The Secret Eleanor (25 page)

His face did not change. Terrified, she watched for any sign she had done it well and saw none. The lute shifted in his grip; standing up, he could not hold it properly. He played another, longer, less connected string of notes.

She shut her eyes. She reminded herself that she loved to do this. She sang the notes back to him, keeping her voice strong, reaching for the joy she had found in this, all those days and nights in Eleanor’s court.

After that, he lowered the lute. His eyebrows rose. He nodded to her. “Yes. I can use you. Come to me here in the evening; I will find some place where we can work.”

“No—I must serve the Queen.”

“When she is abed, then.”

In the dark. She said, “I will only sing.”

His smile spread across his face. He said, “I understand that.” It was a different smile than before, his eyes dark, fixed on her, on her alone. “Come tonight.” He cased the lute again and walked off without another word.

“Good,” Thomas said. “Drink some more of the wine. Keep your throat smooth.”

She reached for the cup. She was damp with sweat under her coif and her bodice; she had been singing since they came in here. She looked around the back of the stable, down the darkened aisle past the rumps of mules. Here where the lamp shone its feeble circle of light everything was yellow: the straw, the dusty air. Her throat was sore, not smooth.

Over and over, he had played streams of notes, and she had sung them; he had shown her different rhythms, playing them on the lute while she clapped and sang. He had taught her to hold her body upright, as if she were a pipe, so the notes came from the bottom, not the top of her throat. In all that while he had paid heed only to her. She had never had anyone so interested in her.

“Down here,” he said, his hand under his ribs. “The note comes from down here. Not—” Patting beneath his chin. “Up here, you flutter. But mostly you are good at this. When did you sing, before?”

“The Queen’s other women and I sing, to pass the time,” she said. “On the progress.”

“Huh,” he said. “What kind of songs?”

“Just—” She struggled to put some name to them. “Country songs. Like dances. Or games. Rounds, you know, where everybody sings a piece of the song, one on top of the other.”

His head rose; his eyes shone. “Really. Come, then. We can do that.”

“But there are only two—”

“Here,” he said, and played notes. As he had taught her, she listened to the rhythm, saw where it folded back on itself, and broke the stream of notes in her mind into matching lines, so she could remember them. When he came to the end and nodded, she began to sing.

He played along with her, the lute cradled in his arms, the quill in his fingers plucking the first line of the song from the strings, then, as she went on to the second, he began to sing also.

Different notes. Her voice wobbled. She struggled to stay in her tune, while his, rich as dark honey, climbed and twined all around like a vine. His voice was so much stronger, held the notes deep and warm, found some place in her that longed for that deep warm power; she longed to do that, to move him as his voice moved her.

Her voice broke. She could not listen to him and sing also, and her song collapsed in a welter of notes and he began to laugh and she laughed also and suddenly he leaned over and kissed her.

She gasped. She clung to his arm with one hand and felt his lips warm on hers and for an instant she would have done anything for him, anywhere.

She drew back, breathless. She could not lose this, not for a quick tumble. He was watching her, smiling.

“We’ll do it again,” he said, and played the song on the lute. “Later. You’ll learn it. I’ve wanted to do this for years. I have never found anyone—it had to be a woman and there are few women troubadours. If we only could get the King to hear it—”

She said, “I have to go. They’ll be wondering where I am.” She lifted her gaze to him, his smile on her so true she wanted to kiss him again.

He said, “Tomorrow, then, Clariza.” His hand drew a long seeking call from the lute. She went quickly out of the stable, half-skipping.

Petronilla leaned on the wall, looking down toward the glitter of the river. The wind rose toward her, smelling of dried leaves, of moldering flowers, cold stone, and the icy river. She loved this place, the city, and this tower, and this very garden wall. Everything she saw was familiar to her, lush with memories, and she ached doubly to see it, the first with the pleasure of being back, and the second because they would soon have to leave it again.

In the years since Eleanor had been forced into the marriage with Louis, they had come to Poitiers seldom, and only as guests, to leave it again almost at once. They had had to watch a Parisian court holding forth in the heart of Aquitaine: music, poetry and jousting and games and dancing, all forbidden, all gaiety proscribed, a broken stone in a garden of living blossoms.

She leaned over the wall, drinking up the flavors of the city. The stone walls along the narrow lanes were the color of old lemons, laced with vining roses heavy with ripe red hips. Above the red clay caps of the walls the crooked arms of apple and plum trees held off the emptiness of the winter sky. In the spring, she knew, the lemon trees would shower their sweet perfume everywhere, and flowers would cascade over every wall and every bough, littering the streets with pink and white petals like the offerings of pilgrims. The common people would dance in the street, would sing as they went out to their fields, throw open their churches to festivals and processions. Even the most ancient stones, older than the Romans, would have their garlands of new blooms, as if the people reawoke the memories of deepest time.

She knew the spring might be too late. By then, she and Eleanor might have lost Poitiers forever.

She thought of the baby growing between her sister’s sides, wondered what would happen to him after he was born. If they kept the secret well enough, he would likely become some unimportant fosterling, a minor courtier in a noble Poitevin household, one close enough to Eleanor that she could trust them to keep his true identity a secret forever, from him and from the world. Bordeaux’s court, maybe, if he were lucky. Chatellerault’s, if not. She imagined him a happy little boy, loved and carefree, as princes never were.

Down below, a drone of voices sounded; she looked keenly in among the tangled streets, and thought she saw a chain of moving people. Some procession: Advent was full of them, each church sending out its particular relic, and gathering worshippers to chant and pray behind them as they wound a way through the neighborhood. There was such a one the next afternoon, also, that Eleanor had promised she would ride in. Another chance for her sister to be revealed. She tapped her fingertips impatiently on the wall.

Thierry’s evil offer came back to her. It had occurred to her more than once, since their meeting in the confessional, that he did know it was Eleanor who was with child—that he was bargaining in his devious scoundrel way for her baby. Did he believe it was really Louis’s? Maybe that was why he hadn’t simply dragged her up before the King and destroyed everything.

Louis might not allow him to humiliate the Queen, even if he did know. She recalled how the King had defended her, Petronilla, against Thierry, that time over the midwife. He was certainly a nobler man than the secretary. Maybe Louis himself had finally given up the marriage, in his heart, as Eleanor had.

That was all guesswork. The chances were that if they found out about the baby, the marriage for Eleanor would end in a penitent’s cell. And, to make sure Louis could marry again, a cold cup of poison.

Poitiers was full of churches, their spires pointing up into the sky like signposts to God. From this place along the flank of the palace, she could see the back of the old church of Saint Pierre, gray with lichens, and the looming mass of Notre Dame, both more venerable than anything in Paris, being the onetime churches of the Romans, like the Baptistry down the hill. In these places the people of Poitiers had worshipped strange spirits before Saint Hilary brought the light of Christ into their lives. The music of their bells would begin soon, marking the midday hour.

The city abounded in even older shrines, the strange constructions of the pagans, mere boulders tipped together, like houses for trolls. She and Eleanor had played hide-and-seek among them as children, with the other children of their father’s court. In Poitiers they had run free as colts, up and down the streets, so beloved that the common folk called their names and tossed them cakes and fruit and blessed them with laughter.

The great age of the place reassured her, the walls of countless years around her; she felt safe here as nowhere else.

Her mind kept twitching back to the problem of the procession the next day. It was to honor the Virgin, whose image they would carry. Petronilla would have chosen to ride in the procession from the Baptistry, which was her favorite of all the churches in Poitiers. Eleanor had chosen Saint Hilaire, because it stood much in need of work and she wanted to draw some interest to it. Eleanor understood those things; Petronilla would have done something sentimental and useless.

But for Eleanor to ride through crowds up and down the street was dangerous; there had to be some other way. A hint of a solution came to her, but she pushed it down, too dangerous, and presumptuous, too.

The sun was shining on her now, moving out from behind the high loom of the tower. She turned to look up at the faceted walls, each vertical plane overhung by a water channel carved into the stone, whose outlet was a shouting head. Each stone was slightly different in color or pattern from each other stone, and she often found herself lost in the subtleties, walking around and around the foot of the tower, looking up.

This tower was the heart of Poitiers—maybe the very heart of Aquitaine. Her grandfather the Troubadour had planned it himself, called on his masons to make of stone what he saw in his mind. Her grandfather had been such a man that tales of him still lingered here, how he sang and fought and loved throughout his days, a great wild spring wind in Aquitaine, the land’s living spirit. Eleanor should be such a one as that, if she escaped the cold prison of the north.

Petronilla lifted her face into the sunlight, enjoying the warmth. She wanted to stay here forever, leaning on the garden wall, waiting for the spring.

“Petra. Let me come closer.”

It was de Rançun. She turned toward him as he stood there with his head a little bowed, waiting to be recognized, who almost alone of the world other than her sister could call her by the silly, childhood name. “Joffre,” she said, in the same wise. “Joffrillo. Why have you ever needed permission? What is it?”

He came across the little garden toward her. Near the gate, a page started up, ready to attend them, and Petronilla waved him off, and she did not veil herself. De Rançun stood beside her and took his cap in his hand.

“You must pardon me for this, but I can talk only to you.” He swallowed. She straightened, warned by the look on his face what was coming. He said, “Petra, hear me, I say this for love of you and her.”

“Of course,” she said, taut.

“It’s this procession, tomorrow, that will be all afternoon, and through huge crowds. She cannot ride so much anymore. It’s too dangerous.”

“Ah,” she said. “Your thoughts trace my own.” She turned her eyes away, alarmed at that; she was not then just being womanish. And he knew, too, of the baby. A mere man, outside the women’s circle. The spreading ripples reached wider and wider, always a little less of a secret, more of an understanding in common. She gave him a sideways glance, thinking,
But he is loyal
.

He snorted at her. “What do you think? I must lift her into the saddle every time she rides. Do you think I don’t notice?” He too then glanced around, making sure they were alone. “And she has almost fallen, that I’ve seen, at least twice.”