The Sister Queens

by Sophie Perinot

  “Your Majesty, Her Majesty Queen Blanche and the bishop-elect of Valence wait just outside to inspect your linens. Surely you will not greet them in the nude?”

  It costs me much dignity to hear this. But mine are not the only cheeks that burn, and Marie’s pleading tone and obvious embarrassment make me like her more and not less. I spring out of bed and find that it is painful to walk. The insides of my thighs are tender as is that place that before last night man had never touched. Holy Mary, if it hurts to walk, how will I sit in the saddle all day?

  A handful of other ladies I do not recognize join us, and my toilet is quickly complete. Marie opens the door to admit Blanche, an elderly gentleman of officious mien whom I do not recognize, my uncle Guillaume, and one of his attendants. The unknown gentleman walks to my bed and with a single swift motion turns back the cover. There on the sheet below is a darkened splotch—my maidenhead. I am mortified. I do not know where to look, but the others seem singularly unmoved by my embarrassment.

  “That is that, then,” Queen Blanche remarks dryly. She nods to the gentleman who pulls the sheet from the bed, folds it, and hands it to Uncle Guillaume. I cannot imagine why, but my uncle does not appear the least surprised. He merely hands the cause of my shame to his attendant, who places it in a bag apparently brought specially for the purpose.

  The queen turns to my uncle. “Your Excellency, I again wish you the safest of returns south. You will want a moment of private leave-taking with Her Majesty.”

  Blanche stops before me just long enough for us to exchange curtsies and then, with her official in her wake, swiftly passes from the room. Uncle Guillaume sends his man out. I nod at Marie with a curtness I did not know I possessed, and she goes likewise, leading the other ladies.

  “Niece,” my uncle says, and I am relieved to hear him address me as he always has, for so many other things seem altered, “we have not much time. Already the train that will bear you north, no doubt to glory, gathers in the courtyard. The Count of Piedmont and all who accompanied you here are not with it.”

  “What?” I am both confused and discomforted. “Surely I mistake you! You told me that you and Uncle Thomas would go with me to Paris and would remain there to be my counsel in all things.”

  “And so I intended. So had the whole family intended. But His Majesty the King of France, or more precisely His Majesty’s mother, has other plans. Last evening after you retired, the Queen Mother called Thomas and me to her. The most elaborate compliments were paid us and also you. Generous gifts were bestowed. I alone received a draft for two hundred thirty-six livres, and even Lisette was not forgotten. Then we were dismissed.”

  “Dismissed?”

  “All of us. From myself to your minstrel.”

  I begin to weep. “Lisette? My ladies?”

  “Must go back to Provence.” Uncle Guillaume takes me by the shoulders and looks me squarely in the eye. “Marguerite, you are your mother’s daughter—clever, beautiful, patient. You are surprised, but you are not undone. You have a duty to yourself and to your family to make of this marriage what you can. We will not abandon you. While you may be alone at Paris for now, your family will support your position in every possible manner.”

  I dry my eyes on my sleeve. Uncle Guillaume is right. I am Queen of France, and that is nothing to weep over. And I am not alone; I am astonished that my uncle even used the term. I have Louis—handsome, gallant Louis. What is the loss of a childhood nurse or even separation from my uncles in comparison to this?

  WE ARRIVE IN THE GREAT CITY of Paris on the ninth of June. I do not exaggerate when I use that appellation. Never could I have imagined such a place! It teems with people. Louis tells me quite offhandedly that he believes there are more than one hundred fifty thousand souls living within the walls. And the streets are paved! At least those we travel. Louis assures me the rest will follow as he is continuing the work of his grandfather in that vein. Throngs of people line the streets. So many flowers are thrown at me or offered me that the arms of my ladies—no, they are not my ladies I remind myself—the arms of the ladies given me are filled with blooms. We ride directly to the Palais du Roi, which sits on an island in the middle of the Seine. It is so large, I wonder how long it will take me to learn my way about.

  “Come,” Louis says, handing me down from my horse. “I will show you your apartment.” We enter the palace and, moving along the ground floor, come to a goodly sized hall with views of an enclosed garden. I notice that the roses are beginning to bloom. “This shall be yours. And through here”—my husband opens a door as he speaks—“are your withdrawing chamber and your bedchamber.” Yolande of Dreux, wife of the Duke of Burgundy and now a member of my household, moves forward to throw open the shutters, revealing a beautifully furnished withdrawing chamber of charming proportion.

  “And what of your bedchamber, Louis?” My husband seems uncomfortable, and I realize with embarrassment that I have addressed him by his Christian name in front of Lady Yolande. The lady, perhaps conscious of it as well, retreats to my hall, drawing the door shut behind her to keep the other members of my household from intruding.

  I have never seen Louis blush. “My rooms are in the north wing of the palace where they have always been.” Then seeing my confusion, he continues. “The rooms en suite to mine would have afforded you no view and no access to the gardens. Besides, I have much business of state to attend to, and my mother fears you will distract me.”

  “Do I? Do I distract you, Louis?” I do not mean the words to be provocative, but at less than two weeks married, Louis is easily excited, as I learned along our journey home.

  “Indeed, Marguerite, but most pleasantly.” He moves forward and takes me into his arms, kissing the side of my neck. “Do not be angry with me, little queen,” he pleads.

  “Never, Louis.” I can feel his member swollen beneath his tunic, and my hand moves confidently down to touch the bulge. I am no longer the little girl I was a fortnight ago. My husband moans with desire and then, grabbing my hand, pulls me through the door to my new bedchamber. Without turning back the covers, he pushes me onto the bed and, grasping the hem of my skirts, lifts them above my hips to reveal my nakedness. Still half sitting, I eagerly help him lift his own tunic and draw down his hose and braies. Unlike the night he took my virginity, I no longer look away but watch with fascination as he disappears inside me. My body, though still tight, offers no resistance but rather flows warm and wet around him. There is no longer any pain involved, only pleasure as my mother promised. I kiss my husband’s face, his ears, his neck.

  The urgency of Louis’s need for me makes our coupling brief. After a few-dozen swift hard strokes, penetrations that pin me to the bed with their force and leave me gasping for air, Louis closes his eyes and pulls his head up and back in that peculiar way I now recognize. A moment later he makes a strangled cry and, jerking as a rabbit caught in a snare, spills his seed into me. We lie quietly for a few moments, both content, and then a knock sounds on the withdrawing chamber door.

  “Yes,” Louis calls out in obvious displeasure, withdrawing his now-shrunken member from me.

  The voice of some unidentifiable attendant comes back across the length of the two rooms separating us from the door. “Your Majesty, the Dowager Queen would see you in her chambers if you are finished settling the Queen Consort into her apartments.”

  Louis looks exasperated, but immediately straightens his tunic and calls out, “Tell Her Majesty we will come at once.” Then, looking down at me, my knees still lifted and naked from the waist down, he offers a rakish smile and says, “Consider yourself settled.”

  A MONTH LATER I DO indeed feel settled in. I know which of my French ladies I can trust and which I cannot. I know that I am the best dancer at my husband’s court and that my manners are far above what passes for proper behavior here. I know I must write to the Vezian family of Montpellier if I want any really good rose water, for the stuff that can be secured in Paris is not worth wearing.
This last is particularly important as Louis likes the smell of roses, in the royal gardens and on my person.

  I am going to the gardens to meet him now with a Latin grammar book in my hands, for the king likes to amuse himself with improving my Latin. Entering the walled space from the archway nearest my rooms, I see him sitting beneath a pear tree, contemplating a book of his own, a religious work by a Cistercian monk. He is very taken with the Cistercians just now. Six years ago he founded an abbey for them at Royaumont. He goes there quite often to wait upon the monks as an act of charity and contrition, and he has promised to take me before the summer is out so I may see the refectory of which he is particularly proud.

  As soon as Louis hears my footfall, he puts down his book. “Little queen,” he says, his delight evident. “How is my Latin scholar this morning?”

  “Very well, Your Majesty,” I reply demurely, and then, opening my eyes as wide as I can, I add in feigned innocence, “But then I slept so very well last night.”

  Louis chuckles. He knows that he kept me awake to all hours—so late, in fact, that he feared discovery as he crept back to his rooms. Blanche, our mother, has given him a lecture on his “marital duties,” admonishing him that while the relations of the marriage bed are no sin, they are meant for procreation and as a remedy against fornication. Therefore, in her august opinion, engaging in them more than once nightly is lascivious self-indulgence. I wonder what she would think if she knew we engaged in them during daylight.

  “Come, sit beside me and we will get to work.” He pats a spot on the carpet that he has spread beneath the tree. This is his favorite way to sit, and I find no fault with it though that officious, self-righteous Marie de Montmirall says it is unseemly and more appropriate for a shepherd than a king. Honestly I loathe that woman. In which opinion I am heartily joined by her daughter-in-law, Lady Elisabeth of Coucy, who is as favored a member of my household as her mother-in-law is disliked.

  I drop down willingly at Louis’s side, and we set to studying. After some time, Agnes d’Harcourt, Princess Isabelle’s chambrière, passes on the path nearby.

  “Spy,” I grumble to Louis.

  “Never mind, little queen, we are quite blamelessly occupied.”

  “How can you be so sanguine about it?” I ask, hands on my hips. For a moment I am more my sister Eleanor than myself. I lose my patience. “The spying I mean. This is your palace. You are king and I your queen; yet we must sneak about to see each other.”

  Louis looks pained. I am myself again and bitterly wish the words unsaid. Only a few nights ago we had a dreadful argument on a similar topic. For the first time I took aim directly at Blanche of Castile and learned an important lesson. I may outsmart the lady, but I dare not complain of her. She is perfect. She is, according to mon mari, the reason he has a throne to sit upon. Good God! But she is old, and I am pretty. I will outplay her, or outlast her.

  “Never mind,” I say, gently touching Louis’s hand where it holds my book. “It is an adventure. We are like the lovers in the epic poems, defeating all to be together.”

  We resume my Latin, but I know Louis is not yet at his ease. His posture tells me as much. Agnes d’Harcourt shuffles past again, and I make certain she can hear my conjugations, reciting in a particularly crisp, clear voice.

  When she disappears into the palace I say, “I believe my hard work and scholarship deserve a reward.”

  “Hm.” Louis pretends to consider me very severely, but I make a face and he laughs at once. “And what do you demand, little queen?”

  “Might we walk in the rose garden?”

  “Bien sûr.” He rises with a grace born of natural athleticism and extends a hand to draw me upward. Together we move in the direction of the roses, which are in their full glory. The smell is intoxicating. Behind a particularly full bush Louis steals a kiss.

  Yes, I think, I will give Louis what Blanche cannot, and love will conquer all.

  HOW I LOVE PONTOISE. IN a single day’s ride, my position in the battle between my “dear” mother and me, or as Yolande and I now refer to her privately, “the dragon from Castile,” improves markedly. I wheedle Louis to bring me here quite often and, given that he likes it as well as I do, I am generally successful unless the dragon can think of some manner of business that must be handled from the Ile de la Cité. This trip was particularly easy to arrange as the Foire Saint-Martin will be held in a week on Saint Martin’s feast day. As I told Louis, such a venerable fair, more than sixty years old, is not to be missed.

  So the November-afternoon sun finds us in the king’s rooms, reclining near a set of windows with a view of the Oise River below while we play chess. We have already played at other things. And perhaps because Louis was satiated in that game, he is letting me win this one.

  “Be careful,” he chides. “You are in danger.”

  “Never, Husband, with you here to protect me.” I smile and rub my foot against his bare leg. In dressing after our encounter he did not bother to put on his hose.

  “No, I mean your queen. Look to your queen.”

  I see what he means and move accordingly, striking with that same queen to remove the threat. “Perhaps the queen can take care of herself.” I shake my head, putting my hair, uncovered and hanging to my waist, in motion.

  “Can she?”

  “Yes, but she prefers to take care of her king.” I rise and, going to a nearby table, pour a goblet of wine and bring it to Louis. Taking it, he motions for me to sit on his lap, and I sink there willingly.

  “You are a very devoted wife, lady.” He offers me a sip, and then sets the glass of wine down on the floor beside him and takes my face in his hand, drawing it close to his. I know what is coming. Already my nipples stand at attention beneath my soft woolen tunic. And then there is a rap at the door.

  “She comes,” says a muffled voice from the other side, and I spring up like a doe surprised by a hunter.

  Grabbing my hose and shoes from a nearby stool, I race to the spiral staircase connecting my husband’s chamber to my own. Down the stairs I plunge. Slipping two steps from the bottom, I skin my calf badly and land in a heap. Elisabeth and Yolande are there to help me up. “Quick!” I whisper, but the admonition is needless. The scene in my chamber has already been carefully set, and I need only be tidied and placed into the tableau. Three stools sit in a circle by the fire with an embroidery frame before each. Needles threaded and at the ready are stuck into two. On the stool before the third, a harp sits, and, even as Yolande fastens my shoes and tightens a girdle around my waist, Elisabeth seats herself and begins to play. Yolande hands me an amber-colored crespine. I give my hair a vicious twist and force it into the net, over which she places my coif and the barbette needed to hold it in place. In another instant I am on my stool, needle in hand.

  Yolande carefully closes the door at the bottom of the stairs before taking her seat.

  I can well imagine what is going on upstairs. Blanche has entered Louis’s chambers and is looking for evidence of me. She will not find any. When I go to Louis’s room, I take nothing. I drink nothing unless it be from his glass. We even have a special cloth we place upon Louis’s bed, when we use the bed, that is folded afterward and tucked away, so that Blanche may not spot or smell the product of our loins and discover us in that manner.

  Generally, once she is satisfied that I am not with Louis, the dragon sits with him herself as long as she can—sentinel against him passing a pleasant hour with me. Occasionally she will appear at my door and be announced, searching for traces that escaped her en haut. Hence the very deliberate picture we have arranged and my choice of loyal company.

  A moment later, the door at the bottom of the interior staircase bursts open. She has never done this! How bold she grows! Or perhaps, how desperate.

  “Your Majesty,” I say, rising to offer the obligatory curtsy, “how you startled us.” I am not obliged to stand in her presence, so I return, as nonchalantly as possible, to my stool. I do not take up m
y needle for fear that my fingers might tremble noticeably. I may hate Blanche, but I also fear her. “Will you join us?”

  “And how have you passed your afternoon?” Blanche makes no move to sit and little effort to soften her voice to an acceptable level of politesse.

  “As a Christian woman should, doing her duty.” I keep my eyes wide and innocent, enjoying the fact that I have made a statement that, while literally true, hints at the very activity she hoped to catch us in. “My ladies and I are working on pieces for the Eucharistic vestments His Majesty asked me to complete for the priest at Royaumont.” I gesture toward my frame, but Blanche shows no inclination to examine the work, so the effort that my ladies made last evening to advance it appears to have been wasted. “Pray, Your Majesty, how was the king, my husband, when you left him?”

  “Rather indolent, and behind in important matters.” Blanche narrows her eyes and peers fiercely at me. “I fear for him. It is so easy for a young man to be led astray by temporal matters. He swore at his coronation to be ‘rex et sacerdos,’ king and priest, and I would not have him break that oath. No, as I have told him since he was a boy, I would rather see him blameless dead than in commission of a mortal sin.”

  The strident nature of Blanche’s pronouncement chills me to the bone. Piety is greatly to be admired. This I was taught and truly believe; and none can question my own family’s religiosity. Every clergyman in my father’s territory, nay the Holy Father himself, would confirm that the Count of Provence is a fast friend to the church. But this woman from Castile has a faith altogether different from my own. It possesses her; yet rather than bringing her comfort, it seems to leave her full of fear.

  “Your Majesty, I pray daily that my husband may be a good king and a worthy Christian, but surely there is little reason for concern on that score. Did he not, before we left Paris, order several hundred of the poor fed in the courtyard of his palace? Does he not, in your company, visit the city hospitals to pray with the sick? Does he not rise up at night to hear the hours?”