The Secret Eleanor

by Cecelia Holland

  The trumpets were still blaring out their flourishes. The Duchess of Aquitaine went to the great table and stood behind her chair, and before her the whole room bobbed down in a grand obeisance. She stood straight, her chin up, their ruler. Far across the room, she saw the one whom she really wanted to see rush out another door, gone.

  She lowered her eyes to her subjects. They swayed and dipped before her, a sea of patchy colors: gold and red, green and silver, dark blue, Tyrian purple. They loved her. They were not enough. She let the steward draw back her chair and sat down.

  A few days later, she sat in her privy chamber, before her a dozen men from Bordeaux. She had already discussed this with the Archbishop, who was their lord, but she knew she had to get these men, the city men, the merchants, to agree to this to make it work.

  She sat with her hands on her knees, square to them, and looked each one in the face as she spoke. She said, “Lately enough ships have come in and out of Bordeaux to cause problems. You’ve told me this, blaming each other. What will help is this. I saw this in Antioch, where my uncle was prince, and where ships have used the harbor since Jesus’ time and before.” She stopped and stared at them, her eyebrows arched, until they fumbled and mumbled and bowed.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “First, let each ship in and out in order. This means you must keep good records of their arrivals and departures. Second, gather a company of your own pilots, train them, and let only them handle ships. Third, you are to stop bribery, and instead collect regular fees. Of which I shall have a certain part. And four times a year my steward will come in to see how your records look, to make sure this is all as it should be.”

  That struck them as if she had spat at them; they stared at her a moment, stunned, and then they all babbled at once, their voices piling over each other as the women’s voices did in a round. She picked out certain phrases.

  “. . . families who have been pilots for generations—”

  “There are no bribes.”

  “Satan’s work, it is. Number is the mark of the Beast.”

  She said, “You will do this or my uncle Bordeaux will have you under an interdict and you will get nothing.”

  “It won’t work.” Through tight lips like a squeezed purse.

  “Oh, it will work. And there’s more, once we have these simple rules in place. And you will heed me, because I am your Duchess, and all you do is by my will.”

  That silenced them. She sat back, drank some wine, and let them fret awhile. Then she gave them some gifts, absolving them of certain taxes and duties, which made them much happier.

  Just as she was beginning to dismiss them, Alys burst in.

  “Your Grace. He’s here. He’s here, Your Grace—”

  Eleanor gasped. She knew at once what she meant. She was not ready. She drove the burghers of Bordeaux out and turned to Alys.

  “Send him up. Him alone.” She shook out her gown, not her best, but a good color.

  Alys flew out. Eleanor’s heart was hammering in her chest. She reached up to her coif, pulled it off, and let her hair tumble down all around her shoulders. With her fingers she picked out the braids. She would come to this like a maiden, a new woman. She shook her head to toss her hair around her, and slapped her cheeks to make them rosy.

  Henry went up the steps, outpacing the pages; the guard shrank back from the door. He walked into a beautiful room, all green and gold, and in the center of it, Eleanor with her blazing red hair.

  She said, “Welcome, my lord.”

  His heart was beating fast from the run. He felt light-headed. He said what he had planned, coming down, “You’re even more beautiful than I remembered.” But she was. He had not remembered how green her eyes were. She came to him and kissed him, and he put his arms around her, his body pulsing. She smelled like roses. Behind him, the door opened again, and closed.

  Eleanor was facing that way, and she gave a start. Breaking out of his arms, she moved a step away from him. He turned, and saw another Eleanor.

  This one held a swaddled baby in her arms. She said, “Eleanor. Will you tell him the truth, or shall I?”

  Eleanor was moving. She went straight toward this other woman, like a hawk stooping to the kill. The woman with the baby stiffened, as if to meet an attack.

  But reaching her, Eleanor slid her arm around her waist and, side by side with her, turned to face him. Her voice rang out. “My lord. Behold, our son.”

  He took a step backward. His jaw dropped. His mind was a jumble; he remembered all the rumors, the puzzles of the last year. She had tricked him. Lied to him, at Saint Pierre. Brought him someone’s bastard. Then at Limoges—that had not been her. They had both tricked him.

  When he realized that, the red temper surged in him. No woman had ever mocked him so. The two facing him had made a fool of him. Of him, of Louis, of all of Christendom. Their faces were bright with defiance, they knew they had done evil. They never looked at each other, but they clung to each other. His first feeling was a rush of shame. Words sizzled in his throat, to curse her, the whore, both of them, to disengage himself.

  He choked that back. He steadied his mind. He had not worked all this while to turn now from the triumph. Anyway, as his temper waned, his ardor rose.

  He could not take his eyes from the two women. He remembered she had a sister; this was Petronilla, then. They were so alike, and yet unalike. Each more beautiful than the other. The lush mouths, the high sloped cheekbones, the skin like cream. He recognized the one he had tumbled in Paris and in Saint Pierre, and the one who had made him kneel in Limoges. Eleanor was a hair taller. The sister was slighter, her hair a shade lighter. They gave off some allure, some aura, like a golden glow around them. He wanted them both, whatever they had done. The more, because of what they had done, like wild mares that would not be tamed, that he longed to bridle and ride.

  He went to the real Eleanor. He said, “My lady Aquitaine. I knew I loved you from the first I saw you. I did not know how much, until now. You were born to share a crown with me. This boy, untimely come as he is, let him be the harbinger of the princes and princesses who will crowd our court. I want you; be my wife.”

  She gave a low cry, and came into his arms and kissed him. Her gold-spangled eyes were suddenly huge with tears. So she had not known what he would do. She had risked it all, for the sake of her sister, who stood there smiling wide at them, the baby in her arms.

  Eleanor said, “Then we marry tomorrow. Are you ready?” She spun on his fingertips, glittering, within reach now, the sun in a woman’s body. Aquitaine. He heard a door shut quietly. Petronilla had gone. He put his hands on Eleanor and drew her into his arms.

  It was a hasty wedding, without much decoration. All through the ceremony, not caring to be noticed, Petronilla stayed in the dark of the little palace chapel, in the back. Afterward, she went out by a side door to the churchyard, to where a great crowd waited, merry as a maying. The day was bright and lovely, with a few little clouds scudding through the sky, and the smell of new-turned earth in the breeze. She climbed up the wall to the rampart by the arch, out of the way, and watched Eleanor and Henry come out of the church.

  With whoops and cheers, her followers and his surrounded them, laughing and throwing flowers. Alys and Marie-Jeanne hugged each other. Eleanor had worn her long hair down, loose; certainly her life was beginning over. They made a new marriage, here, and a great new kingdom.

  Only Eleanor, she thought, only Eleanor could have done this, defied the men’s order and the women’s bargain, seen that this thing was possible and then done it. Leaped outside the old cramped shell of womanhood and doing so, shattered it, maybe forever, and made the whole world wait on her.

  The long red hair swung like a shawl around the Duchess of Aquitaine. Out on the pavement before the chapel, her new Duke caught her hands and kissed her. She flung her head back and laughed, her face high-colored. Flowers dappled her hair, her gown. Henry clutched her against him, kissed her throat, h
er ear. Petronilla guessed they had not waited on the ceremony to start the true work of the marriage.

  Her lover came up behind her and slid his arm around her. She put her hands on his where it rested on her belt and leaned back against his chest.

  “Was that the right choice?”

  “For Eleanor, it was,” she said. “For him, well, he’s brought it on himself.”

  When she carried the baby into the Green Tower, she had seen in Henry’s face how close he was to backing away from all this. But he had not. He deserved Eleanor.

  “For you?” he said. “Are you friends again?”

  “Yes,” she said. “She stood with me against him. And we were always sisters.”

  In the courtyard, Eleanor and Henry held hands, turning around each other, laughing, her hair streaming like a silken flag, his face shining dark with mirth. He was trying to get her to go one way and she was pulling the other, laughing, still, laughing about it now, but this would be more a combat than a marriage.

  She looked up at de Rançun, beside her. “Do you miss her?”

  “I have you,” he said. He kissed her hair. “Come along.”

  She followed him to the stairs down the outside wall. At the foot of the stairs, by the gate, his black horse and the gray Barb waited, their reins in the hands of a groom. The Barb’s mane was studded with red rosettes, and he tossed his head, eager. She went down to him, and de Rançun came after her, to lift her into the saddle.

  Afterword

  This is perhaps a novel interpretation of the scraps and pieces we know about the great Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Nothing herein contradicts those few known facts.

  Medieval politics were family politics, and Eleanor of Aquitaine was the matriarch of the greatest family of them all. Her time could be called the Age of Eleanor. She became Queen of France at age fifteen, when her father died suddenly on pilgrimage. Her younger sister, Petronilla, her constant companion in those early days, went with her to Paris. Eleanor dominated her young husband, Louis VII; engaged in notorious flirtations under his nose; and gave him reckless political advice. When he went on Crusade, she rode side by side with him all the way to the Holy Land, where they disagreed so violently that they returned on separate ships.

  The Pope engineered a brief reconciliation, but in the summer of 1151, when she was thirty, Eleanor met the young Duke of Normandy, Henry of Anjou, apparently for the first time. Over the next several months, she wrangled an annulment of her marriage out of Louis. This was announced on Palm Sunday at Beaugency on the Loire in 1152. Some ambitious young French noblemen conspired to capture her and her duchy on her way home, but she escaped back to her great city of Poitiers in Aquitaine, a rich, ancient land of poetry, song, and combustible nobles. There she sent a proposal to Henry. A few weeks later they were married, and in the next fourteen years they produced the most celebrated brood of children in the Middle Ages.

  Eleanor was Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 and lived another fifteen years after that as Dowager, Regent, and Duchess. Two of her sons became kings of England, and her daughters and grandchildren ruled half the kingdoms of Christendom into the next century. She was a great patron of the arts as well as a capable ruler, holding court and dictating policy, bringing a dozen new styles and ways of thinking to work and play in the High Middle Ages. Above all, she raised the prestige of women to a new height.

  Her marriage to Henry II was even more tumultuous than her marriage to Louis VII. Henry was only nineteen when they married, a hard hand and ambitious, already known for his volatile temper, unflagging energy, and impulsive amorous adventures. Shortly after they married, Henry fought, wheedled, and connived his way to the throne of England, so that between him and Eleanor they ruled a great swath of western Christendom that dwarfed the kingdom of France. Within only a few years they were battling each other for control. Henry had mistresses, and he hoarded all power to himself like a dragon on a pile of gold. They argued about their children and about their officers and their policies. Eleanor hated Thomas à Becket when he was Henry’s intimate and then hated how Henry got him killed. After the birth of John, her last child, she left the King and went to live alone at her splendid court in Poitiers. As soon as her boys were old enough, she began encouraging them to attack their father. Henry retaliated by locking her up for fifteen years.

  Nonetheless, when she got out, his life was over and hers was still in high gear. While her son Richard was on Crusade, she ruled as regent, and in Aquitaine she was always lord suo jure, even if she was a woman. At age eighty she rode across the Pyrenees to collect a bride for the heir to the French throne, choosing a woman who would become almost as powerful as she was, Blanche of Castile, mother of Saint Louis.

  She set a new standard for what a woman could do then and now and followed her own will all her long life, dying in 1204 at age eighty-two. She is buried at Fontevraud, the great abbey on the Loire that her family patronized, and where her effigy still lies on top of her casket, although her bones are long scattered.

  Petronilla of Aquitaine, who never remarried after the caddish Count of Vermandois divorced her, faded from view soon after her sister’s annulment and possibly died the next year. She also was buried at Fontevraud. Joffre de Rançun went on to a long career as the most indefatigable of the many Poitevin rebels against Henry II and later his son Richard the Lionheart. Louis VII of France married twice more, and late in life at last produced a son, Philip Augustus, who reigned after him, wily and successful. The French Princess Marie, Eleanor’s daughter by Louis, became Countess of Champagne, presiding over a renaissance of music and literature at Troyes, patronizing Chrétien de Troyes, among others, one of a generation of women who owed their prestige and their grasp of power to Eleanor of Aquitaine.

  Finally, there is an old text, now vanished, that claimed Eleanor and Henry did have a son named Philip, who disappeared in infancy. When in the steady stream of Eleanor’s children he was born, what happened to him, and how he came by the odd, un-Angevin name, no one now knows.

  READERS GUIDE

  The Secret Eleanor

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Early in the novel, Eleanor doesn’t pray at church about her complicated situation with Henry because “God was a man, anyway, and would not understand” (page 29). In the context of the book, Eleanor seemed to defy this mentality and behaved contrary to the typical male-centric way of thinking in the twelfth century. Discuss whether or not Eleanor would have spoken this same phrase by the end of the book.

  2. Although Eleanor lived a life of luxury and power, she seemed to want more freedom and less complication, as when she first acted as Petronilla, riding her mare and “in her heart she laughed and danced for her freedom like a bacchant” (page 38). Do you think Eleanor did ever yearn for a simpler life, especially later on in the course of the novel?

  3. Do you think most women in the twelfth century desired more opportunity and freedom to choose their own lives?

  4. When Eleanor and Louis are discussing her lack of bearing a son, Eleanor states, “ ‘I know this is God’s judgment. . . . I shall never come to you again as a wife’ ” (page 91). Do you think this is simply an easy excuse to get out of her marriage, or does she really believe this?

  5. Do you think Eleanor was a dishonest woman? Discuss why or why not. During this time period, would any woman of her stature have acted similarly, or was it her idiosyncratic personality?

  6. Eleanor’s ladies-in-waiting are involved in every aspect of her life. Do you think this bond helped or hurt women during this time period? Do you think women of lesser stature had similar bonds with other women? Cite examples when social standing is ignored and real friendship is shown amongst the women.

  7. When Henry’s father dies suddenly, the three remaining sons battle each other for his throne. Discuss the lack of loyalty among these brothers, and how it affected the shifts of power during the Middle Ages.

  8. At one point, Eleanor claims Henry “had what
was better than love; as he had proven again, now he had the gift of power” (page 146). Is this really what’s most important to her with regard to him? Did your opinion shift by the end of the book?

  9. Claire disbelieved Petronilla after meeting Thomas the lute player for the first time, when Petronilla tells her men only care about one thing. Why do you think Claire doesn’t believe her at first? Was Claire right to resist him initially?

  10. When Petronilla finally takes over as the Queen on their progress, it’s enlightening to her. Discuss how the opportunity to play Queen changed Petronilla for better or worse.

  11. Petronilla grapples with the sin of lying but Eleanor seems to have no qualm in this respect. Do you think it’s because Eleanor is trying to get ahead in a man’s world? Petronilla also believes that the intention to help her sister was no sin, even if the deed itself was. Discuss whether or not you agree with her, and how this might pose a different problem in modern society.

  12. After Eleanor almost loses the baby, Petronilla says, “ ‘It is a sign. God favors us.’ ” But Eleanor retorts with, “ ‘Whatever that means’ ” (page 233). Discuss the sisters’ differing viewpoints at this moment and what it might mean for their faith and the future of Aquitaine.

  13. No one in a position of power is to be trusted in the book—they are all plotting one way or another. Cite examples from the book of jealousy getting the best of the characters, especially Henry, Eleanor, and Claire.