The Secret Eleanor (38 page)

Henry was saying, “I still need more money.”

“God’s body, you are a bog for soaking up metal,” his mother said. Although the room was not cold, she was bundled in the fur, her thinning hair tucked under a fur cap, her hands hidden in the laps of the pelt. “I have no more money to draw on, sirrah, understand that.”

“Get it from the priests,” he said. Claire twitched, startled.

His mother said, slowly, “Well, there is always the Crusade.”

“Yes,” he said. “Get the money they’ve been squirreling away for the Crusade.”

His mother drew herself up, affronted. “You blaspheme. You are more like your father every day.”

“I want that money.”

“The Church—”

“Has money,” he said, and smiled, as if this made perfect sense to him. When he smiled, the tips of his teeth showed. Claire thought,
Eleanor and he are a good match
.

His mother turned away, her hand up. “I’m not going to talk about this with you.”

He circled around her, making her look at him, his head thrust forward like a fighting dog’s. “They’ll do it. Go to them, demand they make me a gift. All the Crusade money.”

She twisted the other way. “Leave me. I’m tired.” Her eyes lit on the girl off to the side. “Claire, fetch me some warm cider.”

Claire went off. Henry was still nagging at his mother; Claire thought he enjoyed harassing her just to see her try to elude him. It was an old game with them. She thought again of Thomas, going behind her back, the dark suspicions mounting. When she brought the cider in a wooden cup, the Duke was still there, but standing aside, looking pleased. His mother had agreed, although likely only to get rid of him. She turned to Claire, her scrawny old hands reaching for the cup.

Claire held it out to her. As she did, on an impulse, the girl turned and looked at Duke Henry.

He caught her eye; she had seen him watch her before, interested, and now his interest quickened. She lowered her eyes. Then, knowing what she did, she raised them again, and looked at him through her lashes.

His eyes popped wide; he understood. The old woman said, garrulous, “That’s too hot.” Claire jerked her gaze down again to the task she was doing; suddenly she was rough with embarrassment. She wished she had kept her eyes off him; she wondered what she had let out of the bottle. She swallowed.

“I’ll bring you another, Your Majesty.”

“No, no,” Matilda said wearily. “I’ll just hold it. It will keep me warm.” She put her hands around the cup and looked off down the hall.

Claire glanced through the side of her eyes at the young Duke, standing there, watching her. Waiting. She turned and rushed away through the side door.

She could not find Thomas. He was in none of the usual places, their corner in the hall, or by the hearth, and she was going toward the door when he came in from the outside, his lute sacked on his shoulder.

She ran to him, so glad to see him she was crying. “It’s the cold,” she said, at once, burrowing into his arms. “It’s the cold.”

In her heart, she thought,
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I will never doubt you again
.

They moved inside to be where it was warmer. He put his arms around her. “What’s the matter? What happened?” He held her against him; he slid one hand quickly down over her belly, and then pretended to be pulling her gown straight. She leaned her head against him, amazed. She had not thought he had noticed what was happening with her; she hardly even knew it herself yet. He kissed her forehead.

She thought,
I nearly lost all, for nothing, for a suspicion; I would have given myself to the Duke
. She shut her eyes. The evil she had seen in him she had let sprout in herself.

She said, “Let’s go back to Poitiers. We don’t have to wait for spring, do we?”

“Poitiers,” he said. His voice rose, eager. “That’s good enough. I want to get out of here; I cannot bear this cold, and the style of Lent here is very sore.”

Duke Henry with a crowd of his men was going by them, out the door. The young Duke’s head turned, his gaze flicking toward her and Thomas. She shut her eyes and longed to be somewhere else. She would never do it again. She leaned on Thomas, crying again, and he took her off toward the fire.

The Empress was not happy that they were going, and she raged at Thomas when he went to tell her. “Gently born,” she cried, over and over. “You cannot drag her through the snow.” The more she argued, the more determined he was to leave, and eventually she realized that, stopped shouting, and stared at him for some moments. He stared back.

At last she said, “God’s body. The arrogance of you songmen is beyond understanding. What is it but noise and gibberish? Go, then. I have heard enough of your filthy music anyway.” She tossed her hand in the air, as if she threw him aside.

He worked quickly to get them ready. In this he had another good reason to be glad of Claire, because while he spent whatever he could find, she had saved every coin she could; and when other gifts came, she had turned them into coin, too. Therefore she had a good purse, which he took to buy them each a horse for the trip south, with half the money left over. They were only waiting for a company to travel with, few enough in the deep of winter, especially in Lent. Finally they heard of some Jews from the Rouen Yeshiva going south, and they agreed to join them, at least as far as Blois.

Thomas hooked the lute to his saddle by the strap of the sack and stooped to check the girths; Claire was standing by her own horse. Duke Henry came up to him.

“Lute player. You are leaving here. I’m sad to hear this.” His gaze stabbed over Thomas’s shoulder toward Claire.

“I have light feet,” Thomas said. “I don’t like to be anywhere very long.”

“Yet—” Henry’s eyes met his, sharp. “I’ve heard you are going back to Poitiers.”

Thomas thought he was looking at Claire. He said, “Yes, my lord, eventually. There are a few places I would go first, but my wife wants to go back there.”

“Your wife.” Henry looked past him again, and this time Thomas knew he looked at Claire. Thomas frowned; he remembered how she had clung to him that day. Henry shortened his gaze to him again.

“You are a clever man; you could be of use to me. While you are there, whatever you see of the Duchess, take note of it. I will make this worth your trouble.”

Thomas put his head to one side. This was going the other way now. He said, “What will you give me?

“What do you want?” Henry said. His mouth kinked, half smiling. “Tell me what you see.” He nodded toward Claire, behind him, and went away.

Thomas went up to her, thinking with some excitement about what the Duke had said. It was the game, more than the money, that tempted him. His wife said, “What did he want?”

He could not tell her; he pretended, instead, to be jealous, and said, “Don’t look at him like that.” At that she blushed and turned away, and he was sorry he had played with her. He turned to his horse and mounted, and they went off to join the rest of the company.

In Poitiers the days were dull. The winter had turned, and the sun rode higher in the sky, its light stronger, and on the slopes below the Maubergeon the first green buds appeared on the trees. Lent was almost over.

Eleanor toiled up and down the stairs, trying to bring the baby on, but even he betrayed her; he would not come in time to rescue her.

One day she met Petronilla, coming down the stairs, and they stopped and faced each other.

Her sister wore a splendid green gown. She stared at Eleanor, and Eleanor stared back, expecting some apology, some gesture of contrition, some opening through the barrier between them. Petronilla met her eyes and said nothing. Finally Eleanor trudged on by her. That night she wept for hours.

He cannot tell the difference,
she thought, over and over.
He cannot tell the difference.

The day was soon when she should go to Beaugency. In her own room, anchored to her bed by her belly, she waited to be told that her own women, once again, with her own clothes, and her own crown, were transforming her sister into Duchess of Aquitaine, the Queen of France. She wept, thinking of it, and cursed between her teeth, and in her great belly the baby turned.

Petronilla sat like a doll on the stool while Alys fussed over her, a dab of paint upon her cheeks, a swish of a brush over her throat.

“Is she well? My sister.”

She should say,
The Queen
. But it was not the Queen Petronilla fretted for, but the sister. She herself was becoming Queen, under the touches and devices of the women, but she could not paint and brush herself another sister.

Since Eleanor had shrieked at her, she had been arguing the justice of it over and over in her mind; she had not sought out Henry d’Anjou, she had done only what she had to do. She had put him in his place, as he deserved—as Eleanor herself should have done. She felt Eleanor’s rage like a wound in her heart. She bundled off the memory of that last, passionate kiss.

The thing between her and her sister was hard as cooling iron, was turning rank, would poison them both. She knew Eleanor would never bend her neck, would never admit to being wrong.

It was Petronilla’s duty to ask forgiveness, even if she had done nothing. Once Petronilla had almost yielded, on the stairs, and done what she knew Eleanor expected, bowed to her, and let her have her way. She resisted that. A lie would not heal the wound; a lie would only deepen it.

Alys held the Byzantine looking glass before her, and Petronilla inspected the face reflected in the oval of gold and jewels. She was beautiful. More beautiful now than Eleanor was. Yet her heart ached for the sister whose face she saw in the mirror, the sister she had lost.

“How does Eleanor fare? Is her time upon her yet?”

“No,” Alys said. “She lies abed, very sad, and cries much, and the baby is still high up under her belt.”