Devil's Consort

‘Was it as magnificent as the troubadours say? I’d arrange another expedition if I were you.’

‘Perhaps.’ I forced a smile. I’d not tell her of all my misgivings. I was not sure of them myself. Louis had been so thoughtful, and yet. ‘At least I am now his wife in the eyes of God and man.’

‘And in need of a bath!’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Horse and sweat!’ She laughed. ‘So he was successful.’

‘Yes. Order some hot water for me—and then I must pray with Louis for an heir. Do you know … he thanked me as if I had bestowed a miracle on him.’

‘And so you had. Not everyone beds a princess of Aquitaine! Did you enjoy it?’ she asked.

‘Not greatly.’ I saw her disappointment as I began to loosen my hair from its night braid and was sorry for my brusqueness. ‘It’s early days, Aeli. We need to grow to know each other, I expect.’

It was true, after all. We had made a start. I could teach him more of the intimate pleasures of the bed, to his and my benefit. Once we had settled into our accommodation in Paris, life would become simpler. Louis would not feel so pressured by constraints of time and those around him. I would live with him, replacing Suger’s voice with mine. I would teach him what he needed to know about me and the vast lands he had taken on.

‘Do you know what he did?’ I found myself asking her. It had preyed on my mind through all that had followed Louis’s blurted confession. ‘He chopped off de Lezay’s hands.’

Aelith’s lips made a soundless ‘Oh’.

‘Louis said it was a just punishment for a thief.’

‘Our father spilt enough blood in his time,’ Aelith said consideringly.

‘I did not think our father was so.so vindictive.’

‘It’s nothing out of the way, as I see it,’ Aelith concluded, as if it did not merit further discussion. ‘De Lezay was an arrogant fool.’ She carried my ruined shift to cast it on the bed. ‘I see we have the proof at last. And not before time.’ She had lifted the bed linens, stained with Louis’s sweat and semen and my blood. ‘What shall I do with them?’

I pushed aside the persistent scrape of concern that Louis could be unpredictable in his response to threats or danger, and smiled with not a little malice.

‘Send them to Abbot Suger, of course. I trust he’ll be satisfied. You can tell the Abbot to parcel up the sheets and send them to Fat Louis. His prayers have been answered.’

Fat Louis was never to receive the happy news of his son’s consummation of our marriage. Next morning when we were on our way to Paris before the sun had risen, when we had travelled no longer than one hour, a hard-riding messenger, his fleurs de lys all but obliterated by dust, intercepted us. He flung himself at Louis’s feet.

‘Your Majesty!’

Which was enough to tell us all the news. The courier gasped it out. Louis the Sixth, Fat Louis, was dead.

Louis wept into his hands. And when he finally raised his head and turned his face towards Paris, his blue eyes held the panicked fear of an animal caught in a snare. It was in my heart to feel pity for him, but not much. Why would he not want to be King of France? There had been no close affection between father and son as far as I could tell.

I did not weep for a man I did not know. Instead I appraised my new horizons.

I was Queen of France.

CHAPTER FOUR

I HAD travelled all my life. We in Aquitaine were an itinerant restless court, winter and summer alike, journeying from one end of our domains to the other. Since my father insisted that I travel with him, I had stayed in every variety of accommodation, from castle to hunting lodge, from palace to northern manor to villa in the south. From campaigning tent to luxurious pavilion, in Limoges and Blaye, Melle and Beyonne. I knew gardens and tiled fountains, light, airy rooms in summer, satisfying heat in winter.

Nothing could have prepared me for my new home in Paris that Louis brought me to with such pride. Louis might appreciate his inheritance, I did not. Grim and decaying, the Cité palace seemed nothing to me but a pile of stones, a frowning bleak tower standing on a drear island in the centre of a sluggishly running river. The Ile de la Cité, as I learned to call it, connected to the two banks by stone bridges.

A place of great safety, Louis enthused, protecting us from our enemies.

A prison cut off from the world, I thought. Cold, uncivilised, unwelcoming.

Even before I set eyes on the palace, my heart sank, for Paris, the world outside my new home, stank. Unpaved streets, gutters running with the effluent of two hundred thousand souls who clustered along the River Seine, Paris squatted in a thick cloud of noxious stench. Black flies swarmed in the fetid air. The welcome of our entourage did nothing to detract from the stink. More likely, I decided sourly, the mass of cheering hordes probably increased it, but I acknowledged the welcome. I knew what was expected of me, their new queen.

But my spirits fell to the level of my inadequate footwear as Louis escorted me through the corridors and endless chambers of my new home. I walked at his side in horrified silence. I shivered. Even in the heat of summer it was so cold, so bone-chillingly damp. And dark. The only light to enter was through the narrowest of arrow slits, thus casting every room into depressing gloom. As for the draughts. Where the air came from, I could not fathom, but my veils rippled with the constant movement of chilly air. I wished I had one of my fur mantles with me.

‘The windows have no shutters!’ Aelith muttered from behind me. ‘How do we keep warm here?’

‘There!’ Louis gestured, hearing her complaint. He pointed to two charcoal braziers that stood in the small antechamber we were passing through. ‘I think they give enough heat.’

‘And enough fumes to choke us!’ I replied as the smoke suddenly billowed and caught in my throat. ‘How do you warm the larger rooms? The Great Hall?’

‘A central fire.’

‘And the smoke?’

‘Through a hole in the roof.’ He sounded mildly amused, as if I were a fool not to know.

Letting in the wind and the rain too, I had no doubt, as well as the occasional exploratory squirrel or unfortunate bird. In Aquitaine we had long moved past such basic amenities, borrowing what we could learn from the old villas of Ancient Rome with their open courtyards, hypocausts and drainage channels. I did not speak my dismay, I could not. Unnervingly I could feel Louis’s eyes on me as he smiled and nodded, as if he might stoke my tepid enthusiasm from spark to flame. It was a lost cause, and since I could think of nothing complimentary to say I said nothing but stood in shocked, shivering silence.

‘And we are to live here?’ Aelith marvelled as Louis stepped aside to speak with a servant who approached with a message. ‘Do we die of the ague?’

‘It seems that we do. And probably will.’ My heart was as coldly heavy as the stone floor beneath my feet.

‘I wish we were back at Ombrières!’

So did I.

Perhaps my own accommodations, prepared and decorated with the new bride in mind, as surely they must have been, would be more comfortable. Momentarily I closed my eyes as the shadowy form of a rat sped along the base of the wall, claws tapping against the stone, to disappear behind a poor excuse for a wall hanging that did nothing to enhance the chamber. A woodland scene, I surmised, catching the odd shape of wings and the gleam of stitched eyes, except that the layer of soot was so thick it could have been the black depths of Hell. The rat retraced its scurrying steps, and I wished the livestock to be confined to the stitchery.

When the rat—or perhaps there were many—reappeared to gallop once more in its original direction, I requested that Louis show me to my private chambers immediately, but he had other ideas. Taking my arm in a gentle hold, he detached me from my women and guided me through a doorway, down a long, dark corridor and knocked on the door at the end.

‘What is this?’ I whispered since he did not explain. I felt a need to whisper as the stone pressed down on us. It was like being in a coffin.

‘Dear Eleanor.’ Louis enclosed my hand within his. ‘My mother has asked to meet with you.’

It was the only warning I received. I had not known that the Dowager Queen even resided in this palace. The door was opened by an unobtrusive servant into an audience chamber, the walls bare and shining with damp, the furnishings few and unremarkable. Except for one attendant woman, Louis’s mother sat alone, waiting. Hands clasped loosely on her lap, she gave no sign of acknowledging our entrance. The emotion in that small room was chilling: my flesh crept with it.

‘Madam.’ Louis left my side to approach her.

The Dowager Queen of France raised her head and looked not at her son but at me. It was an unambiguous stare, and I swallowed at what I read there, my throat suddenly dry. I had not expected this. I was instantly on guard.

Louis bowed, the respectful son, took his mother’s hand and saluted her fingers. ‘I regret your loss, madam.’

The Dowager Queen bowed her head in cold acknowledgement. I thought her loss was not as great as her son might fear. There was an air of fierce composure about her. Her features were small and pinched but from a lifetime of dissatisfaction rather than from present grief. The lines between nose and mouth had not been engraved in a matter of weeks.

Adelaide de Maurienne. Queen of France. Whose position I had just usurped.

She was a pious woman from the presence of a prie-dieu, numerous crucifixes and books of religious content and a rosary to hand on the coffer at her side. Clad in black from her veils to her feet, she all but merged with the shadows. I sensed she had been invisible for most of her life as the neglected wife of Fat Louis.