Beloved Enemy (11 page)

Trembling with unsatisfied longings, drenched in sweat, Eleanor shut the door and leaned against the passage wall to collect herself. After a moment’s pause she marched resolutely into the royal bedchamber. Dismissing her women, she quickly undressed, rubbed oil scented with rose petals over her breasts, belly, and hips, then climbed into the blue-canopied bed, pulling the coverlet over her naked body.

When Louis walked into the room she gave him her most inviting smile. He undressed and got into bed beside her. About to blow out the candle she stayed his hand and threw off the coverlet.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” she said, twining her arms about his neck. “You haven’t been near me for weeks.”

“Oh—I hadn’t realized—” He blushed and unwound her arms. “I take communion tomorrow. You know I can’t—come near you during the three days prior.” He averted his eyes. “Cover yourself.”

For answer she brought his mouth down to hers and kissed him, forcing open his unwilling lips. She took one of his hands and laid it firmly on her breast. Left to himself, Louis never fondled her bosom nor kissed her with his mouth open; he entered her only briefly and withdrew right after he had spilled his seed. For a tantalizing moment his hand curled over her breast, before he withdrew it.

Normally, when he resisted, Eleanor could not bring herself to pursue the issue, simply as a matter of pride. But tonight she took his reluctant hand and slowly slid it down her satiny skin until it rested on the fringe of bronze hair between the juncture of thighs and belly. Louis caught his breath. Eleanor saw his eyes furtively dart to where his hand lay. She opened her legs; for an instant his fingers hesitated, then impelled by a force of their own he started to touch her.

The Compline bell sounded. Louis snatched his hand away.

“Do not lie there thus—your nakedness is unseemly,” he said in a thick voice.

“No, it’s entirely natural—if you were a natural husband.”

“What do you mean?”

Eleanor sat up in the bed. “What I mean is that if we continue in this fashion, I will go from my wits.”

He looked genuinely bewildered. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m never satisfied, never fulfilled. I have needs—”

She stopped at the horrified expression on Louis’s face, the deep crimson that stained his features.

“My dear,” he began in an agony of embarrassment. “You know that I love you as a good Christian husband should love his wife, but when you speak like this I fear for your immortal soul. How often have I told you that desire in a woman is the work of the devil? No chaste or religious-minded wife would have carnal longings. Abbé Suger once told me that if a man loved his wife too ardently, it is a sin worse than adultery.”

“Perhaps that is why I cannot conceive a child—Abbé Suger is always in our bed!”

Louis crossed himself, slipped out of the bed, and went to pray at the prie-dieu. Eleanor, unspent as always, watched him with mingled anger and despair. Any mention of a child always provoked the same reaction. After he had taken communion he would undoubtedly bed her—after a fashion. The only way Louis was able to copulate with her at all was if she lay absolutely still and unmoving, like a marble statue, with no show of feeling. Why did she continue to make the effort?

If matters continued thus, she would end up an embittered, frustrated woman, a stranger to the joys of love, the comforts of marriage. Eleanor wanted to scream. It was simply not fair that the silly, wanton Petronilla should effortlessly experience what she was so ripe to enjoy. Both daughters of the hot-blooded south, Eleanor wondered if this heritage was not proving more of a curse than a blessing.

She must find a way out of this coil.

Bored to distraction, Eleanor haunted the stalls of Paris. Every dirty cobbled street loudly blazoned its own speciality: the cloth merchants’ street, the bakers’ and goldsmiths’ streets, the street of the Jews, where money was loaned and exchanged. Her continual purchases of bolts of sendal and wool, costly jewels, scented oils from the East and other luxuries, eventually resulted in a major upset between herself and the queen dowager.

“I can no longer live in the same quarters with this—this extravagant sorceress,” Louis’s mother screamed one evening, after Eleanor had returned from the marketplace with a gold and ruby ring.

Louis shifted from one foot to the other.

“Louis, are you going to allow this woman to insult me?”

The queen dowager turned on Eleanor. “I’m leaving the palace, do you hear? You’ve not only bewitched my son, you wicked creature, but your extravagance will bring France to ruin.”

Eleanor ignored her irate mother-in-law. “Louis, how can you stand by and permit this?”

“Your mother is right, Louis,” said Abbé Suger with a dark look at Eleanor. “Even your council accuses the queen of beggaring the treasury. You must put a stop to her behavior.”

But Louis, pale and mute as always when confronted with any sort of unpleasant situation, could deny her nothing—of a material nature anyway. Ignoring his council, his mother, and Abbé Suger, he continued to indulge her, as if trying to make up to her for his failure to please at night.

The queen dowager vacated Paris in a shower of accusations and dire predictions. Aware of his waning influence, Abbé Suger came less and less often to the palace, and was seen more and more in the Church of St.-Denis, which he was in the process of restoring. Despite his frugal attitude toward her spending, Abbé Suger himself spent lavishly on new stained-glass windows and other embellishments for his favorite project.

Thus, in the end, Eleanor felt she had achieved some sort of victory.

It was a poor substitute for love, however, and made her wretched existence no easier to bear.

Several months later, Geoffrey of Anjou paid one of his infrequent visits to Paris after a recent triumph in Normandy.

“You will notice a difference since your last visit two years ago, my lord,” Eleanor said, pleased, as always, to see him.

She stood in the entrance to the great hall proudly pointing out the changes she was making in the castle: new tapestries worked in blue and scarlet wools graced the stone walls, a half-completed hearth that would have a chimney to funnel the smoke.

“Grace à Dieu,
the hall will be virtually transformed,” Geoffrey said. “This castle used to remind me of a dungeon.”

“Perhaps that is why I always felt like a prisoner.”

“And now? Are you still in need of being rescued?” Geoffrey’s cornflower blue gaze sent a shiver of anticipation through her.

“If I were?”

“I would feel obligated to rescue you.”

Eleanor led him down the passage and up the winding staircase to the solar, where a troubadour was strumming his lute.

“I also intend to broaden the narrow window slits to let in more light.” A servitor offered them silver goblets of wine on a wooden tray “And the wine is now imported from Bordeaux and Gascony—which makes it drinkable.”

Geoffrey smiled as he took a goblet. “That’s not all you’ve imported. I hear there is a veritable parade of troubadours, knights, and jongleurs streaming into Paris from Aquitaine. And surely these are new.” He nodded at Eleanor’s ladies, flitting about the solar like colorful hummingbirds, chatting, laughing, singing along with the minstrel. “I must congratulate you.”

Their eyes met; Geoffrey’s hand brushed against hers as if by accident. Her heart raced and she did not move away. Suddenly aware her ladies were watching, Eleanor felt her cheeks burn and stepped back.

The Vespers bell summoned them to evensong. Eleanor led the way out of the solar and down the passage.

“How is your charming son? He must be nine or ten by now.”

Geoffrey slowed his step. His handsome face twisted into a grimace; he shrugged elegant shoulders. “My charming son, Henry, is with his mother in England these days. Although I worry about his welfare in that war-torn land, it is something of a relief. Subduing Normandy is easier than trying to subdue Henry.”

Eleanor laughed, vividly remembering the connection between herself and the gray-eyed scamp at her wedding feast, then again when he had presented her with a bouquet of lilies on the road to Poitiers.

“Do you go often to Aquitaine?” Geoffrey asked as they continued on their way to the chapel.

“Seldom. Louis doesn’t like me to go without him, and he dislikes going so—” she gave an eloquent shrug. “I miss my duchy—I cannot tell you how deeply.”

“It strikes me that you are not very happy, Madam.”

Unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears. Geoffrey reached out as if to touch her, then withdrew.

The next day when Count Geoffrey was leaving, Eleanor wished she could find an excuse to keep him longer. In the courtyard he bowed over her hand, his eyes caressing her in a manner that sent a wave of heat through her body. She was aware that Louis, standing next to her, had stiffened.

With an aching sense of loneliness she watched the Angevin lord mount his black stallion and ride off into the gray drizzle of the autumn day.

Luxurious quarters, entertainment from morning until night, gay companions, were no compensation for the vast emptiness inside her heart. Even a stolen visit, when she dressed as a page to hear Peter Abelard lecture, had not relieved the monotony for long. In fact, she had been disappointed after a while and found the arguments boring. Did it really matter whether a sow led to market was led by the rope or the man? She was still restless, still wretched, and still a prisoner. What could she do?

“What you need is a lover, Nell,” said Petronilla one afternoon as they lounged on Eleanor’s bed in the solar.

“But I’m not quite ready to take that step. Too dangerous. You know what happens to adulterous queens?”

“Annul the marriage? Banish you to a convent? That wouldn’t happen to you, you’re duchess of Aquitaine! Besides, you’d have to be caught first.”

“Everyone watches me. I know Bernard of Clairvaux is just waiting like a hawk, ready to pounce if I do anything that even looks suspicious.”

“You can’t imagine the joys you’re missing, Sister.”

The growing scandal of Petronilla and her elderly lover, Ralph, provided the only real excitement in Eleanor’s life. Apart from occasional mild flirtations with her own troubadours or visiting nobles like Geoffrey of Anjou, her most vital connection to the passionate existence she craved was through her sister’s adulterous affair.

But Louis was shocked and humiliated by the behavior of the two lovers. “Ralph is married to the sister of the count of Champagne, who is a powerful vassal of mine. He is most distressed by these events and by rumors that Ralph will seek an annulment. Thįs—this disgraceful affair must cease.”

They were in their own chamber preparing for bed. Louis had just risen from the prie-dieu.

“What are you saying?” Eleanor cried, already under the fur-lined, blue and gold-embroidered coverlet. “They are in love, never will they be parted. It’s naught to do with the count of Champagne. How can you be so unchivalrous, so lacking in romance?”

“But, my dear, the count has complained to the pope, who has upbraided me for allowing such adulterous behavior under my own roof. Ralph is my cousin, I can’t very well condone—”

“Why, why, why are you so spineless?” Eleanor threw herself on the lace-trimmed cushions and pounded her fists on the coverlet. “Show a little mettle! Stand up to the pope, to the count! Assert yourself. Behave like a fearless knight for a change.”

Eleanor knew she sounded like a shrew but did not care. If only once Louis would act like a true king, the strong gallant she so longed for him to be! Reminding her as usual of a cowed, bewildered puppy, Louis crept under the coverlet and curled up on his side of the bed. Why had God cursed her with such a husband? What had she ever done to deserve such a wretched life? How long could she go on before exploding?

A month later Bernard of Clairvaux unexpectedly arrived at the palace, demanding to see her.

“After five years of marriage, your failure to bear a child is the talk of Paris,” the monk said, when they met in the Chapel of St. Nicholas. “Like everyone else, I’m concerned for the future of the realm.”

It was a concern Eleanor shared and she did not object to discussing it, even with this meddling monk. For once he might be able to do some good.

“Louis still thinks of himself as a future priest and finds every excuse imaginable not to bed me,” she said. “Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he is forbidden to lie with me, then again forty days before Easter or Christmas, as well as three days before communion. You know how often Louis takes communion? So you see it is hardly my fault. I am more than willing.”

“King Louis behaves as a devoted son of Holy Church, but I will write to His Holiness in Rome. I feel certain that upon my recommendation he will grant dispensations to King Louis in this matter. The weal of the kingdom is at stake.” Abbé Bernard’s gaze bored into hers. “More than willing, you say? What does that mean exactly?”

“What you think it means, Father.” A sudden urge to shock this unshakable, devout churchman took hold of Eleanor. “I am young and ripe for the marriage bed.”

“I’m sure you are aware that carnal desire, even for a husband, is held to be sinful. Relations between husband and wife are not intended for pleasure but for the sole purpose of bearing children. However, with the disgraceful example set you by your adulterous family, what else can one expect but wanton cravings?” His eyes narrowed. “Do you attempt to solace yourself in order to relieve your unholy lust?”

Eleanor was intrigued. “No. There are ways to do that?”

A look of disgust crossed Bernard’s ascetic face as he signed himself. “Unfortunately, the devil has endless means at his disposal to entice the unwary. It relieves my mind that you are ignorant of such matters.”

Eleanor assumed an air of maidenly innocence. “Totally ignorant. You must tell me what—what these means are so I will be sure to avoid them.”

“You must never, never touch yourself—with an object or otherwise.”

“An object?” Eleanor did not have to feign a look of incredulity.