Inside was the courtyard, paved with slates. There outside the hall door he came on his mother sitting in the sun, two girls with her to run errands, and a rug over her knees.
Matilda was thin and dry as a twig, a cluster of bones. He knew she put something in her hair to keep it dark. Her skin had a distinct yellow tinge, like old teeth. She was often sick. Now she seemed hale and bright-eyed. Her voice was sharp enough. As soon as she laid eyes on him, she called, “Well, sirrah, I hear you have been misusing your brother.”
“He deserves it,” Henry said. He dismounted and gave his reins to a groom. With a glance to the trouvère to hold him there, he went across the yard and bowed down to his mother, taking off his hat. He had taken to wearing a piece of broom in it, as his father had. “Is that what you want to talk to me about?”
“What do I hear about you and that wicked Frenchwoman? It’s noised about she’s got an interest in you. You should have nothing to do with a woman like that; she’ll ruin you.”
“She isn’t French,” he said. He glanced around to see who might be hearing—there were dozens of people around. The two girls behind his mother’s chair were watching him through the corners of their eyes. In earlier visits he had bedded one of them and tried for the other. He decided this Christmas he would get the other, too.
His mother said, “Avoid that harpy. She would only do to you what she’s done to poor Louis. You would never know your children were your own.”
He took his gaze slowly from the girls. He wanted his mother off this track. He thought of telling her about the letters, the schemings between Louis and Stephen to cut down the English barons, who would never now let any scion of Stephen’s hold the throne. Henry thought he was now King of England in all but the crowning because of that harpy. Behind him, he heard the first low tones of the lute, and he glanced over his shoulder; the trouvère had sat down on the side of the yard not far away and was bent over his lute, his wife behind him, her hand on his shoulder.
Henry turned back to his mother. “I want to call a council in the spring, to plan out another attack on England.” He would not tell her about the letter. No reason to tell her any more than she had to know.
The old woman lifted her chin. She thrived on the fight for England. She put out one hand, and the girl on her left, the one he had already had, brought forward a ewer. The other, the quest, came with a cup.
Matilda lifted her cup to her lips, drank, and set it down. The girls retreated to their places behind the chair. “Another council,” the Empress said. “Nobody came to the one last fall. Drink.”
Henry took the cup. “They’ll come to this one. I have to build another fleet.” He thought he might have as many as three thousand men, which would be enough. The problem was getting them over to England.
“There is no money.” His mother put her fingertips together. “Tell me why you think you will succeed this time, when you’ve already failed twice.”
Her head turned as she spoke, her eyes going toward the trouvère.
Henry snorted at her. She had been scheming for this since he was a baby; she was only dallying with him, which annoyed him. He drank the rest of the wine in the cup. “The first time I was nine years old.” He tossed the cup down onto the ground. The intercepted letter would convince her, but he was now certainly going to tell her nothing. “I need money.”
His mother shrugged and made a face. Her fingers moved fitfully over the rug on her knees. Her eyes went toward the trouvère again, who was playing something soft and complex, involving many of the songs they had heard in passing from the yule-loggers. The woman began to sing.
“Get me the money,” Henry said. She had friends among the Jews. Friends also among the English.
She said, “They will give me not a silver penny until you prove you can get something done.”
“What have I been doing since my father died? I hold all of Anjou now except Mirebeau, which I let Geoffrey keep out of love of you.” He nodded to her; he wanted some acknowledgment of that. “I’ve got Normandy subdued. I have an agreement with Louis. He will keep out of an English war and even help me defend the east. If I build a fleet this spring, I could sail this summer.” The westward crossing of the narrow water was always hard to figure, the wind contrary and the sea rough. If Louis kept the agreement, he would have all year to wait for the right moment. He did not want to wait a year, not even a month. “Fifty ships.” He could be King by next Christmas, he thought.
“We should be thinking of brides for you,” she said. “A Danish princess, maybe.”
“I’ll deal with that, Mother,” he said.
“It is her, then, isn’t it? That Occitan harlot. She is much older than you,” his mother said. She fluffed the rug on her lap, her gaze on her knobby fingers. “Of course I was older than your father. But I had some sense of a woman’s place. I hated him for twenty years, but I never tried to annul the marriage.” Her voice trailed off, her eyes turned toward the music. “Nearly killed him once.”
Henry laughed. That he believed; his earliest memories of his parents were of their clawing, kicking fights. “I’m not getting married.”
“Oh,” the Empress said, her gaze swinging toward him, her voice suddenly lighter. “Good.”
“Yet.” He laughed again and winked at his new girl.
But now he was thinking about Eleanor. It came to him he did not want to be grateful to Eleanor for his throne. He drew in a deep breath; he wanted to be on top of Eleanor, driving her down, that long red hair wrapped around his wrists.
His mother gave him a sharp, angry look. Maybe she had seen something in his face. But she said only, “Send these musicians closer, that I might hear them better.”
“You like them,” he said. He himself knew little about music, but he thought they sounded very well.
“I can’t know,” his mother said, “until I can actually hear them.” Her voice was edged with affront, as if he presumed. He had never heard any praise from her, not for him, not for any thing or creature. But her face softened as she turned toward the music, and a wistful look came over her. He turned and beckoned to the trouvère and his wife.
The Duke left, and the Empress ordered Claire and Thomas inside the hall. This was like a barn, drafty and bare except for a few hangings on the walls; Claire thought it had been newly made, or made over, and they had not gotten the chance to fill it up yet. With servants bustling around, Thomas and she sat on a little bench near the end where the Empress’s chair was and played. He played a few notes while he was sitting on the bench, then got off and sat on the floor at her feet, cross-legged, the lute in his lap.
First they played the Queen’s song, from his long story of the sorrowing knight, and then the song of Tristan. Thomas was having some trouble with his strings, stopping often to tune them; while he fussed over the fret board and pegs, Claire studied the old woman on her chair.
The Empress wore a long, elegant gown, as fine as anything Eleanor had, and far more jewels than Eleanor. Around her neck hung a massive collar of gold and rosy quartz, and in her hair, on her wrists and fingers, at her ears she wore more bobs and bejeweled bits. But her face was lean as a knife, her skin crinkled like dry leaves, her eyes pitiless; Claire saw the small, narrow-lipped mouth, curled always downward at the ends, and thought she would not be the servant of such a one.
She thought, with some astonishment, I am no servant now, at all, not even Eleanor’s, and a wonderful surge of satisfaction warmed her.
Thomas turned to her. “Let’s try something new. You sing the Queen’s song.”
Obediently she sat up straighter, lifted her head, and began the first notes; dreamy and slow, they could be happy or sad. She loved trying to make them happy and sad at once. The lute played under her for a handful of notes, and then Thomas began.
But he was singing Tristan’s song, now, twining over and around hers. Two different songs, they still fit together, drifted apart, and came back with an aching sweetness.
She startled and looked down at him, and found his gaze on her; she sang to him, and he sang to her, and the song was all different, somehow, rich and deep and tender and foreboding. He smiled at her. She put her hand on his shoulder.
“Where did you get these people?” the Empress asked.
“I’m glad you like them,” Henry said.
“Actually,” she said, “I was thinking they need a drum. But they are above the usual run of the country.” One long finger picked at her nose. “Where did they come from?” Henry was listening to the singers, who were in fact very good. The woman was pretty, too, and young, with a fine manner.
He said, “I think the lute player is from Wales, actually, the little I have seen of him. His wife is French, but . . .” This was curling back where he did not want to go, and he said, “I have no idea where.”
His mother would not let it pass. “How did you come by them?”
He shrugged. “Someone sent them to me. I have much to do, Mother. I shall see you for dinner. Tomorrow. Take care of my singers, since you like them so much.”
“I didn’t say—”
He was already backing away; he gave her a deep bow, to make up for this, and went quickly out the door.
Claire and Thomas lived in the Duke’s hall and played for the Empress two or three times a day, during which Duke Henry did not appear. The Empress gave them a purse, and then another purse. Claire took charge of these. She found the steward and began talking to him about giving them a place to themselves. Christmas came, with Masses and parades and the great yule log burning in the center of the hall. Still there was no sign of the young Duke, but his mother one day abruptly called Claire into her bower, behind the hall.
She could not deny a command from the Empress, servant or no, and she went into the bower. It was musty, warm from a clutch of braziers, stuffed with an old woman’s gatherings: fluffy bedclothes, shawls and furniture, a faint smell of dog. The Empress sat in the middle, and Claire bowed down to her.
“Your name is Claire, I’m told?”
“Yes, Madame.” And at the sharp look, hastily: “Your Majesty.”
“Tell me.” One bony hand rose to the old woman’s lips. “It was the Queen of the French who sent you to my son, was it not?”
She stiffened, but she should have known. Honest, she thought, in an instant. A lie got her in all sorts of trouble. She said, “Yes, your Majesty. But it was not me she sent. I only came with my husband.”
“This outlandish lute player is your husband? But you are gently born. It shows in your manner, in your speech.”
“Thomas is my husband, Your Majesty. I have no other family.” Which was certainly true now. Even if her father knew or cared where she was, he would not take her back after this.
The Empress’s eyes were like beads. “But you came from Poitiers.”
“We were in Poitiers, your Majesty, before Advent.” Claire held herself straight, as she did when she sang; she knew something was coming. The third test, she thought.
“Did you see the French Queen there?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. And the King. My husband played for them there.”
“Yes. Not a good word for him that they let him go. They say, for all her sins, she has a fine ear for a musician. Tell me—” The Empress leaned toward her, fingertips to her chin. “They say she is very brazen and unwomanly, a harlot, and a hussy, who will spread her legs for any man. What did you think of her?”
Claire blinked, and her eyes slid away from the Empress’s. It came to her that she had what the old woman dearly wanted to know, the perfect reason why her son should not marry Eleanor.
She had carried this secret all this while, unthinking, until now, when it rose in her mind like a dragon from a dark cave: treasure in its wake.
And now, to her surprise, she had no interest in it. She had everything she wanted now: Thomas, and the songs, and a life of her own. Smoothing her face, she faced the Empress again.
She said, “I know nothing of her, Your Majesty, save that she is beautiful and clever and rich.”
“Nothing?” The old woman jerked her head back, frowning. “How long were you there?”
“I know nothing, Your Majesty.”
“Did you see her at court? In her chamber?”
“Only at court, Your Majesty.”
“Did you ever see my son with her?”
“In Poitiers? No, Your Majesty.”
“But elsewhere?” Matilda leaped on the words.
“In Paris, Your Majesty. Long ago.”
“Then you were with the Queen there.”
“Your Majesty, I am Thomas’s wife, no more.”
“I do not believe you.”
“Your Majesty.”
The old woman grunted, her purpose crossed. She glared at Claire. “You’re a dull thing, after all,” she said. “Go on, I have no use for you.” Claire rose, and bowed, and went away out of the bower, a light skip in her walk.
She had passed the third trial. She had won, although she knew not what. Up there on the snowy pavement, Thomas stood, smiling at her. She ran to him, happy.
She said later, “I want to go back to Poitiers.”
“Why? What did she say to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing much. I just miss Poitiers. I loved it there.”
“Then we’ll go. But not now. It’s bad traveling weather now. In the spring. And there are a few places I’d like to see first.”
Twenty-seven
LIMOGES
CHRISTMAS 1151
The charters went out at last, summoning the great churchmen of France to the council to decide the issue of the King’s marriage, all to meet at Beaugency in the week before Palm Sunday. Meanwhile Eleanor spent Christmas as if it were ordinary. Petronilla went off to the church, to the glorious blaze of thousands of candles and the glitter of unveiled gold, to light and beauty newborn after the long dark waiting, while Eleanor sat behind a curtain, listening to a boring priest stumble through his Latin.
She grew stronger, day by day. She had stopped bleeding entirely, and she had not lost the baby. He still kicked and rolled in her belly, sometimes making a visible lump through her skin. She slung her arm around him, glad for him, who was as strong as his mother.
They had no Christmas feast, save a few scraps they ate together in their chamber; at least Petronilla did not attend the Vicomte’s great feast in the hall, from which the laughter and uproar and music and excitement wafted up to them all the whole dreary day. Eleanor could not read, or even sit still, and yet the great burden of her body wearied her. She was constantly tired even though she could not sleep. She dreamed of monsters.
The days plodded by. She stayed restless, bad-tempered, burning all of them with her temper, here and there, as she paced endlessly around the room.
Then came Twelfth Night. All that day the women purred and fussed around her in an excess of solicitation, but as the darkness fell and the revels began in the hall, one by one they slipped away. Even Marie-Jeanne, smiling and simpering, after putting Eleanor to bed with most tender care and kindness, made off to join the Feast of Misrule, when the lowest was highest, and every pleasure was permitted.
Eleanor sat alone in her bed, massive as a boulder. She had always loved this night, and it seemed hard and cruel that she should not be able to enjoy it. She wished Thomas were still here; she could call him in to play for her. Likely he would not come, though, willful as he was, as if his music set him out beyond even a duchess. And in any case, he was not here.
Slowly she began to imagine that she could, somehow, still take part in the revel. She would disguise herself in drab clothes, and it came to her that if anybody saw her, they would take her for Petronilla. She could go down and join the crowd, and kick up her heels as best she could.
She pried herself out of the bed. She, who never had to dress herself, struggled into an old gown, pulling and tugging at the skirt to get it over the mound of her belly. She wrapped a coif around her hair and
knotted it like a peasant woman, and found a pair of wooden shoes. With a cloak around her against the bitter cold of the stair, she went out the door, where even the guards had gone away to gambol.
She started down the stair, one hand on the cold wall to keep her balance. Somewhere, down there, someone would be willing to make merry with even such a great lump as she was. She could hear them as she went down, the shrieks and laughter, the flurries of music, and the rhythmic thud of dancing feet.
In her belly, the child turned, as if it danced also.
She paused, her feet taking up the cold of the stair even through the shoes. If she went on, if in fact she found someone to toy with in the dark, the child would be tumbled with her.
She licked her lips. For an instant, her old rebel heart rose up, thinking, No one shall stand in my way, still less a little worm I never asked for. Her hand fell to her belly. Hers, no matter that she could not ever be his mother, yet he was hers, her charge, her baby. Suddenly a wave of love for him passed through her. She thought, He did not ask to be. I made him, however much I didn’t think to do it. He should not suffer for my thoughtless fault.
Then below her, around the bend in the stairway, she heard the voices of children, whispering and giggling. Her hand on the wall still to help her keep her feet, she moved down through the dark; the glow of a torch shone around the curve in the stair. She went around onto the landing and found a crowd of children huddled there, peering down the last few steps into the hall.
They were the youngest pages and little girls in waiting, five and six years old, drawn to the heated excitement but afraid to go closer. When they saw her, they pressed themselves back against the wall; they would have run off, she saw, scattered like elves, if there had been a path, but she blocked the stairs upward, and the dark, uproarious hall below daunted them. She smiled at them and came down into their midst.
“Now, don’t be afraid. I’ve come to see, also—what’s going on out there?” She turned to peer out through the last tunnel of stairway, where a lone torch burned on the wall, into the shadowy dancing and laughing and merry tumult of Twelfth Night.
The Secret Eleanor Page 23