The Sister Queens

by Sophie Perinot

  “He will recover himself with the passage of more time,” I say bracingly.

  My sister gives a deep sigh as if I am being very difficult.

  “The crusade changed him, yes. But it made him more of what he already was, not different. He is not like other men, not your husband, not any man you have ever known.”

  This seems an extreme statement, but I cannot honestly say there is a man among my acquaintance who would do as Marguerite just described. Besides, I have no wish to argue with my sister, not after being apart for so long. Nor is it my place to defend her husband, I remind myself sternly. My place is ever and always to take her part—unless, of course, there is an argument between us.

  I desire to turn the conversation to safer and less troubling subjects. Casting a glance to my left, I see Maude de Lacy riding with her lord. Here, I think, is a perfect topic.

  “Do you remember when you recommended certain gentlemen to my attention? The half brothers of Uncle Peter’s wife? Well, there sits one, Geoffrey de Joinville, beside his wife, my close friend Lady de Lacy.”

  “Really?” Marguerite is transformed. All eager interest, she leans forward over her horse’s neck to look past me. “I remember your writing to me that he had arrived in England and that you married him well.” Then, absently, as if meaning the words only for herself, she adds, “He is a fine man, but not so handsome as his half brother.”

  I nearly ask her to repeat herself, but the strangeness of her remark leaves me momentarily tongue-tied. I struggle to recall the letter in which she first asked me to assist Geoffrey and his brothers. What did she say? I stretch my memory. It seems to me my sister gave me very little by way of reason for her particular interest in the gentlemen, merely some offhanded remark about their being related to one of the French king’s best and most trusted knights.

  “Did the knight related to Lord Geoffrey survive the crusade?”

  “What?” Marguerite’s attention is drawn back to me with force. My question was simple, but it has left my sister looking confused.

  “Did the knight related to Lord Geoffrey survive the crusade?” I repeat.

  “Yes,” Marguerite says. The word is clipped, and if it conveys either pleasure or disappointment in the fact of the gentleman’s survival I cannot decipher as much. I am puzzled by my sister’s manner. But before I can grasp the thread of my confusion and begin to unwind it, Marguerite moves the conversation forward.

  “Does not Mother look well for a woman of eight-and-forty? I hope she will remain with us in France for some time. His Majesty has agreed to set aside Castle Nesle for her use.”

  “I am jealous.”

  “You must not be.” The sister I knew years ago would have said this sternly, as an admonition, but the Marguerite riding beside me today sounds a little like my Edmund when he reports some transgression to me but does not want me to be angry.

  “Well, I have Uncle Peter.” I offer her a conciliatory smile. “He has been a most useful companion to me these last dozen and more years. Now tell me the news of your children. When you wrote last, baby Marguerite was not taking well to her wet nurse and you thought to change her.”

  “Another nurse has been brought in and does better. I would suckle Marguerite myself did I not have so much to occupy my time.” She sighs slightly, then looks for a moment at the pale winter sun. “That was the sole luxury we had in Egypt—time stretching on, sometimes without end. I nursed Jean Tristan entirely myself.”

  HOW DIFFERENT MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Paris is this time from last. The spires of the city’s churches appear on the horizon, and I am neither wet nor frightened. When we reach the city gates, the sides of the road are crowded with people singing and playing upon a great variety of instruments. They call out their approbation to their own king, but he seems oblivious. When they cry out to Henry, he waves good-naturedly and scatters coins into the crowd. The streets are decorated with garlands of fabric and evergreen boughs. Glancing behind me, I watch the crowds spill into the road and follow along after the last of our train.

  For every person who calls out to the King of France, another voice seems to shout a message of praise or greeting for my sister. “Preserver of kings,” “mother of princes,” and “jewel of the house of Capet” are phrases I hear again and again.

  “Your people love you,” I exclaim.

  “They remember who it was that brought their king back to them,” she replies, raising a hand to acknowledge the crowd, “even if others sometimes do not.”

  Perhaps this is it, I think, moving my mind swiftly over the cold and even angry references my sister has made to her husband since we began our journey. Perhaps Marguerite feels slighted by her Louis and feels he has too soon and easily forgotten all she suffered for him and all she did, under great duress, to save him. This would certainly explain much. I myself remember with pain the crushing sense of sadness that sat upon me during that single, dreadful period in my marriage when I felt forgotten by Henry. Well, at least on this point I know how to console and counsel her.

  Our progress is stilled momentarily as people who have clogged the way are moved aside. A young man at the side of the road, taking advantage of the pause, steps forward and boldly kisses the hem of my sister’s gown. “That one should be so beautiful, so brave, and so just is astounding.” Then nodding in my direction, he continues. “That two should be so is miraculous.”

  By the time we reach the Old Temple where Henry and I are to lodge, I am euphoric. Henry too seems ebullient, clasping Louis to him in leave-taking, oblivious to the awkward stiffness of the French king’s form.

  As we are rushed inside, I raise a parting hand to my sister.

  Our rooms are furnished in the greatest style. We, of course, travel with our furnishings and feather beds, but they will not be necessary. The beds are already piled high and made up with costly silks and velvets. Fires roar in every grate.

  “Such a welcome!” Henry says, pulling me into an embrace and then releasing me again to examine my room. “I would do something to acknowledge it.”

  “Perhaps an act of charity,” my uncle says from his seat by my fire.

  Henry loves such gestures, but I know by my uncle’s look that he is thinking of something else—he is thinking how pious Louis will react to such an action on Henry’s part.

  “Yes. The great hall here is of goodly size, perfect for feeding the poor. Five hundred. We will feed five hundred. Even in such a fine city as this there must be five hundred poor souls in need of succor.”

  Peter rises. “Consider it done, Your Majesty.”

  Henry takes my uncle’s seat and pulls me onto his lap as the door closes behind Peter.

  “We are not expected at the Palais du Roi until tomorrow. Shall we have a small supper here, just the two of us?” His hand slides up the front of my dress until it is cupped around one of my breasts.

  “Henry! Surely you are exhausted by a long day in the saddle.”

  “Are you?” His eyes challenge me. And to be honest, I am not exhausted. So much has been made of us by the French—from tradesmen and students to noblemen—that I feel more the queen than I do ofttimes in England.

  “No, I am exhilarated. I doubt I will sleep a wink tonight.”

  “I will endeavor to tire you, lady”—Henry squeezes the breast in his hand meaningfully—“or failing that, to entertain you well in your sleepless hours.”

  Henry is as good as his word. I sleep like a babe after his ministrations. In the morning we set out in great state for the Palais du Roi. Henry is invited to hear Mass with the King of France in his Sainte-Chapelle and then to examine every inch of the chapel. My husband has long anticipated this pleasure, but I have something even better to look forward to. At last I will have time alone with my sister.

  Marguerite and I withdraw to her rooms where I have an opportunity to meet my nieces and nephews. I quickly see even from her manner of their presentation that my sister has two favorites among her children—Louis,
a somewhat delicate but lively ten-year-old who looks a great deal like the young King Louis I met on my bridal journey to England, and four-year-old Jean Tristan. The first is completely understandable. What queen does not have a special place in her heart for her first male child, the child who secured her seat on her throne and her husband’s line into the next generation? And as for the second, I suppose the partiality is explained by the fact that all of us have certain people, even among our families, whose souls are closer to our own and whom we understand better than we understand ourselves.

  The children and their nurses withdraw. Then the talk begins. Words flow like wine at a banquet, ever faster and with greater abandon. Thanks to our numberless letters, we are dearest friends reunited despite nearly twenty years without sight of each other. And yet there is something so very different and wonderful about being physically together—about the sight, smell, and touch of my sister; about the sound of her voice as she relates the most recent happenings in her life. I am quickly engrossed by the details of Marguerite’s travels and travails in Egypt—things she could never have committed to paper—and gratified that Marguerite is eager to hear of Edward’s bride and of the recent actions in Gascony. When a servant brings word that Louis and Henry will go into the city to see Notre Dame and other sights of architectural import, we decline the invitation to join them.

  “The men will not miss us,” I say. “They have a shared passion for the art of building. They have long been rivals without knowing each other. Perhaps familiarity will bring more harmonious relations. I cannot say what it would mean to us if Henry and His Majesty could come to a better understanding, particularly over Gascony. I do believe, having secured it at last from Castilian aggression and the avarice of its own barons, we could hold Gascony against all if we but had a new treaty with France.”

  “And what of your husband’s intentions in Poitou and Normandy? Will his success in Gascony make him ambitious there?” My sister does not speak the words as a challenge so much as a true question, and she waits thoughtfully for my answer.

  Is it disloyal, I wonder, to speak the truth? How can it be when bravado will only keep England and France enemies longer?

  “Henry has no hope of regaining Normandy,” I say. “He knows this in his clearer moments. It is only pride and a deep longing to be thought a great king that keep him from admitting as much.”

  “He is not thought a great king in England?”

  “He is presently, of course, thanks to the victory in Gascony,” I say. “But as you well know, too often his barons do not show the respect for him that they ought. I am sure you are tired of hearing me complain on this point after so many years. But it never ceases to both vex and confound me. Why can they not show him proper deference? He is their anointed monarch and a good man.”

  “Yes,” my sister says kindly, putting her hand over mine where it flutters on the arm of my chair to quiet it, “I can see that he is a good man, and also a good husband.” She looks into my eyes so intensely that for a moment I wonder if I can bear her stare. “The two things are not the same—being a man and being a king.” I prepare to rise to my husband’s defense, surprised that my sister would intimate that my husband is an ineffectual king, even as I know it to be true myself. Defending Henry is my habit. It is my duty. And I am prepared to do it. Then Marguerite says, “Louis is considered a great king, but as a man …I so often find I do not like him very much.”

  So it is as I suspected—the affinity between my sister and her husband that clearly existed while they were on foreign soil, as witnessed by her letters, did not survive their return to France. If she is willing to so frankly own her present disappointment, I will own mine.

  “Henry is a kind and loving man,” I say with warmth, “but there are times when I think he would be better suited and happier too had he been born to follow, not to lead.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes, Marguerite’s hand resting on mine as we each stare into her cheery fire. We have each of us half the man we wanted, I think. It is an epiphany. “Perhaps,” I say, “no man can be everything. Not even a king.”

  “Perhaps.”

  My mind wanders back to the political subjects that led us here. “If Henry were to abandon his claims in Normandy, what might Louis do in return?” In the back of my mind I can hear Uncle Peter suggesting that marks of silver would be far more useful to my husband than lands he cannot conquer or hold, especially with a crown for Edmund to pursue.

  “It is always hard to know what Louis will do until he does it,” Marguerite replies. “But he talks favorably of Henry on such a short acquaintance. And I believe Louis may be amenable to drawing closer to my family connections, as he never was before. After all, with his mother gone, a brother dead in Egypt, and another enfeebled by a sudden seizure while we were yet in the Holy Land, the king’s own family is neither as strong nor as numerous as it once was. He feels this fact keenly. We may have the opportunity, you and I, to make one family of our two. As we have ever been the closest of sisters, let us each push our respective husbands to see each other as brothers. For our children’s good as well as our own.”

  I nod. A knock sounds at the door. Servants bearing refreshment troop in, followed by our mother who passed the morning at the Old Temple with Sanchia, freshly arrived from England for our reunion.

  “Do I interrupt?” she asks, seeing us drawn so close together.

  “What, Mother? Never.” Marguerite rises to offer her seat as it is closest to the fire. “Where is Sanchia? How I long to see her.”

  “She is exhausted from her travels and begs leave to postpone waiting upon you until before this evening’s banquet.”

  “Of course I can wait, and I dare not even complain of the delay while I have the two of you for excellent company. But speaking of the banquet, I must make myself easy on a score of details before the tapers are lit and the first course served. If you will excuse me.”

  Mother and I wave her out. My mother hunts about among the embroidery frames huddled like serving girls, silent but ready, in a corner, and pulls one out.

  “Very elegant,” I remark as she draws it before her and prepares to work. “I fear I am no better with silk and wool than I was as a girl.”

  “Never mind, Eleanor,” Mother says. “You excel at many other things. My brother tells me that you have a natural head for politics and that you are a most excellent mother.”

  This praise catches me off my guard and moistens my eyes.

  “The mothering I learned from you, madam, and the facility for politics comes with the Savoyard blood.”

  “So it does.” Her smile is as it ever was, even though she looks undeniably older than when she came to England to see Sanchia married. Can ten years really have passed since then? They must have, for I am thirty-one now, a year older than my mother was when I married.

  I rise to help myself to the cold meats and things the servants laid. “Would you like something?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  My sister’s table, like her wardrobe and her castles, is of the finest sort. I am glad that where my mother is seated she cannot see the quantity of sugarcoated aniseeds I am taking. I pour myself a measure of wine and water and am about to return to the fireside, when the sound of children laughing attracts me naturally to the window.

  Below in the bleak winter garden I can see the younger princes, Philippe, Jean Tristan, and Pierre, with a nurse. After a few minutes of discussion that I cannot hear from this height, Jean Tristan puts his hands over his eyes and begins to count. They are clearly playing hide-and-seek. Philippe, a strapping boy of nine years, takes off at a run to secrete himself somewhere. Pierre, too young to hide alone, is dragged off by the nurse.

  I am just about to turn away from the window, when a tall man, beautifully dressed, enters the garden, walking with purpose. At the sight of the boy he stops, his face alight with a combination of frank admiration and tenderness. I have seen this same look a thousand
times before on my own husband’s face—this man adores my sister’s son. Creeping up behind the child who is still dutifully counting, he grabs him from behind. The prince laughs in delight and opens his eyes. After an exchange of words, the gentleman swings Jean Tristan up to his shoulders. The boy wraps his one arm about the man’s forehead and points with his other in the direction he wishes to go. As they begin to move off, the child leans down to say something. The dark curls on his head blend with those of the nobleman whom he rides like a pony.

  “Mother,” I demand, “who is this gentleman in the garden with Jean Tristan?” My mother puts aside her embroidery, and with frustratingly unhurried steps makes her way to my side. I cannot say precisely why, but it seems a matter of utmost urgency to know who the man is. I am fearful that my mother will not arrive beside me before the man and the boy disappear behind a tall row of shrubbery, but she does.

  “That,” my mother replies, “is the Lord of Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, a great favorite of His Majesty’s. My goodness, Louis will be glad to have him back.”

  CHAPTER 37

  MARGUERITE

  DECEMBER 1254

  PALAIS DU ROI, PARIS

  To have Eleanor here is a balm, I think as I hurry to the hall to check the mouvants for this evening’s banquet. It is as if some piece of my heart long missing has been put back in its proper place. I am not whole to be sure, but I bustle and feel an energy I have lacked since returning to France.

  On my way back to my rooms, I mean to stop at Louis’s apartment and speak with his chamberlain. I know that Louis will wear no fur, but surely between the two of us we can contrive for the king to look better than he has of late when he presides this evening. He may be used to dining with holy men and collections of the city’s elderly and infirm, a practice he has engaged in almost daily since our return, but this evening’s entertainments are in honor of a king who is also my brother. I would have nothing done that is not in the best style out of respect for Henry of England and for my sister. Thank goodness the fast of Saint Martin has ended or our feasting and entertainments would be so severely curtailed as to make honoring my English kin a hollow gesture.