Pope Eugenius leaned forward on his chair, pale hands tightly clasped, and peered intently at Alienor. He was a small man, made smaller by his posture, and resembled a shrew clad in magnificent episcopal robes.
‘Your Eminence, I am ready to hear your judgement,’ Alienor said. This was it, the fulfilment of the journey. Louis had agreed to the annulment and had spoken to the Pope earlier that morning. She had not seen him since, but he had resolved to go forward with the matter. All that stood between her and the dissolution of her impossible marriage were a few words from this elderly little man and the necessary documentation.
Eugenius rubbed the shining sapphire in his pontifical ring with the pad of his thumb. ‘As I told your husband earlier, this is a matter for God, not for man, and God forbids the separation of those he has joined together, except in very serious and complex situations, neither of which pertain in your case.’
He had a habit of slurring his words at the end of sentences so that it was difficult for Alienor to tell what he was saying, but she understood enough to know he was not taking the tack she wanted.
‘But our bloodlines say our marriage is consanguineous in the third degree. Louis and I share the same ancestors.’
‘By all means laws should be kept, but sometimes they are used as conveniences without due sincerity.’ His voice was an old man’s, thin and gravelly, but nevertheless imbued with power, not least because he was passionate and sincere about what he was saying. ‘I trust you will put your faith in God. You do not wish to raise His anger. Be meek and bend your will to His. That is what I told your husband.’ He raised a warning forefinger. ‘I was much disturbed when I heard that he too desired an annulment. It is not the behaviour I would expect from a true son of the Church. Too many people sue for annulment when they should be doing their best to cherish their marriages. I told him he must reconsider, and he agreed to do so.’
Alienor gazed at him in growing, sick dismay.
Eugenius now pointed his forefinger at her. ‘It is not your place to deny God’s purpose. I do not sit in judgement beyond that which God allows me. I urge you with all my heart to come together with your husband as you were once before and go on your way united. From your union you shall bear an heir for France.’ His brow furrowed in bafflement. ‘You are a young woman still and have no need of resorting to such stratagems in this matter. You must beg God’s mercy for the waywardness of your thoughts.’ A sad but almost kindly smile curved his lips. ‘You have come to the proper place to make it right. All it needs is the determination and everything can be made whole again.’
Alienor was in shock and turmoil, but she set her face and held onto her dignity. Eugenius’s gaze was filled with compassion and concern and also a little troubled censure, as if he were rebuking an erring child. It was plain that the pontiff was not going to agree to annul the marriage and that his mind was set on a very different path.
‘Daughter, you should go to confession and pray upon what I have said, even as I have entreated your husband to do. Let today be a renewal of your marriage vows with your husband, not an ending.’ He held out his hand for her to kiss his ring. ‘I shall hear no more on this foolish matter of annulment. Go and prepare yourself to be your husband’s bride and you will be vouchsafed a son.’
There was nothing Alienor could do but make her obeisance and leave. She was numb, unable to believe the meeting with Eugenius had ended like this. There was no room to appeal his decision. She and Louis were more irrevocably bound than ever.
That night Alienor walked barefoot in her shift and cloak through the corridors of the papal palace at Tusculum, her right hand set lightly on Louis’s left wrist. He too was barefoot and similarly clad. They both wore the gold crowns that had travelled in their baggage from the outset of the crusade. Alienor’s hair fell in burnished ripples to her hips. The scent of roses and incense wafted from her garments and her body as she walked. Louis too was bathed and groomed. Before and behind them a choir of secular canons sang God’s praises, and attendants strewed rose petals from the palace gardens across the floor tiles.
Eventually they came to a polished oak door decorated with wrought-iron curves and scrollwork. With great ceremony an usher knocked upon it with his ebony staff and, at a command from within, turned the latch and admitted them to a bedchamber ablaze with light and colour. It reminded Alienor a little of the stained-glass glory of Saint-Denis because here too the effect was of walking into a reliquary. It felt sacred, and she was filled with trepidation and uncertainty.
Pope Eugenius was waiting for them, standing before the bed as if officiating at an altar. His small, ferrety frame was drowned in a white cope gleaming with embroidery of silver and gold. In his right hand he bore a staff on which was set a reliquary cross, the gold almost obliterated by gemstones. A bishop stood at his side, holding a silver pot containing holy water, and another stood ready with a vial of oil. The scent of incense permeated everything, but especially the bed, which was a confection of white and gold matching the papal robes. Candles and lamps blazed in every niche and crevice, giving off the sweet aromas of beeswax and perfumed oil, filling the room with heat. Eugenius’s lined forehead glistened with drops of sweat like beads of rock crystal.
‘My children,’ he said, opening his hands in welcome. His eyes were as bright as berries and filled with benevolence. ‘This is a moment of renewal; of hope and fruitfulness, endorsed by God. I have sanctified the bed in which you shall lie tonight as husband and wife, and now I shall sanctify you that you shall be blessed with a male heir for France.’
He bade them kneel and Alienor felt his trembling thumb anointing a cross on her brow with holy oil as he spoke words of blessing and sanction. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, let it be done,’ he said.
The gathered clergy left the chamber in an orderly procession, singing as they went, swinging censers, leaving behind drifts of the heavenly scent of frankincense resin.
Alienor and Louis faced each other, two strangers as they had been on their first wedding night, and yet with all the knowledge of years between them like a poisoned chalice containing a brew of hurt, betrayal, treachery and abuse. Eugenius wanted them to start again, but Alienor knew it was a vain hope. All of this was taking her further on to the wrong path. Her first wedding night had led her into a marriage that had soon turned sour. How was this going to be any better? Knowing what to expect only made it worse.
Louis put his arms around her and, drawing her against him, kissed the cross of oil on her forehead. ‘If it is the will of God, then it is our duty to follow what must be done,’ he said sombrely. ‘The Pope is right. We should put our personal desires aside and be a king and queen.’
As Alienor lay back on the great, blessed bed with its priceless hangings and perfumed sheets still damp with sprinkles of holy water, she felt as if not just her heart but her whole body was breaking. How could this be happening when this morning she had expected to be in receipt of an annulment? She barely responded to Louis, but that only served to arouse him, because a passive wife was an obedient wife, and as far as he was concerned, she was obeying the advice the Pope had given to them, and submitting to God’s will.
In the end, Alienor found the physical act itself not too unpleasant. Louis was thoroughly immersed in his role and since there could be no greater sanction to the marriage bed than having it personally overseen by the Pope, he had no difficulty in performing his duty in a way that honoured their surroundings and the sacrament of the moment. Afterwards, he lay back, his hands pillowed behind his head, and gazed up at the bed hangings with a slight smile on his lips. ‘We shall yet have our heir,’ he said, ‘and then everything will be different, you will see.’
She doubted that. Even if she bore a son from this mating, the same courtiers would cause the same problems and marginalise her power. She could not see Louis returning to her bed on a regular basis. It might happen for a short while with the Pope’s exhortations fresh in his mind, but she knew him well. As soon as the glamour began to fade, he would return to his other proclivities.
She needed freedom above all else, but she had just been burdened with yet more chains.
Alienor had never known a winter so bitterly cold. The hard frosts had begun in late November and a fortnight later the snow had followed. Although the shortest day had passed, there was no sign of a thaw, and dawn still came late and the dusk early. There was privation. The queue for alms at abbey gates grew ever longer as food supplies dwindled and increased in price. The poor starved – and froze. The Seine was solid and river commerce had ceased. Supplies were hauled on sleds, and people had to melt ice to obtain water for their cooking pots. The price of kindling rose until folk could scarcely afford to build fires.
Alienor had been out giving alms to the needy and visiting the sick, as had Louis. Their plight concerned her, but they had been born to their lot in life even as she had been born to hers. She did what she could for them within her remit.
Under a hard, bright moon in the winter dusk, she walked with Petronella in the frozen palace gardens. Her heavy cloak was lined with ermine and her shoes insulated with thick, soft fleece. Petronella carried a hot stone wrapped in a layer of sheepskin. An ostentatious ruby ring glowed on her wedding finger to remind the world she was now officially the wife of Raoul of Vermandois. His first wife had died, thus removing the impediment to their match, and they had been received back into the bosom of the Church.
Children dashed and played around the sisters, throwing snowballs, taunting each other, their voices sharp as crystal on the still air of dusk. Alienor’s four-year-old daughter belonged in this landscape with her long flaxen hair and twilight-blue eyes. She was a slender faerie child, but her build masked her vigour and she possessed a robust will that made her ready to tackle her Vermandois cousins fearlessly. Alienor had left her barely walking, still a babe in arms, and had returned to a demanding spindle-legged little girl. There was a gap where maternal emotion should have existed. Alienor felt little connection with her daughter; there had been too long a separation. All she could summon was a feeling of wistful regret. She was with child again, the fruit of their stay in Tusculum on their way home, and she was cutting off from that too, because it was too painful to think about.
‘You will have to tell Louis soon,’ Petronella said as they paused beside a snowy bench to look out over the dormant beds. Alienor had brought home roses from the garden at Palermo, but they would not bloom until the summer. ‘I saw him looking at you earlier today when you refused the trout with almonds.’
‘And then he will turn me into a prisoner,’ Alienor said bitterly. ‘The moment he knows I am with child, he will confine me to my chamber and send in his physicians and priests. He will have me watched day and night. He is almost unbearable now. What will it be like when he does know? Do you think he would allow me to walk in the garden now with you? He would say the night air was bad for the child and I should take more care. He would accuse me of negligence.’
‘But you will still need to do it soon,’ Petronella persisted. ‘He may be a man, but he can count. You are always telling me I should think about the practicalities.’
Alienor grimaced. ‘Yes, but not quite yet. I intend to have a few more days of freedom.’
Petronella’s gaze narrowed. ‘There is much you are not telling me. Raoul saw Abbé Suger’s correspondence in your absence. You sought an annulment when you were in Antioch, and you were still seeking it when you went to Rome. Raoul said Louis would have to be the greatest fool in Christendom to agree to it and lose you and Aquitaine.’
‘Yet he would have agreed,’ Alienor said. ‘It was the Pope who bound us together and refused to dissolve the marriage, the sentimental old fool. He made us share a bed and promised Louis a son.’ She pressed her hand to her belly and breathed out a puff of white vapour.
‘But if he had agreed to the annulment, what then?’ Petronella demanded. ‘What would you have done? You wouldn’t have been free – not as a woman alone and without a male heir but with many years of childbearing left. Someone would seize you. Raoul said you were being just as foolish as Louis.’
‘Raoul seems to have a lot to say on many things, and you seem very keen to take his word as the truth,’ Alienor snapped. ‘Raoul knows nothing of my situation. I do not choose to share my plans with him and with good reason.’
Petronella’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘He has been loyal to Louis throughout.’
‘But I have no doubt that he was busy covering all exits and entrances. And who is Raoul to speak of foolishness with his reputation? Ah, enough. I shall not quarrel with you.’
Ahead of her the children were flurrying through the snow. Little Marie slipped on a patch of ice and fell hard. Her bottom lip quivered and she began to wail. Her cousin Isabelle pulled her to her feet, but it was to Petronella that Marie ran for comfort.
‘Hush now, my love, hush,’ Petronella said, and crouched to stroke Marie’s cheek with a hand that was warm from the stone. ‘It’s nothing, a little scrape, hmmm? Such a fuss.’ She gave her a cuddle and a kiss.
Alienor watched, feeling empty and heartsick. ‘Come,’ she said curtly, turning towards the garden gate. ‘We should go inside; it is growing colder.’
A week later, with the bitter chill still straining people’s endurance at the seams, Louis sat in his chamber of the Great Tower in the late-winter afternoon. Dinner was over, the candles had been lit, and everyone was taking their ease. For once Louis was not at his prayers, but sitting in conversation with members of his household. For once, too, Thierry de Galeran was not at his side, having business at his estates of Montlhéry, and as a result the atmosphere was more relaxed.