Robert of Dreux arrived, his shield almost in pieces and his horse cut about the haunches and lame. Amadée de Maurienne was with him, looking shaken and old. ‘We could not find the King,’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘and the Turks and the natives were all over the mountain, looting and butchering.’
Alienor absorbed the news with an initial surge of shock, but as the jolt left her, she shook her head. Louis was not the world’s best commander, but when it came to fighting ability in a crisis, and sheer luck, he had few equals.
‘God preserve him. God preserve us all.’ Robert crossed himself. He was quivering and his eyes were wide and dark. If Louis did not return, then Robert, here and now, would become King of France. The air was huge with tension. She knew how ambitious Robert was, and already she could see the glances being cast his way, each man wondering if he should dare to be the first to kneel and give his allegiance.
If Louis was dead, then she was no longer Queen of France. Robert’s wife Hawise would bear that burden instead. She could return to Aquitaine, with her daughter, and this time marry as she chose. The notion was like a prison door opening, but she dared not allow herself to think it might be true, and pulled back from the thought as if she had touched a hot iron bar.
Throughout the evening, stragglers continued to arrive. The guards were tense, challenging each one, afraid that the Turks would creep up under cover of darkness and encircle the camp. The cloud on this side of the mountain was sparse, and the stars shone like chips of rock crystal in the bitter night.
Alienor was crouching beside a wounded knight, offering him words of comfort, when she heard the shout go up. ‘The King, the King is found! Praise God, praise God!’ She rose to her feet, clutching her cloak around her, eyes wide. She had been hoping and fearing. She had expected him to succeed and survive, but her thoughts, although controlled, were on a knife edge. She hurried towards the shouting and then stopped abruptly because Louis, filthy, bedraggled and blood-spattered, was swaying where he stood, legs wide-planted for balance, and on their knees before him, heads bowed, were Geoffrey de Rancon and Amadée de Maurienne.
‘Where were you?’ Louis was demanding. ‘You are to blame. You rode off to see to your own comfort. You hid like cowards and left me and my men to die. De Warenne, de Breteuil, de Bullas: hacked to death before my eyes. This is betrayal that amounts to treason!’
‘Sire, we did not know,’ pleaded de Maurienne. ‘We thought it was safe. If we had known, we would not have come down to make camp.’
‘You disobeyed my orders and men whose names you are not fit to utter have died today because of your incompetence and cowardice.’
‘I will give my life if you ask it, nephew,’ de Maurienne volunteered.
Louis’s gaze stabbed the kneeling men. ‘I am inclined to accept your offer,’ he snarled. ‘Neither of you is worth a pot of piss! You are both under arrest, and I will deal with you as you deserve in the morning. Prepare your souls. My household guard sacrificed themselves for me and their bodies are lying out on that mountainside, stripped and butchered by infidels.’ His voice cracked with rage and grief. ‘Their blood is on your hands for eternity, do you hear me? For eternity!’ He raised his dirty, bloodstained fists to emphasise the point, and then slowly lowered them. ‘Bring me maps,’ he commanded. ‘Find me de Galeran – if he survived.’ He pointed to de Maurienne’s tent. ‘I will take this for my own. See to it.’
Geoffrey and de Maurienne were dragged away through a crowd clamouring to see them hanged here and now, especially Geoffrey. Men spat at them and struck out as they passed amid cries of ‘Shame!’ and ‘Treason!’ Alienor’s heart began to pound. Sweeping her cloak around her, she hastened to the tent that Louis had just commandeered and forced her way past the soldiers guarding the entrance. ‘Husband,’ she said to Louis, invoking the familiar form as she dropped the flaps.
He was standing in the middle of the tent, his face in his hands and his body shuddering with sobs. He made an abrupt turn to her and raised his head, tears streaming down his grimed cheeks. ‘What do you want?’ he said raggedly.
She lifted her chin. There was no falling into each other’s arms. No ‘Glad you are alive.’ They were far beyond that. ‘I am sorry for the good men we have lost, but you cannot hang your uncle and my seneschal on the morrow, and you must make sure your men do not do so tonight.’
‘Are you trying to rule me again?’ He bared his teeth. ‘Do not dictate to me what I can and cannot do.’
‘I am telling you that if you do this thing, you will have a war between our troops that will finish what the Turks began.’ She drew herself up. ‘Geoffrey de Rancon is my vassal and it is my prerogative to chastise him for what he has or has not done. You shall not hang him.’
‘They disobeyed my orders,’ Louis snarled, ‘and because they did not do as they were told, my men – my friends – were slaughtered. I shall do as I see fit.’
‘They did what they thought best. They made a mistake, but it was folly, not treason. You have no right to hang Geoffrey, because he is my vassal. If you do, then the Aquitaine contingent will rise in revolt against you. Do you really want to contend with that? And if you hang Geoffrey, you will also have to hang your uncle – your own mother’s brother – because they share the blame. Are you willing to do that, Louis? Will you watch them both swing? How will that sit with your men?’
‘You know nothing!’ he sobbed at her. ‘If you had been there, seeing your friends cut to pieces in front of your eyes, you would not be so swift to leap to their defence! My bodyguards gave their lives to protect mine, while de Maurienne and de Rancon were warming their backsides at the fire and taking their ease. This is all their fault, all of it. If you were any kind of wife to me, you would be supporting me in this, not casting obstacles in my way.’
‘You have a penchant for always seeing reason as an obstacle. If you hang these men, you will lose two battle commanders and all of their vassals who will no longer cleave to your banner, and that means you will only have yourself to blame when what remains disintegrates in your hands.’
‘Be silent!’ He raised his clenched, bloody fist.
Alienor did not flinch. ‘If you do this, you doom yourself,’ she said, her voice quiet but hard. She turned her back on him and left the tent.
Behind her she heard a crash as if something had been kicked over. A real man would not succumb to a boy’s tantrum, she thought, and the sound only served to increase her contempt for him and her fear of what he might do.
Alienor went with Saldebreuil to the tent where Geoffrey and Amadée de Maurienne were being held under house arrest. A crowd of knights and serjeants, survivors of the rearguard, had gathered outside and were shouting insults, most of them directed at Geoffrey. ‘Poitevan coward!’ and ‘Southern softsword!’ were the least of them. Chanted threats to hang the men surged and receded, and more soldiers were drifting towards the tent and joining the crowd with each moment. ‘Find Everard des Barres. Quickly!’ Alienor commanded Saldebreuil.
He snapped swift orders to one of his men, and then with a handful of household knights made a corridor for Alienor to approach the tent entrance. ‘Make way for the Queen!’ he bellowed.
Soldiers fell back, but Alienor was aware of their muttering and resentment. A real sense of danger tingled down her spine. At the tent entrance she paused, drew a deep breath, and then parted the flaps.
Geoffrey and de Maurienne sat at a trestle table with a flagon between them and a platter on which stood a loaf of hard bread and a rind of cheese. They looked up with taut faces as she entered; both then rose and knelt to her.