were not long in delivering their solemn verdict-that the marriage must be annulled on grounds of consanguinity. The young princesses, Marie and Alix, were declared to be legitimate and their custody was granted to the French king. Eleanor relinquished her queenship, and resumed those titles that were hers by birthright: Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitou. The French king was now free to wed again, to seek a wife able to give him a son and heir. At the prodding of Eleanor’s advocate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Council agreed that she was free to wed, too, but of course not without Louis’s consent, for her former husband was still her king and liege lord.
The following morning was a mild, sunlit Saturday, a good day for travel. But the Count of Vermandois did not doubt that his sister-in-law would have ridden out in the teeth of a raging gale, so eager did she seem to leave Beaugency and her former life behind. He would be sorry to see her go, and he said so now, telling her that the royal court would be a dull place without her, that her going would break male hearts and quench candles all over Paris.
Eleanor smiled, for she liked Raoul. His gallantry might be a bit heavy-handed at times, but she’d take that any day over the sort of somber piety she’d been living with for the past fourteen years. Gathering her into his arms, Raoul winked over her shoulder at his wife. “You do not mind if I run off with Eleanor for a few weeks, do you, Petra?”
“Of course not,” Petronilla said absently, not hearing a word he’d said. She was finding this harder than she’d expected-saying farewell to her sister, knowing how drastically their lives were about to change. “I shall miss you, Eleanor,” she said, summoning up a game but forlorn smile. “Who will I have to quarrel with once you’re gone?”
“That is what husbands are for.” As the sisters embraced, Eleanor found her eyes misting, too. “You must visit me at Poitiers later in the spring,” she said, adding significantly, “I will tell you when to come.”
Petronilla nodded, and Raoul cheerfully promised to accompany her. The two women said nothing, for it was understood that Petronilla would find a way to come alone. Raoul was Louis’s cousin and liegeman and seneschal of France; they could not compromise his honour by allowing him to attend Eleanor’s wedding to Henry Fitz Empress. Eleanor had no illusions about what was to come. There was a time when she’d been careless of consequences, but no longer. Louis would see her marriage as a grievous betrayal, both of the man and of the monarch. What would he do? She knew him so well, and yet she was still not sure how he’d react. She felt confident that she and Harry would be a match for him. But she was determined to shield any others from Louis’s wrath, and so Raoul must be kept in ignorance, for his own protection.
The great hall was thronged with clergy and curious onlookers, eager to watch this historic parting between the French king and his notorious queen. As soon as Eleanor appeared, heads turned and necks craned. The men who’d command her escort were waiting by the door: Saldebreuil de Sanzay, her constable, and Geoffrey de Rancon, Lord of Taillebourg. She smiled at sight of them, for they were more than loyal vassals; they were friends, men who would willingly lay down their lives to keep her safe. Louis was nearby, engaged in conversation with the Archbishops of Rouen and Reims, not yet aware of her presence. She was about to start toward him when she saw the tall, white-haired figure by the hearth, his simple monk’s habit contrasting dramatically with the colorfully clad nobles and the ornately garbed princes of the Church. The holy man of France, the venerated and honoured Abbot of Clairvaux. Her sainted enemy.
Abbot Bernard greeted her with frigid formality. He so resembled one of the patriarchs of old-pale and haggard, burning dark eyes and flowing long hair-that Eleanor wondered cynically if he’d deliberately cultivated the image. “I understand,” she said, “that you convinced Louis not to bring my daughters to Beaugency to bid me farewell. He told me that he would have done so-if not for you, my lord abbot.”
He was quite untroubled by the accusation. “That is true,” he said calmly. “I thought it was for the best. Such a meeting was bound to be painful.”
“Am I to believe, then, that you were acting out of Christian kindness?”
“I care for all of God’s lost lambs, madame, even the foolish ones who keep straying into the hills where wolves prowl and dangers lurk. The Lord forgives much, provided that there is true repentance. It is always possible to come back into the fold, back into grace.”
“With you as my guide? I’d rather take my chances with the wolves.”
“Take care, madame, lest you imperil your immortal soul. You do but prove I had good reason to keep your daughters away from your baneful influence.” As wrathful as he was, the abbot still remembered to keep his voice down, for this was not a conversation for others to hear. “Your lack of gratitude should not surprise me, though, given your lamentable lack of decorum and discretion-”
“Gratitude? My apologies, my lord abbot. It seems I’ve been maligning you unfairly, for you do have a sense of humor, after all!”
“It is foolhardy to court danger, madame, but it is lunacy to court damnation. You do indeed owe me a debt of gratitude. If not for my forbearance, you might have been cast aside for adultery rather than consanguinity.”
“It is also foolhardy, my lord abbot, to hold your foes too cheaply. Your convictions to the contrary, most women are not idiots. I could not have been accused of adultery, for you have no proof, and well you know it. And even if you’d found men willing to swear falsely that it was so, a verdict of adultery would have prohibited Louis from marrying again…as you well know, too.”
“I see no point in continuing this conversation. If you would spit upon salvation, so be it, then. I leave your sins to God. Fortunately for the king and for France, he is now free of your unholy spell, free to choose a wife devout and docile and virtuous, a wife who will give him the heir you could not.”
Eleanor’s eyes shone with a greenish glitter. “What a pity,” she said, “that the Blessed Virgin Mary is not available, for she would have suited his needs admirably.”
Bernard drew in his breath with a sibilant hiss. “You are an evil woman, wanton and truly wicked, and you will indeed suffer for-”
“No-no, she is not!” Neither Eleanor nor the abbot had heard Louis’s approach, and they both spun around at the sudden sound of his voice. “You are wrong, Abbot Bernard,” he said, with a firmness Eleanor had seen him show all too rarely. “I know her far better than you, and there is no evil in her soul, only a misguided sense of…of levity.”
Eleanor was tempted to retort that to a man like the abbot, levity might well be the greatest sin of all, but she did not, for Louis’s sake. The abbot was regarding the king with the pained patience of a tutor for a likable but slow student. “You are sometimes too tolerant, my liege,” he said, “too forgiving for your own good.”
That, Eleanor couldn’t resist. “Did not Our Lord Christ preach that forgiveness was a virtue?” she murmured, earning herself a toxic look from the abbot, a reproachful one from the king. Seizing her elbow, Louis steered her away from Bernard, toward a recessed window seat. He did not suggest that they sit; the time was past for that.
“Why is it that turmoil and commotion always follow after you as faithfully as that dog of yours?” Louis asked, pointing to the greyhound that had trailed them into the window alcove. But he sounded more plaintive than protesting, even mustering up a sad smile as their eyes met. His was an easy face to read; it took one glance to reassure Eleanor that he’d not overheard her Blessed Virgin gibe. She was glad, for it was Bernard she’d wanted to wound, not Louis.
That was not always so. There’d been times when she’d yearned for words sharp enough to draw blood, to leave ugly scars. She’d blamed Louis for much that had gone wrong in their marriage, for not being bolder or able to laugh at life’s perversities, for not being more like the swaggering, spirited, roguish men of her House, for no longer heeding her advice as he’d done in their first years together, for loving God far more than he could ever love her, and for the reluctant desire and sense of shame that he’d brought to their marriage bed.
But she’d not hated him for these failings-anger and frustration and occasional contempt, but not hatred. That had come only after Antioch, after Louis had accused her of harboring an incestuous passion for her uncle and threatened to have her bound and gagged and dragged away by force if need be. Ever a realist, she’d yielded, far too proud to fight a war she could not hope to win; she was learning that women must pick their battles with care, that strategy mattered more than strength. Eventually Louis had apologized and swore upon the True Cross that he knew her to be innocent. But by then it was too late. By then her uncle had been slain by the Turks, his impaled head rotting above the caliph’s palace in the hot Baghdad sun, and Eleanor could not look upon her husband without Raymond’s doomed and bloodied spectre coming between them.
But now that she’d regained her freedom, she found herself remembering how it had been at first for them, a fifteen-year-old bride and her sixteen-year-old groom, shyly appealing, awed by her beauty and eager to please her.
