White Heart

by Sherry Jones

  “You are overwrought,” Romano said. “Sit down, my lady.”

  I did as he asked. Standing behind me, he laid his hands on my shoulders. I gave a slight gasp but did not protest, for in the next instant he was massaging them, kneading away my fears, untangling my knots. As he did so, he murmured questions about the speech I would give in the morning, asking what I hoped to accomplish, prompting me as to what I might say and how I might say it, warming me with his palms and his fingertips until, relaxed at last, I melted into my bed. I never even thought to argue when he lay beside me.

  “You should have seen the fear in your eyes,” he said. “You, the most remarkable woman in all the world, should never feel afraid—not of the mere mortals who people this earth, at least. You have done everything right, even without my help. You don’t need me, Blanche. You don’t need anyone.”

  He kissed my forehead, as chastely as if we were brother and sister, and started to rise—but I held on to his hand, pulling him back to me. “I am afraid, especially tonight,” I whispered. “My son’s life hangs in the balance, and it is up to me to save him. What if I fail? Don’t leave me alone with these terrible thoughts.”

  “If we are discovered—”

  “By whom? Mincia? She would never tell a soul. Romano. I do need you tonight, more than you could ever imagine. Come and hold me. I will feel safe in your arms.”

  My speech rolled like thunder from my tongue, striking awe. I came to France alone, leaving my family and friends in Castille, bringing no one with me except my handmaid. Now you are my family. You are my friends. Having twisted the rebels’ complaints against me—I was a “foreign” queen, yes, as they so scornfully said, and also a lonely one—I then appealed to their manly instincts. Louis was still a child, and needed our protection. Unless we rescued him, the plotters would seize him, and the Crown, for their own plunder. So much more is at stake than the life of one boy. The future of France depends on Paris. It depends on you.

  At the palace, knights in hauberks and mail suits strutted and laughed among horses being saddled and fed by servants. I frowned: These were Romano’s men, their horses sporting the red and gold colors of Rome. Would he leave me again so soon?

  I found him in the great hall, sending a messenger out the door with an admonition to hurry: “The king’s life depends upon your haste.”

  “He’s going to Flanders,” he told me. “The Count of Champagne has already agreed to send men, without even hearing your speech today. Blanche, what a triumph it was! You astound me daily.” The look in his eyes made me want to weep with joy.

  “I see your horses and knights preparing to travel,” I said, hating my own breathlessness. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Not I, but you, my lady.” Together we walked to my chambers, where Mincia had laid out Romano’s clothes: a flowing white tunic, a blue velvet robe, a broad-brimmed hat. “These are for you,” he said. “To disguise yourself.”

  After leaving my bed the night before—as I’d slept—Romano had gone to work, calling together his own knights to escort me to Montlhéry, and petitioning everyone he could think of, even the pope, to defend me and my son. “After your rousing plea today, I have no doubt that the Parisians will respond. And now, you must go.”

  “I cannot leave now. The Parisians—”

  “I will take care of everything. Your son needs you, and you must go to him.”

  “In your clothes?” I fingered the soft fabric, imagined it against my skin, this tunic that he had worn.

  “Not even a common robber would dare attack the papal legate.” I, however, would be in greater danger than Louis were I discovered on the Orléans road. I alone stood between the rebels and the throne.

  Mincia dressed me in a hurry. I would need to ride immediately if I wanted to make it to Montlhéry today. At Corbeil, said my spies, confusion reigned. When the rebels heard of Louis’s taking refuge in the castle, they’d cursed, their plans for a surprise attack foiled. Pierre and Philip Hurepel, both hoping for the crown, were quarreling. Philip wanted to storm the castle, while Pierre, knowing how heavily fortified were its walls, wanted to wait until Louis ventured out and then swoop down like a hand to snatch him up. They aimed, as I’d suspected, to separate him from me and take the throne for themselves. But they hadn’t reckoned on me.

  Romano’s kiss on my forehead. His mint-scented breath. The look in his eyes—what was it?

  I wondered, settling into the saddle on his white palfrey, how I would endure the long hours that reaching my son would require. I wished that I could fly, and indeed as I whipped my horse to go faster, faster, the countryside passing in a blur, its hooves seemed never to touch the ground. The rebel barons were well versed in the art of siege warfare. Many of them had taken the cross, and learned from the Saracens terrible new acts of devastation. Please, O Lord, do not let them harm a hair on his head. I remembered Romano’s admonition the night before, that if I were afraid I might pray for God’s comfort. You are the answer to my prayers, Romano. Indeed, he was the prayer itself.

  We reached the castle before dusk, our horses lathered, my legs weak from the long ride, my hair straying from under my cardinal’s hat. The rebel army had not arrived yet, praise God. The castle guards stared as if I were a wraith, astonished to see a woman in a man’s attire—especially the cardinal’s holy vestments—but they lowered the gate to me without delay and I hurried into the great hall to see my beautiful, marvelous, regal—sullen—son.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Who is running our kingdom?”

  “Romano,” I said, forgetting to call him “the cardinal” or some other, less intimate term.

  “You should have sent him here”—he stared at the floor—“instead of coming yourself.”

  “Why, mon petit chou? Afraid for my safety?” I smiled and reached out for his hand, which he yanked away.

  “Already I am mocked as a little boy who needs his mama’s help. Now my detractors will have an even bigger laugh, seeing how you rushed to my side at the first sign of trouble.”

  I gasped. “I have come to help you!” I wanted to slap the pout off his face. “You should be grateful.”

  “I asked for reinforcements, not for you,” he said.

  Shouts arose from outside, and running footsteps. Brother Guérin burst into the hall, his eyes wild. “The rebel army approaches,” he said.

  We hurried to the donjon tower to see. A vast army moved like a swarm of locusts over ground, pulling wagons filled with supplies as well as trebuchets and platforms. I touched my hand to the cool stone wall, yet perspiration dampened my brow. We had only forty men, including the twenty-five I’d brought with me, and only enough food for a few more days.

  “We must leave now,” I said. “I have brought you a monk’s robes as a disguise. Hurry, Louis, before we are surrounded!”

  “Turn tail and run from my enemies?” He snorted. “Am I King of France, or queen?” He turned to Guérin. “Send a messenger to the Cité Palace informing them again”—he shot me a dark look—“of our predicament. Did you bring any food with you, Mama? No, I did not think so.” His haughty tone made me feel as if I had been slapped.

  “I have brought knights with me, direct from Rome,” I said.

  “And archers? We need archers,” Louis said. He and Guérin descended the steps together, forgetting me—or so Louis might have hoped. But I was never one to sit idly by, mending stockings, while men took charge of affairs.

  “Only a few knights are available at the palace,” I said, going down after them. “Send your message to the provost of Paris, Louis. He was recruiting an army for us when I left this morning.”

  “A band of soft-handed, soft-bellied merchants is our defense?” he said, sending Guérin an amused look. “Good work, Mama. That ought to frighten the rebels.”

  No one slept that night—not even, it seemed, the rebel army, whose fires illuminated the meadows and fields around the castle as though it were daylight. Lou
is should have sent his men to raze the nearby trees, or at least to collect all the firewood and large stones in the area for his own defensive use, but he’d spent his precious hours praying for God’s deliverance instead.

  “God gave you a mind and a mother,” I grumbled. “He would expect you to use both, rather than relying on him for miracles.”

  Louis narrowed his eyes. “One might think that, given all your time spent with cardinals of late, your devotion to our Lord would have increased, not diminished.”

  My skin might have burned his hand had he touched me then. My devotion to God diminished? That might have been true until recently, angry as I was over my husband’s death. But I’d spent at least part of the previous night in the arms of the one the Lord had sent to comfort and aid me. Thibaut, not God, had taken my husband’s life, I’d realized. The Lord had not forsaken me, in spite of my own sin. And now, with Romano’s assignment to Paris—for the pope would surely allow it—I had even more cause to thank our Lord for his goodness. Yet I had not spent those last crucial hours in Paris on my knees. If I had, Louis would be lost now, and so would I.

  “‘Honor your father and your mother,’” I quoted, then headed to the chapel to light a candle and pray for, yes, a miracle. Though I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. How I would like to use a rod on my son! His mocking tone, his look of disgust reminded me more of his uncle Philip Hurepel than of the lad I cherished. Indeed, if the rebels had managed to turn him against me, I cared not whether they gained the kingdom. Unless his haughty manner changed, they had already won.

  I heard a shattering of glass then, and saw a ball of fire burst through a stained-glass window overhead, landing on the altar where I had, the moment before, knelt in prayer. The wood ignited immediately; as smoke filled the room I yanked off my mantle and beat down the flames. The siege had begun.

  I ran into the great hall to find Louis, and told him what had happened. “Pierre fought with your grandfather here, and may know of weaknesses in the walls or fortifications,” I said.

  “Guérin sealed them last night,” Louis said, “while you slept.”

  His accusatory tone struck me like a blow. Yes, I had slept, it was true, having learned from Philip Augustus the value of a clear and rested mind. Now, faced with my son’s surliness, I retreated to the donjon, where I might watch our attackers’ attempts to bring down our walls by hurling stones, digging tunnels, and throwing fire.

  Louis, I must say, proved a calm and capable commander despite our dearth of supplies. When the rebels dug tunnels under the wall, he sent men with bellows to blow smoke into them, choking the diggers out. Lacking archers, he found bows and arrows somewhere and stationed several knights in the towers to fire them, admonishing the men not to worry about hitting any mark.

  “We have plenty of arrows, so let them fly. We’ll make them think we have every man in the kingdom on our side! Their uncertainty will be our best defense.”

  Yet the rebels appeared far from uncertain as they built a platform beside the main gate, then began to hoist a number of long-nosed contraptions up the ladder. Guérin called them hand siphons—used in Constantinople, he said, for sending out flames of liquid fire. Our “archers” tried to hit the men as they climbed, but their want of skill showed as the arrows pierced only the air around them. When the rebels started shooting flames against the gate, burning its wooden doors, even Louis turned pale.

  “This, truly, is a time for prayer,” Guérin said. “We can do nothing to stop them now.”

  And then, in the distance, I saw a torrent of men in chain mail rushing our way like a turgid river, swords reflecting the sun, banners bearing the fleurde-lis of France. The men of Paris had arrived, not just one thousand, as I had urged in my speech, but many more.

  “Behold!” I cried. “Our rescue is at hand.” Tears sprang to my eyes.

  A smile filled my son’s golden face like the sun moving from behind a cloud. But he looked at Guérin, not at me. “Praise be to God,” he said, “for answering my prayers.”

  Never was such a procession seen in the history of France: thousands of the men of Paris swept around the castle, smashing the empty platform and the abandoned trebuchets, shouting Vive la France! Vive le roi et la reine! to the now-distant rebels running in fear for their lives. We threw open the gates and ran outside to them: the Parisian provost beaming at me like a proud suitor; the burghers all but leaping with joy, pleased by their easy victory; the soldiers hugging and kissing the women and children of the nearby farms and towns who’d lined the Orléans road to cheer them, and their wagons filled with provisions, with which our cooks prepared a feast for all. I longed to join in the revelry but contented myself with standing by, there being no one for me to embrace once Louis turned away, scowling, at the sight of my open arms. In that moment, I cared not about winning, or about kingdoms, or even about living. Of what use is life without love?

  We set out for Paris amid the beauty of springtime: the crocuses blooming purple against pockets of snow, the trees tipped with shoots so vivid they hurt my eyes. The tender breezes kissed my skin, reminding me of Romano, making me wonder if we would ever kiss. His arms around me, holding me close. Romano in Paris, for the rest of our days.

  I wore my queenly raiments for the journey home yet rode on horseback, there being no carriage, thank God, to jostle and jerk me over the pocked and rubbled road. On Romano’s palfrey I could see, and be seen by, our people who lined the road all the way to the palace, twenty miles of cheering crowds, smiling and shouting wishes of long life for Louis and, yes, for me. Love filled me like waters swelling a skin. I wanted to cry but could not, being a queen, so I put the emotion aside to share with Romano—again tonight, perhaps, in my bed.

  I had been gone for more than a week. My frantic ride to the castle had taken one day. The siege ended, we tarried for three to repair the Montlhéry walls and add fortifications, then took three more days to return to Paris. With so many walking, and so many more by the roadside tossing flowers and gifts and bestowing kisses, it seemed we might never arrive at the palace. Louis rode in front, reminding me of a peacock in his bejeweled crown and mantles of blue and gold, but causing me also to remember my husband. The likeness astonished me, as it did all the world, but their resemblance was only physical. My husband had placed me beside him in every public display, while my son had scowled when I’d ridden up to join him.

  “A king needs a queen,” I reminded him.

  “A man,” he said, “needs not his mama.” He spurred his horse, which sprinted to the front of the procession.

  “Vanity is to be expected in a lad his age,” Guérin said to me. “Pray that it will pass.”

  I cringed, thinking of the horrors my own vanity had brought about. “What, besides prayer, would Francis of Assisi have advised?”

  “Brother Francis had himself flogged daily, as a reminder of Christ’s pain. As St. Bartolomeu de Farne said: ‘We must inflict our body with all kinds of adversity if we want to deliver it to perfect purity of soul.’”

  I glanced ahead to Louis, who was smiling, waving, taking flowers from girls and blowing kisses in return, glorying in the adoration he had scorned to accept from me. What are you doing here? he had said when I’d arrived. I cringed to recall the surly greeting. Did he think I’d placed my life in jeopardy out of pleasure? A highwayman, it was said, lurked behind every tree along the Orléans road. Did he realize what might have happened to me?

  And yet, I hadn’t thought at all about my safety. I’d whipped the horse’s flanks and ridden as hard as I could make it go, and prayed to God for the first time since my husband’s death to keep him safe, dear Lord, don’t let my boy be harmed, you’ve taken the father but leave me the son, O Lord, remember how your own mother suffered when you died at thirty-three, while my sweet Louis is barely thirteen. God had kept my son’s body safe, for which I would ever be thankful, but
now it was my task to guard his soul.

  He met my gaze, then glanced quickly away as if he had not seen me. I wanted to cry out. What had I done to deserve this abuse? I would flog him myself, by God!

  At last we made our way through the clotted streets of Paris, past all the revelers welcoming their king and queen home to safety. Let Pierre and his thugs try again to unseat us. The provost had said more troops had planned to join us from Orléans and Melun and a number of other towns. Never again would we have to fear for our lives, not even if every baron in the kingdom turned against us. We had the love of the people.

  And yet I thought only of one man’s love as I dismounted my horse with deliberate slowness, taking care not to let my eagerness for Romano show. On the ground, I turned, and there he was, bowing before me, kissing my ring, sending shivers racing up my arm.

  “All those men, sent for us from Paris!” I said. “You saved us, my dear cardinal. And you saved our kingdom.”

  He looked down into my face. A lock of hair curled rakishly on his brow. His dark eyes crinkled and I saw, yes, there it was. Love.

  “Not I, but you, my lady. I did nothing. Your speech roused them, Blanche. Your passion stirred theirs—delivered as it was from your pure, white heart.”

  And then, suddenly, he was gone.

  I should have recognized the portents: the whispers falling like snowflakes from the palace ceiling; the twisted grins on my chamber guards’ faces; the bawdy song performed during the Christmas feast about a lady and a priest—and, afterward, Thibaut’s pouting refusal to present any of his chansons. The palace reeked of scandal, and the only ones who didn’t smell it were Romano and me.

  He came to me in the morning, weeping, before I arose. Pope Gregory had called him back to Rome—permanently. “Vicious rumors have reached his ears, my lady, about the two of us.” Apparently our one, innocent night in my bed had become, on the lips of the rumormongers, numerous wild nights of unrestrained ecstasy resulting, now, in my pregnancy. I would have laughed at the absurdity—how I wished to be guilty of the crime!—if I were not fighting back tears.