The Secret Eleanor (40 page)

He found a priest; they would be married during Holy Week, a time of good luck for such things. As soon as the tavern-keeper’s wife and girls found out, they would not leave Claire alone, but bustled her around to find ribbons and a gown, new shoes, an embroidered coif. They were to be married on the porch of the church on Holy Thursday, and the day before that, they got her naked into a tub in the kitchen and poured buckets of hot water over her, and scrubbed her until her skin glowed red and washed her hair with rosewater.

They gossiped, too, telling over their little local scandals, but also about the Queen of France, who had gone to Beaugency to lose her crown. Claire ducked her head under the water and lifted it, dripping, to hear the oldest girl say, “They say she wept and wept. What a terrible thing, your husband casting you off like that.”

Claire said nothing. She wondered which of the sisters was at Beaugency—if Eleanor had borne her baby yet. Her heart ached to go back to Poitiers. She laid her arms on the sides of the tub and suffered the girls to drag a comb through her hair.

“Your husband will never do such a thing, sweet lady,” one said, and patted her shoulder. “Tomorrow you will be married!” They all sighed.

“And none too soon, either,” said the tavern-keeper’s wife, acidly, and they all laughed, even Claire.

“He is a troubadour,” she said. “He lives by his own law.”

Again they all sighed. “I have never heard such music. I hope you stay forever.”

Claire was silent. The comb tugged at her hair. She felt as clean and warm as the sunlight, surrounded by the scent of roses.
He is my troubadour,
she thought; she knew why he wanted to marry, and it amused her that he thought she might ever leave him, for anything. But the idea of actually being married made her happy; she felt as if they were passing through an invisible door together.

“We’ll have another marriage soon, if the man in the castle has his way,” said the tavern-keeper’s oldest daughter. She had brought a cup of wine, mixed with herbs and honey, and sipped from it and held it out to Claire.

“Ssssh,” said her mother. “Such things are never certain. Don’t speak of it until it’s done.”

Claire passed the cup on. The warm sweet wine made her head whirl. She thought of Thomas’s hands, on the lute, on her body, soon to be holding the baby, to be putting the ring on her hand. She stretched the fingers of her left hand; it was a wonder how so small a thing now began to seem so excellent.

“She’ll have to come back this way, won’t she?” another of the girls said. “The Queen. And then we can see her.”

“Not the Queen anymore,” another said. The daughter opened her mouth, and her mother dug her elbow into her ribs to quiet her.

“Oh, she’ll be here,” the mother said.

“Maybe longer than she thinks,” said the daughter.

Claire was studying her hand still, but what the women had said rose uppermost into her mind. She said, “The Duchess will pass by this way, to go to Poitiers?”

“It is the quickest way,” the mother said.

“Then we can see her,” they all chimed, “and see how unhappy she is.” And again the mother jammed her elbow into her daughter’s side, and they exchanged a glance and laughed.

Claire reached for the cup again. It was like music, she thought. Given half the notes, you could sometimes make out the whole. She lifted the cup to her lips, thinking this over.

That evening, before they went to play, she said, “We have to put the marriage off a day or so.”

He jerked his head up. “What?”

“I must go away for a while.” She tore a bit of bread in half, and laid one piece on the table before him. “I’ll be back quick enough, and we’ll marry right away, I promise.”

He said, “I don’t want you to go.”

She said, “Remember, on the road north, how I trusted you then?”

His head turned slightly, so he eyed her from the side. He said, “I remember you were afraid. And you’re with child. Where are you going?”

“Not far,” she said. “Half a day’s walk, likely. But I have to do this.” If she told him, it would only make things more complicated.

“Then you’ll come straight back?” He picked up the bit of bread, his gaze still on her, suspicious.

She said, “Put off the wedding to the day after Easter, and I will be back to marry you. Then we can even do it in the church.”

“I’ll come with you.”

She said, “If you want. If you don’t trust me. But this is my purpose, not yours.”

He chewed the bread, studying her. She smiled at him, and leaned forward and kissed him. And in the end, she went alone.

On Holy Saturday Petronilla rode out of Beaugency, on the road home.

The highway led along the north bank of the Loire, rising with the spring flood. Outside Beaugency they passed along the skirt of the river, below the smiling little hills patterned with trees and fields and vineyards. Every few miles, the highway became the street of a village, a path that wound among scattered houses of stone and wood, already hung with carpets and tapestries and bunches of reeds in anticipation of the Easter week processions. Between the villages the fields climbed in strips over the rising slope, the deep soil opened up in long furrows to the sun, between patches still overgrown with the winter’s brambles and the dried leavings of the previous year. In spite of the approach of Holy Week, people were working in their fields, bending and stooping and straightening in their endless toil.

She saw them sometimes through a screen of wildflowers; the ditches of the road were full of stalky green growth, the white and yellow buds just beginning to open.
Solomon in all his glory,
she thought dutifully, but her gaze went by them to the toilers in the fields.

She always wondered at that parable: Let the wildflowers go, she thought, and the world would be little the worse; without the toilers and spinners, everything fell to ruin.

God, of course, made the wildflowers; Solomon’s glory, however splendid, was only made by men. More likely, women. She crossed herself, a little irked at God’s whims.

The Barbary horse was eager to move out, mouthing the bit and tossing his head. He had a new groom, who had braided his mane with red rosettes and polished all the silver on his harness; the bells on his saddle skirts jingled like music. She held him down, both hands on the reins, and sulkily he obeyed her.

It struck her how odd it would look to the people in the fields, this little gaudy train parading by. After her de Rançun was coming along on his black horse, carrying the sparrow hawk on his wrist, and then the wagon followed with Alys and some other new ladies, who sat chattering away together and eating cakes. Their coifs fluttered; the brisk wind reddened their cheeks, and when they tossed their hands and laughed, it was like the wildflowers dancing in the wind.

De Rançun was keeping silent, hardly even looking at her. She wondered at his distracted mood and guessed he worried about Eleanor, in Poitiers. She wondered if he had ever been so far from her. Behind the women and the several servants walking along beside and after the wagon came four knights in mail, wearing red surcoats with Eleanor’s pacing lion emblem across front and back, and their horses all in red leather bridles. Most of the knights were downy boys, younger sons of younger sons, their swords bright as new-minted money. De Rançun had spent much of the ride north yelling at them to keep order. Still they cavorted on their horses, whistling and making mock charges at each other, eluding his discipline.

The train of her baggage rolled after, led by the steward with his rod of office in his hand, and then a loose crowd of more servants and hangers-on. Many wore Eleanor’s colors, and they went along talking and singing; some walked, some rode, all straggled off along the way for what looked half a mile.

Wildflowers on a progress. As they went along, the people in the fields propped themselves on their hoes and turned to watch. Their faces were as brown as their fields. A little child in ragged smock and bare feet ran along on the edge of the ditch, laughing and excited. Someone began to cheer Eleanor’s name. As they approached, some people moved in from the fields; women in dirty aprons and men with their smocks down around their waists clustered along the edge of the road. She waved to them, wondering what drew them to her—not Eleanor, obviously, since any Eleanor would do. Something they made of her, perhaps, themselves enlarged in her. She should be then as grand and beautiful as possible. She smiled and waved to them, drinking up their cheers, glad of their welcome.

She thought,
What of this is me anymore? Who am I anymore?
The miserable castoff wife of a few months ago seemed as strange to her as this splendid outward duchess. Maybe that was why the world seemed so fresh to her as she rode along, seeing it with new eyes. Maybe she really was a different person now.

The forest closed down around the ancient road; they left the plowed and planted fields behind. Steadily they rode on toward Blois, with the river running green and calm along the foot of the little slope. The water was still high from a recent rain, and little trees stood knee-deep in the shallows. Since it was Holy Week, there were few other travelers, and those that did appear leaped out of the way and stood gaping to watch the Duchess of Aquitaine ride by. At noontide the little company stopped and ate their dinner of bread and cheese sitting on the side of the road, like common folk.

They did not reach Blois that day. Late in the afternoon, they stopped at the convent of Saint Casilda, on the bank of the Loire, to spend the night there. Wild roses covered the walls of the convent, in tribute to the saint, who had carried them in her skirt in some old fable. The winter-blackened vines were just coming into new leaf, like lace against the gray stone wall.

Inside, the nuns were busy readying themselves and their relic, Casilda’s fingerbone, for the Holy Week procession, and Petronilla and her train were much in the way. Packed with her women into the two dormitory rooms kept for high-born travelers, Petronilla ate a supper of bread and sour wine; and when the sun was just going down, she climbed into the bed with Alys and two of the other women, wondering if she would be able to sleep.

Her mind turned again and again to Eleanor’s fury, and to what she had said, what it all meant, now that she and Eleanor had escaped the hateful marriage and the dismal court of France. She could not see how they could be friends again. Yet she had to return to Poitiers. She had nowhere else to go. She wanted to go back to her home, but she had no true home. She stared into the darkness, and all she saw before her was nothing.

She did sleep. When the voice spoke, she startled awake out of a roiling dark dream and sat bolt upright in the bed.

“Who is it?”

“Lady,” de Rançun said, just outside the curtain. “Come quickly, you must hear this.”

The other women were stirring; Alys sat up behind her.

“Are there men in the room?”

Petronilla said, “I’m opening the curtain,” and swung the heavy hanging back and slid off the bed; she wore only a light shift and she held the edge of the curtain up over her. Two candles still burned in the dark, so it was not very late in the night—short of midnight. De Rançun was standing there, trying to look everywhere else than at her, and she pointed and said, “Bring me that cloak. What is it?”

He held out the cloak and she swung it around herself, letting the curtain go, careless of the moment between. He turned, and barefoot, she followed him across the crowded little room to the door.

Just outside, in the arcade, Claire stood, with one of the young knights right behind her.

Petronilla stopped, amazed to see her. The girl looked older somehow. She wore a long dark gown, a heavy cloak over it. She had been talking to the young knight, over her shoulder, and now turned toward Petronilla, her gaze direct.

“Oh,” she said. She swept down in a low bow. “It is you, my lady.”