The Summer Queen (3 page)

The door opened and the Archbishop walked into the room. He had exchanged his elaborate mitre for a plain felt cap and his magnificent outer garments for an ordinary brown habit girded with a simple knotted belt. Tucked under his arm was a carved ivory box. ‘I thought I would find you here, daughter,’ he said.

Alienor felt a little resentful, but said nothing. She could hardly tell the Archbishop of Bordeaux to go away, and a small, forlorn part of her wanted to cling to him, even as she had wanted to cling to her father.

He set the box down on a table beside her chair and lifted the lid. ‘Your father asked me to give you this,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you remember it from when you were small.’ From a lining of soft white fleece, he produced a pear-shaped vase fashioned of clear rock crystal, the surface intricately worked in a honeycomb effect. ‘He said it was like you – precious and unique. When it gives off its light, it enhances all things that surround it.’

Alienor swallowed. ‘I do remember it,’ she said, ‘but I have not seen it since I was small.’

Unspoken between them lay the detail that this beautiful thing had been a gift from her father to her mother at their marriage, and at her death it had been put away in the cathedral treasury at Bordeaux and seldom brought out.

She cupped the vase in her hands and put it down gently on the trestle. The light from the window struck through the crystal, scattering rainbow-coloured lozenges across the white cloth. Alienor gasped at the unexpected, shimmering display. Her eyes blurred on a prism of tears, and she choked back a sob.

‘Ah, daughter, hush now.’ Gofrid came round the table to embrace her. ‘All will be well, I promise you. I am here; I will care for you.’

They were the same words she always used to Petronella, whatever the truth of the matter; they were like a bandage on a wound. It might not heal the injury, but it made it easier to bear. She laid her head on his breast and allowed herself to cry, but eventually drew away, and lifted her chin. The sun still dazzled on the vase and she put her hand in the light to see the colours dance on her wrist: vermilion, cerulean and royal purple.

‘Without the light the beauty remains hidden,’ Gofrid said. ‘But it is always there. Just like God’s love, or a father’s, or mother’s. Remember that, Alienor. You are loved, whether you see it or not.’

In the third week following Easter Sunday the weather was bright and warm, and as the sun climbed in the soft spring morning, Alienor and Petronella took their sewing into the palace gardens with the ladies of the household. Musicians played softly in the background on harp and citole, singing of spring and renewal and unrequited longing. The water splashed in the marble fountains, making a drowsy sound in the fine golden warmth.

The ladies, emboldened because Floreta was absent about other duties, chattered to themselves, emulating the sparrows that bustled in the mulberry trees. Their foolish banter irritated Alienor. She did not want to become involved in gossip about who was making eyes at whom, and whether the baby the under-steward’s wife was expecting was her husband’s or the result of an affair with a young hearth knight. When Alienor was a child, her maternal grandmother’s household in Poitiers had seethed with such trivial but damaging rumours and she hated to hear them passed around like tawdry currency. Dangereuse de Châtellerault had been her grandfather’s mistress, not his wife; he had lived openly with her, flouting all opinion save his own, and there had been frequent accusations of moral laxity. Once gossip began, there was no stopping it; a reputation could be destroyed in moments by a few malicious whispers.

‘Enough,’ she snapped, exerting her authority. ‘I would listen to the music in peace.’

The women exchanged glances but fell silent. Alienor took a piece of candied pear from a platter at her side and bit into the sugary flesh. They were her favourite confection and she had taken to gorging on them. Their intense sweetness was a consolation, while knowing she could have them any time she chose gave her a sense of control. Yet there was discontent too, for what use was it to have command over the petty gossip of maids and the ordering of sweetmeats? Such things were no more than gaudy flourishes and there was no satisfaction in such empty power.

A woman began showing Petronella how to make dainty daisy flowers using a particular embroidery stitch. Alienor abandoned her own sewing and went to stroll around the garden. A dull headache banded her temples, not helped by the circlet at her brow. Her monthly flux was due, and her stomach ached. She had not been sleeping well, her dreams haunted by nightmares that she could not remember on waking, but the feeling was always of being trapped.

She paused beside a young cherry tree and lightly brushed the green orbs of developing fruit with her hand. By the time her father returned, the fruit would be dark red, verging on black. Full and sweet and ripe.

‘Daughter.’

Only two people called her that. She turned to face Archbishop Gofrid and even before he spoke, she knew what he was going to say, because the look on his face, full of trouble and compassion, told it all.

‘I have some bad news,’ he said.

‘It is about my father, isn’t it?’

‘Child, you should sit down.’

She faced him squarely. ‘He is not coming back, is he?’

He looked taken aback, but swiftly recovered his balance. ‘Child, I am sorry to say that he died on Good Friday within sight of Compostela and was buried there at the feet of Saint James.’ His voice had a hoarse catch. ‘He is with God now and free from his pain. He had been unwell for some time.’

Grief shuddered through her like the surges of an underground tide. She had known from the outset that something was wrong, but no one had seen fit to tell her, least of all her father.

Gofrid gave her the sapphire ring he had been holding in his hand. ‘He sent you this, so you would know, and he bade you do your best as you have always done and to heed the advice of your guardians.’

She looked at the ring and remembered it shining on her father’s finger as he set out on his journey. She felt as if the bottom had dropped out of her world and everything that was stable had lurched downwards in one piece. Raising her head, she gazed across the garden towards her sister who was laughing at something a maid had said. In a moment that laughter would cease and in its place would come grief and tears as Petronella’s world shattered too, and that was almost harder to bear than her own shock and grief.

‘What will happen to us?’ She tried to sound pragmatic and mature, even though she could not control the wobble in her voice.

Gofrid closed her fist over the ring. ‘You will be looked after, do not worry. Your father left sound provision for you in his will.’ He moved to embrace her with compassion, but she stepped away and set her jaw.

‘I am not a child.’

Gofrid let his hands fall to his sides. ‘But you are still so very young,’ he replied. ‘Your sister …’ He looked towards the group of women.

‘I will tell Petronella,’ she said firmly. ‘No one else.’

He made a gesture of acknowledgement, although his expression was creased with concern. ‘As you wish, daughter.’

Alienor returned to the women, Gofrid walking at her side. After the maids had curtseyed to him, Alienor dismissed them and sat down beside her sister.

‘Look what I have sewn!’ Petronella held up the kerchief on which she had been working. One corner was carpeted with white daisies, golden knots at their centres. Petronella’s brown eyes were alight. ‘I’m going to give this to Papa when he comes home!’

Alienor bit her lip. ‘Petra,’ she said, putting her arm around her. ‘Listen. I have something to tell you.’

Fetched from his prayers, Louis entered his father’s sickroom in the top chamber of the castle. The wide-open shutters admitted a light breeze and revealed twin arches of blue spring sky. Bowls of incense burned on various tables around the room, but did little to dissipate the stench from his father’s decaying, swollen body. Louis swallowed a retch as he knelt at the bedside and made his obeisance. He almost shuddered as his father’s hand touched the top of his head in benediction.

‘Stand up.’ Louis senior’s voice was gravelly with secretions. ‘Let me look at you.’

Louis strove to control his anxiety. His father’s body might be a bloated ruin, but the ice-blue eyes still showed the mind and will of the keen hunter, soldier and king trapped within the dying flesh. Louis always felt defensive in his father’s presence. He was the second son, intended for a career in the Church, but when his older brother had died in a riding accident, Louis had been brought from his studies at Saint-Denis and made heir to the kingdom. It was God’s decision and Louis knew he must serve in whatever way God wanted, but it had not been his choice – and certainly not his parents’.

His mother stood by the curtains at the right of the bedside, her hands clasped in front of her and her lips pursed in the habitual expression that said she knew best and he knew nothing. To her left stood several of his father’s closest advisers, including his mother’s brothers William and Amadée. Also Theobald, Count of Blois. Louis’s apprehension increased.

His father made a sound down his nose, like a horse-trader not entirely satisfied with the beast on offer but knowing it would have to do. ‘I have a task that will make a man of you,’ he said.

‘Sire?’ Louis’s throat was tight, and his voice emerged on a rising note that betrayed his tension.

‘A matter of marriage vows. Suger will tell you; he has the breath in his lungs to do so, and he is fond of the sound of his own voice.’ His father beckoned, and the small, squirrel-eyed Abbot of Saint-Denis stepped forward from among the group, a scroll held in his thin fingers, and a reproachful look on his face for the King’s jibe.

Louis blinked.
Marriage vows?

‘Sire, we have great and important news for you.’ Suger’s voice was mellifluous and his expression was open and candid. As well as being one of his father’s closest confidants, Suger was Louis’s tutor and mentor. Louis loved him as he did not love his father because Suger helped him to make sense of the world and understood his needs. ‘William of Aquitaine has died during a pilgrimage to Compostela, may God assoil him.’ Suger signed his breast. ‘Before he left, he sent his will to France, asking your father to care for his daughters in the event of his death. The eldest is thirteen and of marriageable age, and the younger one eleven.’

Louis’s father heaved himself into an approximation of upright against the mass of pillows and bolsters supporting his distended torso. ‘We must seize the opportunity,’ he wheezed. ‘Aquitaine and Poitou will increase our lands and prestige a hundredfold. We cannot allow them to fall into the hands of others. Geoffrey of Anjou for one would gladly snatch the duchy with a marriage between his son and the eldest girl, and that must not happen.’ The effort expended on speech left him purple in the face and fighting for breath and he waved at Suger to continue.

Suger cleared his throat. ‘Your father wishes you to take an army down to Bordeaux to secure the region, and to marry the eldest girl. She is currently under guard at the Ombrière Palace and the Archbishop awaits your arrival.’

Louis reeled, feeling as if he had been punched in the stomach. He knew one day he would have to marry and beget heirs, but he had always viewed it as a vaguely unpleasant duty in the distant future. Now he was being told he must wed a girl he had never met who came from lands where the people were known to be pleasure-seekers, lax in their moral habits.

‘I will see to the girls’ education in our ways,’ his mother said, securing her own authority in the proceedings. ‘They have been without maternal care for many years, and they will benefit from proper guidance and instruction.’

His father’s constable, Raoul de Vermandois, stepped forward. ‘Sire, I will begin preparations to leave immediately.’ He was another close adviser, and Louis’s first cousin once removed into the bargain. A leather patch concealed the empty socket where he had lost an eye during a siege eight years ago. He was a reliable warhorse on the battlefield, and an elegant and charismatic courtier, much appreciated by the ladies. The eye patch only added to his cachet where women were concerned.

‘Make haste, Raoul,’ said the King. ‘Time is of the essence.’ He raised a warning forefinger. ‘It is to be an escort of honour and largesse; the Poitevans value such things and we must keep their goodwill at all costs. Fly banners from your spears and wear ribbons round your helms. Make sure that for now you go bearing gifts, not blades.’

‘Sire, leave it to me.’ De Vermandois bowed from the room, his magnificent cloak sweeping behind him like a sail.

Louis knelt to receive his father’s blessing again, and somehow managed to leave the fetid chamber before doubling over to be violently sick. He did not want to take a wife. He knew nothing of girls except that their soft curves, their giggles and twittery voices repulsed him. His mother was not like that; she was a rod of iron, but she had never given him love. The only affection in his world had come from God, but God now seemed to be saying he should be married. Perhaps it was a punishment for his sins that he should have to do this thing, and therefore he should accept it gladly and give praise.

As servants rushed to clear up the mess he had made, Suger emerged from the chamber and was swiftly at his side. ‘Ah, Louis, Louis.’ The Abbé put a comforting arm across the youth’s shoulders. ‘I know this is a shock, but it is God’s will and you must surrender to it. He offers you magnificent opportunities, and a girl near to your own age to be your wife and helpmate. This is truly a moment to rejoice.’

Louis composed himself under Suger’s calming influence. If this was truly the will of God, then he must submit and do his best. ‘I do not even know her name,’ he said.

‘I believe it is Alienor, sire.’

Louis silently formed the syllables on his lips. Her name was like a foreign fruit he had never tasted before. He still felt like heaving.