The Sister Queens

by Sophie Perinot

  It is rumored that you will go to the Holy Land with your kingly husband. Tell me at once if there is truth in this. The Earl Richard has been, of course, and never stops boasting of his doings there, though he is back from crusade nearly three years. Still, if Richard’s bragging is tiresome, his stories also paint pictures of countless wondrous sights. Should you really travel with Louis, you must promise to write to me with every detail of your journey so that it will be as if I am there with you.

  Yours,

  Eleanor

  ELEANOR

  DECEMBER 1244

  PALACE OF WESTMINSTER, ENGLAND

  Despite the bitter cold, I am out in the courtyard when Henry and Uncle Thomas ride in with their men. A war has been averted. This much I know, but I long to hear every detail.

  “Eleanor.” Henry’s voice is filled with pleasure, and he kisses me despite the fact he is covered in dust. “How fine you look! How is my little son?” He pats my round belly with a possessive pride, heedless of the immodesty of the gesture when we are surrounded by men-at-arms.

  “He is very well, sir, and glad, as is his mother, to have you back. I feared you would not return before I was delivered.” Henry has been to the north, drawn there by the Scottish king’s fortification of his border and by complaints from English merchants of Scottish piracy. Uncle Thomas marshaled a Flemish force in my husband’s support and made a tidy sum by it. But, despite baronial complaints, his men were clearly worth my husband’s money as a long war would surely have cost more than four thousand pounds. I give my uncle a blinding smile, and he offers me one in return. “Will Your Majesty and the Count of Flanders take some refreshment in my hall? I can have cold meats and every sort of good thing laid in my rooms while you refresh yourselves from the road.”

  “A fine idea.” Henry rubs his hands in anticipation.

  I myself can hardly wait, for surely when the three of us are closeted together we will discuss the treaty. I bustle toward my apartment, giving orders as I go.

  The repast begins pleasantly enough. Henry has shed the dirt of the road and is in a fine mood. He starts to lay out details of the treaty with the Scots, punctuated with stories of its negotiation. My uncle, content to play a supporting role, offers embellishments now and again, usually in the form of a fact or description showing the king to best advantage.

  My husband clearly enjoys telling the tale and I enjoy hearing it, until he reaches a certain detail. I stare with utter disbelief at Henry as he sits at my table, a piece of fowl halfway to his mouth. For a single moment I allow myself to believe that I imagined his last words. Then he turns his eyes from mine to studiously examine the newly painted wainscoting, and I know by his discomfort that I did not mishear.

  “How could you! How could you betroth Margaret?” Angry tears stream down my face. “She is only four years old. Just a baby.” I slam my fist down on the table so hard that my uncle’s cup goes over. Henry’s eyes snap back to me.

  “She does not go now,” he replies. “We have agreed on the precise location of the line dividing England and Scotland. Scottish sieges along the border will stop. Alexander the Second will keep the York agreements. And in return, Princess Margaret will marry Prince Alexander of Scotland but not for seven years.”

  “She is not a point in a treaty; she is your daughter!” I am so angry that my sentences come out strangely broken. Not a letter, not a hint did I have of this! How could such an important decision have been made without discussion?

  “Eleanor.” My uncle tries to place his hand over mine where it lies, still curled in a fist, on the table, but I shake him off. Undeterred, he continues. “Women marry. You know that. And they do so to the advantage of their families and their kingdoms, as you did yourself.”

  I have a nearly overwhelming urge to strike him. I know he is right, but all I can think of is my quiet, gentle little girl with eyes so wide and so blue one could swim in them. The thought of being parted from her is unbearable, whether now or in seven years. I bury my face in both my hands and sob.

  “I thought this match would please you.” Henry’s voice betrays utter confusion, and the fact that he does not understand my feelings angers me again.

  “Nonsense!” I snap, dropping my hands from my face. “You did not think of me at all.” I bore my eyes into Henry’s, wishing my gaze could shame him into repenting of his decision. He shifts in his seat and, when I continue to stare, rises from it and paces away from the table.

  “On the contrary, Niece.” My uncle’s glance shifts from my husband’s back to my face. His eyes are stern, a visual reprimand. “His Majesty raised your feelings at several turns. He was quite content to have the Princess Margaret settled so close on your account.”

  “How can you call it close when you rode nearly one hundred leagues just to get to the Scottish border?”

  “But there will be no ocean between us.” It is Henry who answers. He has turned back to face me. “Believe me, Eleanor—I have no more desire than you do to be a stranger to our child.”

  “But must His Majesty fight the Scots today over something that can be settled with a promise that need not be kept for more years than the princess has yet been alive?” asks my uncle.

  I wipe my eyes and face with my napkin.

  “We have seen the prince, Eleanor,” Henry says, moving back toward the table. “He is a fine-looking lad, just a child himself, a year younger than Margaret.” He comes around behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder—very lightly. No doubt he fears I will throw it off.

  “And she stays with us until the wedding?”

  “Yes.” He squeezes my shoulder. “You really must try to calm yourself. Such agitation is not good for you or for the child.”

  My eyes drop to my swollen belly. Be this babe boy or girl, it too will have to leave me one day. That is the way of things and I must resign myself to it. Covering Henry’s hand on my shoulder with my own, I look up into his face. “I want to go to Windsor.”

  “Eleanor, you should not be on the road in your condition. Let me send for the children. Let me have them brought here.”

  I nod gratefully; unable to speak for fear that I will start crying again. I do not want to miss another moment of my children’s infancy, which now appears to me more fleeting than I ever imagined. I want to hold Margaret in my arms and tousle her curls. I will not mention Scotland or its prince to her—not yet.

  THE CHRISTMAS COURT HAS BEGUN. The children, surprised by their father’s summons, are delighted to be with us for the festivities, and their high spirits have restored mine. Edward is fascinated by the jongleurs. When it is his turn to ask a favor from his father the king in keeping with the season’s traditions, he asks for a set of colorful balls of his very own. Margaret does not know if many of the entertainments delight or terrify her. This is particularly true of the mummers. She hides behind my shirts, frightened whenever they play for us, but when I try to remove her from the room, she pleads to stay. The entire Palace of Westminster glows. And more than the palace is alight at this darkest time of year.

  “A thousand! A thousand candles before Saint Thomas Becket’s shrine,” says Sybil, beaming as she takes off my veil after another evening of revelry. “Day and night they burn.”

  “And the abbot at Bury Saint Edmunds has all his monks on their knees, praying for Your Majesty,” Isabel adds, removing my shoes and rubbing my swollen ankles and feet.

  As my fourth confinement looms, Henry wants a second son, and all of England knows it. What all of England does not know is that, in the last days, he has become fixedly concerned with my health. The obsession began in the wake of my violent reaction to the treaty with the Scots. After that sudden upset, I developed a fever, doubtless the result of crying for hours while I awaited the children’s arrival from Windsor. I was put to bed and recovered in two short days, but the terror awakened in my husband by my brief incapacity dogs him still.

  “If I should lose you, Eleanor,” he fretted this even
ing as we watched the members of our court dance a carole. “If I should lose you.”

  And so he lights candles for a prince and for my safety.

  My women leave me ensconced in a chair, my feet up on a stool and swaddled in furs against any possible chill, and Henry arrives in turn. He takes a seat beside me before my fire. When I mention my ladies’ wonder and delight over all the fuss, he takes my hand. “The candles at Saint Augustine’s are for you,” he tells me, “for your safety alone.” And I know that he does not say so to flatter, because despite his being only recently returned after a long absence, he has no congress with me. Yet every night he comes to sit with me, as he has this evening, and never fails to tuck me into my bed before leaving.

  “Talk to me about the abbey,” I say, leaning my head back against the chair and allowing my eyes to close. We have some glorious projects planned for this year, and a new prince is but the first. Henry will rebuild the abbey at Westminster. He made up his mind to do so before departing for the north and sent me many pages from the Scottish border filled with his ideas for the project. With his naturally discerning eye, the results must perforce be magnificent, and I am glad. There has been so much talk of the French king’s half-built chapel and of all the relics my sister’s husband has paid out a fortune to obtain for it.

  “I have been thinking, we ought to secure a new relic for the abbey’s rededication,” Henry says. “Something to lie beside the bones of the innocents.”

  “A marvelous idea!” My eyes snap back open, and I turn eagerly to my husband. “But it must be an object of the most superior sort, something so stunning that it will make King Louis’s piece of the crown of thorns seem nothing but a bit of bramble.”

  Henry chuckles slightly, then looks guilty. We both know my comment is hardly in keeping with Christian humility. But Henry wants the abbey to be grand, not only to honor the Confessor but to show that his piety is as great as any other king’s—even Louis’s. It is incomprehensible to me that his reputation on this point is not already secure. My husband hears Mass four times a day nearly every day, and lately has been feeding five hundred paupers daily as well. Why do the Benedictines at Saint Albans never chronicle that!

  “I have appointed Henry de Reyns, as your uncle suggested,” my husband continues.

  “You got him!”

  “He will arrive from France as soon as the weather permits. And when he is here, we will set about making Westminster everything. Not only a place where my son, his son, and so on for a thousand years will be crowned, but a mighty shrine to the Confessor and a place where English kings may lie in peace when their work is done.”

  I feel a shiver run up my spine. The tremor must be observable, for Henry asks, “Are you warm enough?”

  “Yes.” I squeeze his hand. “Only pray do not speak to me of tombs.”

  I regret the remark the minute I utter it. I did not wish to think of Henry’s death, but his mind turns immediately to mine. “Heaven help me, I begin to regret you ever conceived this child!”

  “Henry, you need another son,” I say, trying to calm him.

  “I know, but how shall I look upon him if he kills you?”

  “I have a facility for giving birth. You know that. Sybil says I was made for it.”

  Henry mumbles something indistinct and crosses himself.

  “When,” I ask, trying to turn Henry’s mind back to Westminster, “will the workmen begin to take down the present church?”

  Henry’s eyes continue to reflect abject despair, but he answers, “They will begin inside while it is still cold and breach the outer walls as spring arrives.”

  “Spring—now there is a glorious thought! I mean to spend the spring at Windsor, suckling this new babe in the shade of my gardens and directing the work there. You are not the only one with grand plans for a renovation, Henry.”

  “And in celebration of your safe delivery, I will pay for your renovations,” Henry says, his looks lightening at last, “and you shall have another full-time gardener to order about. Will that please you?”

  “Immensely. And when you come to visit, you can help me plant a tree for each among our brood. Trees that will by example inspire, with God’s help, our children’s little bodies to grow straight and true.”

  IT IS ACCOMPLISHED! WE HAVE a second son—an Edmund to join our Edward. My five-and-a-half-year-old prince, who returned to Windsor Castle immediately after Twelfth Night, sends a dutiful letter congratulating his father and me; or rather the head of my son’s household writes and sends such a letter. It seems highly unlikely my son himself would be so effusive. With two younger sisters ensconced at Windsor with him, he is already savvy enough to know that babies take a while to make good playfellows, and until this baby is “good for something,” Edward is not likely to show much interest in him.

  I look down at Edmund, nursing vigorously at my breast. The time before he will be old enough to run and play in Windsor’s gardens seems distant, but I know that it will pass with the speed of a hunter pursuing his falcon. What sort of boy will Edmund be? Doubtless he and Edward will be opposites. That is the way of children, no two alike, and already there is little in this second son that reminds me of my first. For one thing he is much smaller.

  Well, never mind, I think, stroking the side of his tiny face with my first finger. I am sure that all the milk I can give and the pure air of Windsor will soon cure that. And in any event, being opposites is no bar to being boon companions or the closest of friends. Marguerite and I are proof of that.

  CHAPTER 14

  My dear Eleanor,

  I begin to see the beneficial effects of our great undertaking. Not yet to the Holy Land perhaps, but to His Majesty. The king’s full strength and vivacity are nearly returned, and all his considerable skills turn to the matter of raising armies, carrying them to the Holy Land, and keeping them in the field once they are arrived. Juste à côté de Montpellier he has begun to build a new port devoted entirely to our embarkation. It is most unfortunate that the name of some nearby marshes has attached itself to the project. Aigues-Mortes seems hardly an auspicious name for a place from which men will depart for battle.

  And I? Besides being swollen nearly to bursting with this child, I am also very happy. Because I will travel with the king to the Holy Land and because I work hard now to help him recruit the necessary force of men-at-arms, Louis has more time and more patience for me than he has had in many a year. I feel certain that only two things are needed to secure my newly elevated position and perhaps, dare I hope, my husband’s genuine affection: a second prince to secure Louis’s line, and our separation from Blanche by a wide expanse of ocean. As one of these is a thing certain and the second is surely possible, as you have just proved by the birth of your darling Edmund, I view the restoration of my early marital contentment as a thing within reach.

  Yours,

  M

  MARGUERITE

  APRIL 1245

  PONTOISE, FRANCE

  I sit in the gardens, utterly exhausted. We have been recruiting, Louis and I. Enthusiasm for his crusade burns in the king like a flame. But it has been precious hard to ignite the same passion in others. The Holy Father is more interested in crusading against Emperor Frederick, and would have Louis join him. But all His Holiness’s cajoling has failed to turn my husband in that direction. Louis will not be dissuaded from the Holy Land by anyone. So we work to enlist the support of our vassals. We work. It seems that my decision to take the cross is helping my husband. Men are more inclined to go far from home if they can take their wives with them as a source of comfort. A fact which, sadly, seems to mystify my husband. But never mind that, as, since I am useful to his efforts, I am much in favor at present.

  I could be quite content if it were not for the English. In Louis’s eagerness to broaden the support for his crusade, he sent a call for knights to my sister’s kingdom. No one is coming. The English, it seems, still sting from their defeat in Poitou, though two years have pa
ssed. I cannot account for it, however I try, and it goads me. After all I did to soften Louis’s view of the English king and his followers! I own I expected Eleanor to be grateful. But why should I have? Eleanor has cared more for winning than any person I have known since she was a slip of a girl. Control of her temper came only with age, and well can I remember lying facedown on a path in my mother’s garden with Eleanor on top of me, fists flailing, because I had beaten her in some childish pastime. So, while the personal amity between Eleanor and me was restored shortly after the peace, my sister declines to push her husband or his knights to crusade with my husband.

  I sigh, tired of worrying about my sister’s obstinacy. Leaning back on the stone bench, I turn my face upward to the weak April sun and close my eyes. I imagine how much warmer the sun must be at Aix as I wait for Marie who has gone to get me a cloak and Yolande who will bring a small stool for my feet, insisting that, given my condition, they should be off the cold ground.

  I hear a crunching on the gravel path.

  “Your Majesty.”

  My eyes fly open and my head snaps up. The Seneschal of Champagne is standing not five feet from where I sit. “Sieur de Joinville!” I am normally known for my elocution, but the name comes out very haltingly indeed.

  “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I did not mean to startle you. You are looking very well.”

  I am suddenly, horribly, conscious of my appearance. Only weeks away from giving birth, I am like a ripe pear, and no amount of finery donned for my meetings with visiting nobles can disguise the fact. I have not seen Jean de Joinville in four years, and now for him to see me like this!

  “I am very close to my confinement,” I blurt out, without considering either the appropriateness of my comment or its superfluous nature.