The Summer Queen (29 page)

Alienor heaved and retched. Her bowels cramped. Dear God, dear God. What if she had contracted the bloody flux? They still had days to go until they reached Constantinople and decent physicians, rest and care. She had seen people die along the way, one moment robust, the next expiring in stench and agony.

When it was over, she felt limp and drained, and still desperately nauseous.

‘Madam, shall I find a cart for you to ride in?’

Alienor shook her head at Mamile. ‘I will be all right by and by. Do not make a fuss. Bring my horse.’

By the time they made camp, Alienor had been forced to retire behind the screen three more times. She refused food and took to her bed, but the vomiting and purging continued intermittently through the night.

Towards dawn, Alienor fell into a fitful doze only to be woken by shouts and yells outside the tent, some in French, some in a harsh, foreign tongue. Then the clash of weapons and sounds of hard fighting. She struggled out of the bedclothes and grabbed her cloak. Mamile hastened over to her, a lantern shaking in her hand and her eyes wide. ‘Madam, we are under attack.’

‘Who …?’

‘I don’t know …’ The women stared towards the tent flaps as the noise of battle intensified. Alienor’s other ladies clustered round, skittish as horses hearing the howl of wolves.

‘Help me to dress,’ Alienor commanded. She swallowed a heave as the women did her bidding. When they were finished, she picked up the sheathed hunting knife she kept at her bedside. Gisela whimpered. Outside someone screamed and screamed again until the sound abruptly choked and cut off. The sound of battle diminished and the shouts reverted to French.

Alienor approached the tent flaps.

‘Madam, no!’ Mamile cried, but Alienor stepped outside, her knife at the ready.

Dawn was flushing the eastern horizon and in the strengthening light the camp resembled a kicked ants’ nest. Soldiers were out of their shelters, many still in their undergarments, spears in hands and faces puffy with sleep. Men were throwing jugs of water over a burning tent. Nearby a serjeant wrenched a lance out of a corpse’s chest. There was a dead horse and a dead infidel warrior trapped under it, his scarlet turban winding away from his body like a ribbon of blood. Geoffrey was striding about issuing brisk orders.

Seeing Alienor standing at her tent entrance, he hastened over to her, slotting his sword back into his scabbard.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked faintly.

‘Nomad Cusman raiders.’ Geoffrey was breathing hard. ‘They were trying to steal our horses and supplies. They killed two sentries and torched some of our tents. Three of ours are dead and another has an arrow through his leg, but we gave them the worst of it.’ He grimaced. ‘They’re the same ones who have been attacking the German lines, so our guides say, in retaliation for pillaging and raids on their herds and livelihoods.’

‘You are unharmed?’ She looked him over quickly.

He gave a short nod. ‘They didn’t get near. We’ll have to be ever more vigilant because the raids will only worsen the further we go. Once we cross the Arm of Saint George, we’ll be subject to far greater hostility than this. I will double the guard, but I do not think they will be back for the moment.’ His gaze sharpened as he took in the knife in her hand. ‘It would not have come to that. I would have defended you with my life.’

‘And then what?’ she said. ‘It is always best to be prepared.’

He looked wry. ‘Are you feeling better?’

‘A little,’ she said. It wasn’t true.

He studied her for a long moment. ‘Rest today if you can,’ he said; then he bowed and left, shouting orders to strike camp.

Alienor’s head was pounding and her mouth was dry. The thought of food made her feel sick and she made do with a few swallows of milk from one of the goats they had brought with them. She was dizzy when she mounted the cob, but the thought of bumping along in one of the carts was unbearable, and she felt more in control on a horse.

Following the Cusman attack, they travelled in anxiety, looking round with wide eyes, but the land shimmered in a late-summer heat haze and they saw no one for the twenty miles they covered that day. The local population had moved themselves and their herds away from the depredations of the advancing French. All they encountered were more unburied German corpses, their positions marked by the wild dogs and kites that temporarily abandoned their scavenging as the troops plodded past. No one was keen to go foraging today. Alienor managed to eat some dry bread at noon, but it lay in her stomach like lead and gave her no sustenance. They passed a small town that bartered them a few sacks of flour, crocks of lamb fat and eggs, again let down from ropes over the walls and only a spit in the ocean of what they needed.

Alienor clung to her saddle and thought of Aquitaine. The soft breezes in the palace garden at Poitiers; the sweeping rush of the ocean at Talmont. The spread wings of a white gyrfalcon. La Reina. Angel wings.
Holy Mary, I am coming to you. Holy Mary, hear me now for the love of God and Christ Jesus your son.

Mercifully they found a good camping place by a small stream an hour before sunset and her servants pitched her tent. Alienor almost tumbled from the cob’s back, feeling weak and wretched. Perhaps she was going to die out here and become another set of bones bleaching under this burning foreign sun.

She lay down in her tent, but the bread she had eaten had only been biding its time, and she had to make another sudden dive for the brass ablution bowl.

‘Madam, the sire de Rancon is here,’ a squire announced from outside the tent.

‘Tell him to wait,’ she gasped.

When she had finished retching, she ordered Mamile to remove the bowl. The smell remained though and she had to clench her teeth and swallow hard. Outside, she heard Mamile speak to Geoffrey. Moments later, without her permission, he entered the tent followed by an olive-skinned young woman neatly dressed in a plain dark robe and white wimple, a large satchel carried on a strap between her shoulder and hip.

Dear God, he had brought her a nun, Alienor thought as the woman curtseyed.

‘This is Marchisa,’ Geoffrey said. ‘She is skilled in healing women’s complaints; she comes highly recommended and she will help you.’

Alienor felt too wretched to argue or concern herself with details. She limply waved the young woman to rise. She could have been anything between twenty and thirty with beautiful dark eyes set under well-defined black brows. Although her behaviour was demure, the curve of her lips revealed humour and spirit.

‘Madam, the lord tells me you are sick.’ Her voice musical and fluent. She pressed her hand to Alienor’s forehead. ‘Ah, you are burning,’ she said, and turned round to Geoffrey. ‘The Queen needs to be with her women.’

‘I will leave you then.’ He lingered until Marchisa gave him a stronger look. ‘Make her better,’ he said and ducked out of the tent flaps.

Marchisa returned her attention to Alienor. ‘Your blood must be cooled,’ she said. ‘Permit me.’ With delicate fingers she removed Alienor’s veil and gold net under-cap. She directed the other women to fill a large brass bowl with tepid water. Producing a pouch from her satchel, she sprinkled into it a powder smelling of rose and spices with a clean note of ginger. She gently combed Alienor’s hair, knotted it and pinned it up on her head, and then, dipping a cloth in the scented water, bathed Alienor’s hot face and throat.

‘So many suffer on the road,’ she said as she worked. ‘You eat and drink things you should not; you wear the wrong clothes; you breathe bad humours.’ She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘You must take off your gown.’ She set aside the bowl to unfasten the lacing on Alienor’s dress and help her remove it. ‘Come now, come now.’

Alienor obeyed listlessly. It was almost too much effort to raise and lower her limbs. The coolness was a relief but it also accentuated the discomfort in her stomach, which felt worse in contrast. Marchisa continued to wipe her down, and helped her through another bout of shuddering sickness. When it was over she made Alienor rinse her mouth with a decoction of liquorice and ginger in boiled spring water. She had Alienor’s sour bedclothes stripped and her pallet remade with clean linen.

‘The sire de Rancon is a good man,’ Marchisa said. ‘He is deeply concerned for you.’

Alienor made a small sound of acknowledgement. All she wanted to do was sleep. Marchisa helped her into a clean chemise and saw her tucked into the newly made bed. She anointed her temples with a fresh-smelling unguent. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘You will sleep for a while, and then drink a little and sleep again, and then we shall see.’ Alienor closed her eyes and felt the healer woman’s hand at her brow, cool-palmed and soothing. She dreamed again of Aquitaine, of Bordeaux and Belin, of the roar of the ocean at Talmont. Of Poitiers and the deep green forests of the Limousin uplands. She flew above them on outspread wings like a white gyrfalcon, and her feathers were as cold as snow. The bird’s hunting cry pierced the frozen blue air, and she woke with a sudden gasp. For a moment she lay blinking, uncertain where she was, for the pure, cold blue had vanished and the air she breathed now was dark and scented with spices. She could see the young woman grinding herbs by the soft glow of an oil lamp. As Alienor strove to sit up, she put down the pestle and mortar and came to her side.

‘You have slept well, madam, and the fever is diminished,’ she said, having felt Alienor’s cheek and neck with cool hands. ‘Will you take a drink now?’

Alienor felt light and dizzy, as if all the marrow had been drawn from her bones, leaving them hollow like a bird’s. ‘I dreamed of flying,’ she said and took the cup the young woman handed her, once again tasting the ginger and liquorice mixture. ‘Marchisa,’ she said. ‘I remember your name.’

‘That is so, madam.’ She curtseyed.

‘And how do you come to be in my tent, other than by the grace of the sire de Rancon. Where did he find you? What is your story?’

‘My name is Marchisa de Gençay. I am travelling with my brother to Jerusalem to pray for the souls of our parents.’

Marchisa folded her hands in her lap. ‘As a young man my grandsire went on a pilgrimage and settled on land in the principality of Antioch, where he married my grandmother, a native Christian. She bore him a daughter, and in her turn that daughter married my father, who was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He brought her home to Gençay with him and they lived out their lives there. Now they are both dead and my brother and I are travelling to pray at the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre.’

Alienor sipped the ginger and liquorice tisane. ‘And how are you known to my lord de Rancon?’

‘My brother Elias is a serjeant in his service; the seigneur de Rancon heard that I had some skill with nursing the sick and he thought I might be able to help you.’

‘You have no husband then? I thought perhaps you were a nun.’

Marchisa looked down. ‘I am a widow, madam, and content to remain so. My husband died several years ago. We had no children and I returned home to care for my parents until they too died.’

Alienor absorbed the tale with sympathy but without pity, because she could tell from the set of Marchisa’s jaw that pity was the last thing her pride would accept. She was tired again and she needed to sleep, but a notion was forming in her mind.

By dawn, Alienor was much improved. She drank more of Marchisa’s soothing tisane and ate some bread and honey without bringing it back up.

‘I am in your debt for Marchisa, thank you for sending her,’ she said to Geoffrey when he visited while the army made preparations to set out on the road.

‘She speaks Greek and Arabic too.’ His tone was enthusiastic, like an eager suitor presenting his lady love with a courtship gift. ‘You look much better.’

‘I am on the mend,’ she agreed. ‘Thank you.’

‘I am pleased to be of service, madam.’

There had been no word from Louis, no concern for her wellbeing, although he must know how sick she had been, but Geoffrey had been there immediately. She turned to Marchisa, who had been silent throughout the exchange. ‘I am in your debt,’ she said. ‘I would take you into my household.’

‘I shall be glad to serve you, madam,’ Marchisa replied with a graceful dip of her head that reminded Alienor of a self-contained small cat. ‘But first I must fulfil my duty to my parents and pray at the tomb of the Sepulchre.’

‘Since I will be praying there too, it is settled,’ Alienor replied. ‘Go and fetch your things to my tent.’

Marchisa curtseyed and left. Geoffrey took Alienor’s hands and his lips touched her knuckles. They exchanged a wordless glance, and then he bowed and followed Marchisa outside.

For three more nights, as she recovered, Alienor had the eagle dream. It was always a jolt to awaken and find herself in the dark confines of her tent rather than soaring above the world, but each time the dream came, she felt stronger and more sure of herself. Louis had still not visited to see how she fared, although he sent messages via Geoffrey, who visited Louis’s daily councils and reported back to her.

‘The King is delighted you are recovering and glad that his daily prayers for your wellbeing have been successful,’ Geoffrey said with the neutrality of a polished courtier.

Alienor raised her brows. ‘How gracious of him. What else?’

He gave her a questioning look. ‘About you?’

She shook her head. ‘I doubt there is anything I want to hear on that score from his lips. I meant what news of Constantinople?’

Geoffrey’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘The King has still heard nothing from the lords he sent as heralds. The Emperor’s envoys say all is well and our men are preparing for our arrival, but we have no news of our own. They could be dead for all we know.’

‘We should consider this carefully.’ Alienor paced the tent. ‘If we are to deal with the Greeks successfully, we must be as cunning as they are, and know their ways. We must learn from them everything we can.’

Geoffrey rubbed his hands over his face. ‘I dream of Gençay and Taillebourg. The harvest will recently be in and the woods full of mushrooms. My son will have grown again, and Burgundia will have made me a grandfather by now.’