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perhaps coinciding with Easter. The presence of this infant is a reminder to us that at such a distance, we can never make absolute judgments about people and their relationships to each other.
In any case, Louis finally emerged on July 29 in Roger's territories, all but dead with fatigue, with the loss of his queen, and separation from all his possessions and followers. King Roger was able to reassure him that the queen was safe, albeit too exhausted to continue her journey for the moment. The winds had blown her as far as the Barbary coast, and then back to the port of Palermo in Sicily. Here, she recuperated amidst one of Europe's most splendid, most cosmopolitan, not to say most heretical courts.
For three weeks the couple were reunited, before going to Potenza briefly to meet Roger in person.
Roger was the personification of the collision of cultures that occurred when the Norman invaders settled amongst the Islamic civilization. He had adopted Byzantine robes of purple, but they were embroidered with Islamic writing and images of strange beasts. He kept a harem, but he worshipped as a Roman Catholic. His army was a mixture of Norman knights and Saracen infantry, and his government was a blend of Norman, Byzantine and Arabic systems.2
From Potenza, the remnants of the Frankish train moved north to reach Tusculum on October 9 1149. Here they encountered Pope Eugenius once more, he having fled there, pursued out of Rome by the Emperor's army over yet another of the disputes between Papacy and Empire.
The pope welcomed them warmly, and listened attentively to Louis' outpourings of guilt over the question of the consanguineous marriage.
The pope assured him that there was no further need for concern - everything could be settled if need be by a special dispensation.
Eleanor, however, was not satisfied.
She saw that she had been outwitted by her enemies the monks, who had persuaded the pope to override canonical law.
So be it.
Instead, she poured out her soul to the pope, expressing in passionate terms the real reasons for her unwillingness to stay with Louis: that she hated the adviser Thierry who was poisoning the king's mind against her; that she resented bitterly being carried away from Antioch; and that she was too restricted at home in France.3
As well, she was telling anyone who would listen that Louis was more like a monk than a man, a tendency to celibacy that had been merely heightened by his experiences as a pilgrim.
The pope made a last attempt to reconcile the two, with a gesture that may have seemed suitably fatherly to him, but would have appeared clumsy in the extreme to Eleanor.
He prepared a room for them in which there was only one bed, elaborately decorated with precious brocades of his own. He conducted his spiritual children to the room, and left nature to its healing way.
It was too late, of course. The pope wept as he gave them a farewell blessing before they left for Rome.
The officially reconciled couple experienced the city through a guided tour provided by specially assigned Cardinals. The procession was followed through the streets by crowds of citizens who chanted hymns of praise.4
But it was no honeymoon. For one thing, the mighty ruins of Rome must have seemed dank and desperate compared to the brightness of Antioch, Byzantium, Acre, Jerusalem and Palermo.
From amongst these mouldering reminders of a past glory, the unloving couple rode on over the Alps to Paris.
The arrival home took place in November 1149, their journey having lasted 30 months. They were greeted with one of the bleakest winters on record, during which ice stilled the rivers, a match for the mood of the queen. The utter joylessness of it all must have been compounded by the pain of childbirth which followed soon after the return home. It was not a boy, but a second girl, Alice. The barons harrumphed, their opinions of the fecklessness of the queen confirmed by her oversight in not providing a male heir.
How Eleanor's world had changed during that time.
Eleanor had left a bored, rich young woman, seeking an avenue of escape. She returned an independent woman, rich in the experiences of the world, and laden with the cultural treasures stored in her intelligent mind, ways of living and thinking which she was to introduce to her homeland, and which would change the Europeans forever.
Within two years she had fallen in love with a young count 11 years her junior. Louis, realising the inevitable, called a council of the French clergy which annulled the marriage on March 21 1152.
The story of Eleanor and the Crusades is far from over. A stage in Eleanor's journey was complete: a new one was about to begin.
But the glory days of the Crusades were gone: the next generation was to watch the kingdom born of the blood of their grandparents dry up and be swept away forever.
DELEGATING THE BLAME
Eleanor was criticised by contemporaries for the series of military disasters that characterised her Crusade, whereas there was nothing but praise for the courage and endurance of her husband, Louis.
Roger de Hoveden, for example, said that the crusaders set out with the greatest pomp, but were annihilated because God despised them. The particular faults which brought the displeasure of the deity, according to Roger, were the guilt of fornication and manifest adultery, compounded by many other sorts of crime. His implication was clear: women, by their presence, had ruined God's plan.5
Similarly, William of Tyre expresses nothing but contempt for Eleanor and her actions, dismissing her as an empty headed fool whose personal amours put the whole journey in jeopardy.
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