The Secret Eleanor (18 page)

Petronilla frowned at her. They were going side by side along the arcade of the cloister toward their rooms. “I’ll go with you.”

“No—I want to be alone—I have to think. I’ll just walk in the cloister. Unless you fear some lecherous monk lies in wait?”

The women behind her laughed. Petronilla gave her a long sideways look, suspicious, but all she said was, “Go on, then, but don’t be long. I’m going straight to bed, you’ll wake me up.”

“I won’t.”

The women all turned to go in; she walked on alone down the arcade. Her heart was thudding in her chest.

Her hand slid down her belly, where the baby lay like a rock in her dreams. She held herself straight, pulling her stomach in. He would not notice. She was hardly showing. He could not know; that could ruin everything. Because she was still married to Louis, it was by law Louis’s baby, and to everybody who knew better it was more proof of her wicked, lascivious female nature. To Henry himself, it could be a reason to call everything off.

She could not have ignored his call; she burned to see him again. He would not notice. She pulled off her coif and shook her hair loose. She did not care who saw her now, but she was alone in the dark.

The square of grass in the middle of the cloister was pale with moonlight, the arcade deep in shadows. She walked along to the corner, where the two walls did not meet. The opening between them led into a little crooked passage through to the outside. Beyond the cloister’s outer wall was a row of gardens, bounded by a thorn hedge, and behind the cabbages she found a little gate and let herself out.

She stood at the top of a long grassy slope running down to the tree-lined river. The moonlight turned the long grass silver. The wind swept up from the west, moist and sweet, like a cool kiss that set the grass rippling. She stood a moment in the swirl of it, the wind’s long fingers in her hair. The road led away down the hillside, toward the village. She looked carefully all around for sentries but saw no one. The grass sang in the windy dark. Then through the susurrus of the wind she heard a long, drawn-out whistle: a falconer calling his hawk.

All her hair stood on end; she went toward him like a hawk swooping through the air, running through the moonlight, until near the foot of the slope he stood up suddenly out of the grass and she ran into his arms.

“I had to see you,” he said. “I had to see you.” She clung to him, her arms around his neck, said his name. They kissed. “Come on.” He led her into the shelter of the trees. In the dark she could hardly make out his face. His hands were urgent on her body, his mouth demanding. She helped him gather up her skirts and leaned against an old tree and they joined, his hands on her hips, his lips against her throat. She wrapped her arms around him. She whispered his name again.

“Come with me,” he said. “Forget about Louis. Come with me now.”

She laughed; it felt as if she could never leave him, as if they were permanently connected. She said, “This must be done well, I have told you. Be patient.” She kissed him. He leaned on her a moment more, gasping, and then they were sliding apart. The cool breeze chilled her thighs.

He backed away, pulling his clothes together. “I’ll curse every day until I see you again.” His arms slid around her again; she was doing up her shoulder brooch. His hand moved over her body. He said, in a different voice, “Are you pregnant?”

Her body went cold down to her heels. But she had thought of this. She was ready for this. She laughed. “No, ’tis only the fat bird I dined on. But soon, my darling. We shall have an army of princes.”

He kissed her, his lips apart. He believed her. “Soon.”

“I need to get back.” She had to get away from him, before the suspicion returned. She nuzzled his cheek, her arm around his waist. “We will be together before summer. I swear it.” She turned and went quickly up the slope toward the monastery.

Henry went down through the trees to the bank of the stream, where he had left his horse. His body still thrilled, keen at her touch; he was sweating even in the gentle cool of the night. He led his horse a little way down the stream and swung into the saddle. It was a long ride back to his camp. Yet just thinking of her sent him high again, like a leaf on a storm wind, reeling with excitement.

Up there on the ridge someone shouted. He twisted to look over his shoulder; a horseman was riding into sight past the west end of the monastery wall—a sentry, maybe. The rider shouted again to him to halt, to stand. He touched his spurs to his horse and galloped off down the stream. He was over the next ridge, almost to the old road, before it occurred to him that after all he had never really seen her face.

In the morning, Alys brought her a new gown, plain dark russet, with a subdued gold trim; Eleanor said, “What of that old green thing—it is so comfortable for riding.”

Alys leaned slightly toward her, laying the new gown down for her, and murmured, “My lady, I have let this one out a little at the sides. It will be better, I think. I will work next on the green one.” She smiled and touched Eleanor’s shoulder, and Eleanor understood this was her way of saying that she knew, and would protect her.

But it cooled her excitement a little. She realized that the secret, like the baby, was growing, that more and more people were finding out. That this road might not be leading her home at all, but to the failure of all her hopes, to the dark convent, the penitent’s straw, or worse.

She throttled that away. With a sudden fierce desire, she willed the days ahead of her to go as she wished, and quickly crossed herself and said a prayer for God’s help. But the annoying doubt remained, that maybe the unknowable, unbiddable God intended something else for her, and that which lay ahead for her was an ordeal she, even she, could lose.

They traveled slowly along the river. Eleanor held her train back from the King’s, so that they never met, even when some delay brought them close enough that they stayed overnight in the same area.

The broad wheatlands of the Beauce yielded to softly rolling tree-covered hills, cut through with little streams, all running, as the royal progress ran, to the Loire. During the day they stopped to eat wherever the noon sun found them, sometimes in an open field, where the household spread linens on the ground, and ate from baskets of bread and cheese, and sometimes at an inn, where they took over the whole place and drained the local cellars dry.

They followed west along the river, flowing sleek and brown between woodlands now leafless for the winter. On the low hillsides, the thick stocks of little vineyards traveled in rows up toward the sky like crooked old men with outstretched arms. The cut heaps of last year’s vines were piled up at the ends of each row, and the smell of dead leaves flavored the air. In the stands of trees, globes of mistletoe clustered in the bare branches, with here and there the messy nests of magpies, like bowls of twigs. The birds circled overhead, crying in their hoarse, mocking voices.

They stayed one night at Blois, the ancient city on the Loire. Stephen, who was now King of England, had been born there, his mother the daughter of the Conqueror, William the Bastard. Eleanor thought a curse against King Stephen, for the sake of her lover Henry. She clasped that thought to her, luxuriating in it: her lover Henry.

But now the city and its famous old castle and rich lands belonged to the younger son of the Count of Champagne, Count Theobald, hardly older than her lover Henry himself. He gave a great feast for her and Louis, at which Eleanor stayed as far from Louis as possible. Count Theobald was a lanky young man with pimples and a raucous laugh. His court was rough; he had no wife or sisters to give it polish, and she was glad to leave. In the morning they crossed over the river on the arched Roman bridge and followed the old road, the pilgrimage road, down into the south.

West of here and north was Anjou, she knew, where he was.

There had been no rain for a while, and the brown water coursed slowly along between banks of dry crackling reeds, where the narrow boats of the local fishermen were drawn up in the shallows, and the women washed their linen and spread it to dry on the bushes. The weather was turning gray and grim, and a cold wind met them, sweeping up the river valley from the distant sea. Eleanor sent Claire to the baggage to unpack their fur cloaks, and she and her sister rode with their hands drawn up into the warmth of the sleeves.

Day after day passed. At last, ahead of them, in a twist of the valley, they saw the black slate rooftops of the great abbey of Fontevraud, sprawled along the gentle skirt of the hillside. The people around Eleanor sent up cheers at the sight, and even the horses quickened their steps, their heads bobbing; she turned toward her sister and saw Petronilla already smiling at her, and the old shared love rushed back over her. Whatever had come between them was surely gone. She urged her horse closer and reached out her hand to her sister, and so, holding hands together, they rode into the abbey.

Hereafter, on this side of the river, they were in their own country, and foolishly enough, they thought everything would be well.

Fontevraud was a double house, containing both men and women, ruled over, as all such houses were, by an abbess. The dukes of Aquitaine had supported the place from its beginnings, endowing it with wealth and lands, and the current Abbess, who met them at the gate, was a cousin of Eleanor’s. Louis had already arrived and gotten the great welcome, and so there was little ceremony in their greeting.

Petronilla and Eleanor left their horses and train in the gateyard and followed the Abbess down into the central courtyard of the dormitory, where the shadowy recesses of the galleries rustled with people sneaking away from their prayers or chores to watch. Petronilla was glad to be out of the saddle and longed to take off her dusty clothes; she followed at Eleanor’s side as they went down to the rooms kept for them during such visits as these.

The Abbess was an older woman, short and round of face, who looked out of her wimple like a baby from swaddlings. Petronilla at once sensed some coldness and aloofness in her manner. Eleanor spoke to her once, familiarly, as a cousin, and the woman only gave a little bow, not meeting her eyes. Petronilla thought perhaps it was a mistake to let Louis arrive so long before them, so that Thierry Galeran and his minions had the chance to set people’s minds in his mold.