Geoffrey smiled. ‘You might say my dice are loaded. Henry is a young man of great ability and I have every confidence in recommending him to you, not just because of what he will inherit in terms of land, but in the potential he has within him.’

A flurry at the garden entrance heralded Louis’s arrival from his prayers. ‘I hope I may have your support in this proposal,’ Geoffrey said in a low voice as he prepared to go and make his obeisance.

‘I shall consider what you have said,’ Alienor replied courteously, giving him a gracious and enigmatic smile that told him she was the one in control now. She thought the notion had potential, but she was not going to show her hand so easily.

Alienor went to prayers with Louis that evening in the chapel of Saint Michael, and afterwards returned with him to his chamber. She glanced briefly at the crucifix on the wall facing Louis’s bed, and the bloodstained Christ hanging there in suffering. Louis’s God was everywhere, and he was not a loving one.

‘Have you received the proposal from Geoffrey of Anjou concerning the match between Marie and his eldest son?’ she asked.

Louis gave her a narrow, almost suspicious look and sat down; then he indicated that she should remove his boots, as was the duty of an obedient wife. ‘Who told you about the matter?’

Alienor knelt to perform the task while judging the tone she should take. Louis’s moods were so difficult to negotiate. At prayer he was meek and calm, almost vapid, but that could change in an instant. She could sense his hostility. ‘Count Geoffrey told me,’ she replied. ‘It seems a good match in many ways.’

Louis glowered. ‘He had a duty to tell me first – that is my prerogative as head of State and head of the household. I am his liege lord, and I will not have him tattling to women and going behind my back in this dishonourable way.’

Alienor removed his second boot. ‘I thought only of what would be best for our daughter,’ she said. ‘I gave him no answer.’

He looked away. ‘But you discussed it without my authority and without my leave.’

‘It is a queen’s duty to be a peacemaker,’ she said. ‘And to assist in such business.’

‘Your first duty is to me,’ he said tautly. ‘I will not have you dealing without my say-so. My mother warned me you were not to be trusted, and that you would go your own way, and she was right.’

‘And of course your mother is the fount of all wisdom,’ Alienor retorted. ‘Did she not have a say in the rule of France when she was wed to your father?’

‘Yes, she had a say, and most of it was meddling and false.’ His face contorted. ‘I shall not make that mistake with you.’

Alienor met his stare. ‘I am not like her. The Count of Anjou said nothing to me that I would not say to you and I made no commitments, but I think it a good match.’

Louis narrowed his eyes. ‘Do you indeed? Perhaps you are seduced by the Angevin’s glamour, but I am not. He went to you first and behind my back, and that does not make him suitable as a father-by-marriage for our daughter, or to aspire to be closer kin.’

‘He did not go behind your back.’

‘He did not tell me he had already aired the proposition to you. I count that as going behind my back. However, I did not refuse him. I told him it was too early to make a decision but if he remained loyal while we were gone, I might consider it on our return. That will keep him within bounds. He has acquired too high an opinion of himself and he needs cutting down to size.’

Alienor agreed with him, but she hated the way he treated her as if she too needed cutting down to size. ‘And when we return and he asks again?’

Louis shrugged. ‘Even should I wish to consent, I cannot. Abbé Suger informs me that the match is consanguineous. They share common ancestry.’

‘But closer blood ties have been wed. Our own for example.’ Alienor raised her brows. ‘Abbé Suger did not object to that as I recall, yet we are related within the prohibited degree.’

‘I will hear no more,’ Louis snapped. ‘You will not dispute with me. If you better knew your place, we would have sons by now.’

‘If you better knew yours, I could give them to you. How can I bear children when you do not sow the seed? Perhaps we should indeed seek an annulment.’

Louis’s colour darkened. ‘That is enough! You take my words and you twist them until they become snakes. Since you ask me to sow seed, I will do so.’ He began undressing and gestured her to lie down on the bed.

Alienor swallowed, feeling sick. She had not bargained for this. She knew it was just another way of him putting her in her place, and a part of his inadequacy that he could only do the deed these days if driven by fervent religious passion or rage. She started to shake her head.

‘Do as I say!’ He grabbed her arm and shoved her down. At first she fought him, but he bent her arm behind her back and hurt her so much that she gave in.

At least it was swift. Louis had been told by his advisers that the longer a man remained within a woman’s body, the more vitality she took from him to heat her own cold humours, and that intercourse could seriously weaken a male constitution. Within seconds he was shuddering through his crisis, his voice locking in his throat and releasing in a series of small stutters.

‘There,’ he panted as he withdrew from her. ‘I have given you the means; now go and pray on your knees and make me a child.’

Alienor managed to leave the room with a straight back and her head carried high, but once outside, she doubled over and retched. When she reached her own chamber, she did fall on her knees and pray. With Louis’s seed sticky on her thighs, she asked God to forgive her sins and grant her the blessing of a child, and then, she prostrated herself and vowed on the bones of Saint Radegund that she would win free of this marriage whatever the cost.


26

Hungary, Summer 1147

It began raining again as the cart in front of Alienor shuddered to a halt, its wheels bogged down in the soupy mud churned up by the passage of the endless train of French soldiers and pilgrims. German crusaders had preceded them like a swarm of locusts, stripping the ready supplies, alienating the native populations, and turning the roads into pig wallows.

Soldiers and pilgrims hastened to lend their shoulders to the back of the cart while others threw down logs and hurdles into the mire to add purchase. As they heaved and pushed, one man fell; when he staggered to his feet again he was dripping like a primordial demon. Another lost his shoe in the slurry and had to grope with his hands like a beggar hunting through a bowl of pottage for meat.

Geoffrey de Rancon handed Alienor a mantle of robust waxed leather and a cowled hood of the same. ‘Good Christ, madam,’ he muttered, ‘we’ll not reach the border before sunset at this rate.’

Grimacing, Alienor struggled into the garment. It had not properly dried out from the last occasion she had used it, and the smell of beeswax and leather was permeated by that of damp and smoke. By the time they made camp tonight, she would stink like a charcoal burner, but it was preferable to being soaked to the skin and covered in glutinous mud like most of these poor wretches.

After much heaving, cursing and struggling, the cart eventually sucked out of the ooze and rolled on its tortuous way, but more carts were following, and the same fate awaited them. Alienor had no idea where Louis was, save somewhere ahead, and in truth she did not care, as long as he was out of her sight.

They had been on the road for six weeks, having set off from Saint-Denis at the end of May. On a burning hot day, in the presence of Pope Eugenius, Louis had received the oriflamme banner from the hands of Abbé Suger as part of an elaborate ceremony to bid Godspeed and success to the French army as it embarked on the long march to Jerusalem via the bone-bleached battlefields of Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli. Alienor had sweltered in the many layers of her formal attire. Adelaide too, and for a moment the women had been in accord as they stood side by side, struggling to cope with the heat.

Louis had retired to dine in the cool of the abbey with His Holiness and various clerics. Everyone else had to wait outside, and Alienor added inconsideration and disparagement to her grievances.

At least she did not have to travel with Louis. The army was divided into sections and she rode either with the non-combatants and the baggage in the centre, or else with the men of Aquitaine under the leadership of Geoffrey de Rancon. The latter suited her very well indeed, for among her own she was respected.

Alienor tried not to dwell on the farewells she had made on the steps of Saint-Denis, but still the visions came. The hard hug from Petronella and the tears welling in her sister’s eyes had reminded Alienor of their father leaving for Compostela.

‘What will I do without you?’ Petronella had sobbed.

‘Survive,’ Alienor had replied, her throat swollen with emotion and her eyes full of tears. ‘Survive, my sister, and care for Marie until I return.’

‘As if she were my own daughter,’ Petronella wept.

The children had not been present among the gathering at Saint-Denis. Alienor had kissed Marie farewell earlier in the guest house. She had told her daughter she would bring her jewels from Constantinople, silks and frankincense from far lands and a candle from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to light her way on God’s path. And then she had gone from the room, closed the door on her child and buried her emotions deep.

Thunder rumbled in the distance and Alienor shuddered. Ten days ago on the road from Passau to Klosterneuburg a cart had been struck by lightning and the driver and horses killed instantly.