To Be Queen

by Christy English

  He, too, had bathed, though it was not the custom among my men to do so, especially while on Crusade. I took in the scent of the thyme on his clothes, and the scent of soap on his still-wet hair. His beard was trimmed and smooth, and he was dressed in light, fine-combed wool, his boots polished to a sheen. Louis wore silk and satin for court occasions and in the great hall, but he had never taken the trouble to wear such finery for me when we were alone in my room. My husband had never come wooing; but then, he had never had to.

  I moved away from Geoffrey, drawing my hand from his. I poured Cypriot wine from a silver urn into the silver goblet that matched it. Cool sweat beaded along the outside of that urn; it ran down the side, and caressed my hand as I poured. I shivered, with Geoffrey watching me.

  I raised the cup between us, and took the first sip. His eyes never left me all the while, and he did not draw breath. I stepped across the deep, rich carpet on the floor of my tent, and raised the goblet to his lips myself.

  His hand was on mine then, caressing my fingers. He touched my ruby ring, the one my father once had worn. He touched the diamond Louis had given me when I married him, but neither my rank nor my married state stopped him. Geoffrey swallowed one long draught of wine, then took the goblet from me. He set down the cup beside its urn. He reached for me, and I knew my time to choose was over.

  Geoffrey kissed me softly, gently, as if I were made of spun glass and might break between his hands. Louis loved me, and was often tender, but he had not the skill to cherish me, even after more than ten years of marriage. Geoffrey had both the skill and the fire of a real man combined.

  When I did not shy from him, he drew me close, and pressed himself against me. The heat of his body melded at once with mine, and I lost my breath. His lips were on mine again, sipping from me, as if I were a fountain that would never run dry, as if he had lived all his life in the desert, and just now had the taste of water on his lips.

  I let him lead. Always Louis had to be coaxed and cajoled into the act of love, drawn along by hints and whores’ tricks. I needed none of those with Geoffrey.

  He lifted me in his arms as if I weighed nothing, though I was a tall woman, full of strength. He laid me down upon my pallet of furs and satin, drawing first my gown from me, then my shift. His hands feasted on me as his eyes did, for a lamp was lit beside the bed, and cast its glow over us.

  In spite of the gloves he wore when on horseback or at war, Geoffrey’s hands were coarse and callused, as Louis’ were not. It seemed I could not drive my husband from my mind, comparing him with Geoffrey: the darkness of Geoffrey’s arms with Louis’ fairness, the dark heat in Geoffrey’s brown eyes with Louis’ soft blue. Then Geoffrey reached between my thighs to caress my nether lips, and all comparisons ended.

  A heat began to build in me, a tightening so intense that I began to fight it. But I could fight nothing with Geoffrey’s hands on me. His own gown and hose cast off, he leaned close; his skin heated mine as a forge heats a sword. He pressed the hard length of his body against mine, the warm curling hairs of his thighs against my soft skin. Still, he did not enter me, though I shifted beneath him, trying to coax him closer. Had I not been a queen, I would have begged him, but still his hand rode me as he looked into my eyes.

  I felt it then, the great wave of power as it rose in me. Louis had fanned that flame before, clumsily, but it had never caught. This time, it was a conflagration, and I was swept up in it.

  The waves of power washed over me, pleasure after pleasure, so that I could not catch my breath. Geoffrey entered me. I would have screamed had his hand not been fastened over my mouth. He rode me then, his own gasps echoing in my ears. I had not thought that I could feel anything more, but his body was in mine and on mine, riding me as I rode my mare. I crested once more beneath him as he spoke my name.

  I felt the warmth of his seed spill inside me, and for once it was not just a sordid but necessary end to a man’s pleasure. For once, I felt my own pleasure, and I knew how much I had been cheated of in all my years of marriage. There were depths within me that I would not have plumbed, had Geoffrey never touched me.

  Had I been a weaker woman, I would have cursed Louis. As it was, I did not waste my breath. Instead, I drew Geoffrey close, that he might come to me again.

  Geoffrey loved me many times that night, and each time I rose to the pinnacle of bliss, and toppled over it. When he left me an hour before dawn, I lay spent on the satin of my bed as if slain. But I still lived.

  “Alienor, I will not forget this night, now or ever.”

  “Nor I, Geoffrey. But you must not call me that.”

  “I will not, ever again. But that is who you are to me. Alienor of the soft bronze hair.”

  He kissed me then, and I tasted his regret. His lust had flown, as mine had done. My husband would return soon, and we would not be able to touch each other again.

  “If you ever have need of me, I will come to you.”

  I pressed my hand against his cheek. The unkempt edges of his beard had grown back in the night. It rasped against my fingertips.

  “That has always been true. And I thank you for it,” I said.

  “There need be no thanks between us.”

  He kissed me, his lips lingering on mine as if he wished time would stand still, as if time did not exist. But even then, he knew his duty, just as I knew mine. He left me without another word. There was too much between us ever to be spoken of, and we both knew it.

  Amaria came in when he had gone, and helped me wash and dress. When my women entered my tent, fresh from their own liaisons, I was already breaking my fast. Not one of them looked askance at me, or asked any leading questions. If I had not been so deliciously sore, I might have thought the night before nothing but a dream.

  I was soon to discover that while I was pleasuring myself safe among the cypress trees, the world was going on around me, for good and ill. Word came to us early that morning: Louis’ army had been attacked in the night. The Turks had overrun them, and only two thousand Parisian fighting men had survived.

  Louis was well, they were quick to tell me, thinking that I grew pale in my fear for him. Bile rose in my throat, and I pushed my food aside. It was a dark day. I had been proved right. The Turks had attacked.

  Perhaps the Emperor Manuel still secretly resented our presence in his territory. I wondered if Manuel had heard of our route, and had learned that our forces had been separated overnight. I did not doubt for a moment that the Emperor of Byzantium was capable of selling information about his fellow Christians to the Saracens. Manuel might have told the Turks where Louis and his army could be found, busy at prayer and ripe for the scythe.

  I sent at once for Rancon.

  He bowed to me, no acknowledgment on his face of anything that had passed between us. I questioned him in front of my men. My women had been sent from the tent, save for Amaria, who was always by me.

  Though all my barons no doubt knew that Rancon and I had spent the night in love play, I saw no evidence of that knowledge on their faces. I saw nothing but respect for me, and respect for the man who led them. Rancon had kept them safe. Had we heeded Louis, had we camped on the mountain, we would all be lying dead now, food for crows, and every one of us knew it.

  “And you sent word to the king yesterday, in the afternoon, to tell him that we would be here?” I asked.

  “No, my lady queen. I sent no word. I thought it too far, and that my messenger might be killed. It would have been a waste of a man, and his horse.”

  Rancon did not say it, though we were all thinking it. Louis had wasted more than one man’s life by not heeding me, and taking ship to Antioch before this. I knew, however, that Louis and his Parisians would not see it that way.

  “And the Emperor Conrad and his Germans, what of them?”

  “The emperor still lives, my lady. Many of his men were killed at prayer, and others stood to fight with the king’s knights. A few hundred are left alive. The Germans are making their way f
or the coast even as we speak.”

  I did not want to hear any more. I extended my hand, and Geoffrey bowed over it. He did not kiss my ring, but neither did he let my hand go.

  “You have done well. Send word to me when Louis arrives. He knows by now where we are?”

  Geoffrey’s eyes met mine. “Yes, my lady duchess. My men have met him on the road. The king’s knights are in retreat.”

  My barons bowed to me, before backing from my presence. They knew, as I did, that we would all pay for our night of safety in the valley. Baron Rancon was my war leader, but he was also my husband’s standard-bearer. It was his duty to obey my husband in all things, but Rancon had remembered his oath to me first. He had chosen the safety of our people over Louis’ foolish orders. My husband would not soon forget that he had been ignored, and that my people had been saved from an ambush in which so many Parisians fell.

  We waited until past noon, and Louis’ army still did not come to meet us. Only as the sun set did the French begin to straggle into our camp. One by one, man by man, they came among us. They drank deep from the water of the clear-running creek nearby, almost falling down where they stood. They cared for their horses, then lay down to sleep on blankets in the open air. None of the survivors set up tents, so my people did it for them. I began to see that what I thought had been a rout had been a massacre.

  Louis did not come to me, but sent his man to fetch me to him. I knew then that we were in for deep trouble, the kind I had never before seen with Louis. I dressed in dark blue silk, with a rosary of diamonds and jet bound around my waist. My hair was braided down my back and covered with a linen veil. I thought I looked like a nun, which would suit my purpose. No doubt Louis had no use for a whore so soon after such a humiliating defeat.

  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 ba
ck 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.

  Chapter 20

  City of Antioch

  Kingdom of Antioch

  March 1148

  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.