The rain ceased and a three-quarter moon shone between tatters of cloud. Soldiers clustered round the fires they had built out of whatever firewood they had come across along the way. The wood was damp and belched smoke, but eventually caught. Resin hissed and knots in the branches spat out showers of sparks. Alienor wrapped herself in a dry cloak and, sending for her musicians, left her tent to join her household knights at their fire.
The damp had played havoc with the stringed instruments, but the pipes and whistles were still in good tune and the tabors beat out the rhythm as the singing began. ‘
High are the mountains and the valleys deep in shadow, and the waters swift
…’
Alienor folded her cloak around her and leaned towards the flames. Joining her, Geoffrey pressed a cup of wine into her hand.
‘It’s decent,’ he said. ‘I bought it from one of the merchants hanging around the outskirts of the camp.’
She smiled at him. ‘That must have cost you dear.’
‘Anything for my queen,’ he said with a toast of his cup.
She took a cautious sip and discovered he was right. It was indeed drinkable … and if she drank enough it might make this journey bearable for another day, and it would be one day closer to Antioch.
Geoffrey studied the sky. ‘Let’s hope it stays clear now,’ he said. ‘We need the drier ground.’
Alienor nodded and continued to savour the wine. ‘I wonder what an astrologer would say if he read the sky now. What would he see for all of us? Are our fates truly dictated by the position of the stars at our birth?’
‘Did your father never have your horoscope cast?’ Geoffrey asked curiously.
‘He did.’ She grimaced. ‘The portents said I would make a magnificent marriage, bear many sons and live to a ripe old age. The astrologer also cast a glittering future for my brother, but it’s one he never lived to see.’
‘But you have made a magnificent marriage and may yet bear sons.’
The glance she sent him was sceptical. Sometimes things written in the stars did not happen, or happened differently to expectation. She had envisaged a great marriage for herself, but it had not been to Louis of France. ‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘This is but a little life and we will be back with God before we know it.’ She gave him her cup to refill and their fingers briefly touched.
The music hesitated, then caught again and continued. Alienor looked up, and in the firelight saw the Templar knight Thierry de Galeran watching them. She was immediately on edge. During their journey, de Galeran had constantly tried to ingratiate himself with her, but she knew it was about poking his nose into her business rather than having a better working relationship. He was always striving to find out her plans and discover what resources she had. She would not have him meddling in her affairs and pretending friendship.
He bowed to her, his gesture supple and easy, reminding her of the sinuous winding of a snake. Like a snake, too, his eyes were unblinking.
‘What brings you to my fire, Messire de Galeran?’ she asked.
‘Madam, the King has asked me to check around the camp on his behalf and see that all is well. I have also brought some news from him.’
For ‘news’ she knew he meant ‘instructions’. ‘Does the King send his underlings to me to conduct his business? Does he not check the camp for himself?’ She eyed him coldly, knowing full well he would return to Louis with the tale that he had found the Queen sitting casually round the campfire sharing songs and wine with her knights.
‘Madam, he has retired to his prayers, and delegated both matters to me, which I am pleased to do. I have a soldier’s eye and the business is fiscal.’
Alienor sent a quick glance to Geoffrey. It was exactly as she had thought. ‘Then the sooner you tell me what it is, the sooner it is dealt with.’ She sent a servant to fetch de Galeran a cup of wine from the sour barrel, but the Templar declined with a raised hand.
‘Thank you, madam, but I need none now. What I do not drink is conserved for another time.’ He adjusted his cloak, sweeping it back to reveal the hilt of his sword. ‘Supplies are running low. The King decrees that we must conserve what we have. He is sending to Paris for more silver and bids you command the same of the lords of Aquitaine. He also desires you to send him any spare horses you have in your contingent.’
Alienor swallowed her immediate response that she would give him nothing. ‘I do not see why he needs all these things when we have been travelling the same road. Does he think I have no need of them? Perhaps he should look after his horses and husband his own supplies with more care and then he would not have to come seeking mine.’
She could not tell if the barb hit home because Thierry de Galeran never allowed emotion to show on his face. Whatever was cast at him either bounced off or was absorbed without reaction. ‘What reply shall I take back to him, madam?’
‘Tell him to do me the courtesy of asking me personally instead of sending me his eunuch,’ she said. ‘In the meantime I shall make an inventory and tell him what I can spare.’
‘Madam.’ De Galeran swept her another supple bow and departed the camp. Alienor glanced at Geoffrey, whose own expression was also blank.
‘What?’ she snapped, and felt more than just the warmth from the fire heat her face.
‘Madam, it is not my place to say, but perhaps you should be more circumspect with de Galeran. He is a Templar and a bad enemy to make.’
‘No,’ she said with hauteur, ‘it is not your place to say. He tries to infiltrate my camp. He is always talking to the knights – jesting with them on the road, worming answers out of them and then reporting back to the King. I will not stand for it. Let him stay away from me if he does not wish to be insulted, and let the King do me the courtesy of speaking to me personally if he desires these things.’ She gave him a hard look. ‘You had best be swift about that inventory.’
De Rancon’s eyes were darkly reproachful in the firelight. ‘You will have it by dawn prayers, madam,’ he said.
‘Good.’ She turned back to the music and held out her cup for him to refill, which he did with the polished ease of a courtier. Alienor sighed. ‘Ah, you are right,’ she said softly, ‘but you know my thoughts on de Galeran. Louis should not have sent him, but what else did I expect?’
He acknowledged her reply with a wry gesture. ‘I should go and begin counting,’ he said, rising.
She caught his wrist. ‘I know I said swiftly, but please, at least finish your wine at the fire.’
Geoffrey hesitated and then sat down. The musicians struck up a new tune, delicate and achingly plangent. He and Alienor listened in silence, and when the last note had faded into the sky, Geoffrey stood up, bowed, and took his leave. Alienor left the fire and retired to bed, aching as if the notes had been plucked on her bare heartstrings.
Morning dawned with misty sunshine, although the terrain was still waterlogged and everything damp and mud-caked. Breaking her fast on hard bread smeared with honey, Alienor knew she would remember the cloying, earthy smell for the rest of her days. Geoffrey, all practical business this morning, brought her tallies of what they had and what they would need in order to reach Belgrade. ‘That is assuming that no more horses die and that our remaining carts hold up for the journey,’ he said grimly.
‘So if this is the minimum, should we keep a surplus?’
‘We have to balance keeping a surplus against the cost of supplying and moving that surplus, but I would say yes.’
She thanked him and placed the tallies in the small coffer where she kept her ready coins. ‘Then we shall do so. I trust your judgement.’
He gave her a troubled half-smile. ‘That is a lot to live up to.’
‘Indeed, because I give it to the rare few.’
He stared at her and swallowed. ‘I am made of very coarse stuff compared to the lady of my heart.’
‘I do not believe she would think so,’ Alienor said softly.
Outside the tent they heard a flurry of hoofbeats and a cry saluting the King’s arrival. Alienor drew back and Geoffrey bowed to her and left to attend to his duties.
Through the open tent flaps, Alienor watched Louis dismount from his palfrey with vigorous ill temper. The frown lines between his brows had become habitual since Vitry and just now they were deep grooves.
‘Madam, I received your message last night,’ he said without preamble as he pushed his way into her tent. ‘You will not speak to Thierry de Galeran in such a way again. It is unworthy of a queen.’
‘It would please me greatly not to speak to Thierry de Galeran ever again,’ she retorted. ‘I will not have your spies in my household. If you desire things from me, at least have the courtesy to come and ask me yourself.’
His lips thinned. ‘It was a routine matter. I am told you were drinking round the campfire with the soldiers. That is unseemly behaviour for the Queen of France.’
‘I was speaking with my commanders. There was nothing unseemly about it at all. You sent de Galeran with a message that you wanted to take my horses and my supplies. When we set out, you accused me of being extravagant; you said I had brought too much of everything, but now you are the one without coin or supplies, so what does that say about our respective wisdom in this matter?’
Louis glowered. ‘Have a care, madam. You are my wife and under my discipline. Unless you want to be confined under house arrest, you will be reasonable.’
Loathing him, Alienor wondered how she could ever have found him attractive or even likeable. What she saw now was a querulous man, old before his time, full of righteous anger, his guilt and self-loathing twisting within him, so that all the ills in the world became the sins of the nearest scapegoat. The sympathy she had felt for him had been used up. She had once thought to draw him out of the morass and change him, but he was too deeply embedded, and all he had done was pull her down. ‘Reasonable,’ she said. ‘Oh indeed, sire, you lead by example. You will be pleased to know my lord de Rancon is assembling the horses and supplies you have requested, and I have also authorised more resources from Poitou and Aquitaine.’ She presented him with a sealed parchment.
Louis took it from her by his fingertips and without a word strode from her tent. She knew he would be unhappy with what she had given him, but hoped she had judged it well enough that it would not be worth his while making trouble. For now she had no choice but to endure, but the closer she came to Antioch, the stronger she felt.
Alienor turned her head aside as she rode past the rotting body of yet another horse at the roadside. A German one this time – a knight’s solid destrier, unable to cope with the burning August heat through which they journeyed towards Constantinople. She gagged at the stench rising from the maggot-riddled flesh and pressed her wimple across her face. Shallow graves of pilgrims and soldiers who had died along the route mounded the roadside. Some of the bodies had been dug up by scavengers and the dismembered remains scattered abroad. At first Alienor had been sickened but now she was mostly inured, except that sometimes the smell, heavy and fetid like the butchers’ quarter in Paris at the end of a sweltering summer’s day, made her queasy.
Her cob was flagging in the heat, sweat dripping from its belly, leaving a trail of droplets. For the moment there was water available to replenish that loss, but once across the Arm of Saint George and into Anatolia, that resource would become scarce and the horses would be many hundreds of miles further along the road and less robust than they were now.
Louis’s money had arrived from France on swift pack ponies, their speed not slowed by the non-combatant morass of pilgrims that so hampered the main army. The news from France was one of routine and steady government. Abbé Suger and Raoul of Vermandois were holding the country stable and any minor troubles were being easily resolved. Petronella had written a brief note to say that Marie was running around now and wearing proper little dresses instead of baby smocks.
I tell her about you every day
, Petronella had written.
She will not forget her mama
. Alienor had put the letter aside and not read it a second time. Whatever Petronella told Marie, the child’s notion of who her mama was would not be Alienor – would never be Alienor.
Other letters had arrived too, from the Empress Irene, consort of Emperor Manuel Komnenos, asking Alienor what she could do to provide comfort for her when she arrived in Constantinople, and welcoming her as one royal lady to another. Alienor was looking forward to meeting the Empress of the Greeks, who was of a similar age to herself and of German birth. Her real name was Bertha, but she had changed it to Irene on her marriage to Komnenos. Alienor was also interested in seeing Constantinople. The immense wealth of gold, mosaics and holy relics contained within the city was the stuff of legend.
Louis was less sanguine because of the many constraints being piled upon them by the Greeks, who controlled the route through Bulgaria and had rigid ideas about what the French and German armies were here to do. Louis was infuriated by the demand that he and his barons must do homage to Emperor Manuel for any former imperial lands they took from the infidel. Why should he give allegiance for such gains when they were won by his hand?
The governor of the town of Sofia, a cousin of Emperor Manuel’s, had joined the French army and was helping to supply it along the way, but he had a difficult task. Fights broke out over the exchange rate of five French silver pennies to a single coin of Greek copper. Frequently the Greeks closed up their towns when they saw the French approaching, and would only provide food by lowering it over the walls in baskets. There was never enough to go round and as a result, tempers frayed and skirmishes were commonplace. People broke ranks to go on foraging raids. Some returned with heavy sacks over their shoulders and blood on their hands. Others never returned at all.
As the heat of the day increased Alienor began to feel unwell. She had broken her fast on cold grains mixed with raisins and spices and the taste lingered at the back of her throat. Her stomach somersaulted and cramping pain gripped her lower back. She forced herself forwards. Another ten strides of her cob and another ten. Just as far as that bush. Just as far as that clump of trees. Just as far as … ‘Stop!’ she cried and gestured frantically to her women. They helped her down from her horse and one of her women, Mamile, hastily had the necessary private canvas screen lifted off the packhorse and directed the other ladies to form it around her mistress.