To Be Queen (15 page)

“Your Majesty,” he said. “I have come to show your chamberlain the list of the properties settled on you since your marriage.”

I raised one eyebrow. I knew my marriage contract by heart. Louis the Fat had signed and sealed it, as I had. I got no lands in the bargain, and I brought no dowry other than the coronets of Aquitaine and Poitou. I was not sure what this clerk was referring to, but I would find out.

“My chamberlain is abroad in the palace, seeing to the needs of my household,” I said. “I will hear your report.”

“My lady queen, the report is written in Latin.”

I did not raise my voice to him as I would have done at home, had anyone there had the temerity to question my learning. Of course, everyone on my father's lands knew that I read and spoke Latin, as well as a little Greek. A very little. I had never taken to it as my father had.

The Greeks were too long dead, too far from the world I lived in, to fire my mind. I was glad that the scholars of Paris kept the language of the ancients alive, but for myself, I would stick to languages that might actually serve my purpose in the here and now.

“You may hand it here,” I said.

He swallowed hard and stepped forward. He had enough sense that, in spite of my youth, he feared me. He had seen Louis and me in the hall the night before. He knew well that I had the ear of the king.

I perused the vellum quickly. It was only one page, drawn in a clear hand. The dower lands that had belonged to Queen Adelaide were hereby given to me. This meant that Adelaide, now dowager queen, had nothing but a pittance from her son to live on.

This was a message, telling me that if I was not careful, I, too, might be relegated to nothing and no one. The document in my hand showed me the power the Queen of France held once her king was dead, or once she had the misfortune to fall from favor.

Though Louis had signed the order, his even, monkish hand clear at the bottom of the page, I knew that the order had not come from him. No matter how angry he was at his mother, he never would have thought to disinherit her himself. Louis was too softhearted; someone else had encouraged him to do it.

The Lady Priscilla agreed to take me to Queen Adelaide's rooms. I would have visited Louis' mother in any case, whether she was out of favor with Louis or not, but with the loss of her dower lands, I knew I must seek her out in earnest.

Priscilla took me deep into the bowels of the palace. Queen Adelaide's rooms were far from the court, down a long stone corridor. There was no light in this corridor, and no windows. The torches in their sconces were damp, and were not lit. I saw at once why Priscilla carried a lamp with us, though it was early afternoon, and the sun was still high.

Priscilla knocked on a plain door set deep into the stone wall. We did not wait long before the door swung open, held by an old woman. It was not Adelaide; this woman was the gatekeeper. I was glad to see that not everyone had abandoned Queen Adelaide when her son left her in the dust. Her face was wrinkled and worn, but the look she bore was one of pride. I was not used to finding power in the eyes of a woman, save for my own in the mirror. But as I gazed at this old crone, I saw she was one who had stood fast and had seen much. The experiences of her life had left deep rivets on her forehead, and in two lines around her mouth.

She stared at me without speaking. I touched Priscilla's arm, and she fell back to stand behind me.

“I am Eleanor of Aquitaine,” I said.

I saw by the look on her face that she recognized me at once as her mistress' usurper. For all she knew, I had killed Louis the Fat myself. My youth would not dissuade her from such thoughts. Some people looked at me and saw only a girl of fifteen. This woman did not make that mistake.

“I know who you are.” The crone's voice was dry, and rasped. She stared at me from above her beaklike nose, her gaze impassive.

“I have come to see Queen Adelaide,” I said. “If she will receive me.”

“You ask permission to enter,” she said. “You do not demand it?”

“I would demand nothing of a queen.”

The old woman did not take her eyes from mine. After a long moment, she stepped back, and let me pass.

Adelaide sat behind her protector, a slender blonde dressed in dark blue silk. Her gown was lovely, and cut in the latest fashion, for her husband had been dead only a few weeks. Only a month before, she had ruled alongside him. But now her rooms were poky and small, as dark and dim as the corridor outside. The stone was damp with mildew. As I watched, the queen dowager sneezed delicately into a handkerchief.

“This is an outrage,” I said. “I will not endure it.”

Adelaide wiped her nose as delicately as she had sneezed. Her gaze was as blue as her son's, and as clear. I saw that she was no fool, though I had assumed she might be, since Louis was.

“I endure it, Queen Eleanor. If I can, so can you.”

“Who has placed you here? I will have his head on a pike.”

Adelaide surprised me then. She laughed. Her laugh was musical and sweet, like the soft chime of a bell. I swallowed my anger. If she could laugh at her plight, I could set my anger down.

“Have you no income besides your dower lands?” I asked her.

“How rude you youngsters are,” she said. She herself was not old, only a few years past thirty. Her face smoothed, and her laughter fled, but her eyes still held a soft light when she looked at me. “Come here,” she said. “Come here and let me look at you.”

I drew close to her chair. She sat between two braziers to ward off the chill of the damp. I curtsied to her, and she took my hand.

“You will keep him safe,” she said. “I can see in your face that you are a strong woman, as I am not.”

“I will settle money on you,” I said. “I have estates in Poitou that will serve you. You may go there, and be lady in my place. My people will look after you. I will not leave you here to rot.”

Adelaide laughed again, and drew me down onto the chair beside her. I felt that I took a liberty to sit in her presence. She had a way about her, after so many years as queen. It had not faded yet. Nor would it, I saw, until her days passed from this earth.

“There is no need,” she said. “In one week's time, I travel to meet my betrothed. With my son's reluctant permission, I have arranged to marry Lord Matthew of Montmorency. He will care for me. You need not trouble yourself over my fate. I am well provided for.”

I was shocked by the marriage she was about to make. This woman had once been a power to be reckoned with in the kingdom; next to Bernard of Clairvaux, Adelaide had always held old King Louis' ear. Now she was to marry some minor lord, her dower lands taken from her. Louis might as well have openly banished her from court. There was something she was not telling me. A lone woman would not have been allowed to arrange her own marriage in Paris, not even a queen.

“Who has done this to you? Who chose your husband for you?” I asked.

Adelaide did not drop her gaze, or dodge the question. I saw then that she wanted her revenge. She was not like Louis, save for the soft blue of her eyes and the golden light of her hair, which even now, in the midst of that dread dark, shone like the sun at midday.

“Suger,” she said.

One word only, but I felt it rise before my eyes like an apparition. The churchman who had met us in the antechamber, the abbot who had taken the King of France in his arms without pause or leave. He, then, was my enemy.

I stood to go, thinking that I would walk to Louis that hour, that very moment, and throw his treatment of his mother in his face. Adelaide held tight to my hand. I looked down at her, surprised by her strength. Her blue gaze held mine. I, who rarely listened to anyone, attended on her.

“Fear him, Eleanor. He is a good man, a man of God. But fear him. He was born a peasant, but now that my husband is dead, Bernard of Clairvaux has fallen from power, and no longer has the ear of the king. Suger is the new man behind the throne. He raised Louis from a child, and my son loves him above all others. Heed me. Fear him.”

No doubt Suger wanted Adelaide out of the way, that she might have no more power over the king. He had arranged her marriage to a minor nobleman, knowing that such a marriage would estrange her from her only living son. Suger had taken her lands from her and had given them to me, perhaps to buy my loyalty, perhaps simply to show me that he could.

I stared down at Louis' mother, at her soft golden hair.

“I cannot leave you here, alone in the dark. You must sleep in Louis' rooms until you leave for Montmorency. Louis does not need them.”

Before the dowager queen could answer, her old woman nodded to me from where she stood guard by the door. I had won her over, just as Adelaide had won me.

“Thank you, Eleanor,” Queen Adelaide said. “And where will you go?”

She smiled at me, and I was certain she knew the answer before I spoke.

“I, Your Majesty? I go to seek the king.”

 

 

OF COURSE, I DID NOT RUN OUT AT ONCE, HUNTING DOWN Louis and shrieking like a fishwife. I saw to it that Adelaide was safely ensconced in Louis' rooms, with a fire burning in the brazier beside her. She declined my invitation to sit with my ladies, many of whom had once been her own.

I looked in on my women, and made sure they were out of mischief, while Amaria went to find the king.

“He is at Saint-Étienne, my lady. At the cathedral school.”

“Is he indeed?”

I knew Louis had been raised in the care of monks as a child. I should not have been surprised to learn he was hiding among them now.

I could see him in my mind's eye, reading scripture and praying, leaving his kingdom to lie like some discarded thing for whoever might claim it. It was clear that if I did nothing, Suger would control France, as he controlled St.-Denis, the rich abbey outside Paris that was the seat of his power.

I sent word to Abbot Suger, asking him to my rooms. I was not one to hide in the dark from my enemies. I would face this one head-on.

I did not have long to wait to hear his answer. It seemed that the abbot was too busy to visit the Queen of France. His messenger thanked me prettily, but said that he was about the work of the Church, serving God, and could not leave the cathedral grounds.

Things at the court of France were worse than I thought if a prelate of the Church could so openly defy me. I called for a handful of my most trusted ladies, and a few from the court of France. Led by Bardonne, burly men-at-arms joined us to hold off the peasants, in case someone wished to accost us in the streets. Then I set out for Saint-Étienne on foot, for it was close by. When I did not ask for my litter, the Parisian ladies were shocked, but they were all young, and somewhat flighty. They were happy to walk out into the sunshine, to be admired by all we passed.

The streets of Paris were narrow and dirty, but the people were happy to greet me. Even without my crowns they knew at once who I was, and they called and waved to me as they had not the day we entered Paris in the rain. No doubt they had heard of my generosity to Louis' palace staff. I had my men-at-arms scatter silver coins, and then the people cheered me.

The low buildings of Paris huddled together, the streets that ran between them more like narrow alleys. As my women and I moved toward the cathedral at the center of the island, the smells of street cooking mingled with the smell of goats. I saw one woman milking a goat beneath the leather of an awning. She drew the milk from her goat's teats and offered it to me as a gift. I smiled at her, and my man Bardonne gave her a piece of silver with my father's face on it. I thanked her prettily, but did not touch the filthy crock she offered, moving slowly but steadily toward the cathedral.

The church was a gray stone building done in the style of an old Roman basilica, as my father's cathedral was in Poitiers. But unlike the cathedral in Poitou, Saint-Étienne seemed to squat, low to the ground, as if dreading the inevitable time when more rain would fall. Its gray bricks were soot covered from the fires of the houses nearby, and in the cathedral porch men sold relics and pieces of the True Cross, while others begged for alms.

Bardonne cleared a path for me, and my ladies followed, tittering behind their hands. This day was the closest they had come to the peasants of the city in years, if ever. I nodded to the Parisians who stood and stared at me as I passed, but I did not waver. I knew where I was going.

The interior of the church was as dark as a tomb. Some windows of dirt-streaked glass rose above our heads, but below torches were lit, lining the walls and the chapels tucked into the nooks and crannies of the cathedral. As I watched, a whore in garish paint drew her mark into the shadows of a sepulchre, and I thought of how similar this place was to my husband's court. I saw members of the court here and there, masked to hide their faces, swathed in plain wool cloaks to hide their finery. All could travel to church, men and women both, with the excuse of prayer. There, in the shadows of the cathedral, men drew their lady loves into the darkness, and called it romance. I preferred our romance in Aquitaine. At least there the women got a song first.