The Secret Eleanor (23 page)

She made a sound in her throat, remembering how close that war had come to the progress. That was his border with France. “Yes,” she said. “And I can understand why.”

“Indeed. Ambition above honor. Now Henry is in Normandy, on the coast somewhere up there, and while he’s out of Anjou, his brother with a tableful of local men is raising banners against him.”

“Ah,” she said, with a twinge of alarm. “They try to take him while his back is turned, the dirty dogs.”

“I will find out what I can, as the plot goes on,” he said, and raised his hand to her. “Now shall I fetch the hawk?”

“Yes,” she said. With this news disquieting her, she needed some diversion. She turned toward Petronilla, riding along beside her on her placid brown mare.

“Did you hear that?”

Petronilla gave a wiggle of her head. “Nothing in this seems like news to me, Eleanor.”

“Should I—” She edged the gray Barb closer to the mare, so that they could speak without being overheard. Behind them, in the wagon, the women were still singing, a good cover. “I could send him a message. Warn him. Offer him some encouragement.”

Petronilla only laughed and looked away, which meant she was against it. Eleanor settled into brooding on the problem. She rejected the idea of a message. This was another test of him; if he did not master it, he would be of no use to her.

De Rançun came back with the sparrow hawk, still hooded, on his gloved fist. He had a rare hand for a hawk, and they flew beautifully for him; Eleanor gave herself over to watching his skill with the wild, dagger-beaked little bird. Like all animals, she trusted his deft, tender touch. There was no game on the cold winter roadside, but they flew the hawk anyway, baiting her with scraps of dry meat, to pass the time until they came to Chatellerault.

The Queen’s progress arrived late at night in Chatellerault, and Eleanor slept on in the morning. After all the other women had gone to their morning prayers, Petronilla eased herself out of the bed. Because the winter cold was fierce, she wrapped herself tight in her heaviest cloak, not widow’s wear, but dark, with fur around the cuffs and lining the hood. Then she went to the chapel, as she had bidden Claire to tell Thierry.

The morning Mass was over and the little chapel quiet, dark, and very cold. When she slipped into the confessional, she realized with a start that he was already there, on the other side of the screen.

She sat on the priest’s narrow uncushioned bench, her hands tucked into her sleeves, her heart thundering. The screen showed her only the vague outline of his head beyond.

She said, “What do you want?”

“Your Grace,” he said. “Thank you for meeting me. I have hopes we can find a way through this quandary of ours, to the benefit of all.”

She made the sign of the cross, mechanically, because of where she was. For a moment, startled, she could not speak; he thought she was Eleanor. She almost laughed, and mocked him for his mistake, but then she forbore. She saw some use in letting him go on in this belief, and she bit her lip, amused.

He waited only a moment, and went on. “Your Grace, there is a way for both you and the King to have your way. He could let you go to Poitiers, to live there without him, all the rest of your days. We will give Aquitaine entirely into your charge, which is what you want, isn’t it?”

“What are you saying?” she said. She kept her voice a harsh whisper, for disguise.

“Let him—visit—now and then—and if—when—you have a child, then . . .” Thierry hesitated a moment; in the dim, narrow enclosure she could sense him leaning toward the screen between them, as if he might pierce through it with his look. He was only a darker shape through the mesh screen; likewise, she must be hardly more than a voice to him. “If you had a son, he might still be claimed for the King’s.”

She gasped, outraged. Thierry’s voice tumbled on, ragged.

“Perhaps even . . . your sister’s child, Your Grace. Could be passed off. Or . . . as long as the King could visit—now and then—pretend.”

“God’s breath,” she said, low-voiced. Her amusement that he had taken her for her sister boiled up into rage. “What are you saying? This is indecent. This is monstrous.” She was shivering in the cold, and with more than the cold. “You would pass off a—a nameless bastard as a prince of France—”

“The King may never have a son,” Thierry said, harshly. “In many ways he is good, and worthy, but he abhors all earthly pleasures. My concern is the throne of France and the succession. The realm of France, Your Grace, of which you have been Queen. Please, consider this. It’s a way for us all to get what we want.”

“Bah,” Petronilla said, one of Eleanor’s favorite exclamations. “Go. Get away from me. You are evil. Indecent.”

“Think of it,” Thierry said. But he was going. “Just consider it, Your Grace. For the sake of the realm, the kingdom. Consider.” The door beyond the screen opened and closed, and he was gone.

She sat shivering in the dark, the stale smell of the enclosed space in her nostrils. Dusty, like a tomb. The sheer outrage of it numbed her—to offer to accept a baseborn child for the King of France. She let herself consider the irony that within her sister’s sides now there grew the child of the King’s worst enemy, who might be a boy, and therefore the plausible heir Thierry was seeking; a son of Eleanor and Henry’s, who could by tortuous ways become the King of France. Worth a ballad at least, she thought wryly, if not a fabliau.

And, beneath that, the other startling thing: Thierry had taken her for Eleanor. Of course he could not see her. But he had thought she was Eleanor. She sat there a long time, in the dark, thinking about that. All her life she had wondered what it was like to be Eleanor. At last, hearing someone stir outside in the chapel, she got up, pulled the hood of the cloak well over her face, and left.

Claire drew in behind a column while Petronilla went out of the chapel, and stayed there, in the dark, in the cold, wondering what to do.

She was sure that Petronilla had not told Eleanor of the meeting with Thierry; she had watched them carefully, after she told the Queen’s sister he wanted to see her, and Petronilla had never said anything. Claire had thought then she meant to let Thierry sit in the dark and fret for hours, a laughingstock; thus she herself had gone, to laugh.

But Petronilla had kept the meeting with him. She could not believe that Petronilla would conspire with Thierry. There had to be some good reason for this. But the suspicion crept in under the edge of her thinking, that Petronilla, the woman of perfect virtue, who sternly ordered her to keep faith, Petronilla had lied.

That pleased her, somewhat, to see a high one lowered; they were no different, really, she and Petronilla. But the pleasure was cold, and a little sour. She had loved Petronilla.

She still loved Petronilla. Differently, perhaps. She went out of the chapel, toward the Queen’s tower.

“Where have you been?” Eleanor asked, when Petronilla finally reached their rooms in the Saint Catherine tower.

“I went for a walk,” Petronilla said. She thought,
I will tell her, in a moment
. They would laugh over Thierry’s indecent proposal, and especially that Thierry had mistaken who she was, and Eleanor would surely spurn the whole suggestion, and that would be the end of it all.

“At least you’re out of your widow’s white, for once,” Eleanor said. “You look a lot better, there’s color in your face. I want my wine heated up again and spiced; will you do it? Where is Alys?”

“Oh, probably still at church,” Petronilla said, although she knew that was not so. She went for the warming pan. It irked her to be ordered around like a mere servant; Eleanor could do this as well as she. Eleanor always took her for granted, a sort of second self, a biddable shade, with no will of her own. Perhaps she would not tell her about meeting Thierry—about Thierry’s base offer. Perhaps Eleanor didn’t have to know everything. She knelt by the fire and poured the wine into the pan. Claire came in the door from the next room, quiet, her eyes downcast, and murmured, “I will do it, my lady.” Petronilla gave her the warming pan and went to play tables with her sister.

The Vicomte de Chatellerault, Eleanor’s cousin, was a notorious miser, and his shabby, dreary hall cradled the winter cold to it, instead of holding it outside. So Eleanor could swath herself in fur cloaks, and, wrapped also in the iron fist of her linen, she went to dinner every day and strained her ears to catch the gossip at the men’s side of the table, trying to hear news of Henry.

She remembered again the brawny body, the quick, fiery action, and thought little Anjou would get nowhere. England would be the real test. He would bring her the crown of the richest kingdom in Europe for her morning gift. She stirred, lively at the thought of that.

She noticed Bordeaux in the King’s company, talking to him, but Thierry, also, on Louis’s left hand, looking at her often. Louis spent a good deal of each day in the chapel, and Eleanor saw him only at a distance, each of them surrounded by attendants, and in a hurry. The weather was foul, all those days, and she spent them playing tables with Petronilla, who always won, because she never chanced anything.

Claire went to the kitchen to find the Queen some sweets she craved; she had been told to say of course they were for Petronilla. While she loitered there, waiting for someone to notice her and help her get what she needed, she saw the lute player Thomas coming in through the gate.

She had not seen him since they left Fontevraud and he had gone over to the King’s side. Her heart leaped at the sight of him, the old feeling wakening. He took no care with how he looked, always a little wild, unkempt, his clothes shabby, but he had a cocky strut to his walk, nonetheless, like a prince. It was the music that made him so, she thought. A flock of girls followed him, giggling and flapping like the silly geese they were. Claire felt herself blushing. She saw him suddenly in a new way. He went in their midst like a lord, his lute in its sack over his shoulder, his dark tousled head bare, and his face bright with laughter, but he never really looked at any of them.