She lifted her chin. There was no falling into each other’s arms. No ‘Glad you are alive.’ They were far beyond that. ‘I am sorry for the good men we have lost, but you cannot hang your uncle and my seneschal on the morrow, and you must make sure your men do not do so tonight.’
‘Are you trying to rule me again?’ He bared his teeth. ‘Do not dictate to me what I can and cannot do.’
‘I am telling you that if you do this thing, you will have a war between our troops that will finish what the Turks began.’ She drew herself up. ‘Geoffrey de Rancon is my vassal and it is my prerogative to chastise him for what he has or has not done. You shall not hang him.’
‘They disobeyed my orders,’ Louis snarled, ‘and because they did not do as they were told, my men – my friends – were slaughtered. I shall do as I see fit.’
‘They did what they thought best. They made a mistake, but it was folly, not treason. You have no right to hang Geoffrey, because he is my vassal. If you do, then the Aquitaine contingent will rise in revolt against you. Do you really want to contend with that? And if you hang Geoffrey, you will also have to hang your uncle – your own mother’s brother – because they share the blame. Are you willing to do that, Louis? Will you watch them both swing? How will that sit with your men?’
‘You know nothing!’ he sobbed at her. ‘If you had been there, seeing your friends cut to pieces in front of your eyes, you would not be so swift to leap to their defence! My bodyguards gave their lives to protect mine, while de Maurienne and de Rancon were warming their backsides at the fire and taking their ease. This is all their fault, all of it. If you were any kind of wife to me, you would be supporting me in this, not casting obstacles in my way.’
‘You have a penchant for always seeing reason as an obstacle. If you hang these men, you will lose two battle commanders and all of their vassals who will no longer cleave to your banner, and that means you will only have yourself to blame when what remains disintegrates in your hands.’
‘Be silent!’ He raised his clenched, bloody fist.
Alienor did not flinch. ‘If you do this, you doom yourself,’ she said, her voice quiet but hard. She turned her back on him and left the tent.
Behind her she heard a crash as if something had been kicked over. A real man would not succumb to a boy’s tantrum, she thought, and the sound only served to increase her contempt for him and her fear of what he might do.
Alienor went with Saldebreuil to the tent where Geoffrey and Amadée de Maurienne were being held under house arrest. A crowd of knights and serjeants, survivors of the rearguard, had gathered outside and were shouting insults, most of them directed at Geoffrey. ‘Poitevan coward!’ and ‘Southern softsword!’ were the least of them. Chanted threats to hang the men surged and receded, and more soldiers were drifting towards the tent and joining the crowd with each moment. ‘Find Everard des Barres. Quickly!’ Alienor commanded Saldebreuil.
He snapped swift orders to one of his men, and then with a handful of household knights made a corridor for Alienor to approach the tent entrance. ‘Make way for the Queen!’ he bellowed.
Soldiers fell back, but Alienor was aware of their muttering and resentment. A real sense of danger tingled down her spine. At the tent entrance she paused, drew a deep breath, and then parted the flaps.
Geoffrey and de Maurienne sat at a trestle table with a flagon between them and a platter on which stood a loaf of hard bread and a rind of cheese. They looked up with taut faces as she entered; both then rose and knelt to her.
Alienor knew she dared not betray her emotions by a single look or gesture. ‘I have spoken to the King,’ she said. ‘He is furious, but I believe when it comes to the crux, he will spare you both.’
‘Then we must believe in your belief, madam,’ said de Maurienne, ‘and my nephew’s good sense. But what of them?’ He nodded towards the tent flaps. Something struck the side of the canvas with a heavy thud. A stone, she thought, and the volume of the shouting increased.
‘Help is at hand,’ she replied, praying that it was, and hoping Louis would indeed see sense by the morning.
‘Well, if it is French help, they are likely to string us up,’ Geoffrey said grimly, ‘and if you have summoned our men, there will be bloody fighting in the camp between the factions.’
‘Credit me with more sense than that,’ she snapped. ‘I have sent for the Templars.’
A look of relief passed between the men, but then Geoffrey shook his head. ‘Perhaps we do deserve to die,’ he said.
‘You have already committed enough folly to last you into your dotage, without adding more,’ she said, covering her fear with anger. ‘When we reach Antioch, my lord, I am sending you back to Aquitaine.’ He inhaled to protest and she raised her hand to silence him. ‘My mind is made up. It will benefit me and Aquitaine far more than if you remain here.’
Geoffrey stared at her, his eyes glittering with tears. ‘You will shame me before all.’
‘No, you fool, I will save your life, even if you seem keen to throw it away. Listen to them.’ She gestured to the tent flaps. ‘They will make a scapegoat of you. Someone will put a knife in you before this journey is done. It is different for my lord de Maurienne. He is the King’s uncle, and they will say he followed your lead. They may not hang you today, but nevertheless they will find some way of murdering you. I will not let that happen to … to one of my senior vassals. Besides, I need your strong arm to prepare Aquitaine for when I return. So much will have changed.’ She raised her brows in emphasis.
‘Madam, I beg you …’ Geoffrey looked at her with his heart in his eyes; then he swiftly dropped his gaze and bowed his head. ‘Do not send me away.’
Alienor swallowed. ‘I must. I have no choice.’
There was a taut silence; then Geoffrey said, ‘If that is your wish, I must yield you my obedience, but I do it at your will, not my own.’
De Maurienne had been silently watchful throughout the exchange, and Alienor wondered how much they had given away. ‘The Queen speaks wisely,’ the older man said. ‘I can weather the storm, but you are vulnerable; you have enemies. It is best for all that you leave.’
Outside the tent, the shouting and insults had fallen silent, replaced by the sound of a heavy tread in unison and the clink of weapons. Alienor turned to the entrance. A row of Templar knights and serjeants was lining up facing the crowd, shields presented, hands on sword hilts.
‘Madam.’ Their commander, Everard des Barres, gave her a stiff bow.
Alienor returned the courtesy. ‘Sire, I ask you to guard these men. I fear for their lives. There will be more bloodshed among us should anything happen to them tonight before the King has made his decision. We have problems enough in the camp without adding to them.’
Des Barres gave her a shrewd look from narrow dark eyes. He and Alienor had never been particularly cordial with each other, but were both pragmatic enough to deal on political and diplomatic terms. ‘Madam, you have my personal oath that these men will not be harmed.’
There would be a price to pay at some point, she knew, but des Barres was a man of his word. The Templars had no affinity apart from God, and were the best soldiers in Christendom. ‘Thank you. I leave this in your capable hands, my lord.’
Alienor left the tent without looking back because she did not want to meet Geoffrey’s gaze. The Queen’s traditional role was that of peacemaker; let it rest at that and pretend that her heart was not breaking.
Having passed a worried, sleepless night, Alienor had just finished her morning ablutions when Louis arrived. In the morning light, his face was pale and ravaged, with eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion and weeping. ‘I have decided to spare my uncle and de Rancon,’ he said. ‘It will be a far greater punishment for them to live with their shame.’
‘Thank you,’ Alienor said, her tone conciliatory and subdued. She felt weak with relief, for he could so easily have chosen execution and in the end she could not have stopped him. ‘Geoffrey must return to Aquitaine.’
Louis gave a curt nod. ‘Indeed. I am not inclined to protect him from the men, and I can no longer trust him with any kind of military responsibility. The Templars will command the vanguard for the rest of the way.’
He left the tent in a brusque flurry and Alienor released the breath she had been holding. She could not even bear the scent of him now. Overcome by nausea, she had to run to the slop bowl.
Marchisa left what she was doing and hastened to tend to her.
‘It is nothing,’ Alienor said, gesturing her away. ‘I am all right.’
‘I am here if you need me, madam,’ Marchisa said, giving her a long, thoughtful look.
The Templars led off the army later in the morning. Louis kept de Maurienne close to his side, and Alienor had Geoffrey ride as part of her escort, near enough that he was under her protection as much as he was protecting her. It was unsettling and bittersweet. Each time she breathed him in, the sensation was almost unbearable, as it was with Louis, but for the opposite reasons. She dared not touch him or favour him because people were watching closely. It all had to be worn on the inside. No one must ever know.
Alienor and Louis sailed into the port of Saint Symeon on a glittering morning in mid March. The breeze was soft, the sky clear blue and the sea rocked with a gentle swell. Alienor walked on to the harbour side, thanking God for their safe deliverance. It was impossible to believe that the voyage from the port of Antalya to Antioch, usually of three days’ duration, had taken almost three weeks, during which their vessels had been buffeted on rough seas and blown far off course. The Greek sailors had demanded an extortionate fee of four silver marks for each passenger they shipped. The alternative was a forty-day journey through rough and hostile terrain, which was what the bulk of the army had had to do despite being weakened by sickness and hunger.
Alienor had been nauseous throughout the sea journey, even during the times when the weather was calm. Marchisa had tended to her and said nothing, but her gaze was astute. Alienor knew that sooner or later she would have to confide in her. She could not keep her condition secret for much longer without help.
Antioch stood on the River Orontes, the city wall rising in massive crenellations up the sides of Mount Silipus. It was home to the Holy Saint Peter, first disciple of Jesus, and housed the church where the word ‘Christian’ had first been coined. That church still existed, built into a cavern in the mountainside, and was a place of reverence and pilgrimage. Louis was eager to worship there and tread in the footsteps of heaven’s gatekeeper.
Alienor’s own thoughts were more directed towards meeting her uncle and claiming his protection. Preparing to meet him, she dressed in a red silk dalmatic given to her by the Empress Irene. The loose-fitting gown was ornamented with precious gems, pearls and gold beads. Sapphires and rubies adorned her fingers and she covered her hair with a veil of Egyptian linen, so fine that it was like mist. Despite the rigours of the journey and her recent uncertain health, she was determined to greet her uncle with regal dignity.
She had last seen him when she was nine years old and had a vague memory of a tall young knight with deep blue eyes and hair the same dark golden hue as her own. Her stomach was queasy with anticipation and the knowledge that she was about to begin a new phase of her life, a phase that did not include Louis, although for the moment she would play her role as Queen of France.
They were greeted by a crowd of people singing hymns and scattering blossom petals before them in a pink and white cloud. Louis’s jaw tightened. ‘Let us hope that this place is not another Constantinople,’ he muttered with a curl of his lip.
‘Why should it be?’ She gave him a sharp look. ‘It is ruled by my father’s brother and his wife is your cousin.’
‘Because the ways of the East are tainted, and the fine flourishes only serve to conceal and gild their treachery,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘You believe our own kin to be treacherous?’
‘Until I have been given good reason to think otherwise,’ he said grimly. ‘After all, I have encountered treachery and deceit close to home on more than one occasion.’
Alienor swallowed nausea. Just a little longer, she told herself, just a few days more and she would be free. ‘Antioch is not Constantinople. My uncle and his wife are of our lands even if they have made lives here, and we have come to help them – that was our original purpose.’
‘Not our only one,’ he said. ‘Our duty to God is the more important.’
Outside the palace, her uncle Raymond waited to greet them with his wife, Constance, who was kin to Louis. Many years in the Middle Eastern sun had bleached Raymond’s hair to the white-gold of ripe wheat, and his blue eyes were surrounded by deep creases from staring into harsh light. He was taller and broader than Louis, and had such a look of her father that she wanted to fling her arms around him and sob on his neck, but she restrained herself. Constance was slightly younger than Alienor, slender and dark-haired with light green eyes and fine features. She had a look of Louis around her nose and cheekbones, but there was something a little exotic about her too, as if the East had added its quality to her blood.
Their marriage had begun in scandal and subterfuge. At the age of twenty-two, Raymond had been invited to Antioch to become its ruler by marrying Alice, widow of the recently deceased Count Bohemond. But Alice was headstrong and not of the bloodline, whereas her nine-year-old daughter Constance was. Travelling in secret to avoid enemies, Raymond had arrived in Antioch, ostensibly to marry the mother, but had taken the daughter to wife instead, thereby thwarting Alice’s ambitions and setting himself up in dominance. Although under heavy threat from the Seljuks, he remained a powerful player in the game and was still only in his thirties.
‘Welcome,’ Raymond said, his voice deep and mellifluous. He spoke the French of the north as he greeted Louis with the kiss of peace and embraced him, but he did not kneel. Then he turned to Alienor and his gaze filled with warmth and compassion. ‘Niece,’ he said in the
lenga romana
. ‘My brother’s child.’