Elizabeth Chadwick - The Summer Queen

‘I know what is expected of us,’ she said in a tight voice. ‘The women have explained to me my duty.’

He reached out and touched her hair. ‘My duty has been explained also.’ His fingers brushed her face. ‘But this does not feel like a duty. I thought it would, but it doesn’t.’ His brow furrowed. ‘Perhaps it should.’

Alienor tensed as Louis leaned over her. She had thought they would talk more, but it seemed he was intent on his business and she need not have worried that his early training as a monk had left him ignorant.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said. ‘I am not a beast; I am a prince of France.’ A note of pride crept into his voice. He kissed her cheek and temple with a butterfly gentleness that was almost reverential. His touch was eager, but he was not rough. ‘The Church has given us sanction to do this, and it is a holy thing.’

Alienor steadied herself. The marriage had to be consummated. Proof would be sought in the morning. The deed couldn’t be that terrible or else men and women would not return to it so often or write songs and poetry about it in vivid, carnal detail.

He kissed her on the mouth with his lips closed, and began tentatively to untie the laces at the throat of her chemise. His hand was trembling and his breath shook in his chest. Alienor realised that he too was out of his depth, and it gave her courage. She returned his kiss and put her hands in his hair. His skin was smooth and supple, and his breath smelled of wine and cardamom seeds. Amid clumsy, breathless kisses, they undressed each other. Louis pulled the sheets over them both, creating a barely lit tent within the confines of the bed curtains, and he lay on her. His body was damp with sweat and as smooth as her own. His fair hair was silky under her fingers. She could have stayed like this all night, kissing and touching, wrapped in this mutual, tender embrace with everything still to discover. But Louis was keen to progress the matter and, after a moment, Alienor parted her legs for him.

It was the secret channel. The place where children were conceived from a blending of male and female seed, and from which they were pushed into the world nine months later. A source of sin and shame, but also of pleasure. The work of God; the work of the Devil. Her grandfather had been excommunicated for falling prey to his lust for that place within his mistress’s body, and refusing to give her up even though she was another man’s wife. He had written paeans to the glories of fornication.

Louis fumbled and muttered something that sounded like an oath, but then she realised he was entreating God to be with him at this moment and help him do his duty. Alienor felt a sharp, stabbing pain as he pushed into her and she arched and gritted her teeth, striving not to cry out. He moved above her half a dozen times, and then with a gasp and a final lunge, shuddered and was still.

After a moment he heaved a deep sigh and withdrew from her. Alienor closed her legs as he lay down at her side. There was a long silence. Was that it? Was that all the deed consisted of? Was she supposed to speak? She had once come across a couple in an empty stable lazing in post-coital bliss and they had been talking and kissing in a warm and languorous way, but was that appropriate for her and Louis?

Eventually, he stroked her arm and, drawing away, donned his nightshirt. Leaving the bed, he knelt before the small altar and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving. Alienor was astonished at his action, but he looked so beautiful with the candlelight shining on his hair, and his features aglow with devotion, that she felt admiration too.

He turned to her. ‘Do you not come and pray too, wife?’ he asked with a frown.

Alienor stretched. ‘If that is what you want me to do,’ she said.

His frown deepened. ‘It is what you should do for God, and without question. We should both thank Him and pray that He makes us fruitful.’

Alienor thought they had already done that, but she humoured him and, donning her shift, came to kneel at his side and make her own prayer. Louis’s tense shoulders relaxed and his gaze grew tender. He stroked her hair again as if it fascinated him. And then he cleared his throat and turned back to his prayers.

When eventually they returned to the bed, Alienor’s knees were on fire as well as the place between her thighs. She was shivering too. A small red blot had soaked into the centre of the sheet. Louis looked at it with an expression of mingled satisfaction and distaste. ‘You have given proof of your purity,’ he said. ‘Abbé Suger and the Archbishop will bear witness tomorrow.’ He gestured her back into bed. Alienor climbed in and started to close the curtains.

‘Leave them,’ he said swiftly. ‘I like to see the light; it helps me to sleep.’

Alienor raised her eyebrows, thinking that Louis was just like Petronella. He needed the comfort and security of a candle. She gently touched his shoulder. ‘As you wish, sire,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

He clasped her hand but said nothing.

Alienor closed her eyes. On her side of the bed the candlelight was so dim that it did not impinge. The blood spot was cold and damp under her thighs. She felt a little let down. The embracing, the kissing and twining had been delicious, but the strangeness and discomfort of the final act had left her feeling disappointed and more than a little sore.

Louis seemed to have found his pleasure. She wondered if God was pleased too, and if she had conceived a child. That notion frightened her and she put it from her mind and turned over to face away from him, seeking her own space. Louis’s breathing soon grew deep and slow as he fell asleep, but it was a long time before her own restless mind settled to slumber; there was too much to think about, not least how to deal with this stranger in the bed who had mingled his seed with hers so that they were now irrevocably bound as one flesh.

7

Palace of Poitiers, Summer 1137

Wearing a gown of red sarcenet, the coronet of Aquitaine held between her hands, Alienor sat alone by the pool in the palace gardens. A relentless sun had beaten down all day and now a bruised dusk was mantling the city.

No one had come looking for her yet, but they soon would. Not for her the freedom to do as she pleased. This last fortnight, she had either been immersed in public duties or travelling between them, constantly attended by servants, vassals and family. Her every moment was accounted for as if her time was being apportioned like beads on an abacus counted out by a keen-eyed merchant. Even when she was kneeling in church or at her needlework, she was aware of being scrutinised by members of Louis’s entourage and by Louis himself. He couldn’t take his eyes off her and wanted her with him all of the time, as if she were a precious jewel stitched to his tunic.

She had grown accustomed to the night duty and it hurt less now; indeed it was pleasurable on the occasions when Louis lingered over the foreplay. She just wished he did not have to kneel and ask God’s blessing every time, and then thank Him afterwards and expect her to do the same. He did not share her bed on Fridays or Sundays because he said they should be kept pure for God, but she used those occasions to cuddle up with Petronella in the old way – except it wasn’t the same any more. Her marriage and bedding had severed her from girlhood. Petronella had demanded to know what it was like, sleeping with a man, and Alienor had put her off with vague remarks about it being part of the duty of a wife.

Alienor was still unsure what to make of Louis. Sometimes he was the aloof French prince, looking down from his tall horse, but he was like a child too, having to be told what to think and do by his courtiers, who vied for influence over him. Also like a child, he could be petulant, stubborn and unreasonable. And then there was his stifling piety, born of his upbringing by the Church, coupled with his overweening need for structure and order. Unlike her, he was not good at adapting to suit his circumstances. Yet he could be sweet and charming. He was knowledgeable about nature, loved the trees and the sky, and enjoyed being on the road in merry company where he would shed his solemnity and find his smile, which was winsome and tender. She found him physically attractive too, with his lean, graceful physique, his shining fair hair and dark blue eyes.