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.