The Secret Eleanor

by Cecelia Holland

  “Your wife.” Henry looked past him again, and this time Thomas knew he looked at Claire. Thomas frowned; he remembered how she had clung to him that day. Henry shortened his gaze to him again.

  “You are a clever man; you could be of use to me. While you are there, whatever you see of the Duchess, take note of it. I will make this worth your trouble.”

  Thomas put his head to one side. This was going the other way now. He said, “What will you give me?

  “What do you want?” Henry said. His mouth kinked, half smiling. “Tell me what you see.” He nodded toward Claire, behind him, and went away.

  Thomas went up to her, thinking with some excitement about what the Duke had said. It was the game, more than the money, that tempted him. His wife said, “What did he want?”

  He could not tell her; he pretended, instead, to be jealous, and said, “Don’t look at him like that.” At that she blushed and turned away, and he was sorry he had played with her. He turned to his horse and mounted, and they went off to join the rest of the company.

  Thirty

  In Poitiers the days were dull. The winter had turned, and the sun rode higher in the sky, its light stronger, and on the slopes below the Maubergeon the first green buds appeared on the trees. Lent was almost over.

  Eleanor toiled up and down the stairs, trying to bring the baby on, but even he betrayed her; he would not come in time to rescue her.

  One day she met Petronilla, coming down the stairs, and they stopped and faced each other.

  Her sister wore a splendid green gown. She stared at Eleanor, and Eleanor stared back, expecting some apology, some gesture of contrition, some opening through the barrier between them. Petronilla met her eyes and said nothing. Finally Eleanor trudged on by her. That night she wept for hours.

  He cannot tell the difference, she thought, over and over. He cannot tell the difference.

  The day was soon when she should go to Beaugency. In her own room, anchored to her bed by her belly, she waited to be told that her own women, once again, with her own clothes, and her own crown, were transforming her sister into Duchess of Aquitaine, the Queen of France. She wept, thinking of it, and cursed between her teeth, and in her great belly the baby turned.

  Petronilla sat like a doll on the stool while Alys fussed over her, a dab of paint upon her cheeks, a swish of a brush over her throat.

  “Is she well? My sister.”

  She should say, The Queen. But it was not the Queen Petronilla fretted for, but the sister. She herself was becoming Queen, under the touches and devices of the women, but she could not paint and brush herself another sister.

  Since Eleanor had shrieked at her, she had been arguing the justice of it over and over in her mind; she had not sought out Henry d’Anjou, she had done only what she had to do. She had put him in his place, as he deserved—as Eleanor herself should have done. She felt Eleanor’s rage like a wound in her heart. She bundled off the memory of that last, passionate kiss.

  The thing between her and her sister was hard as cooling iron, was turning rank, would poison them both. She knew Eleanor would never bend her neck, would never admit to being wrong.

  It was Petronilla’s duty to ask forgiveness, even if she had done nothing. Once Petronilla had almost yielded, on the stairs, and done what she knew Eleanor expected, bowed to her, and let her have her way. She resisted that. A lie would not heal the wound; a lie would only deepen it.

  Alys held the Byzantine looking glass before her, and Petronilla inspected the face reflected in the oval of gold and jewels. She was beautiful. More beautiful now than Eleanor was. Yet her heart ached for the sister whose face she saw in the mirror, the sister she had lost.

  “How does Eleanor fare? Is her time upon her yet?”

  “No,” Alys said. “She lies abed, very sad, and cries much, and the baby is still high up under her belt.”

  Petronilla said, with a pang, “I would see her, if I could.”

  Alys said, “Lady, it were wiser perhaps not to. She is in such a state.”

  Petronilla turned her eyes away. In such a state, she knew, meant Eleanor still hated her. To see her, anyway, was not enough; to make things whole between them she would have to betray herself, accept the blame, and let Eleanor keep her false pride.

  That, she knew, would be her own destruction. She would never be happy again.

  Now she had to go off to Beaugency, alone. She gathered herself up. The long ordeal was not yet over, but soon. Then, perhaps, when they were free, they could find their common ground again. She promised herself she would go to her sister then, when they were free, and whatever happened between them would seal it, one way or the other.

  Eleanor lay abed, and de Rançun came to her, his hat in his hand.

  “My lady.” He knelt by the bed. “The Lady Petronilla is going to Beaugency.”

  “You are going with her.”

  “If you bid me, I will not,” he said. “But she is supposed to be you, and I have never left you. Someone will surely mark it if I don’t go with her.”

  Eleanor struggled herself up. A black rage burned in her; she had lain so long, waiting, that her temper had swelled like a boil, full of evil. She reached under the pillow of the bed and drew out the silver dagger.

  “Joffre,” she said. “You must attend her. For that reason, and for another. There cannot be two of us. If he cannot tell the difference, when he comes, there must be only one. She must not return to Poitiers.” She held the dagger out to him. It trembled in her hand. Her voice trembled. “If you love me, you will do this.”

  He understood; she saw it in his eyes. He straightened up, his mouth open, his eyes on her. All the color went out of his face, and his throat worked. His gaze slid away from hers. Then he took the dagger, and in silence he went out. She lay back on the pillow and shut her eyes.

  Later, when the pains began, she thought bitterly about Duke Henry, for whom she did all this. He had brought this on her. He had never loved her. He wanted her only for Aquitaine. She lay in the bed and heaved and screamed. He wanted her only for Aquitaine, for Aquitaine.

  Then, as if these thoughts were a looking glass, she saw herself revealed. She wanted him only because of England, Normandy, Anjou. She had never loved him. She had done all this as evilly as he had.

  In a terrible slow understanding, she thought that she had never loved anybody.

  She had loved her sister. She howled, caught in the grip of the convulsions of the birth. Marie-Jeanne came to her, and she gripped the old woman’s worn, wrinkled hand that had rocked her cradle, dressed her in her first gowns, prepared her for her wedding, traveled with her to Paris and to Antioch, and was now here, constant and true. The door into eternity was opening; she lay like an altar on the threshold. Across her belly, the two hands of the life force fastened on her and began to twist. She held the old woman’s hand, and the tower echoed with her shrieks, but she knew not why she screamed: for the pain, or for the order she had given de Rançun, for her sister.

  Beaugency stood on the north bank of the Loire, on the southern edge of the kingdom of France, a long day’s ride upstream of Blois where the old bridge crossed the river. Petronilla reached it four days before Palm Sunday. With the year turning, the dark and cold of winter was now surely in flight, every day more mild and sunny, grass growing golden green between the cracks of the stones, and the first tender spring breezes blowing up the river from the sea. Behind her, Eleanor was just a tiny memory, locked in a tower room.

  The next day, several of the most powerful prelates and nobles of France met together in a stately formal council and declared that the marriage between the King and Queen was annulled, as if it had never been, because they were cousins within the forbidden degree.

  It was a classic bit of church work, saying everything necessary and nothing really true. An earlier pope had already declared them to be married, which was set aside. The little princesses, Marie and Alix, would remain with their father and were to be consi
dered legitimate, however much this contradicted the essence of the decree. Eleanor received back her patrimony of Aquitaine, where she had always been Duchess in her own right. Both the King and his never-had-been Queen were free to marry, although Eleanor, as Louis’s vassal, was supposed to seek his permission first.

  Petronilla witnessed this, sitting in the back of the church among a crowd of attendants, all but Alys being women of the local nobility who hardly knew her. She kept at a good distance from anyone who really did. But then she moved out onto the porch of the church, into the open and the sunlight, and the spokesmen of the council came before her to announce the decision to her, face-to-face, and one of them was the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who had known her all her life.

  Arrayed in a magnificent new gown of green and gold, with sleeves embroidered cuff to shoulder in gold and pearls, her coif also of tissue of gold, and her head aching from the burden of the crown, she awaited them on the open porch, wondering what to do. What he would do, if he guessed. He would say something. He would have to. It was all nothing, if she was not Eleanor. He could not be party to a fraud.

  Her head throbbed unbearably and she could not think. She put her hands to her head, lifted the crown off, and threw it down on the floor at her feet. Let some other woman be Queen of France.

  Her mind flew to Eleanor, in Poitiers; had she borne the baby, had that changed her temper, as it sometimes did? Did she know already that they were free? That Petronilla had set them free? Abruptly her eyes flooded with tears, as if all this rising feeling pressed out and overflowed. Now Bordeaux was coming, and she was all in tears, falling apart.

  At once she realized this could save her with him. As the little band of churchmen advanced across the porch, she put her hands up to her face and let herself weep uncontrollably.

  He bowed before her, with the other grave-faced prelates lined up behind him; she raised her eyes for an instant, glimpsed their startled faces, and went back to sobbing into her hands. Bordeaux fumbled a moment, saying, “Eleanor, my dear, Eleanor,” and then read the decision hastily through.

  Done, he bent over her, his hand on her shoulder, and whispered, “My dear, now, too late for regrets, isn’t it?” He made a motion with one hand, and a page scooped up the discarded crown. They all shuffled offacross the porch, their robes swishing.

  Out from under his scrutiny, she straightened up, pressed her hands to her eyes, raw from the weeping, her mind scoured and empty. A moment later, she realized she had won.

  She lowered her hands to her lap, startled; she had won, they had given her the annulment and opened the shackles of the awful marriage that bound both her and Eleanor to the cold heart of France. A swell of pleasure took her spirit soaring upward like a leaf on a gust of wind. She crossed herself. Whatever Eleanor thought of her, she had gotten them both through this. She had won them this, their chance at new lives. Now all she had to do was face her sister again.

  And that, she thought, might be the hardest thing of all.

  Thirty-one

  The day after the Queen of France went by on her way to Beaugency, Claire and Thomas came into Blois, the ancient city on the Loire, and there they stayed. They took a room in a tavern by the river, and for almost a week Thomas played there only for them, teaching her new songs and working on his old ones. When the money ran out he played in the public room, for which the tavern-keeper gladly gave them their keep.

  Blois was filling up with people come in for Holy Week and the Easter festivals, and the tavern was always crowded, and besides what the tavern-keeper gave Thomas, other people pressed money on them, flowers and rings and cups of wine, invitations to other houses, pleas for other music. He saw that they could do very well here.

  But he saw that Claire was less than happy with this arrangement. One morning he came upon her standing in the doorway and looking out, not into the street, but beyond toward the river, and the bridge, which was just visible from the threshold. The road over the bridge led south to Poitiers, and the sight of it alone made Thomas uneasy.

  He stood behind her, slid his arms around her, and kissed her shoulder.

  “Let’s go up and practice,” he said. He wanted her not to be looking toward the south.

  “When are we going on?” she said.

  His hands lay over the soft swelling of her belly, growing more every day. This moved him more than he had ever imagined. He was already making songs for the baby.

  He said, “What’s wrong with here? We have everything we need.”

  He was afraid that if she went south, back to the court of Aquitaine, she would remember who she was and how she had lived before, and he would not be good enough for her. Her hands closed over his, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. She said, “I want to go back to Poitiers. I dream of it every night. I want the baby born there. When will we go?”

  He said nothing for a moment. Along the street a steady rumble of wagons passed, and a pack of horsemen in fancy silver coats with red bands on them, wearing swords at their hips. Those, he knew, were the Count’s men. At last, he found the right answer; he said, “When we have been married.”

  “Married.” She turned toward him, her eyes gleaming with sudden humor. “We have been saying all along we were married.” She kissed him.

  He held her tight. “Yes, but—your father has never assented.”

  That brought a gust of broad laughter from her. “Well,” she said, “what lies between me and thee, I think, does away with the need for his assent.” Her eyes searched his face, the smile lingering on her lips; he thought she looked more beautiful every time he saw her, as if she ripened with his seed.

  She said, “Very well, then, we shall be married. When?”

  “Oh,” he said, “when I can find a priest.”

  “Then find a priest today,” she said. “Or as this goes on we shall be having him dip the child at the same time he puts our hands together.”

  “Well, it’s not that soon,” he said, but he kissed her again and went off to find a priest. The idea made him a little giddy, but more and more eager.

  He found a priest; they would be married during Holy Week, a time of good luck for such things. As soon as the tavern-keeper’s wife and girls found out, they would not leave Claire alone, but bustled her around to find ribbons and a gown, new shoes, an embroidered coif. They were to be married on the porch of the church on Holy Thursday, and the day before that, they got her naked into a tub in the kitchen and poured buckets of hot water over her, and scrubbed her until her skin glowed red and washed her hair with rosewater.

  They gossiped, too, telling over their little local scandals, but also about the Queen of France, who had gone to Beaugency to lose her crown. Claire ducked her head under the water and lifted it, dripping, to hear the oldest girl say, “They say she wept and wept. What a terrible thing, your husband casting you off like that.”

  Claire said nothing. She wondered which of the sisters was at Beaugency—if Eleanor had borne her baby yet. Her heart ached to go back to Poitiers. She laid her arms on the sides of the tub and suffered the girls to drag a comb through her hair.

  “Your husband will never do such a thing, sweet lady,” one said, and patted her shoulder. “Tomorrow you will be married!” They all sighed.

  “And none too soon, either,” said the tavern-keeper’s wife, acidly, and they all laughed, even Claire.

  “He is a troubadour,” she said. “He lives by his own law.”

  Again they all sighed. “I have never heard such music. I hope you stay forever.”

  Claire was silent. The comb tugged at her hair. She felt as clean and warm as the sunlight, surrounded by the scent of roses. He is my troubadour, she thought; she knew why he wanted to marry, and it amused her that he thought she might ever leave him, for anything. But the idea of actually being married made her happy; she felt as if they were passing through an invisible door together.

  “We’ll have another marriage soon, if the man in the castle
has his way,” said the tavern-keeper’s oldest daughter. She had brought a cup of wine, mixed with herbs and honey, and sipped from it and held it out to Claire.

  “Ssssh,” said her mother. “Such things are never certain. Don’t speak of it until it’s done.”

  Claire passed the cup on. The warm sweet wine made her head whirl. She thought of Thomas’s hands, on the lute, on her body, soon to be holding the baby, to be putting the ring on her hand. She stretched the fingers of her left hand; it was a wonder how so small a thing now began to seem so excellent.

  “She’ll have to come back this way, won’t she?” another of the girls said. “The Queen. And then we can see her.”

  “Not the Queen anymore,” another said. The daughter opened her mouth, and her mother dug her elbow into her ribs to quiet her.

  “Oh, she’ll be here,” the mother said.

  “Maybe longer than she thinks,” said the daughter.

  Claire was studying her hand still, but what the women had said rose uppermost into her mind. She said, “The Duchess will pass by this way, to go to Poitiers?”

  “It is the quickest way,” the mother said.

  “Then we can see her,” they all chimed, “and see how unhappy she is.” And again the mother jammed her elbow into her daughter’s side, and they exchanged a glance and laughed.

  Claire reached for the cup again. It was like music, she thought. Given half the notes, you could sometimes make out the whole. She lifted the cup to her lips, thinking this over.

  That evening, before they went to play, she said, “We have to put the marriage off a day or so.”

  He jerked his head up. “What?”

  “I must go away for a while.” She tore a bit of bread in half, and laid one piece on the table before him. “I’ll be back quick enough, and we’ll marry right away, I promise.”