The Secret Eleanor (3 page)

“By God, I’ll do nothing at the word of a mere woman!”

But his head turned and he looked at the door and the knights standing there; more of Louis’s men were gathering around de Rançun, and the way was well blocked. Anjou swung forward again, his face fretful with indecision.

His son suddenly strode forward, impatient. He spoke into Anjou’s ear, and the father straightened, his face red as a cock’s comb, and nodded. Henry FitzEmpress walked calmly up before the King of France and bowed, not very deeply.

“My lord King. I ask your leave to go.”

“I give you leave,” Louis said, blinking. “All of you.”

Henry wheeled and marched toward the doors. In the sudden silence the clinking of his spurs sounded loud as bells. Eleanor gathered her skirts in her hands and sat down again on her stool. Petronilla gave her another quick look and saw her watching the young lord; as he went by his father and the other Angevins, they turned around and followed him. At the doors, the wall of knights quietly broke up and moved out of their way.

“Well,” Eleanor said, “that was certainly very interesting.”

Bernard stepped heavily toward the dais, his eyes hooded, his jaw gripped in a frown. He spoke in a voice aimed just at her. “How shameful your name, Lady, in the dirty mouth of an Angevin.”

Eleanor said, unguardedly, “I never heard him say my name.”

Bernard dropped his voice softer yet. “The name of harlot, then.” He turned and walked away.

Petronilla gave a start and went stiff with fury; she could sense Eleanor’s rage, but Eleanor said nothing. Her head turned, though, her eyes narrow, as she watched the tall storklike abbot walk out, without anybody’s leave; but he was a saint and could go where he pleased. Several of his monks followed him.

Petronilla’s spirits plunged. She lowered her gaze to her hands in her lap. Bernard’s absolute clarity daunted her. Everything was simple to him: God, or not. He made her feel messy, scattered, indirect, and compromised. The very definition of female. She turned and looked at the front door, where the Angevins had left. The hall was all stirring, competing voices rose like the rattling of dry reeds.

Eleanor said, under her breath, “What a muddle.”

Louis was talking to her; he said, “You should leave such things to me, my dear, but I admire you nonetheless.” He leaned forward, looking down at the moaning chatelain in his chains on the floor. “Somebody loose this poor fellow.”

Petronilla looked away from them both. It was indeed a muddle. Nothing was as it was supposed to be—the weakness of the King left a hole in the center, which Eleanor and Thierry Galeran and Bernard de Clairvaux fought to fill in an endless indecisive sparring match. Most of the crowd had moved up much closer now, and several people were pushing forward, shouting to the King, trying to reach him with their pleas and complaints. Thierry went out to garner the most worthy of them, or, more likely, the ones with the biggest bribes. Petronilla began to long to be somewhere else. She put her fingertips together, her head down.

Beside her, suddenly, Eleanor spoke to Louis in a low, urgent voice. “Did you mark what just happened, sir? It’s the son we have to deal with, this Henry; he’s obviously gotten le Bel under his thumb. It’s well said the Angevins don’t let their fathers get old. We have to make him pay homage for Normandy, my lord, before this prince grows any greater and decides he doesn’t have to.”

Petronilla looked away, tired of statecraft and trouble. Louis, who clearly felt the same, was putting Eleanor off in a weary voice—“I’ve been sick. I’m tired, I can’t think. Leave it to Thierry. Bernard will do something.” His secretary was leading forward a petitioner already babbling of his cause, a stout old nobleman who had doubtless just pressed a purse into Thierry’s hand. Eleanor shifted on the stool, restless, and she glanced constantly toward the door, after the redheaded duke of Normandy. Petronilla lowered her head; she felt ground between the millstones, meaningless and lost.

Outside, in the courtyard, while the grooms brought their horses, Henry wheeled on his father. “I told you coming here would just get us in trouble.”

His father handed his helmet off to someone else. “Louis is a nothing.” His eyes glittered; he combed his beard with his fingers.

Henry said, “He is not nothing in Paris. Here he is King. You should have foreseen this. You thought you could defy him to his face, but instead you had to yield; you gave up all the edge we got when he gave up the war.” Henry moved off a little way. His father was more of an annoyance all the time. Nevertheless, he was glad they had come to Paris.

She was magnificent, he thought, as beautiful even as rumor had it—more beautiful. And the fire in her blazed as hot as a star. Wild and proud, Duchess of Aquitaine and Queen of France, she was the finest woman he had ever seen. His balls tightened just thinking of her.

His father said, “You bowed.”

“I did what I had to do to get us out of there,” Henry said. He spun toward him, his hands fisted, ready to fight. “You ass, you let that monk make a fool of you.” He shot a hard look at his brother, on his father’s far side.

The Count’s lips were pressed together, as if he held back some blistering remark. Henry stared at him until his father lowered his eyes.

His brother cleared his throat and said, loudly, “Here are the horses.”

The grooms were leading up their mounts and they rode out of the courtyard and down along the island. The Count had a house in Saint Germaine, across the river near the monastery. Henry was thinking of Eleanor again and he slowed his horse, falling farther behind his father, drifting backward out of the crowd, The other men rode up past him, and among them his own knight Robert de Courcy glanced at him; Henry nodded to him to stay with the Count. On the other side, his brother turned to scowl back at him. With a sharp word, Robert cantered on ahead, leading away the rest of Henry’s knights to drive the common folk off the bridge. The river smelled bad here.

Henry said, “I’ll see you all later.”

His brother said, “Hey.” His father glared at him, twisting in his saddle.

“Where are you going?”

Henry made no answer. The whole stream of horsemen had passed him now, the other Angevins riding on without him, although the Count watched, over his shoulder, until he was on the bridge. Henry trotted his horse back toward the royal palace, on the southern end of the island.

The midday August sun was broiling the city. Back in the stifling-hot tower room Eleanor quickly shed the layers of her gown, shook her hair loose, and let her ladies slip her into a plain linen dress. Marie-Jeanne took the court clothes away to brush and air out. Petronilla seemed in a better mood than before; she sat on the floor laughing with Alys and had sent for wine and fruit and cakes. Alys had a piece of sewing in her hands, and the other women gathered around them with their own handiwork.

Their voices rose in a henhouse cackle of gossip, all thrilled with the clash with the Angevins; chiefly they were interested in Bernard’s curse.

“Do you think it will work?” little Claire said. Eleanor’s gaze passed briefly over her; she suspected the girl was a spy, and it annoyed her that she had to watch her tongue around her—watch more than her tongue. She turned to the window, putting her back to the other women.

“Anjou is evil enough,” Petronilla said, behind her. “It’s a foul curse that sticks without some evil on the receiving end.”

Alys retold the popular story that a long-ago Angevin count had married a demoness, who had flown out the window of the church at the Elevation of the Host, and that they all had tails, and perhaps cloven feet. Eleanor had not noticed a tail. She longed for the occasion to make sure of the feet. She climbed into the deep sill of the window and looked out. Beyond the wall of the garden below, the river ran close by; she loved to watch the birds that lived along it, swooping and diving over the slow-moving water.

Bernard’s curse didn’t interest her. He pronounced such anathemas often, but nobody noticed unless one came true. If he could curse at will, she would be a withered crone by now. Then, maybe she was and didn’t know it yet.

Yet she admired the white monk. He made a harsh contrast with Louis. The King was spineless. Sometimes the urge filled her to slide her arms into his sleeves and actually move his hands for him, but even that would do no good. He listened to her, but he listened to everybody, and he had no weight of his own; he floated on the air like a dandelion seed, driven by any fickle wind.

The men around him wished her nothing good, wanted of her only an heir and her duchy Aquitaine. If by some amazing pass she bore a son, a prince of France, she would be a prisoner here the rest of her life. She saw herself disappearing, replaced by a sort of jug in human form: mother of the next king. They would likely send her into a convent, her duty done.

Even if she stayed at court, barren, there was no such merry exciting life as she remembered her father’s court in Poitiers, forever happy, always thrilling to something new: a jongleur with torches, a preacher full of God, songs and stories never heard before, and gallant young men and beautiful clever women, brilliant wits, gardens and music and tournaments. In Paris there was only the plotting, the planning, the web of power, the game of kings, and they forbade her that.

She sat there staring out toward the water, trying not to hear the other women’s chatter and laughing behind her, and in the corner of her eye she glimpsed something moving in the garden below.

Her gaze sharpened. She leaned out a little, looking down, and saw there, among the clumps of blue rosemary and herbs, a blotch of red. Her eyes grew keen. It was a man, looking back at her. A shiver of delight went up her spine. It was Henry FitzEmpress, in his short red cloak.

“Eleanor?” Petronilla said.

Eleanor did not answer. She leaned against the warm stone of the window and looked out at him. He stood there with his head thrown back, staring up at her, making no sign to her, no sound, only looking. In her mind suddenly she imagined she might fly out the window and soar into his arms. She caught herself straining forward, about to take wing.

He wheeled suddenly and vanished up over the wall, and a moment later two kitchen women came into the garden and began to cut the rosemary.

“Eleanor,” her sister said. “What are you doing?”

She drew back into the tower, her heart banging in her chest. She longed to run down there to the garden, to find him, now, at once, perhaps tearing off her clothes as she went. She dared not move. Behind the smooth round faces of the women now staring at her, at least one busy head was already thinking whom she would tell about this, as she told about every little thing she saw.

Eleanor said, “Nothing. The heat is unbearable. I feel like a boiled capon.” She paced around the room, outside the circle of the women, her hands locked together.

Once she would have gone. She knew that; in her youth she had defied them all, followed her own will, and loved where she wanted, in spite of the churchmen’s tongues and the stories they all told about her. Now she could not bring herself to go out the door.

She wanted him. She wanted his youth, his strength, his admiration. More than anything, she wanted to be free to do as she pleased.

She began to think how to satisfy this, her mind flickering from idea to idea—where to meet, how to send him a message—these were easy enough. How to distract the others so she could get away for a few hours, that was the hard part.

As she thought it over, her heart began to beat faster with excitement.
The passion of the chase,
she thought, and gave a low laugh.

“Eleanor.” Petra came up beside her, one arm around her waist. Behind her all the women were watching, intent. “What is it? You look very strange.”

Eleanor turned and smiled at her. “Dear Petronilla.” She took her sister’s hands and kissed her cheek. Already she saw how Petronilla could fit into her schemes. She told herself that it would be something to amuse her sister, lift her out of her doldrums. “Let’s go out for a walk in the garden, and talk about old times.”