Suger spoke words of comfort and reason, but they were as nothing to Louis and he found himself almost loathing the little priest. ‘Get out!’ he sobbed. ‘Get out!’ He looked round for something to throw, but the nearest thing to hand was a wooden figure of the Virgin and, overwrought though he was, he stayed his hand, merely closing his fist around the little statue and shaking it at Suger. ‘It should not have happened!’ he wept.

‘Sire, you must not—’ Suger stopped speaking and turned as a messenger arrived, bearing the news that Alienor’s vassal, William de Lezay, castellan of Talmont, had reneged on his oath and seized for himself the white gyrfalcons reserved to the personal use of the Dukes of Aquitaine. The birds were a symbol of the dignity, authority and virility of the ruling house and it was both a personal affront and a head-on challenge.

Louis stood up straight, breathing hard and swiftly as if he would use up all of the air in the room. The news ignited the red in his mind, turning it to a sheet of fire.

‘If de Lezay will not come and swear his loyalty to us,’ he said hoarsely, ‘then we shall go to him. And before he dies he will crawl to me and rue the day he was born.’

Resting in her chamber, Alienor watched Petronella teaching her fluffy white dog Blanchette to sit up and beg for titbits. The bitch was a gift to her sister from Raoul de Vermandois.

‘Isn’t she clever?’ Petronella called to Alienor as she dangled a shred of venison above the dog’s quivering black nose. Blanchette danced on her hind legs for a moment before Petronella fed the scrap to her with words of lavish praise.

‘The cleverest dog in Christendom.’ Alienor managed a smile for form’s sake. It was a month since she had miscarried the baby. Her body was young and strong and she had made a swift physical recovery, but she was prone to bouts of weeping and dull sorrow. Although the child had been too young to have a soul, she felt his loss keenly, as well as her failure to fulfil her duty.

Her chaplains prayed with her daily and Bernard of Clairvaux had visited to offer his advice and condolences. Feeling antipathy towards the man but knowing how influential he was, she had taken care not to contradict him to his face, but there had been no thaw in their relationship and he continued to treat her as a flighty and shallow young woman in need of strict instruction.

The venison scraps all gone, Blanchette yawned and stretched out to sleep before the hearth. Disinclined to sew, Petronella offered to rub Alienor’s feet in what was for her a rare altruistic gesture.

Alienor closed her eyes and relaxed as Petronella slipped off her soft kidskin shoes and began to work with firm, gentle strokes. Alienor was content to enjoy this healing, peaceful moment with her sister because opportunities like this were rare these days. When Louis was here, he was Alienor’s constant business: his needs, his demands on her; and it had caused a distance to spring up between the girls.

Petronella sighed. ‘I wish we could stay like this forever,’ she said. ‘I wish this was Poitiers.’

‘So do I,’ Alienor murmured without opening her eyes.

‘Do you think we will ever go back there?’

‘Yes, of course we will.’ Alienor’s dreamy, delicious feelings faded, although her eyes remained shut. ‘We couldn’t go this time because it was a matter of urgency, and I was with child.’ She pushed away that particular darkness. ‘I promise we shall visit soon, and stay at Poitiers and Bordeaux and go hunting at Talmont.’

Petronella’s eyes sparkled. ‘And wade in the sea and collect shells!’

‘I will make them into a necklace and hang them round your neck!’ Alienor laughed, imagining Adelaide’s response to seeing her and Petronella splashing in the shallows with their gowns kilted between their legs like two fisher-girls. The thought of the castle on the promontory at Talmont, the golden beach and the sunlit glitter of the sea brought a lump to her throat. At Talmont, too, she had walked hand in hand with Geoffrey de Rancon at a court picnic, and strolled barefoot at the water’s edge.

Her father had a hunting preserve at Talmont where he kept his precious white gyrfalcons, virile symbol of the Dukes of Aquitaine, and the fiercest birds of prey in Christendom. She could remember standing in the soft darkness of the mews, her wrist weighted down by one of them, its scimitar talons gripping the leather glove, its eyes like obsidian jewels. And then carrying the bird into the open and casting her aloft to fly in a jingle of silver bells and sharp white wings. That had been a delicious moment of power.

Petronella suddenly stopped rubbing and drew in her breath. ‘Alienor …’

She opened her eyes and struggled to adjust to the light after the smooth darkness behind her closed lids. Given her thoughts, she was shocked and astonished to see Louis advancing on her, a white gyrfalcon bating on his wrist, and for a moment thought he was an illusion. She leaped to her feet, her heart thumping. Blanchette, roused from her doze, began a shrill yapping that made the bird flap increasingly agitatedly.

Louis ducked away from the bating wings. ‘Get rid of the dog,’ he snapped.

Petronella grabbed Blanchette and, with a glare at Louis, stalked from the chamber.

Alienor stared at him. His garments were crumpled and dusty. He had lost weight and there was a sharpness about his features that had not been present before.

‘I did not know you had returned. You sent me no message. What are you doing with one of my falcons?’

‘I wanted to tell you myself.’ He untucked a hawking gauntlet from his belt and handed it to her. ‘Your vassal de Lezay declared against you and took your birds as an act of defiance. This one was in the chamber where I killed him. I have kept her by me ever since in token of how far I am prepared to go in your name. See, she still has the traitor’s blood on her feathers.’

Alienor’s stomach tightened. There was a tense and dangerous glitter about Louis, as if he might whip out his sword and stab someone just because he could. Suddenly she was very glad that Petronella had left the room. ‘You killed de Lezay?’ She pushed her fingers into the gauntlet.

‘It was necessary,’ he said harshly. ‘They had offered an affront. I was lenient with the people of Poitiers, so I had to show severity at Talmont.’ He scowled at her. ‘There was no need for Suger to come to Poitiers. I was handling matters on my own, and his arrival undermined me. Everyone thinks I am weak, that I am not good enough and second-best, but I showed them; I showed them all.’ His face contorted. ‘De Lezay forswore his allegiance and dishonoured us by taking the gyrfalcons, so do you know what I did?’

Alienor shook her head and eyed him warily.

‘I cut off his hands and feet with my own sword as a lesson to others and had them nailed to the castle door. Let no one dare to take what is not theirs or to deceive me.’ His eyes were almost black because the pupils were so enormous and Alienor was afraid because she did not know what he might do next. Here was no pious, uncertain youth, but a wild and savage creature. She held out her gauntleted wrist. ‘Let me have her,’ she said.

Louis transferred the hawk to Alienor’s wrist, both of them dodging the beating wings. She felt the weight of the bird, the frantic strength of her. Gyrfalcons were the largest and most magnificent of their species. Their only predator was the golden eagle.

‘Suau, mea reina. Suau,’ Alienor said softly in her own southern tongue. ‘Be quiet, my queen, be quiet.’ She stroked the falcon’s soft white breast feathers and crooned to her. Slowly the wings ceased to flap, and the legs to dance. She perched on Alienor’s arm, gripping fiercely. There was a brown stain on top of her head where she could not reach to preen.

Louis watched Alienor, his chest heaving, and as she controlled the bird he too calmed from his crisis and the wildness left his eyes.

‘You did what you had to do,’ she said.

He nodded stiffly. ‘Yes, what I had to do.’ He clenched his fists. ‘Suger told me you lost the child.’

A pang of grief and guilt surged through her, but she kept her composure because of the bird on her wrist. ‘It was not to be.’

‘On the feast of Saint Denis, so I was told,’ he said almost accusingly. ‘God must have been displeased. We must have done something wrong for Him to take away that grace. I prayed and did penance in the cathedral at Poitiers.’

‘I have prayed too.’ The thought of the dead child was a silent anguish. She felt the loss as a part of her own life-spark that had failed to kindle. Had she done something wrong? The thought haunted her.

He cleared his throat. ‘In Poitiers, I heard a priest say that our marriage would not be blessed by offspring because it was consanguineous.’

Alienor gave him a bitter look. ‘Priests say many things out of their own thoughts as men, and not directed by God. Did not the Church bind us in matrimony and advise we should be wed in the first place? Does that same Church now change its mind on a whim?’ She spoke forcefully, and the gyrfalcon arched her wings and flapped. Alienor soothed her again and controlled her own anger.

‘Yes.’ Louis looked relieved. ‘Of course you are right.’ He rubbed his forehead.

‘I will have a falconer put a perch in here for her,’ Alienor said.

Louis exhaled and his shoulders slumped. She saw the exhaustion smudged beneath his eyes and gestured him to lie down on her bed. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Sleep a while and your mind will be clearer.’

He stumbled over to the bed, lay down, and fell asleep almost immediately. Alienor looked at his long limbs, his fair hair and handsome features, and then she looked at La Reina, and the brown stains on her white plumage, and shivered.


12

Paris, Spring 1140

Alienor had been busy all morning, attending mass with Louis, answering correspondence from Aquitaine, dealing with supplicants, before eventually finding a little time to spend with Petronella, who was being fitted for some new dresses.

Petronella’s most spectacular new gown was for the celebration of the feast day of Saint Petronella on the last day of May. It was of a rose-coloured silk that complemented her warm brown hair and turned her eyes the colour of woodland honey. There had been remarks about how much Petronella resembled her grandmother, Dangereuse de Châtellerault, a fiery beauty, notorious for abandoning her husband and running off with her lover, William the ninth Duke of Aquitaine. Not that anyone mentioned the scandal. The discussion centred on what a beauty Petronella was becoming.

The gown was sewn with hundreds of little pearls, echoed in the double belt on the dress and in the rings on Petronella’s fingers. More pearls wound through her braids and hemmed her veil. For Alienor this was more than just cladding her little sister in finery. It was a celebration of Petronella’s womanhood and sent out a strong message that she was protected by wealth and power and therefore untouchable. Clothes were every bit as much a weapon and protection as a knight’s sword and shield.

Petronella swished the full skirts of the gown back and forth, showing a glimpse of silk-clad ankles and dainty embroidered slippers.

‘Our father would be so proud to see you,’ Alienor said.

‘I wish he was here.’ The smile left Petronella’s lips, only to reappear as her gaze lit on Raoul de Vermandois who was standing in the chamber doorway.

‘Raoul, what do you think?’ She skipped over to him and pirouetted.

He stared at her as if poleaxed. ‘I think I must be dreaming,’ he said. ‘You are a beautiful vision.’

Petronella laughed and danced around him, light as thistledown. ‘I am flesh and blood. Feel!’ she said and held out her hand.

He took her fingers and bowed over them . . ‘Well then, a beautiful young lady,’ he amended with a bow. From behind his back, he produced a little dog collar woven with rose-coloured braid and set with rows of pearls. ‘I heard rumours about a certain new dress,’ he said, ‘and I thought Blanchette should match her mistress.’

Petronella clapped her hands and, with a cry of delight, flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. Then, whirling away from him, she stooped to the little dog and replaced her collar of braided leather with the new one.

‘Perfect,’ Raoul said. ‘Now you are perfect.’ With a courtly flourish to the women, he excused himself.

Alienor gazed in his wake, feeling warm in her heart for his consideration. Raoul was so much the surrogate father to Petronella, giving her the attention she sought and keeping the pestering young bloods at bay.