I came at once to Petronilla’s defense.

“She is in love with Vermandois and he with her. There is such a thing as love in the world, you know ... real love ... not the tepid variety which some have to put up with.”

He was too bemused to take in what I was saying. “With child,” he kept murmuring. “But this is impossible. We cannot have a scandal at Court.”

“It would seem we have that already,” I said. “Louis, listen to me. This is regrettable but it has happened. Petronilla is my sister ... yours now. Raoul of Vermandois is your kinsman. Let us face facts. There is only one thing to do. We have to accept this marriage. After all, Vermandois is divorced from his first wife. These things have happened before. It is of the utmost importance that we stand with them in this. If you give your approval, who can raise his voice against that?”

“I can imagine there are some who will.”

“Louis, you have to remember that you are the King. Your will is law.” I went to him and put my arms about him. “You only have to stand firm, Louis. All must obey you.”

He said: “You are right. There is nothing else we can do.”

When the marriage was announced there was a great deal of gossip throughout the Court. What of Vermandois’s first wife? What was to become of her? Was this a precedent? When a man wanted to be rid of his wife, did it mean that all he had to do was to arrange for a divorce through obliging relatives? Of course, everyone did not have such relatives. Everyone was not related to the King and Queen.

I was astonished by Raoul and Petronilla. They were quite blissful, seeming oblivious of the storm they were raising.

I heard that Raoul’s first wife had taken her children to her uncle Thibault of Champagne, and I knew then that it could not be long before there was real trouble.

I was right.

He did what I expected. He took the case to the Pope. His niece had been cursorily cast out by her husband because he wished to take a younger woman to be his wife. There had been a bogus annulment arranged by a relative of the Count of Vermandois, and two priests had been bribed to assist in this. Moreover the whole dastardly scheme had the approval of the King and Queen, whose sister was the new wife. Thibault begged the Pope to intervene on behalf of his wronged niece.

Louis was, of course, still in trouble with the Papacy, so we could expect Innocent to come down heavily on the other side. This he did. He answered Thibault’s plea without delay by sending his legate to judge the case. A verdict was soon arrived at: Raoul was still married to his first wife, and he and Petronilla were living in sin. They were excommunicated and so were the bishop and the priests who had granted the annulment.

I was furiously angry with Thibault of Champagne.

“There lies our enemy,” I said. “You are too lenient, Louis, with those who work against you. This man should have been punished long ago for refusing to send troops to Toulouse.”

Toulouse was an unhappy subject with Louis. He knew he had behaved in an unkingly manner, and if ever I wanted to get my own way I could do so by subtly referring to it.

“He is our enemy,” I persisted. “He has done this to discountenance us.”

“Well,” murmured Louis, “one would have expected him to be angry, Raoul’s first wife being a close kinswoman.”

“I would she had been anyone else.” That was a point on which we could agree. “But it is as it is,” I cried. “And now he has done this. What a scandal! What when the child is born? There will be those to say it is a bastard.”

“Which it will be if the marriage is invalid.”

“We are not going to accept this, Louis.”

“I do not see what can be done.”

“Something has to be done.”

He looked at me fearfully.

“We could march,” I said.

“March?”

“On Champagne.”

“You mean war?”

“What else is there to do? Sit meekly here and accept their insults?”

He was silent. I could see the fear of war in his face. I despised him. Raoul was a rogue, but at least he had courage to act as he wished and face up to the consequences.

“You will have to take up arms against him,” I insisted. “You cannot allow him to flout you in this way. People will laugh at you. They will say you are not worthy of the crown.”

“I shall pray that God will settle the matter for us.”

“He will expect you to do something about it, Louis. It is your affair ... not His.”

“All matters are for God’s judgment.”

“I think God expects His servants to act for themselves. That is what you must do, Louis. In my mind, you have no alternative., You must take an army into Champagne. You must ravage the country. You must let him see that he is but a vassal of the King of France. If you do not act, he will be calling himself the King of France ... for that is what the people will say he is.”

Louis was silent, grappling with his thoughts, trying to find some good reason why he should not go to war against the Count of Champagne.

He could find none.

And I knew that in time I should wear down his resistance.

Once I had made Louis see that war was inevitable, he began to grow enthusiastic about it. I reminded him again and again of how many times Thibault of Champagne had flouted him. He should take no more insults from him. Drastic action was necessary. Thibault had to be taught a lesson, and this was an opportunity to do so.

We discussed plans together and when Christmas was over he set off with an army for Champagne.

This was no Toulouse. The last thing Thibault had expected was war, and he was not ready as Alphonse-Jourdain had been. Marching through Champagne taking towns was an easy matter.

I was delighted by Louis’s victories. Champagne was fast falling into our hands.

Then there was to occur an event which scarred Louis’s conscience for the rest of his life and which I believe was responsible for widening the rift between us.

It happened at Vitry-sur-Marne.

Louis himself was never in the forefront of the battle, war being so alien to his nature. He loathed violence and it was only when spurred on by one of his violent rages that he was guilty of it. He knew that his soldiers had ravaged the towns through which they passed, taking provisions, burning what they thought fit, ill-treating the women. Knowing him, I realized that he would have grappled with his conscience telling himself that it was all part of war. It was the soldier’s reward for coming to the help of his lord. Why should they leave their homes, risk their lives, if not for the spoils of war, the warriors’ perquisites? It shocked Louis, but he realized it was inevitable. It was one of the reasons why he hated war.

Truly he should never have been a king. It was an unkind act of Fate to send that pig running wildly under his brother’s horse’s hoofs.

At Vitry Louis suffered the supreme horror. He was encamped on the La Fourche hills with a few men while the army went in to storm the town. He could see what was happening from his vantage point.

The people of the town were unprepared. There was no defense, and Louis’s soldiers went through the gates to the town with ease. Louis could hear the lamentation of the people, their cries for mercy. He covered his face with his hands because he could not bear to look. He had wanted to call a halt. I knew exactly how he felt for he told me afterward. In fact he could not stop talking of it. He talked at odd moments during the day and in his sleep he woke from nightmares shouting about it.

He saw the blazing town. He knew that people were suffering. But what upset him most was when he learned later that women and children and old people had crowded into the church for sanctuary and the rough soldiers had lighted the roof of the church with their torches and had flung others through the door so that in a few moments the whole building was a mass of flames.

Not a woman, child or old person who had sheltered in the church survived. They were all burned to death.

When Louis heard what had happened, he was overcome with remorse.

I think what upset him more than the deaths of the people was the fact that his men had burned them to death in a church.

Louis had little stomach for war after that. He had been successful for once and almost the whole of Champagne was in his hands. Thibault was once again speaking to the Pope. This time Bernard took a hand.

The terrifying man wrote to Louis in a forceful manner. What did he think he was doing? He was waging war on an innocent man who had done nothing save protest at a wrong done to a member of his family. What devil’s advice was Louis taking?

Was I that devil? I think Bernard regarded all women as such, and I was the chief demon. Louis was being used by the enemies of the Church for their own ends, he said. He believed that if Louis would give up the lands he had sequestered, Thibault would do all in his power to get the sentence of excommunication rescinded.

Louis, of course, was eager for peace but I urged him to be cautious. It never occurred to him that Bernard and the Holy Father could be capable of duplicity; but this was proved to be possible, for when he eagerly called a halt to the war in Champagne it was only to find that the sentence of excommunication was still in force.

A certain antagonism was building up between Louis and me. I think he partly blamed me for Vitry, remembering that I was the one who had urged him to go to war; I had tried to persuade him against giving way to the demands of Bernard and Rome. Bernard then had the temerity to suggest that when Raoul of Vermandois returned to his true wife the ban would be lifted.