The Secret Eleanor (7 page)

“That was brave, my red leopard,” she said. She curled her fingers around him. “That was very passing brave.”

“That milk-blooded Louis doesn’t deserve you,” Henry said. “I would carry you off now, if you’d let me.” Still holding her hand against him, he massaged himself with her.

“Come away with me,” he said. “Be my Eleanor, in spite of him.”

She leaned on him, her head on his shoulder. “No—not like that. Don’t you see? There’s so much more than that. If I were free—if we could marry—”

“I would marry you tomorrow if you were free. But—”

“Then heed me.” On the enseamed linen between them she traced a circle with her finger. “The Land of the Franks—it seems like a great kingdom, and it was great in older times, but over the years they’ve lost great pieces of it, either outright, like Anjou, or giving them away as fiefs, like your Normandy. France is shrinking away; it’s hardly more than the lands around Paris now. If you and I married, I would have Aquitaine, and you would have Normandy and Anjou—”

“And England,” he said, his voice crackling. “I will have England, if I must hack Stephen to pieces to get it.”

“Ah,” she said, “it gives me heart to hear you say that. Because then, mark, we would have such a kingdom that would swallow up poor Louis and his little France.” Her eyes on his, she traced a circle around the mattress between them. “France is dying, and something new could now be born.”

She saw his eyes widen as he took this in. “We would hold the greatest kingdom in Christendom,” he said. “Greater even than the Empire, and rich as the powers of the east.”

Drawn to that lust in his voice, she reached out to him and they joined again, fierce as leopards, scratching and clawing and roaring at the peak, as if they crushed worlds between them. Afterward, his weight still pressing her down, his lance still deep inside her, he said, “Come with me now. We can get Aquitaine back from him, he’s a milksop. Come away with me, be with me always.”

She laughed, loving this in him, how he knew no boundary. “No, no. We must play this one properly. There is a lot to win here. I must get rid of my husband, first, and then I will marry you. That way no one can challenge us.”

“Women can’t break their marriage vows. He’d have to give you up, and he’d be mad to. Just come with me, my Eleanor. I’ll make you the greatest queen in Christendom, and be damned to marriage.”

“Oh, don’t let a priest hear you say that.”

“I hate priests.”

She laughed, and kissed his mouth again, long and tenderly, and then drew away. His manhood slid slowly from her crevice. “You throw yourself over the river before you even reach it. I will do what I must, and then we can be together, and all right with God and man.” She sat up on the edge of the bed and used her shift to wipe his jism from her thighs. “I must go. They’ll know by now I am gone, even with my sister to lead them astray.” She hardly cared if they knew she was gone, if they couldn’t stop her or catch her. It was even better if they knew, as long as they could prove nothing; it would sour Louis against her, so he would more willingly let her go.

“I’ll see you again? You promise?” He gripped her wrist, as if to hold her there. “I’ll die every day I don’t see you again.”

“I promise,” she said, and made the sign of the cross on her breast. Her clothes lay scattered around the little room; she gathered them up, pulled the gown down over her head, cast the underclothes aside. He was sitting up; he caught her discarded shift in his hands and buried his face in the sheer silk, drawing in a deep breath as if he could inhale her. When he looked up, a wicked smile adorned his face.

“I’ll keep this.”

She gave a little laugh, warmed in his young ardor. “As you wish, my red darling. I will send for you, when I’m free.”

“I’ll be waiting, every moment,” he said.

She felt, suddenly, the age between them, as if he looked in through one side of the window of the years, and she through the other. She knew such a fire as this would not last forever. But meanwhile she meant to burn with him and set the world ablaze. She bent and kissed him again, and he tried to draw her down again, and she laughed and got herself loose.

“What, you want more?”

He laughed up at her. “Of you, always,” he said, and caught her hand again and kissed it. She pulled his hand up and kissed him back, and went out of the house.

De Rançun was leaning up against the wall in the lane, one foot cocked up behind him, while the horses cropped blades of grass along the side of the house. Eleanor had swathed herself again in the widow’s cloak, the veil over her face, and without a word de Rançun lifted her back up onto the horse.

He had a sour look on his fair, honest face, and he said nothing, all the way back. She knew he disapproved of this. They had grown up together, and he had always loved her, an older brother, a fellow Occitan, her favorite knight. He was loyal. That meant she did not have to mind his feelings, much; he would resign himself, as he always did.

Her body still hummed with the secret thrills of love. She remembered the crisp red hair on his chest, the hard muscled horseman’s legs. She remembered him in the king’s hall, his quickness of thought and decision. He was determined to take England. She was determined to get out of her marriage. They were a match in everything. Whatever she did not have with Louis she would have with him.

The only problem was her husband.

At the palace, de Rançun lifted her down at the tower door, and she cast off the white cloak and hung it on the saddle, to recover it later. Then she went lightly up the steps, toward the hubbub of noise at the top, where she could hear Thierry Galeran’s ragged oily voice, and Petronilla’s, arguing; the sentry was standing there rigidly by the door and reached out to open it for her.

When she went in, they all wheeled toward her, agape. Thierry had her red cloak in his hands, and a rush of words in his throat.

“Your Grace, this is an outrage—”

“Ah,” she said. “You found it. I wondered where that was, I lost it somehow.” She took the cloak from him and swathed herself in it, in case anyone noticed she was naked under the gown. “Thank you. Now go, I have been praying, hard work as you know, and I want to rest.”

“Where have you been, Your Grace?” Thierry planted himself before her. Behind him the waiting women were clustered together, like a bundle of sticks propping each other up. Claire was not among them. Petronilla had drawn away toward the window.

“I was in the chapel,” Eleanor said, lifting her eyebrows at him. “Did you not look there?”

He said a raw oath and flung himself out of the room; his feet sounded loud on the stair beyond, just before the door slammed.

He would find out she had come in on the brown mare, but too late to stop her, too late even to find out where she had gone. She relished the idea of his helpless rage.

By the window, Petronilla turned away, her head down, morose, but the women crept up around Eleanor like eager fish to a bait. “He was so angry,” Alys said, round-eyed. “And where is Claire?” Her eyes roamed over Eleanor. “You look—gilded, Your Grace. All glowing.”

“Ah,” Eleanor said, “the power of prayer.” And smiling, she went to the wardrobe to shed the cloak.

Claire had crept away into a corner of the wall by the river and wept until she couldn’t cry anymore. Her face hurt, her wrist, where he had gripped her, but what would happen to her now seemed likely to be even worse.

She could not go back to Eleanor, not now; they knew she had betrayed them, she saw they had used her to delude Thierry. They cared no more for her than he did. Even as she blinked the last tears out, she was gloating over how they had deluded Thierry.

But she could not go to him, obviously. Nor home, where her father had made it clear she should make a marriage at court and stay there, no matter anymore of his.

She rubbed her hand over her nose. There was a hard painful lump on her chest. Her mind was blank with fear. Dark was coming. After a while she trudged away down the island, to the last refuge of the sick and homeless, to the Hotel-Dieu, where the hopeless and unwanted went to die.

Henry had never even dreamed before of having Aquitaine. Duke of Normandy, someday Count of Anjou, yes, and he had been pushing his claim to the crown of England since he was nine, but until now Aquitaine had not entered his mind.

Everything he had ever heard of the place flooded back to him: the old cities, the beautiful women, the wine and the troubadours. Hard to rule, they said. But rich.

He wondered if she could break the marriage vow. He did not see how that would happen. Yet now that the notion had been ignited in him, he burned to have Aquitaine. He began to scheme to carry her off somehow. His father would make problems for that, to say nothing of the King.

After he left the house where they had met, he went around the city for a while. He had heard of the Studium, on the Left Bank of the river, and he walked up and down the rows of ramshackle halls, then went into a tavern full of men in the black hooded gowns of priests, drinking and talking in Latin and grabbing at the women. He listened to them, but said nothing, knowing better than to risk his churchboy Latin against their quick and merciless tongues.

At nightfall he went back to his father’s house, in the village of Saint Germaine, west of the Studium. In the courtyard Robert de Courcy was waiting for him, and another of his knights, Reynard.

“My lord, the Count’s been sending for you constantly.”

“It’s a big city,” Henry said. “There’s a lot to look at. Where is everybody?” Most of the knights they had brought to Paris with them were his father’s household guards. Some of his own men, like these, had come along, too, but he saw none of the others.

“My lord.” Reynard was shorter than Robert and stood straighter as a consequence. “They will be back, I promise.”

“You promise,” Henry said sharply. “Where the hell are they?”

“They will be back. I have sentries on all night.”

“Good. I don’t trust this place.” Henry went up the step past him and into the hall, Robert on his heels.

The hall was stuffy and smelled bad. One end was full of lumber. Around the other end the servants had arranged a hasty elegance for his father, an arras, a table covered in silk and some chairs. His father stood before the table, facing three or four men who bowed and nodded continually, their hats dragging the ground. Men from the city. Anjou’s spies in the city. Henry went around to the end of the table, as if he were not listening, and busied himself shrugging off his cloak.

His brother Geoffrey sat on the far side of the table, his back to the huge brazier warming the room, a cup of wine in his hand. The light of the fire shone behind them, so that to Henry he was only a dark lump.

One of the Parisian men said, “The King was so sick he could not eat, ’tis said.”

Another voice cut in. “Not so sick. Any time the King of France falls sick, he takes a fear of dying, because he has no heir.”

Father of sons, Anjou grunted, amused at that, and the other men obediently laughed. Henry lowered his gaze to the tabletop. A servant put a cup of wine by his hand. The spies were talking again, vying with each other for the choicest, best-paid news.

“Thierry Galeran is his closest man, but the monks always have their way with him.”

“No, ’tis the Queen, in the end, he listens to.”

“She heeds him little. Thierry Galeran is always with him; the Queen avoids him.”

“The monks—”

“She is wicked, she is lusty; he should put her in a convent, all say it.”

“Then he would have no heir,” Anjou said, the amusement still trembling in his voice. They jabbered at him, several opinions at once, and he turned to Henry.

“Where in the devil’s name were you?” Anjou waved off the spies and turned to sit down by the table. He slumped on the bench, one arm sprawled across the silk table cover, and took a cup of wine in the other hand. The spies retreated, bowing.

“I went to the Studium,” Henry said. “You know, they have people there who think. It’s an interesting experience.” He put his hands on his hips, looking from his father to his brother and back again. “What are you going to do now, anyway? Now that you’ve walked us in here like this and there’s no way out.”

His brother said, “You were all day at the Studium?” He raised his cup and slurped at it.

“Did anything happen?” Henry said.

His father tossed his empty cup aside. He was getting drunk, if not already there. “I’m minded to go on home and forget the whole thing.” He said this so slurred he repeated it, more clearly. “Forget the whole thing.”

Henry turned toward the middle of the hall. His knight Robert stood there, waiting for orders, and he crooked a finger at him. “Go find those other men and get them here.”

“Yes, my lord.”