Devil's Consort

by Anne O'Brien

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A CHILD. And with Louis in his chosen state of holy celibacy he was not the father. I carried Raymond’s child. In that one heated, pleasure-filled afternoon in the bath house of the palace at Antioch, where we had knowingly and wilfully committed the Great Sin with rare enjoyment, Raymond had got a child on me. I had given no passing nod to any consequences beyond the thrill of the moment. Now the consequences had to be faced, as they must when Fate unwinds the skein of life, and not only by me, but by Louis also. So the King of France expressed to his army his wish to remain in the Holy Land above and beyond the demands of his Crusade, to celebrate Easter in Jerusalem in the most sacred Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Well, so he might, but he had a clutch of more worldly motives, not least a profound desire to be rid of the embarrassment of me. How could he even contemplate returning to France with me full and rounded with Raymond of Antioch’s child, Louis smiling sourly as if the child were his?

  When I told him, his reaction was so predictable as to be ridiculous. Did he condemn me in righteous anger? Did he damn me for a whore and a strumpet? Neither. At least, not on that occasion. Instead he placed me somewhere between a fallen woman and a leper. In the softest of voices, without recrimination, he offered to pray for my delivery from eternal damnation and for the soul of the bastard child. I think I wish he had railed and roared his fury at me instead. But he could not. My fertility pointed too forcefully at his own lack.

  ‘Have you considered my request for an annulment, Louis?’ I asked mockingly when he paid me a dutiful visit to ask after my health, entrenching himself distantly on the threshold. Was it not the obvious path forward? ‘You have had enough time to weigh the good against the bad. Do the scales not lean heavily in my favour now? Do you want a whore as a wife?’

  For the first time since my unwelcome news Louis’s eyes focused on the swell of my belly beneath my loose robes. Then he took in the luxurious fittings of the room, the hangings, the furniture, the soft light. The flagon of ale and jewelled cups, a gift from Queen Melisende of Jerusalem. The low music of the lute in the background. Mouth set, without speaking a word, he strode across the room, ripping a folded manuscript from the breast of his robe and handing it to me. It was much travelled, I noted as I opened it, and Abbot Suger’s careful ecclesiastical script leapt from the page. I read rapidly through the polite introductions, the refusal of more money, and homed in on the one passage that was guaranteed to sway Louis.

  As for the matter of an annulment as broached by your lady wife. Consider this, sire.

  The loss of her dower, the great inheritance of Aquitaine and Poitou, that the Aquitaine lady brought with her to your marriage, would be highly damaging. If you agree to let the lady go as she requests, and if she remarries and has sons to stand as her heir, the Princess Marie will be deprived of her inheritance. Just as your own Frankish kingdom will feel the loss of so vast a territory.

  My advice, sire—this must not be. You must refuse her demands. If she remarries, taking her dower with her as she must, consider the strength of her future husband. A circumstance not in French interests. It would be a grave mistake on your part, sire.

  Certainly you must do nothing to weaken your position until you return to France. In my opinion, the Duchess of Aquitaine must remain your wife at all costs.

  Nothing there for me to misunderstand, all as plain as the ink. The Abbot saw my value in terms of land and power, as it had always been. And I was to be kept tied and bound to the Frankish kingdom—and to Louis—as helpless as a hog trussed for market.

  I was not to be released.

  I reread it to give myself a little time. Then cast the letter aside onto the divan.

  ‘You have not told him of the child?’

  ‘By God, I have not!’

  ‘So you refuse an annulment.’

  ‘Yes.’ Louis had retreated again to the window. ‘I refuse. Abbot Suger says I must. And, before God, I still love you, Eleanor. I always have, and always will.’

  There was Louis, all his confidence gone, strangely reduced and even more diffident than usual with shoulders bowed and eyes restless and unstill, whether from his own failures or my own predicament I could not tell. God’s ultimate blessing before the altar of the Holy Sepulchre had not worked its miracle in his unquiet mind and his expedition against Damascus had heaped further failure on him.

  Have I not mentioned Damascus? How could I forget? For at the same time as I had turned my thoughts inward to this child, Louis had launched a fatal attack on Damascus, only to be driven into ignominious retreat. Fleeing before victorious Nureddin, leaving uncounted numbers of crusader corpses in his wake, Louis had returned to me with my inconvenient burden and entire lack of repentance. For a moment I felt a breath of compassion stir on my skin. I had not given him an easy life, had I?

  ‘I love you, Eleanor. Does that mean nothing to you?’ he asked. At last his rage broke free, like waves breaching sea defences. ‘You committed adultery with your uncle. Incest, by God! You let him fuck you!’

  In the world of military vulgarity in which we had lived for so long, rarely was Louis quite so vulgar. So I matched it because I was in the mood to do so. My compassion was as short-lived as a mayfly snapped up by sprightly wagtail.

  ‘Yes, he did. And very effectively.’

  ‘Slut! Whore!’ He did not measure his words. ‘To give yourself to the brother of your own father!’

  How sordid he made it sound, but it did not harm me. I winged my arrow through the opening he had provided.

  ‘And are we any better?’

  ‘There’s no comparison, by God! We’re cousins in the fourth degree! Not uncle and niece! You have no shame.’

  ‘No. I do not.’

  ‘I cannot lift my head in public.’

  ‘Who’s to know the truth?’ I advanced on him, so that he took a step back. ‘Will you accuse me of it in public? Will you take me before the courts? What will you do, Louis? Have me whipped through the churchyard in penance? By the Virgin, you’re more of a fool than I thought. And I will not comply. I will deny it. I’ll not have you drag my name through the gutter to appease your own pride.’

  ‘The penalty for a queen committing adultery against her lord is death,’ Louis spluttered.

  ‘And you would not dare. You would have war on your hands before my head hit the stone and my blood puddled round your sanctimonious toes,’ I sneered. ‘Aquitaine and Poitou would rise up against you.’

  ‘You deserve any punishment I mete out.’

  ‘Then give me an annulment, Louis. Is that not punishment enough?’

  ‘I will not! I wish it had not come to this.’ He covered his face with his hands, looking more like a flea-bitten, whipped hound than ever. ‘And don’t think of foisting the child on me. I’ll not have it. Better if the bastard dies, Galeran says. He thinks …’

  So Louis had told Thierry Galeran whose hatred of me burned like a torch in the black of midnight.

  ‘Don’t tell me what Galeran says and thinks.’ I was now eye to eye with Louis, and he stepped back again. I could imagine the vicious words, could practically read them in the taut ropes of tendon in Louis’s throat as he swallowed convulsively. Kill it. Smother it at birth. Poison it. Bury it in an unmarked grave. And its mother with it! Anything but bring shame on the King of France through the actions of his wife.

  I think Louis thought I would strike him, as I had once before. I had raised my arms, hands clenched into fists. But I would not. Striking Louis would not stop him listening to Galeran’s naughty mischief.

  ‘Get out!’ My voice echoed satisfyingly off the plastered, painted walls.

  Louis marched from the room, anger shimmering around him, leaving me to my solitary thoughts. The chains that imprisoned me grew heavier with every day. I carried a bastard child and Louis was intransigent.

  A year I spent in Jerusalem. The longest year of my life, a year of loneliness and bitterness and loss. Louis would have had it
a year of humiliation and repentance for me if he’d had his way, but I would not. Regret, yes, repentance, never. For all those months in Jerusalem, as the child ripened and grew in me, I rested and ate well. I recovered my looks and the flesh that had been stripped from my bones in the aftermath of Mount Cadmos. My skin and hair glowed in the warmth.

  I should have felt isolated. My own women were barred from me—Louis’s dread of gossip, of course—so I was served by the silent and soft-footed girls of Queen Melisende’s household. In some ways, in this world of women, almost a seraglio, I was strangely content, even though I was shut away from society and played no part in the events that followed our arrival.

  It was a strange time, as if I were suspended from life, a creature in hibernation. I was given no public role and, in the circumstances, how could I demand it? Did I appear at Louis’s side at the formal entry into the city by the Jaffa Gate? Rather, I was hustled away. Did I see him lay the Oriflamme of France on the altar of the Holy Sepulchre and receive the absolution he had so longed for? I did not. Neither did I hear the shouts of joy that welcomed Louis as hero and conqueror. If I had, I would have screeched with the irony of it. The Great Council of Crusaders at Acre, attended by all the great and good, passed by without my presence.

  It was as if I did not exist.

  ‘Was my absence noted?’ I asked Agnes, more out of curiosity than anger at my banishment.

  ‘They gossip!’

  Well, they would. What treasure my enemies would find to mine from my lack of public appearance.

  ‘You are in disgrace,’ Agnes added.

  ‘Mount Cadmos?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  To be expected, of course. ‘Prince Raymond?’ I would rather not but.

  ‘That too. You could not expect to keep it secret, lady.’

  ‘The child …?’

  She shook her head and I sighed with relief.

  ‘Some say you tried to stick a knife in Galeran,’ Agnes said with an appreciative smile.

  ‘Untrue. Unfortunately.’ I smiled too.

  There was little for me to smile about in these arid months, for our once magnificent Crusade fell into ruin around us. If my mind had been on the military glory of France, of Aquitaine, it would have struck hard. How could I have dragged my sire and grandsire’s reputations in the dust with such ignominious defeat? With money and resources running low, morale even lower, without any clear leadership from Louis, our fine forces, in the nature of unpaid and discontented soldiery, abandoned themselves to fornication and robbery and every sort of wickedness.

  How we were all shamed. It was too painful to contemplate.

  Why did I not leave? Why did I not demand my freedom, as I had in Antioch when I had been brave and confident; why did I not hire my own ship and return to Aquitaine as I had planned? I could not. My isolation was as much self-imposed as demanded by Louis. My resilience waned as my belly grew.

  And Raymond? I neither wrote to him nor sent a courier—although I could have found some means to smuggle out a message. I never told him of the child. I could not and saw no purpose in it. But I would love his son or daughter because it was his blood and mine. Aquitaine blood, rich and rare, and so to be savoured.

  Idly I considered the baby’s future, raised discreetly in some loyal household in Aquitaine. If a male child he would be trained as a knight, if a girl I would insist on her education being as extensive as my own. And, no, the child would never be passed off as Louis’s. I would make provision, I would take responsibility. And then, when the child was grown? Then I would see.

  And as the days passed, my mind recovered its sharpness and I planned. One day I would leave this place, for this soft imprisonment would not last for ever. I was tied here because of the child. But when it was born I would be free to order my own affairs.

  And what then?

  I began to plot and plan, to sift and arrange. Who would help me point Louis along the path I wanted? Who could demand Louis’s obedience more strongly than any other, even more than Galeran or Abbot Suger or even Holy Bernard? Who would speak with God’s voice?

  I knew the answer. There was such a high power.

  The anticipation strengthened me through those endless months.

  Odo de Deuil gave up on writing his History of the Crusade for Abott Suger’s delectation. Enough was enough. Louis’s humiliation before Damascus gave him pause for thought. My own unwritable sin tipped the balance finally and paralysed his hand as it tried to move across the page. At least I had that to be thankful for.

  The child would be born at the turn of the year. As early as the first days of November the first pressure of pain woke me. Nothing to concern, only a twinge, a cramp, a knotting of muscles. It was too early and the pains gentled—I was mistaken after all. I had grown soft in my captivity, my sinews lax from lack of exercise. Agnes—whose uncompromising presence I insisted on in the midst of the seraglio beauties—assured me I would carry the child to full term.

  Not so. My body betrayed me.

  Even now I recall the viciousness of it. The heartbreak of it. Sharp bites of pain forced me to my knees. The waters stained my skirts, puddled on the tiles. I cried out, in agony and in fear.

  It was hard for me, much harder than when Marie was born. A hellish nightmare of sweat and strain, of mingled fear and despair, seized my mind as my thoughts reverted again, when they could escape the confines of my body, to the loss of the stillborn child of the second year of my marriage. I prayed. I called on God’s name. I beseeched the Holy Mother in her mercy. Surely God would not punish me.

  But perhaps He would, for my sin.

  I cried out, clutching the rosary that Agnes thrust into my frenzied fingers as the pain overwhelmed, its claws agonisingly sharp. Hot as the jaws of hell; cold as my isolation in my extremity. I was nearer to despair than I had ever been in my life. Why struggle, if God had put the mark on me for my double sin of adultery and incest?

  Agnes was with me throughout. She was the only one I wanted. Hers was the hand I gripped when I had no more energy to give to this birthing.

  ‘Push, m’lady. Don’t give up now. Don’t let Galeran have his way!’

  And I didn’t, because, in spite of everything, I wanted this child.

  The baby was born, slithering from my thighs with amazing speed at the end, as a long day slid towards dusk, but did not draw breath. Small, blue of skin, lifeless. Nothing so much as a skinned rabbit.

  It was a girl. A daughter.

  ‘Give her to me.’

  ‘Indeed, lady, I think you should rest …’ Agnes was already enfolding the lifeless figure in silk.

  ‘I want to hold her.’

  Too early. Too weak to live alone. Yet, unlike my first child that had not lived, she was perfectly formed, beautiful, fair and translucent. The corners of her mouth curved softly inwards as if she treasured a secret, her eyelashes so pale as to be near invisible. Her hair was nothing more than wisps of gold.

  Poor pretty creature. She was already gone from me. I did not kiss her for I dared not. I would have loved her for the blood of Aquitaine doubly in her veins. I would have loved her for Raymond’s sake. Dry eyed, I gave her back to Agnes.

  ‘Perhaps it’s for the best, lady.’

  ‘For the best?’ I blinked at her, for the moment not understanding.

  ‘Convenient. It would be a difficult birth to explain. With His Majesty’s oath and all.’

  Convenient for Louis. I could not speak. Grief robbed me of any words but I could not weep. It was as if all my emotions, my heart and my mind, were frozen to ice, despite the suffocating heat.

  Louis did not come near me. Neither did I expect it. He let me do as I pleased.

  What to do with my daughter’s tiny body? A hasty burial, drawing no attention, would have been wise perhaps. Or an interment in some unmarked grave. Or even an unspeakable destruction in some midden, merely to be rid of the evidence. I cringed from it even though my thoughts were difficul
t to harness to their task. I would decide. Not Louis, not Galeran. I used the powers still left to me, and the French coin that, in enough quantity, would buy any man. A priest was summoned who would for a pocketful of gold swear that the child drew breath at the first and cried out so that she might be worthy of baptism. I would not commit a daughter of Raymond, Prince of Antioch, to the horrors of limbo, shut out of heaven throughout eternity.

  Philippa. That was her name.

  For Raymond’s mother, my own grandmother.

  I did not see the child again as I decided what I wanted. She would be embalmed with spices and sweet unguents to preserve her frail flesh, then swaddled and encased in silk and leather, as fine as any cradle and covering. Another purse of gold paid for the passage home of one of my household. On my instructions, and without heralding the news to anyone, he took ship for Europe, and I charged him with taking my daughter to be buried in the graveyard beside others of my family at Belin, where I was born. She would rest there and know the same warm sun, the light aromatic breezes and the birdsong that I had known. She would have her final resting place in Aquitaine. One day I would find my way to her grave.

  It crossed my mind—as it must. I cared more for that lost child than for my healthy, living daughter, both flesh of my flesh. Why should that be? She was a true child of Aquitaine—perhaps that was it.

  It was a time of heartbreak for me. It surprised me, how the grief infused my whole body and would not let go. For the first time in my life I could not look forward. I could not think. All was dark and full of misery. I could not sleep but sat and stared blankly. Yet I could not weep.

  I would draw a veil over that sad time.

  But I knew my enemies would not. Since when is any event appertaining to a queen kept secret?