In the hazy morning, still cool and dusky blue, the women left the guest quarters and processed to the church with its new doors of gilded bronze, inscribed in lettering of copper-gilt. The noble work is bright, but, being nobly bright, the work should brighten the minds, allowing them to travel through the lights to the true light, where Christ is the true door. Alienor read the words and then raised her eyes to the lintel where was written: Receive, stern Judge, the prayers of your Suger. Let me be mercifully numbered among your sheep.

Suger’s stamp was everywhere, if not in actual name as it was on the doors, then in all the glittering gold and jewels and colour-stained light flooding through the lucent glass windows. The gold altar front was studded with a fortune in amethysts, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Adorning the choir a magnificent cross stood twenty feet tall, ornamented with gold and gems, crafted by famed Mosan goldsmiths. The darkness shone. Alienor felt as if she were at the heart of a jewel, or indeed a reliquary, and was glad she had worn her gown of red silk with all its adornments, for it made her feel as if she were a part of this glowing, luminous tableau.

Borne aloft by Louis, who was dressed in the simple robes of a penitent, the silver reliquary containing the sacred bones of Saint Denis were processed around the exterior of the abbey in drifts of fragrant smoke. Suger and the attendant clergy sprinkled the outer walls with holy water contained in silver aspergillums and then returned to the congregation, who also received a judicious sprinkling. Louis placed the reliquary on the gem-studded altar and prostrated himself, body stretched out in the shape of a cross. His skin was bone-white and shadows of fatigue hollowed his face, but his eyes were filled with light and his lips were parted with rapture. The glorious sound of the choir rose with the frankincense and dissolved into the coloured radiance from the windows.

Alienor was surprised to be moved by the experience, because she had expected it to be just another of Suger’s ceremonies. Instead she felt the presence and breath of God. Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision to a liquid prism. Beside her, Adelaide quietly dabbed her own eyes with her sleeve while her husband patted her arm. Louis filed out with the monks at the end of the ceremony, looking dazed – almost drunk.

By noon, the dedication was finished but the celebrations continued into the hot summer afternoon. The poor were provided with alms of bread and wine. Vendors sold refreshment from stalls set up outside the abbey. Some pilgrims had brought their own food and found patches of shade in which to sit and eat. People queued to look at the incredible array of relics and decoration that Suger had lavished on the abbey and to read the pictorial stories in the marvellous windows.

Alone, because Louis was still with the monks, Alienor paused by a lectern of an eagle, wings outspread. She had paid to have it regilded because its pinions had been rubbed bare by the constant touch of pilgrims and worshippers, and after all it was her symbol as Duchess of Aquitaine.

A monk came softly to her side and murmured the summons she had been anticipating. A small feeling of dread unfurled in her stomach. Bidding her ladies and household knights stay behind, she accompanied the monk to an upstairs chamber of the abbey guest house. As he knocked on the door and set his hand on the latch, she drew a deep breath and steeled herself.

Within, waiting for her, was Bernard of Clairvaux, clad in a greyish-white habit of unwashed wool. He looked more undernourished than ever, with a fever flush reddening his cheekbones. Although his expression was composed, she could sense that his tension mirrored her own. They were here to negotiate, but neither of them desired to be in the other’s presence.

She wondered what he thought of Saint-Denis, for his own vision of the worship of God was a practice of plain simplicity, in which wealth and precious objects were to be shunned. He had rebuked Suger before now for his interest in material goods, and yet he had attended the consecration. Perhaps it made him feel superior, or perhaps he wanted to observe in order to write one of his damning sermons.

She curtseyed to him and he bowed to her, but it was like two opponents entering the arena. ‘Father, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we can reach a better understanding with each other today than we have had before.’

‘Indeed, my daughter,’ he replied. ‘That is also my wish.’

Her red silk gown rustled over the tiled floor as she moved further into the room and sat down on a cushioned bench. She saw his nostrils flare and his lip curl. He often spoke disparagingly of women who enhanced their appearance with the fur of animals and the work of worms, but then his own robe was but the woven fleece of a sheep. She thought him afraid of the sexual power women wielded, so very different from that of an ascetic male.

She folded her hands in her lap and sat with her spine erect. ‘I am here in the role of peacemaker to ask you to use your influence and petition Pope Celestine to lift the excommunication and marriage ban on my sister Petronella and her husband,’ she said. ‘In return for which, my husband will accept Pierre de la Châtre as Archbishop of Bourges and make a peace treaty with the Count of Champagne.’

He stared at her without speaking, but the silence was eloquent.

‘Do you have no compassion?’ she demanded. ‘No thought for their souls and that of their baby daughter?’

‘I have compassion for the cast-off wife of Raoul de Vermandois,’ he replied implacably. ‘Your sister and her paramour are suffering the consequences of their lust. They have made their bed with covers of dishonour, but God sees all and shall neither be mocked nor bargained with.’

Alienor was irritated. People always made bargains with God. That was what most prayers were about. ‘Raoul’s wife has not fulfilled her role to him in many years,’ she said. ‘The marriage was dead a long time ago, in all but the unravelling.’

‘Nevertheless, it was made before God and cannot be unmade, and never for such a bargain.’ His black gaze bored into hers. ‘If the King desires to do right by the Archbishop of Bourges, then he must do so without condition, and the only way your sister and the lord of Vermandois may return to Holy Mother Church is by repenting of their lust and giving each other up.’ He raised one bony hand in the gesture of a tutor. ‘It is not for me to say what conversations you have with your sister, but you must consider the correctness of your own behaviour when you are with her, and make it clear that you do not condone impropriety under any circumstances.’

‘I will support my sister in every way I can,’ Alienor said stiffly. ‘I have never acted with impropriety.’

His look became sorrowful. ‘In that case you should be encouraging her to submit to holy writ. I do not wish you harm, but I am deeply concerned for your spiritual welfare, daughter. If you wish to help your sister and your husband, then you must cease meddling in these affairs of state, and toil to bring your husband into a state of grace with the Church.’

Alienor gave him a cold look. ‘That is why I came to you: to talk of a solution that would end this fighting. My sister is my heir, and her daughter stands next to her in line. I have to be concerned about her welfare, because it is Aquitaine’s welfare too – and France’s, because Raoul de Vermandois is close kin to my husband.’

‘Then perhaps you should apply yourself to asking God to provide you with an heir for France,’ he said. ‘That is surely your first duty.’

‘Do you think I have not tried? How can I provide an heir for France without my husband’s assistance? Surely it is his duty too? But God punishes us by rendering him incapable when he does come to me, and often he does not visit at all. He would rather spend time in prayer, or in the company of men like Thierry de Galeran.’ She looked down at her tightly clasped hands. ‘What am I supposed to do? I cannot conjure a conception out of thin air.’

There was a long silence. She drew breath to speak again, but he held out his thin, pale hand to her, bidding her be still, his gaze fixed and powerful. There was a slight curve to his lips, almost but not quite a smile, and although superficially it was compassionate, underneath it held satisfaction because she had exposed her vulnerability to him.

‘God has ways of bringing His flock back to him,’ he said. ‘Only do what is right and He will accept you back into His fold.’ He gestured at her silk gown. ‘If you wish to conceive a child, then you must leave off all of these fripperies, these wicked ways that have come to be so important to you. You must forsake them and hold tight to Christ your saviour.’ He took the wooden cross on a cord from around his own neck and pressed it into her hands. ‘Just as Christ died on the Cross to the physical world and rose again, so let your soul die to the world of physical delights and rise again stronger than before. God will admonish you and test you again and again until He is certain that you are one of His. You must carry His Cross and be worthy of it, for it is no easy task to bear the burden of a country upon your back, as your husband well knows, and you must be ready for it and worthy of it. You must scourge your life and make it as God would wish, and only when you are fruitful in the ways of the spirit shall you be fruitful in your womb. In order to make new life, you must leave behind your old life of sin and do God’s work fervently. Do you understand me in this?’

Alienor felt like a cornered deer faced by the hunter’s drawn bow. ‘Yes, Father, I do understand.’