The Secret Eleanor (49 page)

She waved her hand to Claire, who sang as if her chest were bursting, her voice inaudible in the general racket. Behind her, someone said, “’Tis the Lady Petronilla!”

She almost turned and smiled at him. A scattered cheer went up, and she raised her hand again, and more cheered. In the back door came the cook, leading the way for four scullions bearing aloft a huge platter with a whole boar, the head still on, the eyes bulging black plums, shiny with sauce and lying on a thicket of green boughs.

A trumpet blew. The whole crowd turned, suddenly, toward the main door, and their voices rose in a roar of excitement. Petronilla stood, the hackles on her neck rising; then she saw her sister coming in.

Eleanor wore a gown of green stitched with gold, bands of gold along the front and on the deep cuffs. She wore no coif, her red hair done high on her head in coils of braids. The gold circle around it seemed a decoration to the real crown. Petronilla turned and went, swiftly. Everybody else surged the other way, crying out Eleanor’s name, trying to get closer to her radiance.

The trumpets were still blaring out their flourishes. The Duchess of Aquitaine went to the great table and stood behind her chair, and before her the whole room bobbed down in a grand obeisance. She stood straight, her chin up, their ruler. Far across the room, she saw the one whom she really wanted to see rush out another door, gone.

She lowered her eyes to her subjects. They swayed and dipped before her, a sea of patchy colors: gold and red, green and silver, dark blue, Tyrian purple. They loved her. They were not enough. She let the steward draw back her chair and sat down.

A few days later, she sat in her privy chamber, before her a dozen men from Bordeaux. She had already discussed this with the Archbishop, who was their lord, but she knew she had to get these men, the city men, the merchants, to agree to this to make it work.

She sat with her hands on her knees, square to them, and looked each one in the face as she spoke. She said, “Lately enough ships have come in and out of Bordeaux to cause problems. You’ve told me this, blaming each other. What will help is this. I saw this in Antioch, where my uncle was prince, and where ships have used the harbor since Jesus’ time and before.” She stopped and stared at them, her eyebrows arched, until they fumbled and mumbled and bowed.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“First, let each ship in and out in order. This means you must keep good records of their arrivals and departures. Second, gather a company of your own pilots, train them, and let only them handle ships. Third, you are to stop bribery, and instead collect regular fees. Of which I shall have a certain part. And four times a year my steward will come in to see how your records look, to make sure this is all as it should be.”

That struck them as if she had spat at them; they stared at her a moment, stunned, and then they all babbled at once, their voices piling over each other as the women’s voices did in a round. She picked out certain phrases.

“. . . families who have been pilots for generations—”

“There are no bribes.”

“Satan’s work, it is. Number is the mark of the Beast.”

She said, “You will do this or my uncle Bordeaux will have you under an interdict and you will get nothing.”

“It won’t work.” Through tight lips like a squeezed purse.

“Oh, it will work. And there’s more, once we have these simple rules in place. And you will heed me, because I am your Duchess, and all you do is by my will.”

That silenced them. She sat back, drank some wine, and let them fret awhile. Then she gave them some gifts, absolving them of certain taxes and duties, which made them much happier.

Just as she was beginning to dismiss them, Alys burst in.

“Your Grace. He’s here. He’s here, Your Grace—”

Eleanor gasped. She knew at once what she meant. She was not ready. She drove the burghers of Bordeaux out and turned to Alys.

“Send him up. Him alone.” She shook out her gown, not her best, but a good color.

Alys flew out. Eleanor’s heart was hammering in her chest. She reached up to her coif, pulled it off, and let her hair tumble down all around her shoulders. With her fingers she picked out the braids. She would come to this like a maiden, a new woman. She shook her head to toss her hair around her, and slapped her cheeks to make them rosy.

Henry went up the steps, outpacing the pages; the guard shrank back from the door. He walked into a beautiful room, all green and gold, and in the center of it, Eleanor with her blazing red hair.

She said, “Welcome, my lord.”

His heart was beating fast from the run. He felt light-headed. He said what he had planned, coming down, “You’re even more beautiful than I remembered.” But she was. He had not remembered how green her eyes were. She came to him and kissed him, and he put his arms around her, his body pulsing. She smelled like roses. Behind him, the door opened again, and closed.

Eleanor was facing that way, and she gave a start. Breaking out of his arms, she moved a step away from him. He turned, and saw another Eleanor.

This one held a swaddled baby in her arms. She said, “Eleanor. Will you tell him the truth, or shall I?”

Eleanor was moving. She went straight toward this other woman, like a hawk stooping to the kill. The woman with the baby stiffened, as if to meet an attack.

But reaching her, Eleanor slid her arm around her waist and, side by side with her, turned to face him. Her voice rang out. “My lord. Behold, our son.”

He took a step backward. His jaw dropped. His mind was a jumble; he remembered all the rumors, the puzzles of the last year. She had tricked him. Lied to him, at Saint Pierre. Brought him someone’s bastard. Then at Limoges—that had not been her. They had both tricked him.

When he realized that, the red temper surged in him. No woman had ever mocked him so. The two facing him had made a fool of him. Of him, of Louis, of all of Christendom. Their faces were bright with defiance, they knew they had done evil. They never looked at each other, but they clung to each other. His first feeling was a rush of shame. Words sizzled in his throat, to curse her, the whore, both of them, to disengage himself.

He choked that back. He steadied his mind. He had not worked all this while to turn now from the triumph. Anyway, as his temper waned, his ardor rose.

He could not take his eyes from the two women. He remembered she had a sister; this was Petronilla, then. They were so alike, and yet unalike. Each more beautiful than the other. The lush mouths, the high sloped cheekbones, the skin like cream. He recognized the one he had tumbled in Paris and in Saint Pierre, and the one who had made him kneel in Limoges. Eleanor was a hair taller. The sister was slighter, her hair a shade lighter. They gave off some allure, some aura, like a golden glow around them. He wanted them both, whatever they had done. The more, because of what they had done, like wild mares that would not be tamed, that he longed to bridle and ride.

He went to the real Eleanor. He said, “My lady Aquitaine. I knew I loved you from the first I saw you. I did not know how much, until now. You were born to share a crown with me. This boy, untimely come as he is, let him be the harbinger of the princes and princesses who will crowd our court. I want you; be my wife.”

She gave a low cry, and came into his arms and kissed him. Her gold-spangled eyes were suddenly huge with tears. So she had not known what he would do. She had risked it all, for the sake of her sister, who stood there smiling wide at them, the baby in her arms.

Eleanor said, “Then we marry tomorrow. Are you ready?” She spun on his fingertips, glittering, within reach now, the sun in a woman’s body. Aquitaine. He heard a door shut quietly. Petronilla had gone. He put his hands on Eleanor and drew her into his arms.

It was a hasty wedding, without much decoration. All through the ceremony, not caring to be noticed, Petronilla stayed in the dark of the little palace chapel, in the back. Afterward, she went out by a side door to the churchyard, to where a great crowd waited, merry as a maying. The day was bright and lovely, with a few little clouds scudding through the sky, and the smell of new-turned earth in the breeze. She climbed up the wall to the rampart by the arch, out of the way, and watched Eleanor and Henry come out of the church.

With whoops and cheers, her followers and his surrounded them, laughing and throwing flowers. Alys and Marie-Jeanne hugged each other. Eleanor had worn her long hair down, loose; certainly her life was beginning over. They made a new marriage, here, and a great new kingdom.

Only Eleanor, she thought, only Eleanor could have done this, defied the men’s order and the women’s bargain, seen that this thing was possible and then done it. Leaped outside the old cramped shell of womanhood and doing so, shattered it, maybe forever, and made the whole world wait on her.

The long red hair swung like a shawl around the Duchess of Aquitaine. Out on the pavement before the chapel, her new Duke caught her hands and kissed her. She flung her head back and laughed, her face high-colored. Flowers dappled her hair, her gown. Henry clutched her against him, kissed her throat, her ear. Petronilla guessed they had not waited on the ceremony to start the true work of the marriage.

Her lover came up behind her and slid his arm around her. She put her hands on his where it rested on her belt and leaned back against his chest.

“Was that the right choice?”

“For Eleanor, it was,” she said. “For him, well, he’s brought it on himself.”

When she carried the baby into the Green Tower, she had seen in Henry’s face how close he was to backing away from all this. But he had not. He deserved Eleanor.

“For you?” he said. “Are you friends again?”

“Yes,” she said. “She stood with me against him. And we were always sisters.”

In the courtyard, Eleanor and Henry held hands, turning around each other, laughing, her hair streaming like a silken flag, his face shining dark with mirth. He was trying to get her to go one way and she was pulling the other, laughing, still, laughing about it now, but this would be more a combat than a marriage.