When Christ and His Saints Slept

49

Beaugency, France

March 1152

In late September, Louis and Eleanor had begun a royal progress through her domains. They were welcomed with enthusiasm, for Eleanor had always been extremely popular with her people, and they were heartened by rumors of an impending split with her “foreign” French husband. These rumors gained credence as the weeks passed, for in the course of the progress, French garrisons and Crown officials were replaced with men of Eleanor’s choosing, men of Aquitaine. The French sovereigns celebrated their Christmas court at Limoges; it was to be their last one as man and wife. In February, they parted, Eleanor returning to Poitiers, Louis to Paris. By now all knew a divorce was both imminent and inevitable.

On the Friday before Palm Sunday, the Archbishop of Sens convened a Church Council at the royal castle of Beaugency, not far from Orleans. Evidence was presented that the French king and his queen were related within the prohibited degree, for her great-grandmother had been a granddaughter of his great-grandfather. The clerics were not long in delivering their solemn verdict-that the marriage must be annulled on grounds of consanguinity. The young princesses, Marie and Alix, were declared to be legitimate and their custody was granted to the French king. Eleanor relinquished her queenship, and resumed those titles that were hers by birthright: Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitou. The French king was now free to wed again, to seek a wife able to give him a son and heir. At the prodding of Eleanor’s advocate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Council agreed that she was free to wed, too, but of course not without Louis’s consent, for her former husband was still her king and liege lord.

The following morning was a mild, sunlit Saturday, a good day for travel. But the Count of Vermandois did not doubt that his sister-in-law would have ridden out in the teeth of a raging gale, so eager did she seem to leave Beaugency and her former life behind. He would be sorry to see her go, and he said so now, telling her that the royal court would be a dull place without her, that her going would break male hearts and quench candles all over Paris.

Eleanor smiled, for she liked Raoul. His gallantry might be a bit heavy-handed at times, but she’d take that any day over the sort of somber piety she’d been living with for the past fourteen years. Gathering her into his arms, Raoul winked over her shoulder at his wife. “You do not mind if I run off with Eleanor for a few weeks, do you, Petra?”

“Of course not,” Petronilla said absently, not hearing a word he’d said. She was finding this harder than she’d expected-saying farewell to her sister, knowing how drastically their lives were about to change. “I shall miss you, Eleanor,” she said, summoning up a game but forlorn smile. “Who will I have to quarrel with once you’re gone?”

“That is what husbands are for.” As the sisters embraced, Eleanor found her eyes misting, too. “You must visit me at Poitiers later in the spring,” she said, adding significantly, “I will tell you when to come.”

Petronilla nodded, and Raoul cheerfully promised to accompany her. The two women said nothing, for it was understood that Petronilla would find a way to come alone. Raoul was Louis’s cousin and liegeman and seneschal of France; they could not compromise his honour by allowing him to attend Eleanor’s wedding to Henry Fitz Empress. Eleanor had no illusions about what was to come. There was a time when she’d been careless of consequences, but no longer. Louis would see her marriage as a grievous betrayal, both of the man and of the monarch. What would he do? She knew him so well, and yet she was still not sure how he’d react. She felt confident that she and Harry would be a match for him. But she was determined to shield any others from Louis’s wrath, and so Raoul must be kept in ignorance, for his own protection.

The great hall was thronged with clergy and curious onlookers, eager to watch this historic parting between the French king and his notorious queen. As soon as Eleanor appeared, heads turned and necks craned. The men who’d command her escort were waiting by the door: Saldebreuil de Sanzay, her constable, and Geoffrey de Rancon, Lord of Taillebourg. She smiled at sight of them, for they were more than loyal vassals; they were friends, men who would willingly lay down their lives to keep her safe. Louis was nearby, engaged in conversation with the Archbishops of Rouen and Reims, not yet aware of her presence. She was about to start toward him when she saw the tall, white-haired figure by the hearth, his simple monk’s habit contrasting dramatically with the colorfully clad nobles and the ornately garbed princes of the Church. The holy man of France, the venerated and honoured Abbot of Clairvaux. Her sainted enemy.

Abbot Bernard greeted her with frigid formality. He so resembled one of the patriarchs of old-pale and haggard, burning dark eyes and flowing long hair-that Eleanor wondered cynically if he’d deliberately cultivated the image. “I understand,” she said, “that you convinced Louis not to bring my daughters to Beaugency to bid me farewell. He told me that he would have done so-if not for you, my lord abbot.”

He was quite untroubled by the accusation. “That is true,” he said calmly. “I thought it was for the best. Such a meeting was bound to be painful.”

“Am I to believe, then, that you were acting out of Christian kindness?”

“I care for all of God’s lost lambs, madame, even the foolish ones who keep straying into the hills where wolves prowl and dangers lurk. The Lord forgives much, provided that there is true repentance. It is always possible to come back into the fold, back into grace.”

“With you as my guide? I’d rather take my chances with the wolves.”

“Take care, madame, lest you imperil your immortal soul. You do but prove I had good reason to keep your daughters away from your baneful influence.” As wrathful as he was, the abbot still remembered to keep his voice down, for this was not a conversation for others to hear. “Your lack of gratitude should not surprise me, though, given your lamentable lack of decorum and discretion-”

“Gratitude? My apologies, my lord abbot. It seems I’ve been maligning you unfairly, for you do have a sense of humor, after all!”

“It is foolhardy to court danger, madame, but it is lunacy to court damnation. You do indeed owe me a debt of gratitude. If not for my forbearance, you might have been cast aside for adultery rather than consanguinity.”

“It is also foolhardy, my lord abbot, to hold your foes too cheaply. Your convictions to the contrary, most women are not idiots. I could not have been accused of adultery, for you have no proof, and well you know it. And even if you’d found men willing to swear falsely that it was so, a verdict of adultery would have prohibited Louis from marrying again…as you well know, too.”

“I see no point in continuing this conversation. If you would spit upon salvation, so be it, then. I leave your sins to God. Fortunately for the king and for France, he is now free of your unholy spell, free to choose a wife devout and docile and virtuous, a wife who will give him the heir you could not.”

Eleanor’s eyes shone with a greenish glitter. “What a pity,” she said, “that the Blessed Virgin Mary is not available, for she would have suited his needs admirably.”

Bernard drew in his breath with a sibilant hiss. “You are an evil woman, wanton and truly wicked, and you will indeed suffer for-”

“No-no, she is not!” Neither Eleanor nor the abbot had heard Louis’s approach, and they both spun around at the sudden sound of his voice. “You are wrong, Abbot Bernard,” he said, with a firmness Eleanor had seen him show all too rarely. “I know her far better than you, and there is no evil in her soul, only a misguided sense of…of levity.”

Eleanor was tempted to retort that to a man like the abbot, levity might well be the greatest sin of all, but she did not, for Louis’s sake. The abbot was regarding the king with the pained patience of a tutor for a likable but slow student. “You are sometimes too tolerant, my liege,” he said, “too forgiving for your own good.”

That, Eleanor couldn’t resist. “Did not Our Lord Christ preach that forgiveness was a virtue?” she murmured, earning herself a toxic look from the abbot, a reproachful one from the king. Seizing her elbow, Louis steered her away from Bernard, toward a recessed window seat. He did not suggest that they sit; the time was past for that.

“Why is it that turmoil and commotion always follow after you as faithfully as that dog of yours?” Louis asked, pointing to the greyhound that had trailed them into the window alcove. But he sounded more plaintive than protesting, even mustering up a sad smile as their eyes met. His was an easy face to read; it took one glance to reassure Eleanor that he’d not overheard her Blessed Virgin gibe. She was glad, for it was Bernard she’d wanted to wound, not Louis.

That was not always so. There’d been times when she’d yearned for words sharp enough to draw blood, to leave ugly scars. She’d blamed Louis for much that had gone wrong in their marriage, for not being bolder or able to laugh at life’s perversities, for not being more like the swaggering, spirited, roguish men of her House, for no longer heeding her advice as he’d done in their first years together, for loving God far more than he could ever love her, and for the reluctant desire and sense of shame that he’d brought to their marriage bed.

But she’d not hated him for these failings-anger and frustration and occasional contempt, but not hatred. That had come only after Antioch, after Louis had accused her of harboring an incestuous passion for her uncle and threatened to have her bound and gagged and dragged away by force if need be. Ever a realist, she’d yielded, far too proud to fight a war she could not hope to win; she was learning that women must pick their battles with care, that strategy mattered more than strength. Eventually Louis had apologized and swore upon the True Cross that he knew her to be innocent. But by then it was too late. By then her uncle had been slain by the Turks, his impaled head rotting above the caliph’s palace in the hot Baghdad sun, and Eleanor could not look upon her husband without Raymond’s doomed and bloodied spectre coming between them.

But now that she’d regained her freedom, she found herself remembering how it had been at first for them, a fifteen-year-old bride and her sixteen-year-old groom, shyly appealing, awed by her beauty and eager to please her. Before he’d begun to yearn for the peace of the cloister, before those poor souls had died in the flames of a Vitry church, before the miscarriage and daughters instead of sons, before his hair shirt and her disgrace, before the crusade and Antioch and Raymond’s needless death, before Abbot Bernard. For a poignant moment, she could see that long-lost youth reflected in the depths of translucent blue eyes. And then the memory faded and she was looking at a man decent and ineffectual and despairing, a man she could pity but not respect and never love.

“I promise you,” he said earnestly, “that I will not speak ill of you to our daughters.”

She knew better. His intentions were good; they always were. But he would never be able to forgive her for Henry Fitz Empress, no more than she’d been able to forgive him for her uncle Raymond.

“I ought to have brought them,” he said, striving to be fair. “You can see them whenever you come to Paris, that I promise you, too. I would ask, though, that…you not come for a while, Eleanor.”

“No,” she agreed, “not for a while.” Knowing that she’d never be welcome in Paris. She had to believe she’d see her daughters again, for she would never give up what was hers. But as Louis leaned over and kissed her circumspectly on the cheek, she realized-as he did not-that it was not likely they’d ever meet again. A door was slamming shut, and there’d be no going back.

There was nothing more to be said. Louis seemed to grasp that, too, for he stepped aside and wished her “Godspeed,” which struck her as an odd epitaph for a marriage. “I wish you well, Louis,” she said, and discovered that she meant it. “I wish you happiness, a wife with no ‘misguided sense of levity,’ and the son you so crave.” And that, too, she meant-almost.

Raoul and Petronilla followed Eleanor from the hall, out into the bailey, where her armed escort waited. Uncomfortably aware of Abbot Bernard’s disapproving gaze, Louis did not. Instead, he retreated from the hall with what dignity he could. Once he’d reached the privacy of his bedchamber, he unlatched the shutters, leaned out in time to see Eleanor riding across the bailey, out of the castle and out of his life. He watched from the window, mourning what they’d lost and what they’d never had. He kept vigil until she’d disappeared into the distance, until even the dust had settled again onto the grooved, pitted road. But she’d never looked back.

AN early spring had begun to repair the damage done by winter. The trees were budding and the wild daffodils known as Lent lilies were gilding the river meadows with splashes of gold; the Loire shimmered like liquid silver, reflecting the sky and clouds and the soaring spirits of the Aquitanians. Most of the men in Eleanor’s escort detail were Southerners, never happy in the less hospitable domains of the French king. They were a different breed, these sons and daughters of Aquitaine, for theirs was a warmer, more indolent clime, a land of rich harvests and fertile vineyards and lush emerald valleys. They understood that life was short and unpredictable and therefore it behooved a prudent man to taste as many of its pleasures as he could. If their exuberant joie de vivre conflicted with the Church’s stringent teachings about the mortification of the flesh, that never seemed to trouble them much. They were glad to be escaping the rigors of northern winters, even gladder to be leaving behind the French king’s austere, staid court. The jokes flew by faster than the miles as they galloped south, so delighted were they to be bringing their beautiful duchess home.

Not all of the members of Eleanor’s household were born and bred in Aquitaine. One of her ladies-in-waiting came from a wilder region, the fog-drifted seacoast of Brittany. Yolande had been with Eleanor only a few months; it had been her misfortune to join the French queen’s retinue just as Eleanor’s queenship was breathing its last. But if she minded trading Paris for Poitiers, she showed no sign of it. Riding alongside the Lady Colette, Eleanor’s longtime attendant, she kept up a running commentary of cheerful observations and ingenuous questions.

They would be back at Poitiers for Easter, would they not? Was it true that the famed troubadour and poet Bernard de Ventadour would be joining the duchess’s court? Did Colette think the duchess was in true danger from would-be suitors? Would they still be stopping for the night at Blois? Why had the duchess been so loath to accept the invitation they’d gotten from its young count? He’d sounded quite charming, judging from his letter. And very highborn, for was he not the English king’s brother?

Yolande was almost as much in awe of the black-eyed, elegant Colette as she was of the duchess herself. Colette’s moods were as changeable as the weather; she could go from sun to frost and back to sun fast enough to set Yolande’s head to spinning. Today, though, the forecast seemed favorable. Colette listened to Yolande’s chatter with good-humored indulgence, answering her queries and making wry asides of her own.

They’d soon be back in Poitiers, she assured the Breton teenager, within four days if all went well. She’d not be at all surprised if Bernard de Ventadour sought the duchess’s patronage; poets and troubadours would be flocking to Aquitaine like migrating swallows in the spring. Indeed, there was a very real danger now that the duchess was free to wed again; why did Yolande think they had so large an escort?

One of Eleanor’s household knights dropped back beside them, presenting Colette with a fragrant sprig he’d just plucked from a flowering blackthorn bush. She thanked him with a coquettish flutter of her lashes, a hinted smile, but after he’d spurred his stallion on, she dropped the blossoms down into the dust, and the softhearted Yolande winced, hoping the knight hadn’t seen.

As if they’d not been interrupted, Colette resumed the conversation. Yes, she confirmed, they’d still be passing the night at Blois, but in St Lomer’s Abbey, not the castle. Count Theobald had been too importunate for the duchess’s liking. Lady Eleanor thought he’d seemed much too eager for her to accept his hospitality. As for his charm, that was no recommendation. Speaking from her own experience, she’d learned that most charming men were about as trustworthy as Barbary pirates. And no, Count Theobald was the English king’s nephew, not his brother. Yolande had confused the son with the father, Count Theobald of Champagne and Blois, King Stephen’s elder brother, who’d died in January. The eldest son, Henry, had inherited Champagne, and the second son, Theobald, got Blois. Surely Yolande had not forgotten about the plight troth?

Yolande blushed, for while she did have difficulty keeping track of the various barons and lords and peers of the realm, she ought never to have gotten so muddled about Theobald of Blois. It was less than two months since Theobald’s brother, Henry, the new Count of Champagne, had pledged to wed the little Princess Marie. The plight troth had provoked a sharp quarrel between the French king and Eleanor, for she had not been consulted, and was angry that she’d been given no say in a decision that would shape the entire course of her daughter’s life.

Yolande’s elder sisters had been married off in that same summary way; her father had conferred with neither her mother nor the prospective brides beforehand. Nor was it likely that she’d be consulted, in her turn. But that was the way of the only world she knew, and it had not occurred to Yolande to object.

It had occurred to Eleanor, although the French king and his counselors had gone ahead with the plight troth, nonetheless, and six-year-old Marie was now the Count of Champagne’s betrothed. How soon she would become his wife would depend upon her father and husband-to-be, for in that, too, her mother would not be consulted.

Just as Yolande knew Eleanor would not be heeded when the time came to choose another husband for her. The man would have to meet the French king’s approval, and mayhap the Abbot Bernard’s, too, to be judged as a loyal vassal, one worthy enough to be entrusted with Aquitaine. As to what Eleanor might want, that would not matter much in the councils of power. Yolande had been bedazzled from the first by her glamorous, audacious mistress, and she thought it would break her heart to see her lady snared and earthbound for the rest of her days, wings clipped so she could no longer fly.

Nudging her mare closer to Colette’s sleek white mule, she said diffidently, “Colette…what does the future hold for our lady?”

“You need not fret on her behalf, child. This I can tell you for true, that the duchess could teach a cat about landing on its feet.” Colette was frowning into the distance. The sun had set and they were losing the light; they’d soon have to bring out the lanterns. “Look,” she said, “something is afoot.”

Yolande peered into the gathering dusk, and saw that Colette was right. As a horseman emerged from a grove of trees beside the road, her pulse sped up. Colette was urging her mule forward and she followed hastily. But by now it was evident that the rider was alone and some of her alarm eased. Whatever this was about, at least it was not an ambush.

Eleanor had reined in her mare. Protectively flanked by Saldebreuil de Sanzay and Geoffrey de Rancon, she watched with wary curiosity as the stranger was led forward. He was young, not much more than twenty, dark as a Spaniard, with bold, admiring eyes and courtly manners that did not jibe with the plain homespun of his garb. His cap was off with a sweep, and the movement gave her a brief glimpse of a sword hilt as his mantle parted. “Madame,” he said, “I’ve been watching for your approach.”

Eleanor beckoned him closer. “Why?”

He did not mince words. “To warn you away from Blois,” he said bluntly.

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. “Count Theobald?”

He nodded. “If you enter the city tonight, you’ll not find it easy to leave on the morrow. The count was sorely aggrieved, my lady, when you declined to stay at his castle. He means to remedy that, by force if need be. He has it in mind to insist that you lodge with him rather than the monks, and I daresay he has a biddable priest ready and willing to perform a hasty marriage ceremony once you’ve…accepted the inevitable.”

Eleanor’s mouth tightened. “Accepted the inevitable.” A discreet description, indeed, of abduction and rape. Beside her, Geoffrey de Rancon was swearing under his breath, revealing a command of obscenity that any sailor might have envied. Saldebreuil de Sanzay was more controlled, but no less enraged. They’d known they might run into trouble. They’d not expected, though, that they’d encounter it so soon, within a day of the divorce.

“So the hunt has already begun, has it?” she said grimly.

Rancon was still fuming. “We would never have let that whelp take you, my lady-never!”

“I know that, Geoffrey. But it would have been an ugly clash and likely a bloody one. Men ought not to die because of a boastful lordling’s lust-not my men, by God. They deserve better than that.” Eleanor wasted no more time fulminating upon Count Theobald’s treachery. “Tell the others,” she said, her eyes resting speculatively upon their Good Samaritan. “You’ve done me a service I will not soon forget. I was very fortunate that you somehow became privy to Theobald’s plans, a remarkable stroke of luck…if that is indeed what it was?”

Even in the fading light, she could see a flash of white as he grinned. “You are quick, my lady, as well as fair. As you guessed, luck had nothing to do with it. As soon as word got out that the Church synod would be convened at Beaugency, we knew you’d have to take this road back to Poitiers. I was sent into Blois a week ago, charged to see to your safety whilst you were in the city. Sometimes a lone man can do more good than an army.”

“If it is the right man,” Eleanor agreed, and he grinned again.

“It was not that difficult to root out the count’s acorns. He was careless and one for bragging.” A disdainful shrug. “The Almighty might not look upon clumsiness as a sin, but I do, and it gladdens me greatly that the count will have so much to repent upon the morrow.”

“I value a man who knows his own worth. I could easily find a place for you in my household if you were interested. But you are not…are you?”

They smiled at each other in perfect understanding. “No, my lady. I am quite content as I am, serving my lord Duke of Normandy.”

Rancon and Sanzay exchanged startled glances, even more perplexed when Eleanor showed no surprise at all. “You must thank your lord for me,” she said. “Who knows, mayhap one day I may have the opportunity to thank him myself.”

He laughed softly, the triumphant laugh of a man who’d acquitted himself well and who would soon be reaping the rewards of it, and then offered to show them a little-used lane that would allow them to detour safely around the city, so they’d be miles away by the time Theobald began to suspect that his scheme had gone awry.

But as Eleanor started to turn her mare, Sanzay drew her aside for a roadside colloquy, switching from French to their native Provencal. “My lady, I confess to some unease about all this. How can we be sure the Duke of Normandy is acting in good faith? He might well want to thwart Theobald in order to claim you for himself. We’ll be entering his territory once we draw near to Tours. What if this man of his is luring you into a trap?”

“He can be trusted. You need not fear.”

Sanzay was puzzled by her certainty, rather than reassured. “How can you be so confident of that?”

“Because a man need not take by force what is to be given to him freely, Saldebreuil.”

It was so dark now that she could no longer see his face, but she could hear the changed rhythm of his breathing. “Are you saying what I think you are?” he asked at last, and Eleanor laughed.

“Yes, I am…and now you know just how much I trust you, dear friend. Hold your questions, though, until after we’ve left Blois-and its hungry young count-far behind in the dust!”

BY riding all night, Eleanor and her entourage reached safety at Tours, the capital of Henry Fitz Empress’s province of Touraine. They arrived at the abbey of St Martin’s in time to attend Palm Sunday Mass, and then collapsed gratefully upon the beds provided for them in the monastery’s guest quarters.

The next morning, they were on the road again, sending out scouts to reconnoiter the terrain ahead. They’d left the fine weather of Passion Week behind at Tours; the sky was lowering and they were caught in a brief, drenching shower before noon. They were just a few miles from Port-de-Piles, intending to ford the River Creuse there, when one of their scouts came into view, traveling at such a fast gallop that they were alerted even before he’d gotten within shouting range.

Geoffrey de Rancon and Saldebreuil de Sanzay spurred their horses out to meet him. So did Eleanor, who was never one for waiting. “Bad news, my lady,” Sanzay declared as she drew up alongside them. “There are men lying in wait at Port-de-Piles, and I think we can safely assume that they’re up to no good.”

Eleanor mouthed an unladylike oath. “They have most peculiar courting customs in these parts.” But her irony was outward camouflage; inwardly, she seethed, outraged that her divorce had of a sudden made her fair game, that there were so many men willing to chase her down like a prize doe. “Do you have any idea who this latest suitor might be?”

To her surprise, Rancon nodded. “The lad here says it is as maladroit an ambush as he’s ever seen. So sure are they of taking you unaware at the ford that they did not bother to post any guards themselves. He had no trouble getting close enough to look them over, and recognized their leader straightaway. Another young lordling on the prowl, and to add insult to injury, this cub’s but a second son! Passing strange, that the Duke of Normandy should have done you such a good turn at Blois, for his brother now seeks to do you an ill one at Port-de-Piles.”

“God and His good angels!” Geoffrey Fitz Empress was all of what…seventeen? No, nigh on eighteen. She’d made it a point to learn as much as she could about Henry’s background, and that included his brothers, but she’d certainly not anticipated meeting one of them in an ambush by the River Creuse. She shook her head, marveling at life’s odd twists and turns. “This gives a whole new meaning to the saying, ‘keeping it in the family.’”

Rancon looked mystified, but Sanzay gave a startled snort of laughter. “You have a wicked tongue, my lady,” he said with a grin, “damn me if you do not!”

“Someone else said that, too. Abbot Bernard, I believe.” It was drizzling again, and Eleanor pulled up her hood as the raindrops began to splatter about them in earnest. “We’ll have to find another crossing. Does anyone know of one?”

Rancon did. “There is another ford downstream, not far from where the Creuse and the Vienne flow together.” He laughed suddenly. “With luck, the Fitz Empress stripling will be waiting out in the rain for the rest of the day. I’d love to see his face when he realizes he’s been outwitted. What a surprise the lad is in for!”

Eleanor winked at Sanzay. “Indeed, he is,” she said blandly, “but you do not know the half of it!”

SAFE in her own domains, Eleanor lingered for two days at her uncle’s castle at Chatellerault, and on Thursday of Holy Week, she was at last approaching the city she most loved, perched on a bluff overlooking the River Clain, the ancient capital of Poitou-Poitiers.

The city walls shone in the spring sunlight, graceful church spires reaching up toward the heavens, and as ever, Eleanor’s heart rose at the sight. Of all the loves of her life, her first and last and greatest would always be for this land of her birth. Aquitaine was in her blood; even its air seemed sweeter to her. She could see the turrets of her palace now, rising up into the sky, crowned with clouds, and the joy of her homecoming was tempered somewhat by regret, for marriage to Henry Fitz Empress might well lead to a throne, but it would also lead away from Aquitaine.

Coming from the north, they crossed the Clain at the bridge called Pont de Rochereuil. It was then that they heard the bells, pealing out across the city, filling the valley with silvery, celestial sound. Eleanor was baffled, for by tradition, church bells were muted during the final three days before Easter, when they would ring in the Resurrection. So why were they chiming now?

Saldebreuil de Sanzay was the first to comprehend. Turning in the saddle, he smiled at Eleanor. “The bells are for you, my lady,” he said. “They are welcoming you home.”