The Girl Who Would Be Queen

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  “He is reconsidering,” she tells me with confidence. “We have persuaded him with our arguments.”

  If he has been persuaded at all, it is by her lawyers, her council and Hugo del Balzo with his little band of Neapolitan advisors in Avignon, not by Joanna. But if they are successful, it will be a much-needed victory for the Queen. On the other hand, if Clement VI publicly confirms, by appointing a legate, that he does not see Joanna as a capable ruler, how will she ever convince her nobles to obey her when her crown is restored?

  I do not share my sister’s optimism. Perhaps it is simply the weariness of my condition. I am always uncomfortable. My back aches and my breasts are sore, my bladder is always in distress and shooting pains burn my chest. I cannot believe this is the natural condition of carrying a child, even if my midwives assure me it is. Who would ever do this more than once? I am too grumpy to admit that such a thought is shocking, that pious women pray to God to bless them with fertility, but I do remind myself, severely, never to say such a thing out loud.

  Furthermore I am bored. It is not fair, I tell myself, as I stand at a window looking down on the courtyard where Joanna and the other young lords and ladies of her court are mounting their horses for a morning of falconing. The royal falcons sit on their trainers’ gloved hands wearing their brightly-colored hoods. I watch them turning their heads sharply left and right as though trying to find a direction in which they can see. I feel as confined as they are, trapped inside on this beautiful September morning by my expanding belly.

  Sancia, who does not like to ride let alone hunt, comes to stand beside me. We watch the horses stamp their feet, eager to run, as they are led to the mounting blocks. They toss their heads, straining against the grooms’ tight hold on their reigns.

  Robert, Louis, and Philip, our cousins of Taranto, are among the lords joining the hunt. Louis hands Joanna up onto her horse. I watch his hands linger on her foot a little longer than necessary. When he lets go, Louis pats Joanna’s horse, letting his hand brush her skirt. Joanna looks down at him, her eyes half-lidded like a purring cat, her lips curving up in a secret smile. I cannot see Louis’ face, only the back of his head, and his hand against her leg.

  Across the courtyard, Robert watches them, his face cold and withdrawn. Something in his eyes as he looks at his brother makes me shiver. I would not want to cross Robert of Taranto. Louis is impetuous, he has a temper and can be cruel, I have seen it when we played together as children; but Robert... Robert frightens me. Robert would cut down his Lady Mother if she got in his way. I think it a very good thing Robert was sick with fever when I married Charles, and did not recover until after Joanna recognized my marriage and paid off the Taranto family.

  Sancia, standing beside me at the window, glances at me, her look a clear admission that she has seen what I have seen.

  “Have they been circumspect?” I ask. I sound like my Lady Grandmother, but I am afraid for my sister. I imagine the Holy Father hearing of a scandal, when he already questions Joanna’s rule. Or worse, much worse, Andrew’s mother, Elizabeth of Hungary, hearing of this.

  “I do not know what you mean, Princess Maria,” Sancia says, looking at me steadily. I step back from the window. We are completely alone in the room, as she can see.

  “Of course you do. Who else would she trust to help her, now that I am gone?”

  “You—?”

  “Just tell me, Sancia. I do not judge her—how could I?” I smile wryly at this allusion to my scandalous marriage. “I only want to know, is she safe?”

  Sancia nods slowly. “She is now. My grandmother became suspicious of my nighttime... wandering, and caught me bringing Louis to her room. She followed us into Her Grace’s bedchamber and had a talk with them.”

  I grin. I have been subjected to more than one of her grandmother Philippa’s talks. I imagine the Queen of Naples and proud Louis of Taranto guiltily squirming like children as she chastised them. “And it has worked? One talk?” I cannot help laughing.

  “Well, it has not stopped their feelings,” Sancia is giggling herself. “But my Grandmother Philippa sleeps in Her Grace’s privy room now, against the door to her bedchamber. That stops the rest.”

  I find this hysterical. “I think... I think that will keep her safe,” I gasp through my giggles. We are both bent double with laughter.

  Sancia wipes tears from the corners of her eyes. “It is funny now, but at the time I was afraid. Not of Grandmother Philippa—of Lord Louis. He had his hand on his sword. When my grandmother threatened to tell Her Highness the Dowager Queen Sancia—”

  “Holy Mary,” I whisper. I clap my hand over my mouth at once, to prevent anything worse slipping out. Grandmother Sancia! She is too holy to sleep with her own husband, everyone knows she is still a virgin after a lifetime of marriage to King Robert. Imagine her learning her married granddaughter, after all her severe religious instruction, has taken a lover! She would call Joanna harlot and disown her; she would tear the cross from Joanna’s neck and the crown from her head and send her into the streets—or worse! It would be our Lady Grandmother’s death, and she would not go quietly. As surely as she is bound for heaven, just as surely she would order God to send Joanna to hell, and to be quick about it!

  “Just so.” Sancia nods as though she has read my thoughts. “I was sure Lord Louis would kill my grandmother then and there, and probably me as well, to ensure our silence. Indeed he drew his sword from its scabbard and would have—” she looks at the hard stone floor with its covering of rushes. “And no one would have objected. I know our family is not well-liked; people say we have over-stepped ourselves.”

  I want to deny this, it sounds so harsh, but I know it is true. The favoritism shown Philippa and Raymond and their sons by King Robert and Dowager Queen Sancia, and continued by Queen Joanna, has created envy and hatred for them, all the more now that so many are seeing their own wealth precariously ready to disappear if the Florentine bankers fail.

  “He did not hurt Philippa?” I ask anxiously. My nursemaid. My mother. Who else could I call by that name?

  “Queen Joanna put out her hand and stopped him. She loves my grandmother. She will always protect us.” This is said with a rush of feeling that makes me want to promise the same. I start to do so, but Sancia, not noticing, continues, “I am afraid my grandmother has made a powerful enemy in one who might otherwise have been one of our few powerful friends.”

  “The Tarantos have no friends. They have only allies or enemies.” It is true; I do not only say it because I am still bitter over their unprovoked attack on my husband’s castle and lands.

  “That is the nature of men,” Sancia says with a shrug. “Still, I would rather he see me as his ally.”

  “That is why you helped them.”

  “I helped them because Queen Joanna asked me, for the sake of our childhood friendship. You have done the same for her, my Lady, and would still, would you not?”

  She says this with a simple sincerity that shames me. Joanna is my sister, yet I laughed about her plight, I was pleased she was thwarted. The thought of her sleeping alone, with our old nursemaid Philippa the Catanian guarding her door, amused me. Amuses me still. She has a crown; I have a man I love and who loves me, in my bed—I am carrying his child. I touch my extended belly proudly. A fertile woman who is loved is greater than a lonely, barren queen.

  Why must I always judge what she has against my own fortune? Why are there always scales, whose weights must be equal, before I can be happy? Or her, for that matter. Joanna did not want me happily married, she wanted me strategically married, as she is. Married to suit her needs. Can we not simply wish each other well, as Sancia does? Is there no true friendship possible between us?

  This is a hard admission and I am not prepared to make it. My sister held my hand beneath our capes when I feared to enter Castle Nuovo, and I held hers in the dark when she wept for our parents. No matter what else we are, we will always be two sisters holding each others’ hand in
secret. I want her to have her crown and a man she loves—did I not deliver her letter that once? She wants me to have a crown and a husband I love—she just wanted it to be Prince Jean of France.

  And yet, we are not equal. And if we are not equal, should there not be some form of balance? Am I to be blamed for wanting that? Is it not merely fair and just?

  “The Queen is my sister,” I answer Sancia. She nods, but she is not fooled. She knows it is no answer at all.

  ***

  In early October Joanna returns smiling to her presence chamber after a meeting with her council. I wonder what can have made her so happy, when all the civilized world is still reeling with the shock of economic disaster. The massive trade and banking businesses of Florence—the Bardi, Perussi, and Acciaiuoli families—have just declared bankruptcy. Every kingdom in Christendom depends upon them to buy its produce and goods and grant their loans, and none more than the Kingdom of Naples. Who will purchase and distribute the 45,000 tons of grain we produce, which is the basis of our economy, now that they are gone? Everything we do, from the building and beautifying of our castles, cathedrals and monasteries, to the prestige of our university, and the luxuries—silk, perfume, jewels, spices—that are available for purchase at our famed markets—it is all dependent upon the trade and banking of these Florentine families. Not only are our nobles affected, but all who depend upon their patronage. Artists and tradesmen have lost their livelihood, and those who are still employed are glad to make half the wages they were paid before. Everyone from the mightiest lord to the poorest peasant is suffering as this economic plague infects our kingdom, and all our neighboring kingdoms, and nothing can stop it. Joanna and her council are trying grimly to find a way to outlast it; that is the best they can hope for—to survive and one day recover.

  “Clement VI will be struck by this crisis also,” Joanna told me yesterday. It took me a moment to realize she was thinking of her mother-in-law’s tempting hoard of gold, and what Elizabeth of Hungary wants to buy with it.

  So why does Joanna come through the door with the first smile I have seen in weeks on her face? Is the crisis over? Have the Bardi, Perussi, and Acciaiuoli families—or even just one of them—reopened their banks? I smile back, eager for good news.

  “The honored Poet Laureate of Rome, Francesco Petrarch, is coming to visit Naples. He wants to converse with me!” Joanna announces.

  The lords and ladies-in-waiting all applaud, as if they think this is wonderful news. As if they are at all interested in Petrarch’s books, or have even read them. Joanna’s bright eyes and flushed face, her delighted smile and contagious excitement, are enough. They are all desperate for happiness and hope.

  “Play!” Joanna claps her hands to the musicians in her presence chamber. She chooses two of her ladies-in-waiting, the ones with the prettiest voices, and commands them to sing for us.

  But she is too excited to be still and listen. She walks over to where I am sitting and whispers, so as not to interrupt the music, “Do you remember his last visit? When he would have none but our Lord Grandfather examine him? When he said that King Robert the Wise was the only mortal man he would accept as judge?” She is beside herself with delight, as she was then, through the full three days of query and response. I was barely twelve but I remember the moment King Robert pronounced himself satisfied. In front of the most illustrious men in the kingdom, he took off his royal ceremonial robe and draped it over Petrarch’s shoulders, asking the poet to wear it in Rome when he received his laurel crown. And Petrarch did so, proudly.

  “He wants to come to talk with me!” Joanna’s voice is hushed with awe. I am not sure whether she is amazed at being so honored or terrified she will not prove up to it. Probably both.

  “I will have him speak at the university, and bring his new book for our scribes to copy. And ask him to recite his poetry before the court!” Her eyes are shining.

  I smile brightly at her. Surely there will be more entertaining events while he is here? Is Joanna concerned about the cost?

  “Can we afford to entertain him?” I ask. But I am only pretending to good husbandry. In fact, I am hoping there will be lavish feasts, with music and dancing and recitations of his love poems, and tournaments and beast-baiting, and perhaps even a masque—I am doubtful of this, I do not think Petrarch is a whimsical man, perhaps there will be no masque. Then I realize, unless he comes very soon, I shall miss every bit of it!

  I will have to return to Castle Durazzo in less than two weeks. Already I am so heavy with child it is impossible to hide my condition. No one there will tell me any news of court, let alone allow me to appear publicly like this. And a month after that, I go into my confinement and I will be there for three months: six weeks before the baby is born and six weeks after, while everyone else is celebrating Petrarch’s visit. I will miss all twelve days of Christmas as well—the Yule log, the singers, the mummers, everything! When I come out it will all be over. Petrarch will be gone and the celebration of Christmas finished and we will be back to drearily worrying about our finances.

  “When will he arrive?” I demand.

  “In one week.” She looks like a woman dreaming of a lover. I want to slap her. Does she imagine a mere woman will impress the greatest mind in the world, as our grandfather did? I realize, at once, that that is exactly what she dreams of doing. Of matching—no, surmounting—every accomplishment of King Robert’s. Only then will she feel the crown sitting firmly and deservedly on her head.

  “Joanna...” I want to warn her, to prepare her. Petrarch will never respect her as he respected our Lord Grandfather. She may be as intelligent, educated and witty as any person alive, and a monarch as well, but to him she will always be a woman, inferior by her very nature. I am younger than my sister, and not nearly as accomplished or clever, but I understand this.

  She looks at me, smiling.

  There is nothing I can say. She will take it as jealousy or resentment. She thinks because I do not have her intellect, I am without understanding. She will only accept this bitter truth when she learns it on her own.

  Anyway, more to the point, I will be resentful if she has feasts and dances and mummers while I am shut away in a dark room with Margherita and my critical mother-in-law. I bite my lip, thinking.

  “Your Majesty, you should throw a great feast for him as soon as he arrives. The very week he arrives, if not the very day! Fill his first days with every kind of entertainment he might like. If you impress him in the first week, he will not notice if the fetes that follow are poorer. That way, you can honor and impress Petrarch, and then also please your royal treasurer and council with your subsequent frugality.”

  She laughs as if she thinks I have been very clever, and I think I have been, because she agrees at once.

  The feast for Petrarch is wonderful! Ten courses are served, including every kind of meat and fowl and fish, bread so light it is nearly white, olives and sweetmeats and figs, sausage and cheeses, meat pies and pasta, all followed by grapes and pomegranates and tortes topped with marzipan or sweet fruit or custard.

  Extra musicians and minstrels are hired for the event, as well as the court musicians. The dancing is only marred by the fact that I cannot join in. There are tumblers who make us gasp at their feats of agility and skill, and jugglers who recite amusing poems as well as long, breathtaking tales and of course, Petrarch’s most famous poems.

  Joanna was so happy making her plans she allowed me to prevail upon her to invite my husband and his brothers. Charles, seated at my side, is delighted with me and properly deferential to Queen Joanna.

  I could not convince Joanna to invite our Lady Aunt, Agnes of Perigord, my mother-in-law. She is not so delighted with me, but cannot complain as Grandmother Sancia assures her that we both tried our best.

  In short, everything turns out perfectly.

  The next morning I return to Castle Durazzo, which is duller than ever by comparison. The gloomy mood of nobles shunned from their Majesty’s co
urt pervades the castle. I love my husband and I have delighted in his caresses, but he does not caress me now. Instead, from time to time I catch him looking at my belly with a speculative air, as though he wonders whether I will betray him with a daughter. I am sure I carry a son, but if I am wrong?

  All my pride in this pregnancy is evaporating. I do not want to go through with it. What if I am torn so badly I cannot survive? What if the maternal fever takes me, as it does so many women? What if the bleeding afterward cannot be stopped? How did my father’s mother die, and my own mother, both so soon after their child was born? I have never asked, and now I dare not, but my dreams bring me answers—answers I do not want to believe. My midwife reassures me, as I am sure she has done to every mother in her care, both those who survived and those who did not.

  I am too young to die! Over and over these words ring in my mind: I am too young to die! But of course I am not. I am lucky to have survived my own birth, and then to have survived my childhood. I have gone to Somma every year when the summer heat brought fevers to our city; I never thought about those left in the hot, still streets to face it. I have washed their feet at Easter and then fled to the cool breezes of the seaside so that I would live to adulthood. I am not too young, but still I feel my blood pounding in my chest, my throat, my ears, pounding to the ragged beat: I am too young to die.

  One month after my return to the Durazzo castle, my husband the Duke of Durazzo holds a small feast in my honor, after which I curtsy, and kiss him chastely, and enter my confinement clutching my cross and praying fervently that I will walk out of these rooms again.

  Chapter Fourteen: Confinement

  My Lady Mother-in-law accompanies me to the rooms she has prepared for my confinement, close by her chambers. She wants to be the first to know when my child is born. I would prefer to be closer to Charles, so that he could run to me if I called for him if something went wrong, and I could see him one last time. I have not said such a silly thing aloud, they would think me a coward. Charles has his battles and so do I.