Beloved Enemy (4 page)

“As Dangereuse was just reminding me, until you marry again and have a son, Nell is your heir, William, don’t forget that,” said her grandfather. “She may as well start learning what it means to inherit Aquitaine”

“Oh yes. I want to be the heir, Father. Please, please, please don’t marry again.” She climbed down into his lap, twined her arms around him, and nuzzled his neck.

There was more laughter. Duke William took one of Eleanor’s hands and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Now there’s a temptress for you, eh? Who can resist? Speaking of temptresses, that reminds me, did I ever tell you about the time I met these two randy sisters …” He was off again on one of his stories.

For the rest of the evening Eleanor remained on her father’s lap, cradled within the warm circle of his arms, so full of happiness she did not think she could contain herself. What her grandmother had said was true: In order to get what you wanted, it was necessary to take matters into your own hands.

From that moment on her life changed. Aunt Agnes left Poitiers without her, predicting dire consequences for Eleanor’s future. Eleanor returned to Fontevrault but whenever she came home she was always the center of attention, petted and spoiled by her father and grandfather, who taught her to play the lute and sing a few of his songs.

Her grandmother died a year later when Eleanor was nine. Duke William followed her within six months. Eleanor’s father became Duke William X of Aquitaine. There had been several half-hearted attempts on her father’s part to find a suitable wife, but for one reason or another nothing had come of his efforts—thus far. People shook their heads and said it was the will of God.

When she was ten the new duke took Eleanor with him on a progression through his duchy.

“All the vassals of Aquitaine must now pay homage to me as their overlord, just as I myself will have to pay homage to the king of France, God curse him,” he told Eleanor. “I want you to see for yourself what is involved.”

Followed by the usual retinue of scribes, clerks, scullions, cooks, troubadours, and knights, she rode on her father’s horse in front of the saddle, at the head of the long column. After trotting through the forests of Poitou, they visited the armoury at Blaye, then the Abbey of Saintes where Aunt Agnes, now widowed, had become a nun.

She had lost none of her sourness. “This child should be home learning needlework and how to make simples, not making progresses through the duchy. You will rue the day, Brother.”

Fortunately, her father paid no attention to his tiresome sister and they continued their journey. In village after village she watched him collect his rents in the form of pigs, chickens, sacks of flour.

At the grape harvest in Cognac, Eleanor treaded the grapes with the villagers, while her father supervised the loading of casks from last year’s harvest onto the carts.

“Come back next year, little duchess,” the people called out when she left, doffing their caps to her. “Now you are one of us.”

“Little duchess,” she repeated to herself, cherishing the words.

Next they visited the purple hills of the Limousin, where Eleanor met the quarrelsome barons she had heard so much about, watched her father renew their oaths of loyalty, and judge a case between two petty lords over water rights. When she sang a few of her grandfather’s songs for these fierce nobles, they cheered her.

“You have the great gift the Troubadour had,” her father said as they turned southwest toward the capital, Bordeaux. “You know how to win over your subjects.”

Eleanor was not sure what gift he meant, but she noted that her father’s quick temper and sometimes rash behavior did not endear him to his vassals.

By September they returned to Poitou. They stopped first at the fishing village of Talmont, perched on a rocky headland that overlooked the sea, where her grandfather had kept his falcons. Here she listened to her father talk to fishermen about boats and nets and how large a catch might be expected that season.

“You see how varied each part of our duchy is,” he said, lifting her down from his horse. “And you have not yet seen half of Aquitaine. From Poitou to the Pyrenees, the people are all vastly different.”

Taking her hand he led her to the edge of the cliff. It was very hot, the sky a bowl of burning blue. Not a breath of wind stirred the air. The duke turned away from the gently lapping waters that washed the red rock and pointed to the far-off hills melting into a silver horizon.

“The dukes of Aquitaine have ruled here since time out of mind, Nell. And we will go on ruling as long as we keep ourselves from being swallowed up by greedy overlords like the king of France, and hold our unruly vassals in check. We belong to ourselves and always have. This land is in our blood and we can never be free of it.”

Duke William bent down and picked up a piece of rust-colored rock lying on the cliff’s edge. It shimmered like a gem in the sun.

“On this very cliff where we now stand, the Romans founded a village; the Goths forged weapons from the flint rock; the Arabs rode their stallions to the cliff edge.” He solemnly pressed the rock into her hand. “This is the most affluent fief in all Europe, a sacred trust passed on from generation to generation. I intend to marry again and have a son. But through some extraordinary stroke of fate, should this priceless jewel become yours, heed my words, and guard our heritage well.”

A male heir. Eleanor had hoped that if she loved her father enough, she might somehow avert that dark cloud hanging over her life.

It could not, it must not happen.

Thus far Our Lady—and other spirits perhaps—seemed to be answering her prayers.

From the moment she made the decision to dance on the table, felt the surge of power crest like a rolling wave within her, Eleanor had known in the very marrow of her bones that her destiny and Aquitaine’s were bound together for all time. She must protect it, love it, die for it even, whether she would or no.

Aquitaine, abounding in riches of every kind.

—
Ralph of Diceto

The Poitevins are full of life, able as soldiers, brave, nimble in the chase, elegant in dress, handsome, sprightly of mind, liberal, hospitable.

—
Twelfth-century
Pilgrim’s Guide

With the sweet coming of the spring

When woods turn green and birds do sing, Each one in his special tongue,

The verses of his newest song,

’Tis fitting that each man should seek

That which his heart does most desire.

—
William IX, Duke of Aquitaine,

VII Count of Poitou:

The First Troubadour

E
LEANOR WAS SUDDENLY AWAKENED
from sleep by the sound of horses’ hooves ringing against the tiles of the courtyard. Riders arriving at Bordeaux in the dead of night, long after the city gates were closed, usually heralded ominous news: an uprising somewhere in Aquitaine, a sudden death—unless—perhaps her father had returned from his pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela in Spain!

Slipping naked from the bed she shared with her younger sister, Petronilla, Eleanor ran lightly across the carpeted floor to the narrow window of the turret chamber and pushed it open. The scent of honeysuckle and night-blooming jasmine rose on the June air, heady, almost overpowering. A pale shaft of moonlight crept over the buttressed walls of Ombrière Palace, illuminating the squat tower that housed Eleanor’s quarters, and outlining the riders below.

Two dark figures dismounted, ringed immediately by a score of grooms and palace guards.

“Wake the Duchess Eleanor and the archbishop,” called a familiar voice which Eleanor recognized as belonging to Conon, her father’s equerry.

This was followed by the sound of booted feet thundering across the courtyard.

“Where is Duke William?” A guard’s voice echoed the question in Eleanor’s mind.

The reply was inaudible as riders, grooms, and guards vanished from view. Eleanor’s heart jumped. Where
was
her father? She waited a moment longer to see if more riders would appear. The courtyard remained deserted, ghostly under flowing black clouds that now obscured the moon.

Eleanor turned from the window then stopped short. For a moment she felt her heart freeze, the breath catch in her throat.
Duchess
Eleanor? Had Conon actually said that? Holy Mother—she clapped a hand over her mouth, swallowing a scream. No. She must have imagined it. Barely awake, her wits were still dulled with sleep.

But something was afoot. In her mind she heard her dead mother’s soft, sweet voice cautioning her against unseemly curiosity, the tendency to meddle where she might not be wanted. Most unmaidenly behavior for the eldest daughter of the House of Aquitaine. “But this matter—whatever it is—concerns me,” Eleanor whispered under her breath. “I know that it does. Please understand.”

Careful not to wake her sleeping sister, she ran across the faded Syrian rug her grandfather had brought back from his crusade to the Holy Land, snatched the first thing she saw—an ivory gown that lay crumpled on the floor—and hurriedly pulled it over her head. A candle end still sputtered. Trying to ignore the apprehensive ache in her breast, Eleanor picked up the silver holder, glided past the sleeping bodies of her attendant women, and slipped out the door of the chamber.

Her bare feet made no sound against the cool stone as she flew along the passage, spun down the winding staircase, and slowed to a halt before the open doors of the great hall. Yawning servitors were just lighting torches in their iron sconces. The flames cast flickering shadows over the stacked trestle tables and wooden benches, lending an eerie glow to the scenes of falconry and hunting depicted on the heavy tapestries covering the stone walls.

Torchlight illuminated the rotund body and tonsured head of the archbishop of Bordeaux, deep in conversation with the two equerries, Conon and Roland.

Her heart thumping, Eleanor blew out the candle then marched resolutely into the hall.

“Where is my father?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

The archbishop exchanged quick glances with the equerries. “My poor child—I was going to wake you but felt I should hear—good heavens, you are not dressed! Most unseemly. Go back to your chamber and clothe yourself properly.”

Ignoring the archbishop, she steeled herself to ask again: “Please—where is he?”

“I bring sad tidings, Mistress.” Conon faced her with bent head. “Duke William—may God give him rest—is dead of a fever.”

Dead of a fever. Dead of a fever. Dead of a fever. The senseless words beat like a drum roll in her head; Eleanor could not take in their import. Impossible that that great affectionate giant of a man, bursting with life, should be suddenly extinguished like a candle flame. She wanted to run screaming to her bed, hide under the bedclothes, and turn back these unforgiving moments; pretend she had never heard Conon’s shattering words. But she was rooted in place, compelled to hear each last agonizing detail.

“Where?” she whispered.

“In Santiago, Spain. We buried him there not ten days ago then rode straight back to Aquitaine with the news. With his last breath the duke urged us to keep the matter secret.”

Tears sprang to Eleanor’s eyes. “His death secret? Why?” Her voice was barely audible.

“Why?” Conon paused in obvious surprise, exchanging another look with the archbishop. “Because of you, my lady, of course.”

His words made no sense. “I don’t understand.”

“Once word of his death is spread abroad, my child,” said the archbishop, “every greedy and ambitious lord in Europe will light upon the duchy like a flock of vultures. While those covetous vassals within Aquitaine’s borders will converge upon Bordeaux like bees to nectar.”

Eleanor looked from the archbishop to Conon to Roland.

“She doesn’t understand, Your Grace,” Roland said. “It’s the shock.”

The archbishop snapped his fingers. “Bring your new mistress a goblet of wine,” he said when a servant appeared.

“I know this is a terrible tragedy, Eleanor, but you must pull your wits together. You are a great prize now. Many will want to marry you, by force if they cannot have you any other way. He who possesses you, possesses Aquitaine. You and the duchy are now inseparable.”

The prelate’s words cut through her anguish. Stunned, she took an involuntary step backward. When the servant offered her a goblet of wine she could barely hold it, downing it in shocked acquiescence.

“Now, my child, we will decide what to do when you are more appropriately dressed.”

“What—what else did my father say, Conon?”

Conon withdrew a roll of sealed parchment from beneath his hauberk. “Duke William has charged us to deliver this message to King Louis of France without delay.”

For an instant the hall and its occupants reeled. A message for her father’s greatest enemy? Had the world suddenly gone mad?

When the walls and wooden beams of the ceiling had righted themselves, Eleanor saw that even the archbishop looked stunned.

“Do you know what this message contains?”

“Only too well, Your Grace,” replied Conon, his voice laced with bitterness. “ ‘Eleanor will be your duchess now,’ the duke said to me with his dying breath. ‘She is barely fifteen years of age and my heart trembles for her safety. I must leave her and the duchy in someone’s keeping until she marries. Louis of France is overlord of Aquitaine; he will find her a suitable husband.’ Thus spoke the duke. This is what the message contains.”

Conon stuffed the roll back inside his hauberk.

“Benedicamus Dominum!”
The archbishop shook his head in disbelief as he crossed himself. “It is quite beyond my comprehension. I assume the poor man felt this was the only way to protect Aquitaine from the vultures. Desperate times require desperate measures.” He crossed himself again. “Perhaps, at the hour of his death at least, the duke was graced with wisdom. After an unruly life, filled with acts of folly, this was God’s blessing on him. Perhaps we are wrong to judge him. But France? Come, my sons, you must have a goblet of wine and some cold meat or you will never survive the journey to Paris.”