He looked away. ‘I took a vow not to sully myself, you know that.’

‘Sully? Does that not say it all?’ Her anger burned very close to white heat but somehow she held it down.

‘I will have to consult with my advisers,’ he said.

‘You mean seek their permission?’ Alienor scoffed. ‘Do you have to do everything by order of Abbé Suger and that codless Templar? Does Thierry de Galeran rule your mind as well as your bedchamber? You say you are your own man? Well, prove it.’

Louis gave her a look filled with distaste. ‘I am God’s man first, and it is His will I do.’

‘Then ask Him.’

‘Let me be,’ Louis said through clenched teeth. ‘I will give you an answer when I am ready.’

‘Do as you will, but know this: I am not going with you. My choice is made and I am staying here in Antioch.’

As she left the chamber, Thierry de Galeran was waiting to go in and from the look on his face had plainly been eavesdropping. He wore a soft silk robe embroidered with small silver crosses, and over the top, incongruously, his scarred leather swordbelt. Alienor gave him a glare filled with loathing. ‘It is for the best,’ she said. ‘Tell him that while you are both at your prayers.’

Thierry returned her look before sweeping a supercilious bow and entering the chamber.

Slumped in his chair, Louis glanced up as Thierry closed the door. ‘You heard?’ He pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘Some of it, sire,’ Thierry said cautiously.

‘She wants to dissolve the marriage on the grounds of consanguinity and stay here when we leave.’ Louis lowered his hand and looked up. ‘I am half inclined to grant her wish.’

Thierry frowned and hitched his belt. ‘I advise you not to be hasty, sire. If you agree, it will damage your prestige. People will say you cannot keep your wife and that another man has taken her away, albeit that the man is her uncle. It would mean that the men of Aquitaine would look to Antioch for leadership, not France. You are Aquitaine’s overlord in law, but if the Queen repudiates you, your position will be difficult.’

‘She is a thorn in my side.’ Louis’s expression contorted. ‘And all the more painful because I still remember the beauty of the rose.’

‘Many beautiful things are sent by the Devil to do us harm,’ Thierry said. ‘Look at the beauty of a viper’s gleaming skin, but know that it has a deadly bite. And did not the serpent entice Eve into tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and did she not then persuade Adam to eat of it?’

‘I will write to Suger,’ Louis said with a sigh. ‘He will advise me, but you are right. In the meantime she should not remain in Antioch.’

‘I do not think you should bring your army into Antioch. Rather let them join us further on.’

Louis’s gaze sharpened. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Sire, I have heard disquieting rumours.’

‘What kind of rumours?’

Thierry screwed up his face as if he had been drinking vinegar. ‘I believe that the lord of Antioch plots against you.’

‘Think or know?’ Louis’s breathing quickened and panic tightened his chest.

‘I have seen the Prince trying to drive a wedge between our people. He speaks fair words in your brother’s ear, and I believe he is plotting with the Queen too.’ Thierry’s tone dripped with revulsion. ‘I suspect Raymond and the Queen have been inappropriate together. I have seen them sitting as close as lovers, alone without attendants when everyone else is asleep.’ His voice slurred a little on excess saliva. ‘I have seen them embracing. She has behaved inappropriately with other men too. Geoffrey de Rancon was in her chambers until long after midnight on the night before he left Antioch, and my spies report that they parted tenderly. It makes me wonder if what happened to the vanguard on Mount Cadmos was purely an accident.’

Louis stared at him in horror. ‘By Christ and Saint Denis, are you sure of this?’

‘Sire, I would not have spoken if I did not have grave doubts. I say we should leave Antioch the moment our army comes within reach and ride immediately for Jerusalem, bringing the Queen with us. With her at your side, her uncle will not dare to move against us, and where she goes, the men of Aquitaine will follow like drones.’

Louis swallowed. ‘What do you advise?’

‘That we make plans to leave by stealth the moment we know our troops are close. We shall need to move swiftly and only tell the people we trust. Raymond cannot stop you riding away, nor can he prevent you from taking your own wife. You must remove her from his influence and keep her at your side where she will have no opportunity to plot and scheme.’

Louis felt sick. He could not encompass the enormity of what he was being told. He did not want to believe it, and yet Thierry was his eyes and his ears and could nose out plots like a rat discovering a piece of rancid cheese. He had had a sense of danger for a long time now, and it did not surprise him, but he did feel very afraid.

‘Let me deal with it, sire,’ Thierry said smoothly. ‘I shall make sure that the Queen is ready to leave when the moment comes.’

Louis nodded, relief flowing through him. ‘You always know what to do for the best,’ he said.


31

Antioch, March 1148

The night was close and Alienor had told her women to leave the shutters open to encourage what little air there was to circulate. Somewhere in that vast, spangled darkness, Geoffrey was on the road. She remembered their conversation about the stars on the plains of Hungary, and hoped he was making swift progress.

This morning she had visited the church of Saint Peter to offer up prayers and silver for his safety and that of their child. She was eager now for Louis to leave for Jerusalem so she could relax her guard and have peace. Under cover of the square of embroidery on which she was working, she gently cupped her womb and whispered words of love and comfort to the child.

‘Did you speak, madam?’ Gisela asked.

‘Only to myself,’ Alienor said. Gisela had been acting strangely: jumping at the slightest thing, yet withdrawn and preoccupied at the same time. ‘You do not have to stay in Antioch with me,’ Alienor said. ‘I am not stopping you from leaving with the King.’

‘I know that, madam.’

Alienor’s voice sharpened with impatience. ‘Then what is wrong with you?’

‘Nothing, madam, I am just tired.’ Gisela looked down at her own needlework and bit her lip. ‘I have had a headache all day. May I have your permission to go outside and take some air?’

‘Yes, but do not be gone long. I am close to retiring.’

Gisela rose to her feet, slipped on her cloak and left the chamber.

Alienor turned to Marchisa. ‘Do you think she has a lover?’

The maid raised her eyebrows. ‘If she does, I do not know who it could be. The only young man I have seen her talking to is Thierry de Galeran’s squire, and he is not the type to conduct a flirtation.’

Alienor thought of the dour youth with his large Adam’s apple and pockmarked face. ‘Spying then,’ she said, and her stomach sank. Could no one be trusted?

Marchisa shrugged. ‘It may well be, madam.’

‘Do you think she knows about the child?’

‘She may suspect, but she has no proof.’

Alienor bit her lip. She had been careful ever since she realised she was pregnant to show the evidence of her monthly fluxes, even if the rags had been stained with chicken blood smuggled into her chamber in vials by Marchisa.

Gisela returned looking flushed and sparkle-eyed. Alienor vacillated. Perhaps she did indeed have a lover. If she could conceal a pregnancy, then Gisela might be just as adept. Perhaps he was a non-Christian or a man of a lower rank and therefore the affair had to be clandestine. She resolved to get to the bottom of it tomorrow.

Alienor retired to her chamber with Marchisa and Mamile helping her to bed, while Gisela prepared the maids’ room, dousing the lamps and tidying away the needlework. Marchisa took a comb to Alienor’s hair, smoothing after each stroke with the palm of her hand, creating a wave of heavy, shining gold.

There was a sudden soft gasp from Gisela. Alienor looked up and froze as dark-clad figures entered her sleeping sanctum and then closed the doors between the rooms.

Soldiers! They wore swords, and she could see mail gleaming under their cloaks and surcoats. The acrid smell of their sweat pervaded the room. She could feel their eyes raking her figure and her unbound hair. From their midst, Thierry de Galeran stepped forward, his dark eyes filled with satisfied malice, and Alienor knew terror.

‘What is this?’ she demanded. ‘How dare you?’

‘Madam, the King is leaving Antioch now and he desires you to join him. Come, we must go. It is of the utmost urgency.’

‘Let the King do as he wishes,’ she retorted. ‘I am staying in Antioch.’

‘Madam, that is not possible. The King has asked me to make provision for you now.’ He had a bundle over his left arm, which proved to be a man’s cloak of heavy dark green wool, edged with sable.

‘The King knows very well I am remaining here.’ She held herself rigid. The other men stared at her with hostile eyes, not one lowering his gaze in deference to her as a queen. There was no sympathy here, no way out. ‘Or have you come to kill me?’ She realised as she spoke that her murder was a very real possibility. ‘Where is Saldebreuil?’

‘Let us say he is indisposed,’ Thierry said and reached for her.

She batted him away. ‘Do not touch me!’ she hissed, revolted at the very thought of his hands on her.

He seized her wrist and she bit him. Marchisa rushed to the attack, using the comb to rake Thierry’s face. He hit her across the cheek and sent her staggering against a painted chest. Mamile began screaming and one of the other men seized her and set a hand across her mouth. ‘Silence, mistress,’ he growled, ‘or I shall squeeze the voice from your throat.’