Louis was, of course, still in trouble with the Papacy, so we could expect Innocent to come down heavily on the other side. This he did. He answered Thibault’s plea without delay by sending his legate to judge the case. A verdict was soon arrived at: Raoul was still married to his first wife, and he and Petronilla were living in sin. They were excommunicated and so were the bishop and the priests who had granted the annulment.

I was furiously angry with Thibault of Champagne.

“There lies our enemy,” I said. “You are too lenient, Louis, with those who work against you. This man should have been punished long ago for refusing to send troops to Toulouse.”

Toulouse was an unhappy subject with Louis. He knew he had behaved in an unkingly manner, and if ever I wanted to get my own way I could do so by subtly referring to it.

“He is our enemy,” I persisted. “He has done this to discountenance us.”

“Well,” murmured Louis, “one would have expected him to be angry, Raoul’s first wife being a close kinswoman.”

“I would she had been anyone else.” That was a point on which we could agree. “But it is as it is,” I cried. “And now he has done this. What a scandal! What when the child is born? There will be those to say it is a bastard.”

“Which it will be if the marriage is invalid.”

“We are not going to accept this, Louis.”

“I do not see what can be done.”

“Something has to be done.”

He looked at me fearfully.

“We could march,” I said.

“March?”

“On Champagne.”

“You mean war?”

“What else is there to do? Sit meekly here and accept their insults?”

He was silent. I could see the fear of war in his face. I despised him. Raoul was a rogue, but at least he had courage to act as he wished and face up to the consequences.

“You will have to take up arms against him,” I insisted. “You cannot allow him to flout you in this way. People will laugh at you. They will say you are not worthy of the crown.”

“I shall pray that God will settle the matter for us.”

“He will expect you to do something about it, Louis. It is your affair ... not His.”

“All matters are for God’s judgment.”

“I think God expects His servants to act for themselves. That is what you must do, Louis. In my mind, you have no alternative., You must take an army into Champagne. You must ravage the country. You must let him see that he is but a vassal of the King of France. If you do not act, he will be calling himself the King of France ... for that is what the people will say he is.”

Louis was silent, grappling with his thoughts, trying to find some good reason why he should not go to war against the Count of Champagne.

He could find none.

And I knew that in time I should wear down his resistance.

Once I had made Louis see that war was inevitable, he began to grow enthusiastic about it. I reminded him again and again of how many times Thibault of Champagne had flouted him. He should take no more insults from him. Drastic action was necessary. Thibault had to be taught a lesson, and this was an opportunity to do so.

We discussed plans together and when Christmas was over he set off with an army for Champagne.

This was no Toulouse. The last thing Thibault had expected was war, and he was not ready as Alphonse-Jourdain had been. Marching through Champagne taking towns was an easy matter.

I was delighted by Louis’s victories. Champagne was fast falling into our hands.

Then there was to occur an event which scarred Louis’s conscience for the rest of his life and which I believe was responsible for widening the rift between us.

It happened at Vitry-sur-Marne.

Louis himself was never in the forefront of the battle, war being so alien to his nature. He loathed violence and it was only when spurred on by one of his violent rages that he was guilty of it. He knew that his soldiers had ravaged the towns through which they passed, taking provisions, burning what they thought fit, ill-treating the women. Knowing him, I realized that he would have grappled with his conscience telling himself that it was all part of war. It was the soldier’s reward for coming to the help of his lord. Why should they leave their homes, risk their lives, if not for the spoils of war, the warriors’ perquisites? It shocked Louis, but he realized it was inevitable. It was one of the reasons why he hated war.

Truly he should never have been a king. It was an unkind act of Fate to send that pig running wildly under his brother’s horse’s hoofs.

At Vitry Louis suffered the supreme horror. He was encamped on the La Fourche hills with a few men while the army went in to storm the town. He could see what was happening from his vantage point.

The people of the town were unprepared. There was no defense, and Louis’s soldiers went through the gates to the town with ease. Louis could hear the lamentation of the people, their cries for mercy. He covered his face with his hands because he could not bear to look. He had wanted to call a halt. I knew exactly how he felt for he told me afterward. In fact he could not stop talking of it. He talked at odd moments during the day and in his sleep he woke from nightmares shouting about it.

He saw the blazing town. He knew that people were suffering. But what upset him most was when he learned later that women and children and old people had crowded into the church for sanctuary and the rough soldiers had lighted the roof of the church with their torches and had flung others through the door so that in a few moments the whole building was a mass of flames.

Not a woman, child or old person who had sheltered in the church survived. They were all burned to death.

When Louis heard what had happened, he was overcome with remorse.

I think what upset him more than the deaths of the people was the fact that his men had burned them to death in a church.

Louis had little stomach for war after that. He had been successful for once and almost the whole of Champagne was in his hands. Thibault was once again speaking to the Pope. This time Bernard took a hand.

The terrifying man wrote to Louis in a forceful manner. What did he think he was doing? He was waging war on an innocent man who had done nothing save protest at a wrong done to a member of his family. What devil’s advice was Louis taking?

Was I that devil? I think Bernard regarded all women as such, and I was the chief demon. Louis was being used by the enemies of the Church for their own ends, he said. He believed that if Louis would give up the lands he had sequestered, Thibault would do all in his power to get the sentence of excommunication rescinded.

Louis, of course, was eager for peace but I urged him to be cautious. It never occurred to him that Bernard and the Holy Father could be capable of duplicity; but this was proved to be possible, for when he eagerly called a halt to the war in Champagne it was only to find that the sentence of excommunication was still in force.

A certain antagonism was building up between Louis and me. I think he partly blamed me for Vitry, remembering that I was the one who had urged him to go to war; I had tried to persuade him against giving way to the demands of Bernard and Rome. Bernard then had the temerity to suggest that when Raoul of Vermandois returned to his true wife the ban would be lifted.

“This was not what was promised,” I cried in fury.

“They say that all will be forgiven if Raoul will take his wife back.”

“But we shall have gained nothing. All that expense ... all these victories and ... nothing!”

I do not know what would have been the outcome if Innocent had not died suddenly in the midst of all this. It was a happy release ... for us.

Celestine II was elected Pope and no doubt because of the pleas of Suger was persuaded to lift the ban of excommunication from Louis. Louis’s relief was great. But I was furious because nothing was done about that on Raoul and Petronilla. They must remain outcasts. Not that they seemed to care. They appeared to be satisfied with each other. They now had a son named after his father. I could feel almost envious of Petronilla. She had a man and a child. I had neither.

I was now twenty-one years of age and barren. Yet in my heart I knew that the fault for this did not lie with me. But the matter concerned me deeply and I gave a good deal of thought to it.

Life was becoming intolerably dull. Louis was turning more and more to religion. There was hardly any intimacy between us. I might have been living in a nunnery. I had little desire for him, Heaven knew, but desperately I wanted a child.

In a way he was still in love with me. Sometimes I would find him watching me furtively, but in his mind was the thought that I was the temptress urging him to acts which although he might indulge in them with mild relish, were repulsive to him in retrospect. I understood him well. It was ironic that such a man should have come to the throne. I often thought of that pig as one of Heaven’s jokes.

He was growing rather haggard. The nightly prayers were longer than ever. There we lay at our respective ends of that cold, cold bed from which he would often start up in nightmares, shouting: “The town is burning. Save them. Leave everything. Save them. Save the church.”

Vitry lived on in his tortured mind.

And I lay there thinking: I must get a child. What a temptation to give up to my impulses. There were so many handsome, virile men at Court, so many in love with me ... if one could trust their words. But could one? All the time Raoul of Vermandois had been singing his love for me, he had been meeting Petronilla. The thought maddened me, but it cautioned me, too.

There must be a way.

It was said that Bernard was a saint and as such might have the power of miracle working. I believed that he wished France well. France was his country and he had always kept a paternal eye on Louis. I was sure he believed that Louis was meant for the Church, and no doubt he regretted that sudden appearance of the pig as much as Louis had. I felt an irresistible desire to laugh at the thought of Bernard’s admonishing God for letting that fateful animal run out at the crucial moment.

An idea occurred to me. What if I went to Bernard? What if I talked to him of my predicament? What if I begged him to intercede for me with the Almighty, as he seemed to be on such good terms with Him? Could he influence God to make me pregnant?

An opportunity occurred which made me feel that God was watching over me. For some time Suger had been building a cathedral at St. Denis. This was now completed and was to be opened with a brilliant ceremony which Louis and I were to attend with the leading churchmen. Bernard would most certainly be there.

If I could speak to him at the time, it would be more diplomatic than visiting him or asking him to visit me. So this was what I proposed to do. He would understand the need to give France an heir, I was sure. He might possibly be able to help me.

It was a beautiful day when we set out for St. Denis. There were crowds everywhere to cheer us. The people were happy on this occasion. They loved a ceremony. There were so many people making their way to St. Denis for the opening and dedication that there was no room to accommodate them all. Tents had been set up in fields, and there were crowds of all sorts and conditions of men and women. The inevitable pedlars called their wares, and there were apprentices, religious sects, the infirm looking for a miracle, and a smattering of pickpockets, I had no doubt.

Suger came out to greet us and to take us to those apartments which had been prepared for us. I asked if Bernard of Clairvaux was present and was relieved to hear that he was.

“I wish to speak with him,” I said. “Would you arrange a meeting between us?”

Suger looked surprised but rather pleased, I thought. No doubt he believed that, if I wanted to see the saint, it might be a sign that I was reforming. I had never shown any desire to speak to him before.

I was left alone in the apartments. Louis had gone to the chapel to pray. I could imagine his pleas for forgiveness. Vitry, Vitry, Vitry. I was heartily sick of the name.

But I would not waste my thoughts on that. I had to prepare myself. What should I say when I found myself face to face with Bernard? How should I best approach him? He would be aloof, I knew. He cared not that I was the Queen of France. He was one of those who saw themselves above all others on account of their saintliness and their special relationship in heavenly circles. I had always found the saintly arrogant.