“Truly?” Petronilla was relieved, yet puzzled. “I must have misread the signs. But I ought to warn you-I think Louis did, too. I watched him watching you and Geoffrey last night, and he looked very disgruntled.”
“I surely hope so.”
“Eleanor…what is going on? What are you up to?”
Eleanor looked at her thoughtfully, then put her finger to her lips, and moved swiftly and soundlessly across the chamber. Petronilla watched in astonishment as she jerked the door open. “Is it as bad as that? You really think Louis’s men would spy on you?”
Eleanor’s lip curled. “Thierry Galeran would hide under my bed-if only he could fit. Yes, I am quite sure I am being watched. The death vigil for my marriage has begun, and with the venerable Abbot Bernard himself standing ready to give the Last Rites.”
Petronilla should not have felt any surprise. Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis had been the French king’s chief adviser, utterly insistent that his marriage was valid in God’s Eyes. But he’d died that past January, and the French king was now heeding Abbot Bernard-Abbot Bernard who believed that if all women were suspect, daughters of Eve, Eleanor was one of Lucifer’s own.
But even though the news was expected, it still came as a shock, for the ramifications would be earthshaking. Divorce was usually disastrous for a woman; she would invariably lose custody of her children, her dower rights, and often her good name as well. Eleanor would also lose a crown. For a woman who’d been Queen of France, the rest of her life was likely to be anticlimactic. Petronilla thought it was the true measure of her sister’s desperation that she’d wanted a divorce, even knowing what it might cost her.
“Eleanor…there is still time to resurrect your marriage. Louis does love you, and if you could only get pregnant again-”
“No. The marriage has been dead for years, Petra. I would not try to breathe life back into a corpse. Better we finally bury it. It is not the divorce that is stealing my sleep at night, it is what happens afterward. It would indeed be ironic, Sister, if the peace should prove more perilous than the war!”
Petronilla nodded somberly. Eleanor was the greatest heiress in Christendom, for she held Aquitaine in her own right, a vast and rich province, stretching from the River Loire to the Pyrenees, comparable in size and wealth to France itself. Once Eleanor was free, she’d be a tempting prize, indeed, and she’d be fair game for any baron with more ambitions than scruples. All too often, heiresses were abducted and forced into marriage, as both women well knew. The year before his death, their father had become betrothed to the daughter of the Viscount of Limoges, only to have her stolen away and wed against her will to the Count of Angouleme. So the danger was a real one, and would remain so until Eleanor was safely wed again.
But as Eleanor’s liege lord, Louis would be the one to choose another husband for her, and Petronilla did not think he’d choose a husband to her liking. Whatever Louis’s failings as a husband, he was still King of France. It seemed to Petronilla that whomever Eleanor married next, it was bound to be a comedown. She could not help thinking that Eleanor’s wretched marriage to Louis was still the lesser of evils, but she knew better than to say so. Eleanor took no more kindly to unsolicited advice than she did; she would only be leaving herself open to a pointed reminder of her own stubborn insistence upon having Raoul, even if that meant they’d be together in Hell.
No matter what angle she viewed it from, her sister’s future looked precarious at best. But one thing she never doubted-that Eleanor would not sit placidly by whilst her destiny was decided by others. “What mean you to do?”
Eleanor sat down beside her on the bed. “Well, this much I know for certes-that the only fate worse than being yoked to Louis for the rest of my life would be marriage to a man handpicked by that sanctimonious, self- proclaimed saint, Bernard.”
Eleanor’s greyhound reached up suddenly, swiping her cheek in a wet kiss and making her laugh. Almost at once, though, she sobered. “And so,” she continued coolly, “I mean to do my own husband-hunting.”
Petronilla rolled her eyes. “And you dare to call me reckless!”
“Why is it reckless to want a say in my own life? You can well imagine the sort of pathetic French puppet they’d choose for me, a lackey who’d look to Paris for guidance the way infidels look toward Mecca. Do you think I’d entrust Aquitaine to such a weak-willed wretch? I need a husband who’d not be afraid to defy the French Crown or even the Church, a man who could command respect from my duchy’s unruly, quarrelsome barons.” She paused, and then added dryly, “A man I could respect, too, would be a pleasant change.”
“You are not asking much, are you?”
Eleanor reclined back against the pillows and smiled impishly at her sister. “Oh, but I want much more than that, Petra. Those were Aquitaine’s needs, but I have my own, too. I want a man who knows his own mind, who sees nothing odd about reading for the fun of it. A man who likes to laugh, even at himself. A man who is not so intent upon the glories of the next world that it blinds him to the pleasures of this one.” Eleanor was no longer smiling. “Above all, I want a man I do not have to coax to my bed.”
“And where do you expect to find this paragon of manhood? I can think of only one man who measures up to those exacting standards, and Raoul is already spoken for!” Picking up the brush, Petronilla combed out her sister’s long hair, then began to braid it with nimble fingers. “What of Geoffrey? Why then were you flirting with him? Merely to vex Louis?”
“I had a twofold purpose. I wanted to remind Louis how mismatched we are, just in case he’d begun to have second thoughts about the divorce. The only voice he heeds these days is that of our saint in residence, who divides all of womankind into three categories: nuns, sluts, and potential sluts. So I knew he’d look upon flirtation as only slightly less heinous a sin than sacrilege, and I was right. You see, Petra, those famed mystical trances of Bernard’s are only part of his sleight-of-hand. When Louis opens his mouth, lo and behold-Bernard’s words come out.”
It was not often that Eleanor let her bitterness show so nakedly, and Petronilla felt a surge of immediate and indignant sympathy. Her loyalties burned too hot and too deep ever to allow for detachment or objectivity; she supposed that Louis had his side, too, but she had no interest whatsoever in hearing it. Eleanor was right to look for a way out, she decided. The marriage was indeed dead and decomposing, and keeping up the pretense would be like living in a charnel house, trying all the while to ignore the stench.
“Forget what I said earlier about attempting to mend the rift. I’d not urge you to run back into a burning building just because you had nowhere else to go. But I am still curious about that ‘twofold’ remark of yours. Why else were you seeking Geoffrey out? I know you claim you have no interest in a dalliance, but you must have been tempted, at least a little…?”
“I am beginning to think Raoul had best keep an eye on you till Geoffrey departs Paris! Must I assure you again that I am not as susceptible as you to a handsome face? Geoffrey of Anjou was my red herring, no more than that.”
Petronilla’s frown was one of bafflement. She had hunted enough to understand Eleanor’s allusion; drawing a herring across a trail was said to throw pursuing dogs off the scent. But she did not see its application, not at first. When it finally came to her, she gasped aloud and inadvertently jerked on Eleanor’s braid. “Holy Mother Mary! It is not Geoffrey at all, is it? Not the sire-the son!”
Eleanor laughed. “Glory be, at last! Are we such an unlikely pairing, that you never once thought of Henry?”
“It is a brilliant match, Eleanor,” Petronilla enthused. “When I was ransacking my brain for a suitable husband, I did not even think of him, I admit it…mayhap because of the age difference. And yet he is the ideal choice! Of course he is rather young, but he is no green lad, for certes. No son of Maude and Geoffrey could lack for boldness, so you’d be getting a husband willing to challenge the French Crown. One with prospects enough to unsettle even the most complacent of former husbands-Duke of Normandy, heir to Anjou and Maine, not to forget that very intriguing claim across the Channel. Jesu, Eleanor, he might be King of England one day!”
“I’d say that is a foregone conclusion, Petra. Henry strikes me as a bowman who rarely misses the target. I’d wager he gets whatever he aims for.”
Petronilla looked closely into her sister’s face, and then grinned. “So, that is the way the wind blows, does it? I think you fancy the lad!”
Eleanor grinned, too. “Let’s just say I think he has…potential.”
Petronilla burst out laughing, leaning over to give her sister an exuberantly affectionate embrace. Eleanor’s greyhound took that as an invitation and jumped onto the bed. “Felice, down!” Eleanor fended off the dog with a pillow, laughing, too, and for a few moments, they managed to forget about the high stakes, the all-or-nothing gamble that Eleanor was about to make.
