by Anne O'Brien
My whole body shrank in denial. My mind scrabbled, helpless in the toils of papal certainty, Louis’s obvious delight and my own disgust. How could I allow this? To be put to bed like a virgin bride. The Pope took my suddenly inert hand to lead me to the bed as Louis folded back the covers, exposing his skinny ribs and flanks.
I swallowed against the ball of revulsion in my throat and dug in my heels. I should decline politely—no need to make a scene—and make my exit, leaving Louis looking foolish and Eugenius disappointed.
Leave now. Before it’s too late.
Or I should storm out, order up the horses and my palanquin, dress and flee this calculated trap, anything but remain here with this dreadful anticipation on the two male faces.
Yet I did not.
‘Come, my daughter. Allow your woman to disrobe you.’
I looked across at Louis, who sat as apprehensive as the bridegroom of twelve years before, the silk lying across his thin chest revealing the rapid rise and fall of his rib cage, his eyes anxious on mine.
He thinks I will refuse. He fears I will reject him and make of him a fool.
‘What stops you, my daughter?’ The papal voice in my ear was as wickedly persuasive as the serpent in Eden. ‘Here is your husband, waiting to show you his love and devotion.’
No!
‘You are his wife. His Majesty can command your presence in his bed, my dear.’
The words lay like slime on my skin. Louis ran his tongue over his lips, fingers clutching at the papal sheets.
Suddenly all my choices seemed to vanish. I would have to do it. Pray God Louis could not perform, even at the instigation of God’s Anointed. As soon as we were alone, I would change his mind. I might not persuade the Pope over consanguinity, but surely I could quench Louis’s ardour.
Outwardly composed, every muscle controlled, my mind set to accomplish what my body deplored, I let my cloak shrug from my shoulders into the waiting hands of Agnes, let her take my loose veil. I slipped my feet from my soft shoes, leaving them where they lay, then turned to allow Agnes to unlace my chamber robe and remove my shift. Head high, chin lifted, I stalked to the bed, making no attempt to hide my body other than from the natural cloak of my hair that brushed my hips. Never had I been so thankful for its concealment. Eugenius’s eyes were far too prurient for my liking. I slipped in beside Louis, making use of the enshrouding silk. And there we sat, ridiculously, like children, waiting for instruction.
Hysteria ruffled my composure but I dared not allow it to surface. Beside me I could feel Louis tremble against the banked pillows. I must not laugh. I must not weep. Eugenius picked up the vial of holy water, to scatter it over the bed and the pair of us. Then knelt at the foot and bent his head in fervent prayer.
‘Let us pray together, my children.’ Beside me Louis bent his head, his lips already moving. I closed my eyes, clenched my hands tight and willed it all to go away. ‘Almighty God. Here are your children, at odds with each other. I would make intercession for them. Heal their wounds. Grant them love and affection. And make them fruitful. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ repeated Louis.
I could not speak.
Eugenius, his mission accomplished, struggled to lift his corpulent body to its feet and bowed to us, cheeks still damp with the tears of holy victory.
‘Make good use of this, my children. It is a holy moment and must not be squandered.’
And left us, Agnes following, trailing my garments in her arms, looking back with disquiet.
‘A holy moment.’ Louis repeated the exhortation and grasped my hands as if he would waste no time. ‘It’s what we wanted, Eleanor. A new beginning.’
‘Don’t play with me, Louis.’ I shivered in terrible apprehension.
‘Play? I’m deadly serious.’
‘This is not what I wanted—it’s the last thing.’
‘Eleanor—you don’t know what you want. I know what will make you happy.’ I could see the fervour building in his eyes. ‘We can be healed in God’s love and forgiveness.’
‘When you’ve spent the whole of the past year damning me for my adultery with Prince Raymond?’ There! I could not say it more plainly. Some of the fervour died. ‘An annulment would suit us both very well. Don’t let His Holiness persuade you otherwise. You have only one daughter.’
But I had lost him. The mention of Eugenius had been a mistake. The fervour flamed again.
‘No, my love. My dear wife.’ I cringed at his endearments. ‘His Holiness sees it clearly. We are meant to be together. We must do as he says, and we will be blessed in the eyes of God. We took vows!’
His hands were on my shoulders, dragging me close.
‘Are you going to hold me to my empty vow, Louis? On the word of an old man who is probably outside that door even now, with his ear—or eye—to the keyhole, rubbing his hands at making the King of France obey him, even to taking a woman to bed?’
‘Yes. I am going to hold you to it.’
And he would, by God. With a quick violent action, twisting away, I made to slide from the bed. Louis’s hand snapped firm around my wrist.
‘No, Eleanor.’
‘Let me go.’
‘I won’t. You are my wife and His Holiness has directed us to sanctify our marriage in the eyes of God. We will do it.’ And he tugged me back between the silken sheets.
His grip was strong, and then his mouth hot on mine. Stirred by God or bloodshed, Louis could perform as any man. I felt his need hard and ready between us as he dragged me close. His fist wound into my hair.
What happened between us in that bed? I won’t say. I won’t think of it. Louis was under orders from God and so could not refuse despite my distaste. A holy rape, all in all. Except that would be unfair to Louis, who used no force. In the end I submitted in the face of overwhelming odds. Why did I allow it? I don’t know, other than that I was seemingly robbed of all strength in the face of Eugenius’s scheming, the late hour and a sense of inescapable inevitability.
I should have run screaming from the room.
Instead, I submitted. Yet throughout Louis’s God-driven endeavours I prayed to the Virgin to protect me from conception. If by some miracle Louis was able to do what he had failed to do more than twice in the whole of twelve years, and if that child was a son, then I was trapped in this marriage.
For ever.
Consanguinity had proved to be an empty vessel.
My prayers became even more fervent as the weight of Louis’s thin flanks pressed me to the papal bed. Eugenius’s encouragement had stirred his manhood magnificently, and his thrusting was more prolonged than past experience, his groan of fulfilment harsh with one-sided satisfaction. It was unfortunate that he felt a need to complete the deed with his eyes closed and his lips moving in rapturous prayer. My flesh was unmoved. I lay like a stone effigy on a tomb until Louis was finished and he rolled aside to kneel at the prie-dieu and pray. Did he never stop? Did God ever close his ears at the same persistent voice? Then he returned to the bed, kissed my lips and fell asleep almost immediately, his cheek pillowed on his hand like a child.
I lay awake until dawn in utter dismay.
‘Take me home,’ I ordered Louis when he awoke to nauseating gratitude. ‘I wish to leave today.’ I could not stay one more moment in this villa that had seen the destruction of all my plans.
Pray God Louis’s royal seed failed. Pray God indeed!
Barely had we reached Paris—some two and a half years since the day we had left it—than the ill health that had plagued me on the journey to Sicily struck again. Robbed of energy and appetite, a deadly lassitude afflicted me, my spirits as low as the fur-lined shoes that were once again a necessity for life in this ice-cold fortress instead of the soft kid slippers of Outremer. Not even a reconciliation with Marie could restore me. Five years old now, she was a fair, sturdy child, bidding to become a beauty, but she did not know me, or I her. She ran to her governess as soon as I released her, the beads of lapis I had broug
ht her from Antioch, chosen to match the blue of her eyes, discarded in favour of an old and much-loved doll. She prattled endlessly about her pony, a gift from Louis. Marie had not missed me, nor, it unsettled me to admit, had I missed her. Children were only acceptable when old enough to converse sensibly.
I felt no better for the visit.
Outside the Cité palace the Seine was solid with ice, the bone-biting winds cutting through the streets, whistling through the windows of my chambers despite the shutters and glazing, despite Abbot Suger’s refurbishment of them for my return. If he thought to worm his way back into my favour after his deceitful conniving with His Holiness, he failed. It would take more than a roomful of hangings, however fine the stitching. Suger had merely gilded the bars of my prison.
My limbs ached and nausea gripped my belly.
‘You don’t need me to tell you what’s wrong with you, lady!’ Agnes hovered, holding a square of linen as I vomited into a bowl for the third time since I had risen from my bed.
I groaned.
I suffered.
Sweet Jesu!
The only relief from my misery was that I did not have to suffer Louis’s abominable sense of triumph as well. Glowing with incipient fatherhood, he instigated another pilgrimage to the destruction that was once Vitry-le-Brule, to plant a grove of cedar trees brought back from Jerusalem as a symbol of his contrition. I hoped the inhabitants, the families of those burnt to death, appreciated the gesture.
Incarcerated in the Cité palace, I trembled with helpless fury. Pope Eugenius’s prayers had reached the Heavenly Throne, and God was listening. My courses had stopped. Louis’s royal seed had damned well prevailed against all the odds.
‘The Queen is brought to bed. The birth is
imminent! Thanks be to God!’
The announcement echoed around the palace, from mouth to mouth.
I shuddered and whimpered as the familiar clenching, tearing pain took hold. Familiar? This torment was worse than any before, attacking mind as well as body. If it was a boy, an heir for France, these walls would hold me fast, like a novitiate enclosed within a convent until the day of her death. If I gave Louis a son, he would never let me go. He would have his heir and Aquitaine, and nothing I could say would move him from his noxious jubilation.
‘The birth is imminent. The birth of the Capetian heir.’
Even I could hear the blast of trumpets, the joyous announcement from so many throats, above my screams of pain as the child fought for release.
There was no joy for me. This child could tie me to Louis’s chaste bed for ever.
It was not an easy birth. The hours seemed to stand still. Louis sent his heartfelt thanks in unwarranted optimism, and gave orders for a Mass to be said in praise of the arrival of his son and heir. He sent me a jewel. Another jewel.
I groaned and pushed, sipped red wine laced with some baleful substance to deaden the pain, and submitted to the ministrations of Agnes and Mistress Maude, the royal midwife appointed by Louis to ensure my safety. Or so I liked to think. If it came to a choice between me and a male child, I wasn’t so sure.
The pain was bad but the relief of finally reaching this point indescribable. I had been watched, indulged and pampered ad nauseam since the day I had informed Louis that his efforts—and those of the Pope—at Tusculum had been successful. Everything depended on this child. My life was not my own. I was twenty-eight years old and had become a mere vessel to carry the heir to France. Suger had prayed over me. Louis had lavished me with useless gifts as my body had swelled. My hands and feet had become blocks of ice in the bitter temperatures when the Seine had frozen around us as if to hold me and the palace still.
My beauty had waned. I had known it even though I’d refused to turn to the reflecting glass, my hair dull and lank without the sun, without the warmth. I had wanted to go home to Aquitaine.
‘Let me go. You could come with me,’ I urged Louis. ‘We can stay in Poitiers. I can give birth there just as well as here.’
‘We can’t.’
I had not expected such a blunt refusal. ‘I would like it. Indeed, I would.’
‘No.’ He was preoccupied. I had not noticed.
‘Why not?’
Louis took a turn about the room. ‘There’s a rebellion …’
‘I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me …’ I was short on patience, and remained single-minded. Rebellion of a parcel of Frankish barons was the last thing on my mind. ‘Can you not crush it from Poitou as effectively as from Paris?’
‘It’s the Angevins,’ he said bleakly.
‘Oh?’ Which took my mind momentarily from my ills. ‘What are they doing?’
‘The Count of Anjou has ceded Normandy to his son Henry. Neither of them—father or son—has bothered to pay homage to me as his overlord for it or even ask my permission. It’s deliberate defiance and I can’t ignore it. I see what they’re doing—do they think I’m blind? They’re empire building, setting up a power to rival mine. But I’ll not have it!’
He refused to elaborate further, but my political mind absorbed the possibilities, the dangers, glad of something to distract it from my belly. So the Angevins were challenging Louis for pre-eminence, casting around for new territories to seize and consolidate their standing in Europe. Empire-building in truth. Henry, in the fullness of time, would be Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and if he had his way, King of England too. How old was King Stephen? I considered. At least fifty years. Without doubt Louis had reason to feel insecure and nervous. If Henry of Anjou could take the crown of England in his mother’s name, he would be a very powerful young man.
Shuffling my detested bulk in the only chair that gave me ease in those final weeks, I tapped my fingers against the carved fleurs de lys on the arm. Except that King Stephen had a useful son in Eustace, Count of Boulogne. England would not be for Henry’s taking. Henry Plantagenet might have to look elsewhere for his empire.
Hmm. My thoughts were well engaged now.
So was that it? That intriguing letter that had waited for me in Potenza? It made me reassess. Was it all part of the scheme to strip Louis of as much power as possible without direct conflict, Henry making use of me as craftily as his father had attempted to do? Did the young Angevin lord, since he could not be certain to have England, have his eye to Aquitaine instead? I wouldn’t wager against it. I thought he might have an eye to anything for his taking.
Henry Plantagenet will go far, I predict. If not always comfortably.
King Roger’s words seemed likely to be fulfilled, but Henry Plantagenet would get nothing from me that wasn’t to my advantage. I was beyond playing games. I’d already had my fingers burned. Were all men such selfish bastards, intent on their own power?
‘I’ve sent an army to our border with Normandy,’ I heard Louis muttering.
‘Are you sure that’s a good thing?’
‘What would you have me do? Close my eyes and let the Angevin power grow? We’ll stay here in Paris. Not much longer now, my dear Eleanor.’
‘Holy Virgin!’
How I abhorred his bracing tones. He eyed my swollen belly with avarice, but seeing my fingers tighten around the cup of warm wine at least chose wisely not to touch me.
‘I’ll keep a night vigil for you.’
‘You do that, Louis.’
As the child kicked against my hand, I cursed Pope Eugenius, Louis and all men indiscriminately, and in a fit of petulance, when Louis had gone and I was alone, I struggled to my feet to open my jewel casket. Removing the single sheet of parchment, I consigned that strange little note from Henry Plantagenet to the fire without a second thought, watching the flames curl and consume.
I was alone.
I cursed the Pope, Louis and God in equal measure.
In one brief respite in those bleak days, Aelith braved the ice and cold to come to me. We fell into each other’s arms—as much as I was able as my girth strained against the seams of my gown.
‘Why are you
still so beautiful?’ She hugged me as we wiped ridiculous tears from our cheeks.
‘I’m not.’
‘And why are you so fretful?’ She peered closely at me. ‘You’re unhappy,’ she stated immediately. ‘Tell me about it.’
And I did. Everything. I held nothing back.
She was my sister and sisters do not judge each other. As I had not upbraided her over Raoul de Vermandois, so she did not hear me with horror. Or if she did, she hid it well.
Her compassion was balm to my soul.
The pains increased and I was caught in a shadowy world of relentless agony and fear, peopled in my mind by those with an interest in the outcome. Pope Eugenius, nodding benignly, sure of his state of grace and his direct pathway to God’s ear. Louis, of course, his lips moving in prayer. Of what use Aquitaine without a son to inherit it? God, send me a son! And Galeran, stony-faced, hostile, daring me to produce a girl child.
The child was born.
‘Tell me.’
Agnes and the midwife had their heads together as they wrapped the baby in soft linen. Its lungs worked well. I had no fear for its life.
‘Tell me.’ My voice was cracked, my throat as dry as if I had ridden through the desert after Mount Cadmos.
They approached, carrying the child. All I could see was the fluff of fair hair and one aimlessly clutching red fist. Mistress Maude looked stern. I caught a flash of emotion in Agnes’s eyes.
‘Well? Will someone not tell me? Or do I read your silence as my failure?’
They turned back the cloth and Mistress Maude thrust the child towards me. It squalled on an intake of air. Well formed, active. Fair-haired, as I had thought. I stretched out a finger to touch the perfect cheek, to outline the miracle of the tiny ear. The relief within my belly bloomed, impossible to measure.
‘Not what we had hoped for, Majesty.’ Mistress Maude managed to express her disapproval in those few words.
‘A girl!’ Agnes said the obvious.
‘His Majesty will be disappointed.’ Mistress Maude.
‘But not Her Majesty,’ murmured Agnes when Mistress Maude was out of earshot. ‘A miracle, I would say.’
