Devil's Consort (69 page)

‘My appearance is the least of my worries, Louis. You can hardly blame me for it. It was your doing.’

‘Do you expect me to apologise, Eleanor?’

He did not look sorry. In fact, he looked amazingly satisfied. Here was a confident Louis I rarely saw and I reined in my own temper. Anger would not help, and I needed to know his intentions.

‘You have treated me like a chattel,’ I remarked as calmly as I could.

‘Do you deserve any better?’

‘It was my wish to remain in Antioch. You knew that.’

‘I could not allow it. I had to remove you for your own good. Once we are settled in Jerusalem the rumours will, hopefully, die a natural death.’

‘Remove me for my own good?’ Control was becoming more difficult and my breath caught on the enormity of it.

‘Do you not hear what they say of you? Or were you so steeped in sin that you closed your mind to them? Galeran made me aware—’

‘That toad!’ I spat. ‘It was all his idea to abduct
me, wasn’t it? You’d never have thought of that on your own.’

‘All I know is that it would be better for you if you did not remain in Antioch.’

‘How magnanimous of you! To have my well-being so much at heart!’ But I recognised that there was no arguing with him. ‘What happens when we reach Jerusalem?’

‘You will remain under my surveillance.’

‘A prisoner?’ A little flutter of alarm.

‘If you wish.’ How inflexible Louis had become. Between us, Galeran and I had driven him beyond his usual dithering. Here was firm conviction, determination that astonished me. ‘I shall keep you under armed guard if I have to, to preserve what reputation you have left. As for our marriage …’

‘Will you give me an annulment?’

‘This is not the time to discuss it. Neither are you in a position to ask favours of me.’

‘Favours? I ask no favours. Only my rights.’

‘You will stay with me in Jerusalem,’ he continued, as if I had not spoken. ‘We’ll not talk about what happened in Antioch—we’ll pretend this unfortunate little incident never occurred. You’ll see, Eleanor, when sense prevails, that my actions were for the best.’

How typical of him. How horribly typical. To close his eyes to what he did not like, to refuse even to speak of my sin with Raymond out loud. And with Galeran to bolster his self-righteousness I could not see my way
forward. All my plans had gone awry. Louis was refusing an annulment and I no longer had the weapon of the control of my forces to hold over him.

Damn him! Damn him to hell! But I knew I must be careful, very careful, now.

At last he moved towards me, stooping to retrieve the cloak, placing it around my shoulders as if I were an invalid in need of care. And, no, he did not flinch from touching me. His words were gentle, so gentle I felt an urge to strike out at him again. I did not want gentleness from him.

‘You have lost your way, Eleanor. I will look after you. You will stay here, in this pavilion, until your garments and your women arrive. They you will robe yourself suitably and bear yourself with dignity before your Aquitanian forces.’

How damnably condescending!

‘You will find that your captains are no longer willing to follow blindly where you order. Your behaviour has condemned you in their eyes.’

He could not have made my situation plainer. I shrugged and cast myself down on a divan to wait. I had no choice, had I? When, later, clad demurely in silks and fine linen as befitted my status, I left the pavilion to watch my troops approach, nothing could be clearer than that my captains could not meet my eye. Amongst my forces rumour at my expense had been well spread, thoroughly stirred to such a pitch as to put
me firmly in disgrace. It did not take much guessing as to the owner of the viperous tongue.

I was alone and powerless. Dependent on Louis.

Time for thought as I travelled in my solitary litter. Time to apportion blame. It was all my fault, of course. I had committed the sin, if that’s what it was. I had made the choice—and so I must accept the consequences. Taking Raymond as my lover had been. unwise, at best. I would admit to that, even if I would not accept Louis’s accusation of depravity. But now my foolishness had become a sword to be used against me, with Galeran’s hand on the hilt, to wound me and sully my reputation for ever.

So, what about practicalities? What was my plan now for the future? To remain with Louis? It had been made spectacularly clear to me that any planning had been taken out of my hands. My belly lurched, and not with the sway of the palanquin.

I set my mind to feverish decision-making.

With so few options, on one point I was unshakeable. I would have to go to Jerusalem because Louis had decided I must, but I would not stay there at Louis’s pleasure with my name on the lips of every crusading knight in torrid speculation. I could not bear it. Once there I would hire a vessel and I would return to France, to Aquitaine, where I would remake my reputation. I would rid myself of Galeran and Louis.

In my own lands I would make my reputation shine again.

Yes, that’s what I would do. I was determined on it.

There would be no mending of my reputation for a while yet. My residence in Jerusalem proved far longer than I had either foreseen or hoped.

And why?

I could not believe I had been so thoughtless, so blind to consequences. But I had been: I had taken no Roman precautions. How should I, when that single sultry afternoon with Raymond had not been premeditated? How wilful is the body when one would wish most to subjugate its natural impulses. How ironic that my reluctant womb should fall prey to Raymond’s masculinity.

Foolishly, carelessly, impossibly, I had fallen for a child.

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.

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.