Anne O'Brien - Devil's Consort

Nothing could have prepared me for my new home in Paris that Louis brought me to with such pride. Louis might appreciate his inheritance, I did not. Grim and decaying, the Cité palace seemed nothing to me but a pile of stones, a frowning bleak tower standing on a drear island in the centre of a sluggishly running river. The Ile de la Cité, as I learned to call it, connected to the two banks by stone bridges.

A place of great safety, Louis enthused, protecting us from our enemies.

A prison cut off from the world, I thought. Cold, uncivilised, unwelcoming.

Even before I set eyes on the palace, my heart sank, for Paris, the world outside my new home, stank. Unpaved streets, gutters running with the effluent of two hundred thousand souls who clustered along the River Seine, Paris squatted in a thick cloud of noxious stench. Black flies swarmed in the fetid air. The welcome of our entourage did nothing to detract from the stink. More likely, I decided sourly, the mass of cheering hordes probably increased it, but I acknowledged the welcome. I knew what was expected of me, their new queen.

But my spirits fell to the level of my inadequate footwear as Louis escorted me through the corridors and endless chambers of my new home. I walked at his side in horrified silence. I shivered. Even in the heat of summer it was so cold, so bone-chillingly damp. And dark. The only light to enter was through the narrowest of arrow slits, thus casting every room into depressing gloom. As for the draughts. Where the air came from, I could not fathom, but my veils rippled with the constant movement of chilly air. I wished I had one of my fur mantles with me.

‘The windows have no shutters!’ Aelith muttered from behind me. ‘How do we keep warm here?’

‘There!’ Louis gestured, hearing her complaint. He pointed to two charcoal braziers that stood in the small antechamber we were passing through. ‘I think they give enough heat.’

‘And enough fumes to choke us!’ I replied as the smoke suddenly billowed and caught in my throat. ‘How do you warm the larger rooms? The Great Hall?’

‘A central fire.’

‘And the smoke?’

‘Through a hole in the roof.’ He sounded mildly amused, as if I were a fool not to know.

Letting in the wind and the rain too, I had no doubt, as well as the occasional exploratory squirrel or unfortunate bird. In Aquitaine we had long moved past such basic amenities, borrowing what we could learn from the old villas of Ancient Rome with their open courtyards, hypocausts and drainage channels. I did not speak my dismay, I could not. Unnervingly I could feel Louis’s eyes on me as he smiled and nodded, as if he might stoke my tepid enthusiasm from spark to flame. It was a lost cause, and since I could think of nothing complimentary to say I said nothing but stood in shocked, shivering silence.

‘And we are to live here?’ Aelith marvelled as Louis stepped aside to speak with a servant who approached with a message. ‘Do we die of the ague?’

‘It seems that we do. And probably will.’ My heart was as coldly heavy as the stone floor beneath my feet.

‘I wish we were back at Ombrières!’

So did I.

Perhaps my own accommodations, prepared and decorated with the new bride in mind, as surely they must have been, would be more comfortable. Momentarily I closed my eyes as the shadowy form of a rat sped along the base of the wall, claws tapping against the stone, to disappear behind a poor excuse for a wall hanging that did nothing to enhance the chamber. A woodland scene, I surmised, catching the odd shape of wings and the gleam of stitched eyes, except that the layer of soot was so thick it could have been the black depths of Hell. The rat retraced its scurrying steps, and I wished the livestock to be confined to the stitchery.

When the rat—or perhaps there were many—reappeared to gallop once more in its original direction, I requested that Louis show me to my private chambers immediately, but he had other ideas. Taking my arm in a gentle hold, he detached me from my women and guided me through a doorway, down a long, dark corridor and knocked on the door at the end.

‘What is this?’ I whispered since he did not explain. I felt a need to whisper as the stone pressed down on us. It was like being in a coffin.

‘Dear Eleanor.’ Louis enclosed my hand within his. ‘My mother has asked to meet with you.’

It was the only warning I received. I had not known that the Dowager Queen even resided in this palace. The door was opened by an unobtrusive servant into an audience chamber, the walls bare and shining with damp, the furnishings few and unremarkable. Except for one attendant woman, Louis’s mother sat alone, waiting. Hands clasped loosely on her lap, she gave no sign of acknowledging our entrance. The emotion in that small room was chilling: my flesh crept with it.

‘Madam.’ Louis left my side to approach her.

The Dowager Queen of France raised her head and looked not at her son but at me. It was an unambiguous stare, and I swallowed at what I read there, my throat suddenly dry. I had not expected this. I was instantly on guard.

Louis bowed, the respectful son, took his mother’s hand and saluted her fingers. ‘I regret your loss, madam.’

The Dowager Queen bowed her head in cold acknowledgement. I thought her loss was not as great as her son might fear. There was an air of fierce composure about her. Her features were small and pinched but from a lifetime of dissatisfaction rather than from present grief. The lines between nose and mouth had not been engraved in a matter of weeks.

Adelaide de Maurienne. Queen of France. Whose position I had just usurped.

She was a pious woman from the presence of a prie-dieu, numerous crucifixes and books of religious content and a rosary to hand on the coffer at her side. Clad in black from her veils to her feet, she all but merged with the shadows. I sensed she had been invisible for most of her life as the neglected wife of Fat Louis.

‘My son. At last.’ She did not immediately rise to her feet, even though her King and Queen had entered the room.

‘Madam,’ Louis urged with a not-so-subtle tug on her hand. ‘I would present my wife. Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. Now Queen of France.’

Without haste—an insult in itself to my mind—Dowager Queen Adelaide stood, her hand clamped on her son’s wrist, and managed a curt inclination of her head rather than the curtsey she should have afforded my rank. The welcome from Louis’s mother was as grim as the stench of mould from the wetly gleaming walls. Did she think to intimidate me, a daughter of Aquitaine? I knew my worth. And I knew my power as Louis’s wife. With a genuflection as conspicuous as her lack, I sank into a deep curtsey. My face, I made sure, was full of remorse.

‘Madam, I trust your faith gives you consolation. If I can do anything to alleviate your grief during your visit to the Cité palace, you have only to ask. Do you stay long?’ A neat little challenge to her presence, deliberately spoken in my own language.

Adelaide looked to Louis for clarification. When he could not, I repeated my greeting in Latin. Adelaide flushed at the implication that the days of her occupation of these rooms might be numbered. Her spine became rigid.

‘You do not have a facility with the langue d’oeil?’ she asked in that language.

‘I do,’ I replied smoothly. I understood her perfectly well. I had made some progress on my journey to Paris. ‘But I prefer the langue d’oc.’

‘Here we speak the langue d’oeil.’

Sensing the imminent clash of wills, Louis eyed his mother cautiously. ‘We will, madam, converse together in Latin.’

Adelaide inhaled. ‘As you wish, my son.’ And then to me, sliding into rapid Latin. ‘My advice is to learn our language. As a mark of courtesy to your husband and your new country.’