Devil's Consort (36 page)

‘I will beg the ear of His Holiness over the excommunication,’ Bernard agreed.

I took his offered hand, kissed his ring, controlling my creeping flesh at the touch of the scrawny fingers.

‘Are we in agreement, my lord?’

There was no warmth in his face but there was appreciation. ‘You are a clever woman. I think it was Aquitaine’s loss that you were not born a man.’

‘Thank you, my lord.’ I dabbed at my cheeks with the edge of my sleeve. It was the nearest I would ever come to a compliment from him. I decided we understood each other very well at the end.

‘I will pray for you, Eleanor,’ Abbot Bernard said. ‘And I will speak with His Majesty.’

‘I am grateful.’

Demurely, meekly, I left.

* * *

Bernard was as good as his word. As was I. That same day, the Abbot arranged a meeting between the two protagonists and I did my part to encourage Louis to attend and adopt a spirit of compromise. Peace was made, a chilly one but nevertheless a peace, between Louis and Theobald of Champagne, Louis returning all the territory he had seized. Louis appeared content with the promise of heavenly glory in return for his magnanimity.

What passed between Bernard and Louis over more intimate matters was outside my knowledge, but Bernard’s prayers reached the ear of God. Louis came to my bed, presenting himself as if he had not been absent from it for more weeks than I could count. It resulted in as chilly—and brief—an affair as his accommodation with Count Theobald, but Louis, under orders from on high, maintained an erection long enough to achieve the object of both our desires in less time than it took to say a Pater Noster.

Some weeks later, returned to Paris, I could break the good news. Louis was full of joy, and spent the night prostrated in my chamber, arms spread before my
prie-dieu
in grateful thanks.

‘You have given me a child, an heir.’ He kissed both my cheeks.

‘Thank God!’ I replied, heart-felt, and prayed that it would be so.

The child grew within me to full term, as the court prepared to celebrate and rejoice. It was a strong and
healthy baby, arriving without much fuss and a level of pain that was not beyond my tolerance—but a girl. I named her Marie in honour of the Queen of Heaven.

Louis kissed her forehead tenderly, astonished, so it seemed to me, that this was his child, rather than disappointed that I had not managed to produce the much-desired son. Clasping at the air with tiny hands, she was a pretty, undemanding child, very much Louis’s daughter, her hair fair like his, her eyes light and intensely blue. I saw nothing of me in her as I handed her over to her wet-nurse.

I regretted my lack of emotion. All I felt was intense weariness.

One day, unless I carried a son, Marie would rule Aquitaine. Never France. The Salic law made certain that no woman ever wore the crown of France in her own right, but my daughter would be Duchess of Aquitaine and much sought after as a bride, as I had been. Silently I wished her well of it.

As for Louis, he still needed a son as much as he had ever done, yet showed no inclination to repeat Bernard’s instructions to achieve it. He had mastered the fine art of evasion.

Sweet Virgin!

I rose from my empty bed and stripped off my shift to stand naked in the hard early morning light. My hands told me what my looking glass was too small to reflect. My flesh was firm, my waist once again restored, my belly flat with barely a trace of silvered lines.
My breasts were fuller—no bad thing, I decided. I was still youthful, still as beautiful as the April Queen. Still the object of desire to a man. My unbound hair fell like silk over shoulders and breast, enough to entice any man with red blood in his veins. I was as beautiful as I had ever been.

But as I shrugged into a chamber robe, I finally had to accept my lot. Perpetual failure destroyed all hope. Louis would remain obdurate in his need to seek salvation and I would always come a poor second. I would pray no more for his attentions. Loyalty and respect could be throttled to death for want of sustenance. Once I would have stalked him, determined to allow him no peace until he satisfied me. I stalked him no more. In my heart my marriage to Louis was at an end.

I received a letter from Aelith.

I could not read of such happiness and fulfilment, all that I lacked. I threw the parchment into the fire.

T
HE
occasion of the consecration of Abbot Suger’s new abbey church at Saint-Denis brought Adelaide out of retirement and, reluctantly, into my company. We took our seats, prepared to be impressed, and so we were. The building was without doubt incomparable, if somewhat austere and northern for my taste, pointed arches and towering vaults replacing the more sensuous rounded style of the southern cathedrals I knew. Vast stained-glass windows allowed the light to pattern the floors with jewelled mosaics. Abbot Suger might have renounced the sin of luxury for himself but nothing had been spared on this monument to his place in God’s scheme of things. Nothing could take the eye from the High Altar, dominated by a twenty-foot gold cross, lavished with diamonds and rubies and pearls. Crammed with treasures and gifts from every
feudal lord in France, the church glittered like a festive woman.

My eye was drawn to one spectacular offering that graced the altar.

I was at first disbelieving. And then speechless. But I vowed I would not be when I next had conversation with Louis.

Louis led the procession into the church, of course. As a symbol of his restitution, he was given the honour of shouldering the silver reliquary holding the bones of the martyred Saint Denis, placing it on the altar where it would rest amidst more gold and precious stones than the saint could have imagined in his lifetime. The procession was lengthy, the singing endless. The heat and smell of ranks of pilgrims were overpowering as every inch of the cathedral was jammed with those who could push themselves within the four walls.

I played my part with appropriate opulence, wearing a pearl-encrusted diadem and a damask robe overlaid with cloth of gold. Even Adelaide drew the eye, gleaming with royal gems that she had removed with her to Compiègne. Louis. on the other hand. He had, of necessity, to abandon his ridiculous pilgrim’s staff, but was still clad in the drab gown, leather scrip and crude sandals of a penitent that he had arrived in the previous day on our seven-mile journey from Paris. Had he even washed? He could be taken for any obscure pilgrim with filthy feet and shorn hair, one of the hundreds of
riff-raff that swelled the crowds. I felt unable to look at him.

‘Before God, he is no son of mine,’ Adelaide murmured, her dislike of me buried beneath her despair over Louis. ‘Of all my six sons, that he should be the one. Do you hear what they’re saying? It’s dangerous.’

The whispered conversations around me made no effort to hide the contempt for the King’s posturing. At least I was silent in my abhorrence. Oblivious to the scorn of his subjects, his bare feet might be caked with dust, his face emaciated with fasting, yet Louis’s eyes were aglow with the assurance of God’s blessing as he lowered Saint Denis to the altar. They never glowed like that in my presence.

I saw the brilliance of his pleasure fade only once.

As he came to take the seat beside me, he was forced by circumstance to come face to face with Theobald of Champagne. Louis’s saintly aura dissipated in an instant. His features took on a set and unforgiving cast. If it had been hoped there would be a rapprochement between the two at this holy event, Abbot Suger might find a grub in the heart of his sweet fruit. Forgive your enemies? Louis glared hatred at Count Theobald and the Count glared back. What would Louis’s God make of that?

But I had my own bones to pick over with Louis. As he sat and the choristers surged into soaring notes, I leaned towards him, mouth against his ear.

‘You gave away my gift to you!’

His eyes flickered. ‘Which gift?’

‘The one I gave you on the occasion of our marriage. The crystal vase that now graces the High Altar in Abbot Suger’s Abbey. A gift from you to Saint Denis! Or to Abbot Suger? It doesn’t matter which. You gave away my marriage gift!’

A look of bewilderment crossed his face. ‘I thought it a fitting offering. It was very precious to me.’

‘I gave it to you. I chose it as a symbol of my … my respect and hope for our marriage.’

‘I know. Do you not approve that I considered it precious enough to offer it—as a gift from us both?’

‘I did not choose it as a gift for Abbot Suger, who barely tolerates me!’

‘It is for God, not for Abbot Suger.’

The gentle chiding, the soft, tolerant closing of his hand over mine, stirred my anger to another level. ‘God has no need of more gifts. Look at it.’ I raised my hand towards the glittering array, now partially masked by the grey swirls of incense.

‘It is a mark of my repentance, Eleanor.’

I flicked my fingers over the coarse cloth of his sleeve. ‘I think you’ve shown your repentance quite clearly enough in your less than kingly display. Within the past hour I’ve heard you described variously as a fool, an idiot and a poor excuse for a monarch. I’m not sure which hurts me most. It’s ignominious, Louis. You should have shown yourself to your people as a man of power, not as a beggar in the gutter.’

‘God understands.’ He clasped his hands and bent his head in prayer. He was beyond my tolerating. ‘Pray with me, Eleanor,’ he murmured, suddenly gripping my hand.

‘I will pray for an heir, Louis.’ My tongue was acid. ‘I hope you will do more than offer petitions to the Almighty.’

His smile was serene as it fixed on the distant reliquary of the saint. ‘Thank you, Eleanor. I too shall pray that we shall be blessed.’

And did he come to my bed that night, in our comfortable accommodation in the abbey lodgings? He did not! The lure of a night vigil with the monks at Saint-Denis before the glittering crucifix was too strong.

I cursed him.

But it forced me to accept that the path I had set myself, here at Saint-Denis, however distasteful to me, was now inevitable.

I had a purpose. A two-fold purpose for being here at Saint-Denis. I needed help, and was driven to acknowledge that there was only one man who had the power to help me. Oh, how I resisted. How I shrank from making my requests. Would I willingly prostrate myself, laying myself open to his sneering hatred?

Holy Virgin! My belly curdled. But I would do it. After seven years of arid marriage I had no pride. The two worries that crowded my days and nights were beyond my solving.

The one possible source of my redemption, the one voice Louis might listen to below God, was that of Bernard of Clairveaux, that most holy and intractable of saints on earth, who had honoured Saint-Denis with his presence, the glamour of the occasion luring him from his austere cell. There was no man with such influence in heaven or on earth. He might damn me as the daughter of Satan, but I had nowhere else to go.

I requested a private consultation with him.

I went to our meeting as Queen of France in robes and diadem, ermine and cloth of gold. I spared no effort, and I had my arguments thoroughly marshalled, my campaign well planned. I would flatter, put my case, and hope that the saint could not resist the sin of pride in achieving what the King and Queen of France could not accomplish alone. When I stepped into the little audience chamber where he granted me a few precious moments of his time I approached him boldly and held his eye, my recent tearful meeting with my sister close in my heart.

Aelith may have achieved her heart’s desire but it had come at a terrible price.

‘Help us, Eleanor,’ she had wept in my arms from grief as she had once wept from happiness in the early days of her love. ‘I’ve condemned Raoul and our children to hell. You’ve got to help me, Eleanor.’ Her tear-drenched eyes were raised to mine.

Pope Celestine might have shown compassion to Louis and lifted the Church’s ban, but my sister Aelith
and Vermandois were still excommunicate, their marriage not recognised by the Church. They were living in sin, their children conceived in sin. I could not allow the Pope to plunge them into everlasting fire on a whim. I had to act since Louis was a man of straw. I would persuade Abbot Bernard to use his influence.

‘What do you request, lady?’ Abbot Bernard was more emaciated than ever, more skin and bone than saint. ‘Is it forgiveness for your part in the horrors of Vitry?’ he asked bitingly.

‘No, my lord Abbot.’ I would be respectful. I must be respectful! ‘This is a matter dear to my heart.’ I choked out the words. ‘I would ask your help, my lord Abbot.’ His eyes stared without compassion. ‘I am in great need.’

His voice held no softness. ‘And so, my daughter?’

I stated my argument, for Aelith and Vermandois, as plainly and forcefully as I could, ending with a plea that surely he could not resist.

‘I wish more than anything to bring my sister back into the love and communion of the Church. She weeps for her sins and can find no comfort without the sacraments. Would you condemn her, her innocent children, to eternal damnation?’ I took a breath. ‘If you would add your voice to those who petition His Holiness to reconsider, my lord Abbot—I am convinced His Holiness would listen to you.’

Bernard’s fine-grained skin flushed an unhealthy red. ‘Such subjects are not for discussion by a woman.’

‘Not even for a woman for the saving of her sister’s soul?’

‘You should be ashamed to raise such matters.’

A bitter taste of defeat rose into my mouth, yet I pressed on. ‘I would make a pact with you, my lord Abbot.’ He regarded me in unpromising silence. ‘If you will speak for me—for my sister—with His Holiness, I will do all in my power to persuade Louis to come to terms with Theobald of Champagne and restore peace between them.’

It was the best I could offer.