Devil's Consort (20 page)

‘No. I cannot. On Fridays I fast—on bread and water. It is a day of penitence for our sins.’ He stood, releasing my hands. ‘And now you must go. I keep vigil every day, when royal duties permit, between Prime and Vespers. I must pray for my mortal soul. For my country. And I will pray for you too, dear Eleanor.’ Hand firmly at my waist, he was almost pushing me from the cell.

‘When will I see you again?’

‘When my time permits.’

His smile held the sweetness of honey, the emptiness of a stone tomb. Without a second look, Louis walked away from me, back towards the body of the church and the brotherhood of monks, not caring whether I followed or not.

‘Louis …’

He did not turn his head.

‘Louis!’ This time I did not moderate my voice.

And this time Louis turned his face, even at a distance a study in reproach. ‘You must not shout, Eleanor. Not in church. It is not respectful to God.’

Which left me with nothing much to say. Louis left me standing there, my blood colder than the stone that surrounded me. Isolated. Adrift. Uncertain as the truth hit me. Here I was no longer Duchess of Aquitaine, a
ruler with power in her hands, merely a woman with no place but as wife to King Louis.

But Louis did not want to be King. Nor did he want me as his wife.

I was thoughtful on my return, seeking firm footing in the swamp that had suddenly spread itself around my feet, threatening to suck me down. How easy it would be to wallow in misery. Instead, I summoned my women. Quiet, pretty Mamille. Florine and Torqueri, sharp and sly, lovers of gossip. Flirtatious Faydide. Solemn, thoughtful Sybille, Countess of Flanders. There was no laughter here. They were as unsettled as I. Seeing their doleful faces as they huddled in their furs made me decisive. There were changes to be made.

‘Come and walk with me,’ I invited Aelith. ‘And you too, Sybille. Tell me what you think of our new home.’

‘You don’t need me to tell you.’ Aelith grimaced at the encrusted muck from the brazier that our slippers and skirts spread across the floor.

‘Pull it all down and start again!’ Sybille stated with unusual candour.

I laughed, my spirits lifting in their company. ‘Our thoughts run together.’

At the end of an hour I sent for parchment, pen and ink. The result was a list, not long but with consequences.
I set it aside until Louis could satisfy God and visit his wife.

The changes I foresaw would not be only in my living arrangements.

I
T
took three days for Louis to feel his soul safe enough, restored to the bosom of the Almighty, to emerge from Notre Dame and come to my apartments. He came after the order of Tierce and greeted me as if no time had passed, and he had no apology to make for his absence. He bowed, kissed my fingers, my lips and cheeks with tenderness, but fleetingly, as if he greeted a friend.

‘Have you ordered affairs to suit you? Are you comfortable, dear Eleanor?’

He was so certain that I would say yes!

‘No. I am not comfortable. How can I be?’ I ignored his startled expression. ‘I cannot be expected to live like this.’

‘Are you unwell?’ he asked uncertainly.

‘Of course I’m not unwell! Do I look unwell?’ Louis needed a firm hand. Pressing a cup of wine into his hand as I drew him towards the detested brazier in my
solar, pushing him into a cushioned chair beside it, I presented him with the list.

‘What’s this?’

‘You said you wished me to be comfortable. Did you mean it?’

‘Nothing is closer to my heart.’

‘Then I need improvements to my rooms. These!’

His gaze slid to the parchment. ‘Can you write, Eleanor?’

‘Of course I can write!’

‘Not many women are considered able to acquire the skill.’

I ignored that. Did he think I’d been raised an illiterate commoner in a peasant’s hut? ‘And, as you see, Louis, I have made a list.’

I watched him as his eyes travelled down it. His lips pursed, twisted; he glanced up at me, then back to my demands. If I was to live out my days here, in the sweet Virgin’s name there had to be some concessions to the life I’d been raised to.

‘So you have.’ Louis continued to read—how long would it take him?—tapping the page with one hand. ‘Windows? Why do you need windows? You have windows.’

‘These are not windows. These are defensive slits for shooting arrows.’

‘I need to be impregnable. This is a fortress.’

‘Is the King of France not safe in the heart of Paris? My women do not shoot arrows. We need larger
openings to let in air and sunlight. How can we see to sew and read? How can Faydide see to play the lute? Surely your stonemasons can create some wider, taller windows without too much difficulty.’

‘I suppose they could. But would that not allow cold air in?’

‘Shutters! It’s like sitting in a gale even now. I want wooden shutters for all the windows in my apartments. And in my own chambers I want glazing.’

‘Ah! Glazing.’ Louis’s fair brows climbed as if my extravagance was as gaudy as a peacock’s feathers, but he did not refuse. He tilted his head. ‘It says here, “Remove smoke.”’

‘So it does.’ To my good fortune a chance draught wafted a curl of poisonous fumes to envelop him and reduce him to coughing. ‘I’ll die of the smoke if I have to live with it much longer. My hair, my garments reek of it.’

‘But the Great Hall—’

‘Yes, yes, I know the Great Hall must keep its central fire, but in here I want stone fireplaces, Louis, with chimneys built into the thickness of the walls to carry the smoke away.’

Louis eyed the formidable wall of stones before him as if he personally would have to take a hammer to them. ‘A major building programme, then. The cost will be great, of course. My Treasury—’

‘A little thing,’ I disagreed.

‘Well …’

‘In the palaces of Aquitaine we have chimneys,’ I added slyly. ‘Do you not have the wealth to encompass it?’

He thought for a moment. ‘I do.’

‘And I want tapestries,’ I added.

‘As I see.’

‘You have none to my taste. Not one wall in this palace displays a tapestry of any size or quality. Those I’ve seen are in a state of disintegration or covered with soot. What can you be thinking of?’ I allowed him no time to retreat. ‘Think of the display of your wealth and style, Louis. You are not some insignificant lord, still residing in a stone keep, but King of the Franks. Your palace should be a stamp on your authority, not a rough fortress no better than your ancestors could build a hundred years ago. And if that does not appeal to you, think of how much warmer the rooms will be, keeping the damp and draughts at bay.’

‘I don’t feel the cold,’ Louis observed. ‘But if that is what you wish then order them as you will. The tapestries from Bourges are thought to be the best.’

I reached to kiss his cheek, delighted with the resulting quick blush, and tugged at his sleeve. Louis was open to suggestion, a blank scroll on which I might write. And I would write on it. Not Abbot Suger. Not Queen Adelaide. I would be the one to map out Louis’s future.

‘Will you give the orders for the stonework immediately?’

‘If it pleases you, I will. I should be thankful you’ve not gone ahead and done it already, so that I find us knee deep in stone dust and chippings.’ His smile was charmingly rueful, despite the ponderous humour. ‘I’ve been told that you’ve already dismissed one of my appointments.’

So Adelaide had already complained to her son, had she? It had taken her less than twenty-four hours.

‘Yes,’ I acknowledged airily. ‘The cantor at the palace chapel.’

‘My mother was distressed that he’d been removed.’

‘That’s hard to believe.’ I opened my eyes wide. ‘Perhaps you misunderstood her, Louis. The man had no ear and could scare hold a tune. As for leading a choir … When you hear his replacement, one of my own household with a fine voice, you will admit my choice is good.’ I saw the muscles in his jaw twitch as he prepared to refute this, so I pressed on with an argument he could not deny. ‘It’s only fitting that God be praised to the best of our poor talents.’ I was getting the measure of my husband.

‘That is so, of course …’

‘Do you object to my plans, Louis?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘You would say if I displease you, wouldn’t you?’

‘You’ll never displease me. I admire you.’

Victory fluttered in my breast. It seemed I could play the obedient, grateful wife with skill. I had no experience
of it, but a wise woman can learn, and learn fast. I had got exactly what I wanted.

‘And you will give your orders to the stonemasons today?’ I persisted.

‘Yes. Eleanor …?’

‘Hmm?’ I was already halfway across the room to order my women to pack away the most fragile of my gowns.

‘Is there anything you do like here? In Paris?’

I halted. Turned back. He still sat, looking almost dejected at my lack of enthusiasm for my new home, my list in one hand, the untasted cup of wine in the other. How woefully deficient in authority and importance he could be. Poor Louis. He really had no presence.

As if he read my thoughts, he stood and walked towards me, while I sought desperately for something to say to make him look less of a cowed child who had been refused a promised treat.

‘Perhaps you like the gardens,’ he suggested. ‘They’re thought to be very fine. Will you perhaps walk there with me?’

How could I refuse without appearing churlish? I walked with Louis along the pathways enclosed for privacy by walls and trellised vines, bordered with acanthus. Willow, fig, cypress, olive and pear trees gave welcome shade in the heat of the day. They would do very well with some statues and the occasional water display, but these formal plantings were no compensation for the chains on my freedom to travel the length
and breadth of my dominions as I had once done at my father’s side. They were no compensation for the stultifying life I had been dropped into. My new existence was almost as rigidly curtailed as if I had taken the veil. The ordered beauty of sight and scent was no compensation at all for Louis’s continued absence from my bed.

‘Louis.’ I touched his hand as we halted beside a bed of fragrant lilies. ‘I am not carrying your heir.’

My courses had come on time. Louis’s energies after the matter of the white gerfalcons had failed. Our one step into the intimacy of matrimony had not had the desired effect.

Louis’s face fell. ‘I must lay the matter before God.’

That was all he said, at least to me. I presume God was the recipient of his disappointment.

‘It is a waste of money. A sheer waste of money,’ Adelaide raged when the stonemasons moved into my apartments and the air was filled with dust, along with the cheerful cursing and tuneless singing of the workmen. ‘And to what purpose?’ She raised her voice above the racket. ‘A soft lifestyle. It is not necessary.’ She glared her dislike of me and the upheaval combined. ‘You should learn to live our Frankish lifestyle. You are too soft, with your flighty southern ways.’

‘Do you not approve, madam?’ Soft, dulcet. My talent for acting improved daily and I had learned fast that to humour the Dowager Queen was more satisfying than
to oppose her directly. To annoy, Adelaide had deliberately addressed me in the
langue d’oeil
in which I was now proficient. I replied in Latin.

‘No, I do not. What have you persuaded my son to do?’

‘Simply to make my life tolerable.’

‘It is not right. I have told Louis so.’

‘You do not have to tolerate the changes, madam. I will instruct the masons to leave your chambers alone. If it is your desire to live in squalor and cold and choking fumes, that is entirely your own choice.’

She had waylaid me in the corridor to the royal chapel after Mass, where my cantor had just surpassed himself in singing the canticles. I made to walk past her, then halted, faced her. It was not in my nature to remain silent after all when my authority was under question. I fell easily into the harsh syllables of the
langue d’oeil
since it seemed appropriate to express my feelings thus. ‘If you wish to complain about my actions, madam, come to me, not to your son. It does not please me to have Louis troubled by your petty dislikes.’

‘I will complain as I wish,’ she snapped back. ‘I will complain where I think it will have the most effect.’

‘So you think you can persuade Louis?’

‘I am his mother. He listens to me.’ But her furious stare slid from mine.

‘Excellent!’ I smiled thinly. ‘Perhaps you would instruct him that he is no longer a monk but the King of France.’

‘He does not need to be told.’

‘I think he does. We both know that he is at this moment celebrating High Mass and that he will remain at Notre Dame for the rest of the day, despite the official deputation from Normandy that Louis himself summoned. They are kicking their heels in the audience chamber, as they were for much of yesterday.’ I paused, the length of a heartbeat. ‘Your son does not listen to you, madam, does he?’

‘You are discourteous!’ Adelaide hissed. ‘Without respect!’

‘I am Queen of France and Louis’s wife, and as such beyond reproach.’ I performed a polite curtsey. ‘Louis is grown to be a man, away from the woman who gave him birth. Good day, madam.’

‘You will not have it all your own way.’ The final words floated after me.

Would I not? I smiled a little. I did not fear Adelaide. I doubted that she had ever commanded Louis’s full attention. And now Louis would listen to me and to no one else. Who would hinder me?

‘You are a daughter of Satan, madam! You should be ashamed!’

Who would hinder me indeed?

Ashamed? I froze, my mind alive to this threat.

We were in the city of Sens, Louis having moved his whole court to the royal palace there so that we might make an appearance at the formidable Council of
Bishops. And the man who had emerged from monkish seclusion to participate in this Council, the man who now addressed me in such vulgar terms, was Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux.

‘Look at you, woman! All airs and graces and mincing steps, laden with ornament.’

I smoothed my hands down my silk-damask skirts, aware of the shimmer-rich tawny cloth. Had I not taken utmost care with my appearance to honour my husband before this important delegation? Would a visitor to our court address me, the Queen of France, in such a manner?