The Secret Eleanor (44 page)

At last in the ruddy light of sundown she rode out onto another meadow, slanting off to her right. They had come far away from the river, which had to run in the lower land down to the south somewhere. She let the reins loose and the horse began to graze. Looking all around, listening to everything, she saw nothing but the trees and the grass and the river, and heard nothing except the wind and some birds.

She had the piece of bread she had saved, and she fished the bits from her purse and chewed them up. Even when they were gone, she was hungry, and really tired now, and lost, and alone.

She wasn’t afraid, which surprised her. She would find the river, and after she crossed over, Poitiers was only a day or so away. She would not starve in a day. And being alone would help her think things out, perhaps.

First she had to find the river. She let the horse graze, but she nudged him along toward the south, down the meadowland.

When she woke up, in the next dawn, the horse was gone.

She sat straight up, alarmed. Without him she was much more lost than before. She looked around her at the copse of saplings where she had slept; she had come here in the dark, seeing nothing save that it was quiet and open and she could not go another step. She stood up, looking around her for the Barb.

In among the spindly trees it was still dark, but just beyond, the first sun lit up a stretch of green meadow, and she walked out onto the grass into its sudden warmth. She had taken off her shoes, and the dew soaked quickly into her hose. The new sunlight glittered on every blade of grass, twinkling and shimmering, as if the stars had fallen overnight and were struggling to get back up into the sky.

Only a few yards away the Barb was munching grass. In his long rippled mane one last red rosette clung just behind his forelock. She had pulled off the saddle when they stopped and slipped the bit out of his mouth, but left the bridle hanging around his neck and tied the reins to a branch. He had torn the branch off its tree and was dragging it after him as he moved. She watched him as she went up toward him, and saw his ear twitch toward her, and she went up to his head and patted him.

He raised his head from the damp grass and snorted at her. He had huge dark prominent eyes, full of knowing. The skin of his nostrils was velvet soft. He rubbed his head against her, and she untied the reins from the branch and led him back into the copse of saplings. Her belly hurt with hunger.

She had wrapped herself in her cloak and the saddle blankets and slept curled up against the saddle, and now, awkwardly, she began to put it all back on the horse. She got the blanket on easily enough, but the bulky saddle, dangling stirrups and girths, was heavier than she expected, and when she first tried to heave it up onto his back, the hangings hit him and he leaped sideways and eluded her, and the whole thing fell into the dirt.

She remembered seeing the groom swing the stirrup up over the saddle seat to get it out of the way. The horse was standing still, his ears up, but unmoving, watching her. She went up to him and patted him, murmuring sweetness to him, and pulled the blanket straight again, smoothing the hide under it with her hand. Carefully she looped all the stirrups and girths across the seat of the saddle, and on aching arms lifted it up high and lowered it gently onto his back. He snorted, but he stood still. She struggled getting the girths tight enough; the saddle seemed very loose.

She went off across the stretch of grass, leading the horse, looking for something to stand on so that she could get up onto his back. It felt good to be walking. She felt thin and bright with hunger, but her spirits rose, in the sunlight, with the horse walking docilely beside her. For once in her life, she was doing things for herself, by herself. To her surprise she liked being alone, with no one else to care about, or measure up to, for a while, at least. Little white and yellow flowers spangled the grass, and she picked some and threaded them into the Barb’s mane. He ate steadily, tearing at the new green shoots.

When she thought about being alone forever, the sunlit meadow seemed like a cave closing down on her. She would not think about that, not now. First she had to reach Poitiers, and Eleanor. She had to come face-to-face with Eleanor, she thought, and settle this.

For the first time, she realized she could overcome Eleanor. That was where all this led her: that she would triumph, that she would come into her own kind of kingdom. She would never be the mousy little sister again.

Birds flushed ahead of her as she came near the edge of the trees, chattering angrily from the high branches. They found food here, where she could not. She led the horse on down a path as worn as a street, no wider than her foot, beneath the dense overhanging branches of the trees. Such a path had to lead somewhere, and she followed it on down a narrow bank and around the edge of a swampy place, the whole ringing with birdsong, and through some dead stalks of reeds and came upon the river.

The water rushed along brown as dirt, flooding up over the edges of its banks; a tree branch floated briskly by, one arm flung up into the air. She could not cross here. She began to work her way up the bank, which was overgrown with brambles and stands of reeds and pockets of sagging black flooded marsh. The horse followed her, grazing as he went.

Around midday, she came to a place where an outcrop of yellow rock bent the river sharply around. On the outside of this curve, on the far side of the river from her, masses of driftwood had collected, thickets of entwined branches wedged against a half-buried stump. Above that the stony river bottom looked only a few feet deep. On this opposite side, the bank had fallen in, and there was a steep slide down into the current, but the space between the two sides, where the river ran, was hardly more than the horse’s length. She could see, on the moist earth of the slide, some prints of deer; obviously deer crossed here.

She had seen no better place anywhere else. Standing up on the bank with the horse drawn alongside, she eased herself over into the saddle; he stood well for that, to her relief. She patted his neck and told him he was wonderful, and then reined him around and set him down along the steep sandy ramp to the water.

The ground was soft under his feet, and he began to sit back, resisting, his ears switching around. He snorted. “Go,” she cried, and nudged him with her heels, but he did not move. The ground was shifting under him, and he began to slide with it, his head bowed and his ears pricked. She grabbed hold of the saddle pommel, and then in a rush they plowed down the ramp and off into the deep, swirling current.

The river slammed into them like a fist, knocking the horse sideways; they sank down into the icy dark water until only his head showed and she was in to her waist, her skirts billowing around her, her body floating up out of the saddle. She kept herself attached to him with both hands on the square pommel. He swam strongly but the river was thrusting them downstream, away from the shallow bank. For an instant she thought of leaping off, of scrambling through the water by herself, but she held on to the saddle and prayed.

The current swung them around again, and the horse clawed for his footing on the bottom. His hooves struck solid ground. At once he charged, head down and quarters pumping, heading upstream, up through the shallow water in a blinding splash, and caught unawares, she nearly went off. She lost her stirrups; she hung alongside him for a dizzy moment, clutching the saddle with one hand and his mane with the other, and then grappled her way back up onto his back. He was clambering up a steep, short yellow bank into the sun. She was soaked to the skin, but they were across the river.

She was wet and cold, and she found a grassy place for the horse to graze and dismounted. Peeling off all her clothes but her shift, she spread them out on the ground to dry in the sun, and wrung as much water as she could out of her woolen cloak and wrapped herself in that. Somewhere ahead she would find some sign of people, a village, a hall, something, certainly; the whole of Poitou was not desolate. There she could beg something to eat. She raked her hair with her fingers, trying to untangle the knots. She probably looked like a beggarwoman; her hands were dirty and her face was probably dirty as well. She began to think of a thick slice of bread, some creamy cheese, apples, a glass of good wine. The horse munched away at the grass nearby her. She watched him work methodically through the new growth, wishing she could make a meal of weeds.

Then suddenly he lifted his head, his ears pricked, and his curled nostrils opened wide. She leaped up, looking where he was looking, her hand out toward the bridle, in case she had to run.

Up the way they had come from the river, leading his black horse, walking with his head down as if he read the ground, was Joffre de Rançun.

She let out a joyous cry. He wheeled around, saw her, and shouted. The black horse lifted its head, and the Barb, behind Petronilla, gave a soft nicker. De Rançun dropped his reins, took two steps toward her, and swept her up in his arms.

“Petra. My God, I thought you must have gone down in the river there.” He held her tight against him, his hand on her hair. She felt his lips graze her temple. She flung her arms around him. She realized she was wearing only her shift—that between her body and his was only the sheerest of linen. Through the linen the iron ridges of his mail. She stepped back, letting him go, and crossing her arms over herself.

“Joffre. Thank you.” She could think of nothing else to say. Her eyes were hot with tears. “Thank you.”

He smiled down at her. His face shone. “You’re alive. That’s my thanks. You were in my charge, and I failed you, and you won through anyway. You are such a woman, Petra.” He glanced down at her body, all but naked in the shift, and then calmly turned his gaze away from her. His voice went on, light and quick. “You’d better get dressed. We should go on.”

She said, “I’ll get my clothes,” and hurried around gathering them up. He stood there, his back to her, defending her modesty. The coldness in him was gone. He had found her, and they were friends again. She sat down to put on her hose, now stiff and ill-fitting. Rising, she fought her way into her stained underdress and the gown.

“I’m—you can turn around now.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked, facing her.

She came up to him, winding her coif around her matted hair. “I have never wished so much for Alys and Marie-Jeanne. I suppose I have to go to Poitiers. What else would I do? Do you know how to get there?”

He reached out and plucked wisps of grass from her sleeve and her coif, his smile crinkling his eyes, but now his face clouded over again. He said, “Poitiers is only a day away by now. You came a long way south, you know.” He tucked a curl of her hair behind her ear; his fingers grazed her cheek. She thought he was about to try to kiss her. “Half a day on, or so, I think, we’ll meet the main road south, and there’s a village; we can find something to eat there. Maybe some better clothes. Another half day, a little more. But—”

He seemed to gather himself. The kiss was gone. “Maybe you should not go to Poitiers.”

At that some chill went through her, as if she touched cold stone, and she said, “Why not?”

He gave a little shake of his head, and his mouth twisted, tasting something bad. His eyes turned away from her. He said, “Well, there’s Eleanor.”

She frowned at him. “I need to get things out with Eleanor. And where else can I go? Poitiers is my home, and she is my sister, after all.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips, and twisted away from her, walked a few steps off. He spoke in a gust of words. “Your sister. What she—I can’t—” His hands rose, casting something up. “How can I tell you, what I could not even imagine doing? She gave me a dagger, when we left Poitiers. And some instructions. That night on the barge, when you said you’d changed—I knew I could not follow them. I realized I wanted Eleanor to be more like you, that it was you I loved. So I threw the dagger into the river.”

“What is this?” she cried. “What are you telling me?”

He lifted his hands, helpless. “I don’t think she meant it anyway.”

She gave a yell of fury. “She ordered you to murder me?”

“God help me, Petra, believe me, please believe me, I could never have done it.” He put his hands on her arms, bending toward her, intense. “I have always obeyed her, but what you said on the barge—I could not.” He let go of her, backed away a step, his eyes downcast. “Anyhow, I don’t think she meant it.”

“Then why are you telling me not to go back to Poitiers?” She tramped past him toward the horses. “I think this is all the more reason to go.”

Then what he had told her came together, and she turned. She said, “Joffre. You saved my life.” Against Eleanor’s will, he who never failed her, he had defended Petronilla. She stretched out her arms to him.

He came full into her embrace, his arms around her, and his body hard against hers. He kissed her forehead and then her mouth, soft on her mouth, caressing. He cradled her head with his hand. He said, “I love you, Petra. I couldn’t have hurt you.” Then he was stepping back, red-faced. “I do love you,” he said.

Her arms dropped to her sides. The kiss on her mouth like a lingering honey. The space between them awkward. She saw what this meant for him and said, “Joffre. What will you do now?”

“I can’t go back to her service. I’ve broken faith with her. That’s how she’ll see it, anyway.”

“Then she does mean evil to me,” Petronilla cried, and turned toward the horses. “I shall go to her, Joffre—take me there or not, I shall stand against her over this.”

He came up beside her. “Petronilla, we could go to my castle at Taillebourg. It’s just a few days south of here.”

She faced him again, resolute. “I am going to Poitiers, Joffre. Whatever happens.” She put her fingers to his cheek. “What you did—thank you. Thank you.” It was on her tongue to say:
I love you, too.