The Secret Eleanor (15 page)

At Petronilla’s feet, Marie-Jeanne made a little soft sound.

Petronilla glanced down, surprised; the older woman was so quiet they often wondered if she had gone mute. She was still kneeling by the chest, her gnarled hands full of cloth, but she had stopped folding. Petronilla looked closer, wondering what had startled her.

In her soft pale hands the older woman was holding rags, ordinary rags. With a start of understanding, Petronilla realized they were the cloths saved for Eleanor to use when the curse of Eve came on her, and standing there stiff as a pike she watched Marie-Jeanne move mentally through some calculation, and then the waiting woman looked up toward Eleanor, and Petronilla saw she knew.

She made no sound; Marie-Jeanne lifted her head and raised her eyes to her, shining with astonishment and worry. Petronilla said nothing, and did nothing, but only looked into the woman’s soft, kind old face. Marie-Jeanne met her gaze a moment, and then she looked down with some effort, quietly folded up the rags, and stuffed them down into a corner of the chest, far down, burying them.

She rose, then, and crossed the room to Eleanor, whom she had tended since childhood. She put her arms around her and hugged her like a mother with her child. Eleanor, surprised, looked down at the soft gray head and held her close against her for a moment. No one else seemed to notice. Finally Marie-Jeanne came back to the chest and to her work, but now her face was seamed with worry, and her customary smile was gone.

The week before they were to leave on the progress, a page came to Petronilla as she walked alone in the garden and bid her attend the King.

Her belly tightened. She said, “Go fetch my sister, please, to accompany me.” The end of her veil hung down by her shoulder, and she lifted it up over her face.

The page flexed up and down in a jerky bow. “No, my lady—they want to see you alone.”

“It’s unseemly,” she said, frightened.

“My lady, I am to tell you, the King—”

“Ah,” she said. She turned, looking toward the tower behind her, hoping Eleanor saw—Eleanor would rescue her. The tall stone column stood unhelpfully blank and solid in the sun. Reluctant, but afraid to refuse, she followed the page around through the busy courtyard and up the stair to the door into the King’s chamber.

She imagined they knew everything; she imagined their judgments on her, and by the time she reached the door her hands were clammy and her heart was doing a mad gallop in her chest and she was cursing Eleanor for ever getting her into this.

When she entered the room and saw Thierry Galeran standing there behind the King’s chair, her knees almost gave way.

She had always hated him and feared him, who wished her nothing but evil, when he noticed her at all. She remembered how gleefully she had enjoyed tricking him and wished she knew how much he understood. On wobbling legs she advanced into the middle of the room. There, she collected herself; she clasped her hands before her and dipped her head to Louis, who was of no higher house and rank than hers, a mere Capet against the ancient House of Aquitaine. She said, “God keep you, Sire.”

The King mouthed some greeting. Thierry came around the throne toward her, his head up and his chest thrown out, as if he were a real man.

He said, without any gentling, “My lady. We have had several offers for your hand, and mean to dispose of you soon. But an ill gossip has been whispered lately of you, and before we can assign you to a new husband, we wish a midwife to attend you.”

Petronilla jerked her head up, hot with sudden rage and shame, both at what he said and how he said it; she wanted to melt into the floor. She said, “What is this?”

On his throne behind Thierry, Louis looked apologetic and made some gestures. Thierry strutted back and forth before her.

“I need not be more specific, my lady. You must know to what I refer. A midwife—”

“I will not,” she burst out. “This is an insult—this is humiliating.”

Tears trickled from her eyes; she felt already groped and poked and inspected, some piece of merchandise offered for sale. She stretched out her hands to Louis.

“You cannot wish this for me, sir. I have done you no harm, ever. How can you subject me to such base, cruel usage?”

Louis leaned forward, reaching out to take hold of Thierry’s arm, and drew him back a step. Thierry ignored him, looking at her down his nose. “So it is true, then, what they say.”

“Your Grace!” She spoke still to the King, her only hope. “Please, protect me—Oh, God, my Holy Savior—” She folded forward, her hands to her face, sobbing with fear and anger into the crumpled cloth of her veil. “If my husband were here, he would strike you down like a dog for this.”

“If you still had a husband, my lady, your condition would be a joy to all,” Thierry said.

The King said, “Let her go, sir. She will not comply, and I will not suffer her to be forced.”

Thierry said, “Sire, we cannot very well marry her off if she is heavy with someone else’s bastard.”

Petronilla let out a gasp, lowered her hands, and stabbed at him with her eyes; for the first time in her life, her temper soared beyond her prudence, and she took a step forward and slapped his face as hard as she could swing her arm. Thierry flinched back, his cheek bright red. Louis let out a yelp that might have been a smothered laugh. Petronilla turned on her heel and marched out of the room, streaming tears, her hand stinging, her head held high.

She expected them to chase her, to drag her back. To force her into the midwife’s arms. To submit her to this rape. Nothing happened. With each wobbling step, she grew more surprised, and secretly, buoyantly triumphant. She had won. She had defied them. She was stronger than she had thought.

Later, when she told Eleanor, her sister gave a whoop of a laugh.

“My darling. You are a valiant knight—if they had found out it wasn’t you, they would have suspected me at once, and then it would all be over. I wish I’d been there! You won the joust against him, sure enough, I’d have given you the rose.”

Petronilla flushed, angry. For her sister’s sake she had endured humiliation, and Eleanor was treating it like a playful game.

She said, “Someone told them. That I was sick, in the morning, that time. Do you think it was Claire?” She glanced around to see if anybody could overhear. “Someone told him.”

Eleanor had a piece of paper in her hand and was reading it; she laid it down and said, with great patience, “You can’t blame Claire. Half the tower heard you own the prize. It’s worked out so far. Now, help me do this; there are so many people coming along on the progress, and I have to arrange the order for each one.”

Petronilla bit her lips together and bent obediently over the list on her sister’s knee. She was angry again, and this time it touched on her sister. Everything, she thought, was not just something to do with Eleanor. Thierry had wanted to abuse her, Petronilla herself, and in some way, with mere words, he had, and Eleanor had hardly even noticed what was done to her. Eleanor had even tricked her into this. As soon as she could, she slipped away to the garden and walked awhile by herself, until she had herself calm again.

There was another Petronilla, deep inside, that Eleanor did not know. It came to her that Eleanor would not be so pleased if she did know of this secret person. That gave her a grim satisfaction, as much as defying Thierry had. Or maybe, even more.

She went on down the sunlit garden. Near the gate, a shadow moved on the grass, and she looked sharply up. There sitting on the wall was Joffre de Rançun, her sister’s knight; he smiled at her. Guarding them, as he always did. She waved back at him, glad to see him there, and her mood rose. She went over to tease him into walking back with her.

Amazed, Claire said, “What did she do?” They had all heard vague tales of the Lady Petronilla’s confrontation with the King’s secretary.

Alys shook a linen shift vigorously in the sunlight. It smelled of old roses, and a dried petal went flying across the room. “She slapped Thierry’s face for him. One of our pages heard it from one of the King’s pages. He said the King laughed.”

Claire drew in a breath and held it, delighted. She turned to look through the window, where Petronilla was walking. Her satisfaction in this unnerved her; she wanted to run out there and throw her arms around the Queen’s sister. She turned back to Alys.

“But that is so . . . unwomanly, isn’t it?”

Alys handed her a little pile of silken shifts. “Everything Petronilla does befits a woman.”

Claire blurted, “But she is with child, mysteriously.”

Alys glanced beyond her, at Marie-Jeanne, and wordlessly put her hands into the wardrobe for another gown. Claire lowered her eyes and said no more. She busied herself laying the shifts as neatly as she could into the chest. From the bowl beside the chest she took dried rose petals and sprinkled them over the sleek cloth. She thought about what Alys had said, and not said, and her understanding leaped the gap. She licked her lips, excited, watching Alys shake out another shift.

Eleanor it was who was pregnant, she thought.

This made her a little dizzy to think. This was a secret worth a kingdom. She had sworn off telling tales, but now here was the greatest of tales. Perhaps she had turned virtuous too soon. To hide her galloping thoughts, she said, “What then else is there that befits a woman?”

Alys smoothed the lavender silk beneath her fingers. She glanced at Marie-Jeanne and said, “I have never heard it spoken outright—perhaps it befits a woman that no one speaks her virtues outright.” She laughed. “But for me, it is like to what makes a perfect knight, who is mighty at arms, loyal to his lord, frank and open in his manner, and great of heart. A woman cannot be mighty in arms, but she can be pious.”

Claire thought, uneasily,
I am not very pious
. Nor, she thought, was Eleanor, the highest woman she knew. But Eleanor was brave, and that, she thought, was more like the man’s virtue.

She said, “And loyal, and honest, and . . . and kind.”

She remembered Petronilla’s smile, when she found her in the Hotel-Dieu. That still to her was the first goal, to make someone feel as she had felt then, when Petronilla drew her back from hell.

“Yes,” Alys said. “I think so.” Her eyes were bright with amusement, and she glanced at Marie-Jeanne again, as if they knew something.

They did know something, and now Claire knew it, too. The little homily on the virtues of women was only froth, but the secret they had inadvertently given up to her was something of incalculable worth.

For that knowledge Thierry, for one, would give anything. But Thierry would never get it. She bit her lips shut, pleased, that she had what he wanted, and would keep it from him, her revenge. To keep a Queen’s deep secret was an honor in itself, perhaps, far more valuable to keep than to pass on.

Alys’s words of virtue sounded in her mind again. None of it had to do with her. She was not pious. She had already proven she was not loyal, or honest. She wondered if she was kind, and could not say that either.