Free The Secret Eleanor by Cecelia Holland

above it, the standard of the King floated in the mysterious currents of the air like a silken hand.
    She came into the center of the space, then stopped and turned. Around her, all the men also stopped, turned, and lifted their eyes, and from the Angevins came a collective low gasp. She understood how they felt. She still felt its impact, after seeing it a hundred times. The great round window above them in the darkness shone pure as the sunlight, blue and red and green. In the center Christ was smiling down on her, blessing her with His hand. Every time she saw it a surge of pleasure turned her almost dizzy, strong as sex.
    This is God, she thought, exultant. This beauty, this delight, this is God, no matter what Bernard says. He was a saint, but he was walled around with old belief, and he could not see the power in this.
    They held the ceremony in one of the chapels along the ambulatory. Everything was very carefully done. Henry came bareheaded, unarmed and alone before the King, who sat in front of the altar with his crown on. They spoke the ritual words, solemn as prayers and probably older, and Henry knelt down and put his hands into Louis’s hands, and commended himself and his duchy unto the King.
    Louis at this point was supposed to clench his hands hard around Henry’s, to hurt him a little, reminding him of the King’s power. Eleanor, sitting behind and to the left, saw Louis’s pale white hands tighten, and she saw Henry’s eyes widen in surprise, and then flatten with contempt. Louis had no strength to humble him. When Louis leaned down to give him the kiss of peace, Henry shut his eyes.
    Afterward they went into the garden of the monastery, under the pear trees, and there feasted, with the young Duke on the King’s right hand. The sun shone softly through the leaves of the trees and cast dappled shadows all around; at the edge of the orchard the monastery wall rose, its limestones overrun with ivy. The air smelled dusty.
    Eleanor sat on the King’s left, the only woman at the feast. Bernard had come to see the ceremony and was there at the table, a darker shadow in the mottled shadows of the pear trees, sitting among his followers on Anjou’s far side. The Angevins’ own pages served them, which privately she thought was wise; there were those who might try to help Bernard’s curse along.
    The monks had a good array of meats for them, and some choice breads, all done up in odd shapes and unnatural colors. Eleanor was to share the King’s cup and so she drank nothing, not caring to touch her lips to something Louis’s lips would touch. She took only a few bites of a roasted duck’s breast, dipped in its cherry sauce. She laid her hands in her lap and studied the men around her, watching them through the corners of her eyes, through her lashes, so that they could not say she stared.
    Bernard as usual ate nothing, but sat hunched, his head down, his eyes closed, his lips moving. He shrank from every pleasure, every carnal thing, as if it were a weight of earth that kept his soul from God. His skin looked dry as paper, his hair like straw. She thought, suddenly, His faith consumes him . Her old cold doubts began to waken. Surely one who gave himself so utterly to God got something in return; maybe he was right. Maybe she should submit to the will of God.
    She choked that down, tearing her attention away from him, to the other men up and down the table from her. Everybody else was champing away like a horse at a manger: Louis picking the meat off a capon with his fingers, Le Bel Anjou soaking up bloody meat juice with a chunk of bread, no sound but the contented moving of their jaws. Watching them reminded her of cattle munching. Just beyond Louis, Henry FitzEmpress sat back, planting one elbow on the table, brushed a litter of small bones off the board in front of him, and reached for his wine cup.
    His eyes turned toward the spire of Saint Denis, rising above the thatched roof of the refectory. Raising