Eleanor blanched. “Louis, they are but six years and one year in age. I am their mother.”
“You should have thought of that when you pressed for an annulment!” Louis said reprovingly.
“I did think of it, constantly! Is it my fault that we are too near in blood? Louis, I beg of you …”
“Is it not enough that I am to be deserted by the wife I love? Should I lose my children too? I tell you, Eleanor, no court in Christendom would award you custody of them, and it would kill me to have you take them away.” There were tears in Louis’s eyes, his pain not all on account of his daughters.
“So you would deprive them of their mother?” Eleanor persisted.
“They will have a stepmother before long. You said that I must remarry, remember? And I will be expected to, for the sake of the succession.”
“I realize that, but they are my children too!” Eleanor cried. “Do not deprive me of them, I beg of you.”
“Eleanor, you know, as do I, that this is not about consanguinity,” Louis replied sadly. “You want your freedom, I have long been aware of that. Who is doing the depriving here?”
“I never intended that, God knows,” she sobbed, sinking to her knees. “I know you love our girls.” They were both weeping now.
“As usual, you never think things through, Eleanor,” Louis said, resisting the urge to kneel down and comfort her. “You just act impetuously, causing a lot of grief. I loved you—God help me, I love you still—and I feel for you. But on this issue I will not—nay, I cannot—bend. Princesses of France must be reared in France. The people would expect it. Besides, you left Marie for more than two years to go on the crusade. You insisted on coming with me, as I recall.”
“It grieved me to leave her, you must believe that. But I hadto accompany you, Louis. My vassals would not accept you as their leader. Besides, I rarely saw Marie anyway. She did not need me. Neither of my daughters needs me. It is I who need time to get to know them, to make up to them for what I have not been.”
“Alas, I cannot grant you that,” Louis said. “Be realistic, and understand my position.” There was a pause, a heartbeat as his gaze held hers. “You could always reconsider.”
“You know that I cannot,” Eleanor told him. She was trembling. The prospects of her freedom, her return to Aquitaine, and a life with Henry of Anjou, not to mention the manifold benefits their marriage would bring, were too precious to her to give them up, but she had now been made devastatingly aware of just how high a price she was to pay for them. Desperately, she conjured up Henry’s leonine face in her mind, trying to blot out the plaintive image of those two sweet, fair-haired little girls.
Louis shook his head. “What a mess. We made our marriage with such high hopes.”
“We did our best,” Eleanor consoled, her mind still fixed fervently on Henry. “But God’s law must prevail.”
“I will speak to my bishops,” Louis said wearily. “Then we must attend to the practicalities.”
“You mean the transfer of Aquitaine to me?” Eleanor snapped.
“Yes. There will be a peaceful withdrawal of my royal officials and French garrisons. We will go there together and oversee it. Your vassals shall attend you.”
“All those defenses you built must be dismantled,” Eleanor insisted. “My people resent them.”
“It shall be done,” Louis agreed.
Eleanor rose and went to look out of the narrow window—barely more than an arrow slit—across the broad Seine and the huddled rooftops of Paris. Above them, the inky sky was studded with stars—those same stars under which Henry of Anjou was living, breathing, waiting … She caught her breath suddenly, certain she had made the right decision. She must suppress her sadness, for there was no other way for her. Her daughters were well cared for and would barely miss her; she must love them from a distance, as she always had—except the distance would be farther. Her own future was mapped out by destiny, and there was no escaping it, even if she wanted to. She had only to contain herself in patience for some while longer, and in the meantime she would be returning to Aquitaine, to reclaim her great inheritance. She was going home, home to the sweet, lush lands of the South, the lands of mighty rivers and verdant hills, of rich wines and fields of sunflowers; where people spoke her native tongue, the langue d’oc, which would sound as music after the clumsy, outlandish dialect they spoke in the North. She could not wait to be once more among her own people, quarrelsome and often violent though they were. It meant more to her to be Duchess of Aquitaine than it ever had to be Queen of France, or queen of the whole world, for that matter.
Beaugency-sur-Loire, 1152
The whispering was hushed in the vaulted hall as the princes of the Church took their seats on the stone benches, their rich robes settling in swathes of purple and black around them.
Eleanor, enthroned above them on the dais, glanced at Louis, who was staring straight ahead, his handsome features set in stern resolution. He would betray by no frown or grimace what he was feeling inside, she knew. His pride would not allow it.
It was ten days since this synod of archbishops had first assembled. The King and Queen had attended on the first day, to plead their case and present genealogical charts showing how they were related within the forbidden degrees. Witnesses had been summoned by Louis to attest to this, and the venerable Archbishop Hugh of Sens, Primate of France, who had convened this ecclesiastical court, questioned them all at some length, and Louis and Eleanor too, to determine whether they were seeking an annulment for pure motives and no other cause. That was certainly the case with the King, the Archbishop had decided—as for the Queen, who knew? Like most churchmen, he neither liked nor approved of her. She was willful, flighty, and headstrong, and France would be well rid of her. Archbishop Hugh had been mightily relieved when the Pope’s decision, solicited by Abbot Bernard some weeks earlier, had arrived this morning, and he had been able to reconvene the court. Now he was rising to his feet and unraveling the scroll of parchment in his hands.
“By the authority invested in me by His Holiness Pope Eugenius,” he intoned in his softly moderated voice, “I pronounce that the plea of consanguinity laid by our lord, King Louis, and the Lady Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, be upheld, and that the marriage between them be deemed null and void.”
As the archbishops murmured their assent, and Abbot Bernard—come here specially to show his support for the annulment—looked on approvingly, Eleanor felt her heart bursting with joy and elation welling within her. She was free, at last, after all these long years of bondage! She was liberated. In vain, she struggled to keep her face impassive, for it would not be seemly to betray the exultation seething within her. Aquitaine was hers once more. Henry FitzEmpress would be hers … She was free.
Bernard of Clairvaux, catching the fleeting smile of triumph on her face, frowned. Heaven only knew what this wanton woman would do now that she had her release. He thanked God that Louis had put her away, yet trembled at the realization that she was now at liberty to wreak havoc on the rest of Christendom.
Archbishop Samson of Rheims, whom Louis had appointed to represent Eleanor at the synod and look to her interests, was now standing. He bowed in her direction, cleared his throat, and declared, “My Lord King has given me assurances that the Lady Eleanor’s lands will now be restored to her as she possessed them prior to her marriage. Because this union was entered into in good faith, its issue, the Princesses Marie and Alix, are to be held legitimate, and custody of them is granted to King Louis.”