Beloved Enemy (10 page)

The candles had begun to sputter before Louis finally left his devotions and returned to bed, jolting her out of her tantalizing reveries. He looked pale and resigned, reminding her of a lamb going to slaughter; before disrobing, he blew out all the candles, then slipped into bed. Trembling, he curled up beside her. Her body, warm and aroused, instantly grew chill. Sensing his terror she tried to pity him but only succeeded in feeling repelled.

“I’m not fragile, Louis,” she whispered. “There is no need to be afraid.” She forced herself to open her arms, gathering him up as if he were a frightened puppy. “What ails you? Do you not find me desirable?” A foolish question, for already she could feel his member hardening against her thigh.

“You’re an angel of loveliness,” he said in a strangled voice, instantly withdrawing from her embrace. “But Holy Church teaches that for a man to desire his wife is as great a sin as adultery. I never thought to be married—and—and—”

“In your heart you regard our bedding as an act of fornication despite the fact we are married?”

Taking his silence for assent, Eleanor did not know what to say. That a man should be mortified by his own virility, the instinctive surge of his natural desires, was beyond her comprehension. This must be the Church’s doing, she thought bitterly. Such harsh and unnatural doctrine had never taken hold here in the sensuous south, and, in fact, was one of the many reasons why her forebears had so consistently resisted the influence of zealous churchmen who railed against sin.

When Louis still made no move to touch her, Eleanor finally took his hand and laid it gently on her breast. He snatched away his fingers as if they had been scalded. Instead he kissed her with shy reverence on the cheek. Like a brother. For Eleanor, who longed to be taken masterfully in passion, it was a gesture that made her flesh crawl. What could she do?

“Surely even the Church wants an heir for France,” she said. If nothing else he would at least have dynastic impulses.

“Yes. That is true.”

Thank the Holy Mother. Here, at last, was a chink in the armor of his resistance. “Well, then, let us provide one. It is our duty.”

Her words seemed to inspire him with courage. Screwing his eyes shut, Louis clumsily mounted her in a kind of worshipful awe, cautiously poking about in all the wrong places. It might have been amusing if it hadn’t been so utterly disappointing. That he was finally able to enter her at all was a tribute to her knowledge of carnal matters. Upon encountering her maidenhead, however, Louis grew terrified and would have withdrawn if she had not gently encouraged him, biting her lips to keep from crying out in pain as his tentative thrusts finally deflowered her. Thankfully it was soon over.

“You’re a Christian martyr to endure that ordeal. I pray the Holy Virgin make you fruitful.”

So that we do not have to do this very often, she added to herself. Louis had not said the words but she heard them as clearly as if he had shouted them from the battlements. If this night’s work was a foretaste of things to come, she could only agree.

Climbing out of bed, he pulled on his robe and again knelt at the prie-dieu. Her sense of disappointment deepened. Her father’s prize stud stallion was more adroit than the heir to the French throne. She tried to stifle her resentful thoughts as she shifted uncomfortably in the bed. Perhaps in some way she was at fault? Eleanor had never experienced such a sense of failure before. Her lower parts felt sore and she could feel a trickle of moisture between her legs that she assumed was blood. At least there would be visible proof on the sheets that she had been a virgin on her wedding night, which vicious minds like her Aunt Agnes’s had not expected to be the case. Not that Louis would have known the difference. With a sigh of regret she remembered the sensuous touch of the troubadour from Moorish Spain.

Bitterly disappointed, Eleanor cried herself to sleep, while Louis, oblivious, remained at the prie-dieu. When she woke in the morning he was still there, sound asleep on his knees.

In an effort to forget the dismal events of the previous night, Eleanor spent the next day planning a feverish round of merriment for the coming weeks: hawking and hunting parties, more feasting, dancing, and entertainment.

She was in the courtyard, showing Louis her prized white gyrfalcon, when a group of French nobles thundered into the courtyard of the palace. One of them jumped from his horse and knelt before Louis.

“My prince, it is with deep regret that I inform you that death has finally claimed the king of France.”

“My father, dead?” Stricken, uncomprehending, Louis looked first at Abbé Suger then at Eleanor.

“My poor Louis, what a calamity,” said the stunned prelate. Then, collecting himself, he carefully went down on one knee. “Your Majesty, may I express my condolences on our most grievous loss.”

At that moment Eleanor knew that the last vestige of her carefree childhood had gone forever. Was it only three months ago that she had been the thoughtless, indulged daughter of the duke of Aquitaine? And now—the realization was overwhelming—now she was Queen of France.

S
HIVERING, ELEANOR WALKED ALONG
the narrow chill passage so dimly lit she felt as though she existed in a world of perpetual twilight. Even after five years she still could not adjust to the inhospitable atmosphere and cold gray drizzle of France after the gracious warmth and sunlit vistas of Aquitaine.

Eleanor remembered her first shocked view of this ancient seat of the kings of France, unable to believe that the crumbling gray stone fortress, rusty tower gate, and fortified bridge Louis was pointing to with such pride was a royal castle, or that this tiny island in the Seine was the very heart of the French kingdom.

Even Paris had been a shock. In Poitiers she had looked forward to seeing this city, having heard that it was the most popular center of learning in Western Europe, famous for its lectures on philosophy and theology which attracted a wide number of students and a host of brilliant teachers.

What Eleanor had not heard was that the French capital was a jumble of noisy, cramped streets, whose overhang of narrow wooden houses blocked out any ray of sun. Pigs and goats foraged everywhere for food while street vendors rudely jostled the passersby as they urged them to buy buttery waffles and spicy turnovers carried in baskets covered with white cloths. Nor had she expected the all-pervading stench of rotting food and human refuse that clung to everything, even following her into the castle itself. Worst of all she was not prepared to find the Parisians so humorless and argumentative, lacking any sense of style; so different from the pleasure-loving, carefree Aquitainians.

On this chill September evening, Eleanor entered the great hall which, despite the flaring torches set into the walls, looked as cheerless and forbidding as did everything else in the castle. Made even more grim by the dark blue-and-gray tapestries covering the walls, the scenes of martyrdom and tormented sinners only added to the bleakness.

The royal family—Louis, the queen dowager, and his cousin, Ralph of Vermandois, seneschal of France—were seated at the high table along with Petronilla, the ubiquitous Abbé Suger, and a guest. Eleanor’s heart sank. Holy Mother, not again. The guest, an all-too-frequent visitor, was Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbé of the Cistercian monastery at Citeaux.

As Eleanor approached the table, she could hear the Cistercian monk make one of his dark pronouncements.

“His lectures smack of heresy.”

“Whose?” Eleanor made a place for herself at the table.

“Peter Abelard’s, my dear.” Louis gave her a welcoming smile.

“Is he back in Paris? I would like to attend a lecture given by the great Abelard,” she said.

“On no account may you attend, my dear,” Louis said. “Most unseemly for the queen to be glimpsed at one of his lectures.”

“Most unseemly,” echoed the prim queen dowager. She made no secret of her disapproval of her son’s frivolous wife, who had displaced her in importance.

“Why? Everyone tells me Abelard is one of the most gifted scholars in Paris and an inspired speaker.”

“As you know, we open our gates to the students in the warm weather,” Louis continued, not answering her question, “and I should have no objection to your listening to theological lectures from within our own gardens, or even the occasional trip to the Left Bank, which you have already visited—but not to hear Abelard.”

It was on these rare trips to the Left Bank of the Seine that Eleanor had had her only glimpse of the raw intellectual excitement for which Paris was famous, the vitality so lacking at Louis’s court and in her own life. Teachers and students hotly debating, the clash of beliefs, the passionate voicing of new ideas had enthralled her.

“Beware the man who values mind above spirit,” Bernard’s voice intoned. “What says Proverb Ten? ‘… in much talking thou shalt not avoid sin,’ and it is also writ: ‘A wise man is known by the fewness of his words.’ ”

An austere holy man dressed in a simple white cassock belted with a knotted rope, Bernard claimed to disdain riches and worldly pomp. Generally considered to be a saint—only death was necessary to make it official—he wielded enormous influence among the courts of Europe. Although he declared he preferred the peace of the cloister, it appeared to Eleanor that the devout monk spent far more time meddling in the affairs of the world than he did within monastery walls.

“I don’t understand your objection, Father. Is it because Abelard views the Trinity in terms of divine attributes rather than divine persons?” she asked in a mock-sweet voice, more to provoke the cleric than because she really cared. “Or because he advises us to question everything?”

Despite the fact that she was curious to hear what his debates were like, Eleanor’s main interest in the teacher-monk Abelard was due less to his eloquence from the lectern than a romantic aura resulting from an earlier scandal involving the novice, Héloise. The idea of a priest passionate enough to break his vows with a nun had won Eleanor’s wholehearted approval.

“You are familiar with Abelard’s work?” Louis looked shocked.

Bernard slowly turned his smoldering dark gaze toward Eleanor. “That is obvious, my son.” He paused while his eyes swept over her crimson gown with its full sleeves that trailed the rushes, then up to the gold-and-pearl pendants dangling from her ears, to settle on her oval face framed by a white wimple and topped by a gold crown.

“My tutor in Poitiers is very enlightened in his tastes.”

Everyone at the table stared at her as if she had just sprouted horns and a tail.

“Your tutor allowed you to read the works of Abelard?” Louis was clearly aghast.

“Poitou is known for diversity rather than orthodoxy, my son.” Abbé Suger crossed himself.

“All of Aquitaine is a breeding ground for heresy,” said Bernard.

This was one way of looking at it, Eleanor thought. The comparative openness and tolerance of southern society
was
receptive to various spiritual and intellectual influences.

“That is going a bit far, perhaps,” she said. “Certainly, we take a broader view—”

“Broader view?” Bernard raised scraggly brows. “There are only believers, heretics, and infidels. Nothing else.”

“I certainly don’t take such a narrow view—” she began.

“Indeed, that is only too evident. Beware, Madam, beware the consequences of your own unbridled nature.” Bernard jabbed a warning finger at her. “Like your father you have a restless spirit, but in the end Holy Church forced him to submit. It would behoove you to take heed and learn from his example.”

Furious at this public rebuke, it took every ounce of willpower Eleanor possessed not to retaliate with a hot retort.
You
personally forced him to submit, Eleanor longed to say.
You
brought about my father’s excommunication.
You
made him change the course of his life, a change that resulted in his ill-fated pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela—and an untimely death. You, Bernard of Clairvaux, are responsible and I will never forgive you for it. She contented herself with the knowledge that she would hear Abelard lecture with or without the Church’s—or anyone’s—approval.

Later that evening, while Louis, as usual, was on his knees in the chapel, Eleanor, still fuming, was walking along the twilit passage back to her quarters when she heard high-pitched giggles coming from the chamber where Ralph was housed as a guest. The laughter sounded suspiciously like Petronilla’s who, Eleanor knew, continued to harbor a persistent infatuation for the lord of Vermandois. A giant of a man, with dark curly hair and a bronzed craggy face, Ralph was undeniably appealing, but married, with a granddaughter Petronilla’s age. She had warned her sister not to involve herself with this unsuitable lord and cause a scandal.

The door of the chamber was slightly ajar and Eleanor cautiously pushed it further open, then stopped in surprise at the sight that met her eyes.

Petronilla was sitting on the red-canopied bed clad only in her chemise, which had been pulled down to reveal naked breasts, round and plump as pink cabbages. Beside her Ralph, breathing heavily, gazed raptly at her half-clothed body. Eleanor knew she ought to march straight into the chamber and loudly protest this seduction of her sister—except she knew which one had undoubtedly initiated the seducing. In any case she could not bring herself to move.

Ralph now proceeded to fondle Petronilla’s voluptuous bosom with huge hairy hands, rubbing his thumbs over her delicate nipples. Petronilla lay back on the bed, pulling Ralph down beside her.

Eleanor felt her breath come in little gasps. Ralph buried his face in Petronilla’s breasts while she took one of his hands and slid it up under her chemise. Obviously this game was not new to either of them. Eleanor was uncomfortably aware of her pounding heart and a feeling of moisture between her legs.

Whatever Ralph was doing under the chemise, it was causing Petronilla to moan and squirm in obvious delight. The lord of Vermandois, whose mouth was otherwise engaged, began to wheeze so strenuously through his nose Eleanor feared he might do himself an injury. Really, the wretched man sounded as if he might expire at any moment. Unable to bear the sight one moment longer she withdrew.