Time and Chance (53 page)

“You look ghastly,” she scolded. “When will you start paying heed to what I say? It was lunacy to return to Oxford, and well you know it, Eleanor. You’ve not eaten a morsel since this morn, and God’s truth, but your complexion is the color of unripe cheese. It is a miracle for certes if you have not brought on early labor.”

To her annoyance, Eleanor did not appear to be listening. But before she could resume her lecture, the door opened with a bang and Dame Bertrade swept in. “Madame, is there any bleeding? Have the pains begun?”

Eleanor shook her head, let Bertrade and Petronilla get her to her feet. Between them, they helped her to the bed, where she lay back onto the pillows, closing her eyes. Petronilla was terrified by her bloodless pallor, the damp, clammy feel of her skin. She knew women in childbirth could suffer both sweating and shivering fits, felt a great fear that Eleanor was wrong and her travail begun. It was much too soon, both for her and the babe. What if she delivered a stillborn child? What if she died? Childbed was all too often a woman’s deathbed, too. Her gaze blurred with sudden tears and she reached out, grasping the hand of this frail stranger in her sister’s bed.

“Eleanor, look what you’ve done to yourself! Why did you not listen to me and remain at Woodstock as I urged?”

Eleanor’s lashes lifted. Her face was bone-white, the pupils of her eyes so dilated that they seemed black. “I would rather,” she spat, “have given birth by the side of the road!”

 

 

 

ELEANOR HAD CHOSEN the royal manor just north of Oxford’s walls over the castle within the city for her lying-in. Her decision had been dictated by convenience; the manor was more comfortable than the admittedly old-fashioned furnishings of the castle. But she was not long in regretting it, for the manor was haunted by the ghosts of happier times. It was here that nine years ago she’d given birth to her son Richard, while her husband kept anxious vigil within the castle.

 

 

 

AS THE COUNTESS of Chester dismounted, Petronilla darted out of the door of the great hall. “My lady countess, your visit pleases us greatly.” The formalities observed, she embraced Maud, brushing her cheek with a perfunctory kiss as she hissed in the other woman’s ear, “You must have come by way of Scotland, judging by how long you took!”

Maud looked at her in astonishment. So swiftly had she responded to the summons that she had celebrated Christmas on the road—no small sacrifice, in her opinion. She did not take Petronilla seriously enough to be genuinely vexed with her, though, and she contented herself with saying mildly, “I would have been here much sooner if only I’d known how to fly.”

Petronilla did not look amused. The truth was that neither woman liked the other one very much, and Maud knew Eleanor’s sister must be despairing indeed to turn to her for help. Sending her ladies and her escort into the hall, she stopped Petronilla when she would have followed. “We’ll have no privacy inside. Tell me now why you are so fearful for the queen.”

“Eleanor is forty-four years of age and this will be her tenth time in the birthing chamber,” Petronilla said waspishly. “I should think that would be reason enough!”

“Yes, I would agree . . . if not for the fact that Woodstock is but five miles away.”

Petronilla had hoped to ease into the subject. “God Above, is there anyone left in England who does not know about that Clifford slut? How did you hear?”

Maud gave a half-shrug. “There has been talk for some months.”

“If you knew, why did you not tell Eleanor?”

Maud stared at her. “You were the one who told Eleanor? Christ on the Cross, Petra!”

Petronilla blushed. “She had a right to know. People had begun to snicker behind her back, and Eleanor could never abide that.”

“And did it never occur to you that the timing might leave something to be desired?”

Petronilla’s flush deepened. “I find your sarcasm offensive. I did not expect her to go running off to England!”

Maud bit her lip, figuratively and literally. What good did this serve? What was done was done. “Be that as it may, she did. I take it that she went to Woodstock and confronted the girl?”

Petronilla nodded. “Although I am not sure if confrontation is the right term for it. She said not a word to the little bitch, Maud, not a word! And since then, she has refused to talk about it at all.” Her shoulders slumped, the anger draining away. “I have never seen Eleanor like this, never. When she is wroth, the whole world knows it. Mayhap it is because of the babe . . . I only know that I would feel much more at ease if she were screaming and ranting and vowing to geld Harry with a dull spoon. This frozen silence of hers . . . it frightens me.”

It troubled Maud, too. But before she could respond, a door slammed and a young girl came flying down the steps. “Cousin Maud, I am so very glad to see you!”

“And can this be Tilda? I vow, child, you get prettier every time I see you.” Enfolding the girl in an affectionate embrace, Maud saw Petronilla signaling frantically that nothing should be said in front of Tilda, and she wondered, not for the first time, how Eleanor could have been cursed with a sister so lacking in common sense. She was genuinely pleased to see the child, for she’d stood godmother to Tilda. Keeping her arm around Tilda’s slender shoulders, she headed for the warmth of the great hall, leaving Petronilla to follow or not, as she chose.

 

 

 

THE HEARTH had burned low, providing little heat or light. Maud wasted no time summoning a servant, for it was faster to do it herself. Reaching for the fire tongs, she quickly rekindled the flames.

Eleanor watched with an oblique smile that was more ironic than amused, knowing full well that Maud would soon be prodding the embers of her marriage for signs of life, too. “So what now? How do you intend to exorcise my demons?”

Maud sighed. “Could you at least let me thaw out ere you throw down the gauntlet?”

“You’ll forgive me if my manners are ragged around the edges, Maud.” Adding a laconic, “ Pregnancy will do that to a woman.”

“So will an unfaithful husband.” Eleanor’s head jerked around, her eyes suddenly as green and glittering as any cat’s, but Maud staved off her rebuke with an upraised hand. “I ask you to hear me out, for the love I bear you as my queen, my cousin by marriage, and my friend,” she said quietly. “As you clearly guessed, I am here in answer to Petra’s summons. But I would have come on my own, ready to staunch the bleeding or to . . .” She paused very deliberately. “. . . plot regicide.”

Eleanor said nothing, but the corner of her mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly, and Maud took that as a good sign. “I know about Harry’s dalliance with the Clifford girl. If you want to talk about it, whatever you say will go no farther than this chamber. If you do not want to talk, I’ll say no more on it.”

“I do not.”

Maud inclined her head. “As you wish.”

Eleanor did not trouble to mask her skepticism. “Since when are you so biddable?”

“I have more than my share of failings—or so I’ve been told,” Maud said dryly. “But for all of my indiscretions, I am never indiscreet.” Thinking it a pity that the same could not be said for Petronilla.

“Petra meant well,” Eleanor said, and Maud acknowledged her mind-reading with a wry smile. For a time there was no sound in the chamber but the hissing and crackling of the fire. Maud studied the other woman covertly through her lashes, not liking what she found. Eleanor’s skin was a waxen white, almost transparent, a pulse throbbing erratically at her temple, another at her throat, deeply etched evidence of exhaustion in the taut set of her mouth, in the furrows on her brow, and most conspicuously in the lurking shadows under her eyes, the bruises of the sleep-starved.
Ah, Harry, what have you done?

She let Eleanor control the conversation and they talked of the latest rumors to spill out of the queen’s restive homeland: that the Counts of Angoulême and La Marche were supposedly conspiring to disavow Henry and offer their allegiance to the French king. Maud was not surprised when Eleanor complained caustically about the difficulties she’d encountered as regent during Henry’s extended stay in England that past year. She did not doubt that Eleanor was genuinely concerned about the spreading discontent in her domains, but her political grievances were stoked now by private pain, and Maud could think of few fuels more combustible than a sense of humiliation and betrayal.

Eleanor was fuming about a petition recently circulated at the papal court by some of the more disaffected Poitevin barons. They’d actually dared to claim that their duchess’s marriage to the Angevin interloper was invalid because she and Henry were distant cousins, reminding His Holiness that these were the very grounds for dissolving her union with the French king. There was no chance that the Pope would heed their appeal, but Eleanor was infuriated by their effrontery, by the very suggestion that she was subservient to Henry’s will. Maud listened and murmured sympathetic agreement where appropriate, all the while wishing that the wronged wife could speak as candidly as the aggrieved queen.

It was then that they were interrupted by Eleanor’s daughter. Tilda was apologetic yet insistent, entreating her mother to help her write to her grandmother, the Empress Maude. She was being tutored in German, she explained to Maud, for that was the tongue of her husband-to-be, and it had occurred to her that the Empress might be pleased to receive a letter in the language of her long-gone youth. Maud understood what the girl was really seeking—some rare time alone with her mother—and excused herself.

This must have been a wretched Christmas for poor little Tilda. The child was probably anxious about her new life looming in Germany, and at ten, she was old enough to sense her mother’s profound unhappiness, old enough, too, to understand some of the gossip she’d inevitably overheard. Maud gave her a quick hug as she headed for the door, hoping that Tilda would find more happiness at the German court than her grandmother the empress had.

As soon as she stepped out into the stairwell, she was pounced upon by Petronilla. “At last! Well? Did Eleanor talk to you about Harry and his whore?”

“No, she did not.”

“Hellfire and all its furies! I was so sure she’d confide in you . . .” Giving Maud a look of unspoken yet unmistakable reproach, Petronilla slipped her arm through the other woman’s. “Let’s hope you have better luck later. Now we need to find a quiet place where you can tell me exactly what you said to her.”

“Are you sure you do not want to hide under Eleanor’s bed the next time we talk?”

Petronilla was too worried to feel resentment. “I know you think I’m meddling, but it tears at my soul to see Eleanor so stricken and to be unable to ease her heart. First she put her own life and the babe’s at risk with that foolhardy journey to Woodstock, and now she shuts me out, unwilling to share her hurt. Thank God Almighty that Harry did not follow her to England! In her present state of mind, who knows what she might have said to him. At least they’ll have this time apart so her rage can cool.”

Maud stopped so abruptly on the stairs that she nearly lost her balance. Jesus wept, was the woman serious? Nothing could be worse for the marriage than time apart. How could Petra be so blind? But she had no chance to respond, for a door banged above them and Tilda’s frightened cry froze both women in their tracks.

“Aunt Petra, hurry!”

Tilda was hovering in the doorway, staring in horror at the wet stain spreading rapidly across her mother’s skirt. One glance was enough for Maud. Giving the girl a gentle push, she said with quiet, compelling urgency, “You need not fear, lass. Her waters have broken, that’s all. You’d best fetch the midwife straightaway.” Tilda took off and Maud moved swiftly into the chamber, pausing only long enough to close the door. Petronilla was already kneeling at her sister’s side.

“Jesú, Eleanor! Why did you not tell us that your pains had begun?” Eleanor grimaced, her eyes meeting Maud’s over Petronilla’s bowed head. “They had not,” she said, sounding edgy and out of breath. “The waters have broken too soon.”

 

 

 

ALTHOUGH NO ONE acknowledged it, fear was a palpable presence in the birthing chamber. Eleanor’s labor had begun the evening after the premature rupture of her membranes. A day later, the contractions were coming sharp and short, agonizing but ineffective, for she should have been almost fully dilated by now and she was not.

Beset by bouts of nausea, Eleanor could not swallow the honey and wine she needed to keep her strength up; even water sometimes made her gag. By turns, she shivered violently and then broke out in a cold sweat. They felt the sharp edge of her tongue as the hours dragged by, enduring her outbursts with a stoicism that could not completely camouflage their misgivings. They were all veterans of the birthing chamber, familiar with the instinctive panic that could overwhelm a woman who knew she must either deliver her babe or die.

It was, Maud thought grimly, the ultimate trap, and a woman in hard labor did not even have the option that a snared animal did, of chewing off its own foot to make a desperate escape. The Church’s position was unambiguous and immutable: if necessary, the mother must be sacrificed to spare the child. Fortunately for women, they were attended in the birthing chamber by midwives, not priests, and Maud had never known one who would not act first to save the mother.

Eleanor was vomiting again, tended by her sister with so much tenderness that Maud could almost forgive her. For one so given to posturing and frivolity, Petronilla was surprisingly capable in a crisis, showing flashes of tempered steel beneath the superficial surface gloss. Maud reminded herself that the self-indulgent Petra had endured more than her share of sorrows—the loss of an adored father, a beloved husband, and an only son, stricken with that most feared of all mortal ailments, leprosy. She was not about to lose a sister, too, not as long as she had breath in her body, and she was winning Maud’s grudging admiration, both for her demeanor and her gritty determination to banish the shadow of death from the birthing chamber.