To Be Queen (12 page)

There was no priest with us now. Louis left his Church leanings to one side, for he lifted his own linen gown and tossed it after mine. His body was slender and finely made. He was no man for the outdoors, so his skin was pale all over, but his muscles were toned and smooth. I watched them play beneath his skin as he crossed the room to me.

“My lady.” Louis could not speak again. But he was man enough to take my hand.

I drew him into the bath with me, and the warm water caught him as I wished it to. He moaned, and I thought for a moment that he had never felt the pleasure of warm water on his flesh before.

I took the cake of soap between my hands. It was not my own soap, scented with lilac, but some harsh lye stuff that Rancon's people had left us. I laid it by at once, and smoothed my hands over Louis' skin. Let the water do what it would.

Louis stood stock-still while I washed him. I thought for certain that he would take me up in his arms then. His manhood swayed of its own accord, though I did not touch it. But my husband only stood and stared at me. I felt another touch of fear, but I set it aside. His shyness was just one more challenge, one I would face down and win.

I moved back a little, and began to wash myself, while Louis stared at me. I faltered, but swallowed hard. I was a maid, but he was a virgin, too. I had nothing to fear or be ashamed of.

Louis seemed to see my weakness, for he reached for me then, and took my hand. He stepped from the hip bath, and held my hand while I climbed out behind him. He raised a folded linen sheath that had been warming by the fire. He dried me with his own hands, his touch gentle and light, almost like a bird's wing. I thought I would swallow my tongue, my lust rose so quickly.

I thought to do the same for him, but he dried himself, then drew me with him toward the bed. He knew his duty, as I did, and he watched as I climbed onto the bed before him. He drew the curtains closed behind us, but I could still see the outline of his body in the firelight, as I knew he could see mine.

I lay back, and let him take the man's part. Finally, he sought to lead, and I would follow. I waited, my eyes half-closed with lust.

He began to pray.

He prayed in Latin, that our marriage be fruitful, that our bed be blessed with children. He asked for forgiveness for the sin of loving me, and promised God that he would do penance for it on the morrow.

I lay before him, my ardor blown away like so much dust. Humiliation rose to swamp me, and I closed my eyes against it. It was humiliation I felt as Louis leaned awkwardly over me, and pressed his manhood against my thighs.

I had a horrible thought that he might not be able to penetrate me, for I was a virgin true, and my passage was tight. It seemed he had a prayer for that, too, which he murmured over me, almost as if I were a sacrifice. He pushed into me then, and I gasped with the pain. Without a caress or loving touch, my maidenhead was taken in one swift, blinding stroke.

Tears rose in my eyes and I blinked them away. For Aquitaine, I would do anything. For my son to sit on the throne of France, I would have suffered worse.

I lay beneath him as he used me like a whore. As worse than a whore: as a vessel for his seed, and nothing more.

After a while, I felt a little quickening in my womb, in spite of his cold touch. A tiny bit of heat seemed to build in me, once the pain was gone. But I had known already that I was a woman for men.

I thought of the Baron Rancon, turning my face from Louis. I remembered Geoffrey's big hands, their grip hard on my waist as he pressed me up against the wall in my father's keep.

This thought stoked the heat in my nether parts, but then Louis groaned, and stopped moving altogether. The touch of his seed swamped the lamp of my own lust, and put it out.

Louis lay on top of me as one dead. But in the next moment, he drew away and left me.

The curtain stood open behind him, and I felt a draft of cool air on my skin. I shivered, though it was late July. I drew the cover up over my naked body. I would not leave the bed, for fear of seeing him. I did not fear him, but that I might strike him, if my gaze was to fall on him too soon.

As I listened, he drew his dirty shift on once more. I heard the rustling of his clothes. Then he began to pray.

I would have forgiven him even this, for I wanted to love him. But as I listened, he wept, begging his god for forgiveness, for absolution for his descent into carnal lust.

I listened to this for what seemed like an hour. I do not know how long I lay there, and listened to the boy I had married as he wept. The scent of sex clung to me, and to our bed. I drew the bedclothes back once, and saw that there was enough blood on the sheets to show well in the morning.

I turned on my side. Tears formed in the corners of my eyes, and leaked down into my hair. I struck them away.

If I had been a better woman, a softhearted woman like my sister, I would have pitied him. As it was, as I listened to his tears, and to the weakness that no prayers would free him from, I began to hate.

I slept after many hours, and woke to find Amaria leaning over me. “My lady,” she said.

I did not let her finish her thought, but threw myself at her, clinging to her as I would have clung to my own mother had she been there. Amaria was only a year older than I, but she knew how to play the mother's part. She held me close, and stroked my hair.

She dressed me and we rode out into the morning sunshine, our horses set on the road to Poitiers. The sheets had been displayed and applauded over. The Parisians congratulated Louis on his prowess, as if he were a conquering hero.

If Geoffrey of Rancon was there, I did not see him. I kept my eyes unfocused, except when I looked up at the sky, a shade of blue darker than my father's eyes.

My heart was bleeding, but no one but Amaria knew it. This was the path I had chosen.

When Louis reached for my hand, and kissed my fingertips encased in my leather glove, I managed to smile at him.

It was easier after that first night. Sometimes I even began to feel a quickening in my womb, though the heat never rose to its completion. It was as if there were a distant country hidden deep within my body that I saw only glimpses of.

But I had my husband. My people were safe from war, as was my sister, as was I.

We were greeted throughout my lands with cheers and late-blooming flowers. We paced through my lands for a week, and all along our way to Poitiers, the people called to me. My people loved me, as they had loved my father and grandfather before me. They loved me for my beauty and my strength, and for the largesse they received from my hands. Always, I had sat at my father's side and listened to their petitions. We judged them fairly, giving justice to those who asked for it. No great lord could buy my favor, for I was rich already, and so the townspeople and peasants of my lands might come to me, and be heard, if they ever had need. In times of famine, we saw to it that all the grain held in my own walls was given out to the people, so that their children would not starve. This was how my father had ruled, and in the few months since I had been duchess, I went on as he had begun.

Once we reached my capital at Poitiers, Louis and I were crowned with the coronets of Poitou, and feasted in my father's great hall. The burghers of my capital looked at Louis with loathing, for Parisian overlords were not welcome. I smoothed the way for Louis and for his men as much as I could, but my people were loyal only to me.

We were in Poitiers when the news came to us, after only a week of marriage. A fast messenger brought it from Paris, his horse half-dead from his frantic ride. The elder king was dead of dysentery after a weeklong illness. Louis was the young king no longer.

I heard this news as from a far distance. All around me, my people made a show of sorrow, though no doubt they rejoiced to see their duchess brought so high, so quickly. I ordered masses sung for the king's soul at once, knowing that Louis would like it.

I sat surrounded by my own people as the Parisians began their maneuvers. Some left at once for Paris, though what they hoped to gain from a corpse I did not comprehend. Other, younger lords stayed by Louis' side, and fawned over him as if he were Christ come back to earth. Some of them even fawned over me.

My man Bardonne met my eyes across the hall at Poitiers. He had come in my retinue, though he was of low birth and was considered slow in the head. After he had guarded me unasked as I went to seek Louis that night in the chapel at Bordeaux, I had spoken with Bardonne, and found his mind quite sound. I had welcomed him into the ranks of my spies, people I had begun to gather into my service, as my father once had done. All would speak easily in front of Bardonne, thinking him too stupid to understand what they were about.

The day we heard of Louis the Elder's death, I nodded to Bardonne across my father's hall. He needed little prompting to do what must be done. He would make his way among the French who stayed in my court, not the lords, but their men-at-arms, who no doubt would know all their lords' doings. Bardonne would listen well, never speaking a word, so that they all might think him mute as well as stupid. And later, he would come to me alone, and report all he had seen and heard.

As for the French lords who stayed by Louis, I watched each of them to learn their ways. I sent word to my spy in the Church, the bishop of Limoges; no doubt he would report back to me what I already knew. We were in a new world. It was one thing for my father to be murdered when he was away on pilgrimage. For the King of France to fall dead in his own hall was quite another.

Though no one said it, I saw from their faces that others thought as I did. “Dysentery” was an ailment that came after drinking bad water. “Bad water,” like the water that had killed my father, meant poison.

My hatred for Louis burned away in the fire of that new world. He wept openly, and I saw that he had loved his father, as he now claimed to love me.

Each morning, he went to his priests and begged absolution for what went on in our marriage bed. I wondered what he would say if I told him that those same churchmen, or men just like them, had killed my father, and very likely had killed his.

With the old king dead, the Church would reach a height of power in Paris that it had never before seen. My husband was weak, and had been Church-raised. Now that the elder king was dead, my young husband would no doubt fall into line with whatever the Church might want. He would do as he was told, for he was easily led, and the priests knew it.

I saw Louis and myself as those priests would see us: two weak-minded children, one of us Church-raised and biddable, and the other a woman. Louis now held both the Aquitaine and the throne of France; with his father dead, the Church was sure that it held them, too.

I sat in my father's hall and listened to the uneasy talk among the people, while Louis wept beside me. Darkness had risen to engulf us. Evil had raised its hand to press against the clean daylight world I had been raised in. I knew that politics was built on blood, but that day drove that truth home better even than my own father's death. Papa's enemies in the Church had been open in their hatred for him, but no one could have suspected that the elder king was in danger until he lay dead.

The Church thought that they had won, but I would prove otherwise. When lifting their knives in the dark to murder, they had not reckoned on me. Louis was weak, but I was not. I would take the reins into my own hands. Through Louis, I would rule France, and my son would rule after me.

 

 

WE RODE INTO PARIS ON A DAY OF RAIN AND FOG. THE DAMP rose from the ground, just as it fell from the sky in a steady drizzle. I rode my new white mare, which I had christened Melusina after the fabled sorceress, much to Louis' and Amaria's annoyance.