Devil's Consort

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Yes.’ A smile, swiftly followed by a little frown. ‘I recall de Lezay …’

  ‘It was a victory,’ I broke in, to obliterate his memory of de Lezay’s severed hands.

  ‘Yes. A victory.’ Still he was troubled.

  ‘To impose your authority on an impudent vassal who had stolen what was mine.’

  ‘I recall. I had God’s protection.’ Smiling again, Louis rolled to prop his head on his hand and look at me. ‘What of it?’ His eyes shone with benign contentment, and I leapt in before he could think of another prayer to offer. ‘It’s Toulouse. I want you to get back Toulouse for me.’

  ‘Toulouse?’ A large kingdom abutting Aquitaine to the south-east, stretching almost to the Mediterranean. Louis looked quizzical. ‘Do you have a claim on it?’

  ‘Certainly I do. My grandmother Philippa was Countess of Toulouse in her own right. It was snatched from her when my grandfather was too old and ill to fight to retain it for her. The present ruler, Count Alfonso, has no right of blood, only the right of power,’ I explained simply. ‘It should not be. It should be mine.’ Which was not untrue, even though Toulouse had been lost to us for the past twenty years. But here was a circumstance that might just play into my hands. ‘Now that I have a powerful husband of my own …’

  I left the words hanging, for Louis to snatch up. Was this not what I had always wanted? A strong right hand to hold my lands? So why not get back what had been stolen from me? And if success in battle should strengthen Louis’s manhood. So many possibilities here. I let the idea settle in the still room as I reached and handed Louis a cup of spiced wine from the nightstand.

  ‘Think about it,’ I urged as he sipped, faint colour tinging his cheeks, a glow that had nothing to do with the heady spices. ‘It would extend your lands, as well as enhancing your prestige if you launched an assault and crushed the man who dared to steal what is rightfully mine.’ I cupped his cheek with my palm so that he focused on my eyes so close to his. My unbound hair curled with sensual effect onto his chest, his shoulder. ‘I would be so proud of you, Louis, if you could renew my claim to Toulouse and restore it to me—to us …’

  I had planted the seed. I could see it grow in his face, in his eyes. Or it was like I had lit a little flame that bloomed and consumed. Louis drank deep as the vision of fame and glory struck home.

  ‘What a reputation you will build for yourself.’ I added an extra layer. ‘No lord will dare to threaten you.’

  ‘True …’

  ‘And you will have all my admiration …’

  ‘Do you mean it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Louis took another gulp, wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Then I will. Toulouse will be yours again.’

  Taking the cup from him, setting it aside, I kissed him on the mouth. ‘My powerful husband. My victorious lord. I can see it now, the point of your sword at Count Alfonso’s throat so that he has no choice but to hand Toulouse back …’

  His lips warmed beneath mine. His hands clasped my shoulders with surprising strength. His erection surged and stiffened against my thigh.

  ‘Louis …’ I sighed against his mouth.

  God was pleased to allow him to complete the deed. Briefly, in truth, but not before Louis had spent the royal seed in me. I felt nothing. How could I, when Louis’s interest was fast and tepid at best? My body remained unresponsive beyond the success at getting him to this point. Through it all I prayed that my womb would quicken.

  ‘Thank you, Eleanor.’

  Louis fell asleep.

  By the Virgin, Dangerosa! Did you risk your reputation for this?

  CHAPTER SIX

  LOUIS acted. The extent of his enthusiasm astonished me as much as it horrified his mother and drove his royal counsellor into a fury. I had not thought he would take my advice so much to heart, or quite so precipitately. I had thought it would take more than one night in my bed to stir him to open hostility against Toulouse, but Louis leapt on the excuse for invasion as a hungry cat leapt on a bird that threatened to escape. The voices raised against such a project were loud and vociferous but Louis was deaf to them all.

  ‘Why in the blessed name of God make an enemy of the Count of Toulouse?’ Abbot Suger, excruciatingly civil but furious that Louis had made his decision without once consulting him, questioned both the cost and the ultimate value to France.

  ‘Because he has no claim to it,’ Louis stated. ‘Toulouse is Eleanor’s.’

  ‘You have been ill-advised.’ Suger’s flat stare encompassed me before returning to Louis. ‘Are you not aware that your vassals will not support you, sire? They’ll refuse to supply you with knights. Not one of them wants an angry neighbour on his doorstep. We have no argument with Toulouse.’

  ‘I will defeat Count Alfonso, my lord Abbot. He will no longer be a neighbour and his anger will be a thing of no importance.’

  Suger lifted his hands helplessly. ‘I pray God thinks you worthy of victory, sire.’

  ‘I will ask Him. He’ll not refuse me.’

  And Adelaide? Her civility was negligible. ‘You will not go, my son.’

  A mistake. I saw Louis’s nostrils narrow.

  ‘I will, madam.’

  ‘Louis! You will listen to me, even if you refuse to heed Abbot Suger.’

  Ha! Adelaide still had not learned. Louis listened to me, and we set out for Poitiers together, where I prepared to stay as Louis gathered his troops. I wished with all my heart to travel farther south with him, into the centre of my own lands, and the temptation to do so stirred my blood from its northern languor—but a miracle had happened. That one night when I had painted for Louis the glory of his victory over Toulouse, his ownership of me, however brief and perfunctory, had been effective. My courses had stopped and nausea struck in the morning hours.

  Praise the Virgin! I would carry an heir for France and for Aquitaine.

  My delight superseded my wretched mornings when my belly heaved and the thought of food made me retch. Louis proved to be mildly sympathetic but more taken up with the magnificence of his own achievement. I tried not to fall prey to cynicism. The heir would enhance my importance and win over those of Louis’s court who still saw me as an undesirable southern influence in France. No one would dare to slight me when I bore the King a son.

  Even Abbot Bernard would be forced to temper his denunciations.

  But for now Louis was intent on conquest in my name. Emerging from my chamber, a linen cloth pressed to my lips, I listened to his enthusiastic explanation that they would take Toulouse by surprise and starve the city into submission. Even through my misery I noted that for a siege Louis employed few siege engines. Neither was Louis’s army particularly impressive in size. Was the whole operation too small, too ill-prepared? Yet Louis was so confident that I too saw no impediment to his success. If Count Alfonso did not expect the descent of an armed force, he would be unprepared and the campaign brought to a swift end. Louis would return to me, full of courage and male pride. Perhaps his rejoicing would take him from the long hours on his knees.

  ‘I will return and lay Toulouse at your feet,’ he promised. ‘I’ll drag Alfonso to his knees to ask your forgiveness.’

  I kissed Louis farewell and retired to vomit into a basin.

  How many days before Louis returned. Two weeks? Three? We saw the cloud of dust from Poitiers and knew there had been no effective siege. We knew the outcome anyway, long before I saw Louis’s crestfallen face. Rumour travelled faster than the Capetian troops. Count Alfonso had been warned and waiting for him. Formidable defences, banks and ditches and wooden palisades, sufficient to repel Louis’s meagre army, had been hastily thrown up.

  And my noble, all-powerful, ambitious King of France, drunk on pride and certain victory? Louis did not even stay to make a token attack but turned on his heel and retraced every inch back to Poitiers without one blow being struck, whilst in Toulouse Alfonso thumbed his nose from the castle walls, catcalls screeching the derision of the
Toulousians, the soldiers’ gestures obscene and graphic.

  Alfonso could not believe his luck.

  I despaired.

  Louis begged God’s forgiveness for the unspecified sin that kept him from victory.

  A humiliating disaster all round.

  I did not use such words to Louis, although it was in my mind to blame him. Where else to lay the faults of lack of preparation, even of abject cowardice, in making no show of force?

  ‘I failed to take Toulouse,’ was all he said. The misery of failure sat on his shoulders as surly a thunder cloud. The chapel at Poitiers saw more of him than I did.

  After a gloomy progress through my domains, we returned to Paris where the reaction of Abbot Suger and the Dowager Queen would await us. With one look at Louis’s doleful expression, Suger desisted, doing nothing more than frown sternly at both of us, as if we were errant children, then unbending enough to take Louis’s arm in a fatherly manner with a sigh. No point, I suppose, in ringing a peal over his head so long after the event.

  Adelaide would have something to say about it, she would not hold back. Nothing would keep her silent when she had been proved right. I steeled myself. But her apartments were empty and a message had arrived for Louis during our absence. Adelaide had gone to her dower lands in Compiègne where her eye had fallen—with astonishing speed—on an obscure lord of the de Montmorency family who was unwed. Adelaide expressed the intention of marrying the lord and not returning to court. Poor man. Louis appeared to have little interest in it. It astonished me that the Dowager Queen could accept a return to comparative insignificance but perhaps it was in her nature to keep house in a distant keep where she could concentrate on God and her stitching. Obscurity would suit her very well.

  It would not suit me.

  So we were returned to Paris, Louis’s reputation smeared, the weight of Abbot Suger’s disapproval heavy, and perversely I missed Adelaide, her acerbic wit and the sharp cut and thrust that had become the essence of all our dealings. Conversation with Louis was as dull as boiled mutton pudding.

  At least the child grew and thrived in my belly. It was my only consolation.

  Adelaide’s departure had its consequence. Returned to my rooms, I set my women to unpacking my travelling chests since Aelith, who would normally have supervised such a mundane matter, had expressed a desire to remain behind in Poitou. There was the faintest scratch at the doorpost. I turned to find the dark-clad figure of a woman, a servant from her garments, watching me.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You do not recognise me, lady.’

  ‘Should I?’ I was out of sorts and missed Aelith’s easy company. My nausea had settled but I had found the long journey in the lurch and sway of the litter more than exhausting. Louis had been no company.

  ‘I am Agnes,’ she replied with a quiet assurance surprising in one of her status. ‘I was tirewoman to Queen Adelaide.’

  I recalled her, Adelaide’s shadow, silent and unobtrusive as she fetched and carried for her royal mistress. She was short and slight, fine boned, her hair covered by a wimple, her figure concealed in dark wool, a woman, I decided, who would pass unseen through life. I could not understand why she had come to me.

  ‘Why did you not accompany Queen Adelaide to Compiègne and her new life?’

  ‘I do not wish to retire, lady. I have no desire to disappear into the depths of the country.’

  ‘Did she allow you to stay?’ My interest was piqued.

  ‘I did not give her the choice, lady. It was not my wish to go and so I refused.’

  I looked at her sharply, reconsidering. Behind the unassuming exterior of this woman of indeterminate age was a remarkable composure.

  ‘And so?’ I let my cloak slip from my shoulders. Agnes stepped neatly forward to retrieve it before it reached the floor. Impressive! ‘What is your wish?’

  ‘I wish to offer my services to you, lady.’

  ‘I have enough women to wait on me.’ I indicated the women from noble families who made up my household, their sole existence to meet my desires.

  ‘To wait on you, yes. But you need me, lady.’ She placed the fur on the bed, brushing down the soft pelt with her hand.

  ‘I don’t think I do.’ I yawned. Oh, I was tired.

  ‘You need me to help you survive at this court.’

  What a strange thing to say. I did not think I had any such need. What could a servant offer me? I raised my brows in enquiry.

  ‘How many friends do you have, lady?’ the tirewoman asked.

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘I think you have none. Which of these women would tell you the truth?’

  I considered. She had a point. They would tell me what I wished to know.

  ‘My sister would …’

  ‘Your sister is in Poitou, lady. I would be your friend,’ Agnes stated. ‘I would be your eyes and ears. And I would tell you the truth. To know the truth is strength.’

  ‘Why would you do this?’

  She gave no reply. Her eyes were dark and direct as she allowed me to make my own judgement. Truth? Truth was a valuable commodity, not to be sneezed at. I walked across the room, singling out Florine, whose ear for gossip was keen.

  ‘Florine …’

  ‘Yes, lady?’ Looking up from her task of shaking out my robes from the chest, her face was bright.

  ‘What is the court saying about Toulouse?’

  The change was imperceptible. A tightening of a muscle here, a flicker of eyelid there. Her hands stilled on the silk sleeves she had just lifted from a coffer.

  ‘That it was unfortunate that Count Alfonso was warned of His Majesty’s campaign.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  Florine could not quite look at my face. ‘Yes, lady.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I beckoned to Agnes and we walked out of earshot in the deserted anteroom. ‘Tell me, then. What do they say about Toulouse?’

  ‘They put the blame at your door, lady. They say the advice that His Majesty acted on was not good.’ She looked me full in the eye.

  ‘And the lack of forces, the insufficiency of siege engines for such a campaign? The ignominious retreat without a blow being exchanged? Where is the blame for that apportioned?’

  Agnes shook her head.

  ‘How can that be put at my feet?’ I demanded.

  ‘It can if the initial plan was not considered to be sound. And that plan was yours, lady.’

  So I was at fault. My claim to Toulouse might be right and just, but blame for France’s defeat would not be levelled at Louis. The Aquitaine Queen must be the cause of France’s failure. I felt the bitterness of it, the unfairness of it. Perhaps it did not altogether surprise me—but I learned the lesson well. I must guard my vulnerability.

  I kept her. Agnes came into my employ. A friend? How could a tirewoman be a friend to the Duchess of Aquitaine? But I kept her because she was right—truth was strength.

  There were repercussions from Toulouse. Abbot Suger had his revenge for my interference where I’d had no authority to interfere, with the result that I found myself shut out of Louis’s meetings with his council. It was not right! The wife of the King of France had always been given access to decision-making, had always been consulted. Even Adelaide had scrawled her signature on any number of Fat Louis’s charters. I had made it my business to know that.

  But after Toulouse there was a wily conspiracy, a change to the custom, quietly done. I was not to be allowed to sit in Louis’s consultations with his advisers. My role as Queen was to be ceremonial. I was to be a cipher, a lovely face and elegant body to stand silently at Louis’s side in royal robes and bear the royal children. All I had feared. Neither my consent nor advice would be sought or acted upon. I was barred. My presence at royal discussions was de trop.

  Abbot Suger’s little victory.

  I allowed it. Would I embarrass myself by being turned from the door of the Council Chamber? But in my heart I refused to accept defeat. I would say what I wished in t
he privacy of my bedchamber where the worthy Abbot had no power. But first Louis must make amends for cringing so weakly before his minister. I was carrying the heir to France, was I not? I had every right to punish him.

  I withdrew from Louis. I distanced myself from him, made no attempt to seek him out, absenting myself from the formal meals with the excuse that I was unwell. When he came to my apartments, I had a dozen excuses to deny him entry. Indeed, one word of my possible ill health put him to flight like a rat into a sewer in the streets of Paris. I would bring my husband to his knees for his slighting of me. And I did, of course. It was a cunning woman’s ploy, to pretend disinterest. After no more than a se’ennight of the fictitious headache, the troublesome cough, the inexplicable rash, I brought him to me where I had closeted myself in my solar. Abjectly apologetic, Louis had a little coffer clasped to his chest like an offering.

  ‘My lord.’ My voice held the bitter cold of January, while I continued to give my attention to the troubadour who knelt at my feet, pouring out an impassioned love song. I would not be ignored and Louis would be left in no doubt of it.

  She is my heart’s one joy, crown of all ladies I have ever seen,

  Fair, fairer still, fair above all the fairest is she, my lady, as I must avow …

  My troubadour sang with pain and adoration, all plaintive emotion in his voice.

  ‘My lady …’ Louis approached.

  I waved him to silence as the singer fixed his eyes on my face and completed the sentiment.

  Now it is time, lady, that you grant your lover his reward

  Or else it would be folly for him to praise you …

  ‘Lover? Reward?’ Louis’s words were bitten off.

  ‘Certainly.’ I graced him with barely a glance. ‘My troubadour demands my love in return for his.’ How convenient that he should be singing those sentiments at such a moment—if one believed in such coincidences. ‘This is cortez amors, Louis. Courtly love.’ I yawned behind my fingers. ‘The love of a troubadour for his lady. His worship of the unattainable woman of his heart.’