The Young Lion by Blanche d'Alpuget

Author:Blanche d'Alpuget [d'Alpuget, Blanche]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-08-31T14:00:00+00:00

When she arrived in Poitiers, the Queen discovered she had left her estates too much in the hands of others. Although they had been diligent and vigilant in the upkeep of her palace, vineyards, livestock and tilled land, she had to make scores of decisions and hand down judgements on disputes. A stream of vassals rode up to the palace seeking audiences, bearing their dues and gifts for the Princess Alix. They declared Alix the most beautiful child on earth then presented to the Queen a list of problems. ‘I’ve delayed too long,’ she sighed often. Louis grew anxious that she did not feel relaxed.

‘Summon Ventadour,’ he ordered. The King still did not approve of troubadours, but he knew they were good for his wife.

Gossips said that Ventadour was Eleanor’s half-brother, son of the Old Duke, but her father had assured her they shared no blood, and it was his friend, the Viscount Eble, who had sired the poet on a girl who worked in a pastry shop. That was a relief, since everyone in Poitiers knew that Bernard de Ventadour was madly infatuated with the Duchess.

His arrival on the eve of Epiphany transformed the court. ‘He brings magic in his songs,’ people said. He had a song for the new Princess, a song of welcome home to the Duchess/Queen, a song of celebration for the King’s victory in Rouen. But most of all, he sang love songs – songs so stirring the servants said they had seen one of the ancient Roman statues in the garden shedding tears as the troubadour sang.

‘How different from a year ago,’ Eleanor said. She was lying in Louis’s arms. ‘That terrible night when Abbot Suger …’

‘Shhh,’ he murmured. Her dark hair flowed over the pillows; her features, broadened and smoothed from lying on her back, made her face almost child-like. Louis gazed down on her surrendered beneath him and wept into her neck. My Magdalene, he thought. It delighted him, that, thanks to all her exercises since the birth of Princess Alix, her body was as tight as on their wedding night.

‘I’ve overdone it,’ she said. ‘Please help me, Louis: use this goose grease.’

‘You’re like a virgin,’ he murmured.

‘How many more days can you stay with me?’

‘Three? Four?’

‘Four! Please say four.’

He agreed to spend four more nights in Poitiers. He had calculated that by then, surely, she would be with child. Or they would have to wait for another auspicious date: Easter or Pentecost. The Rumlar had told him that pregnancy was most easily achieved according to the Queen’s cycle, not the Church calendar. Louis had refused his advice. ‘Our children are of royal blood. They are holy and must be conceived on holy days,’ he’d replied.

The Queen and the new Princess would stay in the south: Eleanor to attend to her vast domain, the Princess because the warmer climate and drier air were better for her than the damp of Paris. The Queen would return to the capital in the summer, although the weather would be barbarously hot.

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