Devil's Consort

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Neither do I give it. Only my admiration. Tell me, Eleanor.’

  I swallowed against the sudden lump in my throat. ‘How do I live with him?’ I sighed as I was forced to face it. ‘In God’s truth, I don’t know.’

  ‘He is not a husband for such as you.’

  ‘I don’t think our suitability was an issue when Fat Louis arranged it. My father’s decision to give me into his safekeeping meant that I had no choice. But what girl does?’

  ‘And Fat Louis had an eye to your acres.’

  ‘Of course. The destiny of all heiresses. I cannot complain, can I?’

  ‘Does he make you happy?’

  ‘No. But happiness is not everything.’

  ‘Then does he make you sad?’ Raymond persisted.

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’

  ‘I can’t believe he beats you.’

  Raymond’s attempt at humour promptly shattered my defences. The words I had not intended to say fell from my lips. They were demeaning. Humiliating. Had I not found it almost impossible to tell Aelith? But here in these beautiful gardens, all my senses compromised with heat and perfume and a compassionate listener, I spoke them aloud.

  ‘No. Louis does not beat me. He does not touch me. Not to any degree, at least. It astonishes me how many days he has been able to discover in the Church calendar when what passes for intimate relations with his wife is frowned on by God!’ I gripped my hands together to prevent myself saying more, and again failed. ‘Even when God permits, it’s not an experience to gladden my heart! So, no, Louis does not make me happy. It is no marriage.’

  A little silence fell between us.

  ‘So his monklike habits are deeper than that robe he insists on wearing,’ Raymond observed after some thought.

  ‘Yes. And at present he won’t come near me. He’s taken a vow of chastity until he reaches Jerusalem. Even then I don’t hold out much hope.’

  ‘By Christ! What a fool he is.’ It was balm to my soul. ‘How did he manage to get even one child with you?’

  ‘Because Abbot Bernard told him he must persist. He would have been grateful that it only took one attempt. Nor that I care—I don’t love him, you understand.’ I tried to unravel my complicated feelings. ‘I don’t want him, you see. But I am forced to live like a nun. I am not fitted to such a life. I am hedged around by formality and ritual in that cold place in the middle of the grey waters of the Seine. How do I bear it? How do I live like that for the rest of my life? And I really need to carry a son …’

  ‘Eleanor …’ Raymond leaned and kissed my forehead. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘He does love me,’ I admitted in fairness. ‘In his way. Louis cares, you see, and that makes it worse. He showers me with gifts. He never upbraids me for the style of life that he frowns on. I have created my own Aquitaine so that I’m not too homesick for music and conversation and festivity. Louis disapproves but his disapproval is silent mostly. Until Mount Cadmos, that is. He blamed me for that.’

  ‘Then he’s more of a fool than I had thought him.’

  ‘He would not even let me put my case. So I became outcast.’

  ‘He was probably afraid you would show his commanders where the true fault lay—with a man who is incapable of leading the proverbial horse to water, much less a vast army of crusaders and pilgrims into hostile territory.’

  ‘He has never won a campaign or a battle,’ I admitted. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘There you are, then. You are not to blame, Eleanor.’ Once again tears ambushed me, and I dabbed at them with my sleeve. ‘I think you are lonely. And you don’t even have Aelith to be a confidante.’

  ‘No. And now even my women are cold since so many of their friends died on that mountain. My heart is sore for them …’ And since the emotion refused to be contained any longer, I covered my face with my hands and wept.

  ‘Dearest Eleanor … Don’t be distressed.’ Raymond took me in his arms with great tenderness and let me weep against his shoulder, his arms strong and infinitely supportive. It was as if a dammed torrent had been released. I wept for the death of so many of our number. For the apparent futility of our journey, and for my own unspeakable position, whilst Raymond murmured and stroked my back. The soothing words and actions made me weep even harder until I had emptied what seemed to be a vast ocean of grief. Until I was reduced to hiccupping exhaustion.

  Raymond’s question surprised me.

  ‘Will you spend the rest of your life with a man for whom you have no respect?’

  It jolted me out of my self-indulgence. Was the answer not obvious?

  ‘I have no choice. I am no different from any woman forced into a marriage that does not please her. The fact that I am Duchess of Aquitaine is irrelevant.’

  ‘The fact that you are Eleanor, and a woman of some remarkable spirit, might have every relevance. If you ask my advice …’

  Footsteps interrupted, the slap of a pilgrim’s leather sandal against the warm paving. I turned my ravaged face away from the intrusion.

  Slowly Raymond released me and stood. ‘Your Majesty.’

  So it was Louis. Who else? I wished it might be anyone but him to see me like this. Raymond placed himself between us so that I could blot the remaining tears with my ill-used sleeves.

  ‘Come and sit with us. Eleanor is distressed. She has been telling me of your tribulations in the mountains.’

  To my relief—the aroma of unwashed cloth being suddenly paramount—Louis did not sit but stood, arms folded. ‘We all suffered. It was a trial sent to us by God for us to bear. And we should bear it with fortitude.’ Looking up at his hard words, I saw that he frowned at me, as if he found my grief a matter for his displeasure.

  ‘And I will help you bear it in any way I can.’ Raymond spoke gently. ‘I regret your losses at Mount Cadmos.’

  ‘It should not have happened. My orders were disobeyed.’

  ‘Perhaps it was not the wisest route to take—through the heart of the mountains in the winter months. It’s dangerous at the best of times, as I know, and with the Turks at large, what better place to stage an ambush?’ My heart warmed that he should come to my support when no one other than the ill-fated and now absent de Rancon had challenged Louis. Even the Count of Maurienne had been lukewarm when he saw Louis’s obstinacy. But here was Raymond, my champion. ‘You walked into that ambush. Your advisers did not know the land, the terrain. That is where you should look for your culprits if you would cast blame. You should look to your advisers who sent you there in the first place.’

  ‘We would have presented a stronger force if my wife’s vassals had camped where I had instructed!’

  ‘You know your advisers better than I. The monk de Deuil and Templar Galeran.’ To my delight, Raymond infused his voice with the lightest hint of scorn. ‘They would not be my choice—but every man to his own. And I hear they keep Eleanor from your tent.’ Raymond waved aside Louis’s attempts to object. ‘I would have thought a sovereign leader, as Eleanor undoubtedly is, of a vast proportion of your forces would expect to at least have a voice in your counsels. But that’s for the future and for you to decide.’ He took Louis’s arm, his face perfectly bland so that Louis was unsure whether he had been an object of mockery or commiseration.

  ‘For now, let me show you my city. I did well, did I not? From a landless knight to the glory of Antioch? Let me lavish all that I have on you. And perhaps we can run to a new pilgrim’s robe for you …’

  Raymond was as good as his word. Every sumptuous luxury was laid at our feet, banquets to tempt our jaded appetites, tournaments to entertain. Music and chess and draughts to stir our minds. Jewels and garments to replace those we had lost. When the gardens and the magnificent rooms of the palace palled, we hunted with leopards and falcons. Or I did, with Raymond as my host and companion. Louis declined. He could not refuse to eat with the Prince of Antioch without appearing uncivil and churlish, but he rejected the rest, burying himself in feverish planning with Odo and Galeran as
he had when we had been on the march. If I wished to see him, which I didn’t, I had to go to him.

  But I did, when the despicable news reached Antioch.

  Louis sat at a table, documents rolled and scattered in front of him, lines of figures under his fist. He stared unseeingly at them, but looked up when I entered. For a long moment he stared at me, eyes bleak, before he turned away to scowl at the view from the window.

  ‘I’ve heard.’ I wasted no time. ‘You did nothing to help them, did you?’

  Louis surged to his feet, to stride across the room away from me as if he would escape. I followed him, giving no quarter.

  ‘They are all lost to us. All those brave souls we abandoned in Attalia. You forbade me to ask Raymond for aid. You said you would organise their rescue. Did you not pay for the ships to return and transport them here to join us?’

  ‘No. I could not. Think of the cost. And I am still so far from Jerusalem. Such a project would have beggared me.’

  ‘How could you have left them there …?’ I could not disguise my horror, nor did I greatly try.

  Suddenly Louis whipped round and strode back to the table, thrusting past me, dashing the lists of figures from the surface with a sweep of his arm. ‘I don’t have the money. I demanded it from Suger but there is none. And now my army is in pieces.’ Snatching up a final column of numbers that had escaped his fury, he tore it into pieces and cast it to the floor. ‘All I see is failure. I shall never fulfil my vow.’

  ‘And that is all you can think about when you left your army to the mercy of the weather and the Infidel?’

  The courier had been graphic. All our abandoned troops in Attalia gone, either starved or dead of the plague, whilst those who lived had been enticed by the Turks with offers of food or an outright threat. Convert to Islam or die.

  Louis’s eyes blazed with fury. ‘They deserve no sympathy from me. Hundreds of them converted!’ His mouth twisted as if he would vomit from disgust. ‘They took the Cross, they accepted the holy symbol from the hands of Bernard himself, and at the first obstacle went over to the Infidel! By God, they did not deserve to be rescued.’

  ‘I think they had little choice. We had abandoned them.’

  ‘I should have stayed to lead them by land.’ Anger descended into the habitual refrain of maudlin despair.

  ‘Then you too would be dead!’

  Shaking his head, Louis thrust his foot against his chair to send it hurtling onto its side, the cushions scattering. ‘I shouldn’t have listened to you. A monstrous debacle.’

  So I was once more to be the whipping boy. But I was stronger now and Raymond had done much to restore my confidence. I would not be downcast. I would not take on this burden.

  ‘I’ll not be blamed for this, Louis. I would have saved them.’

  But Louis fell into silence, his eyes focused on the floor, reminding me vividly of those weeks in Paris when his mind had become completely taken over by the depth of his sin at Vitry. This was not the time for him to fall into a melancholy that would freeze him into an inability to make any decision other than to spend every night on his knees before God.

  I struck his arm with my hand.

  ‘Louis! For God’s sake …’

  ‘Go away, Eleanor.’ He looked around with distaste at the grandeur of the room with its hangings and gilded furniture. ‘I must talk to Odo. The sooner we leave here the better.’

  At least he was thinking, planning. It was the best I could hope for. ‘I expect you’ll tell me when you’ve made your decision.’ My scorn was heavy.

  ‘Yes. I’ll tell you. And I tell you this.’ Face pale, mouth set, he turned foursquare and his eyes focused on me at last. ‘I consider your intimacy with your uncle unfortunate.’

  ‘My intimacy? I hunt with him, eat with him …’

  ‘You talk to him. You’re always talking to him. What do you talk about?’

  ‘All the things you will not talk to me about! Politics. The Turkish threat. The safety of Antioch and Jerusalem. You won’t—and Raymond will. You can’t find fault with me for that, Louis.’

  ‘I don’t approve. I forbid you to discus French policy with him.’

  ‘Forbid me? By what right do you forbid me?’

  ‘As your husband.’

  ‘If you acted as my husband I might listen to you. Since you do not, I will spend my time as I choose. And if I wish to discuss affairs of war and politics with the Prince, my own blood—I will!’

  I thought that would be the end of it. It was not. Louis took a deep breath and blurted out the accusation.

  ‘I don’t like the rumours I hear, Eleanor.’

  I was alert. All senses came alive. But I remained as cool as a glass of sherbet, my eyes commanding his.

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘You are too much in Prince Raymond’s company.’ At the last his gaze slid uncomfortably from mine. ‘You are too intimate with him.’

  It made no sense. ‘Louis—you are a fool!’ I announced.

  Louis’s lips tightened with disapproval. He stalked past me. I rejected his ridiculous words. I had more important things to think about.

  How do you live with a man like that? Will you spend the rest of your life with a man for whom you have no respect?

  Raymond’s questions, even though I had answered them, would not leave me. They remained, like burrs under a saddle, to irritate. They disturbed my sleep, stalked me through my waking hours. They troubled me.

  Or did they? Did they not light a tiny flame of hope? And in the leisure hours in the heat of the day in Antioch did I not breathe on that little flame until it glowed and the idea began to emerge as a bright phoenix stretching its wings from the flames? Sometimes I thought it impossible. In other moments—well, why not? It was entirely possible if I made it so.

  The fact that you are Eleanor, and a woman of some remarkable spirit, might have every relevance.

  So I worried at it, like loose threads on the worn cuff of a gown. I must think and plan.

  ‘Lady—you should be aware … Court gossip …’ Agnes hovered.

  ‘Of what?’ I hadn’t time for empty tales and false chatter.

  ‘They say that you and the Prince.’

  ‘Raymond’s court has nothing better to do with its time than to indulge in idle speculation. Lies and artifice—either a figment of Louis’s disordered imagination or Galeran’s poisoning tongue. I’ll not hear it.’

  ‘As you will, lady …’

  Once I would have asked her, ‘What do they say of me?’ Once I would have listened to her sage advice, but now my mind was too caught up in my Grand Scheme. So I thought and planned, until every argument was worked out in my mind, as clear as the reflection in the Venetian looking glass that Raymond had provided for my use.

  For a little time I was diverted when Raymond summoned his war council. I was not invited—in matters of government Raymond could be as intransigent as any man—and so was forced to glean information from the violent after-effects. It was not difficult. The palace was awash with opinion and conjecture, not least because within minutes of the council’s meeting Louis and Raymond were at each other’s throats.

  Raymond’s plan of campaign, which I well knew, was to show Louis the wisdom of diverting the crusading army from its progress to Jerusalem and launch instead an attack on the Turkish strongholds of Aleppo and Caesarea. With the Turks distracted and weakened, it would be an easy next step to recover Edessa and thus save Antioch from Turkish inundation. And Raymond’s strongest argument, to appeal to Louis’s principal objective, was that to drive the Turks back would in the long term strengthen Jerusalem.

  Louis had balked like a stubborn mule. Jerusalem was his goal and that was where he would go. My own vassals had sided with Raymond, but their inclination was ridden over roughshod. With terrible conviction and total blindness, Louis declaimed that he would not deliberately shed the blood of his enemy until he had completed his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to lay his standard on
the altar and be washed of his sins. Then he might consider Raymond’s vulnerability, but not before.

  Stunned, Raymond had retaliated, not choosing his words in an unusual show of anger.

  ‘God’s wounds! If you are not prepared to help a fellow Christian, you may as well leave tomorrow. What point in you staying when you would close your eyes to my plight? And that of every man and woman in this city.’

  ‘I am aware of your plight, but I don’t consider it to be immediate.’

  ‘Then God help you if you are ever forced to witness a city sacked by the Turks.’

  The council had ended in a tumult of bad blood. Regrettable, but in it I saw my way to achieve my heart’s desire. I would be mistress of my own destiny yet.

  After the council’s collapse, Raymond seethed. I had no idea what Louis did. Raymond was the one I went to.

  ‘It would have to be a holy miracle to get that damned husband of yours to see beyond his immortal soul!’ Raymond’s anger had cooled, but not greatly.

  ‘Not a miracle.’ I smiled disarmingly. ‘An ultimatum. I want you to recall your war council. And this time I will be there.’ I waved him to silence when I saw the objection of a man who still saw a woman’s place as the kitchen, the solar or the bedchamber spring to his lips. ‘You should have invited me to the first one. I should not have needed an invitation.’

  ‘It is not customary.’

  ‘Is it not? I will be there.’ I laid my hand on his sleeve and weighted my voice with authority. ‘Call the council, Raymond.’

  He studied my face—would he refuse?—then nodded once, a sly glint in his eye. Of course he would agree. Was Raymond not a military man, a skilled tactician, awake to every opportunity? ‘I don’t know what you’re planning but you are a clever woman,’ he observed with the calculating grin reminiscent of the boy I remembered. ‘And a beautiful one. I will do it, because you ask it. We’ll see if Louis can be forced to bend with the wind.’

  Yes, we would indeed see. I could barely wait.

  I delayed my arrival at the war council to enjoy the effect as I walked into the room, as Raymond rose to lead me to the chair that had been placed for me at his right hand. There was a rustle of interest around the table. Louis stiffened, fingers closing round the cross that lay on his breast, probably for strength to withstand me. Galeran’s narrow features were harsh with condemnation. Odo de Deuil looked contemplative, as if deciding whether to write about my uninvited presence or if it might be better to gloss over what might become a vituperative occasion. The rest of Louis’s knights were uneasy. Only my own vassals showed any pleasure in my appearance.