But just as Louis’ mouth warmed over mine, his chamberlain came in. As I met Gerald’s embarrassed eyes as he knelt to us, I wondered for one brief moment if he might not be in the pay of the Count of Valois. The count would love to see me barren; the count would love to see the throne of France without an heir forever, that he might pluck that prize for himself. The fact that Louis seldom touched me was a great joke in the Parisian court, as if this lack of a son were somehow my fault.
Louis pulled away from me at once. His voice sounded pained as he spoke, and I took heart. Perhaps he would simply send Gerald away, and draw me back to the bed in spite of the interruption. He had never done so before, but there was always a first time.
“My lord king, there is news from Bourges. They have chosen a new archbishop.”
Louis’ fair skin darkened with anger. “I know this, Gerald. I sent my chancellor to fill that post. Why do you wake me in the night to tell me what I already know?”
“No, my lord king. A messenger came straight from Bourges. The brothers in the Church have chosen a different archbishop.”
“Not my chancellor?”
“No, my lord king. A monk of their own house.”
Louis said nothing, but waved one hand in dismissal. Gerald stood at once and stumbled from our sight. My husband’s anger was a rare thing, but when it rose, it was like a storm that might shake the very foundations of the earth. I always waited for it, and sometimes hoped for it. The sight of his fury gave me hope now.
Never before had the Church openly defied him. We had worked steadily over the past four years to shore up the power of the throne of France. Louis’ ministers were still mostly churchmen, but he took most of his advice from me. With Suger safe in St.-Denis, running the great cathedral there, even the Count of Valois and his faction had stayed quiet, save for spreading rumors of my barrenness. But now the brothers of Bourges had openly defied Louis, denying him the appointment of their archbishop, an appointment that had been in the hands of the throne of France for centuries. Louis felt the sting of their contempt. Their defiance, instead of making him meek, as they no doubt had hoped, made him strong.
“How dare they? How dare they defy their king?”
I did not step close to him, but waited and listened. In those first few moments of fury, he had forgotten that I was even in the room.
“It is for me to choose the archbishop of Bourges. For myself, and no other. I must return to Paris. I must take counsel with my lords.”
“But, husband, what of Toulouse? The city will fall in a few days’ time. Let us stay here, and finish what we started. Then let us return to Paris, and settle with the Church.”
Louis’ face was puce with anger. I was not sure he even heard me until he spoke.
“No, Eleanor. Toulouse has sued for peace. I will allow it.”
“They sued for peace because they know that they are losing!” I could not keep my own anger from my voice, and Louis heard it. He turned the force of his blue eyes on me. For the first time in our marriage I saw that there truly was strength in him, if only he would learn to use it.
“I will show mercy. I will let them go.”
I thought of my uncle de Faye, of how he had waited so patiently for this city to fall into his hands. I felt it all slipping away, as sand with a tide that is rolling out.
“Louis, please, do not abandon our work here. Let us take the city. If they sued for peace, they will soon open the gates to you. It is only a matter of time.”
“I abandon nothing!” Louis’ fury was turned on me for the first time since I had known him, and I felt a chill along my spine.
“We will return to Paris. I will take counsel with my ministers. I will speak to Suger. I will have that bishopric.”
I saw that his mind had let Toulouse go altogether. He cared nothing for the foot soldiers already lost, or for the fact that by turning from the task only half-done, he would look weak before all our vassals and our men-at-arms.
I thought of my uncle, and how I might appease him with no city to gift him with. I pushed the thought from my mind at once. I needed to pay attention in the midst of Louis’ ire; I needed to stay in the here and now. The game was shifting, and I must shift with it.
For the moment, Toulouse was lost to me, but this new battle with the Church was not. If I hoped to be a player in that battle, I must regain my husband’s ear. I moved now to Louis’ side.
“If you go to Paris, I go with you. I will stand at your side, and fight with you.” My next words stuck in my throat, but I spoke the lie without flinching. “I am your obedient wife.”
Louis drew me close, and pressed me against him. He pulled me behind the damask curtain, and forgot his Church nonsense of sin and death, and embraced me as a man.
He was quick and clumsy, but he made love to me for the first time in many months. And for once, he did not pray afterward.
As Louis lay asleep beside me, his ardor and his anger spent, I laid my plans. I would send word to my uncle and, for the time being, put Toulouse from my thoughts. For I knew that, no matter whose counsel Louis took in Paris, the Church would not concede.
Ultimately, the archbishopric of Bourges was a small matter. It was the power of the throne of France that concerned us, for it was the power of the throne that the Church had attacked. If the Church began to usurp the power to name bishops in a king’s realm, what other powers might they take next?
I lay beside my husband, my breathing quiet as I watched his face. The cast of Louis’ features was implacable, even in sleep. I saw that if the Church did not give way, there might be open war.
Chapter 13
Palace of the City
Paris
September 1141
OF COURSE, LOUIS DID NOT TAKE UP ARMS AGAINST THE Church. He was far too pious for that. Instead, he turned his mind and the minds of his ministers to defending the power of the throne of France. Though I had lost Toulouse for the moment, I was heartened to see Louis defend his realm from the political machinations of the Church. The loss of the bishopric of Bourges was something Louis did not forgive or forget.
One morning, when we had been back in Paris for two months, my ladies sat working on yet another tapestry for the altar of Suger’s cathedral at St.-Denis. Amaria entered my rooms with only the slightest curtsy, and came straight to me. She whispered in my ear, and at once, I sent all my women away.
As soon as they had gone, Petra rushed in, her hair falling from its braids, her riding cloak still clasped around her shoulders.
She was fifteen and as beautiful as a summer morning that has not yet felt the heat of noon. She stood in the doorway of my rooms, her hair falling down around her shoulders in soft golden strands, her blue eyes wild, until they settled on me.
“Eleanor, you must help me,” she said.
I had last seen her at the feast of Christ’s Mass in Poitiers nine months before. We had eaten and drunk together, and I had cast my eye over my uncle’s work in my lands, and had found it sound. Petra, too, had seemed happy, as content as she had been when I first left her under my uncle’s care.
I took her hands in mine as Amaria left, drawing the door shut behind my women. I placed Petra in my own chair, and poured her watered wine. She drank it, her hand shaking.
My sister turned her great blue eyes on me. “Eleanor, I am married.”
Of all the words I had expected from Petra’s lips, I had not thought to hear these. I sat in Amaria’s chair, for my knees had given way. The cushion behind me fell to the stone floor, and there was no one there to set it right.
“He is with me, just outside your chamber door. They would not let him in, as he is a man. But he loves me, and I love him. I am two months gone with his child. We married in haste, as soon as we knew, and then we came to you.”
My sister spoke all this in a rush, throwing down all my hopes for her marriage to come, all hope of a good alliance with a man of my own choosing. I had indulged her, and left her with only my uncle for too lon
g. She had chosen for herself already.
Petra cast herself at my feet, her wine discarded.
“Forgive me, Alienor. You must forgive me.”
The sound of my true name on her lips touched me as nothing else might have done. Petra did not calculate to strike at my heart, nor did she lie. I knew from the look on her face that she loved this man, whoever he was, whatever he had done. She had married him in secret, and came now to tell me.
I took her in my arms, and we knelt together for a moment on that cold Parisian floor. I drew her back onto her chair and began to smooth her braids, taking them down, reworking them with my own hands. She calmed under my touch, as a frightened foal quiets when she sidles up next to her mother.
“I thought you would be angry. Say something, Alienor.”
“I love you, Petra, no matter what you have done. Let me meet your husband. Then I will take you both in to see the king.”
When her husband stepped into my rooms, I realized that things were worse than I had thought. I knew the man on sight. Not only had the opportunity to make a good alliance been lost with my sister’s marriage, but enemies had been made. She had chosen Raoul of Vermandois, a man thirty-five years her senior, a man already married to the Count of Champagne’s sister. No doubt he wished to cast aside his first wife in order to align himself with the throne of France.
My sister, in all her sweetness, did not see this. Petra knew only that she wanted him, and that if she asked, I would arrange to set him free from another so that she could have her heart’s desire. She had no mind for politics, nor for the lengths power-hungry men were driven to. She thought he loved her truly, just as she loved him.
I could only think what my husband would say when presented with this folly. Louis would call for my sister to be sent to a nunnery, and for Raoul to be sent back to his wife. For all the trouble this relationship would cause us, both with the Church and with our vassals and allies, I was tempted to let Louis prevail in this, and to let his scruples rule my sister’s fate. She had made her bed; now let her lie in it.
But as I watched, Petra clung to Raoul of Vermandois’ arm as if he were the bulwark of the world. Her frightened eyes did not leave his face from the moment he stepped into the room. She looked not to me for sanctuary but to him. The love she felt for him was written on the curves of her lovely face, as well as her longing for him. I saw then, and for the first time, all that our father’s death had cost her.
Lost and alone, left behind by me, with only my uncle to guide her, she had found this hulk of a man. This one-eyed warrior, with wide shoulders and hard hands, promised her not just pleasure but a safe haven from the world. The kind of haven she and I once had when our father was still alive.
I would give her the safe haven of her choosing. I would arrange the annulment of Raoul’s first marriage, though his wife was still living, though she had borne him children already. I would see those children disinherited by the order of Louis’ bishops, for Petra’s sake. And in return, Raoul of Vermandois would protect my sister, forsaking all others, or I would see him dead.
“You have dishonored my sister,” I said. “You have thrown her to the dogs, and now you come to beg my leave for having done it. Who do you think you are?”
Raoul of Vermandois knelt at once, and my sister knelt with him, tears rising in her eyes as she clung to his hand. He smoothed back her hair, and kissed her. It was a pretty gesture, and I saw from the tenderness in his touch that it was not an empty one. With my sister comforted, her would-be husband turned to me.
“I mean her no dishonor. I seek to make her my wife.”
“You have a wife already.” My voice was harsh, my face unreadable.
“She has given me no sons. She is the sister of the Count of Champagne, your enemy.”
I was silent for a moment, letting him sweat. The Count of Champagne was a disloyal vassal who had refused to send us troops in any military operation we had accomplished since Louis took the throne. This insolence had gone unpunished. Raoul was offering his marriage to my sister, and its insult to the Count of Champagne, as a bond between us.
If Louis ordered his bishops to annul the marriage of the sister of the Count of Champagne, he would show all his vassals the price of defying the crown. We had enough bishops loyal and obedient to us to follow through with this scheme. Some of our more unruly vassals might even take note of it.
Raoul saw that I was weakening. He had seen the closeness between my sister and me. He knew that I would not cast Petra into a nunnery. He knew that I would care for her always, no matter what it cost me.
“I will defend Petra with my life,” he said.
I did not speak but stared at him. He did not flinch or turn away under my gaze.
“Very well,” I said. “I will back you with Louis. And when the Count of Champagne comes calling, asking for his sister’s husband, I will back you then, too.”
Vermandois came closer and knelt again, this time not as a suppliant but as one swearing me fealty. I offered him my hand, the one that bore my wedding ring, and my father’s signet.
My sister’s husband ignored Louis’ ring as if it were not there. He pressed his lips instead to the ruby of Aquitaine, the ruby that was never off my hand since my father died.
“I will follow you, my lady queen, unto the ends of the earth. I swear it.”
“Rise,” I said. “I will not lead you so far. Just into the neighbor room. The king takes counsel from his ministers. He will see us there.”
Chapter 14
Palace of the City
Paris
September 1141
“ELEANOR, YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS.”
Louis faced me from his place beside his prie-dieu. Newly risen from his prayers, he stood close by the bed of state, where I was certain our son would one day be conceived. I had gone in alone to see him, leaving my sister and her would-be suitor alone with Amaria.
I fought down my irritation as I looked at Louis. The sight of his piety, of his judgmental dismissal of my sister and her woes, made my heart burn with fire. But I kept my tone even, and a welcoming smile on my face. I needed Louis to support me with Petra almost as much as I needed him back in my bed.
Anger still burned beneath my breastbone at his abandonment of Toulouse. Though he had left the city that belonged to my family to languish in the hands of my enemies, Louis had made no headway in his conflict with the Church. Louis’ will was still thwarted; the archbishop chosen by the Church still sat in state at Bourges. My husband’s assertion of his right to appoint bishops across the land fell on deaf ears in Rome. As always, Louis seemed caught in the middle of things, between what he wanted and his inability to work his will against the Church.
I pressed all thoughts of Louis’ weakness, all thoughts of Toulouse, from my mind, focusing all my energy on Petra’s marriage to come.
“Louis, it is very little to ask. My sister wishes to marry this man; she considers herself married to him already in the sight of God. She needs only your blessing.”
“And an annulment for her lover from my bishops.”
The comment was so astute, so unlike Louis, that I could not at once find my voice.
Louis’ thin lips pursed in distaste. “And you say your sister is pregnant, out of wedlock, with his child?”
“She hopes to bear Raoul a son.”
“That is for God to say.”
Louis stepped away from me, and fiddled with a piece of parchment on the mahogany table by his bed. “You ask that I support your sister as a favor to you?”
“Husband, I would ask this as a boon, yes. I know that in your generosity you will grant me this small thing. But it occurs to me, by granting this blessing to me and to my sister, you will also be striking at the Count of Champagne.”
Louis heard that name, and the parchment he held fell once more to the table, discarded. The name of his enemy made his eyes gleam. “Champagne’s sister is married to Vermandois?” Louis asked.
> I stepped toward him, so that he might catch the scent of my lilac perfume. “She was. Now my sister will marry him. As soon as your bishops call for the annulment.”
Satisfaction lit Louis’ eyes. “So you say, Eleanor. We will support your sister. It is time the Count of Champagne learned not to defy the King of France.”
“You are wise, my lord king. You lead us all into the light.”
Being Louis, he did not catch the irony in my voice. He took my hand in his, and instead of kissing me, he pressed his lips to my fingertips. I hoped that something more might come of our accord, but he did not draw me back onto his bed. He gave me his support for Petra, but that was all I got from Louis that day.
I soon saw that Petra’s marriage would not be as easy to procure as I once had hoped.
Though the French bishops granted Raoul of Vermandois an annulment at Louis’ request, as soon as the rest of Christendom heard of it, the annulment was condemned by churchmen all over Europe. The pope himself stated the annulment was void, that Raoul’s marriage to the sister of the Count of Champagne still was valid.
The month before, Petra had left Paris with Raoul. She and her errant husband had gone to his seat at Vermandois, while his first wife languished in her brother’s protection in Champagne. Petra would be delivered of their child in midwinter. I hoped that by the time her baby was born, I would have purchased the annulment of her husband’s first marriage.
I took the matter into my own hands and called Stefan of Gascony to me. Stefan had been my eyes and ears, both with the Church and with Louis’ lords, since my uncle de Faye had brought him into my service.
Of course, I could not meet a man alone in my rooms, even with Amaria to attend me. So I made sure that our meeting looked like chance, as I stood in the simples garden, watching Amaria cut down the last of the lavender. The scent of those flowers was sweet, and soothed me, even in the midst of Paris, even in the middle of my husband’s court. Though it was late October, the rains had ceased, and for that one day we had sunlight. I stood, my face to the sun, and drank in the warmth of it. I knew from all my years in Paris that it would not last, as nothing on earth does.
To Be Queen Page 14