The Sister Queens

by Sophie Perinot

  CHAPTER 7

  My dearest Marguerite,

  Already you must know that I am safely delivered of my son, the Lord Edward, but I felt I must send a few lines by my own hand to assure you that I am well. Indeed, the king is so overjoyed by the pace of my recovery that he has awarded my attendant, Sybil Gifford, an annual pension for her good service in attending me through my confinement. He offers countless masses for our darling Edward, and such charity as has never been seen. I pray that you are well and may soon know the delights of maternity yourself. I tell you plainly there is no joy that can compare to it.

  Your well and truly blessed sister,

  Eleanor

  MARGUERITE

  AUGUST 1239

  THE ROYAL HUNTING LODGE AT VINCENNES, FRANCE

  Just once, I think as my women undress me for the night and rub my limbs to bring them to a rosy glow, just once I wish we could enjoy marital relations as we used to—without praying. I raise my arms reflexively so that Marie may slide my shift over my head; the time is past when Louis will take me naked.

  After all, we are no fornicators. Louis is my husband. Our marriage vows, now five years old, permit our activities, and the need for an heir to the French throne adds urgency to them. If I do not become pregnant soon, I may well be gone. Perhaps this thought is less worrisome to my husband than to me. Certainly my repudiation would delight the dragon of Castile. At the thought of delivering such a victory to my hated mother-in-law, my cheeks burn like fire, and my sisters-in-law, convinced it is a flush in anticipation of my husband’s company, of his “attentions,” titter irritatingly. Louis is still good-looking—mon dieu, there is no denying that. On the nights when he comes to me, it is easy to remember my first impressions of him—golden hair, golden armor, golden boy. Until he opens his mouth.

  I know all too well what is happening to the man I married. He grows increasingly obsessed with things not of this world. And while penance and love of God are noble things, when they interfere with being king and husband, I cannot approve. Once hungry for my body and vexed only that, thanks to the dragon’s machinations and the demands of his confessor, he must eschew my bed for Sundays and holy days, Louis now makes us kneel to pray before and after the act. Not that I might successfully conceive, but that we might be forgiven our carnal desires and any animal pleasures we experience—pleasures that he now considers wrong and self-indulgent. Pleasure of every kind has become his abhorrence.

  Sometimes Louis even prays during the act. My ears burn with the memory of “mea culpas” that have choked from him as he enjoyed my body and censured himself for that enjoyment.

  Tonight must be different. Holy Mary, Mother of God, you must help me to conceive a son. Eleanor has one. He is all she thinks and writes about now. He has made her secure, in her husband’s love and in her kingdom. Surely I am no less worthy than she to be either queen or wife. Have I not been humbled enough by the pilgrimage that wicked Blanche made me take to visit the shrine of Saint Thibault? Being paraded by the dragon past the throngs lining the roads in all the villages on the journey to Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes so that all might see and pity my barrenness was so humiliating! Surely such pain will persuade you to intercede on my behalf and open my womb to my husband’s seed? And if I conceive, I pledge I will have a silver reliquary made for the remnant of your Son’s crown of thorns that Louis has just purchased from the King of Jerusalem, and I will offer the box to Louis as a token of gratitude for my fecundity.

  Louis arrives. He undresses in silence, and I wince to see the raw flesh on his back where his whip with its five lengths of chain has flayed him. I must remember not to put my hands there as we couple. He sits on the edge of the bed.

  I reach for the goblet I prepared before undressing and left on the small table at the bedside. “Husband, will you take some wine? It is watered.” I know that Louis will reject the refreshment as part of his practice of self-denial unless he believes it is diluted. In fact it is not, save for the few drops of water I put in so that my statement would not be a bold-faced lie.

  “Thank you.” He takes a sip, and his eyebrows rise slightly. He is suspicious.

  To distract him, I turn his mind in the one direction capable of holding it. “Louis, I have been waiting with great anticipation to ask how the plans for the Sainte-Chapelle progress. The Countess of Poitiers and I saw Pierre de Montereau with you. Surely if he has ridden from Paris, it was for the purpose of discussing the chapel?”

  Louis’s eyes illuminate, and his voice is warm when he speaks. “Every part of it shall praise the glory of Our Lord and of his saints. The stones themselves shall be adorned with likenesses of the martyrs.” He relaxes visibly against the headboard, and I draw myself close to his side. Turning to face him, I wrap my leg over his. He does not draw away, may the Virgin be praised, but rather, as he continues to describe in detail all that was said this afternoon by his favorite architect, the excitement of his mind appears to spread to his body.

  As my hand runs, unopposed, down his chest and he leans to kiss me, I offer one last prayer and allow myself to be transported by the anticipation of my own dear son.

  “I FEEL A DRAFT,” MATILDA says, turning her head this way and then that as if expecting to see the December wind where it seeps in. “Can you feel the chill, Your Majesty?” The concern in my sister-in-law’s voice is sincere and sincerely gratifying.

  “I am fine.” I assure her. And indeed I am better than fine. It is Christmastide and I am nearly five months gone with child. Joyeux Noël indeed!

  “I will go get your fur-lined mantle,” Matilda insists, rising. As she moves away from the table, one of the dogs curled up at Louis’s feet stirs itself to follow—animals love Matilda—attracting the king’s attention.

  “Where does the Countess of Artois go?”

  “Merely to get my mantle, Your Majesty.”

  “That is most thoughtful of her. We ought to have positioned the table differently. Nearer to the fire. It shall be so.” Louis stands up. The eyes of those gathered at the lower tables are immediately upon him, and the musicians stop playing.

  “Please, Your Majesty.” I reach out and put a hand on Louis’s sleeve. “Do not disturb the assembled company on my account. I am fine.” And when he hesitates, I add, “See, the servers begin to enter the hall with the peacocks. To disrupt their procession would be a shame.”

  “If you are sure,” Louis replies, sinking back into his seat.

  “Perfectly.”

  A gorgeous roasted peacock, redressed in its own feathers for a spectacular effect, is placed on the table before my husband. A servant rolls back the spiced skin of the bird, carves a slice, and moves to place the meat on Louis’s trencher.

  “Pray serve Her Majesty the Queen with the first cut,” Louis instructs.

  This is how it is of late. Everyone pampers me. Well, everyone except for Blanche. The dragon ignores me, but this is still an improvement. She no longer insults or slights me publicly. Perhaps she senses such treatment will no longer be tolerated by her son. The thought of the dragon tamed by my condition makes me smile.

  I recall what Yolande said one afternoon early in my pregnancy, as she held a basin for me to retch into. “Blanche will not know how to feel, wicked woman.” The duchess’s voice brimmed with satisfaction as if the triumph were her own.

  “This prince will be her undoing,” I crowed, wiping my mouth on a cloth she handed me.

  Now, looking across the figure of my husband at my mother-in-law, I say a quick Ave that my prediction may come to pass.

  When the evening’s celebrations end, Louis comes to sit with me in my rooms before I retire. Marital relations are now out of the question, of course. I wish this were not so, for while Louis does not seem to miss them, I, strangely, long desperately for his touch in my present state.

  “Do you think the babe will be a son?” he asks.

  “I pray so.”

  Louis looks so serious and so handsome with t
he firelight in his golden hair. I long to reach out and stroke his locks, but such an innocent and wifely gesture no longer comes naturally to me, so instead, I fold my hands in my lap. When he shifts to pick up his goblet of watered wine, I can see the top of a hair shirt peeking from beneath his tunic. I do not remark upon it. He is happy tonight, and I am happy with him. Why spoil things?

  “And Her Grace the Duchess of Burgundy says the fact that I am carrying low indicates a son,” I add. I do not mention to Louis that my nipples have also darkened, a change that Yolande assures me is further proof my little one will be a prince. Louis would doubtless find such a comment shocking, and even after five years of marriage, I cannot imagine sharing such an intimate detail about my body with my husband.

  Louis sighs contentedly. “It would be very good to have a son, little queen.” He has not used this endearment in a very long time, and I feel a surge of affection upon hearing it. Yes, I think, I will give Louis a prince, and we will be happy as we once were.

  I AM DYING AND NO one will help me. Gasping, my wild eyes light upon the terrified face of my sister-in-law Jeanne, who is praying under her breath. Yolande places a damp, knotted cloth at my lips, and I pull water from it gratefully. And then the pain begins again. As it grips me tighter and tighter, I writhe and scream with all my might—howling like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a hound.

  Where is Louis? Surely he can hear me. He has done this to me, and now he does not come. As the pain begins to ebb again, I hear the sanctimonious voice of Lady Elisabeth’s detested mother-in-law, Madame de Montmirall, say, “Your Majesty should not scream so; it only spends your vigor.”

  With a strength I did not know I possessed, I struggle to raise myself semi-upright, grab the neck of the woman’s tunic where she sits complacently at my bedside, and twist. I mean to choke the life from her before the pain takes me again, but I hear a ripping as her clothing rends and she escapes me.

  “Out.” Yolande’s voice is firm. The midwife, taking advantage of the momentary lull in my agony, rips back my chemise, which has become hopelessly entwined about me.

  Prying my knees apart, she barks to the women on either side of me, “Hold her!” Then she sticks her fingers inside me. I try desperately to twist my body away from those probing fingers, but my women have me trapped. The pain swells again. Holy Mary, Mother of God, how great must Eve’s sin have been to justify this! And then I feel a pulling, a pressure as if the heaviest of stones is trying to force its way out of me. As the pain subsides again, leaving me limp and whimpering, the pulling remains.

  “It is time,” the midwife says.

  Yolande takes my right arm just under my armpit and at my elbow. Robert’s sixteen-year-old wife, Matilda, a squat, thick-waisted girl, takes my left arm in the same manner. Though she has yet to be delivered of a child herself, she assisted at two of her stepmother’s confinements before coming to marry my brother-in-law Robert, the Count of Artois. Jeanne, my second sister-in-law, her hands trembling, follows Yolande’s instructions and places a polished ivory stick between my teeth. Faithful Marie de Vertus and my dear Elisabeth each place their hands upon one of my knees. The bishop of Paris, the king’s Garde des Sceaux, and an ambassador from my father’s house are shown into the room. Surprisingly, I feel no shame before these men—no shame that they see my nakedness, and no embarrassment that they hear my screams, which begin again as soon as the next pain takes me.

  “Push,” the midwife commands, and no order could agree more with my own inclination. Teeth gritted around the stick, I struggle to force my child out into the light of day and stop my own suffering. Again and again with all my might I push. I begin to feel consciousness slipping away from me between my efforts—in those blessed moments when the pain withdraws, only to come back more cruelly than before.

  “You must stay with us, Your Majesty,” Yolande urges me. “Do you not wish to see your son?”

  And I do, dear God, I do. I want a prince to reward me for my suffering; a prince to hold defiantly before his grandmother and to spare me the need of ever, ever, doing this again.

  I shove with all my might. I can feel myself coming apart, tearing like a piece of cloth. Then something slippery slides from between my legs and I feel a blessed relief. A high long wail, not my own, breaks the air.

  “Your Majesty,” Yolande says softly, as if she would not have anyone else hear, “it is a girl.”

  I fall into darkness.

  When I wake, the room is quiet and dark, and I cannot stop crying. A girl. In Provence, a daughter would be of some value. Our laws permit females to inherit and rule in their own right. But we are not in Provence. I have schemed and suffered for nothing. Louis will be disappointed, but will he also be furious? Will he be willing to repudiate me in my failure? Fear rolls over me in waves as pain did hours before.

  “William of Auvergne,” my voice croaks out, mimicking the sound of a crow on the wing.

  Yolande rushes to my bedside and tries to put a cup to my lips. I push it away. I am thirsty, but there will be time enough to drink once he is on his way. “William of Auvergne,” I insist.

  “Get the bishop of Paris,” Yolande directs Marie. As soon as I hear the door close behind my chambrière, I greedily gulp what I am offered. I am still tired, for I labored an entire night and morning. I must struggle to keep my eyes open until the bishop appears.

  “Your Majesty,” he whispers when he arrives a short time later, taking the stool beside my bed and leaning in kindly.

  “Your Excellency, you must help me.”

  “Do you fear death, my child? For you need not; the midwife has no fear for you.”

  “No. But I fear the displeasure of my kingly husband. I thought to give him an heir, and I have failed.”

  “Your Majesty must not despair, for after six years of barrenness, your womb has been quickened. Moreover you have borne a healthy child. I examined her myself in case there was a need for immediate baptism, but there was none. You are not yet twenty. With the Lord’s blessing, your husband may yet put you many times with child.”

  “Will you pray with me?”

  “Of course.”

  “And will you do more? Will you go to His Majesty and tell him of my despair, of my contrition?”

  “If it will calm Your Majesty.”

  “It will. Yolande, bring the silver ewer I keep at my table.” Once again, I curse the limitations Louis has put on my ability to access and dispose of my income. It is hard to build alliances when one cannot make generous gifts. “Your Excellency,” I say, placing the substantial piece of silver in his hands, “I wish to pay for some masses.”

  “For your child. It is understandable.”

  And I can hardly contradict him. Hardly tell him I want prayers offered that Louis will wake from the religious zealotry that stifles the man in him and leaves only the monk; that I will recover quickly and, yes, God help me, become pregnant again. So I merely nod. Then, squeezing the bishop’s hand I plead, “You will see him?”

  “As soon as we finish our prayers.”

  When Louis comes to wait upon me the next morning, his disappointment is palpable. Yet he sits beside my bed and takes my hand.

  “His Excellency told me of your distress. Told me you sought spiritual solace the moment your eyes were open again after your delivery.”

  “It is true, Your Majesty.” I lower my eyes humbly. I am still in bed, of course, but I trust I look much better than I did for my brief audience with the bishop. All my linens are fresh, and over my chemise I wear a fur-lined pelisse of pale blue—the same blue in which the Madonna is so often portrayed. I want to look pretty. I want to look pure. “Has Your Majesty seen our daughter?” The child is not with me now as the wet nurse has taken her to feed.

  “I have.”

  “With Your Majesty’s permission, I would like to name her Blanche.” My sister-in-law Jeanne standing just behind Louis appears quite stunned by my pronouncement, and rightfully so. She knows I can h
ave but little desire to honor the Queen Mother. Surely she must see, however, as a practiced courtier and wife herself, that my intention is not to please the dragon but to mollify my husband who adores the harridan even more than I loathe her. Besides, I think Blanche a perfect name for the mewling babe with her bald head and splotched skin. For who but a lady by the name of Blanche could ever have caused me such pain?

  CHAPTER 8

  My dearest Marguerite,

  I have written to our uncles to assure each that the death of Guillaume is felt as keenly in England as it is in Savoy, in Flanders, or in Vaud. And while our dear uncle can never be replaced in my heart, I am eager that he should be replaced in my court and on His Majesty’s council. I worry for Henry without such trusted guidance. His mind and moods are oft too capricious. And when his peevishness affects his politics, no good comes of it—either for kingdom or king. Yet I find urging a steadiness of temper and purpose upon my husband as frustrating as you must have once found urging that same virtue upon me.

  I appealed to Uncle Thomas, who has always been a great favorite with Henry, to take Guillaume’s place as royal adviser, but he tells me that affairs in Flanders make such a scheme impracticable. Uncle Peter, however, shows some inclination to make England his occasional home. I do all I can to encourage him, assuring him that, should he present himself at our English court, he will be received with great favor and a generosity that extends itself by more than words.

  I wish with all my heart that, like me, you might have Savoyard support in France. It is too cruel that Blanche of Castile conspires to make this impossible and has kept your kin from you for six long years. Perhaps she knows that were your family at your side, she could not treat you as badly as she does. I know I have asked this before, but is there no way to move Louis on the subject?