The Secret Eleanor (12 page)

“Sire! We are here to beg your protection!”

Intrigued by this boldness, Eleanor sat listening to the harsh langue d’oeil, untempered by any humility or indirection. From the other side of the room, Bernard was coming, his acolytes trailing after.

Thierry sprang forward into the gap between the King and the blackbird, who then turned and began to argue with him. The King said, “What is this?”

“Let them speak,” Eleanor said. “You see that Bernard means to hear it.”

Louis’s head swiveled, his eyes seeking the angular figure of the white monk, now drawing near the dais. Apparently Bernard gave him some sign of assent, because the King turned back toward Thierry then and said, in the high-edged voice he used when he tried to be commanding, “Let them come forward. What is your issue, fellow? Why do you come before your King?”

The master, a little hot from his disputation with Thierry, drew his attention from the knight, collected himself with a tug on his sleeves, and approached the King with his head thrown back.

“Sire, we have come to ask that you protect our students from the Provost of Paris. Yesterday as I stood before my class discoursing on the Analytics, a gang of his men burst in and hauled away some of my scholars, and there was much fighting and many fled away for fear. Yet he should have no power over us, since we are clerks, and we beg your intervention, for justice’s sake, as you are the King.”

Bernard spoke out, in his true commanding voice. “What is this but foolishness? You teach quarreling. You reap the very harvest that you sow. You let men espouse dangerous novelties and encourage them in disputation. Your students are arguers and doubters, when they should be humble believers, and corrupt in their thinking they are corrupt also in their deeds, and so the base policemen come for them like the common criminals they are.”

The white monk had drawn closer as he spoke and now stood nearer to the throne than the blackbird. To Louis he said, “Let the Provost clean out the Left Bank. It has been rotten from the beginning, when the unsteady Abelard first discoursed there. They still read there by the witchfire of his false brilliance.”

Eleanor said, “On the contrary, sir, you should protect them. Who will write your charters, who will keep your records, if not people who learn their letters in these schools?” She thought, also, the more part the King took, the stronger he was in it.

Thierry had drawn back out of the confrontation. The master from the Studium faced Bernard without awe. His voice carried clearly, as effortless as Bernard’s: a schooled voice, in an easy Latin clear and everyday as French. “With respect and honor to the holy Abbot of Clairvaux, may God exalt him, let him consider that God did not give men the faculty of reason, nor the whole great cosmos to explore, to stop us from wondering and learning. We feed our faith with understanding of the Creation. It was by books that Augustine himself found his way to God.”

Bernard did not face him, but spoke almost over his shoulder, his eyes heavy-lidded. “God gave you faith to discipline your reason, but like heedless cattle you break out of your proper pastures and go grazing on thorns.”

The master stood, unperturbed. “Yet the essence of a man is his free will, as Erigena has said. And among thorns often grow the finest flowers, so the flowers of thought among the thorns of disputation.”

Bernard was turning toward him, drawn unwillingly into the combat of words. His voice lashed out. “You tread on dangerous ground, brother. You mentioned Augustine, father of us all, who wrote that men are so corrupted by the fall of Adam that if we act freely we can do nothing but sin. And Erigena is proscribed.”

“Yet,” the master said, “we should come to God freely, and of our own will, as Jesus Himself has told us. And if it be sin to come to God, my lord Abbot, how sweet to God that we sin?”

Eleanor burst out laughing and put her hand over her mouth; Louis reached out and gripped her sleeve. Bernard wheeled toward her for an instant and turned back to the master.

“You make a mockery of everything you touch, even your own false idol reason. Go out, get away; you don’t belong here.”

Louis was pulling on Eleanor’s sleeve. “Don’t try to deal with this; this is between the priests, don’t you see?” He waved his hands at the masters, who were already moving off. Thierry had circled quietly around behind the dais. In front of the King, Bernard wheeled toward the throne, his gaunt face like a plowshare behind his thrusting jaw.

He said to Eleanor, “You laugh at sin, lady.”

“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” she said.

“Yes. Birds can imitate sounds also, without knowing what they mean. And they too are beautiful, and they too are utterly of this world.”

Eleanor raised her brows at him. “Do you compliment me, my lord Abbot? I accept.”

Then, from behind her, Thierry’s voice poured over her good spirits like a sluice of icy water.

“Sire, listen to the revered abbot—send her to a convent, shut her away from the temptations of the world, that she might be saved for God.”

Eleanor stiffened, cold to the bone; she had forgotten about him, her worst enemy. They were closing in around her, Thierry behind her, Bernard in front, and at the mention of the convent, for an instant a vision of that life opened before her: she felt the stone beneath her knees, the constant prayer, the dirty habit full of lice, the airless, sunless days.

Louis said, “The Holy Father himself charged us to remain together.”

Bernard’s bony head swung toward him. “You have done all that God could wish of you, Sire, and yet He withholds the blessing of a son.” His eyes flickered at her like darts. “Two children in fifteen years, and both girls. God speaks in such wise. The vessel is impure, can cast only impurity. Perhaps a convent might—indeed—”

Eleanor sat straight, her hands twisting in her lap. His voice was edged with malice, and she dreaded the convent but she saw the opening before her. She could not seem too eager. She had to seem reluctant. She said, “It’s true, we have no prince.” She lowered her head, as if this were a very great grief to her.

Through the corner of her eye she saw Louis’s face working, fretful, and his fingers stroked the robe over his knees. He spoke to his knees. “I cannot—this cannot be the will of God, to immure her. Then there would be no prince ever.”

Eleanor lifted her face, solemn, earnest with hard thought. She let her voice come slowly, the words unwilling. “Sire, perhaps the blessed Abbot is right—another wife, another woman would be more favorable to God, and bear a son to France. That may be the only solution.”

Bernard gave an unsaintly, throaty growl. She turned to look at him. “It’s true—we should not be married anymore.”

Bernard’s eyes widened in a blue fury. Thierry said, “Sire—if the marriage ends—we lose Aquitaine.”

She ignored him. She kept her whole attention on the tall, lanky Abbot of Clairvaux, her quarry. He half-turned away, the hoods of his eyelids shuttering down. His white robes hung around him like dirty wings; his sparse white hair clung to his scalp like softest wool.
Lamb of God,
she thought,
take away my sinful marriage
. She said, “My lord Abbot? What say you on this?”

His voice grated like broken teeth. “She is right in that, twisted though it be, as everything she does is twisted. Your marriage is a curse upon you.”

Eleanor felt suddenly huge, and light, and on the wing, as if she had burst up out of a narrow little box. She stifled a smile. In a voice she could not keep entirely steady, she said to Louis, “Pray, sir. God will show you what to do.”

Bernard faced her, crooked, his hands clawing at each other. She realized he had seen, too late, how she managed him to her own use. His voice flew at her like a volley of arrows. “Foolish woman! You think to be free—as those schoolmen think they are free, and then fly here to be defended from their follies. Who will protect you, if the King gives you up? You go from a kind heart into a wilderness of wolves. You will be a hind fleeing the hunt. Trust no one, I warn you—even those you have never doubted will turn on you now.”

A hush had fallen over the whole hall, as everybody strained to witness; as always he commanded every listener, held the crowd utterly in his sway. Everyone else, she thought, heard his words as another curse. Only she saw the door he opened for her.

She plunged through it. “We must have an annulment, Sire. For the sake of France. You see even the blessed Bernard agrees.”

Thierry cried, “Sire—Aquitaine—”

She said, “What use is Aquitaine, if no prince is born to rule it when you die?” She stabbed a look at Thierry. “Not that such a thing as inheritance matters to him, of course.”

Thierry jerked his head back. Louis gawked at her, his dazed eyes white, his mouth half-open. Bernard’s clutching fingers rose, as if he could rend her apart. He reeled up his eyelids and fixed her with his fierce blue gaze. “How dare you,” he said. “How dare you.”

She sat back, enjoying his temper, triumphant, and folded her hands in her lap. She knew she needed say no more; Louis would heed Bernard as no other, and here was the saint, agreeing with her, even against his will, but agreeing they ought not to be married.

Bernard raked his gaze away from her and turned to the King. For an instant, she feared he would take back what he had said.

The shrouds of his eyelids lowered. He seemed suddenly pale. He spoke in a heavy, weary voice. “Sire, I think I have come here for the last time. I am growing sorely tired here of dealing with the same matters over and over, and I have done what I wanted and brought peace between you and Anjou, although at an unforeseen cost.”

Louis broke in on him, his voice keen, for once, with real feeling; he said, “My lord Abbot, I would keep you by me. Let me know what I might do to make you welcome in my court again.”

Bernard shook his head slowly. “I feel my age upon me. Since old Suger died I have thought much of death, and I know my time approaches when I shall emigrate this world, and I would come to that beginning in my own abbey, in my own cell.”

Louis said, “Without you, I cannot tell what God wants of me. Think of me. Think of my kingdom.”

The saint shrugged his shoulders. He never looked again at Eleanor. He had just given her everything she wanted, but against the King’s pleading he was unmoved as a stone. He said, “Sire, I go.”

Louis said, “Ah, I beg of you—”

But the Abbot was already moving. On stiff legs he teetered toward the door. His acolytes fell in around him and he swayed away across the hall, his head bowed.

“Then he will not stay?” Louis said, in a childish voice.

Eleanor glanced at him. He had outwardly agreed to nothing, and yet something had happened, something surely irrevocable. Thierry knew it and was bent over him, plucking on his sleeve, whispering in his ear; she heard the word
Aquitaine
, over and over. Louis’s eyes blinked at her, damp in the corners. She came to her feet.

“By your leave, my lord.”

She dropped into the slightest of bows, and her women got up around her with a great general whispering of their skirts and followed her away, but it seemed to her, in her lightness and triumph, that she flew rather than walked.

“The King will allow an annulment, and we’ll go back to Poitiers.”

Petronilla clutched Eleanor’s hand. “Poitiers!”

Eleanor put her arm around Petronilla’s waist and leaned her cheek against her sister’s. “I told you. The King is going to see that our marriage is dissolved. Aquitaine is mine, by my own right, so that goes with me.” Her voice dropped to a luxuriant whisper. “We’ll be home again. And we shall command it all. I will bring every great troubadour, every poet, every man who thinks for himself to Poitiers.” She leaned back, her eyes merry, green in the sunlight, fearless.

“Now—I have a longing to celebrate my victory. We’ll dance!” She leaped to her feet and kicked her shoes away. “Marie-Jeanne, lock the door. No one will stop us, not the King himself. Alys, sing a roundel for us. And all—come dance with me!”

For a moment, no one moved, but then as if the sun rose before them their faces brimmed with excitement. Marie-Jeanne pulled the latch closed. Alys, who had a good voice, cleared her throat and began an old melody. Petronilla’s hair prickled up. A thrill passed through her, as if somehow in this little room she were free as a bird in the sky.

She began to sing with Alys; she remembered this song from her childhood, and thought perhaps her grandfather, the great troubadour, had first sung it. She took her sister’s hand in one of hers, and Alys’s in the other, and Marie-Jeanne joined the ring. Now they were all singing.

Uncertain, little Claire came up, and they let her in between Marie-Jeanne and Alys.

Alys sang, “White and radiant goes the bride—”

Eleanor cried, “One, two, three, kick!”

They whirled in a circle around the room, knocking stools and cushions out of the way; they were making a lot of noise. Petronilla bubbled up with laughter. She dipped and swung her arms as they all sang along with Alys.

“The signs rise of a new love, sacred on the altar—”

Leaping into their midst, Eleanor drew back her skirts, pointed one toe forward, then the other, and spun around, her arms over her head, her hips swaying. The others clapped and whooped; even Claire looked happy now, and suddenly she also began to sing—not the words, which she could not know, but the sprightly tune. She had a fine, high, clear voice, sheer behind Alys’s. Eleanor swung back into the circle.

Someone banged on the door and gave a muffled shout of indignation. The women ignored this. Hands joined, they all rushed into the center, their arms lifted.

“Love! Love! Glorious is the new love—”

Then back out again, bowing, and wheeled around the room. Surely everybody in the tower heard this. Surely even Louis heard this boisterous joy. Petronilla leaped into the center of the circle, stepped and stepped, and whirled, and joined hands again.