Devil's Consort

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Oh, I understand you right enough! So you’ve vowed to refuse my bed. I should have known!’ I fought to quell the little knot of hysteria that threatened to expand and bubble over into some extreme emotion that I feared I might not be able to contain. Would I howl with laughter—or hit him? ‘And will I know the difference?’ I sneered.

  Louis stiffened in holy outrage. ‘You demean my sacrifice, lady.’

  I was beyond caring. The emotion transmuted into blind fury. ‘Sacrifice? And what about my sacrifice? You choose to live as a monk, yet you also chose to wed me. Or, no—of course—you didn’t. Your father chose that you should wed me. So if you take the vow of a monk, do you expect me to reciprocate and take the veil? Before God, Louis …’

  His features were frozen. ‘I expect you to live as my wife, Eleanor. I expect you to honour my decisions.’

  ‘But I am not your wife, am I, except in name!’

  ‘You are the mother of my child.’

  ‘And unlikely to get another!’

  Louis face flushed. ‘You should not say such things. I’ll not talk to you about it.’

  ‘You will.’ I stood, advanced towards him. ‘We have no male heir, Louis! How many times do you need to be reminded? Does that not concern you?’

  ‘You know it does.’

  ‘But you’d do nothing to remedy it. In God’s name, Louis …’

  ‘I shall spend this night in prayer. It doesn’t become you to blaspheme, Eleanor!’

  ‘It doesn’t become you to dishonour me!’

  I clenched my fists, then, when I felt the urge to strike out after all, I thrust them behind my back. As Louis took a step and then another towards the door, clearly intent on flight, I fought to rein in my anger and disappointment. Could he not even stay in the same room with me? He claimed he loved me, but such purity of love was anathema. I needed a man who would hold me close. Who would talk to me of the trivia of the day and what we might do tomorrow. Who did not put God before me over and over again. Who would look at me not as if I were a holy statue on a plinth but a warm-fleshed woman who could stir him to physical need.

  ‘By God, Louis! You’re so pure the light shines through you and you have no shadow.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He rubbed his hands over his face then looked at me with what might have been grief. ‘I love you. I thought you would understand.’

  I had no pity. ‘No! I don’t!’

  ‘I need to feel cleansed. I’ve done some terrible things in my life. I have been excommunicated!’ He still could not come to terms with it. ‘I was responsible for all those innocent deaths at Vitry. Those shrieks of agony lie on my conscience and trouble my sleep—’

  ‘In God’s name, be silent! I’ve heard all this before.’

  ‘But listen! I feel that this chance to go to Jerusalem, to stop the Turkish onslaught, is God’s path for me to bring me redemption. Christ was chaste throughout his life. How can I not subject my body to the same penance for a few short months? I thought you would understand, Eleanor.’

  ‘No, I don’t! You’re a fool!’

  ‘When I have earned my salvation, I believe it will be God’s will that we have a son.’

  I gave up. There was no arguing with him. ‘Of course you do.’ Weariness descended on me like an enveloping blanket. There was no moving him.

  ‘I must go.’ He retreated to the door. ‘I’m expected in the abbey church.’

  ‘Then go. Go and talk to God. But how he will answer your prayers for an heir without some direct intervention from you I have no idea!’

  ‘You should respect my motives, Eleanor.’

  I turned my back on him. I could not look at him any longer. The monkish habit, the gaunt cheeks, the shaven head, they repelled me. ‘Do as you will, Louis. Spend the night with your precious Oriflamme and the oath to your long-dead brother. They mean far more to you than I.’ I could not stop the bitterness from flooding out.

  I heard the door close softly and I was alone, and celibate for as long as it took Louis to get us all to Jerusalem. I wondered if Odo de Deuil or Galeran had had any part in Louis’s decision to separate himself entirely from me. Perhaps not. He was quite capable of making it himself.

  How angry I was. As much with myself as with my contemptible husband. How could I have ever thought that the Crusade could mend the rift that Louis had created between us? How could anything mend it? He would remain a celibate at heart, and for the most part in body, until the day he died. And so, physically, through necessity, would I. I was too angry to weep.

  I despised him. I washed my hands of him.

  Nothing would be allowed to dampen my spirits. Cheering crowds lined the route next morning when finally I threw off the dark restrictions of life on the Ile de la Cité. At twenty-five years of age, the beauty of my face and figure was unimpaired, my authority over my Aquitaine vassals unquestionable. For the next month there would be no restrictions on my time and how I chose to spend it. I was free of court life, of protocol, and not least of Louis. Constantinople beckoned with glittering gilded promise. Then Antioch, where Raymond held tight to his control and prayed for help. We would bring it to him. It would be a glorious victory. And finally Jerusalem! By the new year, in Louis’s reckoning, we would be in Jerusalem. The adventure unfolded before me in my mind.

  What an impression we made, what a magnificent sight, this vast army inspired by its Papal promise of driving the infidel Turks from the Holy Land so that we might worship feely in Jerusalem. The sun shone on helmet and armour, glinting off the hilts of swords that carried fragments of the true cross. Destriers fretted and stamped, Banners unfurled and lifted in the summer air, proclaiming the might of my vassals from Poitou and Aquitaine. I rode in their midst, their liege lord, my horse proud-stepping with its plaited mane, my saddle picked out in silver. My robes, as richly flamboyant as any I owned, embroidered with the royal fleurs de lys. I smiled at my subjects as we passed. Still simmering with anger at Louis’s intransigence, I was not sorry to be travelling without him.

  ‘Pray for us in Jerusalem, lady.’

  I raised my hand in acknowledgement.

  And Marie, my daughter? I had already said my farewells. She had gazed with wonder at my jewels and touched her fingers to the fur of my cuffs. She would be well cared for.

  My spirits were high, but doubts nipped at my mind as a terrier nipped at the heels of recalcitrant cattle. Louis was certain of his calculations, his route, but could we trust him to lead such an army to its victory? His past failures scratched at my confidence. How could I have confidence in a dynamic leader of men when he insisted on keeping his pilgrim’s gown? So vast an army of soldiers and pilgrims depended on us, and all those who hung on our sleeves. Servants and minstrels. Vagabonds and criminals and whores. Hunting dogs and hawks. The vast baggage train. Would Louis be able to get us all safely to our goal?

  The thought made me shiver in the warm sunlight.

  I made a silent prayer that he would surprise us all. Before God, he would need to.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  March 1147: nine months later.

  The port of Saint Simeon outside Antioch in the Holy Land.

  PHYSICALLY shattered, nauseously ill, I stepped from the squalid horror of the little round ship that had housed me for the past three weeks onto the solid quay of Saint Simeon, the port of Antioch. With me there was no baggage, no horses and no hope. Louis, of course, was there, and Odo de Deuil and Thierry Galeran—there had been more times than I could count when I had wished myself rid of all three of them. But there was no crusading army, victorious or otherwise.

  What a sight I must have presented. Three weeks of storms and adverse winds and appalling sickness had left me almost as gaunt as Louis. My legs were shockingly weak. Unwashed and filthy, my gown and linen ragged and soiled after weeks of constant wear in the most loathsome of conditions with none to replace them, I imagined my face pale, lined with fear and exhaustion. My hair was matted with salt and itched,
probably—by the Virgin!—with lice. I had, at my lowest ebb, even considered taking a knife to the length of it. I had no looking glass to tell me the truth, neither could have borne to use it if I had. I would not have wished to see the wretchedness in my soul. I was desperately unhappy, my reputation in as many rags as my gown. It was an effort to hold my head high.

  Nine months ago I had set out with such hope. The events I had lived through had been the stuff of tragedy. Never in all my life had I felt so utterly wretched as I did as I stepped from that ship.

  Louis offered me his hand as I staggered on the unmoving dry land. I took it, because appearances must be preserved in public, and there were plenty to mark our arrival, but I neither looked at him nor exchanged words of relief. I was beyond speaking to him. On that final day in France when he had rejected me by his sacred oath to keep his body pure, I had condemned him for a fool. Now I was beyond tolerating him to any degree. As soon as I was sure of my balance, I snatched my hand away. His treatment of me I considered deplorable, despicably unjust, far worse than mere physical rejection.

  And it had all been done, appallingly, in full public gaze.

  I strode ahead of him, pushing him from my mind. I’d had a bellyful of Louis Capet, enough to last me a lifetime. And of de Deuil and Templar Galeran. There was only one face I sought in the crowds that had come to welcome us.

  Even so, I was vain enough to consider: what would these cheering citizens of Antioch see in me? Not the proud figure that had left Paris in a blaze of publicity, an Amazon on a white horse. Not the elegantly fashionable Queen who had feasted and hunted and enjoyed the fabled luxury of Constantinople. Would they believe now that I was the Queen of France? Duchess of Aquitaine? I doubted it. I did not have more than one pair of sodden shoes to my name, and my gown hung on my bones like skin on the carcass of a scrawny chicken. My hair was a rat’s nest of tangles, hidden, I hoped, by my less then pristine veil. I think I looked like a whore from the lowest stews of Paris.

  The voices raised in welcome redoubled and I forced a smile to my lips. Perhaps my sore heart was soothed a little by the familiar chanting of the Te Deum by the choir, led by the Patriarch himself in festive robes. And as I felt my tense muscles begin to relax, I began to be aware of the warmth of early spring on my face. The storm clouds had retreated, leaving the sky the deepest of azure and the hillsides covered with flowers, their spicy scent drifting on the light wind. Just like Aquitaine. Like home in Poitiers and Bordeaux.

  It brought me close to tears.

  And there in the midst of the crowd, walking towards me, was Raymond, my father’s brother. Raymond of Poitiers, now Prince Raymond of Antioch, as magnificently striking, head and shoulders above the crowd, as my memory of him. Indeed, his new authority burnished him in gold.

  ‘Eleanor!’

  He had no eyes for Louis. None for Louis’s damned advisers. He looked at me. He walked straight to me, such balm to my soul after weeks—months, even—of being excluded from Louis’s endless, pointless negotiations with those close to him. Closeted hour after hour with Odo de Deuil and Thierry Galeran, not once had my miserable husband asked my opinion, yet he was quick to castigate me for the collapse of his plans. Now I was greeted as if I mattered.

  Louis and his minions might not have been there.

  ‘Eleanor. My dear girl. We feared for your safety. How you must have suffered.’ Raymond’s welcome rolled over me, wrapping me in comfort in the soft accents of the langue d’oc.

  ‘Ah, Raymond. I am so pleased to be here.’ I almost wept.

  He opened his arms and I fell into them. Unable to fight against it, I wept on his shoulder. All my hopes when I had left France—for adventure, for victory, for sheer pleasure in the day-to-day travel—all had been destroyed under the weight of Louis’s stupidity as much as the military skill of our enemies. And I was being held accountable. But now my ordeal was over. This was home. Raymond’s kiss of welcome on my wet cheeks healed my immediate wounds.

  My nightmare was at an end.

  Nightmare? It had been no mere nightmare, to fade with wakening. It had been a never-ending torment, as black as the pit of hell.

  It had all gone disastrously wrong. Oh, we had started out bravely enough, celebrating our journey across Europe, glorying in the spectacle we made, the flower of western Europe. Hunting and feasting. Enjoying good weather and new surroundings, marvelling at the wonder of Constantinople where we were entertained and cosseted in luxury at the Emperor’s court. But then—were we not warned? Had there not been a complete overshadowing of the sun, the sky darkening to black night, as we left Constantinople? An omen, our troops muttered with fingers circled against the Evil Eye. Perhaps we should delay our departure. But Louis refused to be diverted. Were we, bearing the sacred Oriflamme of France, not protected by God and His Holy Angels? Ha! So much for Louis’s intimate knowledge of God’s plan for us! We should have acknowledged the night-black morning when the sun was lost to us as a dire prediction and acted on it, for what was to come could not have been worse.

  It was Louis’s fault, of course.

  Seven months after we had set out so bravely, Constantinople behind us, we were still untold days from Jerusalem, still floundering in the mountainous regions of Asia Minor. The German Emperor Conrad and his forces had gone on ahead. And Louis? Despite our numbers being bolstered by Louis’s uncle, the Count of Maurienne, and a tidy force of knights, Louis’s spirits were dangerously low. For five days he sat and fretted, debating whether to rendezvous with Conrad or sit tight and wait for news of him. Anyone of wit could see that our army was eating its way through our limited food supplies whilst the days passed and winter loomed.

  Louis’s ability to lead men, always uncertain, seemed to disintegrate into indecisive idiocy with every day. I did not remonstrate with him. He would not listen to me. I’d have told him to take hold, to get the army under way and push ahead with all speed. What point was there in sitting tight and making no progress? But Odo de Deuil and Templar Galeran were the only ones to have access to the royal ear, and they whispered caution. How would they—a narrow-minded, scribbling priest and a miserly, venomous Templar clerk—know anything of relevance about pursuing a military campaign? Under their influence, Louis became as useless as a cracked jug. When he heard of Conrad’s defeat at the hands of the Turks, and the total destruction of his army, he was struck dumb with grief. And when Conrad struggled back to our camp with the most vile head wound that had all but robbed him of his wits, Louis burst into a bout of noisy tears.

  Stupid, stupid man!

  We needed leadership, not raw emotion. We needed the advice of knights and fighting men, not men of the Church. And did Louis turn to his barons and knights? Did he turn to his uncle Maurienne or my own experienced vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon, who could have given him some seasoned advice? No, he did not. I had to leave the tent in disgust as Louis wept and fell to his knees to beg God for guidance.

  Finally, at last, we struck camp, taking the route south along the coastal lowlands—a reasonable enough choice—but nothing would persuade Louis against halting again to celebrate the Christmas festivities. How could we mark Christ’s birth when on the march? By God, would the Holy Child have cared, as long as we got to Jerusalem? It proved to be a desperate decision. Louis’s choice of campsite was simply bad. Torrential rain beat down on us, gales brought terrifying floods that swept away our tents, our weapons and equipment. Precious food was spoiled or lost. Men and animals drowned or were battered to death on the rocks. Instead of a glorious celebration, it was ruination.

  It became impossible for me to even speak to Louis with any show of respect.

  After the devastation of Christmas, he decided to press on to Antioch without delay, taking the direct route through the mountains, which of course condemned us to the slowest of progress with winter at its most inhospitable. I will never forget the misery of it. I will never forgive him for it. The mud that sucked at the horses’ feet, the imposs
ibly steep gradients, almost too much for the horse-drawn litters in which I and the women now travelled. The thick leather curtains failed to keep out the constant rain and sleet. Every day we were set upon by Turkish raiding parties, and all the time we retched at the stench of the decomposing bodies of the massacred Germans who had already taken this route and failed.

  Was Louis even aware of our plight? Oh, he prayed interminably for our success. He sent off letter after letter to Abbot Suger, pleading for money, but never did he give the army the commander it needed. In a misguided spirit of unity he divided responsibilities amongst his barons, each night designating a different commander for the next day.

  Disastrous!

  And what use was Louis in facing Turkish raiding parties with their fine arrows and sharp swords, when he turned his horse aside to visit yet one more wayside shrine? If he prayed at one, he prayed at a score. I was full to the brim with contempt. I seethed with frustrated anger.

  We paid the penalty for Louis’s terrible decisions. How we paid, many with their lives. And I? I paid with my reputation. Never will my good name recover from the stain of what happened at Mount Cadmos. Mount Cadmos. I shudder still at the name, a cataclysm that will be engraved on my heart and on my soul until the day I die. Those who recall Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, even when she is dead, will damn her for it.

  I was not to blame. How could I have been?

  Here’s how it was.

  Louis had sent the vanguard of the army ahead under the command of Geoffrey de Rancon and the Count of Maurienne. I accompanied them with my own Aquitaine forces, leaving Louis with the main body of our forces to bring up the rear with the unarmed pilgrims and the baggage. We were, by his orders, to set up camp on a plateau before the next mountain pass, to wait there for him to join us, a position that both de Rancon and the Count quickly found to be quite untenable, windswept and open, with no water source or protection from either the elements or raiding Turks. We had learned from experience that we could never relax our guard. Since daylight was still good, the two commanders were agreed to push on through the rocky pass to a sheltered, well-irrigated valley beyond, suitable for a camp. I could see nothing but good in the plan. Yes, I agreed to it, if that made me guilty of what was to come. There, in our well-protected camp, we spent a night waiting for the main army to join us.