The Secret Eleanor (30 page)

They crossed the river, going north; the Jews left, headed for Troyes, and the palmers scattered. During the day local people came and went, getting some protection for small trips between villages. At the villages, they watered their horses, and people swarmed around them, trying to sell them bread, cheese, wine, even clothes and shoes.

A wool merchant joined them with a string of pack mules, and a couple of rough-looking horsemen who said they were knights. Every night, Thomas and Claire sang, and other people gave them the best meats, wine, and the softest bed.

It was colder as they went north. The wool merchant turned off on another road, and a crowd of black-robed men joined them, chattering in Latin, who said they were from the Studium, going to England, where there was another Studium. That night they stayed at another inn, where she and Thomas managed to find a corner to themselves.

This was behind the kitchen, and warm, and they lay down together. Her mouth was dry. There was enough light to see, but she could not look at him. She wanted to touch him. He kissed her forehead and held her close against him, and shyly she laid her hands on his shoulders.

He pressed against her, full length, his legs moving against hers. She slid her hands down his back, to his hips. She opened her legs a little, to let him in.

But he did nothing, only kissed her. His hand slipped in between her thighs, barely touching her. Her woman’s part felt as if it reached for him.

She said, “I’m ready,” and flushed, ashamed of having to say it.

“No,” he said firmly. “No, I am too big, you are too tender.” His fingers stroked the edges of her crease, until she arched her back, pleading with her body, and his kisses made her breath short.

“Thomas—”

“No, no, I don’t want to hurt you.”

He was laughing. He was playing with her. She gave a yelp. She seized hold of his stalk and drew it in, and they rollicked together in a gasping delicious dance, a new kind of music until the sun came up.

A few days later they stopped at midday at a well by the road; some dozen houses stood around it. She went off by herself, having perfected this now, found a sheltered place in a ditch, and made water. When she went back to where their mules were tied, he was gone.

She started. But before she could even look around, he came up, striding long.

His eyes were intense, as they were when he played the lute. He got her hand and led her a little away from the road, away from the crowd at the well, and from his sleeve he took a bit of paper.

“See this?”

She frowned at it; the edges were dirty. She held her cloak around her with both fists. The chill breeze had turned his cheeks ruddy; she thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She shook her head. “What is it?”

“This the Queen bade me give to Henry of Normandy.” He wiggled the paper under her nose.

“Oh.” She looked sharper. “What is it? A message.”

“I haven’t read it. It occurs to me—” His voice fell to a murmur. “I could get better reward for it somewhere else, though. Maybe we should read it.”

“What?” Her jaw dropped. The ground seemed to tilt under her. She looked at him as if he had turned into a toad. “You mean—betray her? She would never forgive you.” It would be his end. She shook her head at him. Everything she thought of him was suddenly coming loose, flying around her like a dust devil. “No. Who, for one thing? Where? How? Keep honest, Thomas. It’s easier.”

He laughed. “Good.” He stuck the slip of paper away in his sleeve again. “I knew how you would go at that.” He slipped his arms around her waist and kissed her.

She sighed, relieved. He had been testing her; it was his way, she realized, joking and gaming, as if he always had to come at truth slantwise. Then he said, “But therefore, what I just heard, by the well, changes everything.”

“What?” she said, with some foreboding.

He let go of her, except his hand rested on her hip. “That Duke Henry is in Le Mans, and going south. So if we keep going north, we will miss him.”

“Ah,” she said. Her gaze went to his sleeve, where the note was, wondering what was in it. If it mattered so much.

“Therefore,” he said, “I am going to Le Mans, as fast as I can, faster likely than you can keep up. I want you to go on to Rouen and I will meet you there.”

She gaped at him. The suspicion fell over her like a clammy fog. Everything whirled around her again, clattering and coming apart. He was abandoning her. Petronilla had been right all along; he had used her and now he was casting her off. He had turned, looking up the road toward the others, who were making ready to go on. He faced her again. “What?” he said innocently. He looked into her face. “Don’t you trust me?”

She composed herself, blinking; she remembered what he had proposed first, betraying Eleanor, which had been a trial, which she had won. Here was another trial. She faced him. “I trust you.” Her heart racketed under her ribs.

“Good.” He put his hands on her waist and lifted her up onto her mule. “I will meet you in Rouen.” He took the purse from his belt and shoved it at her.

“Thomas—”

“And this.” He slid the sacked lute off his shoulder and held it out.

She dropped the purse. With both hands she took the lute. Suddenly the upside-down world turned right and settled, still again. He was smiling at her, his eyes merry. By the road, someone called, “We’re going, hey, over there.” She heard a whip crack. She held the lute in her arms like a child, and Thomas stooped for the purse and tucked it between her thigh and the saddle.

“Watch out for that, it’s all we have,” he said, and turned away. She reined her mule around, one arm still wrapped around the lute, and followed the others out the gate. She did not turn to see him go.

She knew he would come back. He would never abandon his lute.

She jogged the mule along to get ahead of the wagons. The Flemish merchant too rode up in front, out of the dust, but she stayed behind him, riding by herself. Ahead the road wound off across the wintry countryside. She thought over what had just happened.

It was like an ordeal, she thought. Like a test of arms. First tempting her, with the Queen’s message, then trying her by leaving her. These things came in threes. Here was the second. There would be another one. She felt a little dizzy; abruptly she longed for Poitiers again, for the familiar people there, that easy life. “Yes, Your Grace.” Find the comb. Do as she was told. On the other hand, she thought, best to keep her wits about her here, where she was. Her hand fell on the purse, wedged against her thigh, and she took it and stuffed it inside her cloak.

From Poitiers Eleanor’s train rode south through a countryside in the clutch of winter, the wayside reeds standing in hedges of broken black sticks, the sky a wide pale sweep of cloudy blue. By the first evening, when they stopped for the night, a drizzle was falling. She bundled herself up in a cloak, worn to exhaustion, and the horse himself was tired and went meekly along under a slack rein.

They continued on again, the next morning, very early, still moving along ahead of the King with his larger, slower train, and the morning after. So at midday of the third day they came to Limoges.

The rain had changed to wet snow, falling into a keen sweeping wind. Divided in half by its river, the city spread out before them over the valley and up the far hillside, its highest spires barely visible in the heavy gray air. Its river divided it; it was the upper half that mattered. Petronilla thought it beautiful, perched on its hillside, its tiled roofs in steps against the snow.

The Vicomte of Limoges had just girded his city round with a new wall, about which there were some issues of legality, but the gate was open for the King and Queen, and the sentries bowed her procession through into the close passages of the streets. The snow was sticking to the roofs and weighed down the trees and shrubs; the horses walked stiffly on the slippery cobbles.

Petronilla had a sudden feeling of the sky closing relentlessly down on them as if to crush them under the eternal night of winter. She pulled the hood of her cloak full around her face, the fur against her cheeks.

On the road below the castle, in the upper city, she gave a nod to de Rançun to stop their progress and reined the Barb around toward the wagon, and Eleanor.

Her sister was bundled up in the mourning clothes and swathed in veils and looked as big as a cow. Tapping her heel on his girth, Petronilla pressed the snorting Barb to the side of the wagon. With a glance she drove back the curious people around them, who sidled away out of earshot and pretended not to be paying attention.

“How are you?”

Eleanor said, “Very well, actually. Thank you. If this is Raimund, up here, we are in some trouble. He’s fairly clever, you know, and I always flirt with him. Can you do that?”

“No.” Petronilla chewed her lip. She had met the Vicomte of Limoges once or twice, and he was more than clever, and she certainly could flirt with no one the way Eleanor did. She said, “You must be ill. I shall be very concerned.”

“Good,” Eleanor said, and lay back, giving out a tragic groan. Petronilla went back up to the head of the train, the reins slippery in her sweating hands.

But only the Vicomtesse, in a crowd of ladies and churchmen, awaited them in the arched gateway of the castle, overflowing with welcomes and explanations. “Your Grace! My lord has gone out to attend the King, but we are very glad to bring you in here, my gracious lady—”

Petronilla leaned down from her saddle to let the woman kiss her hand. “My lady, we are very glad indeed to be here. My sister is suddenly taken very ill, and we must go at once to some quiet place where she can be made comfortable.”

The Vicomtesse was a short, round woman, like an apple, with shiny dark eyes like apple seeds. These widened with a sudden expansion of understanding, and Petronilla saw she had heard the rumors and was leaping to her own conclusions about what ailed her sister. “Oh, yes, Your Grace!” She swept out of the way, performing an elegant bow as she did and ushering Petronilla on past her.

They clattered into the courtyard, swept clean of snow, where the castle’s servants and guests were gathered all around, their clothes bright as banners against the windy white and gray stone. The wagon rolled in, drawing every eye. Voices rose, chattering, and all craned their necks to see. Petronilla went on across the courtyard, hidden in her cloak, ignored. Ruefully, she realized that, even buried in coarse cloth, veiled out of sight, and traveling under a false name, Eleanor was still the center of attention. She let de Rançun lift her down from her saddle, but even he was twisting to look back at the wagon.

They carried Eleanor off like the Martinmas hog, very dramatically, on a cloak borne by a dozen men. With de Rançun in charge, they took her in through the main hall of the castle and around to a separate set of rooms in the north tower. The stair was narrow and twisting, but with a great deal of shouting and apologies they managed to haul her up to the top room.

Once they were in the bedchamber, Petronilla had no trouble sending away everybody except their own women and throwing the door closed. Eleanor, who had been laid tenderly on the bed, sat up, pulling aside the tangled veil.

“I cannot know how you bear this. It’s hot as an oven, all of it.” Marie-Jeanne had come to help her, and they peeled off layers of white wool. The Queen of France emerged from the crumpled petals of the widow’s gown, her hair a damp red-gold tangle and her eyes shining. “I can be myself, now, as long as I don’t have to ride.”

Petronilla had sunk down on a stool. Without Claire they were short of help. They would have to bring in pages, sometimes, when they got food, or messages, or visitors, when they sent for an escort so they could go out. Marie-Jeanne dumped the gown on the bed and went to stoke the braziers, and Alys had gotten out cups and was pouring wine. Petronilla faced her sister again. It would make pretending to be Eleanor all the harder if everybody kept seeing the real one on a regular basis. She raked her fingers through her hair, and Marie-Jeanne came at once with a brush.