Seven days into their journey, Alienor woke in the night certain that something was wrong. She had been dreaming of a baby, its downy golden head nuzzling at her breast, but when she looked down into its tiny face, it began to change, its rosy colour becoming ashen and its eyes turning as dull and dusty as wayside stones. It flopped in her arms, lifeless, and as she clutched it to her, it crumbled to dust. She sat up gasping, and pressed her hands to her belly. It felt heavy and solid under her touch, like a stone. There was no feeling, no flutter of soft limbs against the wall of her womb. She tried to go back to sleep, but eventually gave up, and went to sit by the embers of the fire until it was time to move on.
Louis wanted to visit the holy sites of the Lebanon, including the place where Saint Peter had been given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. The land was fresh and green, known as the ‘valley of springs’, and there was some respite from the burning heat. Alienor tried to drink of the tranquillity and absorb some peace into her soul for the sake of herself and the child. Louis’s mood was bright, but then he enjoyed being royalty on the road when all he had to do was parade and be gracious. She had watched him from a distance, effusing to the men and smiling broadly, even at Thierry de Galeran, whom he seemed to have forgiven in short order. All was well in his world. Raymond of Antioch had been outwitted and Alienor was contained in her curtained litter where she belonged and could do no harm.
As the day’s journey progressed, Alienor began to feel unwell. The jolting of the litter was like being on a boat on a rough sea and there was a band of pain across her belly. At first it resembled the niggling ache that came with her monthly fluxes, but gradually it intensified to the surging pains of true labour. ‘No,’ she gasped. ‘No, it is too soon!’ Her waters broke on a sudden gush, and they were streaked with blood and a greenish-black substance. She pulled back the curtain and leaned out to scream for Marchisa who was riding on a mule at the side of the litter.
‘Madam?’ Marchisa bade the men halt the litter and peered in at Alienor. ‘Holy Mary,’ she breathed and for a moment even her aplomb was shaken.
‘No one must know,’ Alienor gasped. ‘At whatever cost.’
Marchisa shook her head. ‘You cannot continue, madam,’ she said. ‘We have to find you shelter.’ She looked round. There was a shepherd’s hut a little off the track. It was no more than a crude stone shelter, but there was nothing else; Louis’s pilgrim site was much further on.
‘The Queen is unwell,’ Marchisa said to the litter-bearers. ‘Take her to that hut and I will tend her there.’
‘But we cannot leave the line, mistress,’ one of them said.
‘If you do not, she will die,’ Marchisa said fiercely. ‘And you will be to blame. Do as I say.’
‘But the King—’
‘I will deal with the King.’ Marchisa drew herself up. ‘My lady’s ailment is a recurrence of the sickness and flux she suffered in Hungary, and worsened by the treatment she received when she was forced to leave Antioch.’
Having prevailed on the men to bear the litter to the hut, Marchisa sent a squire to Louis with the same story she had given the litter-bearers, and had Mamile brought to the hut too. ‘As you are loyal to my lady, say nothing of this,’ she whispered fiercely to her. ‘If anyone asks, the Queen has the bloody flux.’
Mamile looked at her in fear mingled with angry indignation. ‘I know full well what ails her,’ she said. ‘But I am not Gisela and my loyalty is staunch.’
Together they helped Alienor into the hut. The litter-bearers, having heard the word ‘flux’, were keen to keep their distance and Marchisa encouraged them to do so. A messenger arrived from Louis saying he would continue to the pilgrim site and that Alienor should rest where she was until she was strong enough to rejoin the main troop. However, he would leave guards to protect her, who would camp beside the hut. The messenger insisted on seeing Alienor to make sure she truly was ill and not just pretending in a ploy to make an escape back to Antioch.
He took a single glance at Alienor writhing in the straw on the floor of the hut and made a swift exit.
A small spring bubbled beside the hut and Marchisa filled a bucket with fresh, cold water. She lit a fire in the small stone hearth. There was dung for fuel and she had a sack of charcoal among her supplies. She stuffed a linen palliasse with some of the straw to make Alienor a bed and, once the fire was established, brewed her a tisane that would take away the edge of the pain, although she knew she could not dull what was to come. The blood in the waters and the green smears of the unborn infant’s faeces told their own story of impending tragedy. She suspected that the blows Thierry de Galeran had inflicted on Alienor as they left Antioch had been deliberate in more ways than one.
Alienor opened her eyes and stared at smoke-darkened rafters. There was a burning pain in her belly and between her thighs, constant and duller now, rather than cresting surges. Her throat was raw, as if she had inhaled too much smoke, or screamed until her voice was ragged. She put her hand down to her belly and it was flaccid. Her breasts were tight and someone had bound them with linen cloths. There were pads between her thighs too. She felt weak and wrung out.
‘Madam?’ Marchisa leaned over her and pressed a hand to her forehead. ‘Ah, the fever has dropped at last,’ she said. ‘You have been very ill. Here, you must drink more of this.’
Alienor sipped the cool, bitter brew from the cup that Marchisa pressed to her lips. ‘My child,’ she said. ‘Where is my child? He will need feeding.’ She looked round the hut. A linen curtain hung across the doorway, screening the outside but letting in weak light. A thread of blue smoke twirled from the hearth. Mamile was stirring some sort of stew in a pot, but she looked across at Alienor and then swiftly away. ‘What have you done with him? Show him to me!’
Marchisa bit her lip. ‘Madam … he … was born dead. That was why you went into travail early – because he had died. I am so sorry.’
‘I do not believe you!’ Alienor could feel panic and grief gathering like a surge behind a crumbling wall. ‘Show me.’
‘Madam …’
‘Show me! If there is a body, I will see it and know all there is!’
Marchisa turned to a basket covered with a linen cloth on top of which she had laid the cross on its chain from around her own neck. ‘I was going to bury him at sunrise,’ she said. ‘Truly, madam, I am not sure you should look.’
‘I must.’
Marchisa drew back the cloth and Alienor gazed on what lay within the basket. She let out a single wail and then absorbed the grief, curling over, clutching it to her in lieu of a living, breathing infant. Even as the child had died, so now too did a fragile part of her hopes and dreams. She rocked back and forth, nursing her pain. ‘I do not care what happens to me,’ she said. ‘Let me die. This is no holy land; this is my hell.’
A ceramic platter of the dainty almond and rose-water confections the Arabs called
faludhaj
stood on the inlaid table between Alienor and Melisande, Queen Mother and co-ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Melisande bit into one with pleasure. ‘Too many give you the toothache and gripes,’ she said ruefully, ‘but they are delicious.’ She had a golden complexion and sparkling dark brown eyes that, while full of humour, were shrewd and knowing. ‘These are women’s dainties. Men devour them in one bite, and never discover the joy of true appreciation, but even so, they are a useful lure, I find.’
‘Is that not typical of all male behaviour?’ Alienor smiled and took one herself, playing the role of the gracious French queen. It had been her anchor in the terrible months since the birth of her stillborn son in the Lebanon, and the only way out of the darkness that had threatened to engulf her. She dared not lower her guard for the pain was too great when she did, and her nights were disturbed by vivid, terrifying dreams. Nevertheless, she was living through each day, surviving the nights, and time by infinitesimal increments was thickening the scab over the wound. Saldebreuil had rejoined her in Jerusalem a fortnight ago, still weak from his beating at the hands of Thierry de Galeran and his henchmen, but able to resume his duties, and that at least had comforted her a little, because she had thought him dead.
She and Melisande were sitting on a flat rooftop of the palace of Jerusalem, protected from the sun by an open tent with gauze linen curtains blowing in the breeze. The women wore comfortable loose silk robes and turbans in the way of the Jerusalem Franks, and were enjoying each other’s company while they rested during the hottest part of the day.
Melisande laughed. ‘I fear you are right on the whole, although sometimes there are men who are different, and we should treasure them.’
Alienor looked out across the blue sky and the heat haze rippling from the ancient golden stones. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘But so often we do not get to keep them, do we?’
She was aware of Melisande’s thoughtful scrutiny, but it did not disturb her. Melisande’s blood carried the right to the throne of Jerusalem, but her husband Fulke in his lifetime had tried to seize power from her and she had had to fight for every shred of authority she possessed. She had also been accused of conducting an affair with Hugh le Puiset, lord of Jaffa, one of her closest courtiers, but she had brazened out the storm and emerged from the scandal with her strength intact.
‘No, we do not,’ Melisande said. ‘It is a sad fact of life.’ She gave Alienor a look that was both piercing and gentle. ‘You can tell me what you will and it will go no further. I know enough of you and your situation to listen and understand. See me as a point of respite on your journey from which you will move on in good time.’
Alienor was silent for a moment; then she drew a deep breath and said, ‘I asked Louis for an annulment. Our marriage is consanguineous …’
‘As are many,’ Melisande replied to the point. ‘Most people are related to their spouse in some degree or other, but it does not lead them to annulment unless they choose.’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘You say you asked Louis – not the other way around? Why is that?’
‘Because …’ Alienor looked away, her throat tightening and tears pricking her eyes. ‘Because it was a mistake from the beginning. I love my father and honour his memory. I know he did what he thought was the best for me, but it wasn’t. Louis is …’ Her mind filled with words she could not bring herself to utter. ‘Neither of us has fulfilled the other’s expectations. I am Duchess of Aquitaine and Queen of France, but it means nothing. I desire only to be rid of him and have this marriage dissolved. I want my own power and the wherewithal to make my own decisions. I have been forced to take roads I would never have set foot upon without being coerced.’ She looked at Melisande, who was watching her intently. ‘Louis is weak and foolish. He takes bad counsel from those around him and will not listen to sense. I do not wish to be at the beck and call of a dolt and his minions for the rest of my life.’
‘Ah,’ said Melisande. She clapped her hands and a servant appeared to refresh their cups with wine that had been cooling in a cistern. ‘I well understand that. It is difficult when men prefer to take the advice of other men, and make unwise choices. That decision to attack Damascus was a case in point.’
Alienor grimaced. ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘How different things might have been if they had made Aleppo their objective.’ She had still been recovering from the stillbirth of her son when she had arrived in Jerusalem. No one knew of it even now save for Marchisa and Mamile. There were scurrilous rumours doing the rounds of the barons and clerics, but those rumours concerned impropriety between herself and her uncle and were being spread by the likes of Thierry de Galeran in an attempt to blacken Raymond’s name and turn against him men who might otherwise have listened to his pleas to strike at Aleppo. A council had been held at Acre and Melisande had been present in her capacity as co-ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Alienor had been excluded by Louis and had been too unwell and powerless to protest the exclusion anyway. Melisande had tried to persuade the other attendees that it would be more to their advantage to ride on Aleppo, but she had been overridden. Damascus was a far more tempting prospect to all in the short term, rather than looking to any longer gain. Raymond had refused to come to Acre to argue his point, declaring that there was too much treachery abounding for him to consider risking his life for what was obviously a foregone conclusion.
The army of Jerusalem, bolstered by the French, had assaulted Damascus and been routed, the campaign a disaster. Louis’s reputation had suffered another setback as all the impetus and opportunity to improve the security of the Christian kingdom had been squandered. Louis had now firmly exchanged the mail shirt of a soldier for the robes of a pilgrim. He said it was a precious thing to breathe the same air that the Saviour had done, walk in the same dust, touch the same temple walls. So it was, and Alienor had visited many of the places herself and been humbled and moved, but pilgrimage had become Louis’s obsession and bolt hole from reality. He was currently absent on an expedition to Lake Galilee where he intended collecting vials of the precious water on which Jesus had walked and where he had declared he would make his disciples ‘fishers of men’.
Melisande gave a flick of her wrist. ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Beware all men. I grew to be fond of the husband I was forced to wed, but in our early years, he did his utmost to lock me out of power even though I was his key. It took him a while to learn the ways of this land, and just as we came to an understanding, the fool fell from his horse and broke his skull.’ Her eyes filled with pain, and then she shook herself and reached for her wine. ‘What did Louis say? Has he agreed to give you an annulment?’
‘He would if left to decide on his own, but others have advised him against it,’ Alienor said. ‘He does not want me because he says I am sullied and I do not obey God as I should, and therefore God declines to bless us with an heir – although if Louis will not lie with me how can he beget that heir? But he knows if he does agree to an annulment, he loses Aquitaine and he loses face. Men will call him a failure on all fronts.’ She gave a sour smile. ‘He cannot live with me, he cannot live without me, and so he hides on his little peregrinations, where he can be the King of France with all the dignity and none of the problems. He can fulfil his spiritual needs and forget he has a wife at all. It is an annulment of sorts, just not official.’ Her expression hardened. ‘We shall be visiting Rome on our way back to Paris, and when we do, I hope for a positive outcome.’