Time and Chance

by Sharon Kay Penman

  It troubled Maud, too. But before she could respond, a door slammed and a young girl came flying down the steps. “Cousin Maud, I am so very glad to see you!”

  “And can this be Tilda? I vow, child, you get prettier every time I see you.” Enfolding the girl in an affectionate embrace, Maud saw Petronilla signaling frantically that nothing should be said in front of Tilda, and she wondered, not for the first time, how Eleanor could have been cursed with a sister so lacking in common sense. She was genuinely pleased to see the child, for she’d stood godmother to Tilda. Keeping her arm around Tilda’s slender shoulders, she headed for the warmth of the great hall, leaving Petronilla to follow or not, as she chose.

  THE HEARTH had burned low, providing little heat or light. Maud wasted no time summoning a servant, for it was faster to do it herself. Reaching for the fire tongs, she quickly rekindled the flames.

  Eleanor watched with an oblique smile that was more ironic than amused, knowing full well that Maud would soon be prodding the embers of her marriage for signs of life, too. “So what now? How do you intend to exorcise my demons?”

  Maud sighed. “Could you at least let me thaw out ere you throw down the gauntlet?”

  “You’ll forgive me if my manners are ragged around the edges, Maud.” Adding a laconic, “ Pregnancy will do that to a woman.”

  “So will an unfaithful husband.” Eleanor’s head jerked around, her eyes suddenly as green and glittering as any cat’s, but Maud staved off her rebuke with an upraised hand. “I ask you to hear me out, for the love I bear you as my queen, my cousin by marriage, and my friend,” she said quietly. “As you clearly guessed, I am here in answer to Petra’s summons. But I would have come on my own, ready to staunch the bleeding or to . . .” She paused very deliberately. “. . . plot regicide.”

  Eleanor said nothing, but the corner of her mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly, and Maud took that as a good sign. “I know about Harry’s dalliance with the Clifford girl. If you want to talk about it, whatever you say will go no farther than this chamber. If you do not want to talk, I’ll say no more on it.”

  “I do not.”

  Maud inclined her head. “As you wish.”

  Eleanor did not trouble to mask her skepticism. “Since when are you so biddable?”

  “I have more than my share of failings—or so I’ve been told,” Maud said dryly. “But for all of my indiscretions, I am never indiscreet.” Thinking it a pity that the same could not be said for Petronilla.

  “Petra meant well,” Eleanor said, and Maud acknowledged her mind-reading with a wry smile. For a time there was no sound in the chamber but the hissing and crackling of the fire. Maud studied the other woman covertly through her lashes, not liking what she found. Eleanor’s skin was a waxen white, almost transparent, a pulse throbbing erratically at her temple, another at her throat, deeply etched evidence of exhaustion in the taut set of her mouth, in the furrows on her brow, and most conspicuously in the lurking shadows under her eyes, the bruises of the sleep-starved. Ah, Harry, what have you done?

  She let Eleanor control the conversation and they talked of the latest rumors to spill out of the queen’s restive homeland: that the Counts of Angoulême and La Marche were supposedly conspiring to disavow Henry and offer their allegiance to the French king. Maud was not surprised when Eleanor complained caustically about the difficulties she’d encountered as regent during Henry’s extended stay in England that past year. She did not doubt that Eleanor was genuinely concerned about the spreading discontent in her domains, but her political grievances were stoked now by private pain, and Maud could think of few fuels more combustible than a sense of humiliation and betrayal.

  Eleanor was fuming about a petition recently circulated at the papal court by some of the more disaffected Poitevin barons. They’d actually dared to claim that their duchess’s marriage to the Angevin interloper was invalid because she and Henry were distant cousins, reminding His Holiness that these were the very grounds for dissolving her union with the French king. There was no chance that the Pope would heed their appeal, but Eleanor was infuriated by their effrontery, by the very suggestion that she was subservient to Henry’s will. Maud listened and murmured sympathetic agreement where appropriate, all the while wishing that the wronged wife could speak as candidly as the aggrieved queen.

  It was then that they were interrupted by Eleanor’s daughter. Tilda was apologetic yet insistent, entreating her mother to help her write to her grandmother, the Empress Maude. She was being tutored in German, she explained to Maud, for that was the tongue of her husband-to-be, and it had occurred to her that the Empress might be pleased to receive a letter in the language of her long-gone youth. Maud understood what the girl was really seeking—some rare time alone with her mother—and excused herself.

  This must have been a wretched Christmas for poor little Tilda. The child was probably anxious about her new life looming in Germany, and at ten, she was old enough to sense her mother’s profound unhappiness, old enough, too, to understand some of the gossip she’d inevitably overheard. Maud gave her a quick hug as she headed for the door, hoping that Tilda would find more happiness at the German court than her grandmother the empress had.

  As soon as she stepped out into the stairwell, she was pounced upon by Petronilla. “At last! Well? Did Eleanor talk to you about Harry and his whore?”

  “No, she did not.”

  “Hellfire and all its furies! I was so sure she’d confide in you . . .” Giving Maud a look of unspoken yet unmistakable reproach, Petronilla slipped her arm through the other woman’s. “Let’s hope you have better luck later. Now we need to find a quiet place where you can tell me exactly what you said to her.”

  “Are you sure you do not want to hide under Eleanor’s bed the next time we talk?”

  Petronilla was too worried to feel resentment. “I know you think I’m meddling, but it tears at my soul to see Eleanor so stricken and to be unable to ease her heart. First she put her own life and the babe’s at risk with that foolhardy journey to Woodstock, and now she shuts me out, unwilling to share her hurt. Thank God Almighty that Harry did not follow her to England! In her present state of mind, who knows what she might have said to him. At least they’ll have this time apart so her rage can cool.”

  Maud stopped so abruptly on the stairs that she nearly lost her balance. Jesus wept, was the woman serious? Nothing could be worse for the marriage than time apart. How could Petra be so blind? But she had no chance to respond, for a door banged above them and Tilda’s frightened cry froze both women in their tracks.

  “Aunt Petra, hurry!”

  Tilda was hovering in the doorway, staring in horror at the wet stain spreading rapidly across her mother’s skirt. One glance was enough for Maud. Giving the girl a gentle push, she said with quiet, compelling urgency, “You need not fear, lass. Her waters have broken, that’s all. You’d best fetch the midwife straightaway.” Tilda took off and Maud moved swiftly into the chamber, pausing only long enough to close the door. Petronilla was already kneeling at her sister’s side.

  “Jesú, Eleanor! Why did you not tell us that your pains had begun?” Eleanor grimaced, her eyes meeting Maud’s over Petronilla’s bowed head. “They had not,” she said, sounding edgy and out of breath. “The waters have broken too soon.”

  ALTHOUGH NO ONE acknowledged it, fear was a palpable presence in the birthing chamber. Eleanor’s labor had begun the evening after the premature rupture of her membranes. A day later, the contractions were coming sharp and short, agonizing but ineffective, for she should have been almost fully dilated by now and she was not.

  Beset by bouts of nausea, Eleanor could not swallow the honey and wine she needed to keep her strength up; even water sometimes made her gag. By turns, she shivered violently and then broke out in a cold sweat. They felt the sharp edge of her tongue as the hours dragged by, enduring her outbursts with a stoicism that could not completely camouflage their misgivings. They were all veterans of the
birthing chamber, familiar with the instinctive panic that could overwhelm a woman who knew she must either deliver her babe or die.

  It was, Maud thought grimly, the ultimate trap, and a woman in hard labor did not even have the option that a snared animal did, of chewing off its own foot to make a desperate escape. The Church’s position was unambiguous and immutable: if necessary, the mother must be sacrificed to spare the child. Fortunately for women, they were attended in the birthing chamber by midwives, not priests, and Maud had never known one who would not act first to save the mother.

  Eleanor was vomiting again, tended by her sister with so much tenderness that Maud could almost forgive her. For one so given to posturing and frivolity, Petronilla was surprisingly capable in a crisis, showing flashes of tempered steel beneath the superficial surface gloss. Maud reminded herself that the self-indulgent Petra had endured more than her share of sorrows—the loss of an adored father, a beloved husband, and an only son, stricken with that most feared of all mortal ailments, leprosy. She was not about to lose a sister, too, not as long as she had breath in her body, and she was winning Maud’s grudging admiration, both for her demeanor and her gritty determination to banish the shadow of death from the birthing chamber.

  Bertrade had taken a short break, was just emerging from the corner privy chamber. Her face was blank, for she was too experienced to reveal her own anxieties or dread. Her fatigue she could not hide, however, and she seemed to have aged years in these post-Christmas hours. Untidy black hair defied its pins, revealing a smattering of grey that Maud had never noticed before, and there was such a prominent slump to her shoulders that her body was conveying her distress more eloquently than words could have done. Eleanor was caught up in another contraction, and Maud took advantage of the moment to draw Bertrade aside.

  “Why is the mouth of her womb not open by now?” she asked quietly, the low, even pitch of her voice belied by the fingers digging into Bertrade’s arm. “She has always delivered her babies more easily than this.”

  “When a woman gives birth again and again, her womb can become weak and feeble. I’ve also seen this happen when the waters break too soon, but I do not know why.”

  Maud had learned that midwives, like doctors, were usually loath to admit their lack of knowledge, and she would have given Bertrade credit for her candor if it were not Eleanor in travail. “In all the birthings I’ve witnessed, the waters were either clear or light reddish in color. Eleanor’s were dark, a murky greenish brown. What does that mean?”

  Bertrade glanced across the chamber at the woman writhing on the birthing stool, then dropped her voice so her words barely reached Maud’s ear. “I am not sure, my lady. I’ve seen it but rarely. It can mean that the babe will be stillborn.”

  Maud was expecting as much. “If she cannot deliver the child, what will you do?”

  Bertrade could not repress a superstitious shiver. Why tempt fate? But she was not about to rebuke the Countess of Chester, the king’s cousin, and she said reluctantly, “There are herbs I can give her, dittany and hyssop and others. Or I can make a pessary with bull’s gall, iris juice, and oil, and that will usually expel a dead child. God Willing, it will not come to that.”

  “God Willing,” Maud echoed dutifully, keeping to herself her blasphemous thought that the Almighty too often seemed deaf to prayers coming from the birthing chamber. Just then Eleanor cried out, an involuntary, choked sob that sounded as if it were torn from her throat. Maud had attended three of Eleanor’s birthings and never had she heard her scream like that. The Latin words came unbidden to her lips, so soft and slurred that only Bertrade heard.

  “O infans, siue viuus, aut mortuus, exi foras, quia Christus te vocat ad lucem.”

  The midwife looked at her intently. “What does that mean, Lady Maud?”

  Maud swallowed with difficulty. “It is a prayer for a child whose birthing goes wrong. ‘O infant, whether living or dead, come forth because Christ calls you to the light.’ ”

  Bertrade nodded slowly. “Amen,” she said succinctly, and moved in a swirl of skirts back to Eleanor’s side.

  ELEANOR HAD BEEN CLUTCHING an eagle-stone amulet, most valued of all the talismans said to succor women in childbed. When her grip loosened, it slipped through her fingers onto the floor. With a dismayed gasp, Petronilla dropped to her knees and scrabbled about in the matted, sodden rushes until she’d recovered it. Pressing it back into her sister’s palm, she clasped Eleanor’s hand around the stone and hissed in her ear, “You must not die. You must hold on, you hear me? You cannot let that little whore of Harry’s win!”

  Eleanor’s eyes were like sunken caverns, so tightly was the skin stretched across her cheekbones. To Petronilla’s horror, that familiar face had begun to resemble an alabaster death mask, and she warned hoarsely, “If you die, I swear I’ll kill you!”

  The other women looked at her as if they feared her wits were wandering. But that was a childhood joke between them, and Eleanor’s cracked, bleeding lips twitched in acknowledgment of it. “I am not going to die, Petra . . . not today.”

  Petronilla’s eyes blurred. “You promise?”

  Eleanor nodded wordlessly, saving her strength for all that mattered now—survival. Bertrade was patting her face with a wet cloth, murmuring encouragements and reassurances that it would not be much longer and she must not lose heart. Eleanor knew that most childbed deaths occurred when the woman gave up, for there came a time when dying was easier than any of the alternatives. But she would not be one of them. She would rid her body of this alien intruder, this intimate enemy begotten by betrayal. She would not die so Harry’s child might live. And that the child was also hers seemed of small matter when measured against the desolation that had claimed every corner of her soul.

  He was born as midnight drew nigh, bruised and blue, a small, feeble shadow of the brothers who’d come before him. They had squalled lustily, kicking and squirming as they were cleansed of their mother’s blood and mucus. He gave only a muted, querulous cry, as if to complain at his unceremonious, discordant entry into their world. The birth of a son was usually a cause for celebration. But this one was an afterthought, the fourth son, needed neither as heir nor spare.

  After they’d assured themselves that he was whole and breathing, the women turned their attention to Eleanor, for she still had to expel the afterbirth, and that was often the most dangerous time of all. Bertrade had prepared a yarrow poultice and mixed a flagon of wine with boiled artemisia should Eleanor begin to hemorrhage; she also put aside a lancet and basin, in case the queen’s flooding must be stopped by bleeding her. She felt blessed, indeed, when none of these remedies were needed. After swallowing salted water, Eleanor groaned and twisted upon the birthing stool and the placenta splattered into Bertrade’s waiting hands. Hastily putting it aside for burial later lest it attract demons, the midwife rubbed her temples, leaving streaks of blood midst the sweat. “Well done, Madame,” she said proudly. “Well done!”

  The baby balked at being bathed and then swaddled, but he was in practiced hands and was soon turned over to Rohese, the waiting wet-nurse. She, too, was experienced and had no difficulty in getting him to suckle. “How black his hair is,” she marveled. “Blacker than sin itself.” She had nursed several of Eleanor’s infants and could not help commenting upon the dramatic contrast between the other babies, sun-kissed and robust and golden, and this undersized, fretful, dark imp. None of the women responded to her chatter and she lapsed into a subdued silence, sensing tensions in the chamber that had naught to do with a difficult birth.

  By the time Eleanor’s chaplain was allowed entry into this female sanctorum, she had been bathed and put to bed, although the women were hovering nearby to make sure she did not sleep yet, for all knew the danger that posed to new mothers. She accepted the priest’s congratulations with exhausted indifference, rousing herself to meet the minimum demands of courtesy and protocol, when all she wanted was to spiral down into a deep, dreamless sleep. />
  At the priest’s urging, the wet-nurse produced the infant for his inspection. “A fine lad,” he beamed. “If you wish, I will write to the king this very night. How pleased he will be to hear he has another son. Madame . . . the chapel is ready for the baptism. What name have you chosen for the babe?”

  Eleanor did not seem to have heard his query and he cleared his throat, asked again. She regarded him in silence, and he fidgeted under the power of those slanting hazel eyes, bloodshot and swollen and utterly opaque.

  It was Maud who came to his rescue. Taking the child from Rohese, she said briskly, “Since today is the saint’s day of John the Evangelist, let’s name him John.”

  The priest looked relieved to have this settled. “Does that meet with your approval, Madame?”

  Eleanor nodded and Maud handed the baby back to the wet-nurse. It occurred to Rohese then that the queen had yet to ask for the infant, and she moved, smiling, toward the bed. “Would you like to hold him, Madame?”

  Eleanor turned her head away without answering.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  August 1167

  Nôtre-Dame-du-Pré

  Rouen, Normandy

  MAUDE TURNED AT THE SOUND of the opening door. The woman who entered was her last link to the young bride she’d once been, consort and wife to Heinrich V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Germans. Heinrich had been dead for more than four decades, and in just a month’s time, it would be sixteen years since her unlamented second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, had been called to account for his sins. She’d lost a crown and buried two of her three sons, and through it all, Minna had been with her, steadfast and unswerving in her devotion, loyal even by Maude’s stringent standards. Age had gnarled Minna’s limbs and stolen away her strength; she walked with a limp, panted for breath at the least exertion, and had asked Maude to send her heart back to Germany for burial. Maude had promised that it would be done, and quietly made the necessary arrangements, for she knew—if Minna did not—that death would find her first.