She called Floreta to fetch the soft cloths she used for those times of the month, and pretended not to see the pity in the woman’s eyes. She would have to tell Louis that yet again there was not going to be a child. But then his visits to her bed were so haphazard and dependent on whether or not it was a permitted time that the odds of her conceiving were poor. How could there be a baby if there was no seed to make one? The cramps were painful, but Alienor was not one to linger in bed and instead took some sewing over to the window, where the best light would fall on the fabric. As she picked up her needle, Louis burst into the room. His face was flushed and his eyes glittering with tears of fury. ‘They have denied me,’ he snarled. ‘How dare they!’ ‘Who has denied you?’ Alienor put her sewing down and looked at him in alarm. ‘The monks of the cathedral chapter of Bourges.’ He shook the letter clenched in his fist. ‘They have rejected Cadurc and elected their own archbishop.
