The Secret Eleanor (32 page)

He was not back. She hardly slept, bundled in her cloak on a pallet in a corner of the common room. The lute in her arms. The child. He had gone, seduced her and left. The Fleming believed that, she thought. He would try to persuade her to go with him. Buy his way into her bed, as he could not sing. She laid her cheek against the lute’s fret board, too sad to weep. All this time she had never known him.

She dozed, finally, in the deep of the night, but she dreamed of monsters, and she dreamed she bore a monster child, with dark curly hair and bloody teeth. Then she felt someone draw near and take hold of the lute in her arms.

“No,” she cried, and sat up, still half-asleep, struggling, her arms tight around the lute’s womb-shaped body.

“Clariza,” he whispered, in her ear. “It’s me.” He laughed. “My darling one. My girl.”

She let go of the lute and flung her arms around him, and now, relieved, she did weep. She cried so hard she did not see that the inn was full of men, until they lit a lot more torches, and a harsh voice rang out.

“Stand! By order of the Duke of Normandy!”

She sat up, her heart pounding, the cloak around her and Thomas’s arm around her shoulders.

The inn had but the one room, and it was low and filthy; the torches filled it with a hellish yellow light wreathed in smoke. They were at the edge of the flickering circle of light. In the center stood a young man in mail, with spiky red hair and a sword in his hand.

Behind him stood a wall of mailed men. A stab of cold fear struck her. She glanced at Thomas, who looked worn much older from the ride. He said, under his breath, “He never sleeps, this one.” And hugged her. “Don’t be afraid. He’s with me.” His head rested on her shoulder, and he yawned.

“What is this?” The Flemish merchant came forward, his voice edged with annoyance. “I have licenses—the Count of Flanders is my—”

A door slammed. Claire, still shaking off sleep, realized that most of the other people in the inn were being thrust out of doors; there were soldiers behind her now, too. The young Duke’s voice cracked out.

“I don’t need to hear this.” He looked past the Fleming to one of his men. “Take his packs apart.”

“How dare you do this!” the merchant cried. “Whatever are you looking for—I promise you will not find it. I am an honest man.” He thrust his face toward the Duke, but his head turned suddenly, and he looked at Thomas.

Claire laid her hand on Thomas’s thigh, beside her, as if she could shield him against that look, like a snake striking. Thomas was leaning on her, half-asleep.

The young Duke walked around in the torchlight. His spurs clinked. This was the one Eleanor would marry, Claire thought. A trickle ran down her spine. This was the father of the baby. One of the knights came up.

“My lord, we’ve found nothing. What about the horses?”

Henry’s face darkened. His eyes seemed to bulge out of his head, fixed on the merchant, who smirked at him.

“I told you—”

“Strip him down,” Henry said. “Strip them all down.”

She thought,
He is like a knife blade, cutting through everything to the heart
, and shivered.

The Fleming said, “Now, listen to me.”

The Duke’s attention sharpened, bright as a torch, and his teeth showed. “Take your clothes off!”

“Look. I’ll make a deal.”

“Robert—”

“Wait! Wait—” The Fleming reached inside his coat and pulled out a thick packet, sealed. He flung it on the floor.

“I gave it up. Now just let me go on—”

“Shut up,” Henry said, mildly.

The merchant pressed his lips together. The young Duke nudged the packet with his foot, and his knight Robert picked it up. He looked at the seal, and grunted.

“L, with lilies, a crown over.”

Henry was looking at it, and now his gaze lifted and took in the Fleming again. “There’s more,” he said, staring at the Fleming. His face shone. His eyes burned like coals. Claire crossed herself. Devils, they were. She had heard that, descended from devils. The sword in his hand gleamed in the torchlight. “There’s more. Isn’t there?”

“I—” The Fleming put his palms together. “I swear to God, my lord—”

“Strip him down!”

Robert turned, his mouth open with orders. For an instant he was between the Fleming and the terrible Duke, and the merchant spun around. He leaped, not for the door, but for Thomas, his hands outstretched and his mouth snarling.

Claire screamed. Thomas jerked up out of his doze; as the merchant lunged at him, he hurled his body forward, not even rising, going shoulder first into the merchant’s knees.

The Fleming tripped over him and fell. Three of the knights had him before he hit the floor. Thomas rolled neatly to his feet, circled them, and sat down again by Claire.

The Duke of Normandy had not moved. His eyes flicked briefly over Thomas, then pinned the Fleming again. They were tearing the clothes off him. His bare chest showed, the hair grizzled. Against his ribs a linen band held a second packet, much plainer.

The knight Robert rose, holding it out to the Duke, who took it and looked at the seal. He stuffed this packet inside his coat. He said, “Truss him, take him to Le Mans, and throw him in the pit; see if anybody wants to ransom him.”

“My lord!” The Fleming struggled to sit, his face dripping sweat. He was half naked, and Claire looked away.

The Duke ignored him. He turned to Thomas.

“That’s a lute. Is this your wife? You’re a trouvère?”

“So I think you northerns call us, yes.”

The Duke smiled at him. “That was a nice trick, taking him down. You’re coming with me, to Rouen. It’s almost Christmas, and my mother likes music.”

LIMOGES
DECEMBER 1151

 

 

 

Eleanor had changed the whole room around, put Marie-Jeanne and Alys to work, and now, bereft of anything else to do, she sat by the window sprinkling bread crumbs on the ledge for the birds. Petronilla stood across the room, waiting for the kitchen boys to come back with wine and Advent cakes. With a qualm, Eleanor saw something new in her sister’s looks; Petronilla stood straighter now than before. She had always seemed such a mouse: round-shouldered, and small, and meek. Now she was beautiful, when every day Eleanor felt uglier.

In spite of her size, she felt herself turning invisible. More and more, the others were attending Petronilla, the real Queen, leaving Eleanor off in her corner, anchored by her lump of baby, overlooked and forgotten. She struggled with an unaccustomed sense of envy—she who had never known a rival. Her legs began to twinge, and she shifted her ungainly weight around on her stool. This had to happen this way, she told herself. Petronilla was saving her much pain and almost certain exposure, and giving up her own good name to ridicule and gossip in the process. But a cold jealousy coiled around her heart like a thorny briar.

The cakes came, spreading their spicy scents into the room; the two pages put everything around on the low table, which was set in the midst of every brazier in the tower. The scent of Eastern spices mingled with the smoke. Eleanor turned back to the birds, crumbling bread in her fingers.

Abruptly they all flew off in a tiny whirring of their wings. A sudden rapid knocking banged on the door, and everybody turned. Petronilla glanced now toward Eleanor, unsure, so at least in Eleanor’s presence she did not dare play Queen. Eleanor nodded to her.

“That’s de Rançun—let him in.” She looked past her sister, toward Alys. “Let him in.”

Alys opened the door, and the knight came charging in, his face bright. He went straight past Petronilla and came down on one knee before Eleanor.

“The King has announced the council to declare the annulment of your marriage. For Beaugency, at Eastertide. It’s done, Your Grace. Thierry has suddenly withdrawn to his own lands.” His smile spread across his handsome, sun-burnished face. “And you and your court are to go back to Poitiers, after Christmas, and wait there, until the council meets. You’ve won. You are Duchess of Aquitaine, with no one your master. You shall be free to marry whom you wish.”

Eleanor let out a whoop, like a country girl at dance. The other women screamed and cheered. In their midst, Petronilla turned and smiled at her sister, and their eyes met. Eleanor’s suspicions vanished; she was a fool, after all, making trouble out of nothing. She started up off the stool, her arms out, to embrace Petronilla and their victory.

Then, all through her, a great spasm clenched her, so that she staggered and fell back again upon the stool. She doubled over, her arms across the mound of her belly, and she gave a groan that shook her.

The women all rushed at her, surrounding her; Petronilla cried, “What is it? Is it now? Oh, God—”

Eleanor straightened. The twisting pain subsided a moment. “Take me—” She shut her eyes. Everything buckled and caved in around her. She felt him lift her up and carry her off, and then she was drowning in a dark, pain-shot sea.

It was too soon, too soon to bear it; the baby could not live, and she, likely, would not live, it was too soon.

Her body ached and cramped and bled. She could feel the wet blood pooling under her now. “Eleanor.” That was her sister. “Drink this.” She struggled to lift her head. “Here.” A wet cloth touched her lips, and she sucked on it and tasted the herbs.

She stiffened herself against the next wracking, crushing pain. She could hear the other women talking around her, but nothing mattered except the pain. They brought her wine, and she threw it up again. They carried her out of the bed to change the linens, and the bedclothes were sodden with wine and with blood.

She moaned, the dark closing in dank and stinking around her. She had kicked up her heels at virtue all her life, and now she would pay, all her sins gathering, debts clamoring to be paid. They bundled around her bed like a crowd of ugly little gnomes, holding out their dirty hands. She trembled at the moment when she would ladle out her life to pay their pestering demands. Her body throbbed and kinked again, and she felt a fresh hot spurt of blood against her thighs.

Someone else was feeding her a foul drink, spoon by spoon. She heard voices around her.

“Has she lost the baby?”

“No. No.” A stranger, a dark, southern woman’s voice. “The baby is where it belongs. The potion may stop her pangs. She’s strong, the baby is strong. God be with her.”

She hung on that. God was with her. She was strong. She refused to die. She had dreamed and risked too much to end it all like this. Marie-Jeanne took hold of her hand and kissed it. Another pain wracked her. Eleanor shut her eyes, hoarding the life in her, gathering it back together in drop by drop of pain.

The strange woman had gone. Marie-Jeanne and Alys brought her food. She did not see Petronilla. She ate some, and this she did not throw back. She drank some wine with more herbs. Slowly she realized she had not felt a throe in long moments.

“Petronilla.” She struggled to lift her hand up. To tell Petronilla it was over. “Petra. Where is my sister?”

“My lady—she went to church—it was thought—people would talk—” Alys’s hand gently folded hers back under the covers. “Sleep, my dear, good lady.”

Petra. She went to be me. She went to take my place again.
The old suspicion leaped up through her weariness like a flame in the dead grass.

I could take your place,
Petronilla had said, before them all.

Everything rearranged itself around her, what her sister had said, had done, what Eleanor had let her do. She felt herself slipping, falling, leaving a space behind, which Petronilla took as if by right.
No, no, I won’t let her have it.
Yet she was gliding into sleep, exhausted, the women murmuring around her.

The church was drab and darkened still; on Christmas every candle would be lit, every statue and vessel and painting unveiled, glorious and golden, to welcome the newborn Christ.