The Secret Eleanor (39 page)

Petronilla said, with a pang, “I would see her, if I could.”

Alys said, “Lady, it were wiser perhaps not to. She is in such a state.”

Petronilla turned her eyes away.
In such a state,
she knew, meant Eleanor still hated her. To see her, anyway, was not enough; to make things whole between them she would have to betray herself, accept the blame, and let Eleanor keep her false pride.

That, she knew, would be her own destruction. She would never be happy again.

Now she had to go off to Beaugency, alone. She gathered herself up. The long ordeal was not yet over, but soon. Then, perhaps, when they were free, they could find their common ground again. She promised herself she would go to her sister then, when they were free, and whatever happened between them would seal it, one way or the other.

Eleanor lay abed, and de Rançun came to her, his hat in his hand.

“My lady.” He knelt by the bed. “The Lady Petronilla is going to Beaugency.”

“You are going with her.”

“If you bid me, I will not,” he said. “But she is supposed to be you, and I have never left you. Someone will surely mark it if I don’t go with her.”

Eleanor struggled herself up. A black rage burned in her; she had lain so long, waiting, that her temper had swelled like a boil, full of evil. She reached under the pillow of the bed and drew out the silver dagger.

“Joffre,” she said. “You must attend her. For that reason, and for another. There cannot be two of us. If he cannot tell the difference, when he comes, there must be only one. She must not return to Poitiers.” She held the dagger out to him. It trembled in her hand. Her voice trembled. “If you love me, you will do this.”

He understood; she saw it in his eyes. He straightened up, his mouth open, his eyes on her. All the color went out of his face, and his throat worked. His gaze slid away from hers. Then he took the dagger, and in silence he went out. She lay back on the pillow and shut her eyes.

Later, when the pains began, she thought bitterly about Duke Henry, for whom she did all this. He had brought this on her. He had never loved her. He wanted her only for Aquitaine. She lay in the bed and heaved and screamed. He wanted her only for Aquitaine, for Aquitaine.

Then, as if these thoughts were a looking glass, she saw herself revealed. She wanted him only because of England, Normandy, Anjou. She had never loved him. She had done all this as evilly as he had.

In a terrible slow understanding, she thought that she had never loved anybody.

She had loved her sister. She howled, caught in the grip of the convulsions of the birth. Marie-Jeanne came to her, and she gripped the old woman’s worn, wrinkled hand that had rocked her cradle, dressed her in her first gowns, prepared her for her wedding, traveled with her to Paris and to Antioch, and was now here, constant and true. The door into eternity was opening; she lay like an altar on the threshold. Across her belly, the two hands of the life force fastened on her and began to twist. She held the old woman’s hand, and the tower echoed with her shrieks, but she knew not why she screamed: for the pain, or for the order she had given de Rançun, for her sister.

Beaugency stood on the north bank of the Loire, on the southern edge of the kingdom of France, a long day’s ride upstream of Blois where the old bridge crossed the river. Petronilla reached it four days before Palm Sunday. With the year turning, the dark and cold of winter was now surely in flight, every day more mild and sunny, grass growing golden green between the cracks of the stones, and the first tender spring breezes blowing up the river from the sea. Behind her, Eleanor was just a tiny memory, locked in a tower room.

The next day, several of the most powerful prelates and nobles of France met together in a stately formal council and declared that the marriage between the King and Queen was annulled, as if it had never been, because they were cousins within the forbidden degree.

It was a classic bit of church work, saying everything necessary and nothing really true. An earlier pope had already declared them to be married, which was set aside. The little princesses, Marie and Alix, would remain with their father and were to be considered legitimate, however much this contradicted the essence of the decree. Eleanor received back her patrimony of Aquitaine, where she had always been Duchess in her own right. Both the King and his never-had-been Queen were free to marry, although Eleanor, as Louis’s vassal, was supposed to seek his permission first.

Petronilla witnessed this, sitting in the back of the church among a crowd of attendants, all but Alys being women of the local nobility who hardly knew her. She kept at a good distance from anyone who really did. But then she moved out onto the porch of the church, into the open and the sunlight, and the spokesmen of the council came before her to announce the decision to her, face-to-face, and one of them was the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who had known her all her life.

Arrayed in a magnificent new gown of green and gold, with sleeves embroidered cuff to shoulder in gold and pearls, her coif also of tissue of gold, and her head aching from the burden of the crown, she awaited them on the open porch, wondering what to do. What he would do, if he guessed. He would say something. He would have to. It was all nothing, if she was not Eleanor. He could not be party to a fraud.

Her head throbbed unbearably and she could not think. She put her hands to her head, lifted the crown off, and threw it down on the floor at her feet. Let some other woman be Queen of France.

Her mind flew to Eleanor, in Poitiers; had she borne the baby, had that changed her temper, as it sometimes did? Did she know already that they were free? That Petronilla had set them free? Abruptly her eyes flooded with tears, as if all this rising feeling pressed out and overflowed. Now Bordeaux was coming, and she was all in tears, falling apart.

At once she realized this could save her with him. As the little band of churchmen advanced across the porch, she put her hands up to her face and let herself weep uncontrollably.

He bowed before her, with the other grave-faced prelates lined up behind him; she raised her eyes for an instant, glimpsed their startled faces, and went back to sobbing into her hands. Bordeaux fumbled a moment, saying, “Eleanor, my dear, Eleanor,” and then read the decision hastily through.

Done, he bent over her, his hand on her shoulder, and whispered, “My dear, now, too late for regrets, isn’t it?” He made a motion with one hand, and a page scooped up the discarded crown. They all shuffled offacross the porch, their robes swishing.

Out from under his scrutiny, she straightened up, pressed her hands to her eyes, raw from the weeping, her mind scoured and empty. A moment later, she realized she had won.

She lowered her hands to her lap, startled; she had won, they had given her the annulment and opened the shackles of the awful marriage that bound both her and Eleanor to the cold heart of France. A swell of pleasure took her spirit soaring upward like a leaf on a gust of wind. She crossed herself. Whatever Eleanor thought of her, she had gotten them both through this. She had won them this, their chance at new lives. Now all she had to do was face her sister again.

And that, she thought, might be the hardest thing of all.

The day after the Queen of France went by on her way to Beaugency, Claire and Thomas came into Blois, the ancient city on the Loire, and there they stayed. They took a room in a tavern by the river, and for almost a week Thomas played there only for them, teaching her new songs and working on his old ones. When the money ran out he played in the public room, for which the tavern-keeper gladly gave them their keep.

Blois was filling up with people come in for Holy Week and the Easter festivals, and the tavern was always crowded, and besides what the tavern-keeper gave Thomas, other people pressed money on them, flowers and rings and cups of wine, invitations to other houses, pleas for other music. He saw that they could do very well here.

But he saw that Claire was less than happy with this arrangement. One morning he came upon her standing in the doorway and looking out, not into the street, but beyond toward the river, and the bridge, which was just visible from the threshold. The road over the bridge led south to Poitiers, and the sight of it alone made Thomas uneasy.

He stood behind her, slid his arms around her, and kissed her shoulder.

“Let’s go up and practice,” he said. He wanted her not to be looking toward the south.

“When are we going on?” she said.

His hands lay over the soft swelling of her belly, growing more every day. This moved him more than he had ever imagined. He was already making songs for the baby.

He said, “What’s wrong with here? We have everything we need.”

He was afraid that if she went south, back to the court of Aquitaine, she would remember who she was and how she had lived before, and he would not be good enough for her. Her hands closed over his, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. She said, “I want to go back to Poitiers. I dream of it every night. I want the baby born there. When will we go?”

He said nothing for a moment. Along the street a steady rumble of wagons passed, and a pack of horsemen in fancy silver coats with red bands on them, wearing swords at their hips. Those, he knew, were the Count’s men. At last, he found the right answer; he said, “When we have been married.”

“Married.” She turned toward him, her eyes gleaming with sudden humor. “We have been saying all along we were married.” She kissed him.

He held her tight. “Yes, but—your father has never assented.”

That brought a gust of broad laughter from her. “Well,” she said, “what lies between me and thee, I think, does away with the need for his assent.” Her eyes searched his face, the smile lingering on her lips; he thought she looked more beautiful every time he saw her, as if she ripened with his seed.

She said, “Very well, then, we shall be married. When?”

“Oh,” he said, “when I can find a priest.”

“Then find a priest today,” she said. “Or as this goes on we shall be having him dip the child at the same time he puts our hands together.”

“Well, it’s not that soon,” he said, but he kissed her again and went off to find a priest. The idea made him a little giddy, but more and more eager.