Eleanor of Aquitaine (7 page)
Read Eleanor of Aquitaine Online
Authors: Marion Meade
At the beginning of that winter of 1137, he decided to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James at Santiago de Compostela, in the westernmost corner of Spain. Once and for all he would cleanse his soul and seek the Lord’s guidance in sorting out his tangled life; when he returned, he would begin anew with a nubile young maiden—whom, he could not say—but she would bear him a castleful of sons. Nor would he forget his daughters, for whom he planned to arrange brilliant matches. For a change his eyes shone, and he seemed his old self. There was no question of taking Eleanor and Petronilla with him, but on the other hand he worried about leaving them behind, unprotected, in Poitiers. Owing to the unrest in his land and particularly to his recent experience with the kidnaping of Emma, he felt it wisest to take precautions lest his daughters be snatched from him as well.
At the back of his mind may have lurked another anxiety: Eleanor, exceptionally beautiful at fifteen, had matured into a saucy, hot-blooded damsel, and perhaps he feared that, unproperly chaperoned, she might grant excessive courtesies to some ardent knight. All contemporary accounts of Eleanor, even when she had grown old, emphasized a radiant loveliness that went far beyond the ordinary, but unfortunately there is not a single word about what she looked like. If she conformed to twelfth-century Europe’s ideal standards of feminine beauty, which rarely varied from one romance to the next, she must have been blond, with gray or blue eyes set wide apart. Her nose would have been straight, her skin white, and she would certainly have had a long slender neck, firm breasts, and perfect teeth. Apart from the physical, there is substantial evidence pointing to the fact that she was no shy, helpless maiden; she comported herself freely, laughing and flirting with the adoring young men of the court, taking charge of any gathering with sophisticated self-possession. She was the rose of the world, and she knew it, having already been told so many times in song and verse. Witty and full of irreverent high spirits, she had a streak of mischievousness that she shared with her sister, who was her inseparable companion. In spite of the fact that noble young ladies were not encouraged to behave impertinently, the two girls liked to amuse themselves by comically aping the speech and mannerisms of pompous dignitaries. In a court where minstrel and mummer were ceded positions of importance, these talents were more admired than censured.
Whatever William’s reasons, he decided to avoid trouble by taking Eleanor and Petronilla with him as far as Bordeaux, where he would deposit them in the custody of that city’s archbishop, a stern but kindly man and one of the few loyal vassals remaining to William. Throughout Aquitaine, the nobility’s first reaction to news of his forthcoming pilgrimage was skepticism. A quarrelsome man like the duke, they said loudly, could only be seeking Saint James’s help in revenging himself on his enemies. And since he had many, the land reverberated faintly with tremors of anxiety.
Early in the spring, the warm sun began to thaw the farmland and melt away the debris of winter. Rains swelled the rivers and streams, and although the rutted roads oozed with brown mud, William left for Bordeaux before Lent with a few servingmen and his daughters. A week later, having settled the damsels in the Ombrière Palace and promising to return soon wearing a cockleshell badge, the sign of a successful pilgrimage, he donned a gray cloak of rough sackcloth and a pilgrim’s hat. Clutching his walking stick, he set out on foot down the road toward Gascony with only a few knights and servants. In many ways the pilgrimage would be an arduous one, but still he looked forward to the journey and to reaching Compostela in time to celebrate Easter. In his baggage he carried the
Codex Calixtus,
a newly written guidebook for Compostela-bound pilgrims, a handy manual advising that the Gascons were hospitable, that the Basques demanded excessive tolls, and other helpful information. Along the way William fell in with other pilgrims, and the hours passed in gossip, news, and the singing of psalms. The weather was fine and warm as he began the gradual green climb into the foothills of the Pyrenees, trudging beside pastures where fat cows slouched, up the twisting and turning slopes of valleys, through the misty pass at Roncesvalles where Roland fell, past the country of the Navarrese into Pamplona. A week passed and a second and then a month or more.
Codex Calixtus,
a newly written guidebook for Compostela-bound pilgrims, a handy manual advising that the Gascons were hospitable, that the Basques demanded excessive tolls, and other helpful information. Along the way William fell in with other pilgrims, and the hours passed in gossip, news, and the singing of psalms. The weather was fine and warm as he began the gradual green climb into the foothills of the Pyrenees, trudging beside pastures where fat cows slouched, up the twisting and turning slopes of valleys, through the misty pass at Roncesvalles where Roland fell, past the country of the Navarrese into Pamplona. A week passed and a second and then a month or more.
On the evening of April 8. 1137, William and his weary band broke march beside an inviting stream in eager anticipation of bathing and drinking after many footsore leagues on the highway. When the duke ordered water and fish to be drawn from the stream, his men warned that the waters in that region were said to be dangerous. William, a lover of good food and wine, scoffed. He was, as usual, ravenous.
The next morning, which was Good Friday, there were gray shadows around his eyes, and his hair was drenched with sweat. Frightened, his men begged him to stop and rest, but William insisted upon rejoining the throngs on the road to Santiago, only five or six miles distant. Hour after hour, he stumbled slowly along, faintly singing, his hands folded over his chest in prayer, until he was capable of walking no farther. His men laid him by the side of the road and watched his huge body disintegrate with terrifying swiftness. Later they would say that it had been the foul water or the tainted fish, but in truth they were far from certain what had made their master sicken. Soon it was apparent, even to William, that nothing could be done; he would not recover. On the near edge of death, the maladroit duke showed more political judgment than he ever had during life. Lips swollen and dry, he whispered in halting words his last will and testament:
To his beloved daughter Eleanor, his sole heir, he bequeathed his fief, a rich and now violent legacy.
To his overlord, the king of France, he bestowed both his domains and his daughter, in the hope that the worthy Louis would guard both treasures until he had found the new duchess a suitable husband to rule over the land of love. In the meantime, the king had the right to enjoy the use of Eleanor’s lands.
He insisted that his death be kept a closely guarded secret until these matters reached the ears of Louis VI, extracting promises that his men would cover the mountain leagues across the Pyrenees with all possible haste and stop at Bordeaux only long enough to notify the archbishop. The stray ends tidied at last, the plums in his keeping safely distributed to the best of his ability, William fell silent.
His men, weeping aloud, carried their dying master to the vaulted cavern of Compostela’s great cathedral, where he expired “most piously” after receiving Holy Communion. There, beneath the
botafumeiro,
the awesome silver censer swinging in smoky arcs from its ceiling pulley, the last Duke William of Aquitaine was laid to rest at the foot of the high altar, by the side of the Galilean fisherman whom Christ turned into a fisher of men.
botafumeiro,
the awesome silver censer swinging in smoky arcs from its ceiling pulley, the last Duke William of Aquitaine was laid to rest at the foot of the high altar, by the side of the Galilean fisherman whom Christ turned into a fisher of men.
The Devil and the Monk
The summer promised to be torrid. In Paris the stones of the Cité Palace were white and burning in the great heat of the day, and the air hung heavy and dead. As there had been no rain recently, the odeur de merde in the streets was never absent from anyone’s nostrils, and black masses of flies clung indiscriminately to refuse and human alike. To escape these discomforts, Louis VI had moved a few leagues north of the city, to the suburbs where he owned a hunting lodge. More accurately, he had been transported on a litter, because his corpulence made it virtually impossible for Louis to move himself. There at Béthizy in the waning days of May he lay immobile on a royal couch, a mound of sweating, panting flesh. If not for the sin of gluttony, which he wore like a badge, he might have been known as Louis the Great or even Louis the Practical. As it was, his people had dubbed him, with appropriate candor, Louis le Gros. Louis the Fat had not always been obese, but in recent years he could no longer mount a horse or a woman, nor could he lift his enormous bulk out of bed. He could only eat and worry.
Louis was not, however, the only apprehensive person at Béthizy. Gathered anxiously around his couch were Abbot Suger, his lifelong confidant and chief minister, and a number of barons, bishops, and priests, the latter having been summoned by Suger should an emergency suddenly arise. The king was suffering from a “flux of the bowels,” an attack of the same dysentery that had struck him down two years earlier. He had recovered from the first siege, but this time his condition appeared grave. During those sultry days the smell in his room was foul and suffocating and, although medicines had been prescribed for the diarrhea and the basin near his cot was frequently emptied, his ministers choked when they approached their sovereign. For all his great fat and disease-devoured body, Louis’s head remained clear, and he fretted incessantly over matters he could no longer control.
God had blessed him with six sons but, in his infinite wisdom, had seen fit to remove the eldest just as he was approaching maturity. As a child, Philip had been Louis’s favorite, but with the passage of time Louis had to confess that the boy brought him little joy. When the heir to the throne was barely pubescent, Louis had him anointed, and the vassals of all France bent the knee in allegiance, but afterward the boy no longer listened to his father. The high standards that Louis set for him, those that he himself followed, were disdained, and scoldings had little effect. The boy, says Walter Map, “strayed from the paths of conduct traveled by his father and, by his overweening pride and tyrannical arrogance, made himself a burden to all.” Philip’s adolescent behavior problems, excusable in an ordinary boy but alarming in a youth destined for the Frankish throne, were abruptly solved one day in October 1131, when he and a group of companions were riding along the Seine in the market section of Paris known as the Greve. Suddenly a black pig darted out of a dung heap along the quay and tripped Philip’s running horse, causing it to fall and catapult the heir over its head. The fall “so dreadfully fractured his limbs that he died on the day following” without regaining consciousness.
Louis VI’s second son was cast from an entirely different mold. Mild and sweet-tempered, Louis Capet the Young had been bred for the Church, a calling that seemed made to measure for his placid nature. His life had been spent in the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, immured among the monks, and even though Philip’s death briefly returned him to his father for anointing, even though he had recently received instruction befitting a knight, the musty perfume of the cloister still clung to him. His piety and humility, which no one could fail to see, did not overplease his father, who feared these qualities might be mistaken for weakness and who hoped that by the time he matured, he would develop the strengths required for kingship. Aware of the priests hovering in his antechamber, ready to administer the last rites, Louis understood only too well that his son might be denied the precious years he desperately needed.
It was in this agitated frame of mind that Louis the Fat received the couriers of the late Duke William of Aquitaine and learned that his most bullheaded vassal lay dead at Compostela since Easter. If the news of William’s last will and testament did not cause a spontaneous remission of the dysentery, at least it revived the ailing king. Scarcely able to conceal his joy over this unexpected bit of good fortune, he nevertheless preserved his customary grandeur of manner by asking the Aquitainians to retire while he discussed the matter with his council. Alone with his advisers, Suger tells us, Louis burst into exclamations of ecstasy; he literally stammered with delight. Had he not spent twenty-nine years attempting to extend the boundaries of his uninspiring domain? Set against the acreage of his own paltry kingdom—a strip of land mainly confined to the Île-de-France, Orléans, and part of Berry—the young duchess’s fief was a formidable one. Who better than he could realize the significance of William’s golden bequest? It would bring the richest fief in Europe under the crown and extend Frankish influence beyond Louis’s wildest daydreams; in fact, the addition of Aquitaine to any domain would automatically lift it to prominence among nations. This munificent prize, dropped into his palsied hands like a plump chicken into a watery broth, was not to be allowed a means of escape. Duke William had implored Louis to find his daughter a husband. Who more suitable than his son and heir, Louis? Rarely did the personal and the political coincide so neatly.
Louis the Fat lost no time. Within hours, plans were under way to secure Aquitaine to the crown, and the resourceful Abbot Suger was designated as principal organizer of the wedding arrangements. The bishop of Chartres was dispatched on a secret mission to Bordeaux, where he would ostensibly pay his respects to the duchess but, in reality, make certain of Eleanor’s safety. According to the southern emissaries, the heiress was under heavy guard at the Ombrière Palace, but Louis wished to take no risks. If reports were to be believed, Aquitaine swarmed with anarchists who would not hesitate to filch their liege lady from her rightful destiny. With all the dangers menacing the roads, Louis could not expect Eleanor to travel alone to the heart of France; instead, it was necessary to make a special expedition to bring her back. Nor was it enough to simply fetch her. It had to be accomplished in a style befitting this unprecedented occasion, with a pageantry gorgeous enough to impress the frivolous Aquitainians.
On June 18, 1137, a mighty cortege threaded its way over the hills of the Parisian suburbs in the direction of Orléans. Under the blue and gold banners of the fleur-de-lis they marched, two by two, first the heralds and standard-bearers, then the commanders: Count Theobald of Champagne and Count Ralph of Vermandois, who was the king’s cousin and seneschal of France. The two counts, bitter rivals who had been persuaded to bury their hostilities for the occasion, were accompanied by the man unofficially in charge, Abbot Suger. They were followed by the chivalry of France, but in addition to the noblest barons and knights in the land there was a sizable body of squires, infantry, and cavalry. Next came a train of pack animals carrying portable kitchens, tents, provisions, sacks of silver deniers, and presents for the bride. To call this procession of five hundred or more a nuptial escort would not be accurate. It was a veritable army that moved down the highroad, carefully keeping within the king’s lands. In the midst of the column rode the young prince, his eyes tired and bewildered under their pale blond lashes. Ringing in his ears were his father’s fervent words: “My most dear son, may the powerful hand of almighty God, by whose grace kings are enabled to reign, protect thee and thine. Because if I had the misfortune to lose thee and those I send to accompany thee, I should care neither for myself nor for my kingdom.”
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