SHIVERING, ELEANOR WALKED ALONG the narrow chill passage so dimly lit she felt as though she existed in a world of perpetual twilight. Even after five years she still could not adjust to the inhospitable atmosphere and cold gray drizzle of France after the gracious warmth and sunlit vistas of Aquitaine.
Eleanor remembered her first shocked view of this ancient seat of the kings of France, unable to believe that the crumbling gray stone fortress, rusty tower gate, and fortified bridge Louis was pointing to with such pride was a royal castle, or that this tiny island in the Seine was the very heart of the French kingdom.
Even Paris had been a shock. In Poitiers she had looked forward to seeing this city, having heard that it was the most popular center of learning in Western Europe, famous for its lectures on philosophy and theology which attracted a wide number of students and a host of brilliant teachers.
What Eleanor had not heard was that the French capital was a jumble of noisy, cramped streets, whose overhang of narrow wooden houses blocked out any ray of sun. Pigs and goats foraged everywhere for food while street vendors rudely jostled the passersby as they urged them to buy buttery waffles and spicy turnovers carried in baskets covered with white cloths. Nor had she expected the all-pervading stench of rotting food and human refuse that clung to everything, even following her into the castle itself. Worst of all she was not prepared to find the Parisians so humorless and argumentative, lacking any sense of style; so different from the pleasure-loving, carefree Aquitainians.
On this chill September evening, Eleanor entered the great hall which, despite the flaring torches set into the walls, looked as cheerless and forbidding as did everything else in the castle. Made even more grim by the dark blue-and-gray tapestries covering the walls, the scenes of martyrdom and tormented sinners only added to the bleakness.
The royal family—Louis, the queen dowager, and his cousin, Ralph of Vermandois, seneschal of France—were seated at the high table along with Petronilla, the ubiquitous Abbé Suger, and a guest. Eleanor’s heart sank. Holy Mother, not again. The guest, an all-too-frequent visitor, was Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbé of the Cistercian monastery at Citeaux.
As Eleanor approached the table, she could hear the Cistercian monk make one of his dark pronouncements.
“His lectures smack of heresy.”
“Whose?” Eleanor made a place for herself at the table.
“Peter Abelard’s, my dear.” Louis gave her a welcoming smile.
“Is he back in Paris? I would like to attend a lecture given by the great Abelard,” she said.
“On no account may you attend, my dear,” Louis said. “Most unseemly for the queen to be glimpsed at one of his lectures.”
“Most unseemly,” echoed the prim queen dowager. She made no secret of her disapproval of her son’s frivolous wife, who had displaced her in importance.
“Why? Everyone tells me Abelard is one of the most gifted scholars in Paris and an inspired speaker.”
“As you know, we open our gates to the students in the warm weather,” Louis continued, not answering her question, “and I should have no objection to your listening to theological lectures from within our own gardens, or even the occasional trip to the Left Bank, which you have already visited—but not to hear Abelard.”
It was on these rare trips to the Left Bank of the Seine that Eleanor had had her only glimpse of the raw intellectual excitement for which Paris was famous, the vitality so lacking at Louis’s court and in her own life. Teachers and students hotly debating, the clash of beliefs, the passionate voicing of new ideas had enthralled her.
“Beware the man who values mind above spirit,” Bernard’s voice intoned. “What says Proverb Ten? ‘… in much talking thou shalt not avoid sin,’ and it is also writ: ‘A wise man is known by the fewness of his words.’ ”
An austere holy man dressed in a simple white cassock belted with a knotted rope, Bernard claimed to disdain riches and worldly pomp. Generally considered to be a saint—only death was necessary to make it official—he wielded enormous influence among the courts of Europe. Although he declared he preferred the peace of the cloister, it appeared to Eleanor that the devout monk spent far more time meddling in the affairs of the world than he did within monastery walls.
“I don’t understand your objection, Father. Is it because Abelard views the Trinity in terms of divine attributes rather than divine persons?” she asked in a mock-sweet voice, more to provoke the cleric than because she really cared. “Or because he advises us to question everything?”
Despite the fact that she was curious to hear what his debates were like, Eleanor’s main interest in the teacher-monk Abelard was due less to his eloquence from the lectern than a romantic aura resulting from an earlier scandal involving the novice, Héloise. The idea of a priest passionate enough to break his vows with a nun had won Eleanor’s wholehearted approval.
“You are familiar with Abelard’s work?” Louis looked shocked.
Bernard slowly turned his smoldering dark gaze toward Eleanor. “That is obvious, my son.” He paused while his eyes swept over her crimson gown with its full sleeves that trailed the rushes, then up to the gold-and-pearl pendants dangling from her ears, to settle on her oval face framed by a white wimple and topped by a gold crown.
“My tutor in Poitiers is very enlightened in his tastes.”
Everyone at the table stared at her as if she had just sprouted horns and a tail.
“Your tutor allowed you to read the works of Abelard?” Louis was clearly aghast.
“Poitou is known for diversity rather than orthodoxy, my son.” Abbé Suger crossed himself.
“All of Aquitaine is a breeding ground for heresy,” said Bernard.
This was one way of looking at it, Eleanor thought. The comparative openness and tolerance of southern society was receptive to various spiritual and intellectual influences.
“That is going a bit far, perhaps,” she said. “Certainly, we take a broader view—”
“Broader view?” Bernard raised scraggly brows. “There are only believers, heretics, and infidels. Nothing else.”
“I certainly don’t take such a narrow view—” she began.
“Indeed, that is only too evident. Beware, Madam, beware the consequences of your own unbridled nature.” Bernard jabbed a warning finger at her. “Like your father you have a restless spirit, but in the end Holy Church forced him to submit. It would behoove you to take heed and learn from his example.”
Furious at this public rebuke, it took every ounce of willpower Eleanor possessed not to retaliate with a hot retort. You personally forced him to submit, Eleanor longed to say. You brought about my father’s excommunication. You made him change the course of his life, a change that resulted in his ill-fated pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela—and an untimely death. You, Bernard of Clairvaux, are responsible and I will never forgive you for it. She contented herself with the knowledge that she would hear Abelard lecture with or without the Church’s—or anyone’s—approval.
Later that evening, while Louis, as usual, was on his knees in the chapel, Eleanor, still fuming, was walking along the twilit passage back to her quarters when she heard high-pitched giggles coming from the chamber where Ralph was housed as a guest. The laughter sounded suspiciously like Petronilla’s who, Eleanor knew, continued to harbor a persistent infatuation for the lord of Vermandois. A giant of a man, with dark curly hair and a bronzed craggy face, Ralph was undeniably appealing, but married, with a granddaughter Petronilla’s age. She had warned her sister not to involve herself with this unsuitable lord and cause a scandal.
The door of the chamber was slightly ajar and Eleanor cautiously pushed it further open, then stopped in surprise at the sight that met her eyes.
Petronilla was sitting on the red-canopied bed clad only in her chemise, which had been pulled down to reveal naked breasts, round and plump as pink cabbages. Beside her Ralph, breathing heavily, gazed raptly at her half-clothed body. Eleanor knew she ought to march straight into the chamber and loudly protest this seduction of her sister—except she knew which one had undoubtedly initiated the seducing. In any case she could not bring herself to move.
Ralph now proceeded to fondle Petronilla’s voluptuous bosom with huge hairy hands, rubbing his thumbs over her delicate nipples. Petronilla lay back on the bed, pulling Ralph down beside her.
Eleanor felt her breath come in little gasps. Ralph buried his face in Petronilla’s breasts while she took one of his hands and slid it up under her chemise. Obviously this game was not new to either of them. Eleanor was uncomfortably aware of her pounding heart and a feeling of moisture between her legs.
Whatever Ralph was doing under the chemise, it was causing Petronilla to moan and squirm in obvious delight. The lord of Vermandois, whose mouth was otherwise engaged, began to wheeze so strenuously through his nose Eleanor feared he might do himself an injury. Really, the wretched man sounded as if he might expire at any moment. Unable to bear the sight one moment longer she withdrew.
Trembling with unsatisfied longings, drenched in sweat, Eleanor shut the door and leaned against the passage wall to collect herself. After a moment’s pause she marched resolutely into the royal bedchamber. Dismissing her women, she quickly undressed, rubbed oil scented with rose petals over her breasts, belly, and hips, then climbed into the blue-canopied bed, pulling the coverlet over her naked body.
When Louis walked into the room she gave him her most inviting smile. He undressed and got into bed beside her. About to blow out the candle she stayed his hand and threw off the coverlet.
“Don’t be in such a hurry,” she said, twining her arms about his neck. “You haven’t been near me for weeks.”
“Oh—I hadn’t realized—” He blushed and unwound her arms. “I take communion tomorrow. You know I can’t—come near you during the three days prior.” He averted his eyes. “Cover yourself.”
For answer she brought his mouth down to hers and kissed him, forcing open his unwilling lips. She took one of his hands and laid it firmly on her breast. Left to himself, Louis never fondled her bosom nor kissed her with his mouth open; he entered her only briefly and withdrew right after he had spilled his seed. For a tantalizing moment his hand curled over her breast, before he withdrew it.
Normally, when he resisted, Eleanor could not bring herself to pursue the issue, simply as a matter of pride. But tonight she took his reluctant hand and slowly slid it down her satiny skin until it rested on the fringe of bronze hair between the juncture of thighs and belly. Louis caught his breath. Eleanor saw his eyes furtively dart to where his hand lay. She opened her legs; for an instant his fingers hesitated, then impelled by a force of their own he started to touch her.
The Compline bell sounded. Louis snatched his hand away.
“Do not lie there thus—your nakedness is unseemly,” he said in a thick voice.
“No, it’s entirely natural—if you were a natural husband.”
“What do you mean?”
Eleanor sat up in the bed. “What I mean is that if we continue in this fashion, I will go from my wits.”
He looked genuinely bewildered. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m never satisfied, never fulfilled. I have needs—”
She stopped at the horrified expression on Louis’s face, the deep crimson that stained his features.
“My dear,” he began in an agony of embarrassment. “You know that I love you as a good Christian husband should love his wife, but when you speak like this I fear for your immortal soul. How often have I told you that desire in a woman is the work of the devil? No chaste or religious-minded wife would have carnal longings. Abbé Suger once told me that if a man loved his wife too ardently, it is a sin worse than adultery.”
“Perhaps that is why I cannot conceive a child—Abbé Suger is always in our bed!”
Louis crossed himself, slipped out of the bed, and went to pray at the prie-dieu. Eleanor, unspent as always, watched him with mingled anger and despair. Any mention of a child always provoked the same reaction. After he had taken communion he would undoubtedly bed her—after a fashion. The only way Louis was able to copulate with her at all was if she lay absolutely still and unmoving, like a marble statue, with no show of feeling. Why did she continue to make the effort?
If matters continued thus, she would end up an embittered, frustrated woman, a stranger to the joys of love, the comforts of marriage. Eleanor wanted to scream. It was simply not fair that the silly, wanton Petronilla should effortlessly experience what she was so ripe to enjoy. Both daughters of the hot-blooded south, Eleanor wondered if this heritage was not proving more of a curse than a blessing.
She must find a way out of this coil.
Bored to distraction, Eleanor haunted the stalls of Paris. Every dirty cobbled street loudly blazoned its own speciality: the cloth merchants’ street, the bakers’ and goldsmiths’ streets, the street of the Jews, where money was loaned and exchanged. Her continual purchases of bolts of sendal and wool, costly jewels, scented oils from the East and other luxuries, eventually resulted in a major upset between herself and the queen dowager.
“I can no longer live in the same quarters with this—this extravagant sorceress,” Louis’s mother screamed one evening, after Eleanor had returned from the marketplace with a gold and ruby ring.
Louis shifted from one foot to the other.
“Louis, are you going to allow this woman to insult me?”
The queen dowager turned on Eleanor. “I’m leaving the palace, do you hear? You’ve not only bewitched my son, you wicked creature, but your extravagance will bring France to ruin.”
Eleanor ignored her irate mother-in-law. “Louis, how can you stand by and permit this?”
“Your mother is right, Louis,” said Abbé Suger with a dark look at Eleanor. “Even your council accuses the queen of beggaring the treasury. You must put a stop to her behavior.”
But Louis, pale and mute as always when confronted with any sort of unpleasant situation, could deny her nothing—of a material nature anyway. Ignoring his council, his mother, and Abbé Suger, he continued to indulge her, as if trying to make up to her for his failure to please at night.
The queen dowager vacated Paris in a shower of accusations and dire predictions. Aware of his waning influence, Abbé Suger came less and less often to the palace, and was seen more and more in the Church of St.-Denis, which he was in the process of restoring. Despite his frugal attitude toward her spending, Abbé Suger himself spent lavishly on new stained-glass windows and other embellishments for his favorite project.
Thus, in the end, Eleanor felt she had achieved some sort of victory.
It was a poor substitute for love, however, and made her wretched existence no easier to bear.
Several months later, Geoffrey of Anjou paid one of his infrequent visits to Paris after a recent triumph in Normandy.
“You will notice a difference since your last visit two years ago, my lord,” Eleanor said, pleased, as always, to see him.
She stood in the entrance to the great hall proudly pointing out the changes she was making in the castle: new tapestries worked in blue and scarlet wools graced the stone walls, a half-completed hearth that would have a chimney to funnel the smoke.
“Grace à Dieu, the hall will be virtually transformed,” Geoffrey said. “This castle used to remind me of a dungeon.”
“Perhaps that is why I always felt like a prisoner.”
“And now? Are you still in need of being rescued?” Geoffrey’s cornflower blue gaze sent a shiver of anticipation through her.
“If I were?”
“I would feel obligated to rescue you.”
Eleanor led him down the passage and up the winding staircase to the solar, where a troubadour was strumming his lute.
“I also intend to broaden the narrow window slits to let in more light.” A servitor offered them silver goblets of wine on a wooden tray “And the wine is now imported from Bordeaux and Gascony—which makes it drinkable.”
Geoffrey smiled as he took a goblet. “That’s not all you’ve imported. I hear there is a veritable parade of troubadours, knights, and jongleurs streaming into Paris from Aquitaine. And surely these are new.” He nodded at Eleanor’s ladies, flitting about the solar like colorful hummingbirds, chatting, laughing, singing along with the minstrel. “I must congratulate you.”
Their eyes met; Geoffrey’s hand brushed against hers as if by accident. Her heart raced and she did not move away. Suddenly aware her ladies were watching, Eleanor felt her cheeks burn and stepped back.
The Vespers bell summoned them to evensong. Eleanor led the way out of the solar and down the passage.
“How is your charming son? He must be nine or ten by now.”
Geoffrey slowed his step. His handsome face twisted into a grimace; he shrugged elegant shoulders. “My charming son, Henry, is with his mother in England these days. Although I worry about his welfare in that war-torn land, it is something of a relief. Subduing Normandy is easier than trying to subdue Henry.”
Eleanor laughed, vividly remembering the connection between herself and the gray-eyed scamp at her wedding feast, then again when he had presented her with a bouquet of lilies on the road to Poitiers.
“Do you go often to Aquitaine?” Geoffrey asked as they continued on their way to the chapel.
“Seldom. Louis doesn’t like me to go without him, and he dislikes going so—” she gave an eloquent shrug. “I miss my duchy—I cannot tell you how deeply.”
“It strikes me that you are not very happy, Madam.”
Unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears. Geoffrey reached out as if to touch her, then withdrew.
The next day when Count Geoffrey was leaving, Eleanor wished she could find an excuse to keep him longer. In the courtyard he bowed over her hand, his eyes caressing her in a manner that sent a wave of heat through her body. She was aware that Louis, standing next to her, had stiffened.
With an aching sense of loneliness she watched the Angevin lord mount his black stallion and ride off into the gray drizzle of the autumn day.
Luxurious quarters, entertainment from morning until night, gay companions, were no compensation for the vast emptiness inside her heart. Even a stolen visit, when she dressed as a page to hear Peter Abelard lecture, had not relieved the monotony for long. In fact, she had been disappointed after a while and found the arguments boring. Did it really matter whether a sow led to market was led by the rope or the man? She was still restless, still wretched, and still a prisoner. What could she do?
“What you need is a lover, Nell,” said Petronilla one afternoon as they lounged on Eleanor’s bed in the solar.
“But I’m not quite ready to take that step. Too dangerous. You know what happens to adulterous queens?”
“Annul the marriage? Banish you to a convent? That wouldn’t happen to you, you’re duchess of Aquitaine! Besides, you’d have to be caught first.”
“Everyone watches me. I know Bernard of Clairvaux is just waiting like a hawk, ready to pounce if I do anything that even looks suspicious.”
“You can’t imagine the joys you’re missing, Sister.”
The growing scandal of Petronilla and her elderly lover, Ralph, provided the only real excitement in Eleanor’s life. Apart from occasional mild flirtations with her own troubadours or visiting nobles like Geoffrey of Anjou, her most vital connection to the passionate existence she craved was through her sister’s adulterous affair.
But Louis was shocked and humiliated by the behavior of the two lovers. “Ralph is married to the sister of the count of Champagne, who is a powerful vassal of mine. He is most distressed by these events and by rumors that Ralph will seek an annulment. Thįs—this disgraceful affair must cease.”
They were in their own chamber preparing for bed. Louis had just risen from the prie-dieu.
“What are you saying?” Eleanor cried, already under the fur-lined, blue and gold-embroidered coverlet. “They are in love, never will they be parted. It’s naught to do with the count of Champagne. How can you be so unchivalrous, so lacking in romance?”
“But, my dear, the count has complained to the pope, who has upbraided me for allowing such adulterous behavior under my own roof. Ralph is my cousin, I can’t very well condone—”
“Why, why, why are you so spineless?” Eleanor threw herself on the lace-trimmed cushions and pounded her fists on the coverlet. “Show a little mettle! Stand up to the pope, to the count! Assert yourself. Behave like a fearless knight for a change.”
Eleanor knew she sounded like a shrew but did not care. If only once Louis would act like a true king, the strong gallant she so longed for him to be! Reminding her as usual of a cowed, bewildered puppy, Louis crept under the coverlet and curled up on his side of the bed. Why had God cursed her with such a husband? What had she ever done to deserve such a wretched life? How long could she go on before exploding?
A month later Bernard of Clairvaux unexpectedly arrived at the palace, demanding to see her.
“After five years of marriage, your failure to bear a child is the talk of Paris,” the monk said, when they met in the Chapel of St. Nicholas. “Like everyone else, I’m concerned for the future of the realm.”
It was a concern Eleanor shared and she did not object to discussing it, even with this meddling monk. For once he might be able to do some good.
“Louis still thinks of himself as a future priest and finds every excuse imaginable not to bed me,” she said. “Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he is forbidden to lie with me, then again forty days before Easter or Christmas, as well as three days before communion. You know how often Louis takes communion? So you see it is hardly my fault. I am more than willing.”
“King Louis behaves as a devoted son of Holy Church, but I will write to His Holiness in Rome. I feel certain that upon my recommendation he will grant dispensations to King Louis in this matter. The weal of the kingdom is at stake.” Abbé Bernard’s gaze bored into hers. “More than willing, you say? What does that mean exactly?”
“What you think it means, Father.” A sudden urge to shock this unshakable, devout churchman took hold of Eleanor. “I am young and ripe for the marriage bed.”
“I’m sure you are aware that carnal desire, even for a husband, is held to be sinful. Relations between husband and wife are not intended for pleasure but for the sole purpose of bearing children. However, with the disgraceful example set you by your adulterous family, what else can one expect but wanton cravings?” His eyes narrowed. “Do you attempt to solace yourself in order to relieve your unholy lust?”
Eleanor was intrigued. “No. There are ways to do that?”
A look of disgust crossed Bernard’s ascetic face as he signed himself. “Unfortunately, the devil has endless means at his disposal to entice the unwary. It relieves my mind that you are ignorant of such matters.”
Eleanor assumed an air of maidenly innocence. “Totally ignorant. You must tell me what—what these means are so I will be sure to avoid them.”
“You must never, never touch yourself—with an object or otherwise.”
“An object?” Eleanor did not have to feign a look of incredulity.
For the first time Abbé Bernard looked uncomfortable. “I have heard that Satan often uses a candle as his instrument of temptation.”
With an exclamation of pretended horror Eleanor crossed herself.
Before she left the chapel Bernard showed her the penitential codes. He pointed out that though a great number of lines were devoted to the sins of adultery, sodomy, and bestiality, by far the greatest was devoted to the sin of self-abuse as practiced by laymen. Because she read Latin, Eleanor noticed a whole other section that appeared to deal with self-abuse as practiced by the clergy, before Bernard quickly closed the book. She repressed a smile. So men of God were not immune to the same needs that pricked her own flesh.
“Curb your carnality, woman,” warned Bernard, “lest you fall into the sin of onanism, or self-abuse, which I consider to be worse than adultery. I will give you a forty-day penance and I enjoin you to pray to the Holy Virgin, day and night, to make you fruitful. I also advise a pilgrimage to a holy shrine.”
After this discussion, Louis was granted dispensations that permitted him to bed her five days of the week, although he rarely took advantage of this relaxation. Eleanor, on the other hand, found ways, unsatisfactory as they were, to temporarily dispel her own torments. This led her to wonder, not for the first time, if the strictures of the Church did not, in practice, often lead people to the very sins they wished to prevent.
Eleanor did not conceive but had no intention of visiting a holy shrine nor of observing the forty days of penance. Quite unexpectedly another solution offered itself.
One day in late autumn, as she shopped with her women in the marketplace at a draper’s stall, she overheard two well-dressed Parisian women talk of a visiting seeress, a gypsy woman from Moorish Spain, who was reputed to have success as a teller of fortunes.
When Eleanor returned to the palace she ordered one of her servitors from Poitiers to return to the marketplace and discreetly inquire about this gypsy. After several hours he returned with the information that the woman did indeed exist and where she could be located. The seeress spent much of her time traveling throughout Europe, he said, and had come to Paris in secret. In the south, gypsies were readily accepted. In France, Eleanor knew that the Church was particularly hostile to the seeress’s race as well as to the gypsies’ gift of second sight, which the Holy Fathers deemed witchcraft.
Eleanor dismissed the servant, sent for Petronilla, and persuaded her to accompany her on a visit to the seeress.
A week later when Louis was out of Paris to inspect a newly installed stained glass window at Chartres, Eleanor and Petronilla slipped out of the palace one chill November evening after dusk. Innocent of jewelry, fustian cloaks covering plain linen gowns, they looked like ordinary women of burgher status. Two Poitevin grooms and the servitor from Poitiers, sworn to secrecy, accompanied them on foot.
Eleanor had rarely explored Paris after dark. There were not many people abroad, she noticed, and those who were seemed anxious to avoid them. This gave the whole venture an added spice of danger and excitement. They passed through dark twisted alleys until they came to a narrow wooden house on a winding street beside the banks of the Seine. The dark street was filled with river fog; the light from a sickle moon cast mysterious shadows on the ground. They knocked and the door was immediately opened by a handsome youth with dark hair and swarthy skin who said he would take them to his grandmother.
Petronilla was afraid and refused to see the seeress, preferring, she said, to wait outside the chamber with their attendants. Also fearful, but still determined, Eleanor entered alone. The seeress, wearing many skirts in violet, rose, and deep purple colors, was seated on a divan piled high with cushions. A brass lamp burning a naked flame lay on a low table in front of her. She motioned for Eleanor to sit on a stool on the other side of the table. The woman’s face was in shadow but she appeared to be very old. Her head was loosely covered with a black shawl, and Eleanor glimpsed golden hoops dangling from her ears.
“What I want to know—” Eleanor began in a trembling voice.
“I know what you want, granddaughter of the Troubadour,” the woman interjected in a heavily accented tongue.
Eleanor was shocked into silence. How did the woman know who she was?
The woman chuckled softly, pleased at the effect she had created. “Your grandfather and father were always kind to my people, which is why I consented to see you. Give me your hand.” She stretched out an arm ringed almost to the elbow with jangling gold bracelets.
Eleanor held out a shaking hand. The woman grasped it in warm brown fingers, surprisingly strong and reassuring. A moment later Eleanor found herself telling the old woman everything about her marital relations with Louis and her fears that with such a husband she would never produce a son.
“You will have many sons,” the old woman said in a crooning voice, gazing into Eleanor’s palm. “It is written here quite clearly. But not with the man to whom you are now wedded.” She looked up. Above the flickering flame her eyes, bright as ebony beads, met Eleanor’s. “Much about you is revealed. For instance, in the ignorance of youth you seek to lose yourself in love, to burn with passion’s flame. Beware, for such a love carries within it the seeds of its own destruction and may well be your undoing.”
The old woman’s words reminded Eleanor of Bernard of Clairvaux, and she was tempted to close her ears.
“Beware, as well, of a need for power, which—”
“Where is this man who will give me sons?” Eleanor interjected. She had not come to hear a sermon. “When will I meet him? Is it to be soon?”
The seeress smiled and let go of Eleanor’s hand. “Not very soon, I think. At the moment he is only nine years old.” She paused. Her smile faded; her eyes closed. Swaying back and forth in a kind of snakelike trance her words came forth in a soft hiss.
“Child of the sun, you will undertake many hazardous journeys and suffer much heartbreak, beyond that of most women. Four—yes, four kings will you know and two alien lands, but the road ahead is filled with treachery and stained with blood.” Her voice became silent.
After a few moments the gypsy opened her eyes and held out her hand.
Deeply shaken, Eleanor dropped several silver coins into the curled fingers. “Your words—what do they mean?”
The seeress’s eyes, opaque and unblinking, held Eleanor’s. “I speak that which I see; meaning is beyond my powers. But this I know: You have been given the strength to bear what must be borne. Others who cross your path may be less fortunate. You cast a long shadow, Lady—and will endure.”
Eleanor rose to her feet and stumbled out of the room as in a dream. All the way back to the castle the seeress’s words drummed through her mind. From some far-off place she sensed a breath of anguish, an aura of impending doom so faint, so fragile, a heartbeat later she wondered if she had ever felt it at all.