The Summer Queen

21

Paris, June 1144

The dedication of the refurbished and extended basilica church of Saint-Denis, burial place of the Kings of France, took place on 11 June and drew crowds of worshippers from all across France. The small town of Saint-Denis had grown fields of tents overnight. Every lodging house bulged at the seams, and every guest house within a twenty-mile radius was packed with visiting travellers. Everyone was eager to see the remodelled church, its glittering interior said to resemble a bejewelled reliquary built to house the presence of God. Even the mortar was flecked with gemstones.

Alienor had slept in the abbey lodging house, while Louis had spent his own night in vigil with Suger, the monks of the abbey and various ecclesiastics, including thirteen bishops and five archbishops.

Alienor had shared the guest room with her mother-in-law, who had travelled from her dower lands for the ceremony. The women had been civil but cold with each other. They had not shared company since the Christmas feast, and that at least made tolerance possible. Adelaide eyed Alienor’s ruby silk dress with a slight curl of her lip as if she found it garish and distasteful, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Nor did she mention Petronella and Raoul, although the very absence of the subject was like a dark hole in the middle of the conversations they did have. Petronella and Raoul were absent because they were excommunicate and not permitted to enter a church.

In the hazy morning, still cool and dusky blue, the women left the guest quarters and processed to the church with its new doors of gilded bronze, inscribed in lettering of copper-gilt. The noble work is bright, but, being nobly bright, the work should brighten the minds, allowing them to travel through the lights to the true light, where Christ is the true door. Alienor read the words and then raised her eyes to the lintel where was written: Receive, stern Judge, the prayers of your Suger. Let me be mercifully numbered among your sheep.

Suger’s stamp was everywhere, if not in actual name as it was on the doors, then in all the glittering gold and jewels and colour-stained light flooding through the lucent glass windows. The gold altar front was studded with a fortune in amethysts, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Adorning the choir a magnificent cross stood twenty feet tall, ornamented with gold and gems, crafted by famed Mosan goldsmiths. The darkness shone. Alienor felt as if she were at the heart of a jewel, or indeed a reliquary, and was glad she had worn her gown of red silk with all its adornments, for it made her feel as if she were a part of this glowing, luminous tableau.

Borne aloft by Louis, who was dressed in the simple robes of a penitent, the silver reliquary containing the sacred bones of Saint Denis were processed around the exterior of the abbey in drifts of fragrant smoke. Suger and the attendant clergy sprinkled the outer walls with holy water contained in silver aspergillums and then returned to the congregation, who also received a judicious sprinkling. Louis placed the reliquary on the gem-studded altar and prostrated himself, body stretched out in the shape of a cross. His skin was bone-white and shadows of fatigue hollowed his face, but his eyes were filled with light and his lips were parted with rapture. The glorious sound of the choir rose with the frankincense and dissolved into the coloured radiance from the windows.

Alienor was surprised to be moved by the experience, because she had expected it to be just another of Suger’s ceremonies. Instead she felt the presence and breath of God. Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision to a liquid prism. Beside her, Adelaide quietly dabbed her own eyes with her sleeve while her husband patted her arm. Louis filed out with the monks at the end of the ceremony, looking dazed – almost drunk.

By noon, the dedication was finished but the celebrations continued into the hot summer afternoon. The poor were provided with alms of bread and wine. Vendors sold refreshment from stalls set up outside the abbey. Some pilgrims had brought their own food and found patches of shade in which to sit and eat. People queued to look at the incredible array of relics and decoration that Suger had lavished on the abbey and to read the pictorial stories in the marvellous windows.

Alone, because Louis was still with the monks, Alienor paused by a lectern of an eagle, wings outspread. She had paid to have it regilded because its pinions had been rubbed bare by the constant touch of pilgrims and worshippers, and after all it was her symbol as Duchess of Aquitaine.

A monk came softly to her side and murmured the summons she had been anticipating. A small feeling of dread unfurled in her stomach. Bidding her ladies and household knights stay behind, she accompanied the monk to an upstairs chamber of the abbey guest house. As he knocked on the door and set his hand on the latch, she drew a deep breath and steeled herself.

Within, waiting for her, was Bernard of Clairvaux, clad in a greyish-white habit of unwashed wool. He looked more undernourished than ever, with a fever flush reddening his cheekbones. Although his expression was composed, she could sense that his tension mirrored her own. They were here to negotiate, but neither of them desired to be in the other’s presence.

She wondered what he thought of Saint-Denis, for his own vision of the worship of God was a practice of plain simplicity, in which wealth and precious objects were to be shunned. He had rebuked Suger before now for his interest in material goods, and yet he had attended the consecration. Perhaps it made him feel superior, or perhaps he wanted to observe in order to write one of his damning sermons.

She curtseyed to him and he bowed to her, but it was like two opponents entering the arena. ‘Father, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we can reach a better understanding with each other today than we have had before.’

‘Indeed, my daughter,’ he replied. ‘That is also my wish.’

Her red silk gown rustled over the tiled floor as she moved further into the room and sat down on a cushioned bench. She saw his nostrils flare and his lip curl. He often spoke disparagingly of women who enhanced their appearance with the fur of animals and the work of worms, but then his own robe was but the woven fleece of a sheep. She thought him afraid of the sexual power women wielded, so very different from that of an ascetic male.

She folded her hands in her lap and sat with her spine erect. ‘I am here in the role of peacemaker to ask you to use your influence and petition Pope Celestine to lift the excommunication and marriage ban on my sister Petronella and her husband,’ she said. ‘In return for which, my husband will accept Pierre de la Châtre as Archbishop of Bourges and make a peace treaty with the Count of Champagne.’

He stared at her without speaking, but the silence was eloquent.

‘Do you have no compassion?’ she demanded. ‘No thought for their souls and that of their baby daughter?’

‘I have compassion for the cast-off wife of Raoul de Vermandois,’ he replied implacably. ‘Your sister and her paramour are suffering the consequences of their lust. They have made their bed with covers of dishonour, but God sees all and shall neither be mocked nor bargained with.’

Alienor was irritated. People always made bargains with God. That was what most prayers were about. ‘Raoul’s wife has not fulfilled her role to him in many years,’ she said. ‘The marriage was dead a long time ago, in all but the unravelling.’

‘Nevertheless, it was made before God and cannot be unmade, and never for such a bargain.’ His black gaze bored into hers. ‘If the King desires to do right by the Archbishop of Bourges, then he must do so without condition, and the only way your sister and the lord of Vermandois may return to Holy Mother Church is by repenting of their lust and giving each other up.’ He raised one bony hand in the gesture of a tutor. ‘It is not for me to say what conversations you have with your sister, but you must consider the correctness of your own behaviour when you are with her, and make it clear that you do not condone impropriety under any circumstances.’

‘I will support my sister in every way I can,’ Alienor said stiffly. ‘I have never acted with impropriety.’

His look became sorrowful. ‘In that case you should be encouraging her to submit to holy writ. I do not wish you harm, but I am deeply concerned for your spiritual welfare, daughter. If you wish to help your sister and your husband, then you must cease meddling in these affairs of state, and toil to bring your husband into a state of grace with the Church.’

Alienor gave him a cold look. ‘That is why I came to you: to talk of a solution that would end this fighting. My sister is my heir, and her daughter stands next to her in line. I have to be concerned about her welfare, because it is Aquitaine’s welfare too – and France’s, because Raoul de Vermandois is close kin to my husband.’

‘Then perhaps you should apply yourself to asking God to provide you with an heir for France,’ he said. ‘That is surely your first duty.’

‘Do you think I have not tried? How can I provide an heir for France without my husband’s assistance? Surely it is his duty too? But God punishes us by rendering him incapable when he does come to me, and often he does not visit at all. He would rather spend time in prayer, or in the company of men like Thierry de Galeran.’ She looked down at her tightly clasped hands. ‘What am I supposed to do? I cannot conjure a conception out of thin air.’

There was a long silence. She drew breath to speak again, but he held out his thin, pale hand to her, bidding her be still, his gaze fixed and powerful. There was a slight curve to his lips, almost but not quite a smile, and although superficially it was compassionate, underneath it held satisfaction because she had exposed her vulnerability to him.

‘God has ways of bringing His flock back to him,’ he said. ‘Only do what is right and He will accept you back into His fold.’ He gestured at her silk gown. ‘If you wish to conceive a child, then you must leave off all of these fripperies, these wicked ways that have come to be so important to you. You must forsake them and hold tight to Christ your saviour.’ He took the wooden cross on a cord from around his own neck and pressed it into her hands. ‘Just as Christ died on the Cross to the physical world and rose again, so let your soul die to the world of physical delights and rise again stronger than before. God will admonish you and test you again and again until He is certain that you are one of His. You must carry His Cross and be worthy of it, for it is no easy task to bear the burden of a country upon your back, as your husband well knows, and you must be ready for it and worthy of it. You must scourge your life and make it as God would wish, and only when you are fruitful in the ways of the spirit shall you be fruitful in your womb. In order to make new life, you must leave behind your old life of sin and do God’s work fervently. Do you understand me in this?’

Alienor felt like a cornered deer faced by the hunter’s drawn bow. ‘Yes, Father, I do understand.’

‘You must change your ways,’ he reiterated. ‘And if you do this, I shall pray to God our Heavenly Father that he grants you and the King the great gift and mercy of a child for France.’

She bowed her head over the plain wooden cross in her hand; the leather thong was greasy and dark from the contact with the back of Abbé Bernard’s neck. Despite her revulsion, she felt a strange moment of humility. After all the wealth that had surrounded her today, this object brought her feet back down to the ground. More importantly, it made her see her way forward with Louis.

‘Good, my child,’ he said. ‘I suggest you spend three days and nights in fasting and prayer to purge yourself of any deleterious spirits. And then, doing as I have told you, go to your husband, and all will be well.’

He bade her kneel with him to pray. Alienor closed her eyes as the tiled floor struck cold against her knees through the fine stuff of her garments. She pressed her palms together and tried not to breathe in the sour smell of his body. If prayer and humility would bring her closer to her desire, then she would do what she must.

Newly returned from her three days of fasting and contemplation, Alienor went to her chamber window and looked out on a dazzling blue arch of sky. She felt lightheaded, but her thoughts were lucid and focused. The sky was clear and plain, so unlike Suger’s jewelled use of light in Saint-Denis, and yet its simplicity was the true wonder of God and nothing plain was ever really simple. In that at least, if nothing else, Bernard of Clairvaux was right.

Turning from the window, she studied her bed with its soft sheets and rich golden hangings embellished with scrollwork embroidery in warm fire-orange. She loved them, but she could now see her problem. ‘Strip the bed,’ she commanded her women. ‘Bring me plain sheets and bolster cases, the kind the monks use at Saint-Denis.’

Her ladies eyed her askance. ‘Do it,’ she commanded. Her gaze fell on the beautiful brass bowl at the bedside that was used for her ablutions. It had a flower design worked over its surface that matched the hangings and she loved it. Steeling herself, she bade someone fetch an unembellished one. Everything had to be made simple. She had the niches stripped of their ornaments, her caskets and coffers tidied away into her painted chest, and the chest itself covered with a grey blanket. She placed a book of the lives of the saints on top of it, and put crosses in the embrasures.

When she had finished, the room was stark, but possessed a certain austere beauty. Her ladies were even more wide-eyed when she ordered them to change their fine gowns for others of sober wool, and to cover their heads with full wimples of thick white linen.

‘It is to please the King,’ she told them. ‘That is all you need to know. It is important to put him at ease when he visits, and to do that, the surroundings must suit.’

Alienor opted for a gown of blue wool with modest sleeves, and the same wimple as her women. She hung Abbé Bernard’s wooden cross around her neck and removed all rings but her wedding band. And then she took up some sewing – a chemise to be given in charity to the poor – and stitched the seams while she waited. It was one of Louis’s ‘duty’ evenings, and since she did not have her flux, he had no excuse for keeping away.

He walked into her chamber in his usual rigid manner, like a man forced to wear a garment with seams that irritated, but then he stopped and looked round quizzically. Alienor watched him sniff the air like a deer tasting the dawn. She left her sewing and went to greet him with a demure curtsey. He dismissed the attendants he had brought with him, including the Templar Thierry de Galeran, who flicked her a narrow, speculative look as if measuring an opponent before he bowed and departed.

‘Changes?’ Louis said with a raised eyebrow.

‘I hope you approve of them, sire.’

He made a non-committal sound and went to examine a cross standing in an embrasure.

She waited for him to return to her and give her his cloak. He washed his hands and face using the plain ewer and dried them on the coarse linen towel neatly folded at the side of the bowl. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he patted the rough woollen coverlet. ‘Yes, this is better,’ he said. ‘Perhaps at last you are beginning to understand.’

Alienor bit her tongue on a sharp retort, determined to play the role of submissive, prayerful wife to the hilt if that was what it took to succeed in begetting an heir for France and Aquitaine. ‘Everything became clear to me at Saint-Denis,’ she said demurely. ‘I realised that a change was needed, and that I had to be the one to make it because you had already done so.’ All of which was true. She had married a young man, never realising he would become this warped semblance of a monk.

Louis pointed imperiously to her side of the bed, indicating she should lie down in it. Anger coiled within her, but force of will held her to her purpose. She was sad too. She wanted him as he had once been, with his tender, shy smile, his tumble of long fair hair and all his boyish enthusiasm and desire. But that person no longer existed.

The sheets were scratchy and uncomfortable and she had to suppress a grimace. Louis, however, seemed to relish the feel of them against his skin, as if their very coarseness made them more real. She turned towards him and put her hand across his chest. ‘Louis …’ His eyes were closed and she felt him recoil. ‘Is lying with me really so terrible?’ she asked.

He swallowed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but we must guard our honour and do this thing not out of fleshly lust, but because it is the will of God.’

‘Of course,’ she said as if surprised. ‘It is my intention to follow God’s will. I do not kiss you out of lust, but out of a desire to do His bidding and be fruitful.’ Slowly, as if a sudden move might startle him, she sat up and removed the wimple.

He touched her tightly braided hair. ‘All I have allowed myself to feel are harsh things,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘Punishment things, because I am not worthy of more. The soft and beautiful things are sent to lure us. You must see that?’

Alienor was tempted to say that the beautiful things were God’s creation too. Where else had Eden come from? But that would only agitate him further. ‘I see that we are being tested, just as the Abbot of Clairvaux said we would be,’ she replied. ‘And I see that we are punished in all manner of ways, but procreating is the will of God and we must do our duty.’

He groaned and rolled on top of her, pushing up her chemise and gown. Alienor lay inert and forced herself not to be a participant. Usually she would have raised her knees and parted her thighs; she would have twined her arms and legs around him, and moved her hips in counterpoint to his; but now she did nothing. He kept his eyes tightly closed, as if even to look at her was unbearable. She heard him muttering a prayer between clenched teeth. He tugged her legs apart and she felt him fumbling. ‘God wills it,’ he gasped. ‘God wills it. God wills it!’ And then he was inside her and thrusting wildly, calling on God to watch him doing his duty, his voice rising to a shout that was a mingling of triumph, guilt and despair as he spilled his seed.

He lay inert on her for a moment and then withdrew to gain his breath. She closed her legs and pressed them together. She was sore from the intrusion without any preparation, but she had achieved her goal – as had Louis. A glance at him showed that his eyes were still closed, but his features had relaxed. He left the bed and went to kneel at the cross she had placed at the foot of it, and there thanked God for his great mercy and benevolence in restoring grace to him. Joining him, Alienor thanked God too, and silently prayed for a swift result.