Sharon Penman - Time and Chance

Men were cursing and crying. From a great distance, Ranulf heard a wail of anguish, and he wondered numbly if Peryf knew that at least three of his brothers had died with Hywel. The priest was beside him now, giving the last rites to the man who so many saw as Wales’s best hope, giving them all the only comfort he could, the salvation of Hywel’s immortal soul. Ranulf did not move, no longer hearing the babel of voices. He looked up at the fog-shrouded sky, down at Hywel’s body, and then he wept, for himself and for Hywel, for Peryf and his brothers, for all the good men who had met sudden death in the vale of Pentraeth, but above all, for Wales.

March 1171

Poitiers, Poitou

How many days until Maundy Thursday?” Raoul de Faye’s question seemed idly put, innocuous.

Maud knew better. It was a sly thrust at her cousin the English king, for it was customary for the Pope to issue excommunications and interdicts upon that day, the Thursday before Easter.

“I have not been keeping count,” she lied coolly, as if she had not been grudging every day’s dawning for the past month. Henry’s envoys had departed for the papal court weeks ago, racing the calendar to arrive before Maundy Thursday. Thomas Becket’s cross-bearer, Alexander Llewelyn, was known to be on the road to Italy, too, bearing letters from the French king and outraged French bishops. If he reached the Pope before Henry’s emissaries, a Maundy Thursday thunderbolt was almost a certainty.

“It is less than a fortnight,” Raoul supplied helpfully. “I wonder how far the Angevin’s minions have gotten by now. For all we know, they are snowbound somewhere in the Alps, using his papal petitions for fire-wood.”

“You sound as if you hope that to be true,” Maud observed, and he gave her what he thought was a candid, disarming grin, allowing that he’d not be heartbroken if Henry’s agents were lost until the spring thaw.

Maud studied him with speculative, critical eyes. Raoul had been verbally sparring with her since her arrival in Eleanor’s capital the preceding week. At first she’d dismissed his sniping as an echo of Petronilla’s antagonism, but she was reassessing that assumption. Petronilla was jealous of her intimacy with Eleanor, and obviously so was Raoul. But Petronilla’s resentment was personal and his was political. He wanted no rivals for Eleanor’s ear, no trusted confidants to offer advice that was not his. Not for the first time in her life, Maud marveled that men could be such fools. As if Eleanor would ever be any man’s pawn, be he husband or uncle.

Raoul’s smug satisfaction grated upon her nerves. They were jackals, she thought scornfully, nipping at Harry’s heels, hoping against hope that the lion was cornered at last. She had a weapon of her own-knowledge that Raoul did not possess-and she used it now to retaliate.

“It grieves me,” she said gravely, “that you find such joy in wishing misfortune upon the king’s ambassadors. One of them is my beloved brother, the Bishop of Worcester.” Although addressed ostensibly to Raoul, her retort was actually aimed at their audience, and it achieved the desired result. Her sorrowful dignity stirred chivalric urges in the listening men and their disapproval discomfited Raoul. In the indolent, pleasure-seeking society of Aquitaine, bad manners were often judged more harshly than sins.

Maud had not lingered in the great hall after her victory; she had no interest in exchanging poisoned pleasantries with Raoul or Petronilla. Her confident pose was just that: a pose. She was deeply concerned for her cousin, fearing that Henry would be branded as an enemy of God by the enraged Pope. She worried, too, about Roger, for a winter crossing of the Alps was fraught with peril. And in the past few days, she’d become aware that Eleanor was troubled by more than her husband’s jeopardy.

She discovered the queen’s secret later that night, purely by chance. She’d gone into the chapel upon discovering that it was unoccupied, for solitude was rarely found midst the clamor and commotion of a royal court. After saying prayers for the souls of her parents and dead brothers, for friends long gone and the husband who was surely burning in Hell these seventeen years past, she then prayed for the salvation of a Welsh prince whose laughter was stilled, his music silenced.

She was about to depart when she heard footsteps out in the stairwell leading up to Eleanor’s private chamber. One of the queen’s men was escorting a woman muffled from head to foot in a dark, enveloping mantle, an odd choice of apparel on a mild spring eve. Maud’s curiosity was piqued by the clandestine behavior of the couple; had one of Eleanor’s ladies dared to tryst with a lover in her mistress’s own bed? As they passed the chapel door, whispering furtively, she acted on impulse and stepped out to confront them.

Recoiling sharply, the woman grasped the hood of her cloak, drawing back into its folds like a turtle into its shell. The man reacted with equal dispatch, hurrying her by Maud before any words could be exchanged. Maud stood utterly still in the stairwell, staring after them. A cry rose in her throat, a name that never left her lips. For just the span of an indrawn breath, she’d looked upon the other woman’s face, no more than that, but time enough for recognition. This mysterious, shrouded figure being spirited from the queen’s chamber with such secrecy was Bertrade, her midwife.

Eleanor had unbraided her hair and was brushing it out, a nightly ritual that should have been soothing in its very familiarity. Not tonight; her thoughts continued to careen about: unwelcome, illogical, and unexpected. Picking up a mirror, she examined her metallic reflection with critical eyes, seeing a tired, pale woman gazing back at her, an aging stranger.

The sudden pounding startled her and she frowned toward the door, vexed by this proof of the edgy state of her nerves. Before she could respond, it was pushed open and her cousin by marriage burst into the chamber. But this was a Maud she’d not seen before, white-faced and tense, so obviously agitated that Eleanor felt a surge of alarm.

“Maud? What is wrong? It is not Richard-”

“No,” Maud said hastily, “nothing like that. The last I saw of him, Richard was in the hall, playing chess with one of your household knights too new to know better.”

Eleanor smiled faintly. “Richard turns every game into a life or death struggle. And when he loses, he demands an immediate rematch. But if nothing is amiss, why did you come running in here as if the palace was afire?”

Maud hestitated, for this was one of the rare times when she’d reacted on instinct, not thinking out beforehand what she would do. The sight of Bertrade had propelled her up the stairs, for the memory of Eleanor’s last birthing was still harrowing even after the passage of more than four years. Not knowing what to say, she could only fall back upon the truth. “Eleanor… I saw her leaving.”

“Saw whom?”

“Bertrade. It was not her fault; she was being very circumspect.” Eleanor’s face was a graven mask, utterly unrevealing, but Maud forged ahead, nonetheless. “I know I am intruding and I know that trespassers risk being-”

“Maud, I am not with child.”

“If it is still early enough, there are herbs like artemisia and pennyroyal or savin-”

“You are not listening to me. I am not pregnant.”

This time Maud believed her. “But you thought you were.” Reading Eleanor’s silence as assent, she crossed the room and took the brush from the other woman’s hand. Eleanor didn’t object and for a time it was quiet. Maud concentrated upon brushing the queen’s hair until it gleamed like a long, dark rope.