The Summer Queen

29

Anatolia, January 1148

Alienor turned over and, pulling the furs up around her ears, snuggled against Gisela for warmth.

‘Rain,’ said Marchisa who had stuck her nose outside the tent flaps to sniff the dawn air. ‘It might even turn to snow.’

Alienor groaned and burrowed further under the covers. Everyone spoke of the burning heat of Outremer, but the cold on the high ground was bone-biting.

Today they were due to make the gruelling climb and crossing of Mount Cadmos on their journey to the coast at Antalya. The notion of riding up a mountain in the face of a sleety wind made Alienor reluctant to stir. If only she could wake up at home in Poitiers or Antioch without having to travel in either direction.

Outside Alienor could hear the camp stirring to life: men hacking and coughing; snatches of conversation round the campfire; the stamp and nicker of horses as they received their rations of fodder. The ominous rasp of a sword on a whetstone.

Marchisa was building up the brazier in their tent and setting out portions of cold lamb and flat bread with which to break their fast. With great reluctance, Alienor sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She could smell smoke and grease on her hands from the previous night. The urge to observe the niceties of staying clean and fresh had dwindled to nothing when set against the need to keep dry and warm. She had not bothered to unpack her mirror for the last five nights, and the silk gowns she had worn in Constantinople had been relegated to the bottom of her baggage pack.

Alienor braced herself and left the bed. She had slept in thick socks, her chemise and a woollen gown. Now she donned a pair of soft linen braies and attached men’s leather riding hose to them. She and her women had adopted such clothing since leaving Constantinople because of its comfort and practicality in the advancing winter season and hostile terrain. A highly amused Geoffrey de Rancon had called them ‘the Amazons’ on first discovering the apparel while helping Alienor into the saddle. The nickname had quickly become common parlance among the men. Louis had not been best pleased. He said it was beneath the dignity of the Queen of France and therefore reflected poorly on himself, but since Alienor and her ladies wore perfectly respectable gowns over their hose, and since it helped them to keep up the pace, he let it pass with no more than scowls.

Alienor covered her hair and went to look outside. Pungent woodsmoke drifted from the cooking fires set up under tent awnings. She noticed dashes of white in the rain and knew it would be snowing higher up the mountain. As she stood considering the dismal prospect of riding into the bad weather, a guard detail returned from overnight picket duty.

‘The Turks are out there,’ she heard one soldier telling the men round the fire. ‘They’ll be circling like vultures, just waiting their moment, the devils. We found two more German corpses butchered and stripped, poor bastards. Skulls stove in like smashed apples.’

Alienor’s stomach contracted. Glancing round, she saw that Marchisa had heard. Gisela and the others were fortunately too busy dressing. Marchisa was by far the most pragmatic and practical of her ladies. Nothing discommoded her as they toiled through the inhospitable wastes of Anatolia: neither weather, nor sickness, nor scant supplies. Becoming lost for half a day when their Greek guides deserted them had scarcely disturbed her equilibrium, and she had been a steadying influence on Alienor’s entire household, including Alienor herself, when they discovered that Emperor Manuel had fed them a pack of lies. Contrary to what they had been told in Constantinople, the Turks had in fact decimated the German army. The latter had turned back, leaving the road littered with their dead. With no one to bury the corpses, they were slowly rotting where they had fallen. Day upon day the French army passed the grim waymarkers: testimony to what had really happened to their allies and to the web of deceit in which Manuel Komnenos had snared them. The promised guides had slipped away within days and the supplies had also dried up. The French had no choice but to forage, antagonising the local populace and making themselves vulnerable to Turkish attack. Every day brought fresh casualties and growing anxiety. They should have been in Antioch to celebrate Christmas, yet here they were, still weeks from their destination with the long and treacherous track over Mount Cadmos to negotiate.

Geoffrey was leading the vanguard with Louis’s uncle Amadée de Maurienne. Alienor worried for Geoffrey’s safety but showed nothing outwardly. They had become even more careful around each other since that brief loss of control in the camp at Constantinople, for they both knew the danger and how vulnerable they were.

She turned back into the tent. Gisela was shivering as she donned a fur-lined pelisse. The hem was dusty and the pelts, once a warm squirrel-red, were matted and draggled. ‘I don’t want to ride across that mountain,’ she said querulously.

‘It could be worse,’ Alienor said with small patience. ‘You could have remained in Constantinople as a bride.’

Gisela compressed her lips and finished dressing in silence.

Louis arrived while the women were waiting for their mounts to be brought. ‘Stay in formation and don’t straggle,’ he warned. ‘I want everyone across by nightfall. No foolishness.’

Alienor eyed him with irritation. What did he think they would get up to on a freezing rough mountainside? And why would they wander off when it might mean death from Turkish arrows or tumbling down a stony slope?

‘I have told the vanguard to be vigilant and to wait at the summit for the baggage to catch up.’ Louis nodded briskly, wheeled his stallion and rode back through the camp, leaning down to have a word here and there, bolstering men’s resolve. Alienor watched his progress and grudgingly acknowledged that for all his flaws and the things he had done that made her despise him, he sat a horse well and was an inspiration to his men when he made the effort. He was a strong and skilled swordsman, possessing grace and coordination. If there was anything left that sparked feeling in her, it was the manhood he showed astride a horse.

Saldebreuil brought Serikos round to the tent which the servants had begun dismantling. A thick rug covered his rump this morning and under it, her groom had packed Alienor’s bow and a quiverful of arrows. Everyone carried weapons of some kind; even the poorest non-combatants had a knife and a cudgel.

‘The seigneurs de Rancon and de Maurienne have already set out with the van,’ Saldebreuil said as he boosted Alienor into the saddle. ‘The middle will have to move sharpish to keep up. The van will have a long wait at the top if they get too far ahead.’

‘They know their part,’ Alienor replied as she gathered the reins. ‘The sooner we are over the summit the better for all.’

Together with her women, Alienor set out on the stony track that led up the steep, partially forested slopes of Mount Cadmos. Saldebreuil, ever watchful, rode as close to her as possible, although sometimes before or behind because the path was often too narrow for two horses to go abreast. ‘Make way!’ he shouted. ‘Make way for the Queen!’

The heavily burdened sumpter horses struggled as the steepness of the climb increased. Pilgrims meandered, trying to find the easiest way, planting their staffs in the ground, hauling themselves up step by step and cursing the weather. Alienor heeled Serikos’s flanks, urging him on. Pellets of sleet stung her face. She pulled a scarf across her nose and mouth and felt her breath moisten the wool, each exhalation a momentary burst of warmth that swiftly became an icy chill over her lips and chin. She fixed her mind on the thought of reaching the other side and the welcome of fire, shelter and wine laced with pepper and ginger. Each stony step brought her closer to Antioch, to her uncle Raymond, and release.

Only lightly encumbered and riding good horses, the vanguard progressed swiftly towards the summit of the mountain. Geoffrey de Rancon and Amadée de Maurienne kept their men moving in tight formation. Sometimes they heard the ululation of the Turks who had been shadowing and harassing them all along the route since crossing the Arm of Saint George, but they did not see them. A few desultory arrows curved out of the trees, but they fell short and posed little threat. Nevertheless, the space between Geoffrey’s shoulder blades felt extremely vulnerable. The threat came not only from the Turks. There were men in the train behind who would rather he was dead. He knew of the whispers behind his back: that he was the Queen’s lapdog and not to be relied upon. There was all the prejudice of the northern French nobles for a southern lord, and one beholden to a woman as his liege lady rather than to the King of France. That was why they had paired him with Amadée de Maurienne to take the vanguard over the Cadmos Pass, because the latter was the King’s uncle and considered experienced and trustworthy.

Geoffrey knew that if his deeper intimacy with Alienor were discovered, he would be found guilty of treason against his king and he would die. Perhaps Alienor would too or else face incarceration for the rest of her days. He did not care about his own fate, but for her sake, he had to keep his distance, no matter how difficult it was. That moment at Constantinople had filled him with a maelstrom of conflict. He was ashamed for his loss of control and the danger in which he had put her, but the moment itself had felt sanctified. He had no sense of betraying Louis, because Alienor had been a part of his soul for far longer than Louis had been her husband. She said once they reached Antioch things would change. He did not know how that was going to happen, but since the day was not far off, one way or another the waiting would be over.

The wind drove a fresh flurry of sleet into his face. The higher they climbed, the colder and more exposed they became. Drifting curtains of snow-laden cloud obstructed their vision. The desultory assaults ceased, but the weather continued to batter them all the way to the long summit. Geoffrey drew rein and stopped to listen for the jingle of pack-pony bells and the horns blaring from the unwieldy mid-section of the army. The sound was faint and variable depending on the direction of the wind, which had its own banshee voice and demonic force. There was no judging how long it would be before the centre arrived. Their banner-bearer planted the French lance in the sparse soil of the summit and the silks snapped in the wind, their edges faded and frayed by the months of hard travelling. Geoffrey peeled off one of his sheepskin mittens, and having fumbled his wineskin from his saddlebag, set it to his lips. The sour, tannic taste made him screw up his face and he spat out what was essentially vinegar over his mount’s withers. De Maurienne huddled in his thick squirrel-lined cloak. His bony beak of a nose made him look like a disgruntled vulture.

Geoffrey pulled up his hood as yet again it blew back off his head. His teeth ached and he had to half close his eyes to see through the whirling flakes. He sought the lee of a large boulder. His stallion put down its head and hunched its body, tail streaming between its hind legs.

‘Good Christ,’ de Maurienne muttered, his eyes streaming, ‘by the time the others arrive, we’ll be frozen rigid.’

Geoffrey glanced at him. De Maurienne was not a young man and although he had been robust when they set out, the long journey had taken its toll on his health. ‘We could seek shelter further down off the mountain,’ he suggested. ‘We can put up the tents we have with us and light fires for when the others arrive.’

De Maurienne looked doubtful. ‘The King said to wait here and move off together.’

‘I do not think he realised how much the weather would close in. It’s madness to stay here and freeze. I doubt I could hold my sword if I had to use it.’

The wind veered again, bringing to them the scrape of hoof on stone and the sound of the outriders blowing their horns.

‘I suppose they are not far away,’ de Maurienne said. ‘If it weren’t for this weather, we’d be seeing them by now.’

‘Indeed. There won’t be room for all of us on the summit; we should move on and make camp.’

De Maurienne stroked his white moustaches. ‘Yes …’ he said doubtfully, but another blast of wind-blown sleet decided him. He summoned a squire and sent him down the mountain to liaise with those following on.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Geoffrey ordered the banner-bearer to uproot his lance and take the track to the shelter of the valley.

‘Make way! Make way for the Queen!’ Saldebreuil’s voice rang out again and again, a little hoarse at the edges now. The path had grown steeper and stonier as they climbed, and Alienor and her women had dismounted to go on foot because the horses had become skittish. Alienor had already seen several animals and their riders come to grief, which only added to the ranks of the wounded and to the weight of the packs that everyone else had to carry up the pass.

Gisela’s little grey kept trying to turn back the way he had come, and had to be forced forward with flicks of the whip. He obeyed, but all the time showed the whites of his eyes. Alienor clucked her tongue to Serikos, urging him on, offering him small pieces of bread and dried dates as encouragement. His whiskery muzzle gusted at her shoulder. She could feel the hard stones of the track through her shoes. Despite the weather, the cold and the hardship, the connection gave her a certain sense of satisfaction in the reality of the moment. There was a challenge in going forward, in working her way through the ranks. As a child she had run races against the other palace children, seeing who could be the first to the top of the hill, and there was an element of that feeling now, a testing of her own stamina and strength.

Suddenly an arrow whined through the air and drove into the chest of a man in front of Alienor, hurling him off his feet. He sprawled, drumming his heels and twitching in his death throes. His horse jerked the rein free from the bend of his elbow and plunged back down the track, barging Serikos’s shoulder and narrowly missing Alienor. More arrows showered down, bringing death, injury and panic.

Alienor grabbed Serikos’s bridle close to the bit and ducked under his chin and round to his other flank, intent on reaching the protective quilted tunic in her saddle baggage. The yells of the Turks were clearer now. She saw the flash of a turban from behind a boulder as a Saracen rose to deliver his shot at a burdened pack pony. The initial hit did not down the sumpter immediately; it lumbered and staggered, crashing into pilgrims, creating mayhem. Already the Turk had another arrow at the nock.

‘Good Christ,’ cursed Saldebreuil. ‘Where in God’s name are de Rancon and de Maurienne?’

Alienor shuddered. She had a terrible vision of Geoffrey’s arrow-quilled body sprawled across the rocky path. What if the vanguard had been hit and destroyed? Surely she would have heard the noise of battle and their horns summoning help. Where were they?

Pilgrims screamed and ran, were caught and cut down. Serikos lunged and tried to rear. She staggered against his surging shoulder. Turkish fighters hurled out from the rocks, brandishing scimitars and small round shields. Saldebreuil and another knight engaged them, their larger kite shields protecting their bodies. Alienor heard the grunts of effort, saw the chop of swords and the crimson spurt of blood as Saldebreuil dealt with the first Turk and then took down another. She grabbed Serikos’s reins and struggled into the saddle. ‘Ride for higher ground!’ she cried to her ladies. ‘Ride for the clouds!’

Gisela screamed. Alienor whipped round to see the grey staggering, an arrow deep in its shoulder. ‘Climb up behind me,’ Alienor commanded. ‘Ride pillion!’

Weeping in terror, Gisela set her foot on Alienor’s and hauled herself on to Serikos’s rump. Alienor struck her heels into the gelding’s flanks and urged him upwards. The higher they climbed the better their chances: safer than trying to turn back through a net of Turkish swords.

Below, Alienor heard the vicious clash of weapons and the screams of people and horses as the slaughter continued. She felt the first stirrings of panic. Behind her, Marchisa and Mamile were praying to God to spare them, and she added her own entreaties to theirs, her voice tight in her throat.

They came upon a loose palfrey, its reins dangling dangerously near its forelegs, its dead young rider sprawled across a boulder. Alienor’s blood froze as she recognised Amadée de Maurienne’s squire. Dear God, dear God. She stared round wide-eyed but there was no sign of the rest of the vanguard, just this sole corpse. Swallowing, she turned back to the matter in hand. ‘Take the horse,’ she urged.

Gisela shook her head, staring at the blood-drenched hide. ‘I can’t, I can’t!’

‘You must! Serikos cannot bear us both! Quickly now!’ Alienor caught the palfrey’s reins.

Making small sounds of distress, Gisela slid from Serikos’s back. A Turk leaped out at her from behind a rock, his scimitar drawn, and Gisela’s whimpers turned to screams. The Saracen prepared to strike, but never completed the move because Saldebreuil arrived at a gallop and cut him down with a swipe of his sword. He had two more knights of Alienor’s escort with him, and a serjeant. Swiftly he dismounted, bundled Gisela on to the dead man’s horse and swung back into the saddle. ‘God knows where the vanguard is,’ he snarled. ‘We’re being slaughtered!’ He spurred his blowing, bleeding horse and smacked Serikos with the flat of his gory blade.

The journey down the other side of the mountain was terrifying. The horses scrambled and slipped on the precipitous, uneven ground and Alienor feared they were going to take a tumble and shatter their bodies on the bones of the mountain. The cloud was thick here and boulders and scree loomed out at them without warning. She was certain that at any moment they were going to ride off the edge of the world and vanish into oblivion. She kept expecting to come upon more arrow-shot and butchered corpses from the vanguard, but there was nothing. Perhaps they had indeed taken that leap into the void.

The ground became softer and flatter, the boulders and humps diminishing to scree. At their backs, stones pelted and bounced down the mountainside, disturbed by their passage, and the horses skidded. Saldebreuil led them at a rapid trot along a track where piles of fresh horse droppings showed that the path had recently been used. Eventually they came to an open area in the valley with a swift-running stream. Soldiers had pitched tents and the horses had been put to graze. Twirls of smoke rose from fresh campfires, and the scene was so pastoral and calm that Alienor had to fight disbelief. Only when the guards on picket duty saw the riders approaching at a fast gait did they stand to attention.

‘The middle is under attack!’ Saldebreuil bellowed at them. ‘Get back there, you craven fools! We’re being massacred and robbed. The Queen is safe by the grace of God, but who knows what will happen to the King!’

A soldier ran to fetch Amadée de Maurienne and Geoffrey de Rancon, while the knights scrambled to resaddle their horses.

‘Why didn’t you wait?’ Saldebreuil snarled at Geoffrey as the latter arrived at a run, buckling on his sword. ‘The Turks are slaughtering us on the mountain and we’re caught like lambs in a pen! It’s your fault, but all of us from Aquitaine will carry the blame!’

Geoffrey’s olive complexion was yellow. Without a word he turned and began shouting orders. De Maurienne was already astride his stallion and rallying the men.

‘Guard the camp,’ de Maurienne bellowed to Geoffrey. ‘Prepare for attack. I will deal with this.’ He spurred back the way he had come at a hard gallop.

Geoffrey clenched his fists, his chest heaving. Alienor was furious with him, but was not about to upbraid him in the midst of a desperate situation, and above all else she was limp with relief that he was alive. ‘Do as de Maurienne says, and be swift about it,’ she said curtly. Without waiting for aid she dismounted from Serikos.

‘I swear I did not know. I thought to make a camp out of the weather as a refuge.’ His voice almost cracked. ‘If I had thought for one minute that the Turks would attack, I would never have ridden ahead. I would never risk your life.’

‘But you did.’ Her body shook with reaction. ‘Your decision carries a high price. If you have a tent prepared, as you say, have your squire escort us there.’

‘Madam …’

She set her jaw and turned away before she either struck him or fell upon him in weeping dissolution.

Geoffrey’s squire escorted Alienor and her ladies to a tent in the middle of the camp. A pot of hot stew bubbled softly over a brazier. Sheepskins had been placed on the floor and covered several benches arranged round the coals. Marchisa, practical as ever, prepared a hot herbal tisane, and pressed one of the fleeces around Gisela’s shoulders, for the young woman’s teeth were chattering.

Alienor could hear Geoffrey bellowing orders and men running to obey. She tried to compose herself, but inside still felt as if she was tearing down that slope of rocks and scree towards a shattering impact. Thank God Geoffrey was alive. Thank God they had not betrayed each other. But his error would have terrible repercussions, both in the wider field and the personal. She felt sick. She drank the tisane, and left the tent to do what she could for the survivors who were straggling into camp, dazed, bleeding and disorientated.

Night fell and the trickle into the camp continued from the decimated pilgrim middle sector, and then men from the rearguard in a disorganised scatter. No one had seen the King. Some said they had seen him riding to the aid of the embattled middle with his bodyguard, but not since then.

Robert of Dreux arrived, his shield almost in pieces and his horse cut about the haunches and lame. Amadée de Maurienne was with him, looking shaken and old. ‘We could not find the King,’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘and the Turks and the natives were all over the mountain, looting and butchering.’

Alienor absorbed the news with an initial surge of shock, but as the jolt left her, she shook her head. Louis was not the world’s best commander, but when it came to fighting ability in a crisis, and sheer luck, he had few equals.

‘God preserve him. God preserve us all.’ Robert crossed himself. He was quivering and his eyes were wide and dark. If Louis did not return, then Robert, here and now, would become King of France. The air was huge with tension. She knew how ambitious Robert was, and already she could see the glances being cast his way, each man wondering if he should dare to be the first to kneel and give his allegiance.

If Louis was dead, then she was no longer Queen of France. Robert’s wife Hawise would bear that burden instead. She could return to Aquitaine, with her daughter, and this time marry as she chose. The notion was like a prison door opening, but she dared not allow herself to think it might be true, and pulled back from the thought as if she had touched a hot iron bar.

Throughout the evening, stragglers continued to arrive. The guards were tense, challenging each one, afraid that the Turks would creep up under cover of darkness and encircle the camp. The cloud on this side of the mountain was sparse, and the stars shone like chips of rock crystal in the bitter night.

Alienor was crouching beside a wounded knight, offering him words of comfort, when she heard the shout go up. ‘The King, the King is found! Praise God, praise God!’ She rose to her feet, clutching her cloak around her, eyes wide. She had been hoping and fearing. She had expected him to succeed and survive, but her thoughts, although controlled, were on a knife edge. She hurried towards the shouting and then stopped abruptly because Louis, filthy, bedraggled and blood-spattered, was swaying where he stood, legs wide-planted for balance, and on their knees before him, heads bowed, were Geoffrey de Rancon and Amadée de Maurienne.

‘Where were you?’ Louis was demanding. ‘You are to blame. You rode off to see to your own comfort. You hid like cowards and left me and my men to die. De Warenne, de Breteuil, de Bullas: hacked to death before my eyes. This is betrayal that amounts to treason!’

‘Sire, we did not know,’ pleaded de Maurienne. ‘We thought it was safe. If we had known, we would not have come down to make camp.’

‘You disobeyed my orders and men whose names you are not fit to utter have died today because of your incompetence and cowardice.’

‘I will give my life if you ask it, nephew,’ de Maurienne volunteered.

Louis’s gaze stabbed the kneeling men. ‘I am inclined to accept your offer,’ he snarled. ‘Neither of you is worth a pot of piss! You are both under arrest, and I will deal with you as you deserve in the morning. Prepare your souls. My household guard sacrificed themselves for me and their bodies are lying out on that mountainside, stripped and butchered by infidels.’ His voice cracked with rage and grief. ‘Their blood is on your hands for eternity, do you hear me? For eternity!’ He raised his dirty, bloodstained fists to emphasise the point, and then slowly lowered them. ‘Bring me maps,’ he commanded. ‘Find me de Galeran – if he survived.’ He pointed to de Maurienne’s tent. ‘I will take this for my own. See to it.’

Geoffrey and de Maurienne were dragged away through a crowd clamouring to see them hanged here and now, especially Geoffrey. Men spat at them and struck out as they passed amid cries of ‘Shame!’ and ‘Treason!’ Alienor’s heart began to pound. Sweeping her cloak around her, she hastened to the tent that Louis had just commandeered and forced her way past the soldiers guarding the entrance. ‘Husband,’ she said to Louis, invoking the familiar form as she dropped the flaps.

He was standing in the middle of the tent, his face in his hands and his body shuddering with sobs. He made an abrupt turn to her and raised his head, tears streaming down his grimed cheeks. ‘What do you want?’ he said raggedly.

She lifted her chin. There was no falling into each other’s arms. No ‘Glad you are alive.’ They were far beyond that. ‘I am sorry for the good men we have lost, but you cannot hang your uncle and my seneschal on the morrow, and you must make sure your men do not do so tonight.’

‘Are you trying to rule me again?’ He bared his teeth. ‘Do not dictate to me what I can and cannot do.’

‘I am telling you that if you do this thing, you will have a war between our troops that will finish what the Turks began.’ She drew herself up. ‘Geoffrey de Rancon is my vassal and it is my prerogative to chastise him for what he has or has not done. You shall not hang him.’

‘They disobeyed my orders,’ Louis snarled, ‘and because they did not do as they were told, my men – my friends – were slaughtered. I shall do as I see fit.’

‘They did what they thought best. They made a mistake, but it was folly, not treason. You have no right to hang Geoffrey, because he is my vassal. If you do, then the Aquitaine contingent will rise in revolt against you. Do you really want to contend with that? And if you hang Geoffrey, you will also have to hang your uncle – your own mother’s brother – because they share the blame. Are you willing to do that, Louis? Will you watch them both swing? How will that sit with your men?’

‘You know nothing!’ he sobbed at her. ‘If you had been there, seeing your friends cut to pieces in front of your eyes, you would not be so swift to leap to their defence! My bodyguards gave their lives to protect mine, while de Maurienne and de Rancon were warming their backsides at the fire and taking their ease. This is all their fault, all of it. If you were any kind of wife to me, you would be supporting me in this, not casting obstacles in my way.’

‘You have a penchant for always seeing reason as an obstacle. If you hang these men, you will lose two battle commanders and all of their vassals who will no longer cleave to your banner, and that means you will only have yourself to blame when what remains disintegrates in your hands.’

‘Be silent!’ He raised his clenched, bloody fist.

Alienor did not flinch. ‘If you do this, you doom yourself,’ she said, her voice quiet but hard. She turned her back on him and left the tent.

Behind her she heard a crash as if something had been kicked over. A real man would not succumb to a boy’s tantrum, she thought, and the sound only served to increase her contempt for him and her fear of what he might do.

Alienor went with Saldebreuil to the tent where Geoffrey and Amadée de Maurienne were being held under house arrest. A crowd of knights and serjeants, survivors of the rearguard, had gathered outside and were shouting insults, most of them directed at Geoffrey. ‘Poitevan coward!’ and ‘Southern softsword!’ were the least of them. Chanted threats to hang the men surged and receded, and more soldiers were drifting towards the tent and joining the crowd with each moment. ‘Find Everard des Barres. Quickly!’ Alienor commanded Saldebreuil.

He snapped swift orders to one of his men, and then with a handful of household knights made a corridor for Alienor to approach the tent entrance. ‘Make way for the Queen!’ he bellowed.

Soldiers fell back, but Alienor was aware of their muttering and resentment. A real sense of danger tingled down her spine. At the tent entrance she paused, drew a deep breath, and then parted the flaps.

Geoffrey and de Maurienne sat at a trestle table with a flagon between them and a platter on which stood a loaf of hard bread and a rind of cheese. They looked up with taut faces as she entered; both then rose and knelt to her.

Alienor knew she dared not betray her emotions by a single look or gesture. ‘I have spoken to the King,’ she said. ‘He is furious, but I believe when it comes to the crux, he will spare you both.’

‘Then we must believe in your belief, madam,’ said de Maurienne, ‘and my nephew’s good sense. But what of them?’ He nodded towards the tent flaps. Something struck the side of the canvas with a heavy thud. A stone, she thought, and the volume of the shouting increased.

‘Help is at hand,’ she replied, praying that it was, and hoping Louis would indeed see sense by the morning.

‘Well, if it is French help, they are likely to string us up,’ Geoffrey said grimly, ‘and if you have summoned our men, there will be bloody fighting in the camp between the factions.’

‘Credit me with more sense than that,’ she snapped. ‘I have sent for the Templars.’

A look of relief passed between the men, but then Geoffrey shook his head. ‘Perhaps we do deserve to die,’ he said.

‘You have already committed enough folly to last you into your dotage, without adding more,’ she said, covering her fear with anger. ‘When we reach Antioch, my lord, I am sending you back to Aquitaine.’ He inhaled to protest and she raised her hand to silence him. ‘My mind is made up. It will benefit me and Aquitaine far more than if you remain here.’

Geoffrey stared at her, his eyes glittering with tears. ‘You will shame me before all.’

‘No, you fool, I will save your life, even if you seem keen to throw it away. Listen to them.’ She gestured to the tent flaps. ‘They will make a scapegoat of you. Someone will put a knife in you before this journey is done. It is different for my lord de Maurienne. He is the King’s uncle, and they will say he followed your lead. They may not hang you today, but nevertheless they will find some way of murdering you. I will not let that happen to … to one of my senior vassals. Besides, I need your strong arm to prepare Aquitaine for when I return. So much will have changed.’ She raised her brows in emphasis.

‘Madam, I beg you …’ Geoffrey looked at her with his heart in his eyes; then he swiftly dropped his gaze and bowed his head. ‘Do not send me away.’

Alienor swallowed. ‘I must. I have no choice.’

There was a taut silence; then Geoffrey said, ‘If that is your wish, I must yield you my obedience, but I do it at your will, not my own.’

De Maurienne had been silently watchful throughout the exchange, and Alienor wondered how much they had given away. ‘The Queen speaks wisely,’ the older man said. ‘I can weather the storm, but you are vulnerable; you have enemies. It is best for all that you leave.’

Outside the tent, the shouting and insults had fallen silent, replaced by the sound of a heavy tread in unison and the clink of weapons. Alienor turned to the entrance. A row of Templar knights and serjeants was lining up facing the crowd, shields presented, hands on sword hilts.

‘Madam.’ Their commander, Everard des Barres, gave her a stiff bow.

Alienor returned the courtesy. ‘Sire, I ask you to guard these men. I fear for their lives. There will be more bloodshed among us should anything happen to them tonight before the King has made his decision. We have problems enough in the camp without adding to them.’

Des Barres gave her a shrewd look from narrow dark eyes. He and Alienor had never been particularly cordial with each other, but were both pragmatic enough to deal on political and diplomatic terms. ‘Madam, you have my personal oath that these men will not be harmed.’

There would be a price to pay at some point, she knew, but des Barres was a man of his word. The Templars had no affinity apart from God, and were the best soldiers in Christendom. ‘Thank you. I leave this in your capable hands, my lord.’

Alienor left the tent without looking back because she did not want to meet Geoffrey’s gaze. The Queen’s traditional role was that of peacemaker; let it rest at that and pretend that her heart was not breaking.

Having passed a worried, sleepless night, Alienor had just finished her morning ablutions when Louis arrived. In the morning light, his face was pale and ravaged, with eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion and weeping. ‘I have decided to spare my uncle and de Rancon,’ he said. ‘It will be a far greater punishment for them to live with their shame.’

‘Thank you,’ Alienor said, her tone conciliatory and subdued. She felt weak with relief, for he could so easily have chosen execution and in the end she could not have stopped him. ‘Geoffrey must return to Aquitaine.’

Louis gave a curt nod. ‘Indeed. I am not inclined to protect him from the men, and I can no longer trust him with any kind of military responsibility. The Templars will command the vanguard for the rest of the way.’

He left the tent in a brusque flurry and Alienor released the breath she had been holding. She could not even bear the scent of him now. Overcome by nausea, she had to run to the slop bowl.

Marchisa left what she was doing and hastened to tend to her.

‘It is nothing,’ Alienor said, gesturing her away. ‘I am all right.’

‘I am here if you need me, madam,’ Marchisa said, giving her a long, thoughtful look.

The Templars led off the army later in the morning. Louis kept de Maurienne close to his side, and Alienor had Geoffrey ride as part of her escort, near enough that he was under her protection as much as he was protecting her. It was unsettling and bittersweet. Each time she breathed him in, the sensation was almost unbearable, as it was with Louis, but for the opposite reasons. She dared not touch him or favour him because people were watching closely. It all had to be worn on the inside. No one must ever know.