Alienor regarded with disgust the shocked young man who had just been flung at her feet by two of her trusted knights. Seized when he returned from exercising his horse, Aimery de Niort was still clad in his riding gear, with spurs on his heels and a cloak at his shoulder clasped by a jewelled brooch.

‘Stay on your knees,’ she commanded. ‘You will not rise from them in my presence.’

‘Madam, what have I done to offend you?’ The young knight’s eyes were full of bewilderment.

‘You well know,’ Alienor replied, noting with anger how handsome he was. ‘Did you think I would not find out what you had done?’

‘Madam, I have done nothing!’ He shook his head. ‘I know not of what you speak.’

‘Do you not?’ Alienor considered having him flogged. She took the fear in his expression as guilt. ‘Then shall I mention my sister to you, the lady Petronella?’

He reddened and she saw him swallow.

‘I see you understand,’ she said. ‘I could have you whipped and strung up for what you have done.’

‘Madam, I have done nothing.’ His voice strained and cracked. ‘I but asked the lady Petronella for a keepsake. Whatever it is you accuse me of, I am innocent.’

‘I have heard such protestations before,’ she said icily.

‘If you wish, I shall swear my innocence on the bones of my ancestors. Whatever you have heard it is a lie!’

His expression was so dazed and disbelieving that for a moment Alienor’s conviction wavered. Perhaps he was a good liar too. The main thing was to be rid of him. ‘You are dismissed from my service. Take your horse and your life and go.’ She flicked her fingers and the knights manhandled him from the room, still protesting his innocence.

Alienor closed her eyes. If she thought about matters too hard she would weep.

Raoul de Vermandois put his head round the door. ‘You sent for me, madam?’

She beckoned him to enter. ‘Yes, I did. I want to ask your advice, and a favour of you.’

He looked at her warily, his shoulders tense. ‘Whatever it is, I shall be glad to help.’

She gestured him to the bench at her side. Although she had summoned him, she was not sure if she could tell him. ‘It’s about Petronella,’ she said.

Raoul’s face was expressionless. ‘Madam?’

Alienor bit her lip. ‘My sister looks upon you as she once looked upon our father,’ she said. ‘She likes you and you are kind to her.’

Raoul cleared his throat and folded his arms, but said nothing.

‘I am worried about her. She has been dallying with the squires and young knights – you must know because you have intervened at times. She does not think of the consequences – or if she does, she does not care. She must be reined in, but not so harshly that people talk. I would like you to keep watch on her as we journey back to Paris, and on any young suitors who step out of line.’

Raoul looked away. ‘I am not worthy of your trust,’ he muttered.

‘She will listen to you when she will certainly not listen to me or to Louis.’

‘Madam, I …’

She laid her hand on his sleeve. ‘I know she is difficult, but please, as a favour to me.’

He rumpled his thick silver hair and let out a resigned sigh. ‘As you wish, madam.’

‘Thank you.’ Alienor sighed with relief. ‘I do not want Louis to know about this. It would be to no good purpose – you know what he is like. I value your discretion in this matter, my lord.’

Raoul inclined his head. ‘He shall not find out from me, I promise you.’

As he bowed from the room, Alienor breathed the tension away and closed her eyes. She fervently hoped she had contained the situation.

Her next move was to have Petronella brought to her chamber where she could be watched. ‘We need to pack for the return to Poitiers and Paris,’ she said. ‘There is much to do. Aimery de Niort has left court and will not be returning. We shall not speak of the other matter again – understood?’

Petronella gave her a startled look; then without a word she went to sit in the window embrasure.

Alienor followed her. ‘Petra …’ She wanted to take her in her arms and at the same time she wanted to slap her. ‘I wish you would talk to me. We used to be so close.’

‘I wasn’t the one who went away,’ Petronella said. ‘All you care about is what people will think. You’re not bothered about me, you’re just afraid of the scandal and your position and what Louis will say.’

‘That is not true!’

‘Yes it is! I’m just the annoying little sister who gets in the way. You said you would look after me, but you haven’t.’ Petronella rounded on her, eyes flashing. ‘All you want to do is be the Queen. I don’t matter.’

‘You’re wrong. You’re so very wrong. Of course you matter to me.’ A wave of guilt washed over Alienor because she recognised both the truth in Petronella’s words and the injustice of them too.

‘No I don’t!’ Petronella jumped to her feet and pushed past Alienor. ‘And I don’t care, because you don’t matter to me any more! You don’t keep your word. I hate you!’ The last words rose to a shriek. Petronella stamped over to a baggage chest and began flinging the contents around. The chamber ladies lowered their eyes and went about their duties as if nothing was wrong.

Alienor swallowed nausea. Petronella was exactly like their grandmother Dangereuse, who had been so volatile that as children they had never known from one moment to the next how she was going to react. All ordinary emotion was intensified to passion and Petronella seemed to be developing the same worrying traits as she became a woman. She would just have to keep her occupied and try to diffuse some of that raw intensity before it did any more damage. But she loved her, and the rejection was pain.

For the next several days Alienor was on tenterhooks, but as the danger faded that Petronella’s indiscretion might become a larger scandal, she started to relax. The court was preoccupied with packing for long days on the road and Louis was too busy praying and fulminating over the matter of the Archbishop of Bourges to pay attention to other undercurrents.

Alienor was relieved that Petronella seemed to have taken the warning to heart. Having gone to church and been shriven, she had since been behaving in a subdued and demure fashion. However, she was still refusing to speak to Alienor, and the quarrel lay between the sisters like an open wound that had been bandaged but was still bleeding.

Raoul was as good as his word, and was attentive to Petronella in a formal, courteous way when she emerged from the bower to socialise. He partnered her in the dances, sat with her to eat, and rode at her side as the court made use of the final days to go hunting with the hawks and dogs.

Raoul’s polite reserve upset and angered Petronella. He bowed and smiled at her with the blandness of a courtier and pretended not to notice the way she looked at him. She could not bear to think that the one occasion in the garden had been all it was – another little conquest – and that the tawdry gossip about his affairs with women where he used them and moved on was all true. She set out to bait him in an effort to make him respond and to warn him that she would not be ignored. On passing him in a corridor with other people around them, she brushed against him intimately and flashed him a bold glance. She was successful: he responded with a look composed of desire and reprimand. He was not as indifferent as he pretended. Later, she sat beside him for the main meal of the day, and under cover of the tablecloth, curled her foot around his.

Raoul withdrew rapidly as if she had burned him and gave her a slight shake of his head, which she chose to ignore.

The servants brought food from the kitchens and began setting out the dishes at the high table, including tender venison and marinated fruits on skewers with piquant dipping sauces. There was a golden cameline sauce made with cinnamon, a purple one of blackberries, and another that was warm with the taste of ginger.

Raoul served Petronella with two skewers, one of meat, one of fruits.

‘They look like a row of courtiers,’ she giggled. ‘Here’s Thierry de Galeran, and next to him the fat one is William de Montferrat. And this one looks just like Louis. See, it’s the same colour as his gown. Shall I eat him up? Hold the skewer for me.’

Raoul held the length of whittled ash as Petronella closed her teeth around a chunk of golden marinated pear and pulled it off, her action sensual, almost provocative. She chewed and swallowed. ‘Wouldn’t it be good if we could be rid of all our enemies like that?’ she said.

‘I hope you do not mean that the King is your enemy?’

Petronella shrugged. ‘I meant all enemies in general. Come, I will hold yours for you now. Who are you going to eat? That one looks a bit like Theobald of Champagne, no?’

Raoul shook his head but he was chuckling. ‘You are a very naughty girl.’

Petronella gave him a measured look, smoky and dark. ‘No more naughty than you are,’ she said, and licked her lips.

‘Hush.’ He glanced round. ‘This is neither the time nor the place for such behaviour.’ He wanted to grab her and silence her, but his fear was all knotted up in desire, and he imagined that silencing as a hard kiss, her body drawn tightly against his. He glanced round to see if anyone had noticed their whispered discussion and saw one of Louis’s chaplains observing them with neutrality that might at any moment become censure.

‘Then tell me what is the time and place,’ she retorted, breathing swiftly. ‘You keep me company, but you ignore me, and I am left to wonder.’

‘Doucette, you do not know what you do.’

She tilted her head. ‘The other day you seemed to think I did know what I did.’

Raoul swallowed, feeling increasingly at a loss. ‘If you do not behave yourself, we shall be discovered here and now. Do you really want to face the consequences of that?’ He grimaced at her. ‘We have to find a way to manage this. Now, let me help you to a piece of this fine salmon, my lady.’ He reached to a silver dish in front of them, his courtier’s mask fixed firmly in place.

‘Perhaps, my lord de Vermandois, you are discovering you have bitten off more than you can chew,’ she said with a narrow smile.

He slowly shook his head, and knew that she was his nemesis.

‘Aimery de Niort,’ Louis said to Alienor.

Alienor ceased putting away her rings in her jewel coffer, and her heart leaped with fear. ‘What of him?’

‘His older brother has asked me for redress. He says you dismissed Aimery without cause and treated him dishonourably when he had never done a dishonour to you. Are you going to tell me what this is about?’

Alienor fiddled with a ring set with small red stones like pomegranate seeds. ‘He was showing too much interest in Petronella and I had to intervene.’

Louis arched his brows. ‘Dismissing him sounds like more than just intervention.’

‘It was necessary, trust me.’

He gave her a brooding look. ‘Petronella must have encouraged him.’

‘I have taken her to task and rebuked her for the folly of indiscretion, but even so it takes a spark to light kindling. I have dealt with the matter and there will be no more of it.’

Louis made an irritated sound. ‘It is past time she had a husband,’ he said. ‘I will look into it the moment we return to Paris.’

‘She is my heir until we have a child, and it is my prerogative to find her a suitable consort,’ Alienor replied to the point. ‘But you are right. She should be wed as soon as a fitting one can be found.’


16

Poitiers, late Summer 1141

Cloaked and hooded, Petronella glanced furtively round, gave three taps on the door, and then slipped into the room at the top of the tower. Raoul was waiting for her, seated before the hearth where a small brazier gave off pleasantly scented smoke. His travelling bed stood in a corner of the room, the coverlet and fresh linen sheets turned back invitingly. When Petronella entered, he rose and went to her, took her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth. She returned the kiss as if she were dying of thirst, and made small whimpering sounds in her throat. He lifted her in his arms and took her to the bed, dropping her on the mattress; she lay back, hitching her gown up, desperate for him. Panting, he freed himself from his braies and joined her, grabbing her hips and thrusting into her like a young man in his first season of rut.

Their need for each other was so frantic that it was over in moments, leaving them gasping and unsatisfied beyond the sheer physical sensation of release. Raoul thought his heart was going to burst through his chest. Filled with tenderness, still alive with lust, he leaned over Petronella and kissed her eyelids, her nose and her mouth. Her eyes were soft and dark with wanting. She looked delectable. He began to undress her slowly, taking his time now, and she followed his lead, smiling, nipping and licking him, tasting his skin.