushed and uncomfortable, I wriggled beneath him.
‘Forgive me …’ Immediately Louis propped himself on his elbows and looked down at me, eyes feverish, a little diffident as the extreme energy drained from his face to leave it lax, as if his features were blurred. ‘Dear, beautiful Eleanor. Now you are my wife.’ His mouth on mine was dry-lipped and tender. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘I’ll never hurt you, Eleanor.’ He searched my face. ‘Are you sure? You’re very quiet.’
I was very sore. I could not lie again but, moved by a surprising rush of tenderness, I pushed my fingers through his sweat-slicked hair. It seemed to reassure him.
‘You fired my blood. I pray God will forgive me if I took you too forcefully. I must go and order a Mass—for my safe return and the health of my lovely wife. I’ll pray for an heir.’ His face broke into a radiant smile. ‘Do you think you have conceived?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘My father will be doubly proud if you already carry my child when we return to Paris. Will you kneel beside me and pray for a son of our begetting?’
‘Yes. I’ll pray with you.’
‘God’s wounds! I feel like shouting our good fortune from the roof of the palace.’
‘I hope you won’t,’ I replied dryly. Everyone would wonder why it had taken us so long to get to this point. But Louis was no longer there to listen. With a bound he was gone from the bed, straightening his clothing, making for the door.
Leaving me to lie on the disordered linens, and consider—was this what all the fuss was about? I could not believe it. A discomfort, a sharp pain—nothing to write eloquent verse about. I had felt no pleasure in the deed. All rather messy and undignified, I decided, conscious of the slick stickiness between my thighs. Your innards will become as liquid. Your belly as the sweetest honey, your skin as hot silk. My nurse had had a way with words but not, it seemed, with truth. My muscles had tightened, clenched, against what had seemed a hostile invasion rather than a longed-for consummation. Giving pleasure to a man was one thing, but should I not receive pleasure too? Was the fault mine or that of Louis? He seemed pleased enough. It had all been rather—brief! And I thought his desire for an heir took precedence over his enjoyment with me, despite his sensitivity in asking if I had survived the experience.
Did I think I had fallen for a child? I buried my face in the pillow. Was he so untutored to think I would know so soon? The door opened and I rolled onto my back. Since it was Aelith who approached the bed with a smug smile, I pushed myself up, pulling down my shift and clasping my knees as I met her avid expression.
‘Well! The blood-letting aroused him, I see. Was he a good lover?’
‘Too quick to tell,’ I admitted ungraciously.
‘Was it as magnificent as the troubadours say? I’d arrange another expedition if I were you.’
‘Perhaps.’ I forced a smile. I’d not tell her of all my misgivings. I was not sure of them myself. Louis had been so thoughtful, and yet. ‘At least I am now his wife in the eyes of God and man.’
‘And in need of a bath!’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Horse and sweat!’ She laughed. ‘So he was successful.’
‘Yes. Order some hot water for me—and then I must pray with Louis for an heir. Do you know … he thanked me as if I had bestowed a miracle on him.’
‘And so you had. Not everyone beds a princess of Aquitaine! Did you enjoy it?’ she asked.
‘Not greatly.’ I saw her disappointment as I began to loosen my hair from its night braid and was sorry for my brusqueness. ‘It’s early days, Aeli. We need to grow to know each other, I expect.’
It was true, after all. We had made a start. I could teach him more of the intimate pleasures of the bed, to his and my benefit. Once we had settled into our accommodation in Paris, life would become simpler. Louis would not feel so pressured by constraints of time and those around him. I would live with him, replacing Suger’s voice with mine. I would teach him what he needed to know about me and the vast lands he had taken on.
‘Do you know what he did?’ I found myself asking her. It had preyed on my mind through all that had followed Louis’s blurted confession. ‘He chopped off de Lezay’s hands.’
Aelith’s lips made a soundless ‘Oh’.
‘Louis said it was a just punishment for a thief.’
‘Our father spilt enough blood in his time,’ Aelith said consideringly.
‘I did not think our father was so.so vindictive.’
‘It’s nothing out of the way, as I see it,’ Aelith concluded, as if it did not merit further discussion. ‘De Lezay was an arrogant fool.’ She carried my ruined shift to cast it on the bed. ‘I see we have the proof at last. And not before time.’ She had lifted the bed linens, stained with Louis’s sweat and semen and my blo
od. ‘What shall I do with them?’
I pushed aside the persistent scrape of concern that Louis could be unpredictable in his response to threats or danger, and smiled with not a little malice.
‘Send them to Abbot Suger, of course. I trust he’ll be satisfied. You can tell the Abbot to parcel up the sheets and send them to Fat Louis. His prayers have been answered.’
Fat Louis was never to receive the happy news of his son’s consummation of our marriage. Next morning when we were on our way to Paris before the sun had risen, when we had travelled no longer than one hour, a hard-riding messenger, his fleurs de lys all but obliterated by dust, intercepted us. He flung himself at Louis’s feet.
‘Your Majesty!’
Which was enough to tell us all the news. The courier gasped it out. Louis the Sixth, Fat Louis, was dead.
Louis wept into his hands. And when he finally raised his head and turned his face towards Paris, his blue eyes held the panicked fear of an animal caught in a snare. It was in my heart to feel pity for him, but not much. Why would he not want to be King of France? There had been no close affection between father and son as far as I could tell.
I did not weep for a man I did not know. Instead I appraised my new horizons.
I was Queen of France.
CHAPTER FOUR
I HAD travelled all my life. We in Aquitaine were an itinerant restless court, winter and summer alike, journeying from one end of our domains to the other. Since my father insisted that I travel with him, I had stayed in every variety of accommodation, from castle to hunting lodge, from palace to northern manor to villa in the south. From campaigning tent to luxurious pavilion, in Limoges and Blaye, Melle and Beyonne. I knew gardens and tiled fountains, light, airy rooms in summer, satisfying heat in winter.
Nothing could have prepared me for my new home in Paris that Louis brought me to with such pride. Louis might appreciate his inheritance, I did not. Grim and decaying, the Cité palace seemed nothing to me but a pile of stones, a frowning bleak tower standing on a drear island in the centre of a sluggishly running river. The Ile de la Cité, as I learned to call it, connected to the two banks by stone bridges.
A place of great safety, Louis enthused, protecting us from our enemies.
A prison cut off from the world, I thought. Cold, uncivilised, unwelcoming.
Even before I set eyes on the palace, my heart sank, for Paris, the world outside my new home, stank. Unpaved streets, gutters running with the effluent of two hundred thousand souls who clustered along the River Seine, Paris squatted in a thick cloud of noxious stench. Black flies swarmed in the fetid air. The welcome of our entourage did nothing to detract from the stink. More likely, I decided sourly, the mass of cheering hordes probably increased it, but I acknowledged the welcome. I knew what was expected of me, their new queen.
But my spirits fell to the level of my inadequate footwear as Louis escorted me through the corridors and endless chambers of my new home. I walked at his side in horrified silence. I shivered. Even in the heat of summer it was so cold, so bone-chillingly damp. And dark. The only light to enter was through the narrowest of arrow slits, thus casting every room into depressing gloom. As for the draughts. Where the air came from, I could not fathom, but my veils rippled with the constant movement of chilly air. I wished I had one of my fur mantles with me.
‘The windows have no shutters!’ Aelith muttered from behind me. ‘How do we keep warm here?’
‘There!’ Louis gestured, hearing her complaint. He pointed to two charcoal braziers that stood in the small antechamber we were passing through. ‘I think they give enough heat.’
‘And enough fumes to choke us!’ I replied as the smoke suddenly billowed and caught in my throat. ‘How do you warm the larger rooms? The Great Hall?’
‘A central fire.’
‘And the smoke?’
‘Through a hole in the roof.’ He sounded mildly amused, as if I were a fool not to know.
Letting in the wind and the rain too, I had no doubt, as well as the occasional exploratory squirrel or unfortunate bird. In Aquitaine we had long moved past such basic amenities, borrowing what we could learn from the old villas of Ancient Rome with their open courtyards, hypocausts and drainage channels. I did not speak my dismay, I could not. Unnervingly I could feel Louis’s eyes on me as he smiled and nodded, as if he might stoke my tepid enthusiasm from spark to flame. It was a lost cause, and since I could think of nothing complimentary to say I said nothing but stood in shocked, shivering silence.
‘And we are to live here?’ Aelith marvelled as Louis stepped aside to speak with a servant who approached with a message. ‘Do we die of the ague?’
‘It seems that we do. And probably will.’ My heart was as coldly heavy as the stone floor beneath my feet.
‘I wish we were back at Ombrières!’
So did I.
Perhaps my own accommodations, prepared and decorated with the new bride in mind, as surely they must have been, would be more comfortable. Momentarily I closed my eyes as the shadowy form of a rat sped along the base of the wall, claws tapping against the stone, to disappear behind a poor excuse for a wall hanging that did nothing to enhance the chamber. A woodland scene, I surmised, catching the odd shape of wings and the gleam of stitched eyes, except that the layer of soot was so thick it could have been the black depths of Hell. The rat retraced its scurrying steps, and I wished the livestock to be confined to the stitchery.
When the rat—or perhaps there were many—reappeared to gallop once more in its original direction, I requested that Louis show me to my private chambers immediately, but he had other ideas. Taking my arm in a gentle hold, he detached me from my women and guided me through a doorway, down a long, dark corridor and knocked on the door at the end.
‘What is this?’ I whispered since he did not explain. I felt a need to whisper as the stone pressed down on us. It was like being in a coffin.
‘Dear Eleanor.’ Louis enclosed my hand within his. ‘My mother has asked to meet with you.’
It was the only warning I received. I had not known that the Dowager Queen even resided in this palace. The door was opened by an unobtrusive servant into an audience chamber, the walls bare and shining with damp, the furnishings few and unremarkable. Except for one attendant woman, Louis’s mother sat alone, waiting. Hands clasped loosely on her lap, she gave no sign of acknowledging our entrance. The emotion in that small room was chilling: my flesh crept with it.
‘Madam.’ Louis left my side to approach her.
The Dowager Queen of France raised her head and looked not at her son but at me. It was an unambiguous stare, and I swallowed at what I read there, my throat suddenly dry. I had not expected this. I was instantly on guard.
Louis bowed, the respectful son, took his mother’s hand and saluted her fingers. ‘I regret your loss, madam.’
The Dowager Queen bowed her head in cold acknowledgement. I thought her loss was not as great as her son might fear. There was an air of fierce composure about her. Her features were small and pinched but from a lifetime of dissatisfaction rather than from present grief. The lines between nose and mouth had not been engraved in a matter of weeks.
Adelaide de Maurienne. Queen of France. Whose position I had just usurped.
She was a pious woman from the presence of a prie-dieu, numerous crucifixes and books of religious content and a rosary to hand on the coffer at her side. Clad in black from her veils to her feet, she all but merged with the shadows. I sensed she had been invisible for most of her life as the neglected wife of Fat Louis.
‘My son. At last.’ She did not immediately rise to her feet, even though her King and Queen had entered the room.
‘Madam,’ Louis urged with a not-so-subtle tug on her hand. ‘I would present my wife. Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. Now Queen of France.’
Without haste—an insult in itself to my mind—Dowager Queen Adelaide stood, her hand clamped on her son’s wrist, and managed a curt inclination o
f her head rather than the curtsey she should have afforded my rank. The welcome from Louis’s mother was as grim as the stench of mould from the wetly gleaming walls. Did she think to intimidate me, a daughter of Aquitaine? I knew my worth. And I knew my power as Louis’s wife. With a genuflection as conspicuous as her lack, I sank into a deep curtsey. My face, I made sure, was full of remorse.
‘Madam, I trust your faith gives you consolation. If I can do anything to alleviate your grief during your visit to the Cité palace, you have only to ask. Do you stay long?’ A neat little challenge to her presence, deliberately spoken in my own language.
Adelaide looked to Louis for clarification. When he could not, I repeated my greeting in Latin. Adelaide flushed at the implication that the days of her occupation of these rooms might be numbered. Her spine became rigid.
‘You do not have a facility with the langue d’oeil?’ she asked in that language.
‘I do,’ I replied smoothly. I understood her perfectly well. I had made some progress on my journey to Paris. ‘But I prefer the langue d’oc.’
‘Here we speak the langue d’oeil.’
Sensing the imminent clash of wills, Louis eyed his mother cautiously. ‘We will, madam, converse together in Latin.’
Adelaide inhaled. ‘As you wish, my son.’ And then to me, sliding into rapid Latin. ‘My advice is to learn our language. As a mark of courtesy to your husband and your new country.’
‘If I deem it necessary, I will, madam,’ I responded promptly, switching to perfect Latin. Satisfied with the temporary outcome, my answering smile was bright and my Latin excellent. ‘I have great skill with languages.’
The Dowager Queen allowed her pale eyes to travel over my figure, taking in every aspect of my clothes and appearance. For a brief moment I wished I was not so travel-stained but I raised my chin. I was not answerable to this woman for what I wore. And I deliberately caught her eye.
There! I had not been mistaken. Loathing. A rampant hatred. The depth of it startled me. I had never experienced such abhorrence—one did not exhibit such flagrant emotion towards the Duchess of Aquitaine—but it was impossible to mistake it. Adelaide’s nostrils flared, her lips narrowed into a curl of disdain. The glitter in her eye was an acceptance of my challenge, a return of my gauntlet to signal the onset of warfare between us.
