A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (6 page)

Louis turned Raymond down, and Raymond flew into a rage—a rage for which only Eleanor had any sympathy. She told Odo that she and her uncle wanted a private audience with Louis; he was to stand guard at the door and keep all others out.

Raymond began the conference by reviewing the wisdom of his plan to recapture Edessa. Louis listened. Raymond’s plan was well laid out. It was sound. It made sense, but Louis turned it down again. “My advisers and I have decided to take Damascus.”

“I urge you to reconsider,” Raymond said.

“We will go to Damascus,” Louis repeated.

“But, Louis …” Raymond began.

Eleanor interrupted, “My husband suffers from a complaint common to weak men: he will not change his mind once his advisers have made it up for him.”

Louis got up from his chair. “We will leave for Damascus in the morning.”

“I shall not,” Eleanor said.

“I said
we
will leave in the morning,” Louis repeated.

“I am staying in Antioch,” Eleanor said.

Raymond smiled.

Louis saw the smile and his pride, as a husband and as a king, could not allow him to be smiled at in the manner of Raymond or be spoken to in the manner of Eleanor.

“You will leave with me in the morning, Eleanor. You are my vassal and my wife, and that makes two sets of laws that grant me sovereignty over you.”

Eleanor replied, “I am your vassal, sir, only because you hold my lands. And you hold my lands only because I am your wife. But watch that, Louis, watch that! Because there are those who say that in the eyes of Heaven I am not your wife.”

“Who says that?” Raymond asked.

“Abbot Bernard for one. Abbot Bernard says that my husband and I are cousins within the fourth degree, and therefore we are living in sin. Abbot Bernard says that in the eyes of God, Louis and I are not husband and wife.”

“But the Pope …” Louis stammered.

“The Pope looked the other way when we married, Louis. And so did you. Your passions and my possessions overcame your conscience. Take another look at our family trees, I say, and then tell me whether I am your wife.”

Louis was badly shaken. Raymond’s smile broadened. Louis looked from him to Eleanor and then said, in a low, steady voice, “Pack your things, Duchess of Aquitaine. We leave Antioch in the morning, and we leave together.”

Louis then called to Odo. “Please see that the queen has an escort to her room this evening, kind Odo. She will need a good rest for her journey tomorrow. Please see to it that there is a guard at her door so that no one may enter or leave her room. If she complains of being too tired to emerge in the morning, see to it that she is carried to Damascus.”

THE PLAN
to take Damascus was a failure. The pilgrims had to make their way to Jerusalem without victory. Louis refused to wear his crown in the city where our Lord had worn the Crown of Thorns. (An elegant gesture, I thought.) Odo’s letters were full of Louis’s worries: about Eleanor, about his marriage, about the fate of Jerusalem.

I could do nothing about saving Jerusalem, but I did what I could to save the marriage. I wrote to the Pope and told him of the serious quarrel that had occurred between Eleanor and Louis. Then I wrote to Louis and urged him to return home by way of Rome. I suggested that a visit to the Pope would give Eleanor and him a chance to renew their marriage vows. A chance to begin again.

My plan worked. The Pope had long talks with them both and reassured Louis that the Church was always willing to grant special permission when a marriage served so much good. He told them that he wanted to hear no more talk of cousins, that the word was not to be mentioned in their conversations again. Louis was relieved. He and Eleanor made up. They then asked the Pope to urge God to grant them an heir.

Eleanor and Louis returned to Paris in November, and they had another child, but not a future king. Another girl, whom they named Alix.

While they had been gone, I had, thanks be to God, beautifully redecorated the royal palace, but the winter of their return was a cold one. Cold for Paris, but colder still compared to Constantinople and Antioch. Eleanor came to see me; she lacked her usual smile, her usual high color.

“What is the matter?” I asked. “You look pale, my lady.”

“Why should I not, Abbott? My husband has drained the color from everything else. His world is all black and white, right and wrong.”

“He has grown, Eleanor. He is much more a king than the man you married fifteen years ago.”

“Ha! Abbot. I thought I married a king, and I find I married a monk.”

“What else is bothering you, Eleanor?”

“The gray color of life at our court. The tastelessness of everything. Louis now eats the plain fare of the monks; he dines with them instead of with me. Abbot, I, too, have grown. I am much more a queen now than I was in those days when I was sending Louis into the Aquitaine and into Champagne to do battle for my every whim. I have learned a great deal. I want to use what I have learned. I want to be a queen, one who sets a pattern for life in the land. One who gives tone and tune to her country. And now that I have learned so much, Louis will not listen to me.” She looked down at her lap and said, “Besides, I don’t love Louis.”

“But what has marriage to do with love, Eleanor? Marriage is a land contract not a love match.”

“I keep thinking it can be something more. I have much more than land to give.”

“For my sake, Eleanor, stay with Louis. Come here, come to me, to my church, when you need to see beautiful things, when you need to talk about the glories of Constantinople. I can be your confessor for all things.”

“Yes, for all things. Dear Suger, dear, dear Suger. Abbot Bernard says that to love beautiful carvings is to worship idols, but you tell me that love of such beauty leads to love of God. To Abbot Bernard, I am living in sin with my cousin-husband. To you, I am holding the realm together.”

“Visit me often, Eleanor.”

“Yes, Abbot. You shall be my specialist.”

“In all things, Eleanor. Thanks be to God, I am a specialist in everything.”

“Abbot Suger, you shall spend time in Hell for your lack of modesty.” Eleanor laughed. Her laughter had some of its former naughtiness, and I couldn’t help but join in.

ELEANOR
was sitting on a cloud, hugging her knees. Abbot Suger smiled down at her. “You know I loved those long visits of yours. They were the joy of my last months on Earth. What happened after I died, Eleanor? Why did you not stay with Louis?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eleanor said. She rested her forehead on her knees and then turned her head toward Abbot Suger. “Your not being there made a difference,” she said, smiling.

“That’s not what made the big difference,” boomed Matilda-Empress.

Abbot Suger turned to look at Matilda-Empress and then said, “Are you going to tell me what made the big difference?”

“Eleanor met my son Henry, and she fell madly in love with him. It’s as simple as that.”

“Not quite that simple, Mother Matilda. Nothing in our century was that simple. There was my boredom with life at Louis’s court. And there was always the Aquitaine.”

“Move over,” Matilda-Empress said. The tiny abbot moved to the left, Eleanor moved to the right; the cloud compressed as Matilda-Empress sat between them. She glared at her daughter-in-law. “I’ll tell it as I saw it,” she said.

“There is no other way to tell a story,” the abbot answered as he settled himself deeper into the cloud.

IN THE SUMMER
following the death of Abbot Suger, my husband, Geoffrey, went to the French court to pay homage to Louis. He took our son Henry with him. Geoffrey, my husband, was Count of Anjou; everyone called him Geoffrey Plantagenet because he always wore a stalk of that beautiful wild broom,
planta genista
, in his hat. Henry, our son, had picked up the habit, so he was called Plantagenet, too. It became our family name.

Geoffrey, my husband, was also called Geoffrey the Fair because he was handsome; he knew it. Henry, my son, was also handsome; he knew it, too.

There were a lot of things that Geoffrey could have done but did not. He could have joined Louis on Crusade, but he did not. He could have paid homage to Louis years before, but he did not. Geoffrey never did anything that did not suit his purposes, his immediate purposes.

Neither love nor loyalty brought Geoffrey to court at that late date to pay homage to his king and queen. Necessity brought him. Henry, our son, had been named Duke of Normandy. In order for him to collect the taxes on his lands, he needed the royal stamp of approval; Henry needed to pay homage to his overlord, King Louis, and at the same time receive the kiss of peace from his king.

Henry’s good looks may have come from his father, but his important titles came from me—Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of England and granddaughter of the man who even today was the last successful conqueror of England. Before he had invaded England in the year 1066, my grandfather was called William the Bastard because he was. After the year 1066, he was called William the Conqueror because he was.

When Stephen, the present king of England died, the crown would go to Henry, my son. Stephen was my worthless nephew. I had kept alive my claim to the throne by making a lot of noise about it both in England and France, and by lining up barons and lords who pledged their support to me. Geoffrey and I thought it would be a good idea to get Henry engaged to Marie, the daughter of Eleanor and Louis. Marie was five years old at the time. Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, however, said that he could never allow a marriage between our son, Henry, and any daughter of Eleanor. “Cousins,” he said. It seems that the Abbot Bernard found
cousins
in any marriage of which he did not approve. I was tempted to ask him whom he thought Cain and Abel had married, but Geoffrey made me hold my tongue. He was already in enough trouble with the abbot. Abbot Bernard had recently had him excommunicated.

The Abbot Bernard made a habit of doing that to my husband. It was always done more for politics than religion. Bernard always sided with Louis in any quarrels that came up between Louis and Geoffrey. And now that Louis had returned from the Crusade and now that Abbot Suger was dead, Abbot Bernard was always using the Church as a club over Geoffrey’s head. What had Geoffrey done that was so terrible? I put his case before you:

For three years King Louis’s steward had been attacking our castles in the Vexin. The Vexin was a little wedge of land between our Normandy and Louis’s France. The Vexin was not large, but it was important. Geoffrey was unable to do anything in return because of the Truce of God. The Truce of God was an order from the Pope, which said that no one was allowed to attack the lands of any lords who were on Crusade.

As soon as Louis returned from Crusade, Geoffrey went right to the source of the trouble. He poured boiling oil on the rafters of the steward’s very own castle; then he fired flaming arrows at it. People poured out of the castle along with the flames. One who came running was the steward himself. Geoffrey caught him like a runaway puppy and put him in a dungeon. Abbot Bernard was shocked. No one, he said, could treat an officer of the king that way. Geoffrey said that he could. Bernard ordered Geoffrey to release the steward. Geoffrey said no. So Abbot Bernard excommunicated Geoffrey. Geoffrey was determined to prove his point. He brought the steward to the castle in chains. Abbot Bernard, who was at court with Eleanor and Louis, was amazed at his nerve. He called him brazen.

There they were: Queen Eleanor, King Louis and Abbot Bernard on one side. Geoffrey, Henry and the steward (in chains) on the other.

Geoffrey bowed. “I came, your majesty, to pay homage to you and your lady and to request that you recognize my son, Henry, as Duke of Normandy.” He said all this very solemnly even as he was holding the rope that bound the hands of his prisoner—like a palfrey on a leash.

Abbot Bernard answered, “Give up your prisoner, Count Geoffrey, and I shall lift the ban of excommunication from you, and King Louis will recognize your son as Duke of Normandy.”