The Sister Queens

by Sophie Perinot

  My sole consolation presently is that I have heard no whisper that the king pursues other women.…

  Eleanor

  MARGUERITE

  APRIL 1249

  LIMASSOL, CYPRUS

  “We are back where it began,” Jean says. We sit, side by side, our horses drawn so close that our knees touch, looking down upon the city of Limassol. Yesterday the court returned to the coast in preparation for the voyage to the Holy Land.

  “Did I love you this much then?” I ask teasingly. Then shaking my head I add more seriously, “No, I could not even imagine such a love.”

  Jean has taken me riding. As one of Louis’s closest intimates he is trusted with everything, and certainly with my safe conduct. For appearances I have Marie with me. She sits on her own mount at a respectful distance. How glad I am now that I trusted her with my secret on the morning after I first took Jean to my bed in this very city. I remember how I feared her censure; how I dreaded telling her. But I had no choice—I needed her to take charge of my linens, which would betray my having lain with a man to any woman not virgin herself. And I knew also I would need her assistance if I were to have any hope of continuing my intimacy with the Seneschal of Champagne. How surprised I was when, after I made my confession, she threw her arms about my neck saying, “Bless you, lady! At last you will be loved as you deserve.”

  “Are you ready to go to the Holy Land?” Jean asks, calling me back to the present.

  It seems an odd question. That is why we set forth from France, and already we have been away from home twice the time that I promised my little Louis. “Of course. And surely, despite the pleasures Cyprus has afforded”—I run my hand along the top of his thigh and leave it resting there in comfortable familiarity—“you are eager to be in battle? You are like all the others in this, like the king himself, spoiling to spill the blood of the Sultan of Cairo and his men.”

  Jean laughs. “You are right. I came to fight. But I dread two things about our departure from Cyprus—the weeks we must spend on separate ships without sound, sight, or touch of each other, and being as sick at sea as I was coming here.”

  “And which is worse, Sieur, being sick or being lonely?”

  “I cannot make a fair comparison”—he gives me an easy smile—“as I have scarce gone two days without seeing you in the last four months.”

  The sun is setting off to our right. The water in the bay is touched with shades of pink. I am lost in my own thoughts and Jean in his. When we return to the palace, we will make love in the little walled garden where I first received Jean on the day Louis retained him. The air, already warming, will kiss my skin as Jean does. Then I will retreat to my rooms with the smell of him on my flesh, and Jean will go and sit with Louis until it is time for him to return to his lodgings for the evening.

  As if reading my thoughts, Jean turns to me and says, “There was never a more pious man than His Majesty; I am convinced of it. Nor a better teacher.”

  I incline my head, noncommittally. I believe Louis’s piety to be both very great and entirely sincere; however, unlike Jean, I am not swept up in it.

  “Last night we spoke on the duty of a Christian knight to embrace the articles of faith without allowing a moment of doubt. And His Majesty offered an illustration that made all clear to me.” Jean is most earnestly pious himself, and always striving to perfect his religious understanding. Yet, perhaps because he treats me so very differently than my husband does, his quest for religious certitude never rankles or annoys me.

  “What did Louis say?” I am only mildly curious about the answer, but as it is clear Jean longs to tell me the rest of his story, I have no objection to hearing it.

  “He asked me how I know that my father’s name was Simon. I told him that while I was not so fortunate as to know my father, my mother had told me much of him, including his name. ‘Well then,’ His Majesty replied, ‘if you have such faith in your mother, surely you will grant as much faith to the words of the apostles as represented by the Credo.’” Jean shakes his head in amazement. “Such a simple, clear, explanation. It did me much good.”

  We are quiet again, but I am no longer easy. While the continued and ever-growing closeness between my lover and my husband has many good effects—keeping Jean often in company with me and elevating him to the prominence that I feel his merit deserves—I cannot observe it without some misgiving. For it has a darker side. The more favor Louis shows him, the more Jean’s conscience bothers him.

  As if he is again privy to my private thoughts, Jean looks at me with a sudden, agonizing, seriousness. “Who am I?” he asks.

  “You are a knight of great courage. His Majesty’s faithful servant, and my own beloved friend.”

  “No.” Jean’s voice is rough, and he pushes my hand from his leg. “I am a traitor to my king and my queen’s debaucher.”

  Now the guilt is mine—not guilt for betraying Louis, for I have not been bothered by that emotion for a single instant since giving myself to Jean—but guilt for Jean’s tortured feelings. And something more—I feel ashamed. If Jean harbors regrets and I have none, then what am I but a lascivious woman and a temptress? Pressing to my mouth the hand he expelled so violently, I begin to weep.

  “Oh God,” Jean says, his face falling, “I am sorry.”

  “You told me,” I say, sobbing, “that once begun, we would not look back with remorse. But Louis bewitches you with his talk of God.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.” And suddenly I am angry. “But mark me well, my lord; Louis is no more perfect than I am or than you are! He is just as single-minded and selfish in the pursuit of his desires as we; just as possessed by his own sort of lust. Yet he is excused everything because his obsession is with God.”

  “Marguerite—”

  “I do not want to hear it.” But I do want to hear something. I want to hear Jean say he loves me and that my love is worth the discomfort he feels in Louis’s presence, worth even the mortal sin we heap upon ourselves day after day. How did this happen? I think. How did our beautiful afternoon end in raised voices?

  Jean appears stunned. He gives an odd, stiff, inclination of his head—almost a bow. “I will take you back,” he says.

  We ride in miserable silence. At least I presume Jean is miserable. I know I am. I cast a sidelong glance, hoping to read Jean’s eyes, but he is staring straight ahead. As we come to the outskirts of the city, he pulls up his horse and looks directly at me for the first time since we left our vantage point.

  “Forgive me,” he says simply.

  And I want to. Oh, how I want to. But my pride is stung. Jean has made me feel like an adulteress for the first time.

  “Only when you forgive yourself.”

  Jean sighs. “I love you more than all the world, but do not look for me tonight.”

  I RISE AND DRESS THE next morning with nervous energy. I want to send away the surcote my ladies bring me and ask for the best I brought with me, but how can I possibly make such a request without raising suspicions? Jean likes to see me in pale blue—and not because it makes me resemble the Blessed Virgin. Gazing in my mirror, I see dark circles beneath my eyes, the product of the hours I lay awake worrying over our exchange of words. Others can see them too. Marie, who knows their cause, says nothing. But Matilda asks kindly, “Are you ill?”

  “Perhaps like Lady Coucy, she expects a crusade baby,” Beatrice quips saucily, leaning past me and helping herself to some of my rose water.

  I feel a sudden surge of nausea, not because I am with child, but at the thought of Louis making me so. Thank heavens, after a revival of interest in such deeds, the king has not touched me in more than a fortnight. “No, no,” I say, “bad dreams are all that is the matter with me. I slept ill.”

  “Bad dreams?” Matilda repeats, her brow furrowing. “I hope they are not omens. Did they have anything to do with ships?” She crosses herself. Matilda despises being at sea and dreads the next leg of our journey.

  I smi
le reassuringly at her. “Not a single ship.”

  I am eager to arrive at Mass. Will Jean appear haggard, betraying that he too has passed a night without finding rest? But as I take my seat, I notice that the Seneschal of Champagne is not sitting in his customary place among the king’s favorites. Where can he be? Surely our argument was not enough to keep him away.

  Back in my rooms, with the window flung open to satisfy my desire for spring air and a small fire in the grate to accommodate the other ladies’ constant fear of taking a chill, Marie raises the subject that I dare not. “The Seneschal of Champagne was not with us this morning.”

  “Perhaps he overslept,” Beatrice answers in an odd tone. She lowers her voice conspiratorially, “Despite playing the saint before the king, Charles believes the seneschal kept a woman in Nicosia. Perhaps he has another here.”

  My ears burn, but I do not credit what my sister says. Charles is jealous of anyone who has more influence with Louis than himself. “I have not heard the seneschal’s name mentioned among those debauching themselves,” I say sternly. “And you know that His Majesty is constantly giving Giles le Brun the names of men to be reprimanded and urged to see their confessors.”

  “Oh heavens,” says the Countess of Jaffa, “a face as fair as the Sieur de Joinville’s can do better than a common prostitute.” All the ladies save for me chuckle, for I am not the only woman who can and does appreciate Jean’s beauty. “I would not be at all surprised if he partook of some of the local noblewomen.”

  I wonder what her serious-minded husband would think to hear her talk so, but I am certainly in no position to chastise.

  Matilda tucks her needle into her embroidery and pushes back her frame. “Shall I go and see what Robert can tell of the seneschal’s absence?”

  She is not gone long and I am relieved at her return. Now all this nonsense will be at an end, and we will hear that Jean has a toothache or a sick horse.

  “Well,” says Matilda, beaming, “here is something for us to mull over in earnest. His Majesty received a message last evening from the Empress of Constantinople. She is stranded at Paphos and asked that Erard of Brienne and the Seneschal of Champagne be sent to her aid.”

  “Oh, the empress has an excellent taste in men! Two dashing knights to her rescue.” Beatrice laughs.

  “For heaven’s sake, Beatrice,” I chastise, “Lord Erard of Brienne is the empress’s cousin.”

  “No doubt that is why she asks for him,” says Matilda, “but why the Seneschal of Champagne? Does she know him?”

  “Perhaps she would like to.” Beatrice gives a not so subtle thrust of her hips. Vexatious to me at the best of times, she is truly becoming intolerable.

  “I am sure, Matilda, that you misapprehended. His Majesty thinks highly of the Sieur de Joinville, with good reason.” I give Beatrice a look. “No doubt the king suggested him for this commission.” I am startled by how much my voice sounds like my mother’s when I give a lecture. And I appear to be entirely convincing. But even as the other ladies nod and go back to their handwork, I wonder myself if it is true.

  EMPRESS MARIE OF CONSTANTINOPLE ENTERS the hall with Jean at her elbow. It is the first time I have seen him since our quarrel; since his departure to collect the empress. His eyes meet mine, but there is little they can say in such a public setting. Yet, though I know as much, his face and figure hold my glance, and I look away with difficulty as the empress begins to speak.

  “Your Majesties.”

  She is lovely; tall, with eyes as dark as Jean’s. The hair showing beneath her veil and crown is likewise as dark as a raven’s wing.

  “I have come on behalf of the emperor to beseech Your Majesties to support him as you did before, lest Constantinople be lost.”

  Money and men; that is the empress’s errand then. She is certainly dressed like a woman who comes begging. I wonder that she did not change before coming before the king. The mantle she wears shows every sign of the road. Well, this will do her no harm with Louis.

  “Will you dine with us tomorrow?” Louis asks rather than commands, in deference to the equality of rank between us, though, given what the Emperor Baldwin II asks, my husband might be as imperious as he likes.

  “With great pleasure, Your Majesty.” Is it my imagination or do her long dark lashes flutter?

  “We will discuss what is best to be done, and perhaps I can persuade the emperor to join us when we march on Egypt,” the king says by way of dismissal.

  Then she withdraws, Jean leading the way.

  How I long to run after them.

  Instead, I sit like stone beside my husband. I remain even after Louis, saying something by way of parting that I do not hear, takes his leave and goes about his business. My ladies mill around the now-otherwise-deserted hall, but I have not the energy to dismiss them. I observe with but half attention as Lady Coucy takes matters in hand and sends them off. She herself withdraws a short way with my dear Marie. I can hear them murmuring like water over small stones, and then, with a curtsy, Lady Coucy is gone as well. Marie takes a seat at my feet.

  I continue in silence and in a state of strange suspension, unthinking, unseeing, but not unfeeling. As the shadows shift across the walls, I half expect Jean to return and find me where I sit like the carved effigy of a queen, but he does not. Finally as those same shadows lengthen incontrovertibly, I rise, saying simply, “I will dine alone and then retire early.”

  I seriously doubt that I shall either eat or sleep well. But better the possibility of nightmares than the certainty of bad thoughts. Or so I tell myself as Marie leaves me in my bed for the evening. The disappearance of her candle as the chamber door shuts behind her seems symbolic—a reminder that the light in my life has gone dark.

  The next morning Louis calls upon me in my rooms, startling not only my ladies but me as well.

  “I am here, madam, to seek your advice.”

  I am dumbstruck. “My advice, Your Majesty?”

  My husband paces back and forth. “I have been neglectful in my treatment of the empress, and I hope, with your help, to rectify my failing.”

  My mind travels back to Marie de Brienne’s brief audience. It was completely unremarkable. How can Louis imagine he offended? “Whatever help I can offer, Your Majesty, I give gladly.”

  “The Lord of Nanteuil has just left me,” Louis continues, taking the stool opposite my own and lowering his voice. “It seems when the empress abandoned her wind-torn ship, she had nothing but the clothing upon her back. I invited her to dine with the court without ever once considering that she might not be in a position to dress herself for the occasion!”

  “Your Majesty could not have guessed her circumstances.”

  Louis looks into my eyes. It has been a long time since we have sat this close. A long time since I have had his full attention. “But I ought to have asked if she needed anything. Fortunately, there was one among our party who behaved better than I. Joinville sent the empress all the makings of a dress and surcote this morning. But surely such garments cannot be assembled by this evening?”

  And with that sentence I cease to hear my husband. Jean has made a present to the empress. Perhaps he selected the fabrics himself yesterday afternoon when he was again absent from court. The image of Jean’s hand running over a length of luxurious samite invades my mind. He has not the money for such things! Why did he not suggest she write to the king?

  I realize that Louis is looking at me expectantly. He has clearly asked me something. Dear God, what was it? Marie, who hovers by habit just behind me, comes to my assistance. “I observed, Your Majesty, that the empress is willowy like you. Might you not make a present to her from your wardrobe?”

  “Excellent!” Louis clasps his hands delightedly. “Surely there can be no insult in such a gift from the Queen of France.”

  Still dazed, I force a smile. “Indeed, Your Majesty, I will send her something of my best so that if we are en retard, we will not be outdone in quality. Marie, bring
out my new gown made from the damask the Countess of Jaffa helped me to secure, and my pale blue surcote. It will look lovely with the empress’s dark eyes.”

  Marie’s jaw drops slightly. She hesitates. I nod dismissively, and she bustles off to my wardrobe. A short time later Louis leaves with the surcote. It is Jean’s favorite, and he will never see me in it again.

  My day passes slowly. No matter what my occupation, my mind is disturbed with regularity by two equally unsatisfactory images—first, the empress clasped in Jean’s arms wearing a beautiful tunic of his choosing and second, the empress likewise embraced but wearing my very own surcote. The smile on Jean’s face as he strokes her dark hair causes me much agony, though I chidingly remind myself the entire vision is woven of my own foolish fancy.

  At dinner I keep my attention assiduously on Louis and our guest. I am unfailingly gracious to the empress, though the fact that she looks so lovely in my clothing, as lovely as I imagined she would, rankles me. As the meal comes to a close, I see Jean from the corner of my eye, trying, and not for the first time, to gain my attention.

  Smiling at Louis, I say, “Shall we have dancing?”

  Louis has always been a most excellent dancer. I long for Jean to watch my husband lead me to the floor; to see me flirting with him as our footwork is admired by all the court; to be jealous. True, the king has not danced since we left French soil, not even when the King of Cyprus held a banquet to welcome us. But now surely he will feel the call of duty—the duty to be a gracious host. And sure enough he rises. I do likewise, expecting him to offer me his hand. Instead he says, “Madam, with your indulgence, I would lead our guest to the floor. I am sure the Seneschal of Champagne would be honored to partner you.”

  I suppose I ought to have foreseen it. Louis, who is so supremely unconscious of his own rank, was bound to be scrupulously sensitive to the rank of our visitor. Well, I think, watching Jean come forward for me with a hand outstretched, I can manage a single dance without falling to pieces.