Geoffrey followed Saldebreuil and joined a group of knights in conversation, but he was still intensely aware of Alienor. She turned this way and that and he saw the pale skin of her wrist and the gold silk of her sleeve lining, the suppleness of her body and the grace of her movements. And then he saw the bruise on her cheek and he felt sick. There was only one person who had the right to strike her, which was no right at all when he should have valued her above all things; yet he was Geoffrey’s liege lord and entitled to all that Geoffrey was not.
He turned on his heel and left the chamber. To join in the merriment and dancing was impossible. That was Alienor’s way of coping, not his. Leaning against a pillar, he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, seeking calm to settle his anger, but it would not come. Had Louis been present, Geoffrey would have throttled him.
He heard Alienor’s bright laughter and her voice telling whoever was with her that she would not be long. And then her footsteps, shadow-soft; the rustle of her gown; and the subtle scent of her perfume.
‘Alienor …’ He stepped out from behind the pillar. She gave a gasp of surprise and after a hasty glance over her shoulder, hurried towards him.
‘Why did you leave?’ she demanded in a low voice. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘I left because I could not trust myself to pretend any more.’ He drew her further into the shadows where no one could see them. ‘What has he done to you?’ He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.
‘It does not matter,’ she said impatiently. ‘He is furious that Robert has gone and taken Gisela. He needed a scapegoat, and as usual it was me. This will all end once we reach Antioch.’
‘So you keep saying.’ His voice was grim.
‘Because it is true.’ She stroked the side of his face, reciprocating his action. ‘Geoffrey …’
He pulled her against him. ‘It does matter.’ His face contorted. ‘You do not realise how much. I cannot bear it.’
‘But you will bear it, even as I do – because we must. There is no choice for now.’
He made a sound of despair and kissed her, his grip tightening on her waist. She put her hands in his hair and parted her lips and he came undone because the kiss was such a blend of sweetness and pain. They had been so careful for so long, keeping their distance, behaving as vassal and lady, but it was as if the underground river had risen in full spate and, bursting its banks, had overwhelmed them and swept them to a place where all that existed was this moment and themselves. He leaned against the pillar, lifted her and entered her with all his pent-up love and frustration. She wrapped her legs around him and buried her face against his throat with a sob. And in those moments they lived a lifetime, knowing it was all they might ever have of each other.
Alienor turned over and, pulling the furs up around her ears, snuggled against Gisela for warmth.
‘Rain,’ said Marchisa who had stuck her nose outside the tent flaps to sniff the dawn air. ‘It might even turn to snow.’
Alienor groaned and burrowed further under the covers. Everyone spoke of the burning heat of Outremer, but the cold on the high ground was bone-biting.
Today they were due to make the gruelling climb and crossing of Mount Cadmos on their journey to the coast at Antalya. The notion of riding up a mountain in the face of a sleety wind made Alienor reluctant to stir. If only she could wake up at home in Poitiers or Antioch without having to travel in either direction.
Outside Alienor could hear the camp stirring to life: men hacking and coughing; snatches of conversation round the campfire; the stamp and nicker of horses as they received their rations of fodder. The ominous rasp of a sword on a whetstone.
Marchisa was building up the brazier in their tent and setting out portions of cold lamb and flat bread with which to break their fast. With great reluctance, Alienor sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She could smell smoke and grease on her hands from the previous night. The urge to observe the niceties of staying clean and fresh had dwindled to nothing when set against the need to keep dry and warm. She had not bothered to unpack her mirror for the last five nights, and the silk gowns she had worn in Constantinople had been relegated to the bottom of her baggage pack.
Alienor braced herself and left the bed. She had slept in thick socks, her chemise and a woollen gown. Now she donned a pair of soft linen braies and attached men’s leather riding hose to them. She and her women had adopted such clothing since leaving Constantinople because of its comfort and practicality in the advancing winter season and hostile terrain. A highly amused Geoffrey de Rancon had called them ‘the Amazons’ on first discovering the apparel while helping Alienor into the saddle. The nickname had quickly become common parlance among the men. Louis had not been best pleased. He said it was beneath the dignity of the Queen of France and therefore reflected poorly on himself, but since Alienor and her ladies wore perfectly respectable gowns over their hose, and since it helped them to keep up the pace, he let it pass with no more than scowls.
Alienor covered her hair and went to look outside. Pungent woodsmoke drifted from the cooking fires set up under tent awnings. She noticed dashes of white in the rain and knew it would be snowing higher up the mountain. As she stood considering the dismal prospect of riding into the bad weather, a guard detail returned from overnight picket duty.
‘The Turks are out there,’ she heard one soldier telling the men round the fire. ‘They’ll be circling like vultures, just waiting their moment, the devils. We found two more German corpses butchered and stripped, poor bastards. Skulls stove in like smashed apples.’
Alienor’s stomach contracted. Glancing round, she saw that Marchisa had heard. Gisela and the others were fortunately too busy dressing. Marchisa was by far the most pragmatic and practical of her ladies. Nothing discommoded her as they toiled through the inhospitable wastes of Anatolia: neither weather, nor sickness, nor scant supplies. Becoming lost for half a day when their Greek guides deserted them had scarcely disturbed her equilibrium, and she had been a steadying influence on Alienor’s entire household, including Alienor herself, when they discovered that Emperor Manuel had fed them a pack of lies. Contrary to what they had been told in Constantinople, the Turks had in fact decimated the German army. The latter had turned back, leaving the road littered with their dead. With no one to bury the corpses, they were slowly rotting where they had fallen. Day upon day the French army passed the grim waymarkers: testimony to what had really happened to their allies and to the web of deceit in which Manuel Komnenos had snared them. The promised guides had slipped away within days and the supplies had also dried up. The French had no choice but to forage, antagonising the local populace and making themselves vulnerable to Turkish attack. Every day brought fresh casualties and growing anxiety. They should have been in Antioch to celebrate Christmas, yet here they were, still weeks from their destination with the long and treacherous track over Mount Cadmos to negotiate.
Geoffrey was leading the vanguard with Louis’s uncle Amadée de Maurienne. Alienor worried for Geoffrey’s safety but showed nothing outwardly. They had become even more careful around each other since that brief loss of control in the camp at Constantinople, for they both knew the danger and how vulnerable they were.
She turned back into the tent. Gisela was shivering as she donned a fur-lined pelisse. The hem was dusty and the pelts, once a warm squirrel-red, were matted and draggled. ‘I don’t want to ride across that mountain,’ she said querulously.
‘It could be worse,’ Alienor said with small patience. ‘You could have remained in Constantinople as a bride.’
Gisela compressed her lips and finished dressing in silence.
Louis arrived while the women were waiting for their mounts to be brought. ‘Stay in formation and don’t straggle,’ he warned. ‘I want everyone across by nightfall. No foolishness.’
Alienor eyed him with irritation. What did he think they would get up to on a freezing rough mountainside? And why would they wander off when it might mean death from Turkish arrows or tumbling down a stony slope?
‘I have told the vanguard to be vigilant and to wait at the summit for the baggage to catch up.’ Louis nodded briskly, wheeled his stallion and rode back through the camp, leaning down to have a word here and there, bolstering men’s resolve. Alienor watched his progress and grudgingly acknowledged that for all his flaws and the things he had done that made her despise him, he sat a horse well and was an inspiration to his men when he made the effort. He was a strong and skilled swordsman, possessing grace and coordination. If there was anything left that sparked feeling in her, it was the manhood he showed astride a horse.
Saldebreuil brought Serikos round to the tent which the servants had begun dismantling. A thick rug covered his rump this morning and under it, her groom had packed Alienor’s bow and a quiverful of arrows. Everyone carried weapons of some kind; even the poorest non-combatants had a knife and a cudgel.
‘The seigneurs de Rancon and de Maurienne have already set out with the van,’ Saldebreuil said as he boosted Alienor into the saddle. ‘The middle will have to move sharpish to keep up. The van will have a long wait at the top if they get too far ahead.’
‘They know their part,’ Alienor replied as she gathered the reins. ‘The sooner we are over the summit the better for all.’
Together with her women, Alienor set out on the stony track that led up the steep, partially forested slopes of Mount Cadmos. Saldebreuil, ever watchful, rode as close to her as possible, although sometimes before or behind because the path was often too narrow for two horses to go abreast. ‘Make way!’ he shouted. ‘Make way for the Queen!’
The heavily burdened sumpter horses struggled as the steepness of the climb increased. Pilgrims meandered, trying to find the easiest way, planting their staffs in the ground, hauling themselves up step by step and cursing the weather. Alienor heeled Serikos’s flanks, urging him on. Pellets of sleet stung her face. She pulled a scarf across her nose and mouth and felt her breath moisten the wool, each exhalation a momentary burst of warmth that swiftly became an icy chill over her lips and chin. She fixed her mind on the thought of reaching the other side and the welcome of fire, shelter and wine laced with pepper and ginger. Each stony step brought her closer to Antioch, to her uncle Raymond, and release.
Only lightly encumbered and riding good horses, the vanguard progressed swiftly towards the summit of the mountain. Geoffrey de Rancon and Amadée de Maurienne kept their men moving in tight formation. Sometimes they heard the ululation of the Turks who had been shadowing and harassing them all along the route since crossing the Arm of Saint George, but they did not see them. A few desultory arrows curved out of the trees, but they fell short and posed little threat. Nevertheless, the space between Geoffrey’s shoulder blades felt extremely vulnerable. The threat came not only from the Turks. There were men in the train behind who would rather he was dead. He knew of the whispers behind his back: that he was the Queen’s lapdog and not to be relied upon. There was all the prejudice of the northern French nobles for a southern lord, and one beholden to a woman as his liege lady rather than to the King of France. That was why they had paired him with Amadée de Maurienne to take the vanguard over the Cadmos Pass, because the latter was the King’s uncle and considered experienced and trustworthy.
Geoffrey knew that if his deeper intimacy with Alienor were discovered, he would be found guilty of treason against his king and he would die. Perhaps Alienor would too or else face incarceration for the rest of her days. He did not care about his own fate, but for her sake, he had to keep his distance, no matter how difficult it was. That moment at Constantinople had filled him with a maelstrom of conflict. He was ashamed for his loss of control and the danger in which he had put her, but the moment itself had felt sanctified. He had no sense of betraying Louis, because Alienor had been a part of his soul for far longer than Louis had been her husband. She said once they reached Antioch things would change. He did not know how that was going to happen, but since the day was not far off, one way or another the waiting would be over.
The wind drove a fresh flurry of sleet into his face. The higher they climbed, the colder and more exposed they became. Drifting curtains of snow-laden cloud obstructed their vision. The desultory assaults ceased, but the weather continued to batter them all the way to the long summit. Geoffrey drew rein and stopped to listen for the jingle of pack-pony bells and the horns blaring from the unwieldy mid-section of the army. The sound was faint and variable depending on the direction of the wind, which had its own banshee voice and demonic force. There was no judging how long it would be before the centre arrived. Their banner-bearer planted the French lance in the sparse soil of the summit and the silks snapped in the wind, their edges faded and frayed by the months of hard travelling. Geoffrey peeled off one of his sheepskin mittens, and having fumbled his wineskin from his saddlebag, set it to his lips. The sour, tannic taste made him screw up his face and he spat out what was essentially vinegar over his mount’s withers. De Maurienne huddled in his thick squirrel-lined cloak. His bony beak of a nose made him look like a disgruntled vulture.
Geoffrey pulled up his hood as yet again it blew back off his head. His teeth ached and he had to half close his eyes to see through the whirling flakes. He sought the lee of a large boulder. His stallion put down its head and hunched its body, tail streaming between its hind legs.
‘Good Christ,’ de Maurienne muttered, his eyes streaming, ‘by the time the others arrive, we’ll be frozen rigid.’
Geoffrey glanced at him. De Maurienne was not a young man and although he had been robust when they set out, the long journey had taken its toll on his health. ‘We could seek shelter further down off the mountain,’ he suggested. ‘We can put up the tents we have with us and light fires for when the others arrive.’