The Secret Eleanor (36 page)

The page led her out through a side door, across the snowy darkened courtyard to the gatehouse, and in through a narrow door. In the bare little room beyond, a single candle burned. As soon as she went in, a man embraced her from behind.

“Eleanor.” He turned her toward him, pulled her mask away, and kissed her. “I had to come. I had to see you again.” His mouth pressed again on hers, eager, and his hands groped over her breast, her backside. She looked into eyes as gray, as hard and sharp as flint. It was Henry of Anjou.

Her first wild impulse was to kiss him back. She sank into the fierce embrace, excited, the strong arms around her, the powerful chest beneath her hands. It had been a long time since anyone had kissed her like this. A rutting bull, she thought, who would carry off whomever he willed, Eleanor or anyone else. She remembered his brother’s voice, saying,
He never sleeps alone
.

That memory pierced her like an arrow. A cold veil fell over her. She could not yield. She could not submit to him, or she would vanish into his lust, his ambition, just another conquest.

She put her hands on his chest and shoved him back. He did not let go easily, but he drew his face away, frowning. He said, “You were more eager when last I saw you.”

No doubt,
she thought, but she tossed her head at him and glared him in the face.

“Then I had not heard you had taken another into your bed, sir. Your brother told me. You have torn what was between us.” She slid out of his arms and backed away, crossing her arms over her chest and pinning him with her stare, making herself into Eleanor.

“I have helped you with your cause,” she said. “I have kept faith with you. But you have betrayed me, and I am not sure anymore what there is between us, Henry.”

His jaw dropped. She glanced over his shoulder at the door, which was shut; they were alone in the little room. She turned to face him—the hard gray piercing eyes, the harsh face not so handsome as his father and his brother. Stronger, fiercer. The muscles working at the corners of his jaw. He was getting up a temper. She smiled at him, indifferent to his heat. She said, “You will not treat me thus, sir. No. Not ever.”

He gabbled out something, caught between his anger and his guilty surprise, and she laughed, all scorn. He had thought her secured to him already, his property, like Anjou, and Normandy. His face reddened. The high color made him look much younger. His mouth closed, and his lips moved in and out, and his brows curled over his nose. His eyes softened; she saw he was hunting for excuses.

He said, low, “What you did for me—that was, I hope, for both of us, for our kingdom. As for the other—” His hands muddled the space between them. He said, “It was just—I don’t care about them.”

She laughed again. “Them!” She thought,
Does he not hear what his own voice says?

She turned toward the door, and he stepped in the way, barring her. A chill of fear went over her skin. She dared not let him see that; she faced him with a thunderous frown.

“I shall go now, my lord. I will not be here with you, alone like this.”

“Eleanor.” He put out his hands as if he would seize her again. She gathered herself to fight him, to scream.

This he saw. His face was open as a mirror; she saw all the thoughts behind it. She saw him decide against attacking her, saw him think of something else. He drew his arms back, and he went down on one knee.

“Forgive me,” he said. “You are right, and I was wrong. You alone have my heart—I swear it. Please. Forgive me.”

This sudden submission startled her. She swayed, as if she had been leaning against his force. She looked into his hard gray eyes, wondering if he was true, and she knew, she knew as if he spoke this aloud, that he was saying only what would get him what he wanted. But he would do anything for Aquitaine. She laughed again. He was deceitful, wily, not just strong, and they could never trust him, but he was a marvel. She said, “You are too clever, sir. Let me by.”

He stood up where he was, but his voice fell, wheedling. “I should not have come. I am very busy in the north; I am trying to summon a council, and I have to raise some money. What you sent me has all but given me the throne. But I thought—the Twelfth Night feast—it’s like a night out of time, anyway. A few days’ gallop.” He shrugged. “Then this is the welcome I get.”

“This,” she said, “is the welcome you deserve.”

She started toward the door again, and he reached out and gripped her arm. But his gaze met hers; he did not try to overpower her, and he let go of her at once. He said, “The annulment is to happen.”

“Yes,” she said. “At Eastertide.” She lifted her hand, and he let go of her. Then, impulsively, she tipped forward and kissed his mouth.

This began chastely enough, and he did not try to seize her, but the soft hairs of his beard caressed her cheek, and her lips parted, and their tongues touched. A wave of desire nearly overwhelmed her. But she dared not. She pushed herself out of his arms again and fled out the door.

In the dark and snowy courtyard the cold air burned on her cheeks. She went around toward the tower, and in the arch at the door, under the torchlight, she stopped and straightened her dress. Her heart was pounding madly under her ribs. She lifted her fingers to her mouth. She had wanted to go on kissing him. She had wanted to go much further.

He had not suspected—not for an instant; he had taken her for Eleanor without question.

She thought,
He does not love her. He wants only Aquitaine.
She remembered the power in him, which drew her as it drew her sister, and she wondered if Eleanor could master him, or if he would not break her like a wild mare.

When she looked again the gatehouse door was open, the yellow candle glow weakly gleaming out, and he was gone. A little later, she came upon Alys, a little drunken, sitting by the stair up to the tower.

“Has there been any word of a—a stranger come here? A northerner?”

Alys looked up at her, her eyes large and dark, smudged. “My lady,” she said, and laughed. “My lady.” Laughing, as if this were the hugest of jokes, she put out her hand. Petronilla gave up trying and sat down beside her.

Outside Limoges, Henry tossed aside the pilgrim’s hat he had used to get inside the city, retrieved his horse from a shelter near the road, and went out toward the highway. At least the snow had stopped. He thought he had come a long ride for just a kiss. His mouth still tasted the kiss. He wanted her more than ever; she was even more beautiful than he remembered, her pride around her like a golden glow. When they were married, he would lay her down whenever he wanted. Make that lush red mouth moan.

He remembered the lithe, vigorous body in his arms. The world called her a harlot, a well-used woman, but she seemed almost like a maiden to him, fresh and wild, full of her own worth.

He rode on toward the main road that ran north past Poitiers. As he passed he saw the country around him, more hilly than Anjou or Normandy, the tidy villages tucked within their walls, the castles on the peaks. Their castles were bigger than in the north, and better placed. He thought also he would not have let the Vicomte of Limoges build that wall. Ahead, the road ran out onto a broad plain, and the river valley opened up before him.

All of this would be his, soon. His. And the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He drove his horse steadily northward, back where his work was, but he kept thinking of Aquitaine.

In the dream, Eleanor found herself standing alone in a long hall, with the light coming in through windows. Behind her, above her, somewhere, a voice was speaking the same words over and over. It was Bernard, she realized, the old abbot’s thunderous profound voice seeming to come from heaven.

He was saying, “Trust no one. Trust no one. Trust no one.”

In the dream, there was a table, along the wall below the windows, like an altar, covered with white, and on it a row of daggers. She went along the table picking up the daggers one by one, weighing them, and putting them back. Each one seemed wrong to her. One was too short, another too heavy. Was she choosing one? What was she looking for? One was ugly, one dull, one broken. She reached for the last, a long shining silver blade, and her hand closed on the grip, and the knife turned to a snake in her hand.

She recoiled, still clutching the hilt, and the snake doubled around to bite her, a patterned, wedge-shaped head, jaws yawning; she saw the curved fangs dripping green with venom. Then she woke up.

She knew what the dream meant. Now, after Twelfth Night, she even thought she knew who was the snake.

With Christmas over, and the summonses sent out, they all left Limoges. The King departed first, going back to Paris. A day later, the women struck out for Poitiers.

Petronilla rode in her disguise, Duchess of Aquitaine, for a few months still Queen of France, the gray Barb dancing between her legs. By habit she kept herself straight and her head high, but inwardly she felt herself torn in pieces.

Since Twelfth Night and the meeting with Henry of Normandy, she had spent every morning long at her prayers, begging God to tell her what to do and how to act. God gave her no answers. She had always had Eleanor, before, to talk things out with, and now there was no one. Henry of Normandy crowded into her mind: the rough harsh voice, his arrogance, pushing into her embrace as if he owned her. Eleanor meant to marry this man. She dared not tell Eleanor even that she had met him, much less what else she had done.

And he had lied to her, to gain his purpose. He had no honor, for all his high birth and noble name. He was the more dangerous for that. Young as he was, he had a devil’s wit. He had known how to wiggle inside her outrage, how to blunt her fury, that humble kneeling bow. He would not keep faith. He would follow only what he saw as his interest.

This was the man that her sister meant to bring to Aquitaine, to rule in Aquitaine.

But also, he could be King of England. He had taken Normandy and Anjou, in the short space since they had seen him in Paris. Eleanor had said the letters she sent him would sweep away King Stephen’s last support. Her whole body remembered his embrace; she wondered if she was imagining that he had been so warm, a fire in her arms.

She glanced at de Rançun, riding beside her, and then over her shoulder, to see who was riding within earshot: only the standard-bearer, half asleep in his saddle, and some soldiers. “Joffre,” she said. “What do you know of Duke Henry?”

He shot her a sharp look and nudged his horse closer, so they rode stirrup against stirrup. He said, “I think he is an Angevin, my lady, coarse and cruel and ambitious.” His voice was pitched to reach her ears only.

“But he is a warrior.” Saying that, she felt suddenly the phantom impact of his kiss.

“Yes. He’s a great soldier, I’ll give him that.”

“My sister means to marry him, once she is free,” she said.

He twitched away, as if at a shower of sparks into his face. He said, “I know that. And it will be the ruin of us all. I tried to talk to her, but she would not hear me.”

As they walked along, the Barb was reaching out to nip at his horse, which tossed its head. Petronilla drew the reins tighter. She thought,
The ruin of us
. Or the making of something greater. Joffre, she thought, saw his own will here, and made it Aquitaine’s. “He is young—much younger than her. And he will grow. She might teach him.”

De Rançun was staring straight ahead, his body rigid as a stone. “I should not have spoken. I have no place in this.”

“That you did, loyal as you are to her, is a sign of the truth in what you tell me,” she said.

“My lady,” he said, looking away, “please, talk of it no more. I fear what else I might say.”

“No more, then,” she said. She thought he had said far more in fact than he intended. Behind her, in the wagon, her sister traveled, carrying a child she dared not keep, leaving a husband who loved her distractedly, preparing to take another who would be much harder to deal with. Headstrong, passionate as she was, he might lead her more than she led him.