The Secret Eleanor (27 page)

Eleanor said, “Then I should thank you now for your service.”

“Now, Eleanor,” he said, “listen to me first. The King agrees on the annulment, but having the council in Limoges is impossible. Now they’re saying Beaugency, on Palm Sunday.”

Petronilla looked away, rolling her eyes, exasperated; she thought,
We should have known this would happen. It’s always just too far off. It’s always out of reach.
She looked down at the board before her, the counters neatly lined up on the dagger-shaped lines, no home column left unblocked. She scooped up the dice into the little cup and shook them until they rattled. Perhaps they should find some way to get Eleanor into seclusion to have the baby in secret, and put off the council until summer; at once she knew this was impossible.

Eleanor’s voice was tight as a wire. “Uncle, this is not good news. I want to stay in Poitiers, and now I will have to leave again, and until I am free of the King I cannot come back.”

Petronilla gave a little murmur of agreement. Bordeaux bobbed his shoulders back and forth a little, as if he were dodging something. “It’s that bastard shaven Templar, he wants to wring the last drop out of Aquitaine before he lets it go.”

“Before he lets go!” Eleanor rounded on him, her face blazing in the candlelight, vivid with temper. “He will never let go, Uncle, he will keep on putting this off forever.” Abruptly she gave a sigh, and sat back, and turned toward Petronilla. “What now?”

Petronilla said, “We’ll think of something.” She put one hand out, to keep her sister from standing up and revealing herself.

Bordeaux said, “Be patient. I’ll be back with the King after Christmas; I’ll go at it again with him. But—” He gave them an apologetic smile. “I have a favor to ask.”

Eleanor said, “Of course. What is it this time?”

“It’s Thomas again,” said the Archbishop. “The lute player. He wants to come back to you and is afraid he’s lost his welcome.”

Eleanor gave a harrumph of angry laughter. She turned around toward him, her eyes narrow. “Well, how very clever of him to have discerned that. He found the King indifferent to his arts, did he?”

“They will hear only psalms,” Bordeaux said. “Take him back, Eleanor; he is too good to let go to some German, or worse, Troyes.”

“Tell him to sing tonight outside my window again,” Eleanor said. “Let him be a true nightingale. And I will consider it.”

“You’re a generous woman.” Bordeaux heaved himself upright out of the chair. “I’ll deal with the King. I promise I will get you this annulment.” He gave her his hand, and she took hold of it, looking up at him.

She said, “Thank you, Uncle. You’ve done as well as possible, perhaps.” She gave him back his hand, without kissing his ring, and nodded him away.

When he was well gone, she said, “Well, that is evil news.”

Petra reached out and began to lay the pieces on the board for a new game. They had come so far. There had to be some way to win still. “Be patient, Eleanor. Everything will work out.”

Eleanor sat back in her chair, her head down, looking a little upward at her, beneath her heavy brows. She said, “Petra. Tell me the truth. Claire has told me you spoke to Thierry.”

Petronilla went cold all over; her breath stuck in her throat. She said, “Oh, the little slut.”

Eleanor was not smiling. Her eyes were unreadable. She said, “What did he say?”

Petronilla lowered her gaze to the board, where the counters stood on their pointed stations; she shook the dice and moved her men. Her hand trembled a little. When she spoke, even to herself her voice sounded off-key. “It was—it was so monstrous, Eleanor, I could not bring myself to tell you. He offered to give us Aquitaine in return for a baby.”

“Then he knows.” Eleanor’s voice was utterly calm.

“I don’t—I’m not sure.” Petronilla looked up at her. “He thought I was you. He thought he was talking to you. He made it seem as if you—might have a lover, get a child that way, and give it to the king.”

Eleanor’s head shot up. Her face was vivid with astonishment. “Oh, hideous. What a foul thing is a man without his manhood.”

“I would have told you, I swear it. I meant to.” Petronilla knew she was babbling. “But it was so absurd—I half did not believe it. I wanted only to forget it.”

“Yes.” Eleanor sat up straighter and took the dice cup. Her eyes went to the board, and she rolled out the dice onto it. Her voice was cool, pensive. “I certainly would want to forget it. But Thierry may have given us something. Perhaps we could see him again. In secret.”

“What,” Petronilla said, confused. “You would agree?”

Eleanor smiled at her, not a pleasant smile, thin-lipped and cruel, her eyes half-shut. She had rolled doubles, and she moved her men quickly down the board. She said, “But this time, it will be really me he speaks to.”

Petronilla took the cup, her hand shaking. Yet Eleanor did not seem angry, and she felt easier. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“How did you meet him before?”

“In the confessional—in the chapel at Chatellerault. It was dark, and the screen—”

“Ah, yes. You’re very clever, Petra.”

This did not seem as much of a compliment as it might have. Petronilla tipped the cup, and the dice flew out: a five and a four. She moved her men, not thinking, her mind tumbling over with guilty feelings, and a wash of relief that she had not come for one of Eleanor’s tongue-lashings.

“Well,” Eleanor said. “That was unlike you, Petra. You gave me such an opening.” She took the cup, and rolled again, and with her next move carried two of Petronilla’s pieces off the board. “I think we shall arrange this with Thierry, and see what might come of it.”

Claire had been studying Alys’s crafts, and her face looked actually pretty, not by nature but from art. She had grown and she held herself with more grace, even pride. Petronilla went by her into the shadowy space behind the stairwell, where they could talk unnoticed. It was early morning, and the hall was still empty, everybody so far waiting down in the courtyard, but they would come quickly up.

Yet the first thing Claire said was, “Please, my lady, thank you for letting Thomas come back.”

Petronilla said, “Give me no thanks. I should box your ears, for telling tales of me to my sister.” Eleanor had made her promise to be kind.

The girl raised her head, her eyes direct. “I am the Queen’s servant, my lady. I may not be brave, and I am indifferent honest, but I can be loyal.” Her voice was prim, pleased with this righteousness. She dipped down in a little bow. “What you are doing, to protect her and save her, that is truly noble, my lady, and very brave; I admire you very much for it.”

Petronilla narrowed her eyes and turned her head slightly away. “And you were annoyed with me over Thomas.”

The girl went red, and her teeth chewed her lip. Petronilla laughed, facing her straight on again. “Then we are even, are we not?”

Claire’s lips parted, and her eyes rose, wide with surprise. Uncertainly she began to smile. Her eyes glinted. “Yes. I suppose we are, my lady.”

Petronilla said, “Good. And I suppose you were being honest, and keeping faith, which I must depend on. Because I need you to do me an honest service.”

Claire’s head bobbed. “I will, my lady.”

“I want you to go to Thierry again.”

The girl blinked, her brow furrowing, and put her head to one side. “
You
want me to?” she said, with a slight emphasis on the first word.

“Tell him it is the Queen, of course. Tell him she will meet him as before, this time in the palace chapel, here. It must be late—tonight.”

Abruptly a burst of noise resounded through the hall; people were gushing up the stairs from the courtyard, the place suddenly booming. Boys with torches ran across the room to light the sconces at the far end. Petronilla reached out and rapped Claire on the shoulder, harder than necessary.

“And in spite of what I said, you are still dallying with Thomas.”

The girl swallowed. “We sing. He is teaching me to sing.”

“Oh,” Petronilla said, and laughed. “I’ve never heard it called that before. Go wherever that takes you, I suppose; we’re all in up to our necks.” The room was full of people now; she could not linger. She poked Claire again. “Go now and do as we bid. And you are forgiven, you need not cower anymore.”

Claire was watching her, her mouth open to ask something else. But there were already too many people. Laughing, clapping, they bumped in around her. Claire dropped into a quick bow to her, and went off. Petronilla drew back into the deep shadow under the stair, to pin her veil up in place.

Claire went down to the courtyard to watch for Thierry. The meeting with Petronilla still churned in her mind. She had expected the Queen’s sister to be angrier.

Honest and brave, loyal and generous,
she thought.
If not always, most of the time.

Brave as a hero,
she thought. What they were proposing, that Petronilla ride in the procession in the Queen’s place, moved her like something from one of Thomas’s songs.

Then, across the snowy courtyard, she saw Thierry coming, and she left these thoughts and went to put herself in his way.

Later, sitting in the midst of the women while they readied her for the procession, Petronilla was so frightened she thought she would throw up. She felt like a piece of wood being painted, and she wished she had never agreed to this. She fixed her gaze on Eleanor, on the bed watching, and told herself she could not fail her sister; she kept thinking this, a litany, over and over.

Eleanor wore Petronilla’s own severe white mourning gown, with the veil dangling ready by her ear. Meanwhile the other women were turning Petronilla into the image of her sister.

Alys said, “Now, hold still, my dear.” With her finger she tipped Petronilla’s face up into the sunlight.

Petronilla shut her eyes. The magnificent clothes felt heavy, scratchy, too loose, or too tight, she wasn’t sure, and she was already sweating, although it was cold. The women all around her staring at her made her feel naked. The brush stroked her cheek, and then Alys was daubing something on her eyelid, and under her eye, and smoothing with her thumb. She kept her eyes shut. The deft fingers on her chin tipped her face to the other side, and the brush caressed her skin again, seductively soft.

She straightened, and Alys stepped away from her; she opened her eyes, and all around her the women gave a sharp, collective gasp, the truest of compliments. Petronilla fixed her gaze on Eleanor, before her, and Eleanor picked up a looking glass, and came over beside her and put her head beside Petronilla’s, and held the glass up before them.

Petronilla’s mouth fell open. In the murmuring of the women she heard what she saw in the looking glass, that she and her sister were as like as two rosebuds on the same vine. Two copies of the same face looked out at her: the wide lush mouths, the gold-flecked green eyes, the flare of the cheekbones, the red hair swept back from the deep peak over the brows.