The Secret Eleanor

by Cecelia Holland

  He said, “I don’t want you to go.”

  She said, “Remember, on the road north, how I trusted you then?”

  His head turned slightly, so he eyed her from the side. He said, “I remember you were afraid. And you’re with child. Where are you going?”

  “Not far,” she said. “Half a day’s walk, likely. But I have to do this.” If she told him, it would only make things more complicated.

  “Then you’ll come straight back?” He picked up the bit of bread, his gaze still on her, suspicious.

  She said, “Put off the wedding to the day after Easter, and I will be back to marry you. Then we can even do it in the church.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She said, “If you want. If you don’t trust me. But this is my purpose, not yours.”

  He chewed the bread, studying her. She smiled at him, and leaned forward and kissed him. And in the end, she went alone.

  On Holy Saturday Petronilla rode out of Beaugency, on the road home.

  The highway led along the north bank of the Loire, rising with the spring flood. Outside Beaugency they passed along the skirt of the river, below the smiling little hills patterned with trees and fields and vineyards. Every few miles, the highway became the street of a village, a path that wound among scattered houses of stone and wood, already hung with carpets and tapestries and bunches of reeds in anticipation of the Easter week processions. Between the villages the fields climbed in strips over the rising slope, the deep soil opened up in long furrows to the sun, between patches still overgrown with the winter’s brambles and the dried leavings of the previous year. In spite of the approach of Holy Week, people were working in their fields, bending and stooping and straightening in their endless toil.

  She saw them sometimes through a screen of wildflowers; the ditches of the road were full of stalky green growth, the white and yellow buds just beginning to open. Solomon in all his glory, she thought dutifully, but her gaze went by them to the toilers in the fields.

  She always wondered at that parable: Let the wildflowers go, she thought, and the world would be little the worse; without the toilers and spinners, everything fell to ruin.

  God, of course, made the wildflowers; Solomon’s glory, however splendid, was only made by men. More likely, women. She crossed herself, a little irked at God’s whims.

  The Barbary horse was eager to move out, mouthing the bit and tossing his head. He had a new groom, who had braided his mane with red rosettes and polished all the silver on his harness; the bells on his saddle skirts jingled like music. She held him down, both hands on the reins, and sulkily he obeyed her.

  It struck her how odd it would look to the people in the fields, this little gaudy train parading by. After her de Rançun was coming along on his black horse, carrying the sparrow hawk on his wrist, and then the wagon followed with Alys and some other new ladies, who sat chattering away together and eating cakes. Their coifs fluttered; the brisk wind reddened their cheeks, and when they tossed their hands and laughed, it was like the wildflowers dancing in the wind.

  De Rançun was keeping silent, hardly even looking at her. She wondered at his distracted mood and guessed he worried about Eleanor, in Poitiers. She wondered if he had ever been so far from her. Behind the women and the several servants walking along beside and after the wagon came four knights in mail, wearing red surcoats with Eleanor’s pacing lion emblem across front and back, and their horses all in red leather bridles. Most of the knights were downy boys, younger sons of younger sons, their swords bright as new-minted money. De Rançun had spent much of the ride north yelling at them to keep order. Still they cavorted on their horses, whistling and making mock charges at each other, eluding his discipline.

  The train of her baggage rolled after, led by the steward with his rod of office in his hand, and then a loose crowd of more servants and hangers-on. Many wore Eleanor’s colors, and they went along talking and singing; some walked, some rode, all straggled off along the way for what looked half a mile.

  Wildflowers on a progress. As they went along, the people in the fields propped themselves on their hoes and turned to watch. Their faces were as brown as their fields. A little child in ragged smock and bare feet ran along on the edge of the ditch, laughing and excited. Someone began to cheer Eleanor’s name. As they approached, some people moved in from the fields; women in dirty aprons and men with their smocks down around their waists clustered along the edge of the road. She waved to them, wondering what drew them to her—not Eleanor, obviously, since any Eleanor would do. Something they made of her, perhaps, themselves enlarged in her. She should be then as grand and beautiful as possible. She smiled and waved to them, drinking up their cheers, glad of their welcome.

  She thought, What of this is me anymore? Who am I anymore? The miserable castoff wife of a few months ago seemed as strange to her as this splendid outward duchess. Maybe that was why the world seemed so fresh to her as she rode along, seeing it with new eyes. Maybe she really was a different person now.

  The forest closed down around the ancient road; they left the plowed and planted fields behind. Steadily they rode on toward Blois, with the river running green and calm along the foot of the little slope. The water was still high from a recent rain, and little trees stood knee-deep in the shallows. Since it was Holy Week, there were few other travelers, and those that did appear leaped out of the way and stood gaping to watch the Duchess of Aquitaine ride by. At noontide the little company stopped and ate their dinner of bread and cheese sitting on the side of the road, like common folk.

  They did not reach Blois that day. Late in the afternoon, they stopped at the convent of Saint Casilda, on the bank of the Loire, to spend the night there. Wild roses covered the walls of the convent, in tribute to the saint, who had carried them in her skirt in some old fable. The winter-blackened vines were just coming into new leaf, like lace against the gray stone wall.

  Inside, the nuns were busy readying themselves and their relic, Casilda’s fingerbone, for the Holy Week procession, and Petronilla and her train were much in the way. Packed with her women into the two dormitory rooms kept for high-born travelers, Petronilla ate a supper of bread and sour wine; and when the sun was just going down, she climbed into the bed with Alys and two of the other women, wondering if she would be able to sleep.

  Her mind turned again and again to Eleanor’s fury, and to what she had said, what it all meant, now that she and Eleanor had escaped the hateful marriage and the dismal court of France. She could not see how they could be friends again. Yet she had to return to Poitiers. She had nowhere else to go. She wanted to go back to her home, but she had no true home. She stared into the darkness, and all she saw before her was nothing.

  She did sleep. When the voice spoke, she startled awake out of a roiling dark dream and sat bolt upright in the bed.

  “Who is it?”

  “Lady,” de Rançun said, just outside the curtain. “Come quickly, you must hear this.”

  The other women were stirring; Alys sat up behind her.

  “Are there men in the room?”

  Petronilla said, “I’m opening the curtain,” and swung the heavy hanging back and slid off the bed; she wore only a light shift and she held the edge of the curtain up over her. Two candles still burned in the dark, so it was not very late in the night—short of midnight. De Rançun was standing there, trying to look everywhere else than at her, and she pointed and said, “Bring me that cloak. What is it?”

  He held out the cloak and she swung it around herself, letting the curtain go, careless of the moment between. He turned, and barefoot, she followed him across the crowded little room to the door.

  Just outside, in the arcade, Claire stood, with one of the young knights right behind her.

  Petronilla stopped, amazed to see her. The girl looked older somehow. She wore a long dark gown, a heavy cloak over it. She had been talking to the young knight, over her shoulder, and now turned toward Petronilla, her gaz
e direct.

  “Oh,” she said. She swept down in a low bow. “It is you, my lady.”

  Petronilla said, “I should hope so,” her voice sharp, warning. Claire had known her at once for Petronilla, which did not surprise her. She glanced at the young knight, who did not seem much interested in the girl’s odd words of welcome. “I’m very glad to see you, though. I thought never to see you again. Where have you come from? We all thought you had gone away forever with the lute player.”

  Claire straightened. There was a new pride in her bearing. She said, “I did. I am about to marry him. And we were coming down to Aquitaine again, but—you know Thomas, how he is—he wanted to stop in Blois. So we have been in that city for a while, enough to hear the gossip, and I have come here to warn you that there is trouble for you, ahead, in Blois. You must not go there.”

  Petronilla put one hand out to the young woman before her. “God’s blessing on you, then. But what, tell me, is there for me to fear in Blois?”

  Claire gripped her hand. “The place is suddenly full of men in mail, knights and sergeants, all armed, even in the city. I have seen them myself, and—I overheard folk talking about something that awaits you.” She reddened, but her eyes were direct. “It was some secret, but it was about you, and I think perhaps someone there means to carry you off to marry you by force.”

  Petronilla twitched, clutching the heavy cloak around her with her other fist. She thought, I should have guessed that something would happen. This is not over even now. “Who?”

  “I know little more than that—and what I know is all around corners. But I think the lord there, anyway, it’s his men who are everywhere around there.”

  “It would be crowded anyway for Easter,” Petronilla said. “But to bring in all his men-at-arms—are you sure? How do you know they are all his?”

  “They all wear his blazoning,” Claire said. “Silver, bands crosswise red, each with three disks.”

  “Henry of Champagne,” de Rançun said at once.

  Petronilla shook her head. “Not him, the band makes a difference. It’s the younger brother, Theobald. He is Count of Blois.” Her heart was pounding like a mallet in her chest. She faced Claire again, meeting the girl’s direct gaze, their hands still linked. She squeezed the strong, capable white hand.

  “Thank you, Claire. You have saved us, as you know—come to Aquitaine, that we can thank you.”

  Claire smiled at her, her head to one side, eyes gleaming. “My lady, you have done as much for me, although you know it not. I am loyal to the Lady of Aquitaine.” Her grip tightened briefly and let go, and she was backing away into the dark.

  “Wait,” Petronilla said, but the girl was gone. Back to Thomas; back to the life she had somehow made for herself, where she should have been only a lady-in-waiting, attendant on someone else, until she was shoveled into a convenient marriage.

  De Rançun came before her, his eyebrows cocked, and she knew he needed orders. She dragged her thoughts again to what Claire had said. Her hands were cold and she slid them under her cloak, her mind going to the trap ahead of her.

  If anyone seized her now and took her to his bed, it meant he married her. One of her own aunts had suffered this indignity, before Petronilla was born, when her barons carried her off by force to keep her from marrying someone they didn’t like. The man who raped her became her husband instead. That could happen to her, and that she was not really Eleanor made it all the worse. She turned to the knight.

  “At least Claire has given us a chance,” de Rançun said. “We can circle around Blois. Make for Tours.”

  “No,” she said. “They would anticipate that. Or catch wind of it, very quickly. Such a train as we are cannot move fast enough to outrun armed men.” Her mind leaped forward, past this first threat, to all that might lie ahead. There could be others lying in wait, between here and Poitiers, following the same course, the same evil design, marriage by capture, as old as the ring. One other, especially; she remembered Geoffrey of Anjou, in Limoges, trying once before to carry her off. “What about—” She was trying to imagine this as a game of tables: getting her counters past a clog of opponents. “What about boats? On the river.”

  De Rançun glanced over his shoulder at the young knight behind him, who went swiftly off into the dark. Petronilla turned her head, looking into the chamber behind her; the women were all gathered there, listening. De Rançun faced her again.

  “That’s good,” he said. “If we can get across the Loire, we can go straight south, through the wild country, direct to Poitiers.”

  Wide-eyed, her hair tangled, Alys had come to the door of the chamber. She said, “Should we pack?”

  Petronilla’s mind was hurrying through this, imagining the boats floating across the river, and then picking a way through the cave-riddled hills and forests south; she turned to de Rançun again. “What do you think?”

  He nodded. “As you do, my lady. We can take very few people across at a time, and no baggage.”

  She turned to the woman behind her. “Wait here. I think you may be going on tomorrow the usual way.” It came to her they could go on as if she were still among them, and disguise her flight.

  “But—”

  Petronilla gave her a sharp look, and the older woman was silent. Up through the darkness of the arcade the young knight came striding into the torchlight.

  “My lord,” he said to de Rançun, “the convent has two barges, both rigged, down on the riverbank.”

  “Very good,” Petronilla said. To de Rançun, she said, “I command you, then, go arrange all this. See how many horses we can take on each barge. Find out what’s across the river.”

  De Rançun said, “It’s all swamp, I think; it would make for very slow going. We should go down the river farther, maybe even past Blois.”

  “Well, then.” She imagined that, sailing straight past the ambush, escaping right under her ambushers’ noses, and her blood heated. “Good. However many horses, that’s how many people shall go.”

  “Yes, my lady. I’ll find out where we can make a crossing.” He went off, and she turned back to Alys and the other women in the doorway.

  “You and the others—you are safe enough; they will not harm you. You can come to Poitiers by the usual way.”

  “No,” Alys said. “I won’t let you go alone.” The other women murmured agreement with her, pushing up into the doorway.

  Petronilla laughed, borne up by their stout loyalty to her; she moved into the closed, filled space, into the warmth of their gentle womanly love. “How I love you all for this. But you must do as I say. There will be room for three or four horses at the most.” She did not say that their progress would make it seem she herself kept to the road. “Go on to Poitiers, and I will meet you there.” As long as she had de Rançun with her, she thought, she could do this.

  Alys said, “We shall, then, my lady. We shall get to Poitiers, as best we can.” Her hand lay on Petronilla’s arm. “Take care.”

  Petronilla laid her hand on Alys’s, grateful for the other woman and her devotion. She thought, We take all these people’s faith without even thinking of it, but if they fail, we are lost. She bent and kissed Alys’s hand on her arm, and the woman murmured in surprise. Petronilla said, “Come, now, I have to have better clothes than this. And shoes.” She went into the room, to make ready to escape.

  Thirty-two

  The moon was just past full, a gauzy lopsided egg riding high in a starless sky. The nuns had intended to use the barges to get to Blois for the Holy Week processions there, and so they were ready at the quay, like the kind of boats that children made, two great flat chunks of wood, each with a tall sweep at the back. De Rançun roused the boatmen from their shanty, and when they protested and wanted to go for the Abbess, he drew his sword and forced them onto the boats. The chief of them, whom he brought to Petronilla, was a bent lanky man, groaning and pulling his forelock, ready with answers.

  The boats were sound enough, he said. H
e thought each might carry three horses, but more likely two. Across the river the land was swamp and wilderness and there was no road.

  She had long since given up the idea that they would simply ferry the whole of her little court by twos and threes across to the other side, when she had seen the benefits of dividing. But now she realized that across the river, there would be nothing to eat, no comfort, and a hard ride through enemies.

  They would have to go downriver, as she and de Rançun had already realized, and she designed her questions of the boatman with that intent. How could they pass by the bridge at Blois? She had ridden across it, and she struggled to remember it in detail. The boatman thought the barges would float beneath through the arches, if the river wasn’t too high and nothing had gotten snagged against the bridge in the flood. He said they would reach Blois if they left soon, in the deep of the night, when she could see nothing at all.

  Beyond Blois, he thought there might be places where they could put into the Loire’s left bank, depending on the flood. The boatman shrugged, though, and shook his head a little. That place was very wild, and he himself had never gone there. Who knew what was on the other side? Nobody went there. Petronilla took all this in, trying to make one big idea of all these small things, trying to see her way home.

  Eleanor, she knew, would make her mind up right away. And she could trust de Rançun. She thought again of the power of those who served her.

  They would be at the mercy of the flood-swollen river, and the plan got more vague as it went on; yet she knew she could not stay here. She looked around her for de Rançun.

  He was standing behind the boatman, his young knights gathered at his side. She said, “Put the horses on the barges, the Barb for me and your black horse for you on one, and on the other as many of the knights’ as you can. Get us bread and wine and water and whatever else we need.” She guessed he had already thought of all of this, but she had to command him; this was her decision and she would make it. She reached out her hand to him. “Hurry,” she said.