The Secret Eleanor (9 page)

His eyes turned toward the spire of Saint Denis, rising above the thatched roof of the refectory. Raising the cup, he made a little homage to it and drank.

Eleanor said, “What do you think of my church, then, my lord Normandy?”

Beyond him, in the shadow of the pear trees, she saw Bernard twitch abruptly and turn toward her, and wondered what she had said this time.

Henry said, “I think it a great marvel. In all the world surely there is nothing so splendid. Some of it reminds me of a church in England, although that is not so great—Durham, it is.”

Bernard leaned forward into the light of the sun, grim-lipped, his half-hidden eyes darting from Henry to Eleanor and back. “Many of the masons came from Durham.”

“Yet it is not the same,” Henry said. “Durham is excellent, but this church is something new; it seems so much larger, the vault, the way the columns are set so far apart, the windows, all united in one work, one idea about space, about light. And a new idea.”

His eyes flashed; he stirred on the bench, eager with enthusiasm, and his voice quickened, higher pitched, questing after his thoughts. “There are so many new ideas. In your Studium here, in the new books, in the very air, it seems—our time is full of change. It’s as if some great wind, blowing through the world, sweeps away the cobwebs. My grandfather was called the Schoolboy, because he was so learned, and yet he knew nothing of such things as this church, any more than he knew of Alhazen and the order of the stars.”

Eleanor cast a warm look on him, smiling. Beyond him, over his shoulder, Bernard stood watching her, but his voice was a scythe to mow down Henry’s new ideas. “God ordered the stars before He made Adam. There is nothing new under the sun.”

Louis began to whisper, leaning toward Henry, trying to restrain him; Eleanor, pleased, saw the young man shake the King off. He had turned to face Bernard, and his voice had no respect in it. “Yes, the stars have always been there, the first great Book, but nobody understood them before.” His back was to her; she faced Bernard over his shoulder.

The saintly monk recoiled, sliding back into the shadows, his hands rising before him like a barrier. “This is dangerous false knowledge, full of delusion and pride.”

Henry shrugged. “What’s a danger to one is a weapon to his enemy.”

Eleanor set her hands on the table. “Is that all it is, then?” She kept her voice quiet; she knew they would all listen. “Is it always a war? Abbot Suger’s ideas led to the sublime beauty of this church, not to a battlefield.”

Henry wheeled around toward her, his face shining; she saw how he loved to argue. Before he could speak, Bernard’s voice rolled forth again. “A church that draws the soul away from God.”

Between him and Eleanor, Henry swiveled his head around toward the monk again. “Or leads the mind to Him.”

Eleanor put her elbows on the table and set her chin in her hands. She sensed every move he made, every breath, as if they were her own. She said, still quiet, making them listen, “Why did God give us the power to think, if we are only to do as we’re told?”

The monk’s voice cracked like a door slamming. “God tempts us, to test our faith. God sets seeming choices before us. But there is no real choice.”

Henry said, “All your syllogisms have only one term.”

On the heels of this, the bell for Nones began to ring. Bernard stood up, going to his prayers. He looked down at Henry, still seated on the bench, and said, “When the term is God, I need no other.”

“Oh,” said Henry, with a snort, “that puts you beyond the reach of reason, surely.”

Bernard stood like a withered tree, staring at him. His head hung slightly forward of his body, as if a wire into the top of his spine connected him straight to heaven. “Reason will not serve you if faith fails you, boy. If faith guides you, reason will tag along behind.”

“That’s bread and water,” Henry said. “I’ll let logic and ideas lead me; there’s more meat in them. Do you condemn me for that?”

Bernard looked down his long nose at him. “I have no need to condemn you.” His gaze flicked toward Eleanor. For an instant, his eyes opened wide, blue as stars. “You’ve chosen your own fate.” He turned and walked slowly away, trailed by his acolytes.

Eleanor stared in another direction, fighting a rising pitch of anger. She thought,
To him, I was damned when I was born with a keyhole where he has a key
. She wanted to look at Henry, but could not; she thought,
What if he shrinks?
If Bernard intimidated him, she didn’t want him.

On her right side, between her and Henry, Louis said, “What did he mean by that?”

Eleanor sighed; she had been perched rigid in her place, and now she subsided a little, calmer. Through the corner of her eye, over beyond Louis, she saw the Count of Anjou turn toward his son, who was sitting still for once, his hands raised before him and his head down. The father’s face twisted with suspicion.

“Let’s get out of here.” His gaze slid from Henry toward Eleanor and back. “My lord,” he said to Louis, “we’ll take our leave—we’ve been here too long—our work here’s done, and it’s a long road back to Angers.”

Eleanor turned to look at him, puzzled; under the pear tree, the mottled shadows and sunlight blurred his face, so she couldn’t quite make him out, as if he were disappearing away in front of her eyes. Bernard’s curse, already working. She shook that folly off. Henry was trading some parting words with Louis. She lowered her eyes from him, trying not to seem too interested.

It didn’t matter, because somehow everyone around them knew anyway, some mystic cord already binding them. She was almost bursting with the will to speak to him again. That rasping, growling voice declaiming of Alhazen, quick with passion for newness and ideas, ready for anything. Wanting everything. And yet he had let Bernard shut him up. She found herself with her arms crossed, as if she warded something off. She could not raise her eyes to see him leave. If she found him looking back at her, she would throw herself into his arms. And once he was gone, the space between them would grow cold. She felt as if some huge stone door were shutting on her, sealing off the world. Maybe this was done before it started. She lifted her eyes toward his disappearing back, bereft.

The Queen’s chief lady, Alys, was of the highest blood in Aquitaine, but she had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. So she served Eleanor, and did her needlework, and seemed content at it. Petronilla envied her this repose, this way of belonging. She leaned over and poked into the tangle of colored silks in Alys’s basket. Against the pale purple the green suddenly seemed much merrier. “Those are pretty, and prettier together. You have such an eye for those things.”

Alys made soft disparaging noises, smiling. Her modesty became her because she so obviously knew her praises were earned. She changed the subject. “Why didn’t you go to the feast? Isn’t the cathedral beautiful? The light there is so wonderful. The first time I saw it I wept.” She crossed herself. She had long, fine-boned hands, with perfect oval nails.

“Yes,” Petronilla said. “But it’s a long ride for monk’s meat.” They were walking up the street from the Little Bridge, where Alys had gotten the silken ribbons in the basket. The day was hot again, dry, with billowing big clouds gathering up out of the haze in the distance. Two pages followed them and Marie-Jeanne. “Besides, soon enough we’ll be riding every day.”

“We’re going on another progress?”

“We’re supposed to go to Poitiers,” Petronilla said.

“Poitiers!” Alys turned and beamed at her.

Petronilla felt that same excitement, just to say the name. In the course of the King’s progress they would spend the whole fall riding down to Limoges for Christmas, stopping along the way, for a while, at Poitiers. She had not been there in some years, and the ride to reach it seemed over the world. Yet she would see Poitiers again, and Eleanor was hinting now that they would not leave it. Whatever Eleanor was plotting, it centered on Aquitaine as much as Henry FitzEmpress.

Then, as they were coming up to the pavement before the palace, a horse jogged toward them, and the rider dismounted; even before she saw his face she knew by his long legs and easy grace it was Joffre de Rançun, her sister’s knight. She caught herself smiling to see him, glad of the veil to hide it. He took off his hat and came up, leading his horse.

“My lady.” He gave her a little bow, since they were among others. “You sent me to find the girl Claire. I did. She’s in the Hotel-Dieu.”

Behind her Alys let out a gasp. Petronilla licked her lips, her gaze meeting de Rançun’s. Impatiently she reached up and unhooked the veil. “What’s she doing there?”

“Afraid to go anywhere else, maybe.”

Alys said, “The poor child.”

Petronilla wheeled on her. “Go back to the tower. Marie-Jeanne, you also. Joffre, come with me.” She stepped to the side, so the other women could walk past her.

Alys hung back. “My lady, such an ugly place—”

“Go,” Petronilla said. De Rançun stood beside her, silently drawing the leathers of his reins through his fingers.

When they were gone, he turned to her. “What are you doing?” He was not bowing now. Since they had been children together he had treated both her and her sister with an easy, courtly informality when they were alone.

She turned and started off down the narrow street that led east along the island. “Well, someone’s got to do it.”

He walked beside her, the horse clomping along just behind. They followed the rutted, stony road down between rows of stalls and houses, past a donkey teetering under a mountain of firewood, past market wives carrying their bags of onions and nuts, their half-plucked chickens.

He said, “I’m sorry about Vermandois.” He meant Ralph, the husband who had cast her off, who had been Count of Vermandois.

She bit her lips. “I should have known,” she said. From the beginning, she had ignored a certain oiliness in his voice. What he stood to gain, marrying the Queen’s sister. She began to think she had loved him because he seemed to love her so much. Her gaze slid toward Joffre de Rançun. She wished—What she wished didn’t matter. On the left, past a graveyard, was a patch of meadow where a cow was tethered to graze. The long low barn of the Hotel-Dieu stood on the opposite side of the road.

“Well,” the man beside her said, “he is a swine, and I’ll tell him so if I see him again.”

“Good old Joffre.” She gave him a grateful smile.

They were coming up to the ramshackle almshouse. Grass grew on its roof and out of its rotting walls. In the yard a half dozen people in rags sat around waiting for the evening bread to arrive. She felt their eyes poke her as she came in, with the knight beside her, and was ashamed of having shoes and clothes. The big double door was ajar. She went in, then stopped, blinking in the dimness. The stink roiled her stomach. A moment later, de Rançun came up beside her.

Before her, as her eyes learned to see it, was a long, dark room, divided by two rows of posts that held up the roof beams. All around were people, many all but naked, hunched over, rocking back and forth, lying curled asleep: a man pacing back and forth along a wall, a baby wailing in the corner, a nun carrying a basin of water, people sighing and singing and calling out. So full the air of names, of pleas and curses, as a forest was full of birdsong.

She took a step forward, reaching to put up her veil again, and de Rançun went past her a little and nodded, and she saw Claire.

The girl sat with her back to the wall, her shoulders rounded, her head down, dozing. Petronilla’s hand rose to her mouth. Unwillingly she remembered that she had led Claire to this. She was guilty of this as much as Thierry. The girl was filthy and her face was bruised; she clutched a cloak around her as she sat, so Petronilla could not see her clothes, but her feet were bare.

Petronilla went forward, before she had even seen all this, went to the girl, and knelt down beside her. “Claire.” She put her hand on the dirty little shoulder. “Claire, wake up.”

The girl startled and tossed her head back, her eyes popping open, and turned toward Petronilla. Her face was bruised and filthy. She wore no coif, and her hair was matted. She shrank away, but Petronilla caught her hands and laughed.

“Where are you going? I’ve come to take you home, girl. Come along.” She rose up, lifting Claire by the hand. “Come along home.”

After the feast at Saint Denis was over, Eleanor went back into the church a moment, to glory in it again, but at once they were calling her out. Her horse was already brought to the steps. She mounted, and therefore had to join her husband.

With the afternoon sun on her left, they went back to the city through the meadows and gardens, past the markets of flowers and birds, toward the Seine, but just before they would have gone over the bridge, Henry of Normandy galloped up to them.