To Be Queen (19 page)

“I will serve you all the days of my life, until you no longer have need of me.”

Stefan spoke with fervor, but he did not seem a zealot. I looked into the brown depths of his gaze, searching him out. If there was a lie behind his eyes, I did not find it.

“You will serve me and no other?”

“You and no other.”

I took my hand from his. “So be it. I accept your fealty.”

Stefan rose and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“He is a good man,” my uncle said. “He will serve you well, and keep watch over your enemies.”

“And my allies?”

My uncle's lips quirked, but he did not smile.

“You will have Toulouse, Uncle. But first I must ask Louis to besiege it.”

“Of course.” The curve of Raoul's lips drew an answering smile from me. “What else has a young king to do but to besiege a city at peace?”

My uncle did not kneel, but when he took my hand in his, he, too, kissed my father's signet ring. He would serve me, and I would serve him. That is what allies did, whether family or not. He would not betray me; he cared for me, as much as his cold heart would allow him to, as much as he cared for having Toulouse back again. To keep this bargain with my uncle, Louis and I would take that city. It had been too long in the hands of others already.

Petra and our uncle de Faye stayed behind in Poitiers to rule Aquitaine and Poitou in my stead. Louis thought they were his stewards, but we and all my people knew better. Though it cost me something to leave my sister behind, alone but for my uncle and her women, I knew that I must do it. A woman must tear out her heart to be queen.

It took me until the summer of 1141 to turn Louis' mind to Toulouse and to make it stay there. I had to bide my time, much to my uncle de Faye's displeasure, for it was important that Louis think the conquest of Toulouse his own idea. With my encouragement, he came to see himself as a knight errant, righting a wrong for his lady love.

Finally, four years into our marriage, I sat with my husband in his tent outside Toulouse's city gates. We were perhaps a week away from winning the siege and taking the city back for my family. Louis was elated with the taste of victory. I was nineteen years old, and it was the first time I had ridden to war. I felt the elation of certain victory, too.

“Eleanor, I will crown you Countess of Toulouse in their very cathedral.”

The firelight from the braziers around us cast a warm and mellow light on Louis' handsome face. His soft hair hung down, caressing his cheeks in a fall of gold. At times like these, all memory of his rejections melted away, and I longed for him to touch me again.

Louis had avoided sleeping with me after my miscarriage, the memory of my blood filling his mind with death and loss. He came to have a morbid fear that I would die, especially that I might die in childbed. No matter what I said to dissuade him from this notion, he would not let go of it. And even when my miscarriage was years behind us, Louis avoided my bed as if he might catch the plague there, preferring instead to moon at me over goblets of wine in the great hall, then praying for forgiveness of his sin during the hours when he should have been getting a son on me. I drew him into my bed from time to time, but never often enough to quicken my womb once more. I hoped that a victory at Toulouse would fan his ardor, and confirm in his mind that he was blessed by God. Once we conquered the city, I hoped that Louis would claim my body every night until he had given me a son.

I reached for him, running my hand up the silk of his sleeve. The heat in his blue eyes caught fire and he held my gaze. He leaned close, and for one blessed moment, I thought he would kiss me, then lead me to the bed that lay behind the damask curtain. The walls of his tent were made of the finest waterproofed leather; there was no wind that night, so the walls did not move. I could pretend that his men-at-arms did not guard us, standing less than ten feet away, separated from us only by thin leather. I could pretend that we were alone.

Louis kissed me, and I drew him close without seeming to lead him. He raised me to my feet, for we had been sitting together in the firelight, drinking the last of the wine. His hands were soft in my hair.

But just as Louis' mouth warmed over mine, his chamberlain came in. As I met Gerald's embarrassed eyes as he knelt to us, I wondered for one brief moment if he might not be in the pay of the Count of Valois. The count would love to see me barren; the count would love to see the throne of France without an heir forever, that he might pluck that prize for himself. The fact that Louis seldom touched me was a great joke in the Parisian court, as if this lack of a son were somehow my fault.

Louis pulled away from me at once. His voice sounded pained as he spoke, and I took heart. Perhaps he would simply send Gerald away, and draw me back to the bed in spite of the interruption. He had never done so before, but there was always a first time.

“My lord king, there is news from Bourges. They have chosen a new archbishop.”

Louis' fair skin darkened with anger. “I know this, Gerald. I sent my chancellor to fill that post. Why do you wake me in the night to tell me what I already know?”

“No, my lord king. A messenger came straight from Bourges. The brothers in the Church have chosen a different archbishop.”

“Not my chancellor?”

“No, my lord king. A monk of their own house.”

Louis said nothing, but waved one hand in dismissal. Gerald stood at once and stumbled from our sight. My husband's anger was a rare thing, but when it rose, it was like a storm that might shake the very foundations of the earth. I always waited for it, and sometimes hoped for it. The sight of his fury gave me hope now.

Never before had the Church openly defied him. We had worked steadily over the past four years to shore up the power of the throne of France. Louis' ministers were still mostly churchmen, but he took most of his advice from me. With Suger safe in St.-Denis, running the great cathedral there, even the Count of Valois and his faction had stayed quiet, save for spreading rumors of my barrenness. But now the brothers of Bourges had openly defied Louis, denying him the appointment of their archbishop, an appointment that had been in the hands of the throne of France for centuries. Louis felt the sting of their contempt. Their defiance, instead of making him meek, as they no doubt had hoped, made him strong.

“How dare they? How dare they defy their king?”

I did not step close to him, but waited and listened. In those first few moments of fury, he had forgotten that I was even in the room.

“It is for me to choose the archbishop of Bourges. For myself, and no other. I must return to Paris. I must take counsel with my lords.”

“But, husband, what of Toulouse? The city will fall in a few days' time. Let us stay here, and finish what we started. Then let us return to Paris, and settle with the Church.”

Louis' face was puce with anger. I was not sure he even heard me until he spoke.

“No, Eleanor. Toulouse has sued for peace. I will allow it.”

“They sued for peace because they know that they are losing!” I could not keep my own anger from my voice, and Louis heard it. He turned the force of his blue eyes on me. For the first time in our marriage I saw that there truly was strength in him, if only he would learn to use it.

“I will show mercy. I will let them go.”

I thought of my uncle de Faye, of how he had waited so patiently for this city to fall into his hands. I felt it all slipping away, as sand with a tide that is rolling out.

“Louis, please, do not abandon our work here. Let us take the city. If they sued for peace, they will soon open the gates to you. It is only a matter of time.”

“I abandon nothing!” Louis' fury was turned on me for the first time since I had known him, and I felt a chill along my spine.

“We will return to Paris. I will take counsel with my ministers. I will speak to Suger. I will have that bishopric.”

I saw that his mind had let Toulouse go altogether. He cared nothing for the foot soldiers already lost, or for the fact that by turning from the task only half-done, he would look weak before all our vassals and our men-at-arms.

I thought of my uncle, and how I might appease him with no city to gift him with. I pushed the thought from my mind at once. I needed to pay attention in the midst of Louis' ire; I needed to stay in the here and now. The game was shifting, and I must shift with it.

For the moment, Toulouse was lost to me, but this new battle with the Church was not. If I hoped to be a player in that battle, I must regain my husband's ear. I moved now to Louis' side.

“If you go to Paris, I go with you. I will stand at your side, and fight with you.” My next words stuck in my throat, but I spoke the lie without flinching. “I am your obedient wife.”

Louis drew me close, and pressed me against him. He pulled me behind the damask curtain, and forgot his Church nonsense of sin and death, and embraced me as a man.

He was quick and clumsy, but he made love to me for the first time in many months. And for once, he did not pray afterward.

As Louis lay asleep beside me, his ardor and his anger spent, I laid my plans. I would send word to my uncle and, for the time being, put Toulouse from my thoughts. For I knew that, no matter whose counsel Louis took in Paris, the Church would not concede.

Ultimately, the archbishopric of Bourges was a small matter. It was the power of the throne of France that concerned us, for it was the power of the throne that the Church had attacked. If the Church began to usurp the power to name bishops in a king's realm, what other powers might they take next?

I lay beside my husband, my breathing quiet as I watched his face. The cast of Louis' features was implacable, even in sleep. I saw that if the Church did not give way, there might be open war.

 

 

OF COURSE, LOUIS DID NOT TAKE UP ARMS AGAINST THE Church. He was far too pious for that. Instead, he turned his mind and the minds of his ministers to defending the power of the throne of France. Though I had lost Toulouse for the moment, I was heartened to see Louis defend his realm from the political machinations of the Church. The loss of the bishopric of Bourges was something Louis did not forgive or forget.

One morning, when we had been back in Paris for two months, my ladies sat working on yet another tapestry for the altar of Suger's cathedral at St.-Denis. Amaria entered my rooms with only the slightest curtsy, and came straight to me. She whispered in my ear, and at once, I sent all my women away.

As soon as they had gone, Petra rushed in, her hair falling from its braids, her riding cloak still clasped around her shoulders.

She was fifteen and as beautiful as a summer morning that has not yet felt the heat of noon. She stood in the doorway of my rooms, her hair falling down around her shoulders in soft golden strands, her blue eyes wild, until they settled on me.

“Eleanor, you must help me,” she said.

I had last seen her at the feast of Christ's Mass in Poitiers nine months before. We had eaten and drunk together, and I had cast my eye over my uncle's work in my lands, and had found it sound. Petra, too, had seemed happy, as content as she had been when I first left her under my uncle's care.

I took her hands in mine as Amaria left, drawing the door shut behind my women. I placed Petra in my own chair, and poured her watered wine. She drank it, her hand shaking.

My sister turned her great blue eyes on me. “Eleanor, I am married.”

Of all the words I had expected from Petra's lips, I had not thought to hear these. I sat in Amaria's chair, for my knees had given way. The cushion behind me fell to the stone floor, and there was no one there to set it right.

“He is with me, just outside your chamber door. They would not let him in, as he is a man. But he loves me, and I love him. I am two months gone with his child. We married in haste, as soon as we knew, and then we came to you.”

My sister spoke all this in a rush, throwing down all my hopes for her marriage to come, all hope of a good alliance with a man of my own choosing. I had indulged her, and left her with only my uncle for too long. She had chosen for herself already.

Petra cast herself at my feet, her wine discarded.

“Forgive me, Alienor. You must forgive me.”

The sound of my true name on her lips touched me as nothing else might have done. Petra did not calculate to strike at my heart, nor did she lie. I knew from the look on her face that she loved this man, whoever he was, whatever he had done. She had married him in secret, and came now to tell me.