The Secret Eleanor (5 page)

The afternoon crept by. Long before Vespers Eleanor was sure that she had misunderstood, that he had meant nothing, that he was only passing idle talk with her. He was so young. He was so forward and eager. She was short with all the women; when little Claire was sent for water and brought a jug of wine instead, Eleanor slapped her and pushed her away.

“Go, you brainless brat!”

Claire gave her a look of horror and stormed off sobbing. The other ladies barely heeded her. They were cleaning the floor, carrying out the old broken rushes and bringing in new. Eleanor went to the window, to stay out of their way, and her sister came up beside her. In the bustle, for once, nobody was paying much attention to them.

Petronilla said, “You are jumpy as a cricket in the heat.”

“Bah,” Eleanor said, “that’s it, the heat.”
Some heat, anyway,
she thought wryly. And having to speak of something, she said, “Did you see Marie—how prettily she behaved?”

“Yes. They say she is very strong-minded, though, and not always so demure,” Petra said. She lowered her voice to a murmur. “I think that it was not Marie who lit your fire at court, my sister.”

“I never hear any word of her,” Eleanor said. “When you hear anything, you should tell me.”

“What did he say?”

Eleanor said nothing, turned her head, and stared out the window. Petronilla glanced over her shoulder, where Claire was gathering an armful of old rosemary from the floor. The girl went out the door, and Petronilla swung back to her sister.

“Be careful, my dear one. Bernard has worse means even than curses.”

Eleanor turned to her, and hugged her, and spoke into her sister’s ear. “When we go to Mass. Then will I need your help, as we spoke.” Alys was coming in, faithful and competent Alys, who set about at once strewing out the firm new sweet-smelling herbs, too busy to be eavesdropping on them.

Petronilla leaned her head on her shoulder. “I’m afraid. What if—”

“Sssh!” Eleanor drew back. “Marie, though—she looked so timid, at court, but she’s not?”

“No, they have their hands full with her.” Petra gave an uncertain laugh, drawing back, her eyes wary, fixed on Eleanor. “She will not listen to anyone; she does as she pleases. This to me sounds very familiar.”

“Good,” Eleanor said. “She fights for herself. That’s good.”

Petronilla made a rueful face. She said, quietly, “When you win, fighting is well enough. When you lose . . .”

Eleanor coiled an arm through hers. “I won’t lose.”

Petronilla leaned against her, her voice barely audible. “Then sometimes, too, winning brings its own kind of curse, Eleanor. Think of that. Maybe—”

Eleanor snorted at her, turning back to the window. “Don’t argue with me, Petra.”

“Do I ever argue?” Petronilla gave her another soft caress and left her alone. She would manage the other women when Eleanor needed them out of the way. Eleanor turned her back on them. The gray eyes of the Angevin looked out of her memory, smoky with desire. She turned her gaze blindly out the window, willing the Vespers bell to ring.

When at last the bell did sound, they all went down to Mass, and that seemed to last forever also, the priest speaking as if each word were a stone to be lifted and put into place, the constant racket in the low dark church numbing her ears, the women around her whispering. She did not try to pray. The thing was too complicated already, without trying to sort it out for God. God was a man, anyway, and would not understand. When at last the service was over and they all started out of the stall, she said to Petronilla, beside her, “Take them all home again, now,” and left the stall in the midst of the crowd of women. But in the ambulatory, when they kept on toward the door, she went the other way, into the darkness at the back of the church.

Petronilla’s voice sounded once, hollow in the stony vault, and the women’s footsteps faded. In the pitch-dark silence of the back of the Queen’s choir, Eleanor stood, her fingers picking at each other.

She was alone. She had misread him. Or he only played with her. Then, behind her, she heard, or sensed, someone move.

“I am here,” the harsh voice said.

She turned toward him, in the dark, and reached out blindly; her hands brushed over the rough cloth of his coat, and then his arms were around her, strong and fierce. She lifted her face and his lips brushed her forehead, her cheek. He gave off a heat of passion, like an oven in her arms. She stroked her hands up over embroidered cloth, up over the broad, muscular chest, clasped her arms behind his neck, and kissed him.

His arms tightened around her. His lips parted; she touched the tip of his tongue with hers, her eyes shut, her body tingling in a dizzy reel of lust.

He said, in her ear, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I thought so from the first, but when you stood up against my father like that—Where can we go?” His hands slid inside her clothes and his thigh rose between hers. “I could not take my eyes off you.” His hands were plunging in through the folds of her gown. “Where can we go?”

She caught herself. Fast in his arms, she made herself see that this could not happen, not here, like this. She said, “Not now. They’ll come for me soon.”

He groaned, and his arms tightened around her, sure and strong. He moved against her, and she felt on her thigh the prod between his legs. “Then when?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. She pressed herself against him, soaking up his heat. “There is a house called The Sunrise, in Saint Germaine, on the Left Bank. Be there at midafternoon.” She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “I want you.”

“Oh, I want you, too,” he said. “When I saw you today, it was like a sign. I’m meant to have you. We belong together. Someone’s coming.” His grip slackened.

She straightened, forcing herself away from him. “They watch me every moment.”

“You’re the greatest treasure in this kingdom, and so they guard you well.” He drew back, in the dark, his hands on her arms. “You’re sure you can get away?”

“Tomorrow,” she said, again. “I will not disappoint you.” Behind her, back near the door, she heard footsteps on the rough stone floor.

“Nor I you,” he said. “I swear it.”

“Go. Hurry. If they catch you here, all is lost.” She turned away from him into the cold, empty darkness.

Behind her, he said, “Tomorrow.” And was gone.

She stood shaking in the darkness, feeling the imprint of him over her body, as if he had branded her with her own lust. Turning, she composed herself as well as she could. Down near the door the half-lit space was full of people now, calling for her. She clasped her hands together and walked up out of the darkness, in among them, and through them, past Petronilla, whom Thierry Galeran had by the elbow.

“I was praying,” Eleanor said, without stopping, and went on toward the tower.

At night, when they had put Eleanor to bed, the other women all went out to the room next door, but the guards on the landing were Thierry’s men, and often listened, even easing open the door to do it. Petronilla drew the thick bedhangings tightly closed and in the darkness whispered, “What happened? Did you meet him?”

Eleanor was lying on her stomach, propped on her elbows. She leaned closer, speaking into her sister’s ear, lest anyone outside even know they talked. “Long enough to make arrangements.”

Petra snuggled closer to her. In spite of her misgivings, she was beginning to enjoy this. “That sounds like a handshake. Was that all?”

“He kissed me.” Eleanor laughed, exultant, remembering. “God’s love, he is a bull, and I cannot wait to have him mount me, Petra.”

Petronilla murmured in her throat. The widow’s lot: She’d been chaste for months now, when the blood began to heat, the skin to yearn, the dreams to seem better than waking. “He’s much younger than you,” she said.

Eleanor laughed. “Yes, but he’s so well-grown for his age.” She had spoken too loudly; they both stiffened and went still a moment, holding their breath, listening for any sign someone else was listening. Finally Petronilla felt her sister relax in the darkness, drawing closer again.

“Ah. Who cares. All the better. I said I would meet him again tomorrow.”

“How can you? They follow you everywhere!”

“I have a plan,” Eleanor said. “With your help, I shall have plenty of time.” She stretched out along her side, her arms over her head. “Ah, he is perfect, so far.”

Petronilla folded her arms under her chin. “What’s so perfect about him? He’s not even that handsome. Have you ever seen him before?”

Eleanor laughed. “Oh, his father is much more lovely. But Henry is . . . better endowed. Henry has Normandy, and he will have Anjou.”

Petronilla snorted in the dark. “Cold and stony.”

“Yes, but—” Eleanor hitched up closer to her. “His mother was the Empress Matilda, the daughter of Henry Schoolboy, the King of England before they started fighting over it. So that way this present Henry has an excellent claim to the crown of England.”

“Cold and stony and far away.”

“God in heaven.” Eleanor moved, crunching the mattress in the dark. “Is Paris so sweet and gay?” She turned her back.

There was a long silence between them.

A trickle of sweat ran down Petronilla’s side. In the breathless space within the bedhangings she felt lightly cooked in her own skin. She realized Eleanor had more to her plans than just an afternoon playing Phaedra to Henry’s bull. “Well, Paris is what we have. And Henry FitzEmpress doesn’t even have England yet.”

“I’ll help him,” Eleanor said, over her shoulder. “We’ll do it together.”

“And England has a king already.” FitzEmpress’s mother, Matilda, had failed in her efforts to take the crown; she was old now. “As in fact, you do, too. Have a king.”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. “That’s a sticking point.”

“And the King of England is Stephen of Blois, whose son—whose son and heir, this is—is married to your husband’s sister.”

“How like Louis to choose the wrong man,” Eleanor said.

“Every thing you do, Eleanor, turns upon some crown or another. What do you want of me tomorrow?”

“I need to meet Henry in the afternoon. I thought—I’ve noticed, from time to time, you go off, and no one follows you.”

Petronilla was damp all over with sweat; she longed to throw the bedhangings back and let in a cool rush of air, but she dared not. “Nobody cares about me, Eleanor. I could leap off the New Bridge into the Seine and nobody would care.”

“That’s not true; I love you best of all. Especially, though, speaking of the New Bridge, you could go over to the Left Bank.”

“Ah.” Petronilla licked her lips, trying to suppress the feeling that she was getting into far more than she knew. “That’s so, I could go to the Studium and hear the masters there. I’ve done that often enough.” She liked to practice her Latin, listening to the magistri dispute, and they played with ideas there the way carefree boys played with balls in the street.

“That’s good,” Eleanor said. “And if I took your place in your widow’s white and veil, and rode your old mare, I could do as I please, and once I got anyway from the palace nobody would look very closely. But that won’t be enough.”

“What?” Petronilla said, alarmed.

“We need to lay down a false scent. Otherwise they’ll notice I’m missing.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Eleanor said, “Well, there’s this.” And she leaned so close that her lips brushed Petronilla’s ear, and whispered it.

During the night, rain fell in a crash and roil of wind. Petronilla woke from a fitful, sweaty sleep and lay in the dark beside her sister, listening to the storm.

Eleanor slept on, sprawled across the bed, her arms flung wide. The bed hangings ruffled in the wind. Petronilla burrowed her head into the pillow, longing for sleep. Ralph’s face came into her mind, and she saw the words again: “We must not be together. We have never been married.” She gritted her teeth together, angry.

Discarded. Worth nothing. Her eyes stung with tears. Outside, the wind howled like a demon, and she pulled the covers up over her head.

Beside her, Eleanor called out in her sleep. Dreaming again of escape.

It was too hot to breathe under the covers. She pulled the bedclothes down again.

She longed to go home, back to live in Poitiers, where she had grown up. She wanted, more than anything, to start over.

The darkness all around made the memory vivid in her mind. She saw the gardens of the palace there, the red roses blooming against the gray stone, the Maubergeon Tower, and nearby music, and the sway of skirts and the tap of silken shoes in a rousing dance. The calling of the vendors in the streets and the women in their coifs talking from window to window. A fruit-stuffed pastry popped into her mouth. The crisp skin of a pullet cooked with lemons, her favorite dish in her childhood, and the crusty bread, the creamy cheese, whose taste lasted forever on the tongue.