Perhaps I had given him the impression that if I could have sons all would be well. I had been obliged to do that, for the only excuse I could give for wanting a divorce was the fear that our close relationship displeased God. Louis, I gathered, had said that he longed for us to be in harmony together, that he loved me and never wanted another for his wife.

What happened would have been farcical if it had not been so distressing for me, because it put me into a situation from which I could not escape.

Eugenius behaved like a nurse to two bewildered children. He thought he knew what was necessary to make us happy and he determined to do his best to give it to us.

He had a room prepared in which there was a great bed. This room he hung with relics and he sprinkled the bed with holy water. First I was led to it, then Louis. We were to share it.

We all knelt down and Eugenius prayed to God to bless us and to give us proof of His goodness and mercy toward two children who had lost their way. He saw us in bed together and then left us. I was both amused and despairing. I could see no way out of this. I thought cynically: I wonder he did not wait to see the act and to have anthems sung while it was being performed.

Louis was in earnest. He did his best. I was passive. What else could I do?

In the morning Eugenius greeted us with immense satisfaction. He thought he had solved our problem and saved us both from the ignominy of divorce. He was so pleased with himself for having dealt as he believed so satisfactorily with the matter, and with us for supplying him with a problem which enabled him to show his skill. He showered blessings on us. He told us how high the kingdom of France stood in his esteem. He prayed there would always be complete harmony between us.

And then we made our journey to Paris. There was no great welcome for us. Our crusade had done nothing for France. It had cost too much in lives and property. There was murmuring throughout the realm.

Suger, however, was delighted to see us back. He had, as we had known, ruled the country well during our absence; but it would take the people a long time to forget husbands and sons who had set out full of zeal and met death on the way to Jerusalem.

I had my own troubles. The Pope’s bed had proved fruitful and I was pregnant.

That winter was harsh. I had little to comfort me except my daughter Marie, now a child of five. It was wonderful to see her again and to find her charming and intelligent. She scarcely remembered me but we were soon good friends.

It was difficult to go on with my plans for divorce now that I was expecting Louis’s child. The Pope had been rather clever after all and I had to admit to a certain awe and uneasiness that perhaps God had concerned Himself with our affairs as I had actually conceived among the relics and holy water. I had less respect for those symbols than most because I had been brought up in my grandfather’s Court where they had been of little account. But I did wonder now.

I was desolate and, strange for me, listless. I half wanted the child and half did not. I had some maternal instincts, as Marie had shown me; but on the other hand this new child was an impediment to my divorce, of which I was thinking more and more.

The Seine was frozen over; people were saying it was one of the coldest winters in living memory.

So I lived through that dreary time, and in the early summer of the next year my child was born. To the dismay of Louis and his ministers I produced another daughter. For myself it mattered not. I loved little Alix just as much as I should a boy ... perhaps more. I did not care for the future of France.

My great desire was to escape from it.

I continued to think of the divorce.

A Royal Divorce

Life continued to be unsatisfactory. I had two children now, and if I separated from Louis I should lose them for they were “Daughters of France.” For a time my maternal instincts battled with my desire to be free, but I discovered that above all things I wanted to escape from Louis, to live my own life, to find someone who would be to me what Raymond had been and stifle this yearning for him which beset me. I knew I could only escape from it if I found someone to take his place.

Louis was disappointed by the cool reception he had received from his subjects. We learned that there might have been a rebellion but for the wisdom of Suger, who had kept a firm hand on affairs and had reigned cleverly during his term of regency. Some anxious moments had occurred when Louis’s brother Robert had decided to make a bid for the throne. It naturally seemed to him that Fate had been unkind in making him a younger son when, in his own estimation, he would have made a much better king than his brother. Perhaps he would have. While we were facing death on our crusade, he had gone about the country trying to rally people to his banner. His case was that the King had been brought up in the Church. It would be well for him to go into a monastery when he returned and let Robert take the throne.

It might have seemed a sensible idea to some. Not, however to Suger. God had made Louis King and, if he had been unfortunate, he was a man of God, the chosen of the Lord, their anointed King, and so he must remain. When Louis returned, although the people of France did not welcome him warmly, they made it clear that they wished him to remain their King, and Robert’s hopes foundered.

Suger was against the divorce. I believed his reason might be that it would remove Aquitaine from France, for Louis owned it only through me, and if I went, I would take it with me. It was that thought which had sustained me ever since I made up my mind that I must leave Louis.

So we went on. Louis had brought some cedars from the Holy Land, and these he himself planted in Vitry on that spot where the church had been, thus he believed laying to rest the ghosts of all those people who had perished there. I think he felt a relief from guilt after that.

We had reverted to our old pattern of life. I rarely saw Louis at night. We had separate bedchambers. He found it embarrassing to share one with me. I kept assuring myself that divorce was the only answer and whatever the Pope did or Suger wanted, I must be free to live my own life.

After a while I think Louis was beginning to realize this. He was undoubtedly anxious because there was no male heir. He would do his duty but I guessed he was reluctant to endure more of those embarrassing couplings when perhaps he imagined what my torrid love-making with Raymond must have been like. But it might be that his imagination would not stretch so far, as he had had little experience. There were people who could bring forth children of one sex only, and what if, after the unpleasant intimacy, I did the same again? I wondered if it occurred to him that he might have better luck with another partner and the offensive ritual need not be performed very often.

He was a man who would regard duty as a serious matter. It was God’s will that a king should bring forth heirs. There could be civil war if, on his death, he did not leave a son to follow him.

I really believed that Louis was growing a little more responsive to the idea of divorce.

If we both wanted it, the Pope could surely give it for reasons of consanguinity.

I was hopeful. Then a situation arose which drove all thought of divorce from Louis’s mind. It was the prospect of war.

It came from Anjou. Geoffrey of Anjou interested me. I had seen him on rare occasions when he had come to Court. He was an extremely handsome man. In fact, he was known as “Geoffrey le Bel,” as well as “Geoffrey Planta Genesta” because he made a habit of wearing a sprig of the plant in his hat. The soldiers called him “the Plantagenet.”

He had become important through his marriage to Matilda, the daughter of the King of England, because she had brought him Normandy. Her grandfather, known as William the Conqueror, had taken England in the year 1066 and as Duke of Normandy and King of England had made himself as important as—and perhaps more so than—the King of France. The second William, who had followed him on the throne, had not been the ruler his father had been but, fortunately for England, he had soon been followed by another son of the Conqueror, Henry, who was now seen to have been a very wise ruler. He had had, and this was unfortunate for England, only one son and a daughter. This son, another William, had at the age of seventeen been drowned in the wreck of the White Ship, a tragedy which would never have happened but for the drunken state of the sailors who were manning it. It was a great sadness for the King for he had lost his only legitimate son—although he had several who were illegitimate, for he was a very sensual man; and the matter of inheritance was immediately of the utmost importance. But for the accident to the White Ship, the strife which comes from civil war would have been avoided.

When his daughter Matilda had borne a son, King Henry must have been delighted, for if he took after his mother, he would be a very forceful character. It was soon after the boy’s birth that the King died, through eating too many lampreys, so they said. Poison was not suspected for, though he had been a stern ruler, he had been a wise one. His people had called him “the Lion of Justice” for he had brought back law and order to the land which it had not known since the days of the Conqueror.

But on the death of the King trouble started. It was an indication of what happened when kings did not leave a male heir. Now there were two claimants to the throne of England: Matilda, wife of Geoffrey of Anjou, and Stephen, son of Adela, the Conqueror’s daughter. So it was a question of the late King’s daughter or his nephew. There should have been no doubt, for Matilda was in the direct line, but because she was a woman, before she could claim the throne, Stephen swooped down and, with the support of many of the barons, took it. Matilda was not the woman to stand aside and let someone else take what was hers by right. Hence the trouble.