Four Sisters, All Queens

by Jones, Sherry

  “I am seeking my husband.”

  She is not far from the mark, for His Grace spent the better part of the morning here, he tells her. He departed for the captain’s quarters. Marguerite arrives there as men are filing onto the deck: the Lord Beaumont and his Saracen serving boy; Odo, the pope’s legate; and then, at last, Jean.

  “My lady,” he says, glancing around as he bows to her. Seeing no one nearby, he murmurs, “The king suspects us.”

  Marguerite feels an ache in her chest as if he had struck her there. “How do you know?”

  “He has said so.”

  Louis emerges, then, with the captain behind, his red-rimmed eyes staring at Marguerite as though he knew her thoughts and found them disgusting. She returns his gaze. For once, she does not blush, although her pulse flutters. She will not give up Jean.

  “My queen,” Louis says. “Have you business with me, or with my loyal knight Joinville?”

  “My lord, your son Jean Tristan is ill. His ear has become infected.”

  “Not again?” Louis’s frown hardens. “You have borne me a sickly child. Have you considered whether it is your own doing?”

  “I am sorry, my lord. I do not understand.”

  “Is your conscience clear? Might God be punishing you for something?” He glances up at Joinville, whose face has turned a furious red.

  “I gave birth to him in extreme heat, in a pagan palace, with terror running through my veins as the Turks besieged Damietta,” she says. “I was there at your command.” He rolls his eyes, having heard these complaints before.

  “But I’m not here to point the finger of blame. Our son is ill. Shall we land at Cyprus on the way home to obtain medicine for him? The healer prescribes garlic oil.”

  “Delay our arrival in France? I thought you were anxious to see our children.”

  “To stop would be a necessary evil, of course. But—”

  “Evil,” Louis says, “is never necessary.” He links arms with Joinville. “My dear knight, tell me your conclusions after that meeting. Ought we to heed the captain’s warning of a storm amid this calm weather, and take shelter in the nearest harbor? Or should we press on, confident in the Lord’s protection?”

  IT BEGINS AS a slow breeze, a sweet relief from the summer sun’s reflected heat, which shimmers as if the sea were a mirror and the ship a pile of kindling to be lighted. Marguerite sits on the deck in the shade, feeling air kiss her cheeks, not as pleasurable as Joinville’s kiss but the only kind she is getting these days.

  He has ceased his visits to her cabin. On the first night without him, she paced the floor, anticipating his knock, ready to hear all that Louis had said to him and rebuff each accusation as if her words were fingers massaging away knots of guilt. Of what do they deprive their spouses by giving love to each other? Certainly the seven children she has borne, including the dead (and for what did God punish her with those sorrows?), prove well enough that she has not denied Louis her body. How have they been unfaithful, when Jean’s spouse is far away in body and Marguerite’s in spirit? What is the meaning of loyalty? Was Jean’s wife unfaithful when she refused to accompany him to Outremer? Is Louis faithful when he ignores her as if she were a statue without a head?

  She awakens the next morning with an ache all over from sleeping on the floor by the stove, trying to ease the chill in her bones. She does not seek Joinville that day, but waits for him to come to her. She has some of the ship’s men move her chair and footstool into a shady spot, under a place where the upper deck overhangs the lower. There she reads de Troyes’s Erec and Enide, which Joinville had loaned to her, and dozes and dreams of him. In her dream, he comes to her in a panic, having lost his penis. She awakens herself laughing and feels a hand touch hers.

  “I am glad to see that your nightmares have ceased.” Jean stands beside her, glancing about.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Your laughter, my lady.” So—she is “my lady” again.

  “Laughter can be helpful when one wishes to avoid crying.”

  He looks at her. Something broken shows itself, like a piece of bone splintering through skin.

  “Come to me tonight?” she whispers.

  “I cannot.” A sound enters her ears like the roar in a conch shell. He moves his mouth. She looks down at the book. When she looks up again, he is gone.

  That night, the sea pours forth from her eyes and carries her far away. Floating on her bed, she watches her life swim by and ponders happiness. She swore not to give up Joinville, but that was foolish; they have always known that their love must end. But what of the happiness she feels with him? Must she give that up, as well?

  Once upon a time, she’d fancied that to be France’s queen would bring happiness enough. Ruling the kingdom certainly seemed to fulfill Blanche; she gave up love for it, and became the most powerful woman alive. Now that she is gone, what is to stop Marguerite from taking her place—at last—as the true Queen of France? Louis will need her if he is to continue the monk’s life of constant prayer that he began in Acre.

  Perhaps she does not need Joinville to be happy. With him, she feels confident and quick, like a dancer. If she is those things when he is with her, isn’t she still those things when he is not? Can she find her happiness in spite of him? She sees herself in the court, deciding cases. She sees herself sitting in the great hall on Louis’s right-hand side, interceding for petitioners, accepting obeisance, claiming her power.

  Outside, thunder cracks. The wind bangs at her door, rattling the hinges. She gets up to check the latch—and the ship lurches, throwing her to her knees. Mon Dieu! She pushes herself off the floor in time to be tossed onto her bed. The ship bucks like an unbroken horse, jumbling her insides. Rain gushes from the sky as if their ships sailed under a waterfall. She clings to her bed, keeping her eyes open, battling nausea, waiting to gain her bearings—and then, as always, it comes to her, her equilibrium is restored, and she can rise and open the door to see who is knocking.

  Jean looks as if he had just arisen from the grave. Marguerite pulls him indoors and holds him close against her, bending her knees to move with the ship’s surge upward, then plunge downward, breathe and relax, as if they were dancing on a magic carpet, nothing solid underfoot but stardust all around. It is the last time she will ever hold him. She does not want to let him go.

  “Why did you come?”

  “To make sure you are safe. This is a treacherous storm.”

  “It takes more than a little thunder and rain to frighten me.”

  A flash of light fills the room, illuminating him. The hair on her arms and neck stands on end. From outside, a scream pierces the howling wind. Marguerite runs to the door and throws it open. Their ship’s mast is struck, burning under the sheeting rain.

  The ship lists, hurling her forward. If not for her hand on the door, she would be flung against the rails, perhaps tossed overboard. Joinville yanks her back—“Close that damned door”—and slams it shut. It rocks backward, sending them both stumbling across the floor, crashing a ewer against the wall, which, as they tilt, becomes the floor for a moment. They tumble down together. Joinville leaps up and pulls her onto the bed. She clings to him, staring into the dark.

  “The ship is burning. We are going to die,” she says.

  “Not you,” he says. “Not if I can help it.” He leaps from the bed and staggers to the door, then out. Marguerite cries his name, heedless of who might hear. She grabs her cloak and pulls it over her head and runs out to find him. She must die in his arms.

  She finds him clustered with other men at the front of the ship, where the captain wrestles with the rudder. The sailors are dropping their fifth anchor in attempt to ground the vessel before it hits the enormous rock looming like a sea monster before them. Marguerite crosses herself but she does not pray for forgiveness of her sins, for Jean has certainly not done so, and she would rather spend eternity in purgatory with him than a day in heaven without him.

  J
oinville has not seen her. He is looking down at the floor of the deck and shouting over the wind. She hears him say, “the queen.” She hears, “safety.” She moves closer and sees Louis lying prone on the boards, his arms stretched overhead, wearing nothing but a robe. He is shouting, too, but not to Joinville: Pater noster qui es en caelis sanctificetur nomen tuum. A prayer.

  Gisele tugs at her sleeve with one hand and holds her cloak fast with the other. “Should we awaken the babes, my lady?”

  Marguerite pangs: Fortunate babes. Children can sleep through anything. Any moment now, this ship is going to dash itself against that rock and break apart like an egg on a bowl, but the children will know none of the terror that she has been feeling this last hour. No, she tells Gisele, let them sleep and pass to the Lord in peace.

  She feels a shudder, as though the vessel trembled in fear. She staggers forward to grasp Joinville’s hand. He turns to her with sorrowful eyes. “Au revoir,” she says to him, and grasps the rail just before the ship bucks, airborne on the crest of a wave as high as the wall at Tarascon. She will never see Provence again, or her mother, or her sisters. But, God willing, she will see her father very soon. When the ship comes down, it will crash against the rocks, killing instantly a fortunate few and leaving the others to drown.

  “Go inside!” Joinville pulls her into his cabin and closes the door just as the wave crests and rolls over the ship, nearly snatching Louis away but for the courage of a sailor who remains on deck to hold him fast. The crashing waters wash the poor man overboard without a sound heard by anyone—not even by Louis, who hears only his own shouted prayers. Then the ship does a most unexpected thing: It rocks and shudders some more, but it does not fly through the air. The anchors have held it fast. After a final spasm, the tantrum is ended.

  Not that Marguerite notices. The moment that door closed, she and Joinville commenced to drink each other up and they are still imbibing as Louis is nearly washed overboard, as water fills the sailor’s lungs, as the storm rolls over the island of Cyprus and away from the ship, ripping branches from trees, tearing houses apart. In its wake, the sea laps at the splintered ship as innocently as a kitten’s tongue. A wheeling gull pierces the air with its cry. Louis lies still, praying his thanks to God for delivering him from evil. But by the time the thought of “evil” has sent him staggering to Joinville’s door, the lovers have parted.

  Jean opens the door to Louis, and Marguerite helps him inside. “What are you doing?” Louis gasps.

  She dries him tenderly with a towel, as if he were her little child. “Sir Joinville saved my life this day, by taking me in from the storm,” she says.

  “No, my queen, not Joinville,” Louis says, gasping as if he were a fish flung forth by the waves. “It is I who saved you both—and all the ship—with my prayers.”

  Marguerite kisses his brow, and helps her husband to stand. “Joinville,” he says. “Let us go.”

  “Where are we going, my lord?” Marguerite asks. “You, Sir Jean, and I?”

  Louis scowls at her. “To put me to bed,” he says.

  Her laugh is as light as if she were thirteen again. “For that formidable and demanding task,” she says, “you need your queen. And no one else.” She helps her husband out the door and, hooking her arm through his, walks with him to his cabin with a glance back at her knight.

  “Louis,” she says, “let us disembark at Marseille. We can visit my sister in Aix, and your brother. I think that, if you and I work together, we can take Provence for our own. For France.”

  “Together?”

  “Yes,” she says. “As king and queen. Imagine what we could accomplish, Louis. Together.”

  “I am thinking,” he says as he pulls her into his cabin and takes off her clothes.

  Eléonore

  The Heart of the Lion

  London, 1252

  Twenty-nine years old

  SHE MOUNTS HER palfrey with Henry’s rebuke still ringing in her ears. Arrogance, indeed! She is only exercising her rights. He is the arrogant one, running to the courts with their every dispute and then lashing out when she wins.

  This week the judges have ruled twice in her favor. First they exonerated her clerk, Robert del Ho, of wrongdoing after Henry accused him of fraud—his attempt to blame another for his own reckless spending. And today, they agreed with Robert Grosseteste, the bishop of Lincoln, that Eléonore might appoint the living from her church at Flamstead to her chaplain, without Henry’s approval. “Arrogance,” Henry muttered when the verdict was read, his drooping eyelid ticcing with rage.

  Ignoring him, she stepped over to the bishop to thank him for his testimony. “I had hoped only for a letter of support, but you took the time to come and testify in person,” she said.

  Henry was close behind her. “How much of my money did she pay you?” he demanded. Eléonore wished for a great hole in the floor through which to drop: Robert Grosseteste is one of the world’s most learned and respected men.

  “Why, Henry,” she said, “I give of my own money for the Lord’s work, not only to Lincoln but to parishes throughout the kingdom. Would you view my financial records? I shall send them to you immediately, by way of my clerk—I believe you are familiar with Robert del Ho?” It is a good thing that angry looks cannot kill a person.

  “Arrogance,” he said. “I never thought you would turn against me, Eléonore.”

  The insult is almost more than she can bear. Turn against Henry? She would sooner have her heart cut out. He is challenging her, goaded on by those greedy Lusignans, who would take all for themselves were it not for her.

  She has tried everything, it seems, to bring her husband back to her. She has given him gifts: most recently, a sumptuous robe of purple-brown velvet with a bejeweled clasp in the shape of a lion’s head which she has never seen him wear. She spends hours upon hours reading official documents, the better to advise him, as well as the romances he loves—including the awful Roman de Renart—so that they may discuss them together. She arranges dinners twice weekly at Windsor Palace for visits with the children undistracted by the kingdom’s demands. She has even given up her best friends for his sake, declining to testify for Simon and Eleanor in their disputes with Henry over money. The only court battles in which she would testify against her husband are the ones he initiates.

  He is not a gracious loser. What else should one expect from a man who was given everything as a child? Knowing this, however, does not incline her to defer to him in any contest. She is too competitive for that—a trait that, once upon a time, he admired in her.

  She expected his petulance today. So why does her chest feel so heavy, as though she carried a great stone around her neck? Going to Windsor—home, where her children live—will lift her spirits, beginning with the ride. The day is fine, although a bit chilly, and her horse steps lively, proud, she imagines, of its new saddle elaborately embroidered with the white roses she loves—her emblem—and studded all around with gold.

  “Let’s show you off,” she says, stroking its soft mane. Riding through the neighborhoods of London will also give Eléonore the chance to show off her splendid new gown of blue silk from Paris.

  Flanked by knights and seven of her ladies, Eléonore’s horse trots along the broad, tree-lined avenues near the palace where London’s merchants have built elegant mansions in recent years—prompting complaints from the Earl of Gloucester. “Soon they will be wearing silk and calling themselves ‘Sir,’ and the distinctions of nobility will be obscured,” he pouted. A man steps out of his home and bows to her; his tunic, she notes, is not only silk but purple, as well—a color usually worn only by royalty. If only Gloucester were here to see.

  The knight Sir Thomas turns to her. “We’re approaching Charing, my lady.” The district of London reserved for brothels. “It is no place for a queen.”

  To pass around it would delay their arrival at Windsor by an hour. After Henry’s outburst, she yearns for her children’s hugs and kisses; she hungers to
hold them in her lap, to hear them say, “I love you.”

  “As I am surrounded by knights, I hardly feel endangered by prostitutes and petty thieves,” she says, and quickens her horse’s pace to lead the way down the center of the Charing Road. Perhaps she will spy a baron here, or, better yet, William de Valence, arm in arm with scandal.

  The knights crowd around her as the houses change from spacious and light to narrow and dark, houses whose second stories jut so far over the road that they nearly blot out the sky. Behind them, along meager and muddy alleys, ramshackle homes rot into the ground along with piles of food scraps, offal, and excrement wafting an inglorious stench. Eléonore blinks her eyes against the burn. Inside these squalid homes live presumably squalid lives, judging by the children squishing their feet in the dirty muck and the smiling, dirt-matted dogs. A man with hair like cobwebs scrounges for food in the trash heaps, eliciting a tossed coin from Eléonore that he fails to notice. As the procession moves into an area of shops, the street writhes with activity: Children chase dogs. A young woman sells fruit from a basket. Horses and donkeys pull carts. A boy with Eléonore’s silver coin in his fist jumps over puddles, dodging the grasping hands of the trash heap scavenger. A woman with loose red hair wears the prostitute’s yellow-striped hood, yet looks out of place in a silk-and-ermine robe like the one Eléonore gave to Henry—

  “Stop!” She slides off her horse and strides over to the red-haired woman, ignoring the calls of her knights. Her shoes scatter gravel and English mud as she walks, her mud, for she and Henry own every inch of ground in the kingdom as well as the mantle on this woman’s back.

  “You have something that belongs to me,” she says to the woman. She eyes the clasp: a golden lion with bejeweled eyes, specially made for Henry.