To Be Queen (31 page)

For nothing in this world comes free.

 

 

LOUIS KISSED ME AT THE QUAYSIDE IN THE PORT OF ACRE, and sailed before me. I watched his ship until it was out of sight; then I stepped onto my own. The tide was turning, and we needed to be gone.

I stood on the deck of that ship, rented at a high price from King Roger of Sicily, as my ladies sat below in their cabin. I was alone but for Amaria, who stood at my side. Raymond was like a dream gone at morning, but I felt his eyes on me as I stood upon the deck of King Roger's ship.

I watched until the city of Acre dwindled into nothing. I never saw Raymond, but I knew he was there. I felt his presence, as Louis so often claimed to feel the presence of God. Perhaps, in the end, I was as misguided as Louis was.

Night rose, and the sea rose with it. I went below for a few hours, but slept little. My ladies woke when I did, a few hours before dawn, but they soon went down into the belly of the ship again. The Middle Sea was a place that turned away the faint of heart. A great wind rose, and blew us off course. I welcomed it, for I did not want to step on land again, and see Louis standing there, waiting for me.

When we were two weeks at sea, I saw that we were lost in earnest. My women fell silent, their voices quieted by fear. I saw the most pious among them at prayer, and the worldly ones fingered their rosaries, their eyes turned always to the horizon, looking for land. I welcomed the deep waves and the swelling troughs that rose around us. I wanted freedom from the world as I had known it. If I could not stay in the Levant, I wanted to enter a new world altogether.

Our ship landed not in a new world but in Sicily more than a week later. We had been blown well off course, and came ashore not at Calabria, as Louis had, but at the port of Palermo. But even once we reached the Norman kingdom of Sicily, it was not a simple matter to come to land, for when we reached the waters close by Palermo, the Emperor of Byzantium's ships came upon us out of nowhere.

I laughed out loud when I saw Manuel's standard flying, thinking at first that the Byzantines meant only to greet us as we swept in from the sea. I laughed harder when I saw that they meant to take my ship. I was justified in my mistrust of Emperor Manuel yet again.

The Sicilians on board our ship were brave. They would have died to a man before letting the emperor's navy take me. But just as the imperial sinking catapults were turned on us, King Roger of Sicily's ships sailed up from the city, and fought off Manuel's navy.

I watched all this as a spectator only. I could not feel myself involved in the proceedings, though my very life was at stake. For all I knew, Louis' churchmen had paid the emperor well and in gold to see to it that I never made it back to my husband's side. It would have been like the Church, with their womanish ways, to pay others to commit their murders for them.

I was a woman. I should know.

If Brother Francis and his ilk paid for my death, they lost their money that day, for King Roger's ships took me under their protective wing as a mother hen shields her chicks from the hawk. The emperor's men must not have wanted me all that badly, for after a few parting volleys that went wide, they sailed away, heading for the open sea.

I came off ship at Palermo, knowing that King Roger would not be there to greet me. Of course, he was inland, running his court, as I myself should be. He held his land by the skin of his teeth. Sicily was a Norman conquest, but was full of bandits and rebels, with the Saracens across the Middle Sea in Africa, waiting always for the opportunity to raid the coast. Unlike myself, he could not leave his court to go on Crusade, or to seek his pleasure elsewhere. As my feet touched dry land once more, the hot plains of Sicily made me long for the verdant greens of the Aquitaine and Poitou. I had been gone too long already.

I fell ill from a sweating sickness, though I had never before been sick in my life. The sweltering plains of Sicily brought this sickness to my ladies as well, but it was worse with me. I was laid low with it for a week before we could move inland. I spent those days in a sort of twilight, in which my fever made me forget the past. I thought that Raymond was still with me, just a step away in the next room. I did not call for him, but I wanted to. That alone showed how weak I was.

My faithful Amaria guarded me, her dagger in its sheath on her wrist. She would not let any of King Roger's women attend me. Seeing all my food and water tasted, she fed me from her own hand.

After a week, I was in my own mind once more, and strong enough to travel, albeit slowly and by litter, inland to Roger's capital of Potenza. It took three weeks to make a journey that normally could be accomplished in two days. At the end of it, I was on my feet once more, if only barely.

At King Roger's keep at Potenza, I rose from my litter, Amaria gripping my hand. Louis and his confessor, Brother Francis, stood in the courtyard of Roger's palace, waiting for me. Amaria was angry that Louis had not come to me on the coast, to save me a journey in the midst of my illness. She loved me, almost to distraction. She did not understand that the King of France never put himself in danger of infection to travel to the side of another, not even his queen.

I stepped toward Louis under my own power. When I released her hand, I could feel Amaria's irritated displeasure as clearly as I felt the hot sun in the sky. She said nothing, but let me go.

“Eleanor. When your ship did not land at Calabria, I feared you were dead,” Louis said.

Tears rose in my husband's watery blue eyes. I reached for him, and took his hand, as I would have taken a child's. I stood close to him, and let him hold me up. Only as I leaned against him did he see how weak I was.

“You have been ill,” he said. “I am sorry.”

I forced a smile. “I am mending now, Louis. But I had better get out of this sun.”

“Yes.”

And in the next moment, the King of France swept me up into his arms. I had lost a good deal of weight with the sea voyage and my long illness, but Louis' strength, so rarely seen, struck me dumb. He carried me into Roger's keep, and all our people, his and mine, moved quickly out of his way. He strode without speaking to a room deep in the interior of the castle. There was a little sunlight coming in from an open window, but the room was cooled by its thick stone walls.

Louis laid me gently on a feather bed, a bed far too soft for such a savage court. I missed the Levant already. I had grown used to the ever-running fountains and the rose gardens, the fresh fruit and the cold water. I would have to accustom myself to Europe once more.

We were alone, for Louis had closed the door of the bedroom behind him. I thought for a moment that he might have me on that bed, for his face was flushed with his exertion and his love for me. Whether he turned from me because of his sin or mine, or because of my long illness, he did not lie down beside me. Instead, Louis knelt at my bedside, lifting one of my hands to the softness of his lips.

“I love you, Eleanor. I prayed for you every day, while you were away.”

I could not give Louis the answer he longed for, so I stayed silent. Even now, my men waited outside the door to report on the progress Stefan had made in Rome, to tell me whether or not the pope would set me free.

“You are a good man, Louis,” I said. “Too good a man to be married to me.”

“I am a sinner, Eleanor. You are my idol, and if I do not stay in constant prayer and fasting, I will burn for the sin of idolatry, when I am taken from the earth.”

I considered the idea that Louis had set me up as an idol, and worshipped me without touching me for most of the years of our marriage. If that was true, it must have been worse torment for him than our marriage had been for me, because he was a pious man who could not even take the steps necessary to fulfill his own prayers for a son.

I caressed my husband's hair. We were not even thirty yet. Once I had left him, God might yet grant Louis a son. I believed in nothing, and in no god, but I hoped for Louis' sake that it would be so. For myself, I longed only to be gone from the Parisian court, and from him.

I gathered my strength and smiled. I had a long road to walk before I could go home again.

“Thank you for your prayers, Louis. If God listens to anyone, He listens to you.”

Louis did not chastise me for my blasphemy. No doubt he marked it down as a shadow of my fevered brain. He kissed me, and left me then, so that my women could attend me. They brought cool cloths with which to bathe me, and wine sweetened with fruit. I recognized the Cypriot wine that I had first drunk in Emperor Manuel's palace, the wine I had come to love during my time with Raymond.

I drank that wine, and ate some honeyed dates, though I had no appetite. I had to gather my strength. More than Louis waited for me outside that door. His Parisians waited, too, and his churchmen. I must face them that night at King Roger's board. No matter how sick I was, or how tired, I must go on. They could not be allowed to see my weakness.

Amaria drew a box from among my things, a box I had never before seen. Within it lay cosmetics, vermilion and lapis lazuli, powdered rose petals and kohl. I had never used such things, but I looked at my face, as gray as death, in the bronze mirror Amaria held up for me. Tonight would be the first time. Dressed in cloth of gold, with a bronze and silver belt at my waist, I stood while Amaria fastened my thin gold veil with the diadem of the Aquitaine. No doubt Louis' people would think less of me for it, and whisper evil tidings behind my back for not wearing the crown of France.

But I had long become accustomed to Parisians speaking evil of me, behind my back and to my face. I needed only to maintain my balance long enough to eat Roger's food without choking on it. It had been weeks since I sat among Louis' courtiers. After my journey and long illness, I knew I was not ready. I also knew that I had to be.

Louis himself led me into Roger's hall. The great stone walls were of Norman design, without even the grace of the vaulting I had so often seen in Paris. Here this castle was meant to be seen as it was: a fortress against the enemy. It was also a fortress against air and light.

I stood in the doorway of that great hall, looking at the gray stone walls that seemed to enclose me like a fist, and I almost faltered. I thought to turn back, to run to my room like a child, or a fool. Louis held my hand, and looked into my eyes. He stepped between me and all those who observed us, so that they might not see my face.

“Eleanor, are you all right? Do you need to lie down again?”

The soft sweetness in his voice was almost my undoing. Why had this man not come to my bed? Why, after so many years, had we never had a son? Why had he never become the man he was born to be?

Even these thoughts were weakness, which I pushed away. I caught my breath, and smiled. “No, Louis. I will stand, with you beside me.”

This one phrase caught his ear, and his face opened as a flower in sunlight. He led me proudly then among his people, and seated me at the high table, between himself and the King of Sicily.

The Parisians frowned at this. I saw Brother Francis, Louis' confessor, whisper low to the churchman beside him. I ignored all these people, and offered my host my hand. Roger took it gracefully. Gracious in speech as well, he made me welcome, though I did not hear his words. I drank from the wine at table. The alcohol did not fortify me, but made me dizzy, so I set the cup aside. I kept the false smile on my face, until it felt almost real.

The meat came in then, course after course of it. I took as little as was seemly, and Louis covered over my lack of appetite, praising the cook highly, though as far as I could tell, the clod did not deserve it. Thoughts of Raymond's table filled my mind, the succulent fruits, the light pastries, the honeyed almonds and dates. The year I had spent in the Levant apart from Raymond had faded as mist when sunlight hits it. All I could see, as I gazed at that stone hall in Sicily, were the wide avenues of Antioch, and the gracious fluted columns of Raymond's palace.

As if I had conjured him with my thoughts, someone spoke his name.

Brother Francis was seated at the high table, far above his station, for these things were overlooked in this foreign court as they never would have been in Paris. In Aquitaine, I would not have wanted Francis even in my hall. But among the Normans of Sicily, a lowborn peasant sat with kings simply because he was a well-placed priest. My wits sharpened just enough for me to think that once we returned to France, I must see to taking this churchman down. For everywhere I turned, he was there, mocking me.