Devil's Brood (31 page)

“Indeed not,” he affirmed, striving to sound hearty and confident. He did think her ruse would enable her to escape her husband’s agents. He wished she would have more men with her, though. They’d decided that it would be better to travel with a small escort in order to pass as ordinary travelers, and he agreed that made sense. But he would not be going with her, as his joint evil had flared up again, making riding painful, and he knew he would worry and fret until he received word of her safe arrival in Paris.

Eleanor picked up a mirror to check her camouflage one last time. Satisfied, she turned back to him with a smile, and he said softly, “Go with God, Madame.”

They looked at each other and then Eleanor said, “Propriety be damned” and gave him a quick hug before heading for the door. Saldebreuil went to the window, thrusting open the shutters. The dawn sky was the shade of soft pearl, a few night stars still glimmering to the west. The air was chill but dry; it would be a good day for travel. Eleanor’s escort was below in the bailey, waiting for her. She soon emerged, pausing to give her palfrey an affectionate pat on the nose before using a horse block to swing into the saddle. Glancing up toward the window, she gave Saldebreuil a jaunty wave. He waved back, but with a sense of foreboding, and he remained at his post long after she’d ridden out. His vigil had begun.

E
LEANOR WAS ACCOMPANIED
by Nicholas de Chauvigny and two of her household knights. The rest of her bodyguards were Porteclie de Mauzé’s men, as he had claimed the honor of escorting her to Paris. Their pace was too swift for conversation, but Eleanor could see that they were nervous, casting frequent glances over their shoulders, measuring the progress of the sun on its westward arc, swiveling their heads at every rustling in the underbrush. She did not share their unease, confident that the greatest danger was already past. Once they’d evaded her husband’s spies and slipped out of Poitiers, the odds were very much in her favor that she’d reach safety in French territory.

It was not the journey that troubled her; it was the destination. She loathed the very thought of being indebted to Louis, and she knew all too well how it would gratify him to give her refuge at his court. For she had no illusions about their dubious partnership. Hers were allies of expediency, and as eager as they’d been to join forces with the Duchess of Aquitaine, they were likely now to see her as a frightened woman fleeing her husband’s just rage.

B
Y LATE AFTERNOON,
they were deep in Touraine. Eleanor’s men were showing signs of increasing strain, for this was a land congested with castles, most of them under Henry’s control, and these fortresses must be given a wide berth. Going downstream to avoid Bridoré Castle, they forded the River Indre in late afternoon, and were soon swallowed up by the vast forest of Loches.

They were not far now from their destination, planning to pass the night at Sainte-Trinité de Grandmont Villiers, a small priory hidden away in the midst of Loches Forest. They’d chosen it for its isolation, but Eleanor derived a secret satisfaction from that choice, for the priory had been founded by Henry. He’d always favored the austere Order of Grandmont, a partiality Eleanor did not share. The Grandmontines scorned females as sinful daughters of Eve, reluctant even to allow them to enter their churches, and Eleanor took malicious amusement in the knowledge that she would be sheltering at this male sanctuary, outwitting both her husband and his women-hating monks.

As soon as they entered the woods, they lost the light. Although many trees had been stripped bare, a heavy growth of evergreens, brush, and entwined branches formed a canopy that the wan November sun could not penetrate, and they rode into an early dusk. The path was narrow and their horses’ hooves crunched upon a carpeting of brittle, brown leaves. Squirrels darted along overhanging boughs, and once they startled a fox as they rounded a bend in the road; they caught just a blur of red fur as it faded back into the shadows. Men were usually skittish about such dark forest trails, for many believed that demons, ghosts, and revenants lurked in the gloom, and all knew that outlaws did. But Eleanor’s knights welcomed the camouflage, feeling more vulnerable out on the king’s roads, knowing that Henry’s army was on the prowl. They were less enthusiastic about their stay at the Grandmontine priory, for the order was renowned for its asceticism and self-denial, even forbidding the possession of livestock, and the men knew that meant a meager meal awaited them.

Listening to their glum speculation about that paltry supper, Eleanor had to smile. She did not begrudge them their grumbling; both men had—like Nicholas—been in her service for years and had volunteered for this high-risk mission. The monks’ hospitality would likely be an even greater privation for her, accustomed as she was to the best their world had to offer, but she did not care if they were fed bread and water, wanting only to stretch out on a bed in the guest hall and ease her aching muscles. She’d ridden astride occasionally in the past, but never for such a lengthy journey, and although she would never have admitted it to Nicholas or Porteclie, she was very tired.

“God’s Legs!” Riding at Eleanor’s side, Porteclie de Mauzé swore suddenly and then signaled for a halt. “My horse has gone lame,” he exclaimed. “What wretched luck, with us so close to the priory.” Swinging from the saddle, he began to examine his stallion’s right foreleg as the other men drew rein, milling about on the pathway until he told them to dismount. Suppressing a sigh, Eleanor slid from the saddle, too, not waiting for Nicholas’s assistance.

They’d stopped at a crossroads, another winding trail snaking off to their left. In a nearby copse of trees was a small thatched hut. Pointing it out to Eleanor, Nicholas said that a celebrated recluse dwelled there, an ancient known as Bernard the Hermit. He’d once earned his keep by guiding travelers through the forest, although he was now too old to venture far from his hut. But he was admired for his piety and godly way of life, and local people saw to it that he didn’t starve.

Eleanor glanced over at that shabby little hut, unable to comprehend why anyone of sound mind would deliberately choose to live like that, alone and impoverished. But when Nicholas started toward the cottage, she followed, welcoming a chance to walk off her stiffness. The door was ajar and after calling out politely, Nicholas pushed it open. He came back out almost at once. “There is no one inside,” he reported, sounding disappointed. “I hope he has not died.”

Porteclie was still examining his horse’s hoof, and Eleanor moved in his direction, with Nicholas trailing behind. It was then that her palfrey lifted his head, ears pricking, and snorted. Gérard, the elder of Eleanor’s knights, was listening, too, quickly giving the alert. “Riders are coming,” he warned, gesturing toward the second road that angled off toward the west.

They had not encountered many travelers on the road today; prudent people tried to keep to their own hearths during times of war. Eleanor tensed instinctively before common sense reasserted itself. Annoyed that she should be susceptible to such phantom fears, she nonetheless shifted so that she was half-hidden by her horse, for she knew that her disguise would not bear close inspection. Nicholas had tensed, too, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. As the riders approached, he glanced toward Porteclie, waiting for the older man to take charge. When Porteclie neither moved nor spoke, Nicholas shot him an aggrieved, reproachful look, and then stepped forward to greet them.

“Good morrow.” His stomach muscles tightened as he saw how badly outnumbered they were by these new arrivals, but he forced a cheerful smile, saying as blandly as he could, “A fine day for travel, no? Have you come far?”

“No, not far…from Loches.” The speaker was a dark-haired man in his early thirties, clad in a good wool mantle, with a quick smile and a relaxed manner. He looked eminently respectable and quite reassuring, but Nicholas’s queasy stomach lurched again, for Loches was one of Henry’s most formidable strongholds.

“I am Sir Yves des Roches.” Plucking the names out of the air, Nicholas half-turned so that he could glare at Porteclie, who should have been their spokesman. “This is my lord, Porteclie de Mauzé. We’re on our way to the abbey at Cormery.”

The stranger’s eyes flicked toward Porteclie, but without interest. His gaze moving from face to face, he did not pause until he found Eleanor. She’d drawn her hood forward to shadow her face, careful to keep on the far side of her palfrey, but he did not hesitate. “Welcome to Touraine, Madame.” He doffed his cap in a deferential gesture that somehow seemed sincere despite the incongruity of the circumstances. “I am Sir Hervé de Monbazon, the new provost of Loches. We have been awaiting your arrival since Nones rang, had begun to fear that you’d chosen another route.”

Shock rendered Eleanor speechless, and then she swung around to confront Porteclie. Even as her eyes swept from the hermit’s hut to his supposedly lame stallion, her heart was unwilling to accept what her head was telling her, for Porteclie de Mauzé was one of her most steadfast barons, a distant cousin on her father’s side of the family. But as she looked into his face, she saw the ugly truth written in his ducked head, his averted eyes, and his silence.

“You Judas!” Nicholas had reached the same appalled conclusion and lunged for Porteclie’s throat. As they crashed to the ground, Eleanor’s two knights drew their swords, urging her to flee. When she’d been ambushed by the de Lusignans five years ago, William Marshal and his uncle, the Earl of Salisbury, had done the same, offering up their lives for her safety. The earl had died and Will had been wounded and captured, but their blood had bought her the time she needed to escape. Now, though, there was nowhere to run, and even as she struggled with the enormity of this betrayal, she saw the futility of resistance.

“No!” she cried sharply. “I’ll have no bloodshed, will have no men dying in vain! Lower your swords—now!”

They hesitated and then slowly obeyed. Porteclie’s knights stood rooted, no one moving, not even to come to their lord’s aid. It was easy for Eleanor to tell which ones had been in the know and which had not, for the latter looked stunned and the former either grim or shame-faced. The provost had swiftly dismounted and ordered two of the men to separate Nicholas and Porteclie, who were rolling about in the dirt, locked in a death grip. When they were pulled apart, Porteclie stayed down, gulping for air, his throat scratched and bruised, already showing clear imprints of Nicholas’s clutching fingers. Nicholas was bleeding from a deep cut to his leg, slashed by one of Porteclie’s spurs. When Eleanor told him to surrender his sword, he looked at her in anguish, dark eyes glittering with blinked-back tears, but he did as she bade, offered his weapon to the provost before limping over to stand protectively at her side.

Hervé de Monbazon passed Nicholas’s sword to one of his men. “If you will, Madame,” he said politely. It was a moment before she realized he wanted her own sword. Unbuckling the scabbard, she handed it to him. “Thank you. Now…may I help you to mount?” he asked, still so politely that she wanted to slap him. Did he think that his feigned courtesy could make this anything but what it was? He might act as if she was his queen, but she was his captive and they both knew it.

But if he could pretend that this was a perfectly ordinary encounter, then by God, so could she. “Be sure to bring my sumpter horse,” she said, in the brusque tones of one who never doubted her orders would be obeyed. “It carries my clothes.” When he cupped his hands, she stepped into them and swung up into the saddle, inclining her head in aloof acknowledgment of his help. When he ordered her men to be bound before they mounted their horses, she voiced no protest, knowing it would be futile. When he snapped a leather lead upon her palfrey’s bridle, she kept silent, staring straight ahead as if his action was of no interest to her. And when they rode off, she never looked back at Porteclie de Mauzé, standing with his men by the side of the road.

E
LEANOR HAD NEVER LIKED
Loches Castle. Situated upon a rocky outcrop far above the River Indre, its stark, rectangular shape was silhouetted ominously against the evening sky. Made of grey-white freestone, it reminded her of the Tower of London’s great keep, and she’d never liked that stronghold either. Loches’s ancient donjon—more than one hundred twenty feet high, with walls nine feet thick, its few windows not much bigger than arrow slits—proclaimed that this was a wartime fortress, not a royal residence. It had been built by one of Henry’s more infamous ancestors, Fulk Nerra, in the eleventh century, and she’d found it to be utterly lacking in comfort during her infrequent visits. But if it had always seemed primitive to her, there was something almost sinister about it now, looming out of the darkness like some hulking beast of prey.

They entered the bailey through the Porte Royale gatehouse, were soon being ushered into the great hall that occupied the second story of the keep. Unlike the provost, the man standing by the smoking hearth was well known to Eleanor. Maurice de Craon was the same age as her husband. He was of average height like Henry, and like Henry, he gave the impression of being larger than he actually was, with a wrestler’s well-muscled build and stocky legs. Only in coloring did he differ from his sovereign, for he was as swarthy as Henry was fair. Eleanor’s heart sank at the sight of him, for Maurice de Craon was one of Henry’s intimates, a powerful Angevin baron and a battle commander of some note. His presence at Loches showed how important her capture was to her wrathful husband.

Raising her chin, she moved toward him with all the hauteur at her command. “My lord de Craon.”

“Madame.” If Eleanor’s voice had been coolly clipped, his dripped with icicles. His eyes were almost black; they took in her appearance with a disdain he did not bother to conceal. “I am surprised that Sir Hervé was able to recognize you. You could hardly look less queenly, could you?”