The Girl Who Would Be Queen

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  “You are condemning us of a crime we have not committed.”

  “You are blameless. I do not consent to any of this.”

  “Your action does. Your lack of objection does. You are agreeing in deed with the Pope’s accusation. No one will ever believe us innocent if you do this.”

  At last she looks up, her face twisted. “I have no choice!” she cries. The sound of it, like a wounded animal, nearly makes me weep. “Every lord who supports me insists I appease Clement VI. They will not risk the possibility that he will change his mind and return the legate to power. Louis of Durazzo and Cardinal Talleyrand are even now in Avignon trying to convince him not to have Andrew crowned with me. Those are the battles I must win!” Joanna stops. Her eyes are desperate, and ashamed. She looks back down at the table, her hands gripping it now.

  “Your lords are not advising this in order to appease the cardinal or the pope,” Philippa says. “They are doing this for envy of me and my family, because we have been rewarded for our service and our loyalty by your royal grandparents and by you.”

  “I must have their support.”

  The room falls silent. Joanna does not look up. At length Philippa curtsies low and murmurs “Farewell, Your Majesty.”

  Joanna looks up then. “When I am stronger, when I am secure on my throne, I will call you back, all of you.” Her voice is so low it is nearly a whisper.

  “I hope you do not remember us too late, Your Majesty,” Philippa says. She turns and leads her family from the room.

  I want to walk out with them. For the sake of my husband I do not; and for the sake of my sister, who hates what she has done as much as I do.

  I want to go to her. It hurts me, the way she stands holding fast to the table where all her decisions are made. For the sake of my nursemaid, my Mother, the only one I have known, I cannot go to Joanna. I stand still and silent, just inside the room.

  There was nothing I could say. Philippa knew it was useless, I saw that in her face before we entered, but she could not let this happen to her family without objecting. And there is nothing I can say now. It is done.

  Joanna shuffles some papers on the table in front of her. Her clerk will come in later to take them away. I see her signature, the stamp of her ring—the mark of royalty. This is what she is, the Queen. Where has my sister gone, the girl who slept beside me, who laughed and played with me in the garden and knelt beside me in our grandmother’s chapel, praying with such fervor I once thought if I could just tangle my prayers up in hers they would surely ride to heaven on the force of her faith. All our choices then were simple and clear and innocent, even when we chose wrong.

  Now she is Queen of Naples and none of her choices are simple, or clear, or innocent, even when she chooses right.

  Has she chosen right? Even a strong monarch cannot defy the pope and all her advisors for one family. She has sacrificed those she most loves to keep her crown.

  Do I want to be a queen?

  And for the good of Naples, I remind myself. For the protection of us all. I walk to her side and hold out my hand, and my sister takes it.

  We cannot take back our choices. I said that, or thought it, long ago. I frown, trying to remember. Something about turning love into a wicked thing. Isolde! Isolde and her love potion. We cannot take back our choices, I thought then, with the callous judgment of a child. Joanna will regret this all her life. I open my mouth to warn her, to beg her to reconsider—

  Joanna takes a deep breath and raises her head, letting go of my hand. We cannot take back our choices.

  I curtsy, low enough to brush the floor with my hand. She fixes a smile on her face and sweeps past me, but at the door she pauses. I do not think she can surprise me further, but I am wrong.

  “My advisors have also suggested that I resume... marital relations... with my husband,” she says.

  The door opens and she is gone.

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Scales of Justice

  I am the first to notice. Perhaps because I am pregnant again myself, I am watching my own rounded belly fill out, wearing looser gowns to hide it, postponing the day I will have to give up riding and come to court in a litter, and then not come at all.

  I do not comment on what I have noticed as I slip my sister’s shift over her head and pull it down to cover her, but she sees my averted eyes and she knows I have guessed her secret. When we have dressed her and combed and plaited up her hair, she asks me to stay and sends her other ladies-in-waiting out to her presence chamber.

  “Has anyone else noticed?”

  I shrug. All of those who were closest to us—Marguerita, Margaret, Sancia—are no longer serving the Queen. Still, none of her ladies are blind. “No one has said anything,” I tell her.

  “Keep this to yourself.”

  “How can I not tell my husband?”

  My sister, who does not speak to her husband unless they are in public and she cannot avoid it, gives me a skeptical look.

  “If he finds out by someone other than me...” I leave the rest to my sister’s imagination. I have seen Charles’ temper, although I have never been the recipient of it. I know he is capable of harsh punishments. One of his serfs failed to come to arms when Louis of Taranto pillaged our lands. Charles had the man’s entire family, even a two-year-old babe-in-arms, slaughtered before him. The man himself Charles handed over to his guard, with the instruction that he must be heard screaming for two days as a warning to others of what happens to a man who does not respond to his lord’s call. But I do not censure my husband; he does what a lord must do to maintain his authority.

  Joanna studies me, her eyes narrowed. She has changed since she sent away Philippa and her family. There is no lightness in her, no more laughter, only a steely determination and a cold aloofness. She has learned to do what a monarch must do to maintain her authority.

  And I have learned to do what a wife must do. I sink into a curtsy. “Your Highness, let me tell him before you announce it. Let him hear it first from me. Only that.”

  “You will wait until I say?”

  “Yes, I swear. If only my Lord can hear it first.”

  “Before my own Lord Husband?”

  “After,” I stammer, feeling my face flush as I stare at the floor. “After, of course, Your Majesty.” I take a breath. “But right after.”

  “From now on you will dress and undress me, you alone.”

  I look up to see her frowning down at me. Before I can interpret her expression—regret? Anger? Distrust?—she snaps, “You may rise now. I have granted your request.”

  I rise at once, but keep my head lowered. I want to apologize, but how can I apologize for loyalty to my husband? I would like to regain the closeness we once shared, to remind her we are sisters. I look at her, willing her to see it in my eyes, to understand.

  “Come into confinement with me, Maria, if you are out of your own in time.”

  I smile. “I have missed my courses four months now.”

  “You must have been got with child the night after you were churched.” She shakes her head, smiling. “A little duke this time,” she wishes on me.

  And I am about to wish her a little prince when it occurs to me, what I should have realized at once. What my lord husband will realize immediately when he hears. And now I am not at all eager to tell him, and I know why my sister has not announced it.

  “When I tell my lord husband...” There is no way I can ask this without her knowing what I now understand, but I must ask it. I must have her word on this when I speak to Charles. I take a deep breath. “When I tell him, I must also tell him that you have agreed to give him my dowry at last, and in full.”

  The smile fades from Joanna’s face. “I see,” she says. “And will it be used to raise an army against me?”

  “Never!” I cry. How could she think such a thing? “Never, Your Majesty!” I am so stunned I cannot think what else to say but the truth. “He must have something. The belief that he is in your favor again, that
you have accepted... He must be able to hope he will be a court advisor again, that there will be future appointments. That is all.”

  “That is quite a lot, for the privilege of keeping the Queen’s secret.”

  I hang my head. Then I feel my own temper rising. “I only ask what is mine by rights. What our Grandfather willed to me.” With every sentence my resentment rises. “You have had your inheritance these two years, you have no right to continue withholding mine!” I stop before I can say worse.

  “You should never have let him take you! Your seduction shames us both.”

  “I could not prevent it! I fought them! I was not willingly taken.”

  Joanna stares at me in horror. I clap my hand over my mouth, having told her what I swore she would never know.

  “They laid hands on you? A royal princess? They touched you without your permission? And the duke, he ordered them to do so?”

  “No! ...Yes, of course, he must have.” I am hot, flushed with shame. “But you would never have let us marry, you would have broken the engagement. You have the crown of Naples, I had a right to something!”

  “You would have had a crown.”

  “Would I? The second sister? While you were still healthy? At best I would have married a younger son, if there was one who would have me. If Louis of Hungary did not insist I wait to marry Andrew in case something happened to you!” This is all true, and she cannot deny it.

  “Have they been executed?”

  I blink. “Who?”

  “Have they?” she shouts, her face rigid with fury.

  “I ...I do not know. I did not ask.” I look aside, unable to meet her eyes.

  “You did not think they should die for touching you against your will? For violating the heir to the throne of Naples with their coarse hands? Our royal blood is holy, we are ordained by God to rule—to touch us is a desecration! And the Duke of Durazzo ordered this?”

  “No! I am sure he did not. He... he may not have thought I would resist.” Everything I say makes this worse.

  “He knew when you arrived at his castle, whether you came willingly or not. And he has allowed them to live. You have made it possible for any man to touch a royal and expect to live! If they can do it to you, they can do it to me! We are both vulnerable now. The Duke of Durazzo has made it acceptable for men to lay hands on those God anoints to rule them!”

  “I am certain Lord Charles did not mean that! I am certain he did not intend—”

  “What do I care for his intent? He did not object. His lack of action condones it!”

  I am struck silent by this. Does she know what she has said? Can she hear Philippa’s voice behind her words, as I do? She must, because she turns her head aside, unable to face me.

  When she speaks again her voice is low, bitterness replacing anger. “You may tell your lord husband I will give him your dowry when he has hanged the men who abducted you. The men who laid commoners’ hands on you.” She says it with such disgust I feel my face redden again. “Every one of them. No matter who they are. No matter how he loves them.” She says this last through gritted teeth, but there is a gleam in her eye. A slight rebalance of the scales of justice. She has had to betray those she loved, and they were innocent of any crime, unlike Charles’ men.

  Her own husband laid hands on me. Will she have him hanged for me? But that is a secret I will never tell.

  She waits until I say, “Yes, Your Majesty.” I say it quietly, without looking at her.

  Charles will be angry when I give him this message. I will have to tell him why Joanna is insisting now, when she did not think of it two years ago. I do not know who they are, I do not want to know, but he will know. They will be men he trusts, men who trust him to stand by them when they follow his orders. He will be teaching his men to question his orders. I do not want to give him this bitter command.

  But I cannot deny that a part of me leaps up at the thought. How many times in these past two years have I wondered, in shame, when I stood with Charles before his men, which of them held me while I struggled, which ones knew the feel of my body against theirs. How many times have I wondered if they were thinking of that when they looked at me, and wondered that my lord husband would allow it, and was humiliated that he did? How many times have I resented Charles for letting them live?

  How many times have I subdued such thoughts and refused to allow myself to think them, as I refuse to think of the night Andrew touched me?

  “I am protecting you, Maria, better than Duke Charles does,” Joanna says. “I am making sure no one else thinks he can lay hands on either of us with impunity.”

  Does she expect me to thank her? I look at her so that she knows I do not thank her for this. I curtsy, looking her in the eye the whole while.

  “You are a fool, Maria. You do not know him at all,” she says when I have risen from my sullen curtsy. “But you are my sister. I will keep my promise if you keep yours.”

  I have already promised, so I am silent.

  “You may go now.”

  I leave her privy chamber and her presence chamber, and find a boy, whom I send to find my husband.

  When Charles meets me in the stable I tell him I cannot ride back with him this night. “The Queen wants me to stay in the rooms for the maids-in-waiting.”

  “You are not a maid.” He twists a curl on my cheek that has escaped my braids, and smiles. “I know a better place for you to sleep.”

  “She wants me near her. All those she was close to have been sent away, because of Cardinal Aimeric’s suspicions.” The Cardinal will be pleased when he hears the news of her pregnancy, I think. He will believe his interference solved their marital troubles.

  Charles’ smile broadens. “That could be good for us. Gain her trust, Maria. Encourage her to confide in you, now the others are gone.”

  “She trusts nobody.”

  He cups my chin in his hand, turning my face up to his. “Make her trust you.”

  I pull my head free. “And how shall I do that?”

  “Do whatever it takes.”

  “Remember you told me that, husband.”

  He laughs. He thinks I am joking. “I will remember, my pretty little duchess,” he says.

  I do not smile. I will hold him to it.

  ***

  By late April it is obvious Joanna will not be able to keep her condition secret much longer. In order to keep her promise, she tells me I may tell my husband.

  I help her on with her gown and open the door for the rest of her maids, who will assist her with her hair and jewels. Some of them are already wondering, no doubt. I have seen speculative glances aimed at the Queen’s belly, and I was beginning to fear that gossip would begin before I could speak to Charles. I leave Joanna’s bedchamber and look for Charles among the other courtiers in her presence chamber.

  I catch his eye at once and smile, briefly raising my eyebrow. He excuses himself and strolls over to greet me.

  “We must talk,” I whisper. “As soon as possible.” Now that Joanna has allowed me to tell him, I am desperate to do so. One whisper from one of her other maids and everyone will know, and my husband will wonder why that first whisper was not from me to him.

  “I have always enjoyed walking in the garden with you,” Charles murmurs. I look up to see the smile in his eyes and force myself to smile back. He will not be as pleased to hear what I have to tell him as I was then with what he told me.

  On the way to the outside gardens we talk of the new song the troubadour sang at dinner last night and the jousting match that is being planned for next week, and our little daughter Joanna whom I have not seen for two months. Charles tells me she is crawling now whenever she is out of the swaddling board, and that she fights against being put back in.

  “She must have straight legs,” I tell him. “A girl cannot have bowed legs and dance with any elegance.”

  “Her legs are straight. Do not worry, Duchess Maria, our Joanna’s nursemaid does not give in to her baby tan
trums.”

  “Tantrums?”

  “She is strong-willed.”

  “She is like you, then.”

  “And my Lady Mother.

  “She is nothing like your Lady Mother!”

  Charles chuckles. “She is like herself. She is perfect. And soon she will have a brother.”

  “I want her to visit me in my confinement.” Charles does not answer.

  “If I must spend all this time at court, I want at least to see my daughter when I am at Castle Durazzo.”

  “I will suggest it to my Lady Mother.”

  “I am our Joanna’s Lady Mother. I should have a say.”

  By now we are deep enough into the garden that there is little likelihood we will be overheard. Charles glances around to be sure no one is near. His expression of fond indulgence disappears. “What do you have to tell me?” he asks, stopping on the pathway, too eager to wait until we have reached the bench.

  “The Queen has agreed to give you my dowry.”

  He laughs, as pleased as a child who has just opened a gift. “Maria, that is excellent news—”

  “But she has a condition. You must have the men who abducted me hanged.”

  He looks at me, delight shifting to surprise, then to something darker.

  “It was not my idea,” I protest. “It is all from her.”

  “How does she know? After two years, what made her think—”

  “She accused me of going to you myself, of plotting with you against her. I had to tell her I was taken. You yourself told me to gain her trust!”

  “By making her distrust me? Does she think I forced you?” His face is red with anger.

  “She knows I married you willingly. We swore to that two years ago when she wanted me to leave you. She knows you would never force me.”

  We are keeping our voices down but anyone watching us from a window... I glance up. No one can be seen at any of the windows, which does not prove they are not there.

  “She would not have given up my dowry otherwise. Now she trusts me. And she will trust you if you do this.”

  “How many?” he asks.

  “How many?”