The Secret Eleanor

by Cecelia Holland

  She made a sound in her throat, remembering how close that war had come to the progress. That was his border with France. “Yes,” she said. “And I can understand why.”

  “Indeed. Ambition above honor. Now Henry is in Normandy, on the coast somewhere up there, and while he’s out of Anjou, his brother with a tableful of local men is raising banners against him.”

  “Ah,” she said, with a twinge of alarm. “They try to take him while his back is turned, the dirty dogs.”

  “I will find out what I can, as the plot goes on,” he said, and raised his hand to her. “Now shall I fetch the hawk?”

  “Yes,” she said. With this news disquieting her, she needed some diversion. She turned toward Petronilla, riding along beside her on her placid brown mare.

  “Did you hear that?”

  Petronilla gave a wiggle of her head. “Nothing in this seems like news to me, Eleanor.”

  “Should I—” She edged the gray Barb closer to the mare, so that they could speak without being overheard. Behind them, in the wagon, the women were still singing, a good cover. “I could send him a message. Warn him. Offer him some encouragement.”

  Petronilla only laughed and looked away, which meant she was against it. Eleanor settled into brooding on the problem. She rejected the idea of a message. This was another test of him; if he did not master it, he would be of no use to her.

  De Rançun came back with the sparrow hawk, still hooded, on his gloved fist. He had a rare hand for a hawk, and they flew beautifully for him; Eleanor gave herself over to watching his skill with the wild, dagger-beaked little bird. Like all animals, she trusted his deft, tender touch. There was no game on the cold winter roadside, but they flew the hawk anyway, baiting her with scraps of dry meat, to pass the time until they came to Chatellerault.

  The Queen’s progress arrived late at night in Chatellerault, and Eleanor slept on in the morning. After all the other women had gone to their morning prayers, Petronilla eased herself out of the bed. Because the winter cold was fierce, she wrapped herself tight in her heaviest cloak, not widow’s wear, but dark, with fur around the cuffs and lining the hood. Then she went to the chapel, as she had bidden Claire to tell Thierry.

  The morning Mass was over and the little chapel quiet, dark, and very cold. When she slipped into the confessional, she realized with a start that he was already there, on the other side of the screen.

  She sat on the priest’s narrow uncushioned bench, her hands tucked into her sleeves, her heart thundering. The screen showed her only the vague outline of his head beyond.

  She said, “What do you want?”

  “Your Grace,” he said. “Thank you for meeting me. I have hopes we can find a way through this quandary of ours, to the benefit of all.”

  She made the sign of the cross, mechanically, because of where she was. For a moment, startled, she could not speak; he thought she was Eleanor. She almost laughed, and mocked him for his mistake, but then she forbore. She saw some use in letting him go on in this belief, and she bit her lip, amused.

  He waited only a moment, and went on. “Your Grace, there is a way for both you and the King to have your way. He could let you go to Poitiers, to live there without him, all the rest of your days. We will give Aquitaine entirely into your charge, which is what you want, isn’t it?”

  “What are you saying?” she said. She kept her voice a harsh whisper, for disguise.

  “Let him—visit—now and then—and if—when—you have a child, then . . .” Thierry hesitated a moment; in the dim, narrow enclosure she could sense him leaning toward the screen between them, as if he might pierce through it with his look. He was only a darker shape through the mesh screen; likewise, she must be hardly more than a voice to him. “If you had a son, he might still be claimed for the King’s.”

  She gasped, outraged. Thierry’s voice tumbled on, ragged.

  “Perhaps even . . . your sister’s child, Your Grace. Could be passed off. Or . . . as long as the King could visit—now and then—pretend.”

  “God’s breath,” she said, low-voiced. Her amusement that he had taken her for her sister boiled up into rage. “What are you saying? This is indecent. This is monstrous.” She was shivering in the cold, and with more than the cold. “You would pass off a—a nameless bastard as a prince of France—”

  “The King may never have a son,” Thierry said, harshly. “In many ways he is good, and worthy, but he abhors all earthly pleasures. My concern is the throne of France and the succession. The realm of France, Your Grace, of which you have been Queen. Please, consider this. It’s a way for us all to get what we want.”

  “Bah,” Petronilla said, one of Eleanor’s favorite exclamations. “Go. Get away from me. You are evil. Indecent.”

  “Think of it,” Thierry said. But he was going. “Just consider it, Your Grace. For the sake of the realm, the kingdom. Consider.” The door beyond the screen opened and closed, and he was gone.

  She sat shivering in the dark, the stale smell of the enclosed space in her nostrils. Dusty, like a tomb. The sheer outrage of it numbed her—to offer to accept a baseborn child for the King of France. She let herself consider the irony that within her sister’s sides now there grew the child of the King’s worst enemy, who might be a boy, and therefore the plausible heir Thierry was seeking; a son of Eleanor and Henry’s, who could by tortuous ways become the King of France. Worth a ballad at least, she thought wryly, if not a fabliau.

  And, beneath that, the other startling thing: Thierry had taken her for Eleanor. Of course he could not see her. But he had thought she was Eleanor. She sat there a long time, in the dark, thinking about that. All her life she had wondered what it was like to be Eleanor. At last, hearing someone stir outside in the chapel, she got up, pulled the hood of the cloak well over her face, and left.

  Claire drew in behind a column while Petronilla went out of the chapel, and stayed there, in the dark, in the cold, wondering what to do.

  She was sure that Petronilla had not told Eleanor of the meeting with Thierry; she had watched them carefully, after she told the Queen’s sister he wanted to see her, and Petronilla had never said anything. Claire had thought then she meant to let Thierry sit in the dark and fret for hours, a laughingstock; thus she herself had gone, to laugh.

  But Petronilla had kept the meeting with him. She could not believe that Petronilla would conspire with Thierry. There had to be some good reason for this. But the suspicion crept in under the edge of her thinking, that Petronilla, the woman of perfect virtue, who sternly ordered her to keep faith, Petronilla had lied.

  That pleased her, somewhat, to see a high one lowered; they were no different, really, she and Petronilla. But the pleasure was cold, and a little sour. She had loved Petronilla.

  She still loved Petronilla. Differently, perhaps. She went out of the chapel, toward the Queen’s tower.

  “Where have you been?” Eleanor asked, when Petronilla finally reached their rooms in the Saint Catherine tower.

  “I went for a walk,” Petronilla said. She thought, I will tell her, in a moment. They would laugh over Thierry’s indecent proposal, and especially that Thierry had mistaken who she was, and Eleanor would surely spurn the whole suggestion, and that would be the end of it all.

  “At least you’re out of your widow’s white, for once,” Eleanor said. “You look a lot better, there’s color in your face. I want my wine heated up again and spiced; will you do it? Where is Alys?”

  “Oh, probably still at church,” Petronilla said, although she knew that was not so. She went for the warming pan. It irked her to be ordered around like a mere servant; Eleanor could do this as well as she. Eleanor always took her for granted, a sort of second self, a biddable shade, with no will of her own. Perhaps she would not tell her about meeting Thierry—about Thierry’s base offer. Perhaps Eleanor didn’t have to know everything. She knelt by the fire and poured the wine into the pan. Claire came in the door from the next room, quiet, her eyes downcas
t, and murmured, “I will do it, my lady.” Petronilla gave her the warming pan and went to play tables with her sister.

  Nineteen

  The Vicomte de Chatellerault, Eleanor’s cousin, was a notorious miser, and his shabby, dreary hall cradled the winter cold to it, instead of holding it outside. So Eleanor could swath herself in fur cloaks, and, wrapped also in the iron fist of her linen, she went to dinner every day and strained her ears to catch the gossip at the men’s side of the table, trying to hear news of Henry.

  She remembered again the brawny body, the quick, fiery action, and thought little Anjou would get nowhere. England would be the real test. He would bring her the crown of the richest kingdom in Europe for her morning gift. She stirred, lively at the thought of that.

  She noticed Bordeaux in the King’s company, talking to him, but Thierry, also, on Louis’s left hand, looking at her often. Louis spent a good deal of each day in the chapel, and Eleanor saw him only at a distance, each of them surrounded by attendants, and in a hurry. The weather was foul, all those days, and she spent them playing tables with Petronilla, who always won, because she never chanced anything.

  Claire went to the kitchen to find the Queen some sweets she craved; she had been told to say of course they were for Petronilla. While she loitered there, waiting for someone to notice her and help her get what she needed, she saw the lute player Thomas coming in through the gate.

  She had not seen him since they left Fontevraud and he had gone over to the King’s side. Her heart leaped at the sight of him, the old feeling wakening. He took no care with how he looked, always a little wild, unkempt, his clothes shabby, but he had a cocky strut to his walk, nonetheless, like a prince. It was the music that made him so, she thought. A flock of girls followed him, giggling and flapping like the silly geese they were. Claire felt herself blushing. She saw him suddenly in a new way. He went in their midst like a lord, his lute in its sack over his shoulder, his dark tousled head bare, and his face bright with laughter, but he never really looked at any of them.

  She thought she would call out to him, would raise her hand, but some foreboding kept her frozen in her place. She would be just one of all of these girls, who clung to him, shameless, adoring. His gaze passed over her and he did not notice her; he went on by her, laughing. Claire lowered her eyes, trying to pretend she was not looking at him. The girls around him battled each other to be close to him. So it was, she thought. So it was. But now her anger at Petronilla rose a little hotter.

  When the weather cleared, they began on toward Poitiers, some days off, and on the first night of the journey, they stopped at a monastery near the River Creuse. Eleanor’s train arrived much later than the King’s, and before she had dismounted, de Rançun came up to her on foot, his face expressionless.

  “I think we’ll see little Anjou back here soon.”

  “What?” she said, turning abruptly around, and as she did so the horse moved abruptly and she lost her balance.

  She was dismounting, swinging her leg across the cantle of the saddle, and she began to fall. She caught herself, both hands on the saddle, and the horse sidestepped away from her and she did fall. De Rançun caught her almost at once, his hands on her sides. The Barbary horse, snorting, swiveled away from them, his ears pricked up. She hung one arm around the Poitevin knight’s neck, her whole body in his arms. Her eyes went bleared and her head muzzy, as if the world disintegrated around her.

  De Rançun set her on her feet again, holding her until she was steady. She turned toward him and looked into his stiff, drawn face, and at once she saw that he knew what was going on with her. He lowered his eyes, as if nothing had happened, his voice unnecessarily loud.

  “The plot in Anjou’s done. Duke Henry heard about it and rode down there from Normandy—in a single night—” He gave a little shake of his head, a grudging admiration. “That must have been quite a ride. Picking up his garrisons as he went. Caught the whole batch of schemers all at once, still cooking up their little rebellion, and stewed them together in their own pot.”

  “Good,” she said, pleased; she told herself she had foreseen this, knew him well enough to know what he would do, questing toward his crown. She drew in a deep breath. The spell was fading, and in a moment she would be strong again. She glanced at the knight. De Rançun, she knew, would tell no one about what had just happened. She forgot about losing her saddle; that was nothing. And she would shake off the little lingering dizziness. “Give me your arm, I’ll go inside. Where is my sister?”

  They reached Poitiers the day after the King arrived, on a bright breezy winter day, when little silver-bellied clouds scudded above the city on its rocky hill like ships across the blue sea of the sky. They rode over the bridge and up the steep narrow street toward the palace through crowds of cheering people who screamed Eleanor’s name and reached their arms out to touch her.

  The noise and confusion spooked even Petronilla’s little mare, usually calm as a nun, and Petronilla kept a nervous eye on Eleanor, on the Barbary horse, which tiptoed along with his head bowed almost to his chest, snorting with each step. Eleanor mastered him utterly; they went through the gate into the palace with no trouble, and left the thunderous cheers behind.

  The huge rambling palace covered the hilltop, the center of it old Roman work, patched and expanded with new stone halls and towers. Eleanor took one look at it and turned to the double tower on the right, under the two hats of its peaked roofs. “We will house ourselves there,” she said, and so they moved into the Maubergeon.

  Her grandfather had built the great double tower for his mistress Dangereuse, and so it had acquired a certain disrepute. Nobody had lived there for years. The rooms were full of dirt and trash, rats and owls and bats, terrible smells and crawling things that hissed. Eleanor got everybody to cleaning it up, carrying out masses of junk and dirt, sweeping, washing down, bringing in what suitable furniture she could find elsewhere in the palace.

  She herself decided everything. Except for a brief appearance at dinner on their first day, she ignored the rest of the court; she watched over every task in the Maubergeon. She went into the rooms and found the new-style hearths, set in recesses in the outer wall, which had been plugged up by somebody who did not understand their use. Birds had built nests and clogged the openings above them, which were supposed to let the smoke escape without coming into the room. She set a crew of men to digging them out, and made sure they did it properly, especially the smoke channels. In the meanwhile she sat with Petronilla beside her to choose new hangings for the walls.

  She remembered this place from when she and Petronilla had grown up here—the hearths, the curving staircase, the sunny windows—and she meant to bring it back again, and with it, that world of poetry and music, new ideas and new dreams. Sitting with Petronilla, running her fingers over a heap of silky damasks, she said, “Was it this color? Or green? There was a dark green.”

  “No,” Petronilla said, “it was blue, in this room, blue and gold, like this, only Grandfather’s initial, not yours. Big gold Gs. Dark green upstairs, and a lighter green, what they call salamander, across the way.”

  “Then let it be so,” Eleanor said.

  She intended to live here, to make her greatest place here, when she was free. When they were all free. Yet they were no closer to that, even though they were in Poitiers. The King still had not summoned any council, although he was certainly promising. She put off the gnawing twinge of doubt. Maubergeon and the life she wanted lay within her grasp now, and she refused to let this not happen. She haggled with the merchant over the blue and gold damask, as if she could make the future by furnishing it.

  Something was going on with Petronilla, she knew not what. Her sister had lost her easy openness, which once Eleanor had seen through and through like glass. Some part of her was closed away. Twice she had almost said something, but held back—as if she did not trust her, Petronilla, who had been by her side all her life. Downcast at this, she struggled to put off
her doubts, thinking that being pregnant was always a mild form of madness.

  That afternoon, a neatly folded, elegantly written letter appeared, laid on a cushion just inside the door of the middle room, and she did not need de Rançun to tell her that Geoffrey d’Anjou was back.

  She tossed that paper into the hearth, but over the next several days there came more such in a steady stream. She sent them all after the first, without reading them. The other women happened on them, as they were tossed in through the windows or tucked into the usual gifts from the court and people in the city, and quickly the servants understood what was going on and gathered in giggling bunches to read them before they brought them to her. She refused to let them tell her what they said. She contented herself listening to de Rançun’s stories of Duke Henry.

  “He’s tireless, they say; he rides everywhere, drives everybody, and he is fearless, and certain—you don’t see him down here hanging on Louis’s sleeve.”

  She said, “Anything you hear of him, though, bring to me.” Anything, she thought, save whom he takes into his bed. I will make him love me, she thought. Once we are married.

  “I hear he is ruthless, and cruel,” de Rançun said. “And if he would do such to his own brother, Eleanor, what would he do to a wife?”

  She laughed, angry. “Bah. I am not a mere wife, am I?”

  He hesitated; she saw he had something he wanted to say. “What is it? There’s more news? Tell me.”

  “No, my lady.” He swallowed, his head down, and she guessed it was something else entirely, which she wanted not to hear. He started to speak, and she beckoned him off with her fingers.