Four Sisters, All Queens

by Jones, Sherry

  Justine’s pressed lips make a thin line in her fleshy face.

  All of England, it seems, comes for the ceremony. She stands at the cathedral door with Marguerite, Eléonore, and Justine, unable to enter for all the onlookers stretching their necks the wrong way for a glimpse of her.

  “Is the pope of Rome attending, too?” Marguerite says. “I did not have so large an audience at my churching.”

  “Everyone loves Sanchia,” Eléonore says.

  She moves through the ceremony as if in a dream. On her knees before the altar of the Virgin Mary, she gives thanks for her splendid life, which she does not deserve, and for the love of her sisters who have traveled from afar to honor her. Richard’s gaze warms her like a lover’s breath although she thinks he does not love her—not yet. Now that she has borne his son, though, his feelings seem to be changing. For that she gives thanks, too.

  After the service, she and her sisters cross to the field where today’s tournament will take place—the first tournament Sanchia has ever seen.

  “I brought Joinville to fight as my champion,” Marguerite says. Her eyes hold a soft glow, like candlelight. “Wait until your English knights test his mettle! They will discover why France’s army is the most fearsome in the land.”

  Sanchia smiles in spite of her dread. She has heard tales of blood and gore at these games, even of death. Their father never allowed jousts in Provence: “War is neither a game nor a spectacle,” he said. King Henry has forbidden them, and Richard hates them—but neither could refuse the French challenge to a contest.

  She sits on the high dais beside the jousting field with her sisters, not a queen as they are but feeling like one, drinking wine from bejeweled cups and admiring the knights in their hauberks, plate armor, leather helmets, and shields bearing colorful coats of arms. “Beauty!” someone cries. “Beauty, these are for you!” A bouquet of red roses sails through the air but Margi’s handsome knight, standing just below, catches it in his gloved hands before presenting it to her.

  “There, sister—Joinville has saved you from the thorns’ prick,” Eléonore cries.

  “Now watch him prick the English vassals with his lance,” says Marguerite.

  On the field, Richard and King Henry vie with the archers to split a tree branch with their arrows. The muscles ripple in Richard’s back and arms as he draws the arrow back in the stiff longbow—but he cannot quite make the full draw, and the arrow falls short of the mark. He grins as King Henry slaps him on the back, but his face flushes a dark red. When Henry shoots the arrow true, Richard glances around as if to see who is watching—and frowns at Sanchia as though she had caused him to miss. She hopes she will not be made to pay for his humiliation. She takes a drink from her goblet and the flutters in her stomach subside.

  “Any news from the boy king in Edinburgh?” Marguerite asks Eléonore.

  “He has accepted our offer.” Eléonore clasps her hands together. “Our little Margaret is going to be Queen of Scotland. Soon our entire family will comprise queens and kings.”

  “Except for me,” Sanchia says.

  “Why not? Richard is ambitious. I expect to see you on a throne someday.”

  She winces. “May God protect me from that fate.”

  “Don’t you want to change the world?” Marguerite smirks.

  “It is enough for me to change Richard’s world.”

  “Aren’t you the devoted wife, all of a sudden? Isn’t Jesus jealous?”

  “You have improved Richard’s life immeasurably with this new child,” Eléonore says, giving Marguerite a stern look. “I have not seen my brother-in-law so happy in years.”

  “Richard has had a hard life, in many ways,” Sanchia says.

  “King John treated everyone cruelly, including his children,” Eléonore says. “Henry has told terrible tales. He inherited his father’s temper, alas.”

  “But he does not abuse you?” Sanchia grips her sister’s arm.

  “Eléonore, abused? I pity the man who would try,” Marguerite says.

  A trumpet sounds. On the field, the archers gather their arrows and retire to their tables. The jousting knights converge on the meadow astride their destriers: the English on one side, the French on the other.

  “Wait until you see how skillfully Joinville wields a lance,” Marguerite says.

  “Henry is too gentle a soul to treat me roughly,” says Eléonore. “The same is true of Richard, I think.”

  “He dislikes his mother greatly.” Sanchia looks away. Should she tell her sisters the truth? Would they laugh at her, as Marguerite loves to do? “He resents her for leaving him after his father died.”

  “Henry laments losing her, as well. ‘I never had a family of my own,’ he always says. And now she has retreated again—to a convent.”

  Sanchia sighs. “I envy her.”

  “She said she’s doing penance for the lies she told Henry and Richard, to trick them into fighting the French. As well she should! Henry was nearly killed.”

  “She wanted only to help her children,” Sanchia says. “That is what I have heard.”

  “Instead, she has left them destitute,” Marguerite says. “Blanche has taken La Marche for Alphonse, too. When Hugh of Lusignan dies, his heir will receive only Angoulême. His other children will inherit nothing.”

  “Do not be so certain,” Eléonore says. “Henry’s half-brothers and sisters arrived in London two weeks ago, six of them! They fell like long-lost lovers into Henry’s open arms. At last he has the family he has always wanted. He would give them the entire kingdom if I would allow it.”

  “Shh!” Marguerite says. “It’s Joinville.”

  He rides his horse far to the west; his English opponent rides far to the east. There they wait, their lances couched underarm, their free hands ready to bring down whips on their horses’ flanks. At the trumpet’s blast the horses tear forth as fast as each will go, aiming head-on for each other. Is it Sanchia’s shriek rending the air or that of the horses when they clash? The French knight’s lance strikes the Englishman’s shield so forcefully it splits it apart. The English knight falls to the ground with a thud, then lies still for a long moment. Sanchia’s pulse races and she says a prayer for him as his fellow knights help him struggle slowly to his feet.

  “Not a drop of blood,” Eléonore says, frowning.

  “Joinville is saving his best efforts for the more skilled English fighters,” Marguerite says. “If there are any.”

  Meanwhile, Marguerite’s young knight has removed his helmet and bows to the sisters, then to the cheering crowd. “Give me a flower,” Margi tells her. She takes one and tosses it to her knight, her complexion as brilliant as the rose she throws.

  And so it goes for hours, it seems, crash after crash, smash after sickening smash, men striking each other down, cracking helmets, crunching bones, shattering teeth, and, often, smiling even as the blood pours from their noses and mouths. Sanchia thinks she will be sick to her stomach. “Stop!” she cries, wanting it to end, but her protest is lost in the crowd’s excitement. Even her sisters cheer and boo as if they watched children playing pretend or cocks fighting in the ring instead of flesh-and-blood men endangering their lives for others’ pleasure. When Margi and Elli begin placing bets with each new match she would scream at them, too. They are like the Roman soldiers casting lots for Jesus’s clothes as he hung on the cross. But she cannot scream; nor can she cry, nor even hide her eyes. As the honored guest, she must hide her disgust behind a smile. The things that men do for pleasure. It is a wonder that they have not destroyed the earth and everyone on it by now.

  At last the contests end, and she can breathe. While Marguerite collects her winnings from a pouting Eléonore, the men arrive to escort them to the great hall and the feast that awaits. King Henry looks pale. “He hates tournaments. He has forbidden them in London, to everyone’s disappointment.” Eléonore pats his hand, smiling. “For all his manly bluster, my Henry has a woman’s heart.”

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nbsp; “No tournaments! But how will you train your knights to succeed in battle?” asks Joinville. Sanchia leaps to the king’s defense.

  “If they kill and maim each other in tournaments, then who will remain to fight the battles?” she asks.

  “My thoughts precisely,” Henry says. “The last tournament held in my court caused the deaths of eighty knights, including my beloved Gilbert Marshal.”

  “Didn’t you like the games?” Richard asks Sanchia. “Your sisters seemed to enjoy themselves immensely.”

  Have they been married three years? And yet Richard knows so little about her.

  Trumpets herald their entrance into the hall, where the nurse, Matilda, waits to present the baby to Sanchia. Richard looks down at the child in her arms, then at her, and she sees at last the pride that she has dreamt of since their wedding day—the pride she wanted her father to feel in her, too, but he never liked her fair hair nor understood why, at dinner, she did not leap into arguments with the rest of them. He thought she had nothing to say, while the truth was that she did speak, but her voice was too quiet to be heard above Marguerite’s commanding tone and Eléonore’s excited shouts. How pleased he always looked when one of his daughters proved him wrong on some matter! She had dreaded Eléonore’s leaving home but she secretly hoped that, with her sister gone, Papa would finally notice her. But then she fell ill and had to stay in bed for a week, and when she emerged Beatrice had caught their Papa’s eye and she kept it for the rest of his life.

  Now, at last, Sanchia sees not only pride but also love on a man’s face. Richard loves her. As she gazes back at him, claiming him before all of England, her smile stretches so broadly it pains her cheeks.

  Uncle Boniface, newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry—at Eléonore’s urging—flashes his smile at her, his famous smile that makes women call him the “handsome archbishop.” Such beauty is wasted, they say, on a celibate man. (Richard laughed when he heard this, and said that a man like Boniface would be of no use to women, anyway. Sanchia cannot imagine what he means.)

  “Have you decided on a name for the child?” Uncle asks. Richard nods toward Sanchia. They have agreed to name the boy Ramon, after her father. Now, though, enveloped in her husband’s love, she changes her mind.

  “We will name him Richard.” As the room fills with cheers, he kisses her cheek. A tear forms in the corner of his eye, but he quickly wipes it away.

  The nurse takes the baby so Sanchia can dine. “We had hoped to arrive earlier,” Eléonore is telling their uncle, “but we have been stomping out fires in Gascony.” Already the Gascon rebels have overthrown the man Henry appointed to administer the county. “They want to wrest the duchy away from us, but we will not allow it. Gascony is Edward’s.”

  The question trembles on her lips, like a bird about to fly for the first time. “M-m-might you send R-r-r-ichard? You know he would be a strong ruler.”

  Eléonore turns a little pale. The corners of her mouth droop. “Gascony is Edward’s,” she says again.

  The feast is exactly as she dreamt it: She and Richard sit with Henry, Eléonore, and Marguerite at the high table, the king and queens on elevated thrones—talking and laughing and drinking wine. Richard’s gaze caresses her, and his boasts about her increase as the day continues. “God has blessed me with an angel for a wife,” he says. “A beautiful angel, who has performed a miracle and lifted the curse against me.”

  Sanchia bites back her reply. God doesn’t kill babies, not anymore, not since His son died for the sins of all.

  After the feast, the wet nurse brings the baby. Sanchia walks with him about the hall, showing him off. “He looks like me, don’t you think?” Richard says, his voice vast with pride.

  The Countess of Beaulieu, her cap perched percariously on a high, tightly wound spool of gray hair, squints down at the baby. “Yes, he does resemble you,” she says. “As do all your children.”

  “All your children?” Sanchia whispers to her husband as they walk away. “Do you have others besides Henry?”

  “The countess is growing old. Her mind is enfeebled.”

  Eléonore sweeps up and scoops the baby into her arm. “What a darling,” she coos, and kisses him all over his face, laughing—until a stranger steps into their circle, and her expression tightens as if pulled by a drawstring.

  Richard introduces the new Earl of Pembroke, his half-brother William de Valence, whose sharp features remind Sanchia of a hawk’s. He is richly dressed even for this noble gathering, in a green undertunic and silk overtunic of brilliant blue embroidered with gold fleurs de lis, and purple leggings.

  “He arrived from France last winter wearing a coat of coarse wool, and now behold his finery,” Eléonore murmurs to her. “The Lusignans seem intent on grabbing all the land and titles they can coax from Henry. By the time they finish, nothing will remain for our children.”

  “Montfort calls me a thief and a foreigner,” William de Valence is saying. “He fancied that Pembroke belonged to him.”

  “Henry did award it to him,” Eléonore puts in. “To settle their dispute over Eleanor’s dowry.”

  “Yes, all the world knows about the Montforts and their endless demands on Henry.” He speaks as though Eléonore has brought up a most tedious topic.

  “Simon de Montfort is an upward-reaching man,” Richard says. “He thought to become rich by marrying my sister.”

  “Our sister,” the Earl of Pembroke reminds him. He nudges Richard as though they are long-lost friends.

  “The Montforts are very much in love,” Eléonore says, her color rising. The baby begins to cry.

  “Love, between a husband and wife?” Richard begins to laugh.

  “What is funny?” Sanchia frowns. “My parents loved each other.”

  “They respected each other.” Richard pats her cheek. “But love, my sweet, is like a delicate oil. Marriage is like vinegar. The two cannot mix. Do I speak correctly, Lord Pembroke?”

  “Marriage is one thing, and love quite another,” the count says. “That is why men have mistresses.”

  Before either sister can retort, the trumpet sounds to announce a late arrival: The Baroness of Tremberton, Joan de Valletort, and her son Philip. The baroness stands like a statue, her dark hair swept smoothly back from her high forehead and gleaming through pearl-studded crespinettes, her skin like alabaster, her long, slender fingers clasped lightly, her full lips in a half smile. Sanchia wonders at her composure, so like Mama’s. How does any woman gain such confidence? Then her gaze moves to the young man in priest’s robes beside her. He looks familiar, but she cannot imagine why.

  Eléonore grasps her hand. “Keep breathing,” she says. “Calm is essential.”

  With eyes like glittering obsidian the woman crosses the room with her slump-shouldered son to where Richard and Sanchia stand. Her steps make dainty tapping sounds on the tiles, sounds elevated by the silence blowing before her like a warning wind.

  “Richard. How divine to see you! How many years has it been?” He lowers his lips to her hand; her eyes watch him knowingly, as if they shared a private jest.

  “Baroness.” Richard’s voice sounds as brittle as dried leaves. His mouth puckers in that way he has when he gets annoyed. “I’d like you to meet my wife, the Countess Sanchia.”

  “Oh, yes, I’d heard that you married one of the sisters of Savoy.” Under her cool appraisal, Sanchia feels as if, without this woman’s approval, she might be sent back to her mother. “You are famous, my dear, and now I can see why. What a beauty! Richard, she’s darling. And the baby! He’s nearly as cute as Philip was.”

  Sanchia blushes. She feels Eléonore watching her, but she cannot meet her gaze. Her eyes are locked to the face of this woman whose smile is one thing when it falls upon her and quite another when it shines on Richard. Her son joins them; the baroness steps aside so that he can stand beside Richard. Sanchia gasps. His wavy, sand-colored hair; his sturdy, square body; his soft, full mouth: He could be Ri
chard’s son, he is so like him. Eléonore takes her hand. “Sister, I am weary after today’s journey. Will you come and sit with me?”

  “Go along, darling.” Richard moves his hand from her waist. “I will join you soon.” Sanchia moves as if in a fog, or as if the fog were in her, slowing her steps and obscuring even her thoughts.

  “That boy must be at least sixteen years old,” her sister says.

  “Sixteen years ago, Richard was married to Isabel Marshal,” Sanchia says. “The love of his life. Or one of them.”

  “‘Love is the delicate oil, and marriage the vinegar,’” Eléonore quips. “I wonder if Richard invented those lines?”

  Marguerite

  Against the Winds

  Egypt, 1249

  Twenty-eight years old

  THIS IS NOT what she imagined. The triumphal entry, yes—fifteen hundred ships, sails billowing, covering the sea in canvas. But the zeal in Louis’s eyes, his restless pacing across the deck, his constant talk of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem—this Marguerite did not envision, nor the men’s screams as the Saracen gallies burn and crumble, sunk by balls of flame launched at Louis’s command.

  She has been told to remain in her cabin, but she is free to do as she wills now, the Queen of France at last, not in Paris as she had hoped, but queen nonetheless. And she does not wish to huddle in that cramped room while her imagination spins scenes of terror from the sounds coming through the door. Yet the view from the deck is grimmer than anything she imagined.

  “Lower two dinghies for rescue,” Louis commands. Is he mad? Two dinghies will not hold all the men flailing in the sea and shouting for help. “Save the Saracen captains and nobles, and leave the rest to God,” he tells the crewmen clambering into the boats. She wants to argue, to intervene for the lives of the others, but she holds her tongue. If she would prove herself to Louis here in Outremer, she must not begin by publicly challenging his decisions.

  Beatrice joins her at the rail but Marguerite says nothing, having asked her for her dowry and been refused—again. “I will not violate our father’s will,” Beatrice said. “You can ask me as many times as you please, but my answer isn’t going to change.” Marguerite has now decided to ignore her. Why listen to Beatrice when she will not listen to Marguerite?