The Secret Eleanor (35 page)

And now, to her surprise, she had no interest in it. She had everything she wanted now: Thomas, and the songs, and a life of her own. Smoothing her face, she faced the Empress again.

She said, “I know nothing of her, Your Majesty, save that she is beautiful and clever and rich.”

“Nothing?” The old woman jerked her head back, frowning. “How long were you there?”

“I know nothing, Your Majesty.”

“Did you see her at court? In her chamber?”

“Only at court, Your Majesty.”

“Did you ever see my son with her?”

“In Poitiers? No, Your Majesty.”

“But elsewhere?” Matilda leaped on the words.

“In Paris, Your Majesty. Long ago.”

“Then you were with the Queen there.”

“Your Majesty, I am Thomas’s wife, no more.”

“I do not believe you.”

“Your Majesty.”

The old woman grunted, her purpose crossed. She glared at Claire. “You’re a dull thing, after all,” she said. “Go on, I have no use for you.” Claire rose, and bowed, and went away out of the bower, a light skip in her walk.

She had passed the third trial. She had won, although she knew not what. Up there on the snowy pavement, Thomas stood, smiling at her. She ran to him, happy.

She said later, “I want to go back to Poitiers.”

“Why? What did she say to you?”

“Nothing. Nothing much. I just miss Poitiers. I loved it there.”

“Then we’ll go. But not now. It’s bad traveling weather now. In the spring. And there are a few places I’d like to see first.”

LIMOGES
CHRISTMAS 1151

 

 

 

The charters went out at last, summoning the great churchmen of France to the council to decide the issue of the King’s marriage, all to meet at Beaugency in the week before Palm Sunday. Meanwhile Eleanor spent Christmas as if it were ordinary. Petronilla went off to the church, to the glorious blaze of thousands of candles and the glitter of unveiled gold, to light and beauty newborn after the long dark waiting, while Eleanor sat behind a curtain, listening to a boring priest stumble through his Latin.

She grew stronger, day by day. She had stopped bleeding entirely, and she had not lost the baby. He still kicked and rolled in her belly, sometimes making a visible lump through her skin. She slung her arm around him, glad for him, who was as strong as his mother.

They had no Christmas feast, save a few scraps they ate together in their chamber; at least Petronilla did not attend the Vicomte’s great feast in the hall, from which the laughter and uproar and music and excitement wafted up to them all the whole dreary day. Eleanor could not read, or even sit still, and yet the great burden of her body wearied her. She was constantly tired even though she could not sleep. She dreamed of monsters.

The days plodded by. She stayed restless, bad-tempered, burning all of them with her temper, here and there, as she paced endlessly around the room.

Then came Twelfth Night. All that day the women purred and fussed around her in an excess of solicitation, but as the darkness fell and the revels began in the hall, one by one they slipped away. Even Marie-Jeanne, smiling and simpering, after putting Eleanor to bed with most tender care and kindness, made off to join the Feast of Misrule, when the lowest was highest, and every pleasure was permitted.

Eleanor sat alone in her bed, massive as a boulder. She had always loved this night, and it seemed hard and cruel that she should not be able to enjoy it. She wished Thomas were still here; she could call him in to play for her. Likely he would not come, though, willful as he was, as if his music set him out beyond even a duchess. And in any case, he was not here.

Slowly she began to imagine that she could, somehow, still take part in the revel. She would disguise herself in drab clothes, and it came to her that if anybody saw her, they would take her for Petronilla. She could go down and join the crowd, and kick up her heels as best she could.

She pried herself out of the bed. She, who never had to dress herself, struggled into an old gown, pulling and tugging at the skirt to get it over the mound of her belly. She wrapped a coif around her hair and knotted it like a peasant woman, and found a pair of wooden shoes. With a cloak around her against the bitter cold of the stair, she went out the door, where even the guards had gone away to gambol.

She started down the stair, one hand on the cold wall to keep her balance. Somewhere, down there, someone would be willing to make merry with even such a great lump as she was. She could hear them as she went down, the shrieks and laughter, the flurries of music, and the rhythmic thud of dancing feet.

In her belly, the child turned, as if it danced also.

She paused, her feet taking up the cold of the stair even through the shoes. If she went on, if in fact she found someone to toy with in the dark, the child would be tumbled with her.

She licked her lips. For an instant, her old rebel heart rose up, thinking,
No one shall stand in my way, still less a little worm I never asked for
. Her hand fell to her belly. Hers, no matter that she could not ever be his mother, yet he was hers, her charge, her baby. Suddenly a wave of love for him passed through her. She thought,
He did not ask to be. I made him, however much I didn’t think to do it. He should not suffer for my thoughtless fault.

Then below her, around the bend in the stairway, she heard the voices of children, whispering and giggling. Her hand on the wall still to help her keep her feet, she moved down through the dark; the glow of a torch shone around the curve in the stair. She went around onto the landing and found a crowd of children huddled there, peering down the last few steps into the hall.

They were the youngest pages and little girls in waiting, five and six years old, drawn to the heated excitement but afraid to go closer. When they saw her, they pressed themselves back against the wall; they would have run off, she saw, scattered like elves, if there had been a path, but she blocked the stairs upward, and the dark, uproarious hall below daunted them. She smiled at them and came down into their midst.

“Now, don’t be afraid. I’ve come to see, also—what’s going on out there?” She turned to peer out through the last tunnel of stairway, where a lone torch burned on the wall, into the shadowy dancing and laughing and merry tumult of Twelfth Night.

Only a few candles glowed in the cavernous darkness beyond, and those were at the far end of the great room, so at first all she saw was the churning mass of bodies, the arms upflung, heads bobbing, the spinning of a dance. Music played, somewhere, wild and a little off-tune and out of rhythm. She drew nearer the top of the stairs, trying to make out faces among the dark mob.

They were dancing in a great rope of bodies, each with her hands on the shoulders or waist of him before, twisting and turning their course through the hall. The candlelight shone for an instant on an upturned face, broad with laughter and red with drink. A foot kicked out, a skirt flew up. The whole wild jigging of bodies seemed one vast creature making love with itself.

She sank down on the step to watch, seeing out there the Vicomte himself, in jongleur’s costume, strenuously leaping with a servant girl. Another girl ran shrieking through the crowd, pushing between dancers, her hair streaming and her bodice half off, one breast bouncing naked. Eleanor gathered her skirts around her knees; she realized, startled, that the children had nestled in around her to watch, one tousled head against her left arm, a small hand on her right knee.

What a strange little revel,
she thought, delighted. She spread her cloak out around them to keep them warm, like a mother hen with her chicks.

“Look!” she said, and pointed toward the great hearth, where someone stood tossing buns from a basket into the crowd. People leaped up to catch them, climbing over each other in a wild tangle, knocking each other around. Down the hall a half dozen men came, mock fighting with staves; de Rançun was among them. As she watched, he leaped onto the table, parried the others a moment, and then jumped off over them and smacked the nearest on the backside.

Closer, against the wall, she saw two upright bodies working energetically together, and she drew the children’s gaze in the opposite direction.

“See the King of Misrule! Who is that—do any of you know?”

“ ’Tis Joques, the cook ’s boy!” The children’s laughter chimed around her. “Look at him, the big silly! Cook will make him scour pots tomorrow!” Out there people were singing, and the long rope of the dancers began to sway in time. A leather jug came sailing over the heads of the crowd to strike the wall and fall to the floor, obviously empty. A long young man in a woman’s houppelande, with enormous sleeves like wings, rushed through the crowd with three girls in pursuit; when they had gotten him out of the dense pack of people, they caught him and began to spin him around in their midst, shrieking with laughter.

“Dance, Reynaldo, dance!”

“Lady.” One of the children plucked at Eleanor’s sleeve. “Is that the Queen?”

Eleanor startled, apprehensive. She looked where the little girl pointed.

It was the Queen, or Petronilla, anyway, gliding through the crowd. As she passed, in spite of the leveling spirit of Twelfth Night, the people all bowed down, so it was as if she made a progress through them. She paid no heed to anybody, Petronilla, but minced along with a high-headed pride that set Eleanor’s teeth on edge. She said, “Yes, the Queen.”

She tucked her arm around her enormous belly. The excitement and fun of watching the revels had turned to ashes in her mouth. She thought,
This is mad. There can’t be two of us.

The little girl was looking up at her, wide-eyed. “She isn’t as pretty as you, my lady.”

“Ahh.” Her amusement was gone, and she could not bring it back. The children around her were giggling, daring each other to run out into the wild dance. Gently she disentangled herself from their midst, got her clumsy self up onto her feet. One hand on the wall to keep her balance on the slippery stair, she made her way back up to the dark empty bed.

Petronilla wore a half mask, and a hood over her coif, but they all thought they knew who she was, anyway. Twelfth Night, she thought, was the perfect time for her, the false Queen disguised, two deceptions making a fool of someone, herself for one. The crowd bowed deep as she passed through the crowded, boisterous hall, and she smiled and waved, Queen of Misrule.

Only a few lights burned here and there, so that there would be comfortable darkness in which to make merry. On the long tables the piles of bean cake and jugs of wine were rapidly diminishing. Up at the head of the table, the cook’s scullion, King for the evening, was already rapturously drunk on his throne, a paper crown on his head, bellowing half-coherent orders nobody bothered to fulfill. A line of dancers passed by her, hands on each other’s hips, kicking out and laughing. Petronilla strolled among them, head high, and a ripple of adoring comment went after her.

She glided through the room, accepting bows with a queenly, condescending smile. The people around her shouted and danced and sent up gales of laughter. A man in a hat tipped with bells leaped up out of the crowd, bent in an extravagant bow to her, and led her in a quick little dance down past the hearth. A cup came by, from hand to hand, and she took a sip of it. Someone gave her a bean cake, although there was no bean.

Near the door, someone touched her arm; she wheeled, startled, toward a strange little page, snow freckling the shoulders of his coat. He bowed double, put his finger to his lips, and beckoned.

She hesitated. She wondered at the effrontery of such a summons. She wondered whose page he was—the Vicomte was a famous lover. Her curiosity warmed her. This was the Night of Misrule, a time only to be merry in the dark. She wanted suddenly to be wanted, to be courted at least, if not necessarily won.