The Summer Queen

5

Bordeaux, July 1137

In the stultifying heat of early July the arrangements for the arrival of the French bridegroom and his army continued apace. News came to Bordeaux that Louis had reached Limoges in time to celebrate the feast of Saint Martial on 30 June. He had taken the homage of the Count of Toulouse and those barons of the Limousin who had come to tender their fealty as news of the impending wedding spread across Alienor’s lands. Now, accompanied by Alienor’s vassals, the French cavalcade had set out on the final stage of its journey.

From cellar to turret, Bordeaux prepared for Louis’s arrival. Hostels were swept out and decorated with banners and garlands. Cartloads of supplies rolled into the city from the surrounding countryside, together with herds and flocks for the slaughter. Seamstresses toiled over yards of pale gold cloth of escarlet, sewing a wedding gown fit for their new duchess and a future queen of France. The train was hemmed with hundreds of pearls and the sleeves swept from wrist to ankle with decorative golden hooks to loop them back should they get in the way.

In the dawn of a baking July morning, Alienor attended church to confess and be shriven. On her return, her women robed her in a gown of ivory damask, the gold laces pulled tight to emphasise her slender waist. A jewelled cap covered the top of her head, but her burnished hair remained exposed, the thick strands woven with metallic ribbons. Her nails were pink with madder stain and had been buffed until they gleamed. Alienor felt as if she had been polished to a shine just like the silver-gilt cups intended for the marriage feast.

Through the open shutters the sky was a pure summer blue. Doves circled the red tiled roof of the palace cote and the river sparkled like a treasure chest in the morning heat. Alienor gazed at the French tents on the far bank, arrayed like clusters of exotic mushrooms. Louis and his army had arrived shortly before dusk yesterday, and had made camp as the sun sank over the limpid waters of the Garonne. The pale canvases of the ordinary troops marked the French periphery, while the centre blazed with the bright silks and golden finials of the high nobility and the Church. She fixed her eyes on the largest pavilion of them all: lapis blue and powdered gold with the red oriflamme banner fluttering in the hot breeze outside its open flaps. She could see men coming and going but had no idea if one of them was her prospective husband.

All along the riverbank, small boats and barges plied their trade, rowing supplies of food and drink to the host on the far bank. A deputation of vessels sculled out towards the French encampment, the oars making white dashes in the water. Banners decorated the lead barge, which was draped with a canvas awning to shade its occupants from the sun, and she could see the figure of Archbishop Gofrid standing near the prow. They were on their way to greet the French delegation and bring Louis and his courtiers to the city for a formal first meeting of bride and groom.

Louis wouldn’t be fat, she told herself, trying to be positive. This was all happening for the greater good. But her stomach was hollow because it did not feel as if it was for the greater good, and she was moving ever further away from familiar shores.

Petronella joined her, jostling at the window. She was dancing on her tiptoes and the liveliest Alienor had seen her since their father’s death. Her initial upset at the news of the wedding had been subsumed by the excitement of the preparations. She adored fine clothes, distractions and entertainments, and this was satisfying all those appetites.

The Archbishop and her uncle disembarked on the opposite bank of the river and a servant hurried to the great blue and gold tent. Moments later a gathering of brightly clad courtiers emerged.

‘Which one do you think is Louis? Which one?’ Petronella craned her neck.

Alienor shook her head. ‘I do not know.’

‘That one – there in the blue!’ Petronella stretched her arm and pointed.

Alienor could see various churchmen in glittering regalia, and many nobles, but several were wearing blue and they were too far away for her to make a guess.

The awning shaded the party as the crew began to pull back across the water, but unlike her sister, Alienor felt as if she was watching an invasion rather than the joyful approach of a bridegroom and his retinue.

Louis felt sick with apprehension as the barge moored beneath the great walls of the Ombrière Palace. Envoys kept telling him how beautiful, gracious and demure his bride-to-be was, but envoys often told lies. He was keeping a tight rein on himself and hoping his fear did not show on his face for others to see. His father had entrusted this responsibility to him and he had to deal with it like a man.

The intense heat made it difficult to breathe. He could almost taste the sun-warmed canvas of the awning and feel it sticking at the back of his throat. Archbishop Gofrid of Bordeaux looked as if he were melting, sweat dribbling down his red face from the soaked brow-band of his embroidery-crusted mitre. He had greeted Louis with gravity and deference, and had added a smile for Abbot Suger who was an old friend and ally.

Louis’s seneschal, Raoul of Vermandois, wiped the back of his neck with a chequered silk cloth. ‘I have never known a summer so hot,’ he said, mopping carefully around the leather patch over his left eye.

‘You will find the palace cool and pleasant, my lords,’ the Archbishop said. ‘It was built long ago as a refuge from the summer heat.’

Louis glanced at the towering walls. The palace of Shade; the palace of Shadows. There was more than one meaning here. ‘We will welcome it, Archbishop,’ he said. ‘We often travelled after dusk and by moonlight to avoid the heat on the way here.’

‘Indeed,’ Gofrid replied, ‘and we are glad for your haste in this matter.’

Louis inclined his head. ‘My father understood the necessity.’

‘The Duchess looks forward to welcoming you.’

‘As I look forward to greeting her,’ Louis answered woodenly.

Raoul of Vermandois tossed a flash of silver coins into the water and they watched as youths dived for them, brown bodies glistening. ‘Your father said we should treat these people with courtesy and largesse,’ he said, grinning at Louis’s raised brows.

Louis was not certain that his father had meant quite so low down the pecking order, but Raoul was a man of cheerful and spontaneous gestures, and it could do no harm to throw money for the city youths to dive after, even if it was frivolous and less dignified than giving alms at the church door.

Once disembarked, they were greeted by various clergy and nobles before being escorted in slow procession under a shaded palanquin to the cathedral of Saint-André where Louis was to wed his young bride on the following day.

He entered under the decorated arch of the portico and stood in the holy presence of God. The cathedral interior was a cool and blessed haven from the burn of the midsummer sun. Drawing in the mingled scents of incense and candle wax, Louis sighed with relief. This was familiar territory. He walked down the nave with its decorated pillars and when he reached the altar steps, he signed his breast and prostrated himself.

‘Dear God, I am your servant. Grant me the strength to do Your will and not fail. Grant me Your grace and lead me along the paths of righteousness.’

This was where he and Alienor would celebrate their wedding. He still found it difficult to say her name, much less imagine her person. They said she was beautiful, but beauty was in the eye of the beholder. He wished he was home in Paris and safe behind the solid walls of Notre-Dame or Saint-Denis.

At the sound of a fanfare, he turned his gaze down the nave. The columns made a tunnel of golden arches, leading his eye to the brightness of the open doorway. A girl came walking through the light towards him, accompanied by attendants, and for an instant his eyes were so dazzled that the entire group seemed to have a radiance not of this world. She was tall and slender; her deep-golden hair shimmered to her waist but the top of her head was decently covered by a virgin’s jewelled cap. Her face was a pale, pure oval, not overtly feminine, but wrought with a blend of precise strength and delicacy that made Louis think of an angel.

She knelt to kiss the Archbishop’s ring, and once he had raised her to her feet, she set her hand upon his arm and continued down the nave to Louis. ‘Sire,’ she said, kneeling again, and from that position lifted her eyes to his. They were the mutable colour of the ocean, full of truth and intelligence, and Louis felt as if his heart had been set upon an anvil and struck into a different shape with a single blow.

‘Demoiselle,’ he said. ‘I am pleased to meet you and to offer you the honour of marriage so that our great lands may be united.’ The words emerged by rote, because he had been rehearsing them with Suger in his tent for most of the previous evening, sweating in the canvas-intensified heat, the whine of mosquitoes in his ears. Saying them now, he regained a little of his equilibrium, although his heart was still bounding like a deer at full leap.

‘As I am honoured to meet you, sire,’ she replied, lowering her lashes, and then added with a little catch in her voice, ‘and to accept your offer of marriage as my father desired.’

Louis realised she must have been practising too and like him was anxious. He felt relieved, then protective and superior. She was more perfect than he had dared hope. God had answered his doubts and shown him that this was truly meant to be. Having a wife was a natural progression of manhood and kingship, because a king needed a consort. He raised her to her feet and kissed her lightly and swiftly on both cheeks, and then drew back, his chest tight.

She demurely introduced the girl beside her as her sister Petronella. This one was still a child, smaller and brown-haired with a heart-shaped face and a sensuous rosebud mouth. She curtseyed to Louis and, after a single sharp look from bright brown eyes, lowered her gaze. Other than to think that she would make a fine reward for one of his French nobles, Louis dismissed her from his mind to attend to the matter in hand. Turning with Alienor to the altar, he pledged himself in formal betrothal, his hands trembling as he slipped a gold ring on to her right middle finger. And at that moment, he was certain that God had favoured him with such bounty that he was overwhelmed.

A celebration feast had been prepared at the Ombrière Palace. Tables spread with white napery had been arranged in the garden cloister so that guests could sit in the open air, well shaded from the sun, and listen to musicians while they dined.

Alienor smiled and answered when addressed, but she was preoccupied and finding conversation difficult. A huge weight had landed on her with Louis’s arrival and the knowledge that the changes in her life were now irrevocable. There were too many new people to weigh up, all so different in their speech and mannerisms to her own courtiers. They spoke the dialect of northern France, which she understood because it was the common language of Poitou, but the Parisian cadence was harsher on the ear. Their garments were of thicker, more sombre cloth, and they seemed to lack the vibrancy of her people. But then they had been travelling hard in the blistering summer heat, so perhaps she should give them the benefit of the doubt.

Her fears that Louis would be fat and loutish were ungrounded. He was tall and narrow through the hips like a good gazehound. He had glorious, shoulder-length, silver-blond hair and wide blue eyes. His mouth was thin but well formed. She found his manner stilted and rule-bound, but that could be caused by the pressures of the day. He did not smile much – unlike his seneschal, Raoul de Vermandois, who never seemed to stop. De Vermandois was showing Petronella his sleight of hand by hiding a small glass ball under one of three cups and getting her to guess where the ball was. She was giggling at his antics, her eyes shining. The rest of the French party were more watchful and reserved, as if they all had planks stuck down the backs of their tunics. Theobald, Count of Blois Champagne, was eyeing de Vermandois with irritation, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Alienor wondered at the tension between the men. There was so much she did not know, so much she had to take in and assimilate.

At least, even if he was reserved, Louis did not appear to be an ogre, and she could probably find ways of influencing him. It might be more difficult to circumvent the older men, especially Suger and Louis’s uncles Amadée de Maurienne and William de Montferrat, but she had been accustomed to getting her own way with her father, and there would be occasions when she would have Louis to herself with no one to interfere. She was of a similar age to him and that meant they had some common ground.

When everyone had eaten and drunk their fill, Louis formally presented Alienor with the wedding gifts he had brought from France. There were books with ivory cover panels, reliquaries, boxes of precious stones, silver chalices, glass cups from the workshops of Tyre, tapis rugs, bolts of fine fabric. Boxes and chests and sacks. Alienor’s eyes ached at the largesse. Louis presented her with a pectoral cross studded with rubies as red as small drops of blood. ‘This belonged to my grandmother,’ he said as he fastened it around her neck and then stepped back, breathing swiftly.

‘It is magnificent,’ Alienor replied, which was the truth, even if she did not particularly like the piece.

His expression had been anxious, but now he stood tall and proud. ‘You have given me the coronet of Aquitaine,’ he said. ‘It would be a poor thing indeed if I could not gift my bride with the wealth of France in return.’

Alienor felt a frisson of resentment. Although she owed him homage as a vassal of France, Aquitaine belonged to her and always would no matter that he was to be invested with the ducal coronet after their wedding. At least the marriage contract stipulated that her lands were not to be absorbed into France but were to remain a separate duchy. ‘I have something for you also.’ She beckoned, and a chamberlain stepped forward with a carved ivory box. Alienor carefully lifted her vase from its fleece lining. The dimpled rock crystal was cool against her fingers as she turned and presented it formally to Louis.

‘My grandfather brought this back with him from a holy war in Spain,’ she said. ‘It is of great antiquity.’

The vase looked austere and simple when set against the opulent gifts that Louis had given her, but the backdrop only added to its impact. Holding the piece in his hands, Louis kissed her brow. ‘It is like you,’ he said, ‘clear and fine and unique.’ He set it down gently on the table, and immediately a shower of coloured diamonds spangled the white cloth. Louis’s face filled with astonished delight. Alienor smiled to see his response and thought that while he had given her all these rich and heavy things, her gift to him of captured light surpassed them all.

‘May I?’ Without waiting for consent, Abbé Suger picked up the vase in eager hands, his gaze frankly acquisitive. ‘Exquisite,’ he said. ‘I have never seen such fine workmanship.’ He ran his fingers over the carving in tactile delight. ‘See how clear it is, and yet it reflects all the colours of a cathedral window. Truly this is God’s work.’

Alienor suppressed the urge to snatch it from him. Suger was a close friend of Archbishop Gofrid and she ought to be delighted by his admiration.

‘Abbé Suger is fascinated by such items,’ Louis said with a smile. ‘He has a fine collection at Saint-Denis, as you will see when we return to Paris.’

Suger carefully replaced the vase on the trestle. ‘I do not make the collection for me,’ he said with a hint of rebuke, ‘but for the glorification of God through beauty.’

‘Indeed, Father.’ Louis flushed like a scolded boy.

After one sharp glance, Alienor looked down. She had noticed how often Louis glanced at Suger, seeking approval and support. This man could be friend or foe and he had Louis at his beck and call. She would need to tread very carefully indeed.

Later in the afternoon, as the sun cooled on the river and the Ombrière Palace drew on a mantle of deeper, slumbrous shadows, Louis prepared to return to his camp across the river. He had become more relaxed as the day wore on, and he was smiling as he took his farewell of Alienor, setting his thumb over the ring he had given her and kissing her cheek. His lips were silky and warm, and his fledgling beard was soft against her skin. ‘I will visit again tomorrow,’ he said.

Something inside Alienor unclenched and opened. The notion of marrying him had begun to feel more solid – reality, rather than the cloudy haze of a dream. Louis seemed decent enough; he had been kind thus far and he was handsome. Matters could have been much worse.

Embarking to his camp across a sunset river of sheeted gold, Louis raised his hand in farewell and Alienor returned the gesture with a half-smile on her lips.

‘Well, daughter,’ said Archbishop Gofrid, coming to stand at her side, ‘have your fears been allayed?’

‘Yes, Father,’ she replied, knowing it was what he wanted to hear.

‘Louis is a fine, devout young man. I am much impressed by him. Abbé Suger has tutored him well.’

Alienor nodded again. She was still trying to decide whether Suger was ally or foe, no matter that he was Gofrid’s friend.

‘I am pleased you gave him the vase.’

‘Nothing else would match what he had brought to me,’ she said. She wondered if her tutor had brought out the vase from the depths of the treasury with that intention. She firmed her lips. ‘I am glad Abbé Bernard of Clairvaux was not among their number.’

Gofrid raised his brows.

Alienor grimaced. Twice the redoubtable Abbé Bernard had visited her father, on both occasions to harangue him about his support for the opposition during a papal schism. She had only been a small child on his first visit and vaguely remembered him patting her head. He had been as thin as a lance, and had smelled musty, like old wall hangings. The second time, when she was twelve, Bernard and her father had argued violently in the church at La Couldre. It had been at the start of her father’s illness, and Abbé Bernard, with his stabbing bony finger, blazing eyes and eloquent speech threatening the fires of hell, had brought her father to his knees at the altar, and claimed it was God’s judgement on a sinner. Alienor had feared that Abbé Bernard might be among the French ecclesiasts and had been mightily relieved when he wasn’t. ‘He humiliated my father,’ she said.

‘Bernard of Clairvaux is a very holy man,’ Gofrid admonished gently. ‘Above all he seeks the clear path to God and if sometimes he is critical or zealous, then it is for the common good and for God to judge, not us. If you encounter him in Paris, I trust you to act with good and proper judgement as befits your position.’

‘Yes, Father,’ Alienor said neutrally, although she felt mutinous.

Gofrid pressed a light kiss to her brow. ‘I am proud of you, as would your father be if he were here.’

Alienor swallowed, determined not to cry. If her father were here, she would not have to make this marriage. She would be cherished and safe and all would be well. If she thought too hard about it, she knew she would blame him for dying and leaving her this legacy in his will.

In Alienor’s absence the wedding presents from Louis had been moved to her chamber and placed on a trestle for her to examine at leisure. Many items were only in her custody for a brief time; she would be expected to make gifts of them to the Church, or bestow them upon families of importance and influence. There was a reliquary containing a sliver of bone from the leg of Saint James. The casing was of silver gilt, decorated with pearls and precious stones, and a little door of hinged rock crystal opened to reveal a gold box containing the precious fragment. There were two enamelled candlesticks, two silver censers and a box filled with tawny shards and lumps of aromatic frankincense.

For Alienor’s personal use, there was a circlet adorned with gems, as well as brooches, rings and pendants. Petronella had been given a chaplet fashioned from exquisite golden roses set with pearls and sapphires. She wore it now, pinned to her brown waves, while she played with some coloured glass balls Raoul of Vermandois had given to her.

Alienor looked round; there were yet more boxes to be examined and she felt like a diner at a banquet with an excess of courses. There was too much richness, too much gold enclosing and smothering her. In haste she changed her elaborate gown for one of plain, cool linen and replaced her dainty embroidered shoes with her riding boots. ‘I am going to the stables to see Ginnet,’ she said.

‘I’ll come with you.’ Petronella put the glass balls away in her coffer. When Alienor suggested she should remove the golden chaplet, Petronella shook her head and pouted. ‘I want to keep it on,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I won’t lose it.’

Alienor gave her an exasperated glance but held her peace. Arguing with Petronella over such a trifle was too much trouble on top of everything else.

In the stables, Ginnet greeted Alienor with a soft whicker and eagerly sought the crust of bread her mistress had brought as a treat. Alienor stroked her, taking comfort in the sweet smell of straw and horse. ‘You’re going to be all right,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll take you with me to Paris; I won’t leave you behind, I promise.’

Petronella leaned against the stable door watching Alienor intently as if the words were meant for her. Alienor closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the mare’s smooth, warm neck. In a world where so much had changed so rapidly, she was taking what solace she could from the dear and non-judgemental familiar. She would rather bed down in the stable than return to her chamber and that glittering pile of wedding gifts.

As full dusk fell, Petronella plucked at Alienor’s sleeve. ‘I want to walk in the garden,’ she said. ‘I want to see the fireflies.’

Alienor allowed Petronella to lead her to the courtyard where they had feasted earlier. It was much cooler now, although the walls still gave off soft warmth. Servants had stacked the trestles against a wall and cleared away the white cloths and fine tableware. The fish in the courtyard pond made lazy splashes as they leaped for midges in the last reflection of light. The air was thick with an ancient smell of baked stone. Alienor’s heart was heavy. On top of losing her father and being pushed into a marriage not of her choosing, she now had to leave her home and go to Paris in the company of strangers, one of them her own bridegroom.

She remembered childhood play here: darting around the columns, playing tag with Petronella. Colours, images and echoes of laughter wove like a transparent ribbon through the reality of now and were gone.

Petronella gave her a sudden, fierce hug. ‘Do you think it will be all right?’ she asked, burying her head against Alienor’s shoulder. ‘You said it to Ginnet, but is it true? I’m scared.’

‘Of course it’s true!’ Alienor had to close her eyes as she hugged her sister, because this was unbearable. ‘Of course we are going to be all right!’ She drew Petronella to sit on the old stone bench by the pond where they had so often sat in childhood, and together they watched the fireflies twinkle in and out like hopes in the darkness.

Louis gazed at the vase. He had placed it on the small devotional table in his tent beside his crucifix and his ivory statue of the Virgin. The simplicity and value of the gift filled him with wonder, as did the girl who had presented it to him. She was so utterly different to everything he had expected. Her name, which so recently had seemed like a strange, unpleasant taste when he spoke it, was now honey on his tongue. She filled him up, and yet he still felt hollow, and did not know how this could be. When the light from the vase had spilled on to the tablecloth, he had taken it as a sign from God that the forthcoming marriage was divinely blessed. Their union was like this vessel, waiting to be filled with light, so that it could shine forth with God’s grace.

Kneeling before the table, he pressed his forehead against his clasped palms and thanked his maker with his heart and soul.