The Sister Queens

by Sophie Perinot

  “He has forgotten everything of this world. You know that. He thinks only of making a place for himself at God’s knee in the next world through charitable acts.” Jean lifts our son from my lap into his own and plays with his curls absentmindedly.

  Marie clears her throat. The nurse walking with Pierre on her hip draws close, completing her first circle of the garden. Jean sets our son down and changes his tone. “If Your Majesty would like to see the oranges in their groves, I am sure I would be happy to arrange it.”

  “I think the baby has had enough air,” I say, nodding to the nurse. “Pray take him in to the wet nurse. Marie and I will bring Jean Tristan in when we come.” As soon as she is out of earshot, I ask Jean, “Should I write to Blanche of Castile?”

  “Why? When, if ever, has the Queen Mother taken your part against her son?”

  “A fair point. But this time our interests must surely be identical. She wanted Louis home two years ago. And pleaded with him again, and even more desperately, in letters accompanying the second ship that she sent, carrying the money that finally reached us.”

  “Then write to her by all means.”

  Jean Tristan wanders away and, crouching by the base of a bush, earnestly examines a bug of some sort.

  “I will not speak of my fears that Louis will be usurped. She knows her sons, especially Charles, better than anyone. Rather I will say that I fear for her grandsons born here. This is no place to raise princes of France.” It is the truth; both Jean and I know it. Without the company of other children, privy to conversations that ought to be held outside his presence, and alone for hours at a time, Jean Tristan is the most solemn two-year-old I have ever encountered. Louis continues to take an interest in him, though he ignores Pierre and me as much as he can. With Louis, an interest means religious education, so little Jean has been subjected to stern lectures on the glory of God and man’s unworthiness—lectures better left for an older child.

  “Perhaps if she reminds him of what he should already know,” I continue, “reminds him that he has discharged his honorable duty by securing the release of the last prisoners; that without more men-at-arms, he cannot seek battle with the Saracens; and that no further French troops are coming, perhaps then Louis will hear and understand as he does not when his advisers say the same things. After all, Louis is accustomed to letting his mother lead him. She can certainly bend him to her will as I never could.” I give a deep sigh.

  “Come,” Jean says bracingly. “Let me see you smile. We cannot control the king; we cannot control the Mamlu¯ks or the Sultan of Aleppo. All we can do is love each other and make the best of the situation.” Gazing up at the clear blue sky, he turns to Jean Tristan. “Would you like to go down to the beach?”

  “Yes please!” The boy runs to take Jean’s outstretched hand, his habitually solemn look dissolving into an angelic smile.

  “Mama.” Jean Tristan holds out his other hand to me expectantly. As I take it, Jean drops the one he holds. As pleasing as the image of the three of us walking hand in hand to the port might be to Jean or me, it is hardly one we can allow others to glimpse.

  “DID YOU WRITE TO OUR mother?” Louis is furious.

  Summoned to his tent to find him pacing back and forth, while Jean looks on, I am caught entirely off my guard. It is impossible to believe that Blanche could have my letter yet, let alone that Louis could have received comment upon it. After all, one of the greatest woes attendant upon all our travels has been the impossibility of the regular and reliable receipt and sending of letters.

  “Please, Louis!” I sink to my knees in a pool of light from the setting September sun. I can see the horror in Jean’s eyes, but I do not care—or rather I am beyond caring. If I must grovel in the dust to move Louis in the direction of home, I will do so.

  “Answer my question.”

  “I wrote to inquire about the health and welfare of our children in France.”

  “And to complain about the circumstances of our children here.”

  Startled as I am, I remain too chary to confess what I am not certain my husband knows. “Is that what Her Majesty says?”

  “Our mother seems unduly worried that the princes are being raised like nomads,” Louis replies. “What would put such a thought in her head if you did not?”

  “What would put such a thought in her head? Our circumstances, sir!” I gesture to the spare furnishings of his tent and to the sea of tents beyond its open side. “The queen is a wise woman and a mother many times over; she needs no letter from me to imagine how we live here and to see that it would be better for Tristan and Pierre if we returned to France.”

  Louis glares at me; then turning to Jean, he says, “My Lord of Joinville, you see how it is. I am engaged in a great undertaking for the glory of God, and my wife would distract me from it! Remember, madam, it was woman who tempted Adam in the garden with disastrous results. I will not be turned from what is right by your complaints.”

  Hot tears of anger spring to my eyes. “I do not complain for myself. I would be content to live out the balance of my life in the desert if Your Majesty willed it so. But what mother would not speak for her children? And what subject would not beseech her king to think of the needs of his land?”

  Now I have done something unforgiveable—I have reminded Louis of his duty to France, a duty I know gnaws at him when he cannot force it out of his mind with prayer or the exhaustion of putting rocks one on top of the other from dawn to dusk. Coming forward, Louis grasps my arm and hauls me to my feet. “Leave us!” He shoves me roughly in the direction of the tent flap. “The Seneschal of Champagne and I have more important matters to discuss than how a foolish woman thinks I ought to govern my kingdom.”

  Jean’s face is blanched. I have the horrible presentiment that he will rise to my defense. With no time to think and no better idea, I close my eyes and let myself fall to the ground as if insensible.

  “Great God, was ever woman more inconvenient!”

  “I will take her back to the castle, Your Majesty.” I thank God that Jean’s voice, while hardly calm, remains under control. Though Louis must hear the anger in it, he doubtless thinks the seneschal is disgusted with me.

  “Yes,” Louis responds, his voice already cooled from its rage to an icy, detached tone that I hate even more, “get her out of my sight.”

  Jean’s arms scoop me up. I try to let my limbs hang limp to further the illusion that I am insensate. When we are clear of the tent, Jean mutters a curse.

  I open my eyes. Jean’s face is as openly angry as Louis was moments ago. “I am fine,” I whisper urgently.

  “What?” Jean is rightfully confused by my sudden recovery.

  “I did not faint; I only pretended.”

  His gaze meets mine. “Thank you.”

  And then I know that Jean was closer to losing control than perhaps even he himself realized.

  “You can put me down; I am quite able to walk. Only see me to my horse, and Marie and I will ride back.”

  “And lose my excuse for bearing you back to the castle before me on my saddle? No. And I am not only being selfish. I need time to let my temper cool before I return to His Majesty.”

  I close my eyes again and rest my head contentedly against Jean’s chest. I can hear his heart galloping like a horse given its reins. “I swear,” Jean says softly, “if he had struck you, I would have killed him.”

  His words chill me to the bone. I make up my mind to plead no more. Not if we stay in the desert a dozen years. More than this, I will avoid the king as much as appearances allow. It is not as if I take any pleasure in his company and certainly he takes no pleasure in mine.

  But Louis is not done with me.

  As dusk falls, he comes to the castle and is ushered into my rooms. I am not even undressed for bed when he dismisses my ladies. There is no love in him. Nor any real desire that I can sense, save perhaps the desire to show me that he is my master and France’s. He takes me as a warrior might take a
city, heedless of how he destroys my clothing, never uttering a single word.

  Marie returns to find me ruined, scratched, and weeping. She too is silent. Gently removing my torn garments, she washes me.

  “Promise me,” I swallow hard, my voice trembling with emotion, “swear to me that you will never tell him.”

  Marie knows whom I mean.

  “Never, Your Majesty. For the seneschal is too much a man of honor to let such as this pass unanswered.”

  ANOTHER SPRING HAS NEARLY GONE and I am growing large with child again. Sighing, I watch Marie move my chair before an open window, then take a seat, lifting my swollen feet to rest on the stool she places for me. It seems unjust that I should bear a third babe in the desert, but perhaps it is my penance. Jean certainly feels it is his. “I shall have a second chance to master the quality of acceptance,” he said when I first told him. “To submit meekly to God’s will and to Louis’s dominion over you. There will be no jealousy this time, Marguerite; I swear it.”

  Of course, I had not told him everything. No, never that. The morning after Louis took me so violently, as I stood before my mirror examining the scratches and bruises that my husband left upon me, a clever deceit came to me. I told Jean that my courses had come early. The abstinence demanded by such an event allowed Louis’s marks to heal before Jean saw me naked again. So while Jean accepts that I carry Louis’s child, he does not know the manner in which it was sown upon me.

  My door swings open to reveal Jean, eyes twinkling merrily, one hand hidden behind his back. “What do you think I have here?” he asks, coming to kiss my forehead. He brings his hand forward with an exaggerated flourish; it is full of pink-blossomed Egyptian campion. “The last to be found anywhere.” He bows as he hands them to me.

  I smile. “And have you nothing better to do this morning than pick flowers?”

  “Not when they are for you.” Jean takes my outstretched hand and seats himself on the stool beside my feet. “His Majesty and I will make a circuit of the city this afternoon to examine the wall that now stretches from the sea on one side to the sea on the other like a crescent. Do you feel up to riding?”

  “I am not sure Louis would approve of your extending the invitation.”

  “I will tell him that I adjudged you in need of some air.” Louis no longer visits me at all, and I eschew the tents of his camp save to dine once weekly with His Majesty and the gathering of knights that passes for a royal court these days. But, sensitive to at least this much of his duty to me, my husband asks Jean to call on me daily and ascertain my health. It is an errand that suits both Jean and myself perfectly. “Provided you make appreciative exclamations while we are inspecting the towers, you will doubtless be very welcome,” Jean continues. “After all, His Majesty built these defenses to be admired.”

  “I thought he built them for God’s glory.”

  Jean laughs. “That too, that too.”

  “When the wall is done will we go home?” I ask.

  Jean’s features are at once serious. “His Majesty’s mind shows no sign of turning in that direction. But I think he must relent soon before the money is gone.”

  I want to be convinced by Jean’s argument. But in my heart I believe Louis will spend every livre that his mother sent us without even knowing it. Only when the coffers are empty will he stop this madness, and then, if Blanche or his brothers do not raise and send more funds, I do not know how we will sail home. Looking down at my swollen ankles, I say, “Much as I would like to spend the afternoon in the saddle with you, my love, I fear I am in no condition. Why not take little Jean?”

  “Excellent! He can sit before me on my saddle.” In his excitement Jean gets to his feet, his face alight with unadulterated pleasure. Clearly our three-year-old son’s company will substitute for mine. But rather than feeling affronted, I experience a profound sense of thanksgiving—just as I do every time I see father and son together. Whatever neglect Louis has shown our children, however little it appears to concern him that we have not set eyes on Louis, Philippe, or Isabelle in five years—longer than either of the boys had been alive at the time we left them—I have one son at least who is entirely beloved of his father.

  When June arrives, it is ungodly hot—hot enough to make me sometimes wish that I lodged in one of the tents where I might be open to the air. Yet, as my confinement approaches, I find myself unaccountably cheerful. Perhaps it is the diversion of having something to do other than to sit for hours sweating over an embroidery frame or a book. My ladies and I are preparing a chamber for my upcoming labor. A servant sweeps the place from corner to corner while Marie, following behind, scatters sweet hay. The Countess of Jaffa stands on a stool, humming and tying bunches of herbs to the posts of the bed.

  “Where is Her Majesty?” The question echoes from the room beyond in Jean’s distinctive voice. A moment later he joins us.

  “Sieur,” the Countess of Jaffa chides strictly from her perch, “this is no place for you!”

  “Pardon, Countess, but I have been sent by the king with a message for Her Majesty.” Jean is all politesse, but I can see the strain in the muscles of his jaw and I know something significant has happened.

  “My Lord of Joinville, pray withdraw with me and I will hear you.” Gliding past him and through the door he holds for me, I admonish the others over my shoulder. “Continue with your good work. I will be back shortly.”

  As soon as the door is shut I ask, “What is it?”

  “The king is betrayed by the Mamlu¯ks.”

  At last, I think, now we can stop waiting for them. “Surely you are not surprised by this?”

  “No.” Jean shakes his head solemnly in the negative to reinforce the word. “I never believed they would join us here as promised to fight the sultan of Damascus. But there is worse. They made peace with the sultan, and even now their combined forces are marching to Sidon.”

  “Sidon? Where His Majesty sent the Lord of Montceliard to help the populace refortify?”

  “There are too few Christians there to hold the place.” Jean paces away from me. “They will be slaughtered.” He pushes both his hands into his hair at either side of his temples.

  “Heaven help them.”

  “We must help them. We leave at once.”

  “It is so far,” I say in dismay. I cannot imagine riding so far in my condition. Then, steeling myself, I say, “I can be ready in an hour.”

  Jean’s face tightens. Stepping forward, he places his hands on my shoulders. “Marguerite, you are not going.”

  “I know you are concerned for me, but I will be fine.”

  “No, you do not understand. This is the king’s direction, not mine.”

  I stagger to the nearest stool and sink down on it. “I am to be abandoned?”

  “You will be safe here at Jaffa.” Jean crouches before me and takes both my hands. “When we pass Acre, I will see that His Majesty sends a ship to bring you to join us at Sidon as soon as it is safe. I swear it.”

  “A ship? And who will make the sea journey to Sidon with me? Or am I to manage alone in dangerous waters with two small children and a babe?”

  “If I could stay with you, I would.” Jean’s eyes look beseechingly into my own. “I suggested as much to His Majesty.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He will leave a dozen knights to guard you on your passage.”

  “That is not what he said.”

  Jean ignores the jibe. “That is what he will do.”

  “Oh Jean, I am frightened.”

  “I know you are, and I am frightened for you. But remember, you are the woman who held Damietta with only five hundred men. You ransomed the king and led our people to safety in Acre. You have done great things for your kingly husband and your God. One of them at least will not desert you now. I will pray every day for your safe delivery and journey, and I will stand on the shore at Sidon to greet your ship when it finally comes, though Louis himself should seek to bar my way.”
Looking over his shoulder at the door by which we entered and seeing that it remains closed, Jean leans in and kisses me tenderly. Then rising he says, “I must go.”

  I want to cry. But Jean already feels worse than he deserves to. I know he would stay if he could. I rise, give him a quick kiss, and in a voice as cheerful as I can make it say, “Take care of your person, my lord, until we meet again. I shall be very angry at you if, when I disembark from my ship at Sidon, I find you dirty and blanket-clad as you were when your ship pulled into Acre.”

  FROM THE DECK OF MY nef, I see a castle sitting in the sea. Doubtless it is on an island, but, as it covers every inch, it appears to be floating; glimmering white in the morning sun. A ribbon of stone ties it to land, a causeway. And on that jetty the figure of a knight grows every minute clearer. He is alone, but I can see half a dozen figures on shore near a small cart at the place where we must disembark, and beyond them a city of tents flying the assorted banners of my husband’s men. As we enter the harbor, we pass closer. The lone figure is Jean—another promise kept. He raises a hand in greeting, then starts briskly to join the rest of the party waiting for us.

  Holding little Jean’s hand, with two-year-old Pierre in Marie’s charge and my new daughter in the arms of the nurse, I wait impatiently for the plank to be lowered. I can see now that the others are lackeys and foot soldiers doubtless come to carry our things. Jean is the lone gentleman here to welcome us.

  I let the others descend before me. I watch how Jean greets each earnestly, even as his gaze flits repeatedly to me. When I reach the bottom of the plank, he says, “Your Majesty, welcome to Sidon.”

  “Where is the king?” I am not worried that Louis was killed or injured in whatever took place here, for Jean wears no sign of mourning.

  Jean takes our son’s hand, passes it deftly to Marie, then gives an instruction to one of the soldiers who begins to lead the women of my party toward the camp. The remaining men head onto the ship to retrieve our trunks. When only the two of us are left motionless in the sand, Jean says, “His Majesty regrets that he could not come down to meet you.”