Devil's Consort. Anne O'Brien

Louis! If he had hoped for melodic tweetings, he was disappointed. Shrill and tuneless, the creatures merely added to the pandemonium. Nor was that all. With shouts of laugher from the barons, crossbows appeared in eager hands, arrows aimed—dangerously—at these unexpected targets. Their aim was remarkably good, all things considered. As the barons roared their approval at every hit, my own vassals amongst them, the songbirds began to fall, to be snapped up by the hounds that swarmed and waited below.

      I watched with growing dismay.

      Aelith giggled in horror.

      ‘Well, Louis …’ I sought for words through my distaste at so much thoughtless bloodshed, through pity for the small corpses. ‘That was truly spectacular!’

      Louis, on his feet, paled to the blue-white of a corpse. ‘I did not mean for this.’

      Of course he had not. But had he not thought? Two score or more birds encased in a pie, released from their captivity, would assuredly cause havoc.

      ‘Clear them out,’ he ordered as one wounded, cheeping creature fell onto the table under his nose.

      ‘How is it possible?’ I asked, angry now. ‘If you wait long enough, your barons will dispatch most of them.’

      It was indeed pitiful. Blood and death and poor little bodies. I tried not to mind the smirks and ridicule from the lords who were sober enough to mock Louis’s failure. The whole was only brought to a halt when a casually loosed arrow buried itself in the shoulder of one ill-fortuned squire.

      Poor Louis.

      Even his best efforts were crowned with disaster.

      When Louis solemnly gave the formal kiss of peace on the mouth to each of his barons, I shivered with uneasy premonition. He was no leader of men and never would be.

      It was impressed on me in those early days of my marriage after my crowning that I had misjudged my self-appointed task to make Louis attend to me. Louis continued to apportion his time spent with me and in matters of government to the barest necessity. Almighty God ruled Louis’s world. God demanded his devotion, his meticulous observance of the offices, the measuring of his days. Oh, he was always pleased when his path crossed mine. I could never fault the depth of affection and kindness in him. He would kiss my cheek, give me gifts. Sometimes he would kiss my lips and stroke his hand down my hair, looking at me in delighted, innocent amazement as if he could not quite understand how he had come to have a wife at all.

      Sometimes I did not see him for days on end.

      Before God, I was patient with him. I would not shout. I would not scold or upbraid him for his neglect of me. Sweet Virgin, I would not! I had to keep a tight hold on my temper as my life was smothered by the flat, tedious, all-encompassing monotony of it all.

      Boredom had a heavy hand.

      How did I pass my time?

      With my women I set stitches in belts and altar cloths. We played chess, we sang and read and gossiped when the weather was unkind. We strolled in the gardens. On bright mornings we rode out to hunt and hawk.

      It was stultifying. Suffocating.

      Sometimes Louis came to my bed, but not before praying through the order of Compline as if his soul could not survive the night with me without the click of the rosary beads through his fingers. He slept beside me. He did not touch me.

      My courses came regularly, again and again, as the months passed. Why would they not? Although Louis’s face fell at my failure to conceive, he had not felt moved to repeat the experience beyond that first brief occasion.

      ‘How do I bear a child if you will not play the man?’ I demanded, furious with him, unable to contain my frustration when he enquired yet again after my health.

      Louis turned his face away.

      But not before I experienced that first flutter of fear. What if I failed to carry an heir for France? What would be my future then? Even more important to me—what if I conceived no heir for Aquitaine? I stamped down on the thought before it could bear fruit.

      I was thrown back on my own devices. What did I do with my time, my energies? What did I do to warm this cold northern existence, to exercise my mind and my imagination? Songs and stories had a finite quality. The constructions Louis had promised me continued apace. Soon I had my glazed windows and fireplaces, my beautiful tapestries that filled the rooms with vibrant colour and tales of daring and courage, but my heart remained far away in Aquitaine. In Poitiers. I yearned for the warmth, the beauty, the songs and dancing that stirred the blood to passion. I wanted feasting and laughter and.

      So there it was. It was no great leap to set up my own court, a close mirror image of what I knew and loved. I would be Duchess of Aquitaine first, Queen of France second. I would drag this backward court into an Aquitanian world of rich hues and sensual pleasures. I would create a little Aquitaine in the heart of Paris. And surely, somewhere in the novelty and excitement of it all, I could bring Louis to my bed as man and lover instead of as an affectionate brother.

      ‘You’ve been busy again, Eleanor.’ His hands plucked uncomfortably at the embroidered band around his cuff as he surveyed what I had done to the High Table. A linen cloth stretched fair and stainless along its length, as white as snow, with a napkin, a glass, a knife and a spoon at every place. Plates of polished pewter and silver. No more bread trenchers for those who sat at my table. The pages’ hands were scoured to red-fingered purity, the finger bowls perfumed with citrus and rosemary, frequently replenished. A troubadour warmed the strings of his lute. ‘Does it make you happy?’

      ‘Yes, indeed.’ I smiled encouragingly. I had his full attention. ‘One thing would please me far more,’ I whispered in Louis’s ear. ‘One thing would make me very happy.’

      ‘Then I will grant it. You only have to ask.’

      ‘Come to me tonight. We will pray together—’ a lure he could not refuse ‘—and then I will tell you. Will you come?’

      ‘Yes.’ There was no hesitation. Louis smiled at me.

      ‘Promise me.’

      ‘I promise.’

      Excellent. I had a plan. My experience told me that there was perhaps one pathway to Louis’s reluctant loins.

      ‘Do you recall the success of your expedition against de Lezay at Talmont, Louis? When you rescued my gerfalcons?’

      We had prayed. At some length. Now at ease, Louis lay beside me in the bed. The room was warm, the bed-hangings sumptuous, the linens soft against our naked flesh. Louis’s skin gleamed in the light from the single candle. I had hidden the Book of Hours in the bottom of one of my coffers.

      ‘Yes.’ A smile, swiftly followed by a little frown. ‘I recall de Lezay …’

      ‘It was a victory,’ I broke in, to obliterate his memory of de Lezay’s severed hands.

      ‘Yes. A victory.’ Still he was troubled.

      ‘To impose your authority on an impudent vassal who had stolen what was mine.’

      ‘I recall. I had God’s protection.’ Smiling again, Louis rolled to prop his head on his hand and look at me. ‘What of it?’ His eyes shone with benign contentment, and I leapt in before he could think of another prayer to offer. ‘It’s Toulouse. I want you to get back Toulouse for me.’

      ‘Toulouse?’ A large kingdom abutting Aquitaine to the south-east, stretching almost to the Mediterranean. Louis looked quizzical. ‘Do you have a claim on it?’

      ‘Certainly I do. My grandmother Philippa was Countess of Toulouse in her own right. It was snatched from her when my grandfather was too old and ill to fight to retain it for her. The present ruler, Count Alfonso, has no right of blood, only the right of power,’ I explained simply. ‘It should not be. It should be mine.’ Which was not untrue, even though Toulouse had been lost to us for the past twenty years. But here was a circumstance that might just play into my