To Be Queen

by Christy English

  But I had long become accustomed to Parisians speaking evil of me, behind my back and to my face. I needed only to maintain my balance long enough to eat Roger’s food without choking on it. It had been weeks since I sat among Louis’ courtiers. After my journey and long illness, I knew I was not ready. I also knew that I had to be.

  Louis himself led me into Roger’s hall. The great stone walls were of Norman design, without even the grace of the vaulting I had so often seen in Paris. Here this castle was meant to be seen as it was: a fortress against the enemy. It was also a fortress against air and light.

  I stood in the doorway of that great hall, looking at the gray stone walls that seemed to enclose me like a fist, and I almost faltered. I thought to turn back, to run to my room like a child, or a fool. Louis held my hand, and looked into my eyes. He stepped between me and all those who observed us, so that they might not see my face.

  “Eleanor, are you all right? Do you need to lie down again?”

  The soft sweetness in his voice was almost my undoing. Why had this man not come to my bed? Why, after so many years, had we never had a son? Why had he never become the man he was born to be?

  Even these thoughts were weakness, which I pushed away. I caught my breath, and smiled. “No, Louis. I will stand, with you beside me.”

  This one phrase caught his ear, and his face opened as a flower in sunlight. He led me proudly then among his people, and seated me at the high table, between himself and the King of Sicily.

  The Parisians frowned at this. I saw Brother Francis, Louis’ confessor, whisper low to the churchman beside him. I ignored all these people, and offered my host my hand. Roger took it gracefully. Gracious in speech as well, he made me welcome, though I did not hear his words. I drank from the wine at table. The alcohol did not fortify me, but made me dizzy, so I set the cup aside. I kept the false smile on my face, until it felt almost real.

  The meat came in then, course after course of it. I took as little as was seemly, and Louis covered over my lack of appetite, praising the cook highly, though as far as I could tell, the clod did not deserve it. Thoughts of Raymond’s table filled my mind, the succulent fruits, the light pastries, the honeyed almonds and dates. The year I had spent in the Levant apart from Raymond had faded as mist when sunlight hits it. All I could see, as I gazed at that stone hall in Sicily, were the wide avenues of Antioch, and the gracious fluted columns of Raymond’s palace.

  As if I had conjured him with my thoughts, someone spoke his name.

  Brother Francis was seated at the high table, far above his station, for these things were overlooked in this foreign court as they never would have been in Paris. In Aquitaine, I would not have wanted Francis even in my hall. But among the Normans of Sicily, a lowborn peasant sat with kings simply because he was a well-placed priest. My wits sharpened just enough for me to think that once we returned to France, I must see to taking this churchman down. For everywhere I turned, he was there, mocking me.

  Francis was mocking me now, though his smile was deferent, though he spoke Raymond’s name with a sham of respect. I heard the contempt behind his words. No doubt everyone else did as well. Everyone save Louis.

  “And the Turks rise once more in Edessa,” Francis said. “The Emperor Manuel of Byzantium will have to go in and subdue them.”

  “No doubt the kingdom of Antioch will welcome the assistance,” I said by way of dismissal.

  The priest’s eyes gleamed in the lamplight. He savored his next words as he spoke them.

  “No doubt they will,” Francis said. “Now that their prince is dead.”

  I was not sure, but I thought that I heard laughter somewhere in the hall. A woman’s laugh, quick, high-pitched, and easily silenced. I listened hard after it faded, but it seemed I could hear nothing else. My mind had stopped, and my ears had fallen deaf, though Francis talked on, his mouth moving in mock sympathy, sympathy flavored with dark delight.

  My mind was slow to take in the knowledge, and my heart lagged far behind.

  Raymond was dead.

  Francis went over the old tale there in my hearing, for old it was by now. With no one to fight with him, in June Raymond had gone to Edessa to negotiate with the Saracens there. On the road, he had been attacked; his men had fled or had died with him. Raymond fell, his head taken to be sold to the caliph in Edessa for gold. Francis told this story with such joy that no doubt he would have bid for Raymond’s bloody corpse, had it been placed on sale at market.

  “Well,” the false priest concluded, “better men have died at the hands of the Saracens. No doubt the Emperor Manuel will put that land to rights, once he is king in Antioch.”

  Roger made a gracious comment, and I could see he meant to silence my husband’s priest. Louis turned to Francis and met his eyes unblinking. For the second time that day, I saw my husband’s strength, and wondered what kind of man he might have made if my father had the training of him.

  “You forget yourself, Brother Francis. You speak of my wife’s uncle, and my own dear kinsman. Raymond of Antioch’s passing is a great loss to all of Christendom. His sacrifice is not to be mocked, or gainsaid. He is in heaven now, at the foot of Our Lord, as all martyrs are, as we all one day hope to be.” Louis laid his hand over mine as he spoke, but his eyes never left Francis.

  The priest stood and bowed, and moved as if to kneel, but Louis raised one hand. “You may go. You are dismissed.”

  A black cloud of fury passed over Francis’ face before his mask of righteous piety came to cover it. I would have laughed had my heart not been bleeding in my chest. Louis kept his hand over mine as Francis made his way from that foreign hall.

  King Roger called for music then, and for some wine to go with the dancing, but my husband and I did not move from the dais. I sat for hours longer, my hand in Louis’, looking on Roger’s hall unseeing. All that came before my eyes was the sight of Raymond’s golden hair, glinting in the sunlight, and the imagined sight of his bloody neck, sliced through by a Saracen’s blade. I could see nothing but that red gold hair and the fair skin beneath it, colored in bright blood. But I did not weep. No good thing on this earth is meant to last.

  Chapter 24

  Papal Villa

  City of Rome

  October 1149

  WE TRAVELED NORTH TO THE PAPAL VILLA OUTSIDE ROME, where the pope waited to meet us. I lay still in my litter, the curtains drawn. My interest in wild, untamed country had faded.

  I rode no horse, for Melusina, the beautiful white mare Louis had given me on our wedding day, had died while we were in Jerusalem. That she had walked so far with me on her back was a kind of miracle, Louis declared, though as far as I know, he never had his priests bottle and sell her blood as a relic. That is one kind of mercy, I suppose.

  It was one of the darkest times of my life. Raymond was dead, left to the crows behind me. I lay alone in that great litter, as the bearers carried me ever closer to Rome.

  Stefan waited for me there. In that city, I would make my next move in the game to set myself free. I must be awake and aware, fully alert, and ready for battle when I first set eyes on the Papal See. Pope Eugenius was just a man, a man who could be bought, as all men can. But as I lay adrift in that litter, I found I did not care if I never reached Rome, or ever saw Aquitaine again. It was the lowest point of my life, save for the day my father died.

  If my father could see me laid so low, he would have stroked my hair, his wisdom and his calm conveyed to me in his gentle touch. Then he would have stood and said, “Alienor, I raised you to be stronger than this. Stand up. Live your life. Do what must be done.”

  I said these words to myself, over and over, expecting them at any moment to take hold of my mind, if not my heart. With each new hill town along the coast of Italy, I thought my mind would sharpen, that my heart would revive. They did not.

  Amaria fed me teas and watered wine with bread soaked in it, as she would for someone dying. I was not dying, but I was not living either. As I r
ode ever closer to Rome and to my fate, I found that I did not have the energy to contemplate the future or the freedom I hoped for, much less to plan or fight for it. I was undone, and all of Louis’ people traveling with us knew it.

  It was Louis who came to me in the midst of my despair, as he had after my miscarriage. But this time I did not blame him for my losses or my pain. This time, my despair had nothing to do with him, so the sight of him did not gall me.

  He sat beside my bed in the last abbey we stopped at on our way to Rome. The next morning would see us brought to the pope at his villa. We would be feasted and we would each be granted a papal audience, a time to confess our sins, air our grievances, and kiss the papal ring.

  I could not think of it, of the reports I would hear from Stefan, briefing me on the lay of the land before me. I could not think of the battle to come. I, a lone woman, armed with nothing but my wit and the might of the Aquitaine, would come to the Vicar of Christ to barter for my life. This pope had already taken payment upon payment from my hands. But, as all good politicians, he had committed himself to nothing.

  “Eleanor,” Louis said. “It grieves me to see you so ill, and so out of heart. I have prayed for you constantly, but you do not seem to get any better.”

  I met his eyes, this man I had comforted and cajoled, manipulated and lied to, for almost thirteen years. He was a good man, and kind to me. His time in the Levant had not changed him, except inexplicably to make him love me more. His weakness still lay open for all to see, his unknown strengths hidden where I had never been able to reach them. Now that I had given up so completely on him and on our marriage both, I looked on Louis not as a husband or an enemy, but simply as a friend.

  “You are good to pray for me,” I said. “His Holiness will no doubt do the same, and I will be miraculously cured.”

  If Louis heard my jibe, he did not acknowledge it. He held my hand tighter, and kissed it, bringing it to his lips as he would a holy relic. I saw then that Louis would always love me, just as I loved Raymond, until his days passed from this earth. Just as I had not chosen Raymond, Louis had not chosen me. We were the same in this. Fate had not been kind to either of us.

  I opened my arms to him, and Louis came up onto the bed. He clutched me close, but he did not draw me under him. Somewhere in his mind, unacknowledged and unlooked for since our time in Antioch, lay the truth that our marriage was over. Its death throes, long and painful, were upon us. They would one day subside, leaving us both with nothing.

  Though I was full of sorrow, it was Louis who wept for both of us. His tears washed away some of my own pain, enough so that I could go on. Raymond was still lost. I would never look upon his face again. But Louis loved me enough to weep for me, as I could not weep for my own losses, that day or ever.

  I found, as I held my husband in my arms, that it was enough. My heart began to heal. I began that night to do as my father would have instructed, had he been there. I began to rise from my living grave, to live my life, to go on. As we all must do, or perish utterly.

  His Holiness Pope Eugenius III was an urbane man of letters who greeted us inside his own gates with the aplomb of an emperor and the warmth of a priest. I knelt to him there in his courtyard, and kissed his ring. When I rose to meet his eyes, I found him smiling down on me, for he was a tall man, and full of fire. His brown eyes gleamed as he took in my form beneath the cloth of gold I wore. No man had looked at me so since Raymond, and I laughed out loud.

  We were not alone, and all of Louis’ Parisians frowned to hear my mirth. But Louis, rising from his own genuflection, turned to me with a smile.

  “Praise God, Your Holiness. I thought to never hear her laugh again,” he said.

  “Indeed.” Eugenius smiled. “And now you have.”

  I said nothing, but cast my eyes down in a false show of modesty, following His Holiness into his inner sanctum. Louis, ever the gentlemen, had allowed me to take my private audience first.

  The pope and I walked in silence through empty gardens filled with jasmine and columbine, on paths lined with white marble that gleamed in the warm Italian sun. I raised my face to the light, loath to go inside to his rooms, as I knew we must.

  Eugenius surprised me when he said, “Let us sit out here, between these fountains.”

  I sent a sharp glance toward him, and he smiled to acknowledge it. “We will be more alone here,” he said. “These fountains will muffle the sound of our voices.”

  “So it will remain between us, all that we speak of,” I said.

  “Well,” Eugenius answered, “between us and God.”

  His brown eyes gleamed with mirth, and I could not tell if he was baiting me with my faithlessness or acknowledging his own. He was the first man I had met, save those of my family, who looked to be my equal. I reserved judgment, and sat down on a marble bench when he bade me.

  “Louis is a good man,” Eugenius said.

  “One of the best men I have ever known,” I answered.

  “And yet you wish to be free of him.”

  “Yes.”

  I thought for a moment to go into my long prepared speech of my own sin, of my fears that I was keeping the throne of France from a son and heir. But I saw that just as Stefan had reported to me, this pope had his own men hidden in my household. He knew that Louis would not touch me, on pain of death, and that this reason, more than anything, was why France had no son.

  “You wish to be free to marry again,” he said.

  “No.” I spoke without thinking. I took a breath, and chastised myself for foolishness. I was still on shaky ground. I had risen from my living grave, but I had not got my full strength back yet. I forced my eyes to his, and commanded my wits to be sharper. My life depended on this man, and what he chose to do with me.

  “I may marry again, if that is God’s will.”

  “But there is no one you have in mind at present,” Eugenius said. “No man who calls to you, and bids you break your oath to your husband.”

  I met his eyes. For once, they were not smiling. “No,” I answered. “There is no other man. Just as there is no son for France. Nor will be, I think, until Louis is free of me.”

  “So you plead for Louis’ freedom?”

  “And my own.”

  “But Louis has no wish to be free. He wishes to remain married to you, and to accept God’s will in the matter of his son.”

  “Louis is young. It is all well and good to wait on God when one is eight and twenty. But when he is forty, and the wolves begin to circle, he will want a strong son to stand beside him, to hold them off. Whatever Louis is, whatever he hopes to be, he is king. A good king provides a son and heir for his people.”

  “I thought that was for you, his queen, to do.”

  “I have failed. I ask that Louis be given another queen, who will not.”

  “Such concern for people who hate you. I am sure the Parisians are touched by your hopes for their future.”

  I laid down my lies. I saw that Eugenius was not deceived by them. I could see nothing of his true thoughts, or his motivations. For all I knew, Louis’ churchmen had been here before me, and had paid him for his judgment, just as I had.

  If that was so, the truth would not harm me. And I had spent much gold lining the pockets of this man. Perhaps that gold, and the truth, would count for something with him. I had nothing else to bargain with, save my beauty. And in spite of what Louis’ people said of me, I was no whore.

  “I hate them as much as they hate me. But I would not curse them so, to leave them without an heir. I simply want to be gone. I wish to retire to my lands, and live out my life in peace.”

  “You would go to a nunnery, then, and leave your lands to France?”

  I stood, my eyes blazing. All my father had taught me of hiding my true feelings while bargaining was gone like so much smoke.

  “Never,” I said. “Never, so long as I draw breath.”

  We stood facing each other like two enemies across a shield. I heard
a bird singing somewhere in a hedge close by, and the wind in the tall fig trees, whispering above our heads. I stared Eugenius down. It was he who looked away first.

  “Very well, then. You want to be free to return to Aquitaine as duchess in your own right.”

  “My right of birth,” I said, “as my marriage contract states.”

  “Of course, of course.” Eugenius spoke to soothe me, but I did not sit again. When he saw my strength, unsheathed before him, he let his own attempt at pretense go.

  “Very well, Lady Alienor. I will consider your position. But please remember that I must consider your husband’s position as well, and that of all of Christendom.”

  “You have much under your hand,” I said.

  Eugenius met my eyes, and for a moment, I thought I had made an enemy. But then the gleam of appreciation came into his gaze, and I saw that he admired not just my form and beauty but my mind.

  “And if you are set free of this marriage, would you take counsel before bringing your next husband to your bed?”

  “You mean to say, will I allow the Holy See to choose him?”

  Eugenius did not speak but smiled, and bowed his head.

  I smiled in answer, for I was closer to a victory than I had hoped. I knelt before him, my light veil showing the bronze of my red gold hair. I bent my head as if in prayer, knowing what a beautiful picture I made. What man can resist a kneeling woman?

  “Let it be with me as God has wrought,” I said.

  For a long moment, there was nothing between us but birdsong and silence. Then, deep from Eugenius’ chest rose a laugh that warmed my insides, curling my woman’s parts with fire. The strength behind that laugh called to me. I was not dead yet.

  That knowledge buoyed me as nothing else had in months. Still I kept my eyes down, my head bent, and let him take me in.

  Eugenius offered his hand, his laughter done. He raised me to my feet. He met my eyes, and I saw his laughter still gleaming there. My blasphemy in quoting the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation had not offended him. I could not see what lay behind the doorway to his mind, but I knew he was no true child of the Church, as I was not.