The Sister Queens

by Sophie Perinot

  I begin to cry. I want to break free from Marguerite, to run from this room, from this palace, from France. My sister is likely damned; she is certainly miserable and I cannot help her—I cannot repair the shambles she has made of her life. But I will not, I cannot, destroy her more than she has destroyed herself.

  “I will take your secret to my grave; I swear it,” I whisper.

  Marguerite is weeping too. She releases me, but instead of departing as I so urgently desired only moments ago, I set my candle on a nearby table and take her into my arms. “I will never tell,” I croon in the same tone I might use to comfort one of my boys after a bad fall.

  When Marguerite’s sobs subside and she is quiet, I let her go. She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her chemise. “You are no doubt tired,” she says in a voice so formal and out of place to the occasion that I experience the insane desire to laugh, “and will wish to return to bed.”

  She is trying to restore the normal order, and I, God forgive me, am eager to let her. Eager because we have nothing to say to each other that cannot bring more pain or horror. “Yes,” I reply, “Henry might awaken and look for me.” I reach to collect my candle and take my leave.

  “No one.” Her eyes search mine.

  “No one,” I agree, nodding.

  When I am almost to the door, I turn once more. My sister stands where I left her, a figure suddenly without substance in the low glimmer of her dying fire. “One thing I must ask in return,” I say. “Never speak to me of this again, nor of him. My forbearance cannot extend so far.”

  “Never,” she agrees.

  Then I go. But the heavy door falling shut behind me is not enough to banish the image of my sister’s empty eyes. I can feel them on my back as I flee in search of my room.

  Back beside my slumbering husband, lying as still as I can so as not to disturb him, I hear my sister’s words again: “Dishonor, death—they mean nothing to me. I have given up the man I love.” Here then is the explanation for all the emptiness and listlessness I perceived in Marguerite’s letters since her return from Egypt, and in my sister herself when we were reunited. A part of her dwells in grief just as that emotion dogs the steps of her husband. Only her sadness comes not from the loss of armies. Does she grieve over the commission of her sin or over its cessation? In the dark, staring up into the curtains of my bed, I am oppressed almost to the point of screaming by a single thought: my beloved sister is damned. How could this man, this Seneschal, be worth that, an eternity of suffering? Hot bitter tears roll down my face in the dark, as if I, not she, were guilty of her offenses. And I suppose twenty years ago had anyone predicted which of us would be capricious even to the point of her own destruction, none would have said Marguerite; not even I.

  The bells marking the hours continue to find me awake, struggling to think how I can help my sister, or at least how I can forget what I know and wish I did not. Then, there is a man at the foot of my bed. He has his back to me. For a moment I think it is Louis, for no one else of this court dresses so plainly. Then he turns. He is a stranger. He tries to speak, but his words come out mumbled and slurred. I am not afraid, though perhaps I ought to be, but rather I am frustrated. I feel that he has some explanation to make for my sister’s conduct—that if I could understand his words, I could help her. “Speak up, man!” I admonish. “And hold up your light so I can see you properly.” Slowly he lifts his candle until his face is bathed in its glow. His incomprehensible babble is explained. The man has no lips, only horrible, red, puckered scars where his lips ought to be.

  I awake screaming.

  CHAPTER 39

  MARGUERITE

  DECEMBER 1254

  PALAIS DU ROI, PARIS

  I send Marie away with the note even before my ladies come to help me dress:

  As you say that you love me, burn this the moment it is read. My sister has guessed. We need fear nothing from her, she being the sole person in this world whose love I can count upon as I count on your own. But what her eyes have seen perhaps others will remark as well. For the present then, let your looks be guarded and your words cold. Cordiality and decorum will be our shield, though I fear also our sword. For if your eyes obey my command and your will, and regard me as if I were any other, the wound in my heart will be deep. And the banal words of daily discourse I must utter to you without distinction of smile or jest will doubtless cut you likewise.

  All in my household are tired from the festivities of the night before. This is just as well, for it makes my low spirits less subject to observation. My mind wanders nowhere this morning. It is merely blank, wrapped in a shroud of pain. My sister despises me. My sin, which I thought to abandon on the deck of my husband’s ship that it might do no one any harm, seems determined to lay waste to all before it.

  Matilda is lacing up the back of my gown when her hands stop.

  “Your Majesty!”

  Every woman but I sinks in reverence. The sudden and most unexpected appearance of my husband leaves me frozen like stone. I struggle to conjure a smile.

  “Do not let me keep you from your business,” Louis says to the ladies surrounding me just as Marie slides into the room. My husband comes to stand before me while my women, with some hesitation despite his admonition, resume their ministrations. “I’ll warrant you were not surprised to see the Seneschal of Champagne at yesterday’s banquet,” he says.

  No opening of conversation could be better suited to unnerve me. Tired from passing half the night crying, I must expend considerable effort to keep my knees from giving way beneath me. Even so, my arm jerks involuntarily at Louis’s comment, causing the woman who is sewing me into my sleeve to prick me with her needle. She murmurs an apology, while Marie, who has come to my other side, gives me a look as if to say, Go carefully, lady.

  “Why should Your Majesty think so?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light as if I am curious, not terrified. I am about to protest that I keep no correspondence with the gentleman, but Louis plows onward.

  “Joinville told me that he called upon you yesterday when he arrived and found that I was out. Just the sort of attention to form and nicety I would expect from the knight. Goodness, I have missed him.”

  “Mmm,” I murmur, noncommittally, as I raise my arms and my ladies slide my surcote over my head, conveniently covering my face so that I may collect it. How glad I am now that my defensive words were left unspoken. Still, I wonder if Louis taunts me. But no, when my head emerges, I see he is smiling.

  “Your father must be happy in heaven this morning.”

  “My father?” My husband is in such a state of bright agitation, and his conversation jumps about so unexpectedly, that did I not know him better, I would suspect he had begun the morning drinking.

  “From his seat in that celestial home, he surely observed last evening that all the most golden threads in the tapestry of Europe are related to him by either blood or marriage.”

  “Sir, it is kind of you to say so.” What can Louis mean by such hyperbole?

  “I do not flatter.” The stern Louis returns for an instant. “Though he had no sons, his four beautiful daughters have married into a greatness that his sons could not have been born to. His wife is in every part a lady to be admired; his brothers by marriage, at least the Earl of Lincoln and His Grace the archbishop of Canterbury whom we meet here, have as fine an understanding of doctrine and of politics as I have seen. And his son the King of England—what can I say but that I am thankful we have had this meeting. Having fought the man in Poitou and heard reports of him, I could never have imagined King Henry as he is—a man of such devoutness, faith, and piety that I am not at all embarrassed to call him brother.”

  I slide first one foot and then another into the slippers that my ladies hold out. I see now how it is—Louis is dazzled by the same domestic tableau that charmed his emissaries twenty years ago, that found places for my kin in the court of England, and secured husbands for us all. He comes full late to valuing my family connections
. Yet, in my husband’s eager face I see an opportunity. I will throw myself into the making of peace between kingdoms. It is the season for such things being in a period of Treuga Dei when warfare is suspended by order of the church, and with the celebration of the birth of Our Lord, the Prince of Peace, approaching. And more than this, it is a task by which I may, perchance, make meaningful my life, which is turned again to ashes in my mouth since Eleanor left me sobbing in the dark.

  “I believe my sister’s husband is as Your Majesty finds, a very good man. I cannot think that such a man will march his troops into Normandy as we have been told for so many years, can you?” Here I must step delicately. It was an unquestioned pillar of my late mother-in-law’s canon that Henry of England maneuvered always and in everything to retake Normandy.

  “This much is certain,” Louis concedes in a cautious tone. “If Henry gives me his word that he will not do so, I will trust that word as my own.”

  “And has Your Majesty spoken with the English king about what it would take to secure such word? Or perhaps it would be more delicate to sound out my uncle Peter on the subject. My sister tells me he is much familiar with the mind of the king.” It costs me some considerable effort to mention my sister. The very thought of Eleanor conjures in my brain memories of our heated exchange in the dead of the night.

  “And what else does your sister say? I had no notion that you ladies spoke of politics.”

  It no longer baffles or insults me that Louis thinks as he does. I have had ample time to accept that, save for his mother, Louis cannot think of members of the fair sex as political creatures. “Husband, we speak not of politics but of family. Is it not the earnest wish of every wife and mother to see her family harmonious? Is it not well within her purview to work to make it so?”

  “My lady wife, what you say is entirely sound.” Louis holds out his arm to me now that I am properly assembled to greet the day. “Will you walk with me to Mass?”

  “With pleasure, Your Majesty.”

  And laying my hand upon Louis’s arm, I realize I will need its support to face this day. Will arriving in chapel in company with my husband mollify my sister? Will Louis’s leading me to my place make it easier for me to keep my eyes from the spot near to his own that Jean occupies? I can be certain of only one thing: both Eleanor and Jean are bound to notice the circles beneath my eyes that my husband overlooks entirely.

  CHAPTER 40

  THE SISTER QUEENS

  DECEMBER 1254

  PALAIS DU ROI, PARIS

  I glance over at Eleanor. She and I have come to the great hall to help Louis and Henry. Two hundred of the city’s needy gather to be fed on this Christmas Eve day, and our kings wish to serve the bread and fish themselves. She gives me a smile from beside a stack of trenchers, and I try to return it.

  She has been cordial these last days. As if the events of that dreadful night, one week ago this very day, did not take place. Yet they did, and if I cannot forget them, neither can she. I see a sign of this in the fact that our conversations confine themselves to the most trivial things, such as the arrival of my son Pierre’s last tooth; the fabric of a gown; the elephant Louis brought back from crusade that the English king finds so marvelous. After so many years of maintaining closeness across many leagues and through so much living, we are estranged. I fear I have lost Eleanor’s respect, and her judgment of me matters greatly, whatever I may have said that night in the dark.

  I move to my sister, pick up an armful of trenchers, and say, “Shall we lay the tables?”

  She gathers an armful as well, and we set off, each along our own trestle, placing trenchers as we go. Jean is in the hall. Louis selected him to be one of those honored by participating in the washing of the hands. I watched him enter, all clad in a dark green that becomes him well, but I have not looked at him a single time since; such discipline costs me greatly. I notice Eleanor glancing about as we work. Is she searching for Jean?

  When everything is in its proper place, the doors are opened and the king, who has been waiting outside with Henry of En-gland, making conversation with the filthy, rag-covered souls whom he will now nourish, leads the way. The odor of so many filthy bodies crowding into the place is quite overwhelming. I curtsy to my husband across the room, then, going to Eleanor’s elbow, say, “Let us withdraw. We have done our part, and Louis and Henry could not be happier.”

  “True.” Eleanor shakes her head in dismay and crinkles her nose. We slide from the room unnoticed. “Heavens,” she says once we have gained fresher air, “I have founded my share of hospitals and abbeys and embroidered my share of vestments for pious clergymen. But I cannot see why good works must lead to unpleasant odors.”

  “Oh Eleanor!”

  “I am glad to think I can shock you still after all these years.”

  “No indeed,” I protest. “In truth I admire you. You have the courage to say what everyone else only thinks.”

  My sister stops walking and releases my arm. She squares her shoulders and says, “I shall endeavor to prove your point. It is silly not to look at him on my account.”

  “I—”

  “Never mind your protests; they will not convince me. For a week you have studiously ignored the Seneschal of Champagne. Nothing could be plainer. I do not doubt but if he fell down dead before you, you would step over him and proceed unhindered. It convinces me of nothing and is, I think, likely to draw more eyes to you, not fewer.”

  My heart pounds in my throat. “But if you detected us in only a day—”

  “Have your husband and your courtiers not had a thousand times as many days and failed? I know you as no one else does, and I came with fresh eyes, having never seen you in the gentlemen’s company before. Those of your own court are doubtless used to your prior conduct. They think only that you play the lady and the knight. Would you alert them by this change, this studied avoidance, to the very thing you want them least to notice?”

  A serving girl, leaving the hall, passes us, bobbing her head in respect since her laden tray prevents her from curtsying. Her appearance stops our conversation. By God, no woman has less privacy than I do! Yet here is a conversation I would not abandon.

  Taking Eleanor’s elbow, I steer her out into the gardens. Frost covers everything, and it is doubtless foolish for us to stand out of doors dressed as we are, but here at least we are alone. Not far from where we stand is Louis’s favorite pear tree. Gazing upon it, I feel very sorry for myself. How little could I have imagined, when I sat beneath that tree as a girl watching my husband’s lips form Latin conjugations as if his every word were enchanting, that I would stand as I do, a woman grown and supposedly wiser, shivering in the cold, my life as empty of love as the tree is now of bud or bloom.

  “Eleanor,” I say, “I know you bid me never to speak on this subject, but you have begun it. Before it is quit, I swear by my very life, there is no longer anything going on between the Seneschal of Champagne and me that anyone at court might not know of. Jean and I have never sinned on French soil nor ever will.”

  “Do not tell me lies, Marguerite. I see your eyes when they chance upon him. More than that, I have looked deep into your eyes these past days as they seek to avoid him. The pain there cannot be missed. You love him still.”

  “You call love alone a sin, then?” I demand. “I say not to love what is yours is the worse sin, but I will not argue the point with you, you who have been adored since you set foot on English soil. For the simple matter is this: it is not in my power to cease loving Jean. If I bid you tomorrow to stop loving Henry as you do, could you do it? Is your heart so obedient to your command?”

  Marguerite’s words hang in the air, though the steam from the breath that accompanied them has fallen away. “My heart is not at issue here,” I reply. “You have some practice in the task of ceasing to love. You stopped loving Louis, did you not?”

  “Would you believe me, Eleanor, if I told you it took years?” she asks, reaching out a hand for mine, whic
h I keep from her. “That I clung to some fondness for Louis even in the face of his constant neglect, like a dog will crawl back to its master again and again despite being struck or sent away?” Turning her back upon me, she takes a few steps away. Then rounding, she says, “How long can we love those who do not love us in return?”

  I do not know the answer to her inquiry. I’ve struggled with a question of my own since the maimed man spoke to me in my dreams. I know my sister has sinned; yet my heart tells me she is still the best woman I know. How can these facts be reconciled? Marguerite has always been deliberative in nature, and just—more just than I—in her treatment of others. Can her judgment suddenly have abandoned her so entirely? Perhaps I do not see things clearly. Would that it were so! For in this instance I would rather be wrong than have Marguerite wrong. Such an admission might make me smile under other circumstances.

  I look down at the ground. Near the tip of my slipper lies a broken twig with a cocoon lashed upon it. If my Edmund were here, he would pick it up and gently place it where it could not be stepped on. “It may seem broken,” he would tell me, “but something beautiful might still come out.”

  I pick up the twig. Marguerite looks at me oddly. She is still waiting for my answer. Her life at present is like this cocoon. Damaged, yes, but something beautiful may still come of it. I wish I could make her life better. I cannot. I pray that time can. But I will not step on her. I will have my son’s heart. I walk to the nearest bush and carefully set the twig among its branches.

  “I know only one thing for certain about hearts—that ours must never be separated. That is the essence of what we pledged when you left me to come to France. So many years have passed, but we have allowed neither the events that filled them nor the others of importance in our lives to sever the bond between us—not Louis nor Henry, even when they were at war. The only things to part us for a time were my stubbornness and anger. I will not make that mistake again. That the Seneschal of Champagne loves you makes him a wiser man than his king.” For some ridiculous reason my eyes grow damp. “There is surely no sin in that, nor, I think, in the contents of your heart. As for your acts,” I say, feeling my cheeks grow warm despite the December cold, “did Our Lord not say, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them’? If God forgives you your sins, then they can be nothing to me. You are my most beloved sister as ever you were and ever you shall be.”