Authors: Anne O'Brien
A shiver of caution passed over my skin. I hesitated. ‘Will you be strong enough?’ I remembered Toulouse.
‘I’ve no intention of facing Theobald in pitched battle. If I lay waste to his crops and villages, he’ll soon come running to ask forgiveness. Followed hot on his heels by the Pope, who’ll cancel the Interdict fast enough. It wouldn’t be wise for Innocent to be at odds with the King of France with a victorious army at his back.’ He surged to his feet and gripped me by the shoulders. ‘And before I go, Eleanor—I’ll bed you.’ He planted a kiss full on my mouth. ‘Remove your gown!’
‘It’s a Friday,’ I remarked waspishly. Louis’s idea of seduction was not mine.
‘I’m aware of that, but this is urgent.’ He had already released me and was stripping his tunic over his head. ‘I’ve no thought of my defeat, but I pray God it’s his will that I leave you with my heir growing in your belly.’
I submitted with ill grace but I doubt Louis noticed. He prayed and maintained an erection with feverish intent. I prayed for his success in Champagne and in the power of his loins. I think I might even have prayed for some vestige of pleasure but it was a brief, businesslike occasion. Louis seemed pleased enough and kissed me before he left. It crossed my mind that he had come to
me because he was forbidden to approach God. I think by now I was resigned to it.
But Louis’s planning disturbed me. I could see no good coming of it, only the conflict getting worse. Neither did I like the lack of courage that made Louis turn aside from battle with Count Theobald to wage war on the villages of Champagne. It was not the policy of a principled warrior.
Louis marched into Champagne with banners and pennons fluttering gold and blue, and I stayed in Paris, trying not to remember his brave descent on Toulouse and his ignominious return. Would he emerge the victor? I sent a stream of prayers to the Holy Virgin to come to his aid. Surely he could not lose, surely … As I prayed I closed my eyes tightly, trying not to visualise the tales that were trickling back to us, of fire and blood, of indiscriminate killing and looting and abominations committed by the French troops across a swath of Champagne.
What happened at Vitry-sur-Marne I could not ignore. No one could.
It was imprinted on my mind in sickening detail.
‘We were victorious, lady. We could have made our own terms with the Count of Champagne.’
Victory. My relief was overwhelming. But no terms? The flat report, the uneasy manner of it, did not ring true with victory. The atmosphere in my tapestried
audience chamber pulsed with tension. Our armies had returned showing few signs of depredation, flags flying bravely, but where was Louis? He had not ridden in at the head of his troops to receive the acclamation of his capital. It was now drawing towards evening and one of Louis’s captains, a man I did not know, had, strangely, asked to speak to me.
‘You didn’t make terms,’ I stated.
‘No, lady.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was a hard campaign,’ he replied. The captain paused, and looked away to study his hands as they tightened white-fingered around his gauntlets.
‘Where is the King?’ I asked, by now unnerved.
‘I have to tell you, lady …’ The captain raised his head at sound of approaching footsteps from the antechamber and I saw sweat, slick on his brow, although the room was not warm. ‘Here is His Majesty. I have presumed to come and warn you …’
His anxiety was now spreading strongly to me. Something was amiss. I felt an invisible hand, as cold as ice, grip my throat. A weight lodged in my belly
‘Is the King wounded?’
‘No, lady. Not exactly.’ Which did not reassure me to any degree.
‘Tell me,’ I snapped.
The captain, a man of experience in the battlefield, chose his words carefully. ‘His Majesty is … unwell. He has not spoken or eaten since … since Vitry-sur-Marne.
We felt constrained to return to France in the circumstances. I gave the order …’ His eyes slid to the door. ‘As you see, lady …’
By the Virgin! I had needed the warning. Louis was led into the chamber by another Frankish knight whose hand was firm on my husband’s shoulder. Louis’s feet were hesitant, stumbling, his shoulders bowed.
‘Your Majesty. You are home.’ The knight touched Louis’s arm to bring him to a halt.
Louis blinked and looked around, a crease digging between his fair brows. I think he did not recognise his surroundings. Grey and insubstantial, eyes dulled and lacking life, Louis seemed to cower, searching the room for some point of recognition. Then his eye fell on me.
‘Eleanor!’ His voice cracked, broke on the one word.
‘Your Majesty …’ Louis’s captains bowed themselves out, relief obvious in their speed, and left him to me.
For a moment shock held me in place. Little more than a walking shadow, Louis seemed to have aged a score of years in the time since he had left. Was this the man who had embarked on his campaign with such assurance, such energy? Still clad in his mail, the royal colours on his surcoat proclaimed him the King of France, but here was no majesty, here no military might. Here was a drained husk of a man.
‘Louis?’
My voice too broke a little, so great was my appalled astonishment. I could never have anticipated such a
change in a young man. He might recognise me but there was no communication there in his empty gaze. He simply stood, silent, unmoving, as if waiting for orders. His hair was lank and filthy, his clothes mired. This was far worse than Toulouse. The majesty of kingship had been obliterated—and now I knew why. The vicious rumours had prepared me.
Vitry-sur-Marne. The name that must not be mentioned.
Practicalities took over. I took his hand and led him into my apartments. He followed me like a loyal hound, unquestioning, his hand lax in mine. It was just the strain and stress of war, of travel, I tried to convince myself. I would see to his bodily comforts and then when sense and reason returned I would talk with him. A good night’s sleep and a hot meal and Louis would come to his senses. I drew him into my own bedchamber where with Agnes’s help—it was not my wish to subject him to my women’s gossip—Louis stripped, bathed, put on clean hose and tunic, ate and drank a little and sat before a fire. All without a word.
This was not right. It worried me more and more as Louis followed my instructions without complaint. Not once did he express his own preference. His eyes were focused beyond me, his lips clamped tight. At last, alone, Agnes dismissed, I pulled up a stool and sat beside him, taking his hand in mine when he paid me no heed.
‘Louis …’ Nothing. ‘Louis!’
He pulled his mind back from some great distance, and looked at me.
‘Are you comfortable now?’
‘I am guilty.’
Rough and raw, his voice sounded unused. I considered encouraging him to speak of the campaign in general but decided to draw out the blade. Brutally painful it would be, but it would release the poison faster.
‘Is it Vitry?’ I asked.
A shudder ran through his frame and his hand clenched on mine, the nails digging into my flesh. His mouth framed the word but he could not speak it. Ashen, body shaking, he turned his face away from me. When I looked, tears were running silently down his cheeks to drip onto his tunic. Nothing I could do would stop them. All I could do was put him to bed.
At first he sank into a deep sleep but then the nightmares took hold. Louis thrashed, cried out, then woke to weep into his pillow.
‘Tell me what troubles you. Let me help you.’
But he remained silent, sunk into his own private hell.
With dawn came Agnes, carrying a tray of ale and bread. When he refused to respond, between us we pulled Louis from the bed and dressed him. When he shook his head at the offered ale, I held it to his lips until he drank. And then my patience gave out.
‘Get him to talk to you,’ Agnes advised. I did not need her to tell me. I had no intention of allowing
Louis to continue like this. I pushed him into a chair, pulling up a low stool so that he must look at me.
‘Louis. Tell me what happened.’
‘I … can’t!’
‘I won’t go away until you do, so set your mind to it.’
And he told me, the words tumbling out from his stiff lips like a river in spring, its flow without restraint. I don’t think Louis saw me but merely let the memories loose.
‘It was Vitry. We attacked the keep at Vitry. They fired back at us with a hail of bowshot. So I gave orders to retaliate—we fired flaming arrows. The wooden keep was soon ablaze. They deserved it, didn’t they? They should have offered a truce …’ Tears began to track down his cheeks again but he was unaware of them. Licking his dry lips, he continued. ‘My troops—I lost control. Blood lust swept through them. They stormed through the streets, killing, hacking all who came in their path.’ He spread his palms and looked at them as if the scene was painted there. ‘The thatch and wood of the houses caught fire fast in the breeze. I was on the ridge above and saw it all. The whole town ablaze. I couldn’t stop it. They fled.’ He stopped, his breath catching.
‘Go on.’ Even though I knew the pain of what he must recount.
‘The people fled into the cathedral. They thought they would be safe there, you understand, under the
protection of God. They should have been. But they weren’t. The flames engulfed them. The roof caved in. I saw it—heard it. Every soul trapped and perished.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. He leaned towards me. ‘Over a thousand people, they told me.’
I gave him a cup of ale again but he could scarce hold it, his hand shaking as if he had the ague. I guided it to his lips once more but he shook his head and raised his eyes to mine. They were haunted. Horror and remorse swam there beneath the tears.
‘I heard the screams of the dying, Eleanor. Smelt their burning flesh. I could not stop it. I am responsible. The destruction of God’s house. All those innocents, women and children. How can I ever atone for that?’
And he wept into his hands, harsh, rasping sobs that I could not soothe. For a time I absorbed the extent of the massacre done, in Louis’s name and mine. It was an abomination and I could make no excuse for it. I too would have wept for the loss, but I forced my mind back to my weeping husband.
‘It was not your fault,’ I tried. ‘You did not order the sacking of the town.’
I don’t think he heard me. ‘God will blame me. And how can I ask for his forgiveness? I am forbidden God’s presence.’
That was the crux of the problem. Excommunicate as he was, Louis counted himself forever damned, without hope of spiritual ease. No confession, no absolution, no comfort of the Blessed Sacrament. The fear of the Last
Judgment hung over him and would until the day he died, a death without the hope of salvation. All his life had been spent in the arms of Holy Mother Church, and now when he needed its care and compassion and forgiveness most it was closed to him. Throughout that day, Louis wailed as a soul in torment. I could not comfort him as he lay in my bed staring up into the canopy, or curled onto his side like a child.
He had my compassion, of course. At first. But as the days passed and I saw no signs of recovery my tolerance spun out to its allotted length. I could not understand his refusal to take hold of his life again.
‘What are they saying?’ I asked Agnes, as I frequently did in those troubled days.
‘That the King is mad and incapable from grief.’ Her bluntness was a relief.
Even Abbot Suger was helpless, turning to me in open appeal when Louis refused to speak to him. ‘You have to get him up, lady. If his barons see him in public, wearing the crown, well, the damage is not so great. If not, I fear insurrection. Get him up and dressed, for the love of God …’
Easier said than done.
‘You must get up, Louis.’ I gripped his shoulder, aware of the press of bone against my palm from his fasting. Still I shook him. ‘You are King of France.’
‘I am damned.’
‘Lying here will not change that. Your people need to see you.’
‘I cannot.’ His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow.
‘You can. You must.’
‘How can I face my people when I’m guilty of the slaughter of so many?’
‘How can you not face them? You are the King. You can’t stay here for ever.’
‘I need God’s forgiveness.’
‘And I’m sure you’ll get it. But for now you have to face your people. You have to be seen or discontent and rumour will spread.’
‘I’m damned, Eleanor. I’ll never be forgiven. I don’t deserve to be King.’ Pushing my hand away, Louis turned his head on the pillow. Weak tears collected in the harsh runnels beside his mouth.
How many tears could the man weep?
I had to leave the room or I would have slapped him. I had done what I could for him but this was too much. Short of dragging him from the bed I could do nothing more. I could neither understand nor cure him, so intent was he in wallowing in misery. In those days it seemed that the crown of France rolled in the gutter, its owner sinking under a glut of misery and self-pity, incapable of rescuing it.
I prayed to the Virgin to stiffen Louis’s backbone—and suddenly there was hope when I had all but lost faith in Louis’s recovery.
‘His Holiness Pope Innocent is dead, Your Majesty.’
I hid my joy from the Papal emissary who, suitably
sonorous, had ridden hard to bring us the news. The Pope had been summoned by his Holy Father. God had come to my rescue. The new Pope, Celestine the Second, I was informed, in a spirit of compromise to get his papacy off to a good start, was pleased to welcome his errant son the King of France back into the fold and remove the ban of excommunication.
Thank God! My thoughts skittered over what this would mean, and the news was good. All would now be well, with Louis free to renew his relationship with God. He would confess the sins of Vitry and would be absolved. Good, good. I could barely take it in when despair had been so strong in me. Louis’s spirits would be restored, he would resume his authority in the eyes of his barons. Surely he would also rediscover his need for me and I would conceive that much-desired son. I dispatched the news immediately to Louis whilst I assured the Papal emissary that relations between France and Champagne would be put to rights. As soon as I had seen to the man’s hospitality—it all seemed to take an age—I allowed myself to celebrate this miraculous reversal of our fortunes.