The Secret Eleanor (26 page)

“She could ride in a wagon,” Petronilla said. “Or at least, a less mettlesome horse.”

He said, “She will never consent to that, I think. She would find it humiliating.”

Petronilla studied him from an angle, his square, ordinary face, his hair almost white, like sheep’s wool, shagging down to his shoulders. He had always loved Eleanor best. She remembered when they were children, once, how he had run full tilt into a pond to fetch her ball back to her, only to find, when he bore it up to her in triumph, that she had lost interest and gotten into something else. He had turned and handed the ball then to Petronilla, and she had never forgotten the glum disappointment in his face. Like her, he was in second place.

She put her hand on his sleeve. “Thank you, Joffre. You are good and loyal and noble.”

He said, “I have gone every step of the way with her, since she became the Duchess. I will be steadfast now. I have no love for the French.”

His hand brushed hers on his sleeve. His touch was warm as the sun. At once, they realized they were too close, and both moved apart, saying nothing.

“Nor do I,” she said. “We are one on that.” And she flushed a little, at something too nearly said. She lowered her eyes.

Beyond him, in the shadow of the tower, the page suddenly bounded up and leaped to open the door. Eleanor was coming out into the garden. Petronilla turned, glad. “You can say this to her yourself, now, about the procession, because here she is. But I agree, and will help.”

“What do you two do, here?” Eleanor said. Behind her, Claire and Alys were trailing along the path. Eleanor wore a billowing dark cloak, and the wind was quickly teasing her coif apart; she reached up suddenly and pulled it off, and her hair streamed down like a cascade of russet silk. The wind brought the high color into her face. Her eyes were a bright, golden green.

“My lady,” de Rançun said, “I want to say—I have to beg—you must not ride the Barb in this procession tomorrow. It’s too dangerous.”

Eleanor stopped still on the path and her face settled. She did not lose her temper, which surprised Petronilla; she guessed then that her sister had already been considering how to manage this. Eleanor’s eyebrows went up and down, and her gaze flicked toward Petronilla, taking in that she and de Rançun had discussed it, and then she came up beside Petronilla and stood looking out over the wall. Her hand slid down her front, and under the cloak the bulge of her belly showed round and ripening.

“I can still ride the Barb. They have put it out very widely around the city that I am to lead this procession. It will be a great event, and everybody will be watching. Everyone knows that’s my horse. If I don’t ride him, they’ll suspect something. And once they begin to suspect, everything will fall apart.”

“You can say he’s come up lame,” Petronilla said. “Or you like another horse. Or you could ride in the wagon with the icon.”

“You think the wagon is less a jostle than a horse?”

“We can make you comfortable in the wagon,” de Rançun said.

Eleanor swung to face him. “Do you think then people won’t know what’s going on? If I ride around Poitiers in a wagon, everybody in France will know at once there’s something wrong with me. Have we come all this way for nothing? Have we gone so far, to give it all up now?” Her eyes glinted, full of anger, and then, abruptly, full of tears. “No. I won’t give up, not now. I will be free of Louis, one way or another, child or not.”

Petronilla said, “Or I could take your place.”

They all stammered silent, and all their faces swiveled toward her. She said nothing; the words had jumped from her, all but unbidden. Eleanor said, “Sweet Jesus.”

De Rançun said, his voice low, “Yes. She’s done it before, my lady—from any distance, how often are you taken for each other?”

Alys stepped forward. “Oh. Oh, yes, that is the perfect way—Your Grace, don’t you see?”

Eleanor’s mouth was open, as if she would speak, but she said nothing; in her eyes, Petronilla saw the wild thoughts racing each other back and forth. Eleanor jerked away from them all, turning to stare at the tower.

“Can you ride my horse, Petra?”

Petronilla collected herself, excited. Eleanor was considering it, then. She imagined the Barb and could not see herself in the saddle. “I don’t know. You know I don’t ride astride very much.”

“Then we say he’s lame, and get you another,” Alys said.

De Rançun said, “If she rides the Barb, they’ll believe without a doubt she’s Eleanor.”

Now Eleanor faced Petronilla again, narrow-eyed, with a little smile. “You would have to cast off your widow’s white, at least. I’d see that, anyway. In my clothes, and if you take on my manner, which I have seen you do quite well—”

As the thought matured, Petronilla’s courage gave out; she went stiff as wood, a carved puppet. They would all stare at her, everybody, for miles; there would be nowhere to hide. They would laugh at her presumption. She would make a fool of herself.

Yet she could be Eleanor, in front of everybody, just for a day. She could find out at last what it meant to be the center of all attention, the glory of the world.

Alys said, “There are ways to make your faces utterly alike. My lady Petronilla, I have told you often, a little brush of color in your cheeks, and I have a trick for your eyes, that would make you the image of the Queen.”

Petronilla licked her lips; she tried to tell herself that she did not really want to be Eleanor. That it was to save her sister that she did this. But in her heart a new, eager lust stirred up, a sudden ambition.

Eleanor said, “Then we will do it. Petra, you are sure of this?”

Petronilla blinked; she could not meet her sister’s eyes. “I will try,” she said. “I know how to do it, I suppose. And we have to do something. But—” If she was going to be brave, she would be brave all the way. She turned to de Rançun. “As you said, I have to ride the Barb, and I have to ride astride. You must help me.”

“Good,” de Rançun said, with a quick smile; he reached out and touched her arm. “You’re a better rider than you think, Petra. You can do it.” He remembered again, and said, “My lady.”

Eleanor hugged her. “My sister.” Petronilla hugged her back, her cheek against her cheek, and shut her eyes, fighting off her fears, her wild surmises, her awakening will.

De Rançun and Petronilla left almost at once to work with the Barb somewhere; Eleanor lingered in the garden, enjoying the crisp air and the view of the river plunging along far below the wall. Alys went swiftly off to gather her brushes and paints. Only Claire remained behind.

The girl had stood back from all the excitement. She was doing nothing, her hands twining together, her eyes downcast. Eleanor turned away, looking over her shoulder, but still Claire did not leave. A tingle of suspicion went down Eleanor’s spine. She said, “Do you wish something, child?”

The girl lifted her eyes and met Eleanor’s, direct, although a frown dented her forehead. Eleanor faced her, now keenly attuned to her. “What is it, Claire?”

“Your Grace,” Claire said, and came forward, and dipped into a bow. But still direct. Eleanor had never seen her so bold. “There is something—I have long known this, but I thought—what just happened, though—I must tell you.”

Eleanor was drawn tight as a sail in the wind; she watched the girl’s eyes. “Speak, then,” she said.

The Barb was agile as a cat, headstrong and mischievous; as soon as Petronilla mounted him, he threw her.

She landed hard on the grass, her hands under her. Her stomach seemed to bounce even after the rest of her had stopped. De Rançun was settling the gray Barb down, and he said, “We’ll get another horse.”

“No.” She got up off the ground, shaken but whole, and went back toward him and the horse. They had come outside the city to do this, to a meadow in the woods, and there were no witnesses; here she looked like a fool only to herself. And to de Rançun, who knew anyway.

The horse snorted at her, his ears switching back and forth, and his eyes gleaming with a wicked joy, as if he had just done something wonderful. He tossed his long white mane and snorted. Now that he knew he could pitch her, he would try it again as soon as possible. She said, between her teeth, “I will ride him—help me.”

She thought,
I am not worthy if I cannot ride her horse.
She did not think what she was worthy of, if she could.

De Rançun said, “Keep your heels down and your head up—I’ll hold his bridle this time.” He boosted her effortlessly up into the saddle, and she flung her leg across, pulling her skirts after her, sitting astride as she had not done since she had ridden her pony bareback as a child.

The horse bounced again and rocked her forward, but this time, expecting it, and with de Rançun holding his head, she stayed on, got her feet into the stirrups, and drove her heels down. De Rançun had the reins close under the horse’s chin, talking in a steady, soothing stream as the animal danced and sidled around him, light on his feet as a deer. She took up the reins.

“Let him go.”

“Keep him collected. Don’t let him stick his nose out!” He turned toward his black horse.

Under her the Barb bounded forward, swift and soft and powerful; she gathered him up, touching her leg to his side, driving him onto the bit so that he had to flex his neck. Turning him in a circle, she held him to a mincing slow trot. De Rançun rode up beside her, and the Barb shied violently, and she went forward out of the saddle again and he bolted.

De Rançun galloped alongside a moment and then fell behind, shouting. She found her seat after only a few strides and, working the reins, was able to turn the horse in a circle, and slow him down again, and get control of him again.

“He’s so fast,” she said, as de Rançun caught up to her.

“He’s a damn devil.” He leaned out to slap the curved muscular gray neck. “You did that very well. I told you, you can ride this horse. Just keep him collected. He can’t run away with his chin tucked in.”

Petronilla was trying to picture how Eleanor sat in her saddle, her shoulders square. Often she held the reins overlapped in one hand, one over and one under. Often she laid her hand with the reins together on her thigh, her other hand on her hip. Petronilla’s own thighs were already sore, and her backside hurt in a new place; this was much less comfortable than riding aside, she thought, but also she had more mastery of the horse. She made the Barb canter in a circle, his action smooth as cream, like riding in the crook of an angel’s arm.

I can do this,
she thought, with a surge of excitement.
I can do everything she can do.
With a kind of raw lust, she threw her head back and laughed out loud.

That night Bordeaux came to them, as Eleanor and Petronilla were playing tables in the hall of the Maubergeon, with six candles in a sconce set high over the board. At the announcement of him, Petronilla glanced quickly at her sister to make certain that the darkness disguised her. With relief she saw that only Eleanor’s face showed in the light, and her hands.

The Archbishop strolled across the room toward them, smiling, but he looked weary and worn, and Eleanor with a glance sent a page for a chair for him.

“Good evening, my dear girls,” he said, in his informal, Occitan drawl. He took his place carefully on the chair the page had brought; Petronilla suspected a few untested stools had collapsed under him. He planted his hands on his widespread knees and looked over the board between them. His jowls hung around his collar in round folds; his eyes drooped a little, like little red swags, as if he were always sad in spite of his jokes. “Well,” he said, “you see, playing at tables, here, your girlish impulses serve you very ill, Eleanor.”

Eleanor laughed at him, annoyed. Petronilla said, “Uncle, are you going on with us to Limoges, when we set out again?”

“Ah, no,” he said. “I’m for Bordeaux by myself; I must keep court there, and the quarter day is coming up.” He took off his cap and swiped his hand across his shining head.