The Sister Queens

by Sophie Perinot

  This proof of life frees my feet. Moving to his bedside, I lay a hand upon his forehead. “He burns!”

  “The smell!” Marie sets down the broth on Jean’s small table and covers her mouth and nose with her hand.

  “Yes.” Turning back Jean’s covers, I find him lying in his own filth. With all who serve him suffering from the same illness that felled him, there was clearly no one to help him to the stool.

  “Heat some water,” I bark at Marie, “and find new linens if you must run out to the market to buy them.” Ignoring the stench, I lean in and say, “I am here, love. You will be well now.”

  Jean mutters something through cracked lips, but I cannot make it out. I find wine, pour a small amount, and lifting his head, urge it upon him. He swallows greedily.

  Finished kindling the fire and putting the water on as I asked, Marie is rummaging around in a trunk near the wall, pulling out the few items of clothing Jean has managed to accumulate since his return. I am happy to see that a shirt is among them. Taking the neck of the shirt Jean wears in both hands, I rip it open, continuing to tear down its whole length. Untying his soiled braies at the knees and unrolling their waist, I try to tear them free of him as well, but the fabric will not cooperate. Taking my knife from my girdle, I use it to carefully rend the fabric at one hip, then tear furiously until the undergarment too falls away.

  “Help me roll him,” I call to Marie who is closing the trunk again. We turn Jean on one side, thankful in this one instance that his frame is still underweight. I am conscious of the great heat of his skin beneath my hands. While I hold him in place, Marie pulls away the remains of his shirt and braies and casts them onto the fire. But the linens beneath him are dirty as well.

  “There were no sheets among his things and no doubt the straw is soaked through,” she says grimly.

  “Go home. Bring sheets, a feather bed, and a blanket.”

  “From where, Your Majesty?”

  “I do not care. Take them from my bed if you must. But be quick.”

  I cannot stand the thought of laying Jean back in filth, but there is nothing for it at present, so, placing him on his back, I draw up the fetid cover again. Pulling a stool beside the bed, I sit and take his hand.

  “What am I to do with you?” I say, talking merely to break the silence. “Ever since we set foot in the Holy Land, I cannot let you out of my sight for a moment without your finding trouble of one sort or another.” I am surprised to see Jean’s eyes open weakly.

  “It would be better then if we were not parted.” His voice is faint and tremulous, but I can make him out clearly nonetheless.

  Putting a hand against his burning cheek I reply, “It would be better. Take care to remember that before you think of doing anything foolish such as dying.”

  “I feared I would—lying here, when no one came—would die without seeing you.”

  “Well, I am here now, so lie quiet.”

  Like an obedient child, he takes another sip of the wine I offer, then closes his eyes and drifts to sleep.

  When Marie returns, the real work begins. Supporting Jean from either side, we struggle to move him to a stool. Though he is awake again, his legs are of no use to him. Once there, he cannot sit on his own. I put my arms around his chest from behind and struggle to keep him upright while Marie removes his soiled sheets and straw-filled mattress and then makes the bed anew. Then she holds him in turn while I clean him with basin and sponge, dumping dirtied water again and again out the window. It is a blessing that Jean is sensate only part of the time or he would be mortified. When his eyes do open, they struggle to follow my movements. Satisfied at last with my handiwork, we slide a new shirt over Jean’s head and bear him back to his bed. I am utterly exhausted.

  “We should send for a physician.”

  “And so we shall, only let me feed him first.”

  While I warm the broth, Marie checks on Jean’s servants. I must own in all the time I labored never once did it occur to me to wonder whether these men lived. I know this is unchristian, but it is the truth. Both, as it turns out, are still of this world. Marie does her best to bathe their faces and give them each a drink, while I lay Jean’s head in my lap and, gently rousing him to consciousness, ply him with broth from a cup.

  “It is my own fault,” he says, resting between swallows. “This illness flows from my sin.”

  He is becoming agitated. I try to soothe him by stroking his face, and I put the cup to his lips again, but he pushes it away.

  “When you were here last, I was so jealous. Jealousy is a special sin in my case, as I am jealous of the king for loving what he has every right to love.”

  “Louis does not love me. He is fond of me to be sure, but love me as you love me? No.”

  I do not think this a lie. There has been a thaw in my relations with my husband, but does Louis love me? I do not believe or even hope as much. Nor am I love struck and foolish as I was as a bride. But even as I reassure Jean, I wonder what might be if Louis continues to behave as he has been since returning.

  “I think you are too hard on yourself.” I bend to kiss Jean’s forehead. “Is not God a jealous God? Why then should you be above the emotion?”

  “Ah, but the Lord is jealous only for what belongs to him by right. I am jealous for what I have stolen.”

  “Fool,” I reply, kissing his brow again, “you steal nothing, for I give you everything with the greatest of pleasure.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Dear Eleanor,

  The news that you are back in your husband’s favor came as a balm to me, and verily I am in great need of one. I am glad that the victory at Damietta proved useful to you. It no longer provides any comfort to me, even when it is eagerly urged upon me by my ladies as proof of the French troops’ military prowess and God’s favorable disposition toward them. I have had no word from the king in too long—far too long to suppose that things go well for him. I am filled with such terror. The weight of it is heavier than the child I carry, and it drags me nearly to the dust. If something has happened to the king and to his knights, what shall become of my child? Of my ladies? I rest here at Damietta with scarcely five hundred men, many of whom are not soldiers but sailors and foreigners. I do not like to think what would happen if we were attacked. Of course, we have the ships at our back, waiting off shore. But the thought of retreating to them, a collection of women and children without our men, is scarcely more palatable.

  Pray for me, dear sister, and do not be too eager yourself to leave English shores and come to these. There may be glory to be had in the Holy Land, but I fear there is also death.

  Your sister,

  Marguerite

  ELEANOR

  JUNE 1250

  WINDSOR, ENGLAND

  “God preserve us, can this be true?” Henry sits in his customary chair at his council table, but only Uncle Peter and I are with him. He is speaking of what, doubtless, all of Europe talks of—the stunning report that Louis of France left most of his magnificent army dead in the desert.

  “Disbelief was Blanche of Castile’s response, Your Majesty,” Peter says. “I have heard she hanged the first messengers to bring her the news as liars and blasphemers. Poor souls.”

  “And Marguerite?” My body trembles all over as I ask the question. Does my sister’s lovely head decorate the walls of an infidel city somewhere? My vivid imagining of such a thing threatens to deprive me of consciousness, and I must reach out and clutch the back of the chair before me.

  “I have precious little news of Marguerite, but we know she lives, for it is reported ’twas she who gathered and meted out payment of the mighty ransom necessary to see her husband freed.”

  “The sum promised”—Henry looks down at the letter from one of my uncle’s contacts in the French court that Peter has laid before him—“is so large that to speak it aloud would seem an obscenity. The King of France will return much weakened by this.” Then, glancing in my direction, Henry shifts uncomfortably a
nd says, “Sorry, my dear.”

  I leave the council chamber at a run and go straight to the chapel—not to my gallery, but to the aisle before the great altar. Prostrating myself, I begin both to cry and to pray. Holy Mary, Mother of God, watch over my sister. How mortified I am that I envied Marguerite her travels. I imagined it all so clearly—as a story—forgetting that tales of honor and glory are just that, tales. And now the illuminated pictures from the Chanson d’Antioche are wiped from my mind by the thought of my beloved sister surrounded by blood, by death, and by danger. Dear God, forgive my sin of envy and guard me from it better in the future. I know, even as I think the words, that this would be miracle indeed. I am an envious creature by nature, at least where it comes to Marguerite. And if I am so fortunate as to be granted a miracle, I would not waste it on improving myself, which ought to be my own toil. The miracle I want now is my sister home safe to France, even if she be the only survivor of her husband’s ill-fated endeavor.

  Slowly my fevered thoughts, tears, and murmurings are quieted by the stillness of my surroundings. The cold of the stone floor rises up through me and, far from being uncomfortable, eases my distress. As I lie, facedown, I hear footsteps upon stone. Oddly, I am not curious enough about who approaches to even lift my head.

  “Mother?” It is the voice of my Edward. “Father is looking for you.”

  I draw myself to a seated position, arms around bent knees, and gaze up at my son. He is a tall boy for eleven and even taller from my current vantage point. “Goodness,” I say, rubbing my eyes on my sleeve as if I were the child, “I pray he has not alarmed the entire palace on my account.”

  “No. He looks very quietly. He came to the nursery first and was going on to your gardens. I came here because it seemed the next most likely place.” He puts out his hand to assist me in rising, and then, seeing I am not inclined to do so, sits down beside me drawing his own long legs up so that he is sitting as I am.

  “The King of France was defeated in Egypt and taken prisoner.” The starkness of my statement nearly brings me to tears again.

  “You worry for Aunt Marguerite.”

  I nod dumbly.

  “I wish I could rescue her for you. I am good with a sword; everyone says so.”

  Edward has begun his training in arms and, though I say it myself, shows his Savoyard blood. “Did I ever tell you what they called your great-uncle Guillaume?” I ask my son. “A ‘second Alexander.’”

  “Really?” Edward’s eyes blaze.

  “Yes. When he went to fight with the emperor near Turin the spring before you were born, not one but two horses were killed beneath him in a single battle, but he never stopped fighting. You will be just like him.” I reach out and stroke my son’s hair. “Only not too soon. For my sake.”

  “Mother!” Edward bristles slightly, but he moves closer and leans against me. He is still, thank heaven, more boy than man.

  We sit quietly for a moment. I am pondering how fast the years have flown since I held Edward as a babe in my arms while he is doubtless envisioning himself in armor.

  Then he says, “It is a good thing for a man to be brave.”

  “Yes. And also a good thing for a woman.”

  “But you have men to protect you.”

  “I see. You would protect me from everything?”

  Edward nods determinedly.

  “And what about when I am in London and you are here? While your uncle Louis was in the hands of the Saracens with all his knights, did not your aunt Marguerite have need of bravery?” I have picked an example I think Edward can understand. I do not mention all the times in ordinary life—in the delivery of a child or in the nursing of one when he is sick—that I have found bravery necessary.

  “If Aunt Marguerite is brave, then why do you weep and worry for her?”

  “Because she must also be lucky. The brave may die as well as the cowardly.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Marguerite,

  …Say only that you are safe, that you are whole. Our uncle assures me that you are and, more than this, that you rose to the occasion of your husband’s defeat and rescued all by firm action. If that be so, it is to your credit and to the benefit of your husband and his kingdom, but do I admit too much by saying that I care nothing for such larger things? Your survival and that of your family are more important than any kingdom. You must remind yourself, surrounded as you are by tragedy, that so long as the corpses piled in the desert do not include any of your kin, all else can be borne.…

  Yours,

  Eleanor

  MARGUERITE

  JULY 1250

  ACRE, KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM

  “You were playing at dice again!”

  Louis is so angry that he is shaking. I am angry too. The king’s brothers know how he feels about gambling; yet against his wishes and despite the fact that his recovery has been hard fought and is by no means secure, Charles and Alphonse show no regard for His Majesty.

  “We were not cheating,” Charles replies cheekily. “And none of the knights who took our money is complaining.”

  Louis’s complexion, still pallid from captivity, grows whiter still. “We are on holy ground with a serious purpose—”

  “We are waiting for Your Majesty to recover sufficiently to go home,” Charles interrupts. “Is there any good reason we should be bored while doing so?”

  My husband appears too stunned or perhaps too pained to speak. I look to my sister, hoping, for the sake of my husband, that she will restrain hers. But Beatrice pays no attention to my pointed glance. Jeanne, on the other hand, nudges Alphonse with her foot under the table.

  “Your Majesty,” the Count of Poitiers says, rising, “I apologize for any offense given and shall endeavor not to repeat it.”

  “Meaning he will take more care where he plays and with whom to avoid being called out,” I whisper to Matilda.

  We dine, as a family, in the king’s apartment. For his convenience, but also, I presume, so there will be no one to witness his dressing-down of his brothers. These reprimands have become increasingly frequent. The Counts of Anjou and Poitiers came back from captivity in relatively good health when compared to their fellows. They apparently expected the royal court to be just as it was before, with the same entertainments we all enjoyed in Cyprus. They seem completely without regard for the memories of so many, their own brother Robert included, who died, or a thought for the hundreds of common soldiers, some of them their own retainers, still held prisoner by the Saracens!

  Alphonse reseats himself and we sit for a moment or two in uncomfortable silence, except for Charles and Beatrice who carry on a low conversation between themselves. As the bowls have already come and gone after the meal, each of us expects the king to dismiss us. My sense is that all eagerly anticipate being free of Louis’s critical eye and going off to seek more pleasant company. I myself anticipate a stolen hour with Jean before he is expected with the king.

  Sitting back in his chair, Louis looks us over and says, “I received a letter from our lady mother this morning.”

  Suddenly the sullen brothers are all attention. Even at a distance Blanche commands in a way that Louis cannot.

  “She has dispatched the monies that Her Majesty”—he nods appreciatively in my direction—“so presciently wrote to request on our behalf the moment the terms of my surrender were known to her.”

  It was, I think, the one time in my sixteen-year marriage that I have ever written to Blanche with honest and bold language. I knew our chests here could not supply the balance of the ransom and knew as well that the dragon would do everything in her power to assist Louis.

  “Our mother earnestly entreats me to return to France with haste on the grounds that my kingdom has need of me and that my truce with the English king soon expires. She is also particularly eager for you, Alphonse, to claim in person the county of Toulouse, which became yours upon the death of your good wife’s father.”

  “I will go home most willingly t
he moment Your Majesty is ready!” Alphonse replies with real eagerness.

  “Hm.”

  The tone of Louis’s voice, not entirely approving, shocks me into wariness. Surely we are going home as soon as the last monies are paid? I’ve written to little Louis and told him as much.

  “After receiving our mother’s letter, I summoned the noblemen who live and hold possessions in this land. Unlike you, Brother, they show little zeal for my departure.”

  “What?” Charles blurts the word out without thinking. Then, recalling to whom he speaks, he sits up straight in his chair and in a more careful tone says, “Pardon me, Your Majesty, but surely you do not think of staying in this forsaken place. With so few knights left, what would Your Majesty propose by it?”

  “The barons here seem to think this land will be lost in its entirety if I withdraw. But”—Louis puts up a hand to stop Charles who shows every sign of interrupting—“I make no decision on the point at present. No, I will hear advice before deciding such an important matter.”

  Charles looks momentarily relieved; then his face clouds again. “Whose advice?”

  “Yours, Brother, to be sure, but also the advice of my councilors and of the preudommes who survived the desert with us and have ever given me excellent counsel even when I would not hear it. And, of course, I will hear the opinion of the Holy Father’s legate.”

  I can guess what Charles and Alphonse are thinking. As soon as they leave this room, they will seek the very men whom Louis names and secure their opinions. I would do the same had I the purse or the political connections for such action. Next month it will be two years complete since we set sail from Aigues-Mortes. We have exhausted what supplies we did not abandon in Damietta, and our mighty army is largely dead or imprisoned in Egypt. There is nothing for it but to swallow our pride, accept our defeat, and go back to France. Why not do so at once so that Louis can continue to recover his health in his own kingdom?