Devil's Consort. Anne O'Brien

      Ave Marie. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

      Blessed art thou among women

      And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

      Holy Mary, Mother of Grace, pray for us now

      And in the hour of our death. Amen.

      Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

      Blessed art thou.

      On and on it went. Should I join him on my knees, to pray with him? But he had not invited me, neither did I think it appropriate when this occasion demanded a physical rather than spiritual response. I clawed my fingers into the linen. I’d wager Dangerosa and my grandfather did not begin their reprehensible relationship on their knees before a crucifix.

      ‘Hail Mary.’

      ‘Louis!’ I said, cautiously. Should I disturb him in his prayers?

      ‘Blessed art thou among women …’

      ‘Louis!’ I raised my voice to an unmaidenly pitch.

      Unhurriedly, Louis completed the Ave, rose, genuflected, and returned to the bed, where he once more removed his robe and slid between the sheets, but bringing with him my little Book of Hours that he proceeded to open, turning the pages slowly from one illuminated text to the next.

      ‘This is a very beautiful book,’ he observed.

      I was tempted to snatch it from him and hurl it across the room.

      Instead, I said, ‘Louis—did you not wish to marry me?’

      ‘Of course. My father wished it. It is an important marriage to make our alliance between France and Aquitaine. The Scriptures say it is better for a man to marry than to burn.’

      I did not think, on evidence, that Louis burned.

      ‘But do you not want me?’

      ‘You are beautiful.’

      So was my Book of Hours! ‘Then tell me, Louis.’ Perhaps he was simply shy. Was that it? A boy brought up by monks might be reserved and indecisive in the company of a woman who was naked and expecting some degree of intimacy. I would encourage him. ‘Tell me why you think I am beautiful. A woman always likes to know.’

      ‘If you wish.’ He did not close the book, keeping one finger in the page, but now he looked at me. ‘Your hair is … the russet of a dog fox. Look how it curls around my fingers.’ He touched my hair. ‘And your eyes …’ he peered into them ‘ … green.’ Lord, Louis was no poet. My troubadours would mock his lack of skill. ‘Your skin … pale and smooth. Your hands so elegant and soft but so capable—you controlled your horse as well as any man. Your shoulders …’ His fingers skimmed them thoughtfully, until he snatched them away as if they were scorched.

      ‘Look,’ he said suddenly, urgently. ‘Here.’ He lifted the Book of Hours so that I might see and thumbed through the pages until he came to the illustration he sought, the coloured inks vibrant. ‘Here’s an angel with your exact colouring. Is that not beautiful?’

      ‘Well, yes …’ It was beautiful, but unreal, with its painted features and heavy with gold leaf. Did he see me as a gilded icon? I was a woman of flesh and blood.

      ‘What about my lips?’ I asked. Daring, certainly forward, but why not? Once my troubadour Bernart had compared them to an opening rose, pink and perfectly petalled.

      ‘Sweet …’

      I despaired. ‘You could kiss them.’

      ‘I would like to.’ Louis leaned forward and placed his lips softly on mine. Fleetingly.

      ‘Did you like that?’ I asked as he drew away.

      His smile was totally disarming. ‘Yes.’

      I placed my hand on his chest—his heart beat slow and steady—and leaned to kiss him of my own volition. Louis allowed it but did not respond. He was still smiling at the end. As a child might smile when given a piece of sugared marchpane.

      ‘I enjoyed it too,’ I said, desperation keen. Did he not know what to do? Surely someone would have seen to his education. He might not have been raised to know the coarse jokes and explicit reminiscences that to my experience men indulged in but surely …

      ‘I think we shall be happy together,’ he murmured.

      ‘Would you like to hold me in your arms?’

      ‘Very much. Shall we sleep now? It’s late and you must be weary.’

      ‘I thought that …’ What to say? Louis’s eyes were wide and charmingly friendly. ‘Will the Abbot not wish for proof of our union—the sheets …?’ I wouldn’t mince words. ‘The linen should be stained to prove my virginity and your ability to claim it.’

      And saw the return of the initial stubbornness as his brows flattened into a line. His reply had a gentle dignity. A complete assurance. ‘The Abbot will get his proof. When I wish it.’

      ‘But, Louis … My women—they will mock.’

      ‘I care not. Neither should you. It is not their concern.’

      ‘They will say you have found me wanting. Or—’ even worse ‘—that I was no virgin.’

      ‘Then they will be wrong. I have never met a woman who has touched my heart as you have. And I know you are innocent. There now, don’t be upset. Come here …’

      Abandoning the book, Louis folded me into his arms—as if he were a brother comforting a distressed sister. His manhood did not stir against my thigh despite his appreciation of me. Should I touch him? I may not have had the practice but I knew the method.

      But I couldn’t do it. I dared not touch him so intimately. In the presence of God and the Book of Hours and Louis’s strange sanctity, I just could not do it.

      When Louis released me to blow out the candle and we lay side by side like carved effigies on a tomb, I was mortified. My marriage was no marriage at all. I knew that Louis slept, as calmly composed as that same effigy, his hands folded on his breast as if still summoning God to take note of his prayers. When I turned my head to look at him, his face was serene and completely unaware of the disillusion that I suffered.

      Eventually I slept. When I awoke with daylight, he was gone, the Book of Hours carefully positioned on the empty pillow at my side, the page open to the gilded angel. The linen of my bed was entirely unmarked. There were no bloody sheets to testify to my husband’s duty towards me or even his desire.

      Well, I could have faked it, couldn’t I? A quick stab to my finger with my embroidery needle—but I did not. It had not been my choice and Louis must answer for his own lack. Faced with the Abbot’s gentle enquiry the following morning, I was haughty. I was defiant but icily controlled.

      ‘If you wish to know what passed between us in the privacy of our bed, you must ask the Prince,’ I informed him.

      I silenced my women with a blank stare and a demand that I would break my fast as soon as they could arrange it. Perhaps now rather than in their own good time. I would not show my humiliation but coated it in a hard shell, as my cook in Bordeaux might enclose the softness of an almond in sugar. As for Aelith’s obvious concern, I shut her out. I could not speak of what had not occurred, even to her. If I had, I think I might have wept.

      What passed between the Abbot and the Prince I had no idea.

      In a bid to impress my subjects, Abbot Suger himself, in the glory of the great cathedral, placed the golden coronets to proclaim us Count and Countess of Poitiers. Louis accepted his new dignity with an unfortunate show of shy diffidence, whereas I spent the ceremony taking note of those who bent the knee and bared their necks in subservience, and making an even more careful accounting of those who did not.

      Such as William de Lezay, my own castellan of Talmot, my hunting