To Be Queen (27 page)

As I came to the door of Louis' tent, one of his confessors, Brother Matthew, beckoned to me at the door, giving me leave to enter. I thought for a moment that the churchman might stay with me and my husband, to hear all that we might say, but when he saw the look on Louis' face, Matthew left at once.

My husband had aged ten years in one day. His face was gray, as if he had seen too much death. He was a good man, with a soft heart. The last day's work had been his undoing. I could see it in the rings of dark blue around his eyes. The whites of his eyes were reddened with sleeplessness, and with tears.

Louis did not speak, but simply stared at me. He did not rise from his cushioned chair. I knelt in the center of his tent, where his people had not yet even placed the rug his brother king the Emperor Manuel had given him. I knelt on the canvas, with nothing to cushion my knees but the hard ground and my thin silk skirts. I lowered my head, as if I were a suppliant. If I had thought that might be enough, I was mistaken.

“I am sorry, Louis,” I said. “I am sorry for the loss of your men.”

He did not speak for a long time. When I raised my head, he was staring at me still, but his eyes were vacant, like a lost child's. I thought of our daughter, Marie, left behind in Paris. I wondered how she was faring, alone but for her nurse and attendants. I wondered if, when she thought of us, she felt as lost as Louis looked.

I pressed the idea of my child from my mind. I had a marriage to salvage, and little time to do it in. If I left this wound even overnight, it would fester. Louis would curse me, and set me aside.

I would not let it come to that. “You left us,” he said. “We looked for you on the mountainside, and you were not there.”

“No, Louis. I was not.” I did not look away from him. Baron Rancon and I were justified in our decision to stay in the valley. We had defied Louis' orders, and we had stayed alive as a consequence. But always, with a king, one must take the blame onto oneself. “Forgive me.”

He reached out to me, and I rose to my feet. I kissed his hand, and pressed my cheek to the back of it. I knelt once more before him, his hand still cradled in mine. I thought of the night I had spent in the Baron Rancon's arms. Louis' people would soon learn of it.

I had been foolish to take the risk. Louis was furious that Baron Rancon had defied his orders. If he learned of our night together while the French troops were being slaughtered, he would put me aside. I would have to send the Baron Rancon home by ship, and the rest of my vassals with him. I could no longer be the Duchess of Aquitaine and the Countess of Poitou on this journey, commanding my own troops through my lover. As in Paris, I would have to subjugate myself to Louis and his people in order to heal the breach that the decimation of his army had made between us. We still had more than two thousand living knights from Louis' train. Those knights would have to be sufficient to protect us as we continued our journey to Jerusalem.

Louis sat for a long time with my lips on his hand, my cheek pressed against his palm. His hand was cold in mine. I thought to chafe it a little, to warm it, as I would have warmed my own, but I did not dare. I would not take the risk of being overly familiar. Fool or not, real man or not, Louis was king.

“I forgive you, Eleanor.”

I raised my head, and met his eyes. Louis' hand was still clutched in mine.

I would never love this man. The realization bruised my heart, as if someone had struck me. I wanted to love Louis; I wanted to hunger for him. I wanted his touch to transport me as the Baron Rancon's had. But kneeling before him, far from the world we had built together, I knew that I would never love him or desire him. There would be no son born to us, no Charlemagne come back to earth. As a child, I had learned to bear pain in silence. Now I set aside my pain, and kissed my husband's fingertips.

“I love you, Louis,” I said, and for the last time. It was not true, but it would have been if I could have willed it so.

He raised me up, and stood beside me, drawing me close. He did not clutch me as the baron had. His hands were not firm on my waist. Louis leaned against me, as if gathering his strength.

“Go to your tent, Eleanor. Rest and make ready. Tomorrow we ride for the coast, for the city of Attalia.”

Attalia held no distinction, except that it was a coastal town the Turks did not hold. Our journey overland had come to disaster. So we would take ship for Antioch after all, and travel by sea to my uncle's kingdom, where we might find a modicum of safety, and a moment of peace in this quest for war.

I saw on my husband's face that he had had enough of fighting. He would go to Jerusalem. He would kneel at the shrines and beg for a son. But from that moment, alone with me, he laid his crusader's sword down.

Louis stood a little taller than I was. I easily met his eyes as he came into my arms, and clutched me close, as if he would squeeze the breath from my body. I longed to feel sheltered by his embrace, but the best I could hope for was that he felt sheltered for a moment in mine.

He kissed me, and sent me away. Brother Francis was tending to what was left of Louis' men. But Brother Matthew still stood at the flap of Louis' tent. Father Gilbert, an old Norman priest who had served both Suger and my husband for many years, stood with him. They both looked at me reproachfully, and I knew that they had heard of my liaison with the Baron Rancon.

I bowed my head to Louis' churchmen as I passed. Matthew and Gilbert were wise enough to bow to me, for Louis was there, and watching them. I still had the ear of the king.

That night, I stayed in my tent, giving out word that I was in prayer for the souls of the men who had died. No one came to me, not even my women. Amaria and I sat alone, eating fresh rabbit that someone had caught and put into a stew. It was rude fare, but savory. I sent the best part of it to Louis.

He did not leave me unattended. An hour after I had sent him the stew from my own pot, a gift came for me, much more elaborate. Wrapped in gauze and linen, in a box of mahogany and mother-of-pearl, lay a chess set so fine, it took my breath. The board was ebony and mother-of-pearl, lined with lapis. The pieces were cast in gold and silver, and stood as tall as the length of my palm. I took up one and hoisted it. It was heavy as only good gold and silver can be. I laid the piece back down, and sat at once to write a flowery message of thanks.

Louis sent no reply, but it was enough. He had sent the gift. Though he loathed chess and had no patience for it, though his newfound friend the emperor had gifted him with the set himself, still, Louis sent it to me. All was not lost between us. We would go on to be blessed in Jerusalem. Louis would still pray for a son.

I sat in that tent at the edge of the world, the soft, warm winds of the East on my cheek. The thought of a son to unite the kingdoms was far from me, like a mirage in the desert of my life, a phantom only, a shadow with no substance. As I sat alone in my tent, with only Amaria to attend me, I wondered. Perhaps it was time to build a new dream for myself.

 

 

WE TOOK SICILIAN SHIPS FROM THE HILL TOWN OF ATTALIA, and spent two days on the sea sailing from Byzantium to the kingdom of Antioch. The rowers worked with the wind, and we made good time across the deep blue of the Middle Sea. I spent a great deal of my own gold to purchase that safe passage, for we still needed ships enough for all two thousand of my husband's men. Conrad and his German army took their own ships to the port of Acre in the kingdom of Jerusalem. The German emperor bade us farewell at Attalia, agreeing to meet us once more in Jerusalem.

Baron Rancon and most of my men from Poitou and Aquitaine left with the outgoing tide, as we did. The sight of my barons and men-at-arms, all alive and well, served only to remind Louis of his own losses at the hands of the Turks. As a concession to him, I agreed to send my own people back. Most had had enough of travel, and longed only to see their homes again. My barons had taken on many bolts of silk, cloth of gold, and spices. They loaded these wares onto other Sicilian ships, and sailed for home.

As we crossed the Middle Sea, my women, sickened by the motion of the waves, stayed in the cabin below and prayed for a safe delivery. Whether they wished to be delivered from death or into death's comforting hands, I was not sure.

Amaria and I did not sicken. We stayed on deck both days, and faced the wind. The sun was high and warm. We sat under a canopy, and watched the sailors work. It seemed that they showed a bit of flair for our sakes, but no doubt they were always adept at climbing the rigging.

I thought of Bernard of Clairvaux's words, that Louis and I were too closely related to be truly married in the eyes of God. I thought of how I might slip the leash of my marriage.

I wanted my life for my own, free from Louis and his court. More and more, I thought of what freedom might mean. I might live my life on my own lands, surrounded by my people, protected by my barons. Though the loss of the crown of France would be great, my hunger for freedom from Louis and from the French court grew as each day went by. The idea of freedom burned in my brain, a firebrand that would not go out.

I rode the waves of the Mediterranean to my uncle's stronghold, watching the dark blue water touch the blue of the sky. The world seemed too big a place to stay always in Paris without a son and heir, at that court's mercy for the rest of my life. I was born for better things.

Of course, I did not speak of this, not even to Amaria. To speak these thoughts was to give another too much power. So I waited, and watched the water, and thought of home. I longed to be duchess in my own hall, with no man to rule beside me. To be Duchess of Aquitaine in my own right was a heady thought. It had never been done. Always, every duchess in the history of my lands had a husband to rule beside her. For the first time in the history of my people, I might be different. I could scent my freedom on the air, in the salt that rose with the waves.

I went to stand at the rail as we came to the coast of the kingdom of Antioch, the taste of freedom on my tongue. It was a tempting wine. I must guard against it. My stolen night with Geoffrey of Rancon had taught me that. I would have to plan, and carefully. Too much freedom, taken too soon, could be my undoing.

When we reached the port, there was no flower-decked fanfare as in Constantinople. But there was a barge waiting to take us upriver to the city of Antioch itself. I did not know my uncle, the king. Raymond, my father's brother, was only nine years my senior, but if I had ever met him as a child, I had forgotten it, as I had forgotten most of my childhood. I felt as if I had been born a duchess, a duchess preparing always to be a queen.

My father had told me that Raymond had been restless even as a boy. After he was fostered out among the nobility of Normandy, he never came back to Aquitaine. He served King Henry of England before that old man died, leaving the kingdom to be fought over by Queen Maude and the usurper, Stephen of Blois. Raymond had left Europe then for the Levant, not wanting to die in someone else's war, intending to make his way in the world himself.

And so he had. When Raymond married the heiress of Antioch, he had become king there. He stayed away from the Aquitaine and Poitou, even when he might have come home and taken up his place as my father's heir. Now that I had breathed in the spices of the East and drunk deep of the colors of the Levant for myself, I could see why he never came home. Even the Aquitaine paled in comparison with this vivid place. It was a land that called on men to dash themselves against it, as a man might dash himself against the rocks on hearing the sirens' song. Like a woman of power, that ground called on all strong men to conquer it.

I had no taste for battle, but even I heard the song of that place. It called to the restlessness in me, fanning it, making it grow. I became something different there, something more than I had been. The Levant sang to me a siren's song of what it might mean to be whole, and to be free.

We came up from the barges on the river to the gates of Antioch. The gates of the city did not open until we were close at hand, when the fighting men of Antioch could see our faces as well as our standards from the ramparts. The men who greeted us were dressed for war, but their armor gleamed with inlaid gold and silver. Even the least of their knights were dressed in such finery, and counted it as nothing. The Parisians looked on those precious metals, then turned to one another, their eyes gleaming.

I was surprised to see Easterners among the men who waited upon us. I should have learned by then that in that place I could not tell Christian from Saracen, Frank from Greek. Even the fairest German was tanned a deep brown in that climate. After years under that relentless sun, even Louis would have gained some color other than bright red, had he not kept a canopy over his horse, and over me.

Louis and I stood together, his new standard-bearer a step behind us. At first I could not tell which man among those there to greet us was the king. We stepped through the gate, and it closed behind us, most of our army left to camp on the hills below.

It was then that I saw him. He looked like any other man, neither tall nor short, neither handsome nor fair. Until I saw his eyes. That blue struck me down. I stood frozen, caught in a strange alchemy. The web of that alchemy rose from the ground to swamp my reason, and drew me to him. I tried to fight it, to command the emotions that rose to steal my breath.

Then he spoke, and I knew it was beyond my control.

“Greetings, Your Majesties. I am Raymond, Prince of Antioch. You and yours are welcome to this place.”

I do not believe in fate. But I felt what others call fate as Raymond stared down at me. His eyes were not heavy on my face. He did not leer or stare, as some men in my life had done. But there was something behind the deep blue of his eyes that told me he felt it. The alchemy between us had claimed him, too.