Devil's Consort (27 page)

He sought for a word. I supplied it. And not quietly. ‘A harlot?’ I suggested.

It silenced Louis. It drew all eyes in the chamber to us. With a furious look, Louis leaned to whisper, the syllables harsh in the quiet room. ‘You will dismiss your troubadour, Eleanor.’

‘I will not. I am his patron.’

Louis stalked out. The jewels—his peace offering but left behind with bad grace—were atrocious, solid enough to decorate a horse’s harness. I remained obdurate. I knew what I was about. Hardly had the week expired than Louis marched in with another box, small and carved out of wood. Without apology or explanation he thrust it into my hands.

‘A gift, Eleanor. To remind you of your home. I know you love the perfumes of the south so I’ve had this made for you.’

I opened the little box to release a sweet scent of orange blossom with a deeper note that tickled my nose. It was pleasant enough and I was touched that he should think of me with so personal a gift. Feeling magnanimous, I put aside my embroidery. Now was
the time to welcome him back into my affections. I kissed his cheek.

‘I had the ingredients from a merchant here in the city,’ Louis explained, as he took the box from me, strode across the room to the open fire and.

‘Take care, Louis—only a little. The merest pinch. That’s too much!’

Louis cast a hearty handful of the contents onto the fire. His enthusiasm was a fine thing.

Smoke rose. There was the sweetness of the orange blossom, perhaps a little jasmine scenting the air, and beneath that. I sniffed. Sandalwood I expected, or even frankincense, as the base notes. That is what I would have ordered. We in the south had much experience of the skills of ancient Rome, now practised and polished by our alchemists. But that was not it. I sniffed again. One of my women sneezed. Louis coughed discreetly. Then not so discreetly as the smoke billowed and the pungency caught at the back of the throat.

There was no escape. The perfume burned, the smoke filled the room and we coughed, sneezed, eyes watering as we were all overwhelmed with the cloying, animal heaviness of it.

‘Open the windows,’ I ordered when I could breathe. ‘Douse the flames.’

To no avail. The perfume continued to give off its secrets and the mingled scents hung like a miasma in the air. By this time any sweetness was entirely obliterated,
the draughts from the open windows merely stirring the fire into fresh life.

We fled to the antechamber where we continued to wheeze.

‘It was very expensive,’ gasped Louis, beating at his tunic, dragging his hands down over his face.

‘I can imagine.’ And I began to laugh.

Musk, of course. The most valuable, the most sought-after of base elements. To be used circumspectly, and totally overwhelming when applied with too liberal a hand. Laughter took hold and I could not stop. Everything was permeated with the scent of musk. The tapestries, the very stones of the walls. And ourselves.

‘It was too much, Louis,’ I managed. But Louis was already beating a retreat, still spluttering, as I mopped my eyes. ‘They say its perfume remains detectable for a hundred years …’ I gasped.

‘One week on the skin would be too much,’ Agnes muttered. ‘Your hair, lady! It reeks of the stuff. Who concocted it for His Majesty? They ought to be suffocated in their own product.’

‘Probably the Master of Horse, used to making liniment! They say it’s an aphrodisiac …’ I burst into laughter again.

‘And will you inform His Majesty of that?’

We laughed until we could laugh no more, before Agnes ordered up hot water to scrub and scour our skin and hair. The remains of Louis’s gift we consigned to the garderobe.

Poor Louis! Even his kindest efforts went awry, but at least we were reconciled.

I was still not readmitted to Louis’s councils.

I lost our child. For no reason that I could understand. Although my belly was hardly rounded, the birth far distant, I gave up hunting. I danced only moderately. I ate and drank circumspectly. Nothing must harm this precious child. But then a sharp pain struck in the night, a pain that became agony where there should have been no pain. The child was stillborn, almost too ill formed to be recognisable as a child, certainly too small to take a breath on its own and too incomplete for me to know its sex. Only a mess of blood and disappointment. Of the pain in the bearing of that child as it tore its way from my body I gave no thought, only the loss that lodged its despair in my heart. I had failed. I had failed France and Aquitaine. My grief surprised me.

Did Louis blame me?

No, he never did. He thought our loss was brought about by some nameless, undisclosed sin of his own that he had not confessed, thus driving him to endless hours on his knees to seek God’s forgiveness.

Perhaps it was. Or was the sin mine?

It was Agnes who held my hand when I wept, when the pain was almost too great to bear—not Louis, who was banned as were all men from the birth chamber.

‘What do they say, Agnes?’ I asked when grief ebbed, to be replaced by empty reality.

She pursed her lips.

‘Who do they blame?’ I pressed her.

She gave an eloquent shrug. ‘The child was born before its time. It is always the fault of the woman. It is the burden we have to bear.’

A caustic reply but not without sympathy. I knew she was right.

As for Louis, his despair may have driven him to his knees, but he still found time to banish Marcabru from my court. I did not know my troubadour had gone until I emerged from my chamber to be told that Louis had sent him back to Poitiers on the understanding that he would never return to Paris. I missed him, that bright flavour of the south in his words and music that might have helped me to heal. I was heart-sore, but kept it close within me. I never talked of it to Louis. It had been deliberate retribution on his part. I had not thought him capable of it.

I think in those days my heart began to harden against the King of France.

I
DID
not see it but my feet tottered at the edge of a slippery slope that would take me tumbling down into a black void. It was my own fault. Had I not been so taken up with the loss of my child, with Louis’s disregard, I would never have neglected Aelith. What possible harm could come to her in Poitiers, where she was known and well loved? I should have remembered that she could be too passionate for her own good. But in fairness I could never have imagined the consequences of the freedom she enjoyed there.

She returned to Paris, her face alight, as full of joy as I had ever seen her.

‘Aelith!’ I hugged her. ‘I missed you …’

‘I’m so sorry, Eleanor. I should have been here.’

‘What could you do?’ I studied her, suddenly suspicious. ‘You look pleased with yourself!’

‘Oh, Eleanor! I’m in love.’

I laughed, relaxed a little. ‘Which troubadour this time?’

‘No, no.’ Gravity and an unusual maturity settled on her features. ‘I love Raoul of Vermandois. I want him. I want to marry him and, before God, he wants me. Will you help us?’

Raoul of Vermandois. The man Aelith had cast her eye over at my marriage feast. Count Raoul, the Seneschal of France with the well-connected wife. Of an age to be wed, Aelith had distracted me when I had suggested it was time and beyond to find her a husband. And why was that? Because she’d had Raoul of Vermandois in her sights. And why had she remained behind in Poitiers? To be with him, as Count Raoul had been ordered by Louis to remain there and take soundings of any incipient uprisings.

Aelith’s voice was urgent, her fingers digging into my arm. ‘I am in love with Raoul of Vermandois.’

Simple words but heralding such disaster if I had but known it, so that it was to be Aelith who unwittingly brought me great distress. I meant well. All I wanted was happiness for her, the happiness and fulfilment such as I did not have, with the man she loved and who loved her. I did not see the outcome for her, for Louis, for me. How could I? It was beyond what anyone could have foreseen.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

And she did, her eyes sparkling, her words extravagant with infatuation, unable to sit. In Poitou, as I had
guessed. Late summer, the weather had been fine, offering good hunting and long lazy days. It had given much more. Aelith and Count Raoul, free from too many interested glances, had stopped attempting to deny the strange fascination they had for each other.

I produced all the arguments. She would not go blind into this relationship.

‘He’s married, Aelith.’

‘I know.’

‘A wife with powerful connections. And children.’

‘I know that too.’

‘He’s old enough to be your grandfather.’

‘He loves me. He’s more of a man than Louis!’

Which was true. I sighed. ‘What makes you so certain he’s not in love with your dower, more than your mind and body?’ Aelith was a wealthy woman, a desirable bride for any man, with estates in Normandy and Burgundy. Vermandois would be a fool not to see Aelith’s value.

‘He likes my mind and body very well.’ She blushed.

So that was it. I tried not to appear shocked at what my little sister had been doing in Poitou. ‘Have you slept with him?’

‘More often than you have with Louis, I warrant!’ she retorted with uncomfortable percipience. ‘At least when Raoul looks at me, it’s with a man’s desire for a woman, not veneration at the feet of the Madonna!’

‘Aelith!’

‘Well, it’s true!’

True it may be, but I was not prepared to admit it.

‘Please, Eleanor,’ Aelith continued, wrapped up in her own problems. ‘Talk to Louis. Get his support.’

‘The Count is married, Aelith.’ The final nail in the coffin of Aelith’s love, as far as I could see.

‘So Raoul divorces his wife!’ A distinct flounce, unworthy of her claims to adult emotion. ‘If Louis will support him, why should he not demand his freedom? The Church will agree.’

‘Are you sure about this, Aeli?’

‘I am. Raoul’s come to Paris with me. I love him.’ She looked so radiantly happy. ‘Would you deny me love because there’s precious little in your life?’

It was not something I had ever talked of, not even to my sister. How could a proud woman confess that the man she had married could barely tolerate her body? But how true her accusation. Jealousy! It struck home, a fist to my belly, and I was ashamed. How could I not give her my blessing? I promised to test Louis’s feelings, and soon discovered that I did not need to. Count Raoul had already broached the subject with Louis over a cup of ale. Taking time off from his daily appointment with the Almighty, Louis sought me out to complain of my sister’s flighty ways and questionable morals.

‘Needless to say, I don’t approve,’ Louis remarked, his fist clenching on his knee as he sat and frowned at me.

‘Why not?’ I was completing my dressing, choosing jewels from a casket. ‘They love each other.’

‘So Vermandois tells me. He threatens to leave his wife and children and carry Aelith off and live with her, whether I say yea or nae.’

‘So what are you going to do about it, Louis?’

It had become very important that I win this chance of happiness for Aelith. If guilt was to be apportioned for the events that unfolded, I could not claim my innocence. For I had watched Aelith and Raoul together, in public, marvelling at the latent passion that arced between them. Raoul might be an aging wolf but he was still a wolf, tough and vital. The desire when they looked at each other made me shiver. Never less than courteous and respectful, Raoul’s touch on Aelith’s hand, the deep caress of his voice, the slide of his eyes over her face, had all announced his feelings for her to the whole court. Oh, yes, they loved each other.

What did I have?

Nothing. How long since Louis had last touched me? I burned with longing. My heart and my bed were a wasteland, empty and barren, and I could do nothing to remedy it. It almost reduced me to weeping until I reminded myself that Duchesses of Aquitaine did not weep. They took action to remedy the problem—and I could at least remedy Aelith’s lack. She would have her much-desired marriage, she would have her lover. All I had to do was open Louis’s eyes to the advantage for him, for France.

Louis’s brow creased in familiar worry and uncertainty. ‘Raoul says his first marriage is unlawful. He and the lady are third cousins and no dispensation was sought—so he could demand an annulment.’

‘I know.’ The Church and the laws of consanguinity were a positive quagmire into which the unwary fell. No man and woman related within the scope of four generations could wed. Without a dispensation and the passing of much gold from the disappointed couple to the Pope, such a marriage was unlawful. ‘I think you should support Vermandois.’

‘I’ve no wish to become embroiled with the Pope …’ I saw Louis almost physically retreat, but I knew how to play Louis, like a fish on a line.

‘But Louis, surely you have realised …?’

‘Realised what?’

I pushed onto my finger a pretty amethyst ring and leaned from where I sat to grasp his sleeve. ‘Have you considered the connections of Raoul’s wife, Louis? Is she not sister to Count Theobald of Champagne?’

Champagne!

It was as if I had stuck Louis. If Louis hated any man it was Count Theobald of Champagne, the very man who had refused point blank to support Louis in the debacle of Toulouse, denying his feudal obligation to send troops to aid his overlord. If Louis was of a mind to blame any man for his ignominy before Toulouse, it was his disobedient vassal Theobald of Champagne.

How fortunate!

Louis blinked. He had snapped up my bait and the possibilities swam in his eyes: revenge of a very personal nature cloaked in political support of Vermandois’s new marriage.

‘Champagne’s sister. I had forgot …’ he muttered.

‘She is. Now will you support Vermandois and Aelith?’

I purred. I had stirred the pot—a woman who had never stirred a pot in her life—and now I must leave it to simmer. No need! It took all of ten seconds to come to a turbulent bubble.

‘I’ll do it!’ Louis declaimed. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll have a parcel of French bishops annul the Vermandois’ marriage immediately.’