The Secret Eleanor

by Cecelia Holland

  When she went out into the street, the crowds cheered her; they called her name from the rooftops and followed her all the way home. Still, there was no sign of Duke Henry.

  She summoned a council of the local lords—she knew the great barons would not answer: Talmond, Angouleme and Limoges, Chatellerault, Lusignan, and, now, de Rançun. The local men were more dependent on her and could not ignore her. At the council, to reward them, she named them all to high offices, seneschal and marshal and constable, which they were glad to have, preening themselves. She laid heavy taxes on them, then, which they liked less, but could not deny her. So she had money coming.

  Through this council she commanded the Vicomte de Limoges that he should remove his unpermitted wall. She also commanded her cousin, the Vicomte of Chatellerault, to bring her men-at-arms to go against Limoges. She sent forth generally a command that the French law no longer held in Aquitaine, and that she would give law here, and no other.

  No word came from Limoges. From the Vicomte de Chatellerault a written message arrived that he would bring an army to her when she consented to marry him.

  She had the money now to buy an army; all she needed was a commander. She had never needed one before, but she had botched that. Still, she thought, maybe she could do this alone.

  That was less than she wanted. She stood on the top of the tower, looking north, wanting more. Wanting everything.

  One morning while she was hearing two people argue about ownership of a stream, she looked up and saw a dark curly head she knew coming in the doorway.

  Behind him, wrapped in a gray cloak, was Claire. Her heart jumped like a lovelorn girl’s, and she shifted impatiently in her throne. The weary arguments of the two Poitevins who had been fighting over this waterway for generations could drone for hours, and she cut them off with a wave of her hand. She told them to come back later, when she had thought it out, and as they left, she sent a page for Thomas the lute player.

  “God keep you, lady,” he said, with a bow.

  “You are very welcome here,” she said. “That I bade you do, in Normandy, how did that go?”

  “I gave the message to the Duke himself, my lady,” he said. “He was very glad to get it, I think. He acted on it right away.”

  “Good. He kept you at his court?”

  “Until Lent, my lady, and then we went off again.”

  “Then tell me—how does my lord Normandy?” She stopped, ashamed to look overeager. Her gaze went by him to Claire, who was smiling and bent her knee in a quick dip.

  Thomas said, “He was well enough, when I saw him. But we left Rouen a while ago, my lady; I know nothing of him now.” He bobbed his head again, as much as he ever gave anybody of a bow. “My lady, we need your permission, Claire and I—” He reached his hand out behind him, and she came forward, smiling. “We have married,” he said, “which may not sit well with her family.”

  Eleanor laughed. “No, I suppose not. It sits with me.” Her smile widened, and she looked on Claire with a new pride. “God bless you both. Welcome to my court.” To him, she said, “Play.”

  But she wished he had some news for her of Henry. Her skin felt cold; he was not coming. His mother, or something he had learned, or his barons kept him north.

  Thomas had sat down below the dais, and the first soft tones of the lute reached her ears. She turned to call a page and announce that the court was over, so she could go somewhere quieter and closer, to lose herself in the music.

  Claire went off as soon as she could and climbed the stair to the blue tower. The door at the top of the stairs was open, and she could hear Alys’s voice; she went to the threshold and looked in.

  What she saw gladdened her. Alys was helping Petronilla dress, the gown slipped on over her head, her arms raised to find the sleeves. In the corner, a baby suckled noisily, his nurse wrapped around him like a piece of furniture. Claire slipped into the room, and Petronilla, poking her head up through the gown, saw her and said, “There you are!”

  She pulled out of Alys’s arms and went to Claire and hugged her. She held Claire’s hand, and smiled at her, and turned to Alys.

  “Remember? She saved us.”

  “Sssh, my lady,” Alys said. “But I am glad to see you, Claire.”

  Petronilla said, “Come see the baby. Alys, tell her what happened after—in Blois.” She straightened her gown and stepped into her own shoes. To Claire, she said, “We do not live such quiet lives, after all.”

  Alys picked up the nightdress and shook it out. She began a story that sounded as if she had told it several times before, which still got Petronilla laughing. Claire laughed, thinking of the balked fury of the would-be abductors. Petronilla had lifted the baby away from the nurse, and danced around the room with it, which beguiled her more. She went across the room to watch her, laughing at the right places in Alys’s story. Petronilla stopped long enough to show her the child’s face.

  “Philip,” she said. “He’s a boy.” She danced off again.

  Claire smiled to see this; she thought everything had worked out well. She stood by the bed, which was still unmade. Alys was coming to the peak of her tale, her arms waving, describing the knights’ desperate searches. Claire smoothed the bedclothes, meaning to put the bed together when the story ended.

  She saw, then, that the pillows were hollowed out as if two heads had slept there, side by side. She glanced at Alys, who with wild arms and tossing head was demonstrating the Count of Blois’s complete dismay. Alys might not have noticed. Quickly Claire plumped the pillows up and drew the covers higher. A curly fair hair flew from one linen flounce into the sunlight. She glanced at Petronilla again, amazed.

  Petronilla had stopped dancing, had seen Claire do all this, and stood staring at her, a challenge on her face. The baby in her arms waved a little fist.

  Claire said, “I’m glad he didn’t hurt you,” to Alys. She stood in front of the bed.

  Alys said, “Oh, he wouldn’t dare.”

  Claire turned to making the bed up. “I think you were very brave, nonetheless.”

  Petronilla said, “Alys, you should go—my sister needs you.”

  Alys said, “I can—”

  “Come back later,” Petronilla said, and the tall waiting woman left. Petronilla fixed her eyes on Claire.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Claire said, “That a lot has happened. You and the Queen—the Duchess—you are where you belong.” She nodded at the baby. “He is a beautiful baby.”

  Petronilla’s face settled, and she took the baby to the young nurse and shooed them both out. When she came back, her face was grim. She sat down next to Claire on the bed.

  She said, “We are not where we belong. We are at odds, Eleanor and I, and like to be forever. She tried to have me killed. If he were a lesser man, I would be killed.”

  Claire started. She turned her gaze back toward the pillow, thinking of the curly fair hair. She realized then she had not seen him, who had always before been close around the Duchess. She said, “God bless him, then. But I cannot believe—”

  “I can. She saw some danger in me, in spite of all I had done, and her use for me was over.” Petronilla’s hand was furiously pulling at the bedcover. “Except that I should take her baby, which I gladly do.”

  Claire said, “You will not forgive her.”

  “I can never forgive her. I am not a sister to her, or even a friend, just a tool she can use. If she ever loved me—”

  She broke off. Bright tears trembled on the lashes of her eyes. She said, “I’m glad you’re back, Claire. You at least I can talk to.” She slid off the bed. “Help me make this bed. That was careless of me; thank you.”

  He stretched out on the bed, his arms over his head, the candlelight glinting on the golden hair on his chest. “She won’t tell anybody?”

  “No,” Petronilla said. “She has changed, too, you can see it; she is a woman now. She hid what she saw from Alys. She knows Alys loves to gossip.”

>   He caught her hand and kissed it. “I worry about you. What Eleanor might do.”

  She laughed. “More worry what I might do to her.”

  The baby stirred in the corner; she lifted her head, but he settled again. The wet nurse was downstairs, and Petronilla would send a page for her when the baby woke hungry.

  De Rançun said, “I can’t stay much longer. Someone will see me. She has sent for Henry. I have not spent the last year studying him for no reason. I know what he will do. As soon as he gets here, she will set him on Limoges and that wall. I need to be behind my own walls before whatever happens there happens.”

  Petronilla wondered where he went during the day; he appeared here only after dark. She said, “If he comes.”

  He made a noise in his throat. “Of course he will come. Would he decline the doubling of his lands, his power? If she were a pocky hag, he would come.”

  “She’s hardly a pocky hag.”

  “The more hastily he will come.”

  Petronilla said, slowly, “Then, if he comes, if he makes the right choice . . .”

  “Which is?”

  She put her head down, saying nothing. She laid her hand on his chest; he was watching her, sharp, the light shining clear in his eyes. He turned and blew the candle out, and did not ask her again.

  Some days later, when Claire was in the hall with Thomas, a page came to bid her up to the Duchess’s chamber. No one was there but Eleanor, standing by the hearth, and she sent the page swiftly off. Claire made a bow to the Duchess. She had spent the morning helping Petronilla with the baby, and she imagined she still smelled of spoiled milk. The mother of the baby faced her, exactly as Claire remembered her: the gold circlet of her coronet on the thick coppery braids of her hair, the red slippers peeping out below the hem of her gown.

  Eleanor said, “I am glad to have you back, Claire. You need not fear your father.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.” Claire folded her hands in front of her; she was joyous to be back in Poitiers, and to have the Duchess so kind to her. This loosened her tongue, and she blurted, “In truth I wondered which of you I would find here, Your Grace.” At that she put her hand to her mouth, amazed at what had come out of her.

  Eleanor’s face widened with her smile. “Well, are you disappointed?”

  “Your Grace, you are both here, I can hope for no better. And you have always been Aquitaine.” She shook her head. “No one ever else could be the Duchess of Aquitaine save you.”

  To her relief, she saw that pleased Eleanor, or amused her. She seemed much loftier, as if before the King had dragged her down. Muffled her. Her eyes now met Claire’s, direct.

  “You went with your husband to the Duke of Normandy?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. He wasn’t my husband then.”

  The smile grew impish. “I remember how he was. God give you the strength for him. Did you see the Duke of Normandy at all?”

  “Oh, not much, Your Grace. He took us to his mother’s court, in Rouen.”

  The wide green eyes flashed, brilliant. “His mother. The Empress. What sort of woman is she? I have never met her.”

  Claire said, “She is lean and dry as a stick, Your Grace. She looks sickly to me, as if something eats her inside out, but she still wants to put her hands on everything.” She drew a breath and told Eleanor what she had to know.

  “She does not want her son to marry you. They are stodgy in the north; I see not how they have children.” Except, she thought, they all be by Duke Henry.

  Eleanor gave a southern whoop of laughter. Claire smiled wide; their eyes met. Claire said, “The Duke Henry pays her very little heed. He is a hard one, Your Grace.”

  “He has other women,” Eleanor said.

  “I saw that not, but I heard it, Your Grace.”

  “You spoke to him.”

  “No, Your Grace. Not once. Thomas did.”

  “You spoke to his mother.”

  “She heard nothing interesting from me, Your Grace; she said I was dull.”

  Eleanor understood that; her eyes widened, and her chin lifted. “You kept my secrets, Claire. For this I am obliged to you.”

  “Lady,” she said, “for what I have had of you, I am more obliged.”

  The Duchess nodded. “What lies ahead of us we cannot know. What went before we soon forget. You have seen my sister.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “You know she and I are out with each other.”

  “Yes, Your Grace, she told me.”

  Eleanor gave a shake of her head. “Then she told you why.” She waited a moment, but Claire said nothing. Eleanor said, wistfully, “Is she well?”

  Claire said, “She is, Your Grace. She is herself again. I think this is all she ever wanted.”

  The woman before her made a sudden movement, her hands rising. She turned away, and her fingers intertwined. “Ah, that’s a torment. Then I can remember her as she truly is. Yet I cannot be in her company that so delighted me. This is cold.” She walked around the room, rubbing her hands together.

  Finally, she faced Claire again. “You are to go again to Petronilla.”

  Claire said, “Yes, she has asked me.”

  “Tell her—” The green eyes blazed. “Tell her I want my sister back.”

  “Your Grace—” Claire shifted uneasily, her hands rising uncertainly before her. “You must talk to her, not I.”

  “I can’t.” Eleanor turned away. “I fear too much what she would say. I would throw myself into a fire before I could hear what she might say. Do as I bid you; no harm shall come to you, whatever happens.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Claire said, and she bowed and went away.

  Claire went down to the common hall again, full as always with the Duchess’s people. Thomas sat by the hearth playing. She thought of what the Duchess had said, and Petronilla, and tried to fathom what had come between them, when they had always been so close.

  She thought, Duke Henry. Yet surely that was not the redheaded Henry’s hair on Petronilla’s pillow. She went up and sat next to Thomas, who glanced at her and went back to playing some line of notes, over and over, humming to himself.

  She laid her hand over her belly; she thought about what was happening down there. For that they needed a sure place here. That required the favor of the Duchess, which meant there could be no double-dealing. She waited until Thomas had stopped a moment and taken a drink of wine.

  She said, “When we left Rouen, I remember, you went aside with the Duke a moment, didn’t you?”

  “Unh. I don’t remember. Oh, he gave me a purse.” He twiddled the quill in his fingers, his face bland.

  “You are such a bad liar.” She swatted him. “I should lie to you about how he caught me in the corner, one time, and tried to kiss me.”

  His face flew into a furious scowl. “Did he? I’ll kill him.”

  “Or do I lie? Tell me what he said to you, that time in Rouen.” She cupped her hands together in her lap.

  “Oh, nothing much.” His eyes narrowed. “I remember that time—how you looked, afterward—frightened. Was it then?”

  She stared him in the eyes. She said, “So, one lie or another, what does it matter?”

  He frowned at her a moment. At last, he put the lute down. He said, “I take your point. The Duke bade me heed everything that happens here, and report it to him, and he would reward me well.”

  She had thought this was likely so. She thought, ruefully, she knew too much of courts. “What did you say?”

  “That I would—I did not say yes. But you can’t say no to a man like that.”

  She gave a low growl in her throat. “Are you a musician or a spy?”

  His frown deepened a moment, and then went away. His eyes glinted. He leaned forward and kissed her mouth. “You are my soul, my dear one.”

  She said, “I have been a spy. I would rather be a musician.” She thought at least whatever happened between Eleanor and Duke Henry and Petronilla would not fall at her and
Thomas’s feet. She put her head down on Thomas’s shoulder, her hand on her belly, content.

  Petronilla could hear the noisy excitement of the court, and she could not keep herself from going to see it. She went down to the side door, at the foot of the stairs to her tower, and stood there.

  Before her was the court of Aquitaine, a dance of color and faces. Thick as bees at a hive, men in splendid coats and women in ornately twisted coifs were gathered, talking, and watching each other watching them. They moved constantly, a shifting of interest, allegiance, opportunity. Over by the hearth, Thomas the lute player sat beside another man with a lute, maybe teaching him something; Claire stood beyond him, with three other women, their mouths open wide and their chests pumping. They were singing, but the uproar in the great hall was so much, few could have heard them. A swarm of knaves came in with a great load of wood, which they began to pitch into the pit of the hearth.

  The people around Petronilla saw her and dropped into elegant bows. A man swept the floor with his cap. Up there she saw that the great table was empty. Her sister had not come down yet. Around her all were murmuring, bowing. She wore no finery, but, she thought, she needed none. She went out among these people, glad of the noise and laughter.

  She waved her hand to Claire, who sang as if her chest were bursting, her voice inaudible in the general racket. Behind her, someone said, “’Tis the Lady Petronilla!”

  She almost turned and smiled at him. A scattered cheer went up, and she raised her hand again, and more cheered. In the back door came the cook, leading the way for four scullions bearing aloft a huge platter with a whole boar, the head still on, the eyes bulging black plums, shiny with sauce and lying on a thicket of green boughs.

  A trumpet blew. The whole crowd turned, suddenly, toward the main door, and their voices rose in a roar of excitement. Petronilla stood, the hackles on her neck rising; then she saw her sister coming in.

  Eleanor wore a gown of green stitched with gold, bands of gold along the front and on the deep cuffs. She wore no coif, her red hair done high on her head in coils of braids. The gold circle around it seemed a decoration to the real crown. Petronilla turned and went, swiftly. Everybody else surged the other way, crying out Eleanor’s name, trying to get closer to her radiance.