To Be Queen

by Christy English

  I did not look to her, but I raised one hand to my temple as if in despair. As I did, my fingers fluttered once toward the door to my bedroom, where Louis lay, still sleeping.

  Amaria moved at once, as silent as a ghost. The door between my rooms was well oiled, and draped with a thick tapestry to keep out the drafts in winter. My woman disappeared behind that tapestry, so that I was left alone with the man who had killed my father.

  “Poison?” I asked.

  It took no time for Francis to continue to speak, for he was overconfident, as all fools are. My woman had left and he did not heed it. He counted her as nothing, just as he counted me. Francis came close to me then, but he did not lower his voice. I saw that he was proud of all that he had done, and I had not yet learned the whole of it.

  “Your father coughed blood at the last. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  My hand shook as I touched my hair. This time, I did not have to dissemble. My father’s death was a wound that burned like acid. I would never be free of it. But I would hear this man’s confession clearly, and from his own lips. Then I would act, as I had waited almost fourteen years to do.

  I saw the tapestry at my bedroom door flutter once, as if in a draft from a window. I knew by that sign that Amaria stood behind it. I could only hope that Louis stood with her. Though it was not in my husband to dissemble or to hide, especially from a man of the Church, I fervently wished that, this once, Louis might stay hidden.

  I raised my voice enough that it might be heard, even where Louis stood. I did not have to feign horror. I was steeped in it already.

  “And the old king?” I asked. “Did he cough blood as well when he was poisoned?”

  It was a clumsy move, but I had no way of knowing how long Louis might keep himself concealed. I hoped that my husband had enough sense to wait, and to listen to Francis’ answer.

  “Louis the king fell to poison, but his end was worse than your father’s, or so my colleague said. He was three days dying of dysentery. Your father took only two.”

  Bile rose in my throat, but I swallowed it. “And your colleague . . . where is he now?”

  “He was taken to the Lord’s grace five years ago. I have lit a candle for his soul.”

  “No doubt he needs it.”

  Francis heard the acid in my voice, and took one step back.

  I rose from my chair, and faced my enemy. “You murdered my father, and the king’s father, for the good of France?”

  “For the good of the Church,” Francis said. “I wanted to make way for you and your husband to rule alone, unencumbered.”

  “With King Louis the Elder dead, my father would have advised us,” I said.

  “Yes. We knew we could not let William of Aquitaine live. He had made an enemy of us already.”

  I saw it all then, and it took my breath. This man had been in league with the old pope, the one we had worked against before I was ever duchess. That pope had hated my father for backing his rival, and had called for my father’s penance, saying that he must go either to Rome or to Santiago. Francis had followed my father to Spain and killed him there. Months later, after my wedding, our enemy pope had sent another minion of the Church to Louis the Fat. The elder king had died by poison, just as my father had.

  The Church had thought to control the wealth of the Aquitaine as well as the throne of France through my young, easily led husband, and through me. Only my strength of will had kept them from it.

  I could hear nothing behind the tapestry, but I knew that Louis was there.

  “Why do you come to me, and tell me all this now?”

  “As I have said, I have heard rumors among the courtiers that some seek your death. I would give you my protection.”

  I did not laugh in his face. What protection could this bumbling fool offer me? A man so stupid that he would keep his silence for fourteen years, then reveal himself as my father’s murderer? Did this baseborn cur think that I would ally myself with him? There would be time for vengeance, but I must hold my tongue and stay my hand. When I spoke, my voice was cool and calm, as if I spoke with my steward about the household accounts in Poitiers.

  “And in exchange for your protection, I will help you control Louis?”

  “Yes,” Francis said. “Your father is dead, and the old king, and Abbot Suger. Now my brethren in the Church and I can control France altogether.”

  Louis stepped out from behind the tapestry, and Francis’ face turned gray. Francis had thought my husband asleep in his own bed, or he would never have come to me. The false priest shook with fear at the sight of my husband’s face.

  “Get out,” Louis said, his voice hoarse with weeping. “Get out of my sight.”

  “My lord king,” Francis stammered.

  “I am not your lord or your king. You are a treacherous dog, not fit to live upon the earth.”

  Francis ran from us, and left the door to the hallway standing open behind him. Amaria moved before I could beckon her. She would order my men-at-arms to catch the monk and hold him. My battle-hardened men, fresh from the Crusade, cared little if the prisoner they held was a man of God.

  Amaria left us alone, closing the outer door behind her. Louis fell to his knees, and I knelt beside him. I took him in my arms, expecting tears, but he did not weep. Perhaps the horror of the last day had overwhelmed him. I was a strong woman, and it had overwhelmed me.

  The cold of the stone floor seeped into my skin through the silk of my gown. Louis leaned his cheek against mine. I supported his weight, but he also supported me.

  “Eleanor, I am so sorry.”

  “There is no fault in you, Louis.”

  “There is,” he said. “There is. A true king would have known it. A true man of God would have seen what Francis was. Dear God, dear God, how may I be shriven for it?”

  I kissed him, pressing my lips hard against his. He did not respond, but drew back from me, and lay down on the floor as if he wished to fall through the cracks between the stones and disappear.

  “We have sinned, Eleanor. We are cursed. No marriage can be built on blood. My father and yours, dead through the greed of evil men. We can build nothing on that. This is why God never gave us sons.”

  I said nothing, for there was nothing left to say. I stroked his hair while he lay on the floor beside me. Amaria found us there when she came back.

  She nodded once. Francis had been caught. I would look to him later. For now, I sat beside my husband, and offered comfort he could not take.

  That night, Bardonne drowned Brother Francis in the Seine. His body turned up three miles downstream, outside the city walls. There was talk of suicide, so that he could not be buried in consecrated ground. Louis, gray and pale all through those days, heard this news and said nothing. He did not know that I had taken Francis’ death into my own hands. It was one more lie between us.

  Louis agreed with me finally to petition the pope for an annulment. The murders of our fathers cast a pall over his mind, though he never spoke of it again. He looked harder at the men about him after that time. His own heart hardened a little, though never enough to be king.

  I sat beside Louis on his throne as he dealt out death and judgment. I watched as his blue eyes took in the world as if seeing it for the first time. He would never be that sweet, golden boy again. I was surprised to feel the loss of that, even as Louis prepared to let me go.

  My father had no restless spirit, no ghost to lie quiet, now that his murder was avenged. I was glad that Francis was dead. I begrudged him every peaceful night of sleep, every morsel of food, every bit of pleasure that he had taken from the day of my father’s death until his own. But revenge did not soothe me as I had always thought it would.

  The dead were still dead. I had no thought of heaven to comfort me, as Louis did. My father moldered in his grave at Santiago. He would not rise at some trumpet call. I would never see his face again. His murder was avenged, but it was cold comfort, too little consolation that came too late.
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br />   Chapter 26

  Palace of the City

  Paris

  August 1151

  IN THE SPRING OF 1151, PETRA CAME TO ME AS THE FIRST flowers began to rise from the thawed ground in Paris. I sent for her so that I might tell of her of our father’s murder, and of the revenge I had exacted for it. Petra was a woman now; I could not hold back such news from her. I had also heard of trouble in her household, that her husband had taken a lover. I did not want her left alone on his lands, undefended. Let her roving husband remember that he was still married to the sister of the Duchess of Aquitaine.

  I had planted a Persian rose garden when I first returned from the Levant, in the months before Alix was born. Now Alix was almost one year old, and the roses thrived, even in the damp wasteland that was my husband’s keep. There was enough sun for them between those walls, though there was never enough sun for me.

  I stood among those roses when Petra arrived at my gates. Amaria did not hesitate, but brought my sister to me.

  When I saw her, I took her in my arms. Tears rose in my eyes. Her presence was a greater gift than I had expected. I had missed her, in the years I had been away. My love for her came flooding back, like a tide that would never go out.

  Amaria took my women indoors to work at a new tapestry, so that my sister and I could be alone. The Parisian women of my household embroidered that cloth in honor of Abbot Suger. It would one day cover the altar at his cathedral at St.-Denis. If I had my way, by the time it was completed, I would no longer be in Paris.

  It was the first warm day in June. Amaria had set out wine on a small table among the roses, as well as two chairs with cushions. Even now, Amaria was no doubt guarding the passage that led to the garden, so that my sister and I could be alone. I had news for Petra that no one else could hear.

  Petra’s soft blond hair fell from her braids, framing her face like a halo. My sister wept openly, and clung to me as if she were still eleven years old, and our father newly dead. I remembered how frightened she had been in the days after Papa died. She had not been able to sleep in her room with her women for months. She had slept in my bed with me, until the weeks before I married Louis.

  Though she was slight, Petra was a child no longer. Her own two girls were eight and nine years old, and they would both marry in a few years’ time. I would have to look to their marriage portions, and find decent men to stand by them. I would not allow my sister’s daughters to go to any clod that Raoul might choose: some man who liked to hawk, or some boy with a good pair of hunting hounds.

  “Alienor, he has left me.”

  “Who, Petra?” Though of course, I knew already.

  “Raoul. He has married another.”

  I laughed, bitterness filling my voice with gall. “After all the trouble I went to getting him out of his first marriage? I think not. The pope will not be a fool in his case twice. I paid good money for that divorce. You and he are married, no matter how many doxies he takes to his bed.”

  “She is pregnant.”

  I had nothing to say to that. I took Petra in my arms, and held her close while she wept. Though Raoul was much older than she, I saw that she loved him still.

  “Shall I have him killed?”

  It was a course of action that before I never would have considered. But now that I had seen my father’s murderer done to death, such things seemed possible. I did not see how I could let the ungrateful bastard live, after he had made my sister weep.

  “No, Alienor, please do not hurt him.”

  She clutched me hard, and I forced a smile. For her sake, it even reached my eyes. I was a better actress than I once had been. Even Petra could not tell when I was lying now.

  “I was only joking, sweetheart. Forgive me. It was lightly said.”

  I kissed her, and she leaned against me, her tears spent.

  “Men are unfaithful ever,” I said, knowing that the well-worn platitude would be no comfort to her.

  “I know.” She dried her eyes on the fur trim of my gown, as no one else alive would have dared to do. “I always thought he would be faithful to me.”

  Those who served me in Petra’s household had told me already of her troubles, but I had been so steeped in mine that I had been able to do nothing but send for her. I would care for her and her girls for the rest of their lives.

  As for Raoul, I knew he was dying of a coughing sickness that made him hack up blood. From all the doctors in Paris told me, it was a lingering illness, and a difficult death. I had already decided to let him take what doxies he might. I would leave him to that death, and welcome.

  “Where are the girls?” I asked.

  “In the nursery, with Marie and Alix.”

  Her weeping had stopped. Before it began again, as I knew it would, there were things I would speak of, things she must know.

  “Petra,” I said. “I have news. Come and sit by me.”

  “Are you well, Alienor?”

  My sister had never taken up the new pronunciation of my name. She spoke it as she always had. Only with Petra did I remember my softness, the shadow of the girl I had been long ago, before my mother died.

  I saw her fear that I would die and leave her. I smiled again, and pressed her hand.

  “I am well,” I answered. “I am too strong for even God to kill.”

  We sat together on the chairs Amaria had left for us in the midst of my Persian roses. I took my sister’s hand. “Petra, you remember the dark days, the days after Papa died.”

  My sister blinked in the soft light of that walled garden. “Yes, Alienor. Of course I remember.”

  “I did not tell you then, but Papa was killed.”

  “He drank bad water,” she said.

  “He drank someone’s poison.”

  Her alabaster skin turned gray, and I thought she might be sick. My hand moved to her arm, holding her up.

  “Forgive me for telling you, but you are a woman now. You are old enough to know. I found the man who killed him.”

  “He is dead?” Petra asked. I saw her strength suddenly, in the soft, deep blue of her eyes.

  “He is dead now,” I answered.

  “You killed him.” She watched my face. She knew I would not lie to her.

  “I did,” I said. “He drowned in the Seine. My man had a hand in it.”

  “Bardonne,” she guessed.

  “How did you know?” I asked. “Has there been talk?”

  “No, Alienor. He always loved you, even from a child. He will never tell.”

  “No,” I said. “He will not.”

  “Papa would be glad,” she said. “He would be proud of you, if he knew.”

  “Perhaps he does know,” I answered.

  Petra’s grip tightened. “You do not believe that.”

  “No. I do not.”

  We sat in silence then, my sister and I, each of us lost in our own thoughts. She was not devastated, as I thought she would be. Her pain over Raoul seemed to recede with this news I gave her. She was glad our father’s murderer had been caught and punished. It gave her comfort, as it had not comforted me.

  Petra stood, and raised me to my feet. In her eyes, I saw myself, not as the hero of her childhood, but as the woman I was, my flaws and strengths together. Petra pressed her hand to my cheek as if in blessing.

  She knew me, as no one else did, as no one else ever would. Tears rose in my eyes, and clogged my throat. Petra drew me close, and pretended that she had not seen them.

  “I love you, Alienor.”

  I stood in my sister’s embrace, and clutched her close. This time, it was she who held me.

  “Come,” she said. “Let us go in. I would see Marie, and Alix. And you must see my girls.”

  “Before we go,” I said, drying my eyes on my scented handkerchief, “I must tell you. Louis and I . . .”

  “You will part, as soon as it can be done.”

  “You knew?”

  “I live in the country, Alienor, but even there, we hear the ne
ws.”

  “And the people in Aquitaine, and Poitou,” I said. “Are they angry?”

  Petra smiled. She had passed through my lands on her way to Paris. She had seen the people there with her own eyes, and listened to their grievances as she passed. She was always my eyes and ears when she traveled through our homeland, and this time was no exception. “They are angry that Louis was not man enough to give you sons. But they love you. They would follow you anywhere, farther even than Jerusalem.”

  I kissed her, before we went indoors to fetch our children. Had I been alone, I would have sent a woman for them, but Petra wanted to go inside to see the girls in their nursery.

  I would have to leave my daughters with Louis when I went home to the Aquitaine. But they would be gone in a few years’ time in any case. French princesses were betrothed young, and raised among their husbands’ kin. I felt the loss of them already, as I stood in that walled garden, with Petra’s hand on mine. Before Marie and Alix were parted, sent to separate husbands in separate lands, I hoped they would be some kind of comfort to each other, as Petra had always been a comfort to me. I would suffer from the loss of them, once I was gone.

  One must cut out one’s heart, to be free.

  Petra spoke as if she had read my mind like an open book of prayer. “Your girls will be all right. Fear nothing, Alienor. Louis loves them. He will guard them well.”

  “Yes,” I answered. “Louis is a good man.”

  “You are a good woman,” she said.

  “Ah, Petra. You are the only one who thinks so.”

  “Then no one else knows you, Alienor.”

  I did not answer. Petra took my hand, and led me into the darkness of the keep. We would find our daughters and bring them with us, out into the light.

  Petra and her girls stayed for the rest of that summer. I would not send them home again, but kept them safe in my household. They would return to Poitiers before me, after my annulment was secure. During those months, the sun shone more than it ever had, as if offering a blessing on my divorce. Louis’ people had begun the arduous work of securing it through Rome.