The Secret Eleanor (47 page)

Eleanor smiled to imagine this; even Marie-Jeanne chuckled. Alys said, “He turned the color of a raw beefsteak, and made us all get out, and searched the wagons, all the while giving off oaths—I dare not repeat them to you, they were so awful—especially not what he said when he finally admitted you weren’t there.”

The brush dug into Eleanor’s hair. She said, “What a rude boy. Did he at least give you feasting and safe haven overnight?”

Alys crowed. “Oh, they didn’t care about us. He was so angry, my lady, I wanted only to be far away—but you were long gone by then.”

She stooped and kissed Eleanor’s shoulder. She said, “You made all women great with this, Your Grace. We are all greater for you.”

Eleanor murmured something. Alys’s memory had flowed back smoothly into its prescribed course, wiping out the traces of what had really happened, maybe even in her own mind. The other women were coming in, leading pages and grooms with crates of clothes. Each of them as she arrived came and knelt down at Eleanor’s feet and blessed her happily; their eyes shining. Alys was right; what she had done enlarged them. What they thought she had done. Her mind went unwillingly to Petronilla. But if they saw any difference between this Eleanor and the one they had seen last on the banks of the Loire, no one spoke.

She said, “Some ladies of good birth must be found to attend my sister, if you will all stay with me.”

Alys was stroking the brush through her hair. “Let me see to it, Your Grace.” Her voice was smooth. Eleanor felt a ripple of unease in her belly. She thought,
You do not know. What lies between me and Petronilla still seethes. You think it is all over.
She put her hand up, and Alys took hold of her fingers, reassuring.

With Petronilla back, Eleanor could step forth in her own name. She began at once to shape her court. Several people still clung to office who were relics of King Louis’s rule, and she sent them home. She named Matthieu, her long-faithful steward, to manage her household, but she still needed pages, attendants, knights, all of the highest families.

A few families sent younger sons to be pages, but she could tell, by the ones who did not, that they were still waiting to see how she fared here, ruling alone. She got some women from the city up; mannerless as they were, they were apt enough, and their talk lively. She already had the knights who had gone with her sister to Beaugency and back, and a few more came, younger sons, wanderers. Without de Rançun, there was no one to command them.

The greater lords sent not their children, but heralds, greeting her, rejoicing in her escape from the traps laid for her, promising her whatever they thought would get them some advantage. She received them in the great hall, all hung now with tapestry and gold cloth, crowded with as many of her new court as she could get in there, loud with trumpets and drums, a great show. Bordeaux’s herald was especially fine, with a scarlet tabard trimmed all in fox, and a hat with a long Spanish plume, and his speech went on upward of an hour.

There also, in the great hall, she held her court. She had a single throne put on the dais in the center of the cold, echoing room, and heard everyone who came to her with a grievance: the jilted bride wanting her dowry back, the shepherds with a quarrel about marks on rocks, the merchants fighting over street stalls and gate tolls, wanting favors, wanting privileges. She gave no one privileges. When a rich man of Bordeaux offered her a bribe, she threw him into the stocks and hung his purse from his nose.

She settled every argument according to the justice of it, as keenly as she could see it; she knew that was all that stood between her and robbery.

She sent off the palace cooks and got new ones, and made the grooms wear coats all of the same red. She found women to sew bold red coats for her pages and bargained for more cloth from the east. Every morning and every evening her kitchen gave out whole-baked loaves to the poor. She invited the local merchants to bring her their goods to see, so that every day, in the hall, there was a display of fine things. Every day she went to a different church in the city and lit candles.

When she went out into the street, the crowds cheered her; they called her name from the rooftops and followed her all the way home. Still, there was no sign of Duke Henry.

She summoned a council of the local lords—she knew the great barons would not answer: Talmond, Angouleme and Limoges, Chatellerault, Lusignan, and, now, de Rançun. The local men were more dependent on her and could not ignore her. At the council, to reward them, she named them all to high offices, seneschal and marshal and constable, which they were glad to have, preening themselves. She laid heavy taxes on them, then, which they liked less, but could not deny her. So she had money coming.

Through this council she commanded the Vicomte de Limoges that he should remove his unpermitted wall. She also commanded her cousin, the Vicomte of Chatellerault, to bring her men-at-arms to go against Limoges. She sent forth generally a command that the French law no longer held in Aquitaine, and that she would give law here, and no other.

No word came from Limoges. From the Vicomte de Chatellerault a written message arrived that he would bring an army to her when she consented to marry him.

She had the money now to buy an army; all she needed was a commander. She had never needed one before, but she had botched that. Still, she thought, maybe she could do this alone.

That was less than she wanted. She stood on the top of the tower, looking north, wanting more. Wanting everything.

One morning while she was hearing two people argue about ownership of a stream, she looked up and saw a dark curly head she knew coming in the doorway.

Behind him, wrapped in a gray cloak, was Claire. Her heart jumped like a lovelorn girl’s, and she shifted impatiently in her throne. The weary arguments of the two Poitevins who had been fighting over this waterway for generations could drone for hours, and she cut them off with a wave of her hand. She told them to come back later, when she had thought it out, and as they left, she sent a page for Thomas the lute player.

“God keep you, lady,” he said, with a bow.

“You are very welcome here,” she said. “That I bade you do, in Normandy, how did that go?”

“I gave the message to the Duke himself, my lady,” he said. “He was very glad to get it, I think. He acted on it right away.”

“Good. He kept you at his court?”

“Until Lent, my lady, and then we went off again.”

“Then tell me—how does my lord Normandy?” She stopped, ashamed to look overeager. Her gaze went by him to Claire, who was smiling and bent her knee in a quick dip.

Thomas said, “He was well enough, when I saw him. But we left Rouen a while ago, my lady; I know nothing of him now.” He bobbed his head again, as much as he ever gave anybody of a bow. “My lady, we need your permission, Claire and I—” He reached his hand out behind him, and she came forward, smiling. “We have married,” he said, “which may not sit well with her family.”

Eleanor laughed. “No, I suppose not. It sits with me.” Her smile widened, and she looked on Claire with a new pride. “God bless you both. Welcome to my court.” To him, she said, “Play.”

But she wished he had some news for her of Henry. Her skin felt cold; he was not coming. His mother, or something he had learned, or his barons kept him north.

Thomas had sat down below the dais, and the first soft tones of the lute reached her ears. She turned to call a page and announce that the court was over, so she could go somewhere quieter and closer, to lose herself in the music.

Claire went off as soon as she could and climbed the stair to the blue tower. The door at the top of the stairs was open, and she could hear Alys’s voice; she went to the threshold and looked in.

What she saw gladdened her. Alys was helping Petronilla dress, the gown slipped on over her head, her arms raised to find the sleeves. In the corner, a baby suckled noisily, his nurse wrapped around him like a piece of furniture. Claire slipped into the room, and Petronilla, poking her head up through the gown, saw her and said, “There you are!”

She pulled out of Alys’s arms and went to Claire and hugged her. She held Claire’s hand, and smiled at her, and turned to Alys.

“Remember? She saved us.”

“Sssh, my lady,” Alys said. “But I am glad to see you, Claire.”

Petronilla said, “Come see the baby. Alys, tell her what happened after—in Blois.” She straightened her gown and stepped into her own shoes. To Claire, she said, “We do not live such quiet lives, after all.”

Alys picked up the nightdress and shook it out. She began a story that sounded as if she had told it several times before, which still got Petronilla laughing. Claire laughed, thinking of the balked fury of the would-be abductors. Petronilla had lifted the baby away from the nurse, and danced around the room with it, which beguiled her more. She went across the room to watch her, laughing at the right places in Alys’s story. Petronilla stopped long enough to show her the child’s face.

“Philip,” she said. “He’s a boy.” She danced off again.

Claire smiled to see this; she thought everything had worked out well. She stood by the bed, which was still unmade. Alys was coming to the peak of her tale, her arms waving, describing the knights’ desperate searches. Claire smoothed the bedclothes, meaning to put the bed together when the story ended.

She saw, then, that the pillows were hollowed out as if two heads had slept there, side by side. She glanced at Alys, who with wild arms and tossing head was demonstrating the Count of Blois’s complete dismay. Alys might not have noticed. Quickly Claire plumped the pillows up and drew the covers higher. A curly fair hair flew from one linen flounce into the sunlight. She glanced at Petronilla again, amazed.

Petronilla had stopped dancing, had seen Claire do all this, and stood staring at her, a challenge on her face. The baby in her arms waved a little fist.

Claire said, “I’m glad he didn’t hurt you,” to Alys. She stood in front of the bed.

Alys said, “Oh, he wouldn’t dare.”

Claire turned to making the bed up. “I think you were very brave, nonetheless.”

Petronilla said, “Alys, you should go—my sister needs you.”

Alys said, “I can—”

“Come back later,” Petronilla said, and the tall waiting woman left. Petronilla fixed her eyes on Claire.

“What are you thinking?”

Claire said, “That a lot has happened. You and the Queen—the Duchess—you are where you belong.” She nodded at the baby. “He is a beautiful baby.”

Petronilla’s face settled, and she took the baby to the young nurse and shooed them both out. When she came back, her face was grim. She sat down next to Claire on the bed.

She said, “We are not where we belong. We are at odds, Eleanor and I, and like to be forever. She tried to have me killed. If he were a lesser man, I would be killed.”

Claire started. She turned her gaze back toward the pillow, thinking of the curly fair hair. She realized then she had not seen him, who had always before been close around the Duchess. She said, “God bless him, then. But I cannot believe—”