April Queen (20 page)

Christmas came, and spring. More than a year had passed since they landed at St Simeon. Only after celebrating Easter of 1149 in Jerusalem did Louis at last ride down through the Judean mountains and head
north along the coast, embarking at Acre in one small high-pooped pilgrim transport while Eleanor and her small household travelled separately in another ship. Thus ended the first of sixteen years she was to spend as a prisoner at the whim of her two husbands.

On the visit to Rome during the journey home, her hatred of Galeran was vehemently expressed to the pope, which poses the question: had the lost year of her life been the Templar eunuch’s idea? Were the first months of her confinement to hide a pregnancy resulting from the relationship with Raymond? Because the adultery would have debarred Louis from remarrying, it is conceivable that this would have been kept secret at the time. If there was a child, what happened to it?

There were reports of Thierry Galeran being seen in Belin after his return to France, despite Aquitaine being a region where he was not welcome. One of the accusations against Eleanor after the divorce from Louis was that she had buried her bastards in the churchyard there. So, did Galeran kill a child by Raymond, whose birth had to be hidden, and afterwards in accordance with a Templar’s oath fulfil an undertaking to bury the small corpse in the discreet churchyard, where Eleanor could visit the grave in secrecy? It would account for the rumour. Yet, even if this had been hushed up at the time, it is unlikely that her detractors would have failed after Louis’ death to write up so great a slur on her name.

But there is a second possible explanation of what happened during the missing year.

T
he homeward voyage was uneventful until some Sicilian galleys were sighted off the southern tip of mainland Greece in worsening weather. Coming alongside one of them for the latest news from Europe, Louis learned that King Roger of Sicily was at war with Comnenus because the homebound German Emperor had concluded a deal in Constantinople for joint military action with Byzantine forces against Sicilian expansion into Byzantine territory along the Adriatic seaboard. So much for the story of the ‘treacherous Greek guides' who had caused Conrad's defeat by the Turks. …

Hardly had the vessels separated to continue on their way when a squadron of Byzantine galleys captured Eleanor's ship together with Louis' escort and baggage and drove them away as a prize of war in the direction of the nearest harbour. The captain of Louis' ship avoided the same fate by running up a false flag – a common device in those pirate-infested waters. So why had the queen's ship not done the same? Any hopes Eleanor had of escaping in the confusion were
dashed when the Sicilians' galleys returned and forced the Byzantines to release their slower-moving prize in order to save themselves.

High seas and poor visibility then separated Louis' small convoy, after which he and Eleanor were not to see each other again for two whole months. Unsubstantiated legend says that she spent part of this time in what is now Tunisia, but it seems to have been adverse weather and possibly health problems that caused the delay. Two days before the end of July Louis reached the Italian mainland somewhere in Calabria with a few companions, having been so ill from seasickness that he swore never again to set foot in a boat.

Local Normans loyal to Roger of Sicily provided the royal pilgrim with food and clothing, and also gave him news of Eleanor, who had landed at the Sicilian port of Palermo shortly before. Having suffered prolonged seasickness while tossed for days on end in gales off what was called the coast of Barbary, it is not surprising that she did not feel up to making even the short crossing over the straits of Messina to the mainland. But three weeks later she did so and caught up with Louis at the Sicilian court in Potenza, where they were well received and gave thanks for their deliverance in the cathedral whose twelfth-century apse and rose windows still survive after much rebuilding made necessary by earth tremors.

On the journey north, Louis and Eleanor visited St Benedict's monastery of Monte Cassino, where Pope Innocent II had been captured by Roger of Sicily ten years before. There, some monk avid for gossip gleaned that Louis had travelled back to Antioch after the siege of Damascus.
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As to why he had done this and whether alone or with Eleanor, the annals of the monastery are mute, which only adds to the mystery of the missing year.

Immediately after his return from crusade, emboldened by his alliance with Byzantium, Conrad III had reopened hostilities against the papal territories in central Italy. With the southern third of the peninsula already within the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the pope was exiled from Rome and staying at his castle of Tusculum
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on the northern slopes of the Alban hills, fifteen miles south-east of Rome.

In the halls whose ruins stand above the town he received Eleanor and Louis as returning pilgrims who had suffered much for their faith during the two years since he had blessed the oriflamme at St Denis. Louis confided his ambition of raising finance for another expedition to the Holy Land to carry out all the Second Crusade had so signally failed to achieve, but Eleanor had more personal issues on her mind. As papal secretary, John of Salisbury recorded the queen's
skilful presentation of her case for an annulment of the marriage to Louis on the grounds of consanguinity, in which she cited the authority of Bernard of Clairvaux, whom the pope himself consulted on points of canon law.

Smiling but firm, Eugenius would hear none of this. Ignoring Eleanor's arguments and Bernard's judgement, he confirmed to her horror that the marriage was legitimate and threatened with anathema anyone rash enough to refer to the matter of this consanguinity in future. Eleanor was furious that Galeran and the king's other clerical advisers had turned Eugenius' ear against her before she had had a chance to put her case. Abandoning dialectic, she poured out to him the long list of her legitimate grievances, including her abduction from Antioch by the Templar eunuch and the continual constraint under which she lived in Louis' household.

In best diplomatic style, the pope listened but, far from taking any notice of a woman desperate to escape from a hated and frustrating marriage, gave instructions that a double bed be prepared for the royal spouses and spread with his own bedcovers. The following day he acted the part of marriage guidance counsellor until he at least was convinced that he had reconciled the royal couple after all their past differences, then gave them presents before watching them leave with tears in his eyes. It was an unusual display of emotion for this reserved and celibate priest.
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Ahead of them lay Rome. Squalid, reduced to less than a quarter of its imperial size and with vast tracts of wasteland within the walls, ruined by repeated invasion and damaged anew during the recent fighting, the once eternal city was a sad mockery of vibrant Byzantium. What Eleanor did to contain her fury at being treated by Eugenius like a wayward child is not recorded. Louis the pilgrim was welcomed at the gate of the city by a deputation of senators representing the commune that had killed a pope trying to assert his pontifical rights only six years before. Accepting the freedom of the city and guided by the senators, the pilgrim king toured the most important holy sites followed by a claque chanting in Latin, ‘Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.'

Just as important to pilgrims as the apostles' tombs was the multitude of relics in Rome credited with the ability to re-transmit some of the virtue absorbed from contact with the saints and martyrs. Chief of these was the ‘Veronica', a handkerchief-sized piece of cloth on which Christ was said to have wiped His face and imprinted his features on the way to His crucifixion. Nor would Louis have missed the grisly relics of the circumcision and the birth in the manger, nor the phial of the Virgin's milk.

But it was unwise to linger in Rome at this time of year, when
la mal'aria
– literally ‘bad air', from the swamps around the city – was blamed for killing off many visitors, although most Romans seemed to have developed some tolerance for it. So the royal couple travelled on by the Via Aurelia, crossed the Alps and arrived in Auxerre, Burgundy, where Abbot Suger met them to give an account of his exemplary stewardship of the kingdom and mediate between Louis and Eleanor in comparative privacy before they were exposed to the courtiers in that gossip factory which was the Ile de la Cité. It was all to no avail; Eleanor's mind was made up.

Together with Suger, they journeyed on to Paris, arriving at Martinmas in November 1149. The abbot of St Denis, who would be given Augustus' ultimate accolade of
pater patriae
on his death by Louis for all he had done for the country and the monarchs he served, had somehow found time to have Eleanor's apartments refurbished in the hope that this would make her homecoming at least more comfortable. It was a gesture she spurned; as far as she was concerned, he had merely gilded the bars of her cage. Two and a half years after setting out on her great adventure, Eleanor was back in Louis' palace more deeply ensnared in her unwanted marriage than ever.

Medals were struck commemorating the great achievements of the crusade, with Louis seated in a triumphal chariot and Victory above him bearing palm and crown. Others depicted heaps of Turks slain by the faithful. The legends around the outside read, ‘The citizens of Paris joyfully welcome their king returning victorious from the Orient, 1149' and ‘Fleeing Turks slain on the banks of the Meander'.
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The spin doctors had a field day proving that the Second Crusade had been a success, while churchmen, including the pope, tied themselves in knots seeking signs of God's will in the obvious failure of the great enterprise that had cost so many lives. Abbé Bernard's rationalisation was that mankind was as yet unworthy to be rewarded with success, while Bishop Otto of Freising, Odo's counterpart as official German chronicler, described the crusade as a boon to those it had enabled to gain a martyr's crown.
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The winter of 1149/50 was unusually severe across the whole of northern Europe. Rivers and sea froze in many places, but Louis' immediate problem was the political chill between him and his barons. If they continued to blame the Poitevins – and therefore the now-pregnant queen on the Ile de la Cité – for the disaster in the mountains and her alleged treason in Antioch, they also blamed his criminal vacillation in leadership for consuming their personal fortunes to no effect. Suger had
foreseen this when urging Louis to hurry home.
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So the king had only himself to blame for allowing the political balance to turn against him for a whole year after his enemies returned to spread their side of the story. He must have had a powerful reason to ignore Suger's pleas.

At some unknown date in 1150 Eleanor gave birth to another daughter, christened Aelith after her aunt. Most historians have assumed that this occurred at least nine months after the pope's marriage guidance counselling at Tusculum, but Professor Friedrich Heer calculated the birth as having taken place in the winter of 1149/50.
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If he was right, the alternative explanation of Eleanor's missing year is that she was kept a prisoner in the Holy Land for several months until she finally consented to pay the price of the journey home, which was allowing Louis to get her with child.

That would never have been his own idea, but it would account for her hatred of Galeran, for only he would have dreamed up such a scenario. Had she been suffering prolonged seasickness in addition to the inconvenience of pregnancy during the mystery weeks when she was missing at sea, that might also account for her needing to convalesce for three weeks before crossing from Sicily to the main-land and the slow rate of subsequent progress northward.

After the birth of his second daughter Louis' political enemies added the inability to beget a son to the list of their monarch's shortcomings. For Eleanor, Aelith's birth was a mixed blessing. Had the newborn been male, it is possible that she would have recouped some respect among the Franks as the mother of their future king and resigned herself to her position, which would have changed the course of European history for 300 years. As it was, Louis was under increasing pressure to find himself another wife who would perform the most important duty of a queen.

Just when he most needed them, Suger's wise and temperate counsels ceased with the abbot's death on 11 January 1151 at the age of seventy. One of the problems of a feudal king whose political credit was low was keeping even a semblance of loyalty among his vassals. Among many who had failed to pay homage to Louis were Count Geoffrey of Anjou, which adjoined Eleanor's Poitou on the north, and his son Duke Henry of Normandy, which spread from Anjou to the English Channel. After Louis sent the bishop of Lisieux to remind father and son of their obligations, they duly came to Paris.
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