Devil's Consort

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘And tonight? Will you come to me tonight?’

  ‘No. You must understand, Eleanor. It is no reflection of my deep affection and respect for you, but today is Friday.’ He was very serious, as if explaining to a child.

  ‘And you are not permitted to enjoy intimate relations on a Friday.’ My tolerance was fraying rapidly at the edges, like an old, much-worn girdle.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But … you need an heir.’

  ‘As I know. You did not to conceive from our last coupling?’ From our only coupling! And I did not yet know the outcome of Louis’s virility. ‘If you did,’ Louis continued, not waiting for a reply, ‘there’s no need for me to demand intimate relations with you more frequently than seems appropriate.’

  Appropriate. Frustration built within me, stone upon stone. I fixed my eyes on his. This was no time for shyness. ‘Do you not think, Louis, that sharing my bed could bring pleasure—to both of us?’

  A little frown creased his brow, although he lifted my fingers to his lips. ‘But that is forbidden. It is sinful, Eleanor. The Scriptures teach that the purpose of a man knowing a woman is for the procreation of children, and for no other reason.’

  ‘But God made us in his image, to experience physical satisfaction—together.’

  ‘Of course—but within the bounds of Holy Scripture.’

  Louis looked at me quizzically, as if amazed that I should not understand this. He was so gentle, so considerate, his certainty so absolute, that I knew I was right to be afraid as I saw my future in his calm explanation. How could any woman—even I—compete with God and the demands of Holy Mother Church for his attentions?

  ‘God determines the course of my life, although I will always be concerned for your happiness. I’ll not neglect you, Eleanor—but you must understand that I dedicate my life to God.’

  ‘Will you at least eat with me? Tonight, in my chamber. Privately. Just the two of us so that we might …’ I shrugged helplessly, clutching at a passing straw. If he would at least spend time with me, I might win him over to seeing that intimacy need not be sinful.

  ‘No. I cannot. On Fridays I fast—on bread and water. It is a day of penitence for our sins.’ He stood, releasing my hands. ‘And now you must go. I keep vigil every day, when royal duties permit, between Prime and Vespers. I must pray for my mortal soul. For my country. And I will pray for you too, dear Eleanor.’ Hand firmly at my waist, he was almost pushing me from the cell.

  ‘When will I see you again?’

  ‘When my time permits.’

  His smile held the sweetness of honey, the emptiness of a stone tomb. Without a second look, Louis walked away from me, back towards the body of the church and the brotherhood of monks, not caring whether I followed or not.

  ‘Louis …’

  He did not turn his head.

  ‘Louis!’ This time I did not moderate my voice.

  And this time Louis turned his face, even at a distance a study in reproach. ‘You must not shout, Eleanor. Not in church. It is not respectful to God.’

  Which left me with nothing much to say. Louis left me standing there, my blood colder than the stone that surrounded me. Isolated. Adrift. Uncertain as the truth hit me. Here I was no longer Duchess of Aquitaine, a ruler with power in her hands, merely a woman with no place but as wife to King Louis.

  But Louis did not want to be King. Nor did he want me as his wife.

  I was thoughtful on my return, seeking firm footing in the swamp that had suddenly spread itself around my feet, threatening to suck me down. How easy it would be to wallow in misery. Instead, I summoned my women. Quiet, pretty Mamille. Florine and Torqueri, sharp and sly, lovers of gossip. Flirtatious Faydide. Solemn, thoughtful Sybille, Countess of Flanders. There was no laughter here. They were as unsettled as I. Seeing their doleful faces as they huddled in their furs made me decisive. There were changes to be made.

  ‘Come and walk with me,’ I invited Aelith. ‘And you too, Sybille. Tell me what you think of our new home.’

  ‘You don’t need me to tell you.’ Aelith grimaced at the encrusted muck from the brazier that our slippers and skirts spread across the floor.

  ‘Pull it all down and start again!’ Sybille stated with unusual candour.

  I laughed, my spirits lifting in their company. ‘Our thoughts run together.’

  At the end of an hour I sent for parchment, pen and ink. The result was a list, not long but with consequences. I set it aside until Louis could satisfy God and visit his wife.

  The changes I foresaw would not be only in my living arrangements.

  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 of 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.

  And the prize for the victor?

  Louis, of course.

  Abbot Suger’s warning had arisen from political necessity, as he saw it. He would control Louis’s ruling of France and thwart me if I demanded a voice. Here before me was quite a different level of opposition: vindictive jealousy, entirely personal, and perhaps all the more dangerous for it. Adelaide would control the heart and soul of her son.

  And the object of so much desire to control and manage? I glanced at him. Did Louis see this potential battle of wills between the two women in his life? Would he stand up for me against Queen Adelaide if it ever became necessary? Was he even aware of the tone of our exchange?

  Of course he was not. Louis was irritatingly occupied elsewhere, astonishingly oblivious, leafing through the pages of one of his mother’s devotional missals. So be it. I must rely on myself in a conflict that Adelaide must not win. I was not raised to bow before an inferior force.

  Adelaide deliberately turned her shoulder to me and addressed Louis. ‘We shall meet again at supper, my son—a banquet has been prepared to mark your return and your marriage.’ She fixed him with the same formidable stare as she must have done at any time over the seventeen years of Louis’s life. ‘You will be there, of course. There must be no excuses.’

  A strange comment, one that caught my attention but then slid away as Louis bowed and ushered me rapidly from the room, striding away purposefully.

  ‘Will you show me my own rooms?’ I asked, trying to keep up and my skirts from contact with the walls, watching my footsteps in the gloom.

  Suddenly Louis was in a hurry. ‘Yes.’ He did not slow his pace. There was an urgency about him.

  ‘Where are your own chambers?’ I asked.

  ‘Through there.’ He waved vaguely towards a distant door before ushering me into my suite of rooms. ‘There!’ A light kiss on my cheek, his words delivered in a rush. ‘If anything is not to your taste, you must tell me. This is now your home. I want you to be as comfortable here as you were in your own lands in the south.’

  Looking around the stark rooms, their air of abandonment, I doubted it.

  But before I could reply, Louis had gone and closed the door behind him. I sat on the bed, sneezing as the mildew from the hangings released its unpleasant odour. Whatever was pulling at him was far more important than his stay
ing with me. But at least now that we were here, in Paris at last, even in the face of the Dowager Queen’s disapproval—which I intended to ignore—we could start to make some sort of life together.

  * * *

  By the end of that day I was more exhausted than if I had—in my imagination since I had no experience of it—been on a military campaign. Moreover, it proved to be an education, a squint into what was to be my future. How little of my life I had lived so far—a mere fifteen years—and how much still stretched before me with all its promise and excitement. The promise was smothered by my experience of that day, the excitement all but snuffed out. What I had seen so far in the palace, the lack of any refinement or luxury, was merely replicated in the royal apartments. The vast bed with its moth-eaten hangings and damp linens made me shudder. My women for once were smitten into silence.

  ‘By the Virgin!’ Except for Aelith.

  And then the ceremonial feast to acknowledge the new King and Queen.

  Louis presided. Why had his mother found the need to insist? He led me to the dais and presented me to my new subjects. I felt their interested gaze, heard the whispered comment, particularly of the women of the court who were so far behind the fashions of the day as to appear ridiculously outré. Louis attracted no such attention. He looked no better than a well-to-do merchant in a plain tunic and hose. His chamberlain was better garbed. How could he demand their respect as King when dressed little better than a servant? I determined to take him in hand. But for tonight I settled myself to be celebrated and entertained.

  I did not expect to be astonished: to be so rudely awakened into the reality of the Frankish court. But I was.

  Where was the procession of courses at the royal feast? The peppered peacocks, the candied fruits, the rice cooked with milk of almond and powdered cinnamon? The lobsters fried with egg? There was no shortage of food, for sure. Meat upon meat upon meat—venison and wild boar, game birds aplenty—but so coarse and unflavoured. Fish appeared—and languished on its platter. It was not popular. No delicacies of tarts or junkets or fritters. No leaves or salads. Vegetables abounded—particularly onions and garlic—a matter for much regret—stewed or pounded without finesse into an unrecognisable mush.