The Secret Eleanor (37 page)

Petronilla wondered what her place was in this, and whether she had done well with any of it. She thought, again, and with the helpless knowledge that she would not do it, that she should tell her sister what had happened between her and Henry. It would probably do no good and certainly cause a lot of trouble. She could think of nothing else she could have done save what she had. She rode along in the wintry sunshine, and a sick little fear grew in her belly that anything she did would probably make things worse.

They wended a slow way home, for Eleanor’s sake, stopping often. The snowy fields lay all around them. Crowds of people came out to see them go by. Day in and out Eleanor lay in the wagon under piles of furs, cradling her vast belly in her arms. Everything in her now was turning toward the baby. She dreamed of him, and imagined him, nurturing him in her mind as her body fashioned him in its cauldron; the understanding that she would have to give him up made her heart ache. Yet she saw no other course for them. She promised him she would care for him. She would see that he was rich, and honored; surely he would be handsome enough.

If she bore him soon, she might be able to go to Beaugency herself. She could receive the annulment herself; before the world she would again step back into the place of Duchess of Aquitaine, the issue with Petronilla firmly settled. If the baby came not soon enough for that—if this strange deception had to go on . . .

Rattling along in the wagon she saw her sister riding up ahead, drawing all the cheers, all the looks, the homage, while she herself lay like a lump. She saw how Petronilla struggled sometimes with the Barbary horse, and with a certain glee she realized that her sister was afraid of him. She began to will the stallion to shy, to leap, to toss her into the ditch.

As soon as she felt that, she thought,
What a small woman I am, after all, everything brought down to a baby no bigger than a cat, and wishing ill to my sister.
She should be grateful to Petronilla for doing all this, sacrificing her good name for the sake of Aquitaine. Gratitude was an empty purse, nothing but wind. Love was a failing reed. Her power, her name, her very face and form were passing away, might never be hers again. Lying cushioned and wrapped in the wagon, with only the sky visible overhead, she dozed most of the time, in and out of sleep. The wagon jounced slowly along; she cradled her arm around her belly and fell to thinking about this child, imagining his face, his voice, as if dreaming about him brought him more into being. What else was there? she thought drowsily, with some bafflement.

They went into Poitiers late in the night, to avoid any crowd, and with a minimum of display took over the Maubergeon. Eleanor climbed into the top story of the outer tower, what she thought of as the Green Tower, and looked out over her city, and willed the baby to be born.

She and Petronilla were hardly speaking. They slept in separate rooms—in the two opposite towers of the Maubergeon. There seemed some great chasm between them, something unbridgeable, something broken. During the day her sister went in and out of the hall, never staying long, never looking at Eleanor. She had moved her own court into the other tower, with its blue chambers, and she was there more and more often as the days wore on. With Petronilla out of sight, Eleanor began to brood on the suspicion of her sister’s treachery. If she was not Queen of France, Duchess of Aquitaine, she was no one.

Petronilla would not even look at her, and Eleanor knew she held something secret from her. She went around the city, and the crowds followed her, and she went to church and gave out alms in the name of the Duchess of Aquitaine. She did not hold a court, with the holy days over, and Lent approaching, and her sister allegedly sick. She went everywhere else as the Duchess.

Alys said, wryly, “I did not know Petronilla would be as pleased with this as she is. She has embraced this, I think.”

“She would as lief I had died, that time,” Eleanor said, half asleep. Sitting by the fire, she was letting the other women bathe her, stroke her with a warm cloth, and dry her skin to a ruddy glow. Marie-Jeanne got a fresh towel. Eleanor watched her dry her enormous belly, laced with pale seams, her navel poking straight out. Something moved, pressing momentarily against her side and shifting toward the middle, and then it all went smooth again. “It would have made things much easier.”

Marie-Jeanne gasped. Alys said, “My lady, that’s not so. She loves you. She just loves being you also.” She put her hand to her mouth. “She means no harm.”

Eleanor shut her eyes. Alys wanted this to be so, as she said it; but the more Eleanor thought of it, the harder her suspicions grew. Between her and Petronilla now there was only silence, and with every day that passed, one day closer to Beaugency, one day more without the baby’s birth, the silence deepened and grew thorns.

Lent began. She climbed the stairs every day, up and down, several times; she had always heard climbing stairs would bring on labor. The baby remained stubbornly where he was, growing bigger and heavier. She dreamed he had two heads, one for each of her breasts. She dreamed she bore a litter of kittens. She dreamed, over and over, of the blade that turned into a snake in her hand. She began to sleep with a silver dagger under her pillow.

Stories flew about Henry of Normandy, who had made himself master of Normandy and Anjou and called a council for the spring, to begin the attack on England. The first council, six months before, had interested no one at all, and rumors flew that King Stephen was paying the Norman barons to refuse this one, too.

One day Alys came to Eleanor, her forehead rumpled, and said, “Your Grace, did you know that Henry of Normandy was in Limoges on Twelfth Night?”

She started up—she had been lying in her bed, the only place she was comfortable anymore—and said, “Oh, no. I didn’t. He was there? God’s breath. Thank God he did not see me.” She remembered that moment on the stair, when some impulse saved her; she remembered sitting with the children watching all the unruly crowd.

Then horribly the understanding shone in on her, like a blast of fire, and she flung the coverlet away.

“But he did, didn’t he?” An irresistible rage swelled within her, hot and furious, something long held pent. She slid her feet down to the floor. “Or thought he did, perhaps. Send for my sister.”

De Rançun stood by the door. He thrust out his hand. “Please—be careful—” He shot a narrow look at Alys. “What have you done?”

“Bring her here,” Eleanor shouted. “If you must drag her by the hair, bring her before me!”

Her face white, Alys scuttled by him out the door; he looked over his shoulder after her. Eleanor flung her cloak around her. Not even her temper could keep her warm. She paced across the room, her teeth clenched, and then back again, as de Rançun and Marie-Jeanne shrank against the walls, and then, in the door, Petronilla came.

Her sister wore a queenly gown, one of Alys’s finest fashionings, her hair done in red-gold braids on her head. She was wearing no coif, but a jewel glittering on her breast. She was beautiful, Eleanor knew, as beautiful as a star, and she—she—

All her festering suspicions burst into a boiling rage. She shouted, “Did you lie with him? Did you?”

Petronilla’s eyes popped open, and her lips parted. For a moment the old Petronilla surfaced, her shoulders rounded, meek, and she said, “My lady, I don’t know what—”

“You know!” Eleanor rushed at her, furious at this dissembling, convinced now that Petronilla was the snake; she almost struck her across the face, but instead roared at her, nose to nose. “Did you lie with him? The truth, false-hearted, evil woman! I want the truth!”

“No,” Petronilla cried, and shrank away. But her face altered; she did not submit at once to Eleanor’s furious glare, as she would have before. She reared back, her face white, but unafraid, and her eyes piercing.

“No. I did not.” Her voice rang with certainty. She turned back to her sister, and she bared her teeth in something not a smile. “He would have, thinking I was you, and knowing you for a she-wolf in heat—”

Eleanor shouted, and this time she did swing her hand at Petronilla, but her sister reached up and caught her wrist and held her arm away.

“I forced him to his knees,” Petronilla cried, triumphant. “I made him apologize for his faithlessness.” She thrust Eleanor’s arm aside. Her eyes were brilliant, steady, unblinking. This was the new Petronilla, her rival, her equal. “I did what was right, Eleanor! You dare not come at me like this.”

“I dare do anything I wish,” Eleanor cried. “You saw him—and he kissed you, did he not?”

Petronilla yielded nothing, her face blazing with anger. “Are you jealous? Yes, I kissed him. You should make a study of this—he doesn’t love you—he doesn’t even know the difference between me and you. Not even in a kiss. All he wants is Aquitaine.”

Eleanor let out a howl. She whirled away from the knowledge, flung herself across the room, her fists beating on her thighs. “Bernard’s curse was real—even those I trusted—Ah, God, I am undone! He—even he—And you! You!”

Abruptly, exhausted, she was gushing tears, and she sank down on the floor and wept into her hands. “Go away. All of you. Get out of my sight.” The baby heaved and kicked inside her, as if he would flee too from this madwoman, his mother.

Behind her, Petronilla said, “Everything does not turn around you, Eleanor. There is more to all of this than you would let it be.” She went out. The door slammed. Around the room, fearful as mice, the others began to move, their murmuring voices like the rustling of mice. Sobbing, Eleanor crept back toward her bed and buried herself in the covers.

ROUEN
FEBRUARY 1152

 

 

 

The black winter shut them down. The Empress kept a very harsh Lent. She had maneuvered Claire into her waiting women, without much asking, but Claire was glad of something to do. The old woman needed constant attendance, and the girls were always coming and going. Thomas being in a very dark mood, she was glad anyway to have somewhere else to be. The Empress made them all go to Mass often, which made no one any happier.

Being so much with the other women, Claire shared their gossip. They chattered about people she did not know, found out she had been in Poitiers and Paris, and rained names on her from those courts.

She said, “Paris is not so much,” and this made them all very pleased, but then she said, “Poitiers, though, is the prettiest place in the world, and I wish I were there,” and they scowled at her, and began to sneer at her and talked behind her back.

They were asp-tongued. They told tales of her to the Empress, who seemed not to care. One woman, younger than she was, sidled up to her at the wardrobe and smirked. “He’s a handsome fellow, your husband. You must keep close watch on him, I think.” The other girls laughed. After that, she could not help it; she watched Thomas with a narrow eye.

Henry suddenly reappeared soon after the pancakes. Claire thought he looked a little harried. When she saw him come into the hall, she was bringing a robe for the Empress, who was out of bed for the first time in a while and sitting up, surrounded by braziers. As soon as she saw him, the old woman called out to him.

“Well, my boy, and where did you get off to?”

Henry came up the long room to her. His cloak was filthy and he threw it off one way and tossed his cap in the other; pages ran to pick them up. Claire drew back out toward the wall. Most of the girls quietly battled to get into his sight, which reminded her of Thomas.

The reminder of Thomas vexed her. The winter seemed to have laid a heavy hand on him. He had gotten very silent and gloomy since the Empress declared that her prohibitions for Lent included music. Even before Shrove began, he was sneaking away by himself to play, as if he would punish the court, which thought his passion sinful.

Claire had gone with him a few times; the Empress’s edict worked in all of Rouen, so they had to walk beyond the city. In a farmer’s shed, they sang together, and he struggled with a new part of the Tristan story. Then his melancholy seemed to lift, and he even smiled at her. But it was cold, and she had much to do; without his playing to keep them at court, someone had to be useful. But he went out a lot, by himself, every day, sometimes several times a day. She wondered if he had another woman. She began watching the other girls in the court, to see if one was always gone when he was gone.