‘But if he had agreed to the annulment, what then?’ Petronella demanded. ‘What would you have done? You wouldn’t have been free – not as a woman alone and without a male heir but with many years of childbearing left. Someone would seize you. Raoul said you were being just as foolish as Louis.’
‘Raoul seems to have a lot to say on many things, and you seem very keen to take his word as the truth,’ Alienor snapped. ‘Raoul knows nothing of my situation. I do not choose to share my plans with him and with good reason.’
Petronella’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘He has been loyal to Louis throughout.’
‘But I have no doubt that he was busy covering all exits and entrances. And who is Raoul to speak of foolishness with his reputation? Ah, enough. I shall not quarrel with you.’
Ahead of her the children were flurrying through the snow. Little Marie slipped on a patch of ice and fell hard. Her bottom lip quivered and she began to wail. Her cousin Isabelle pulled her to her feet, but it was to Petronella that Marie ran for comfort.
‘Hush now, my love, hush,’ Petronella said, and crouched to stroke Marie’s cheek with a hand that was warm from the stone. ‘It’s nothing, a little scrape, hmmm? Such a fuss.’ She gave her a cuddle and a kiss.
Alienor watched, feeling empty and heartsick. ‘Come,’ she said curtly, turning towards the garden gate. ‘We should go inside; it is growing colder.’
A week later, with the bitter chill still straining people’s endurance at the seams, Louis sat in his chamber of the Great Tower in the late-winter afternoon. Dinner was over, the candles had been lit, and everyone was taking their ease. For once Louis was not at his prayers, but sitting in conversation with members of his household. For once, too, Thierry de Galeran was not at his side, having business at his estates of Montlhéry, and as a result the atmosphere was more relaxed.
The court children were playing a simple game of dice near the hearth and their quick cries rang out. It would soon be their bedtime and the nurses were keeping close watch. Raoul’s son and namesake was over-exuberant and the dice bounced from the table and rolled under the trestle where the adults were talking. Little Marie crawled under to fetch them and then squealed as a dog took this as an invitation to lick her face.
Raoul called the hound to heel and peered under the table. ‘What are you doing, child?’
‘Finding the dice, sire,’ she lisped, and held them out on the palm of her hand.
‘Ah, you weren’t spying on us then?’ Raoul said with a twitch of his lips. His words elicited an uncomfortable silence from the adults.
‘What’s spying, sire?’
‘Listening to what other people say without them knowing you are listening, and then reporting what you have heard to others. If you’re lucky, they’ll pay you for the information.’
She continued to stare at him. ‘That’s telling tales.’
Raoul’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. ‘I suppose it is. Just remember that all knowledge is profit.’ He smiled briefly at Alienor and, rising from his stoop, went to join the dice game and show the children one of his tricks. Louis shook his head and snorted with amusement. ‘Fool,’ he said.
‘A knowing fool though.’ She watched him bend over the table and perform a vanishing trick with the newly retrieved dice. Marie leaned against his leg like a kitten after milk and he patted her head.
Alienor looked down at her lap. She knew she had to tell him. That smile from Raoul had been a warning. ‘Louis,’ she said. ‘I am with child. You are to be a father once more.’
His expression went very still and then, like raindrops hitting a pool, the emotion twitched across his face. ‘Truly?’ he said. ‘You speak truly?’
Alienor nodded and set her jaw. She wanted to cry, but not with joy. ‘Yes, I speak truly,’ she said.
Louis took her hands in his and leaned forward to kiss her brow. ‘That is the greatest news you could give me! The Pope was right and wise. This is indeed a new start. I am going to protect you and look after you and make sure you have the best possible care.’ His chest expanded. ‘Tomorrow I shall send for the most learned physicians in the land. You and our child will want for nothing. I shall do everything in my power to keep you and the child safe.’
Alienor tried to smile but could not for she knew that now her incarceration would begin. Already she felt as if she could not breathe.
If the winter had been long and hard, then the early summer of 1150 was hot enough to blister the paint from the shutters and warp doors, creating fissures and cracks in the gasping wood. Even in the top chamber of the Great Tower, with the shutters open and the insulation of the thick, cool stone, the air was warm and stale. Labouring to bear her child, Alienor’s only relief from the heat came as successive layers of sweat dried on her body.
The midwives had told her all was well and progressing as it should be, but the hours still slipped by in the pain and endurance of Eve’s lot. She could not help but remember the stillbirth on the road from Antioch and it churned up all her terror, rage and grief from that time. Those emotions had never gone away, and rode her hard as she sought to push this new child from the womb and be free of the burden.
There came the last moments of struggle, the final effort and the baby was born, pink and wet and living, with a set of lungs that filled the still air in the room like a fanfare. But all the attendants and adults in the room were silent and the anticipation on their faces turned to blank expressions and sidelong glances.
Petronella leaned over the bed and held Alienor’s hand. ‘It’s another girl,’ she said. ‘You have another beautiful daughter.’
The words meant nothing to Alienor. It was as if her mind was cut off from her feelings just as the cord severed her from the new baby. She had had no choice in Tusculum but to share Louis’s bed and this child was a matter between the Pope and her husband. She had only been the vessel. That it was a girl did nothing to pierce her numbness. There was naught she could do about it and so it had to be accepted. She turned her head towards the window, to the faint breath of breeze.
‘Perhaps the next one will be a boy,’ Petronella said. ‘Our mother had two daughters and a son, and so do I.’
Alienor looked at her sister. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘What God decides, He decides.’
Petronella gently stroked Alienor’s loose hair. Then she rose and stood aside for the midwives to deal with the afterbirth as the contractions gathered again. ‘Perhaps it is for the best,’ she whispered. ‘You can be free now.’
Louis had been pacing and waiting for news ever since hearing that Alienor’s labour had begun. As always such things seemed to take forever. This time he knew it would be a son. The Pope had given his word, and the child had been conceived in the papal palace. Everyone he consulted assured him that the child was a boy. He had made sure Alienor had had the best of care and protection throughout the pregnancy. He was to be named Philippe, and Louis was ready to take him to his christening before the altar of Saint Peter in the royal chapel the moment he was brought from the birthing chamber. He had even written some documents in his son’s name, promising gifts to abbeys, penning the words himself without the use of a scribe so that he could form the inky nib around the name ‘Philippe’ and feel that wonderful sense of destiny.
Abbé Suger sat with him. They had been at prayer together earlier and were now busy with matters of government. Suger had aged in the bitter winter last year, becoming gaunt and wizened, his words punctuated by a persistent dry cough. However, despite his physical frailty, he was still politically active and astute as they discussed their troublesome neighbours.