The Secret Eleanor

by Cecelia Holland

  His fingers went to the garnet-studded crucifix at his waist. His lips pursed. His eyes rolled toward her.

  He said, “But if you come back, you will have some new duke over us.”

  She said, “Leave that to me. I alone am Aquitaine. I promise you, I shall be your champion even before I am another’s bride, and always after.”

  He smiled, his eyes twinkling. “Not for nothing are you the granddaughter of the Troubadour.”

  She gave him back the smile, flattered at that, and he put his hand on his heart, and bowed to her.

  “My dear uncle. God bless you for that; I shall be worthy of it.”

  “I shall speak to him, my dear. You have convinced me.”

  “Good,” she said. “Then the council will sit at Poitiers, during Advent?”

  “A council. No, I fear the King has done nothing so immediate. But that’s certainly the way; there must be a council of churchmen, to declare the marriage null. The church, you know, is very zealous about marriages; we believe it’s for the sake of the women, mostly, foolish men that we are. Advent is too soon; we cannot all come together so quickly.” He patted her hand. “You spend Christmas in Limoges? Perhaps after that, around Epiphany.”

  “Epiphany.” She steadied her voice against her disappointment; Thierry was still winning, somehow; for her, Epiphany would be too late.

  “Limoges, then. But even that may be hasty. By summer, surely, though.”

  She did not say, By summer I will be ruined. Maybe the best she could hope for was the convent. She bowed her head to him. “Thank you, my lord. I am most grateful.” Her heart was galloping, and then, deep in her body, something twisted strongly and struck her in the side, as if the child himself caught her alarm.

  Oblivious, Bordeaux was talking on, reviewing who should sit in the council, and she recovered at once. To her relief she realized all of the men he was mentioning were French prelates, near at hand. It would not take so long to gather them, if she could keep Louis to it. She mouthed words at Bordeaux, agreeing to everything, and leaned on him a little, to let him feel manly. He turned toward her and said, “And there is something you can do for me.”

  “Ah,” she said, taking hold of his hand. “What is it? A tax, an estate, a city? Make me Duchess of Aquitaine and I will give you everything you desire in Bordeaux.”

  He chuckled, but his cheeks reddened a little, and she guessed he had such desires; there was something to work with, then, in time to come. He smiled at her. “No, this is more immediate. I have a certain lute player whom I must get rid of, because he cannot keep his hands off women.”

  “Aha,” she said. “So you would send this lusty musician among a gaggle of women. Turn him into the street, what’s so hard about that?”

  “Oh, no. He is too good; I do not care to see him go out of the country and ply his considerable skills elsewhere. Any court will profit from his presence; he can make a man great with a song, and probably ruin him, too. Poitiers would be perfect for him. I merely want him off my own hands, and you will love his work.”

  “Provençal?” she said.

  “No, from the west, over the water, some borderland to England, I forget the name. His name is Brintomos, Brantomos, something like that.” His smile broadened, irresistible. “He has a song about a knight who falls in love with his Queen that I think you’ll especially enjoy.”

  “While he seduces all my chamberwomen?” she said. “Very well, we’re stronger in defense than we seem. Send him to me.”

  Martinmas began, when everybody was supposed to be merry, and Eleanor wished she were merrier than she was. There was no way to avoid attending the great feast, but even the music could not amuse her. She sat at the head of the great table in the refectory, not beside Louis, but as far from him as their chairs could be placed. Still she could not escape him; she felt his gaze constantly on her, and his pages came by every few moments with little gifts of meat, a wine, a comfit.

  She ignored them, keeping her gaze forward, sitting straight as an icon, and ate only a few mouthfuls. In preparation for this event, before they put on her sumptuous gown, her ladies had wrapped her up from armpits to hips in two tight layers of damp linen that had dried now to an unyielding armor, and she could barely breathe. Before her, stretched across the whole refectory, crowds of people stood watching her, and if only one wondered about her, she might be lost.

  Petronilla was on her left hand; Petronilla fed on most of what the King sent, not Eleanor. Bolt upright, bored with the bad music, Eleanor lifted her gaze to the high ceiling of the refectory, where cobwebs swayed in the little breezes like dusty tapestries.

  She had forgotten how pregnancy was like being made a servant of her own body, now occupied by a demanding and finicky stranger. Petronilla was right; she could not bear this very long, nor continue going before the eyes of their enemies. Between her sides the baby churned again. Around her at the high table they had eaten their fill of the fat goose and its attendants, and now the rest of the court was falling on the meats and bread and puddings heaped on the lesser tables all through the refectory.

  At her knee, Petronilla sat primly in her chair, her eyes restless. Framed in the dingy white of her gown and coif, her face was a younger version of what Eleanor saw in her own looking glass; but washed of color and boldness, she looked plain as a mouse. She was deep in thought and would not be spoken to. Eleanor turned away, crushed inside the linen bands, looking for something else to distract her from her sufferings.

  Behind her, she heard her steward send off someone else trying to approach her; she had given them orders to let no one through, and obeying her was keeping them busy, this the seventh or eighth supplicant for her attention. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a tall man in a green coat stalking away down the table, no one she knew.

  Her wandering gaze stuck on someone down by the wall: Geoffrey of Anjou.

  She gave a start, the faces similar enough there also that she thought at once of his father, Le Bel, and his brother, but this was the younger boy. Strapping, tall, he was a preening cock, with a mane of tawny curls and jewels in his ears and on his fingers. He had Le Bel’s animal beauty, but sleek and spotless with the untested innocence of youth. She caught the steward’s eye and nodded to him, and a page went down the rows of courtiers. She turned forward again to see another man walking up to her on the far side of the table.

  “My lady, welcome to Aquitaine.”

  This was the Vicomte de Chatellerault, of course another cousin, an older man, with a well-kept beard and a jeweled collar. He was twice a widower and doubtless looking for a third wife to suck dry. He and Eleanor shared a grandmother, remembered by the interesting name of Dangereuse, who had been the object of one of the great Duke William’s more strenuous romantic maneuvers. Therefore she had to speak to him, and she bantered with him a little, holding herself thin as a stork’s leg, and moving as well as possible when she had to. When he went away, Geoffrey of Anjou stood just behind her elbow.

  She turned with stately slowness toward him, and he gave her a deep, flourishing bow. He wore a truly remarkable red and gold coat, and the bobs in his ears were carved rubies. His hair and crispy curled beard were combed to perfect smoothness, as if painted on. He straightened with practiced flattery on his lips. “My gracious Queen, pardon me my stutters and gasps; your beauty has taken all my breath away.”

  “You speak excellently well, for the lack,” she said. “What do you here, my lord, so far from home? And still in mourning, surely.” She glanced at the short-skirted red surcoat, puffed and filled, fur-trimmed and sewn with figures in gold thread; the golden links of the collar around his neck were studded with crystals. “How kind of you to come to us, in your time of sadness.”

  His bright blue eyes gleamed at her. He said, “Mourning does not unman me, Your Grace. How could I keep myself from seeing you, and still call myself a man?”

  She glanced off into the open hall, where the first bad lute players had be
en replaced with two more, no better, plucking twangs and thunks rather than music from their strings. Petronilla, beside her, staring into the indefinite distance, was obviously listening to everything she said to Anjou. She leaned a little closer to the slick-tongued boy and gazed deep into his eyes, and when his eyes widened with hope and excitement, she said, “And what news of your brother, the Duke of Normandy?”

  His ardor dimmed like a cloud crossing the sun. He scowled at her, insulted. “What to say of him that is not an outrage? He has stripped away all my father’s gifts to me, except poor old Mirebeau. The will said also I am to be Count of Anjou, one day—small chance he will honor that. Now he’s north again, bringing all the Normans to heel—but I don’t want to talk of him!” He reached out for her hand. “It’s you I came to see.”

  She eluded his touch. “Better you should be off north, heeling Normandy.”

  That drove him back a step. His smooth, tanned face tightened with bad temper; his sun-bleached hair bristled. In that he was his father’s son, rash and headstrong. His temper gave his voice a whining edge. He said, “My brother has driven me from my own lands! Surely, simple honor compels you to support my cause.”

  She laughed. Geoffrey of Anjou did not seem amused. Across his handsome, clear-eyed young face went a slow progress of thought, and his initial indignation warped into a sly smirk. He leaned closer to her, his voice silky.

  “You mark that he is not here, pressing his suit with you. He’d rather stay in Normandy, cracking heads. And—Your Grace, I am loath to tell you this, lest it lower your esteem for him, but you should know he has another leman. He never sleeps alone.”

  She sat back. For an instant a white rage heated her. At once she knew this was what the raw youth before her wanted, and she cooled. Nonetheless the wording irked her—another leman. As if she had ever been his leman. She felt little Anjou’s eyes greedy on her, taking in this struggle in her. She thought she would rather be a sinner than betray one. “Well,” she said, “perhaps it keeps him warm.” The linen clutched her like an iron girdle. With her forefinger she traced a figure eight on the arm of the chair.

  In her mind, something she had thought solid cracked apart.

  Her gaze never left little Anjou, whom she hated now for telling her this, the pig. “You’re here, then, to get my lord the King’s approval for your cause? Has he given it?”

  A page was waiting with yet another tray of comfits, and she waved him off. Once the boy was gone, Anjou leaned even closer, gazed at her tenderly from his cornflower-blue eyes, and said, “I came here to see you, my Queen, and nothing else. The mere sight of you consumes me with a passion.”

  She smiled at him. “Such a fire in green wood,” she said. “Season awhile, my lord, and you’ll burn cleaner.”

  Geoffrey straightened up like a fighting stag, all fine indignant strut. “I’ll prove to you what kind of man I am, if you let me.”

  Eleanor turned away, watching him through the corner of her eye, her head tilted. “Get out of here before I set the cat on you.”

  He flushed to the roots of his yellow hair, turned on his heel, and marched off. Eleanor straightened, her gaze on the musicians. Her whole body ached. She had to get out of the scratchy embrace of the linen, to breathe freely, to lie down and let her body alone. When the page came to fill her cup, she drank half of it in a single gulp.

  Petronilla said, “What a pretty fellow that is.”

  Eleanor said, “A pretty little serpent.”

  She thought again of what he had said, his brother with another woman, and she shifted in her chair, restless, angry again. She imagined him spewing all that hot passion over someone else. She had thought—he had said—there had been some things said about always. She didn’t remember anything about chastity. She wished a poison dart into little Anjou’s back. Across the room, she noticed someone watching her.

  It was her cousin the Vicomte de Chatellerault, standing alone behind some others. When she saw him, he looked away immediately, but she still felt the cold quality of his stare. She sat straight up, her hands in her lap, uneasy all over her skin. Many men watched her, she was used to that; she enjoyed that, the admiring looks, the longing, desirous looks. This attention had a greedy edge to it, a fresh hunger.

  Wolfish, she thought, remembering the clever, saintly Bernard and his prophesies. A wolf on a hind.

  Now she glanced around the hall and saw other faces, on all sides, watching her, who would soon become a woman alone, and Duchess of Aquitaine. Every one hoping to profit somehow thereby. This was what she had come into, a country of wolves.

  Yet it was her country, hers alone. She held herself straight as a scepter. She was Duchess of Aquitaine and these were her servants, obligated by blood and duty to her. They gave themselves away with their lustful looks; they gave her power over them. They were here, after all, because of her, and not she for them.

  That was why she needed Henry, even more than for his passion and his lusts. He had what was better than love; as he had proven again, now he had the gift of power. She had to remember that foremost. She kept her hands in her lap. Avoided touching her belly, or bracing her back. Beside her, Petronilla gave her another half-smiling look.

  “I hope neither of these is the lute player Uncle Bordeaux wants to give us.”

  “So do I, very heartily.” Eleanor turned to send a page for more wine. “It should not be said of any lute player that I would rather listen to flatteries than him.”

  Seventeen

  As soon as they were back in the Queen’s chambers, the door shut, the braziers glowing hot, Eleanor almost burst out of her bonds, flinging her gown off, turning around and around as Alys unwound her. She sprawled out on the bed with a sigh. The other women hurried around, putting her discarded clothes away and setting up the room for the night. Petronilla sat down by the window, her hands in her lap, watching everything.

  She had been thinking over what Eleanor had told her of the talk with Bordeaux, and she agreed with her sister: They were running out of time, and there seemed no way to force the issue. Claire went by her with a candle, shielded from the draft, to light the candles by the bed. Eleanor’s hair, spread out on the pillow, picked up the light like a bed of embers. Petronilla looked away. She had begun to lust for her freedom, and now they were snatching the chance away from her.

  Then, in through the window, came the first notes of a lute.

  Petronilla’s lips parted; in the heat of the crowded room the notes fell upon her like drops of cool clear water. The jangling of the monastery’s musicians faded out of her memory. This was how the lute should be played, the tones firm and mellow at once, deep and singing. She turned her gaze toward Eleanor and saw her sitting up in the bed, looking toward the window. All of the other women had fallen utterly still.

  The melody came in, two or three lines of pure music, and then the voice rose. And it was equal to the lute, strong and manly, deep and resonant, like a dark slow-flowing river of sound.

  Born to sorrow was this knight—

  She found herself smiling. Her gaze went again to Eleanor, who was flushed, her eyes bright, canted toward the window. The song went on, telling of the courage and honor of the knight, the beauty and passion of the Queen, the fate that exalted and destroyed them like a pure, cleansing flame. Inside the room, the candles guttered, and one by one went out. Claire huddled up, her head on her knees. The other women lay down on their blankets. Slowly, everyone else, even Eleanor, fell softly into sleep, but Petronilla stayed by the window, listening.

  The song and the voice seemed only for her, and especially for her, as if the night itself wakened her from some prison of memory, called her back to life. Locked in her current frets, she had not thought for days of the treacherous Ralph, and now, in her mind, he seemed faded, thin and insufficient. The song lifted her up strongly on its sensuous wings, and she felt herself opening to that, her body yearning, as if the music were a key to some door inside that she had forgotten
was there.

  Even as she wakened, she felt herself hesitant, almost withdrawing, afraid of the risk. In the great bed, Eleanor murmured luxuriously in her sleep and cast one arm wide—Eleanor, who loved risk, and risked everything, at every opportunity.

  Petronilla thought, Am I going to spend the rest of my life sitting under the window listening to someone else’s song?

  The last notes hung in the night like struck silver. The troubadour’s voice faded. At last she got up and went to the bed, to lie by her sister and sleep.

  In the morning, the room was icy cold, and when they brought in the braziers, full of smoke and smells. Eleanor gave a flurry of orders, and the women rushed around to clean up and try to improve things. Petronilla went out to the garden with some pages to look for rosemary to sweeten the floor.

  They had to go far out into the garden to find bushes not already cropped nearly to their bare stalks. By the wall at last she found an untouched stand, and she pointed here and there, and the boys with their shears cut armfuls of the sweet blue-flowered sea dew, which would perfume the room. The boys gathered them and ran on ahead of her, and she walked back slowly through the winter-deadened garden.

  The path took her around a corner, and there she came on a man sitting on the ground eating an apple.

  He looked up at her, startled, a stocky, ordinary-looking man, with a shock of thick black curly hair. She shrank back, wary. He leaped to his feet, his eyes gleaming, bobbed a little bow, and smiled.

  When he smiled, she felt a ripple all along her body, as if he radiated some intense interest, fixed totally on her, a wave of desire. Beside him on the ground lay a leather sack, lute-shaped. She realized at once who he was, even before he spoke.

  His voice was like dark honey, roughened with a strange accent. He said, “My lady, excuse me—is this your garden? You must excuse me—I have no business being here—I hoped to go unnoticed.” His black eyes glistened. “Are you the Queen?” And he smiled again.