To Be Queen (18 page)

My people would not think him a fool if he went back on his given word. They would think him weak, and me, his plaything.

My fury rose to consume me. Suger ruled here, not me, a man too feeble to keep hostages, even when it was necessary. The lands that had belonged to my family since before the time of Charlemagne were now held by a mere abbot and my husband, who was his pawn.

The cramp in my belly doubled me over, the pain so sharp I could not speak, nor breathe. I heard Louis shout for Amaria, who took one look at me and called for the midwife.

My women had to carry me to my bed, for I could not walk. The pain rode me as I would ride a stallion. Wave after wave of it washed through me, taking my reason. I felt something inside my belly give way, as if a ship inside me had slipped its moors unbidden, and I knew. My child had flown. My son for Aquitaine was dead. Suger had killed him.

My father's bed was covered in my blood. The fur coverlet was drawn off to be washed, and my women washed me. All that time, Louis would not leave, though I cursed him and told him to stay far from me. His abbot had killed our child because Louis was too weak to hold fast, to do what was necessary.

I do not think I said these things aloud, but I was so out of my head that I might have said such things and more. Louis was as white as snow, as gray as death, but still, he would not leave me. Indeed, he would not let go of my hand. He stayed beside me, as close and as loyal as a dog to his master.

I wanted to curse him then in earnest, but reason had come back to me, and I held my tongue. Where was his loyalty to me when Suger beckoned to him? Why would Louis betray me to those who would rise against us when one lone abbot told him to? I had no answers; I knew that I would never have them.

The midwife came to us when it was done. She wiped my brow, and touched my cheek as she would have touched her own daughter's. By way of comfort, she whispered low to me, as if to salve my pain.

“It was a girl, lady. You did not lose a son.”

Her words were like a knife in my ear. My tears had long since dried on my cheeks, but at those words, my pain rose again, another cramp in my belly, though my child was already gone. I did not speak, but waved the woman away. Louis wept beside me. He had heard her, too.

“Eleanor, forgive me.” Louis laid his head on the bed beside me, his tears wetting the fine lawn of my sheets. “Forgive me, Eleanor.”

That day, I learned that marriage is not just playacting and manipulation. It is not just making moves on the dance floor, fitting your steps to those of your partner, leading him while he thinks that he is leading you. That day, I learned that marriage is built on lies. It must be so if one is wed to a king.

“I forgive you, Louis,” I said. “I forgive you.”

He lay down beside me then, not touching me but to hold my hand. He slept finally, hours later. I did not. I stared into the darkness, into the shadows that rose from the fire and climbed the curtains of my bed. I thought of my daughter's face, the face I would never see. While Louis slept, when I was alone with his hand on mine, only then did I weep.

 

 

TWO DAYS AFTER MY MISCARRIAGE, I FORCED MYSELF OUT OF bed. Louis spoke of returning to Paris, but I knew that I could not go without securing Poitiers behind us. My people would see our backs, and start to think once more of setting up their own government of burghers in place of Louis' Parisian stewards. I needed an alternative. As soon as I could sit upright in a chair with pillows behind my back, I asked to see my uncle Raoul de Faye.

Raoul de Faye was my mother's brother, a man I had seen little during my childhood, but one my father had always relied on to watch his back, as he relied on a handful of faithful vassals, who were always eager to serve the duchy. Now, in my hour of need, I would call on Raoul de Faye to serve the duchy again.

My uncle came to me as soon as I sent word. Weeks before, he had heard of the insurrection in my capital, and had traveled to Poitiers while I was still pouring out my first child's lifeblood in my father's bedchamber. Three days after I lost the baby, my uncle entered my bedroom, and bowed over my hand. The stench of blood and death had been cleaned from that place, but it still lingered in my mind like a curse. Raoul de Faye, a slender man with dark brown hair and deep blue eyes, seemed to bring sunlight and fresh air into the room with him. He also brought my sister, Petra.

Weeks before, Louis had called for Petra to come south from Paris, that she might wait with me for the birth of our child. She had just arrived that morning, now that there was no child to wait for. My uncle brought her in to see me.

Petra, now twelve years old, was slight and delicate, as our mother had been. Her soft blond hair was falling from its braids, coming loose in a halo around her face. I saw from her traveling cloak and from the dirt on her gloves that she had not even stopped to wash, but had come to me straight from the road. I took her in my arms, thinking to hold her close, but as she stood next to my high-backed wooden chair, it was she who held me.

“I am sorry, Alienor,” she said. “I am sorry about the baby.”

I could not speak. My voice was silenced by the heavy sorrow that lodged in my throat. I simply held on to Petra, and fought for control of myself. In this, my uncle helped me, his dry voice sounding in the room like the toll of a bell, calling me from self-pity to my duty as Duchess of Aquitaine.

“Alienor, Petra. We have no time for tears.”

I pulled back from my sister, and pressed her hand, drawing her to sit down beside me in Amaria's cushioned chair. Raoul de Faye was right. My sorrow would have to wait until Poitiers was safe. Since Louis would not take steps to secure it, my family and I would.

My uncle stood before me, waiting for me to turn my eyes to him. He was slight, as all my mother's family was, more a politician than a warrior. But as Papa had taught me, a good politician can always find other men to fight his battles for him. A thinking man chose which battle to fight. We were going to have to fight another battle now, for the hearts and minds of the people of Poitiers.

“Alienor, you cannot leave the city behind you with no assurances of the burghers' continued loyalty. But your husband and his bishops will not hold hostages to keep the peace. Do I understand the situation clearly?”

“You do, Uncle.”

“It seems to me that you need someone from the family to hold the city in your place.”

I raised one brow. “You, Uncle?”

He smiled, and amusement warmed the chill of his blue eyes. “Indeed. I will hold the lands of Aquitaine for you, while you are about our family's business in Paris. But the people would not accept me any more than they accept Louis. We must have a bridge between the people's emotions and the world as it is.”

Almost as one, my uncle and I turned to Petra.

She did not understand us. She had not been raised to politics and war, as I had been. I took her hand, my voice soft as I spoke to her. She was a young girl at twelve years old, but today, I would ask her to become a woman.

“Petra, we will need you to stay here, to keep the peace among the people.”

“But I cannot rule,” she said. “I do not know how.”

I saw the panic rise in the clear blue of her eyes. I gripped her hand. “No,” I said. “You will not have to. Uncle Raoul will advise you.”

“He will stay with me? He will deal with Louis' men?”

“Yes,” I said. “But you will have to keep state in the great hall, in my place. You will have to listen to petitions, and mete out justice, in my name.”

Petra was pale, but I saw her strength. I saw for the first time that she, too, was our father's daughter.

“And Uncle Raoul will help me?”

My mother's brother met my eyes over my sister's head.

“He will,” I said.

We wasted no time but took Petra at once out among the people of Poitiers, with my uncle and myself walking beside her. Our people had heard of her arrival from Paris, and they welcomed Petra with song and dancing along the roads, with flowers and a feast. In those first weeks, while I watched, the people of Poitiers made much of her, and pretended to listen to her edicts, all the while taking note and obeying my uncle, who stood behind her in my place.

Though my uncle began to administer my realm in Aquitaine and Poitou, it was Petra's presence that would keep the peace. Her sunny smile lit all the countryside around our capital. Over the next two weeks, people came for miles just to greet her, and to welcome her home.

She was young for such work, younger than I had been when our father died. But the people loved her. They saw her strength, which she herself had just begun to learn of. They saw her kindness, every time she was called on to deal out justice in the great hall of my father's palace. In Petra, the people of Poitiers saw a reflection of both my father and myself. Her blue eyes shone like his, and her finespun hair hung like gold down her back, lit by the sun, shining bright like a blessing from God. My people believed in God as I did not, and they saw Him first in us.

Petra had my laugh, and a ready smile. It was enough. Poitiers embraced her as one of their own, as indeed she was, all the while dealing with my uncle in matters of state, trade, and war. My people were in good hands, and so was Petra. The burghers of Poitiers would not rebel again. As we listened to the city cheer Petra from the front steps of my father's cathedral after Sunday mass, I saw this knowledge reflected in my uncle's eyes. His support, like all things, would have to be paid for.

I expected him to ask for more land or for an income from my husband, but he did not. I should have known before we met, alone in my father's old bedchamber, what Raoul de Faye would ask of me.

“Toulouse,” he said.

One word only, but in a moment, I knew exactly what he wanted and exactly how difficult a task granting his wish would be.

“Toulouse,” I answered.

It was dark already. The feast in the great hall had ended an hour before, and Louis had gone to the cathedral to pray with his confessor, Francis. I had seen Petra put safely to bed with her women. She was tired from the weeks of dealing with my people. And she had many years ahead, until I had a son to secure the Aquitaine and Poitou both. My shoes were hard to fill; as young as she was, Petra knew that, but she was determined to try, and to make a success of it.

Of course, without my uncle to support her and to rule from behind the ducal throne, she would not succeed. Petra did not understand this, but my uncle de Faye and I did. Toulouse would be his price.

“Toulouse is in the hands of our enemies,” I said. “They have held that city since my grandfather's time.”

“Yes. But now your mother's family wants it back.”

Toulouse, a city so beautiful that even my own troubadours had sung of it. That city had belonged to my mother's family for generations, and had fallen into the hands of the Saint-Gilles family only in my grandmother's lifetime. And now, after two generations, my uncle wanted me to take the city back.

I laughed and sat down in my high-backed chair. Amaria had left us alone, so I had to arrange my own cushions. My back still pained me from my miscarriage the month before. I used this bit of business to look away from my uncle, and to buy myself time to think.

“You would have me call on Louis,” I said. “You would have the throne of France take Toulouse for us.”

Raoul smiled. He did not have to answer.

“What if Louis will not agree?” I asked.

My uncle's smile did not falter. “I think he will agree to anything if his loving wife asks it.”

Raoul de Faye paused for a moment to allow his comment to sink into my brain. “You knew nothing of the rebellion in Poitiers before it happened,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I did not.”

“You will build a new web of people loyal to you, then? People who owe their allegiance to you alone? The spies you inherited from your father are worse than useless.”

I was not surprised that my uncle knew of my father's spy network, but I was displeased that he knew of its inefficiency. I found myself forced to swallow sudden anger that even this man, after all he had done for me, would speak ill of my father.

“The old network is useless,” I answered. “I will build a new one.”

“Good,” Raoul said. “I will help you.”

He rang my father's bell, the bell that had once called for Baldwin, my father's steward. I saw that I would have to remind my uncle that I was duchess here.

A young, slender man stepped into my bedchamber. He had been waiting for the sound of that bell, and as he entered the room, he met my uncle's eyes. But he bowed not to Raoul, but came at once to me. He knelt, just two feet from me, close enough to be seen in the firelight, but not so close as to be taking a liberty.

He lowered his head in obeisance, then met my eyes.

“My lady duchess, I am Stefan of Gascony. I am here to serve you.”

His eyes were hazel with flecks of green hidden in their depths. His dark blond hair was almost brown. Only here and there in the firelight did hints of honey gold gleam.

Raoul de Faye smiled. “Your father's family is not the only one that wishes you well. You are not alone in the world, Alienor. I know what burdens you bear. I will help you bear them.”

“For Toulouse,” I said.

He smiled, pleased that I understood him. “Yes. For Toulouse.”

I lifted my hand then and Stefan of Gascony took it gently into his palm. He pressed his lips, not to my diamond wedding ring, but to my father's ruby signet.