Four Sisters, All Queens

by Jones, Sherry

  And then he does what Sanchia longs to do: he bursts into tears.

  SHIVERING IN HER too-thin gown, she stands near the fire and wishes for wine to warm her blood.

  “Not all of us welcome the pope’s involvement,” the man says, or so she guesses, for his accent is as thick as his beard. “William of Holland discovered what may happen when a man tries to impose his will.”

  “The pope imposes God’s will,” Sanchia says. The man yelps, having caught a popping ember in one hand, saving the gold leaves, saving the delicate pearls, saving the fabric of pale green silk swirling like water about Sanchia’s slippered feet.

  “Of course it burns, but only a bit, not to worry,” he says, flicking the coal back into the fireplace. The flames’ reflection flickers in his eyes. “I only wish that I had not moved so quickly, or I might have had the pleasure of brushing it from your exquisite person.”

  She lowers her gaze away from his florid face—she will not think of his fat hands touching her—and turns toward the white-clothed table glittering with candlelight and silver and strewn with flowers. Behind it, Richard waits for two German nobles to seat him. Although it is May, they wear woolen cloaks and tunics, clothing as heavy as their stern expressions. This is a cold kingdom indeed. Sanchia, who brought silks from England instead of wool, rubs her arms with her palms as she abandons the fire to join her husband, crowned today the King of Germany.

  “Here is the real reason we supported your election,” one of the men says. His long teeth and furry face remind her of a wolf. “Germany will be the envy of the world, having the most beautiful of queens.”

  “I thought it was my good looks that impressed you,” Richard says, but only Sanchia laughs. “Obviously, my debilitating sense of humor isn’t why we are here,” he mutters as she takes her seat.

  “I wonder if they ever laugh in Germany,” she says. “They look as if it pains them to smile.” The servant refilling her glass hears her, and pinches his lips together. She sips from her goblet. “When is the wine coming? This sour ale unsettles my stomach.”

  Under the table, Richard’s fingers grip her knee. “Lower your voice, my love.” He sounds anything but loving. She is acutely aware of his hand on her leg. He has barely touched her since Floria died. She places her hand on his, and he pulls it away. One step at a time, she reminds herself. At least Richard has broken his silence toward her. Every day that he did not speak, Sanchia felt herself fade a bit more until she became nearly invisible. Until she felt as if she were the one who had died. But now he has turned to her again. Now he needs her.

  Winning the crown is only the first step toward ruling Germany. Next, he has told her, they must win the hearts of the German people. “I have seen how you can shine, how your light can dazzle.” He said that to her the first time after the Christmas feast in Paris, where she surprised even herself with her brilliance. She would shine more brightly tonight if the Germans would give her some wine.

  What they have given her instead is so foul that the Germans gulp it down, dreading its taste, no doubt. She follows the lead of those around her and pours it down her throat. At last, that sweet, familiar warmth spreads through her. Men and women enfolded in colorfully stitched garments sit around them, speaking in their harsh, guttural language, heedless of the fact that, although Richard speaks English and can understand them somewhat, Sanchia does not.

  “Richard, what are they saying?” she whispers. “How can I shine for you when I cannot understand a word?”

  “Smile, darling,” he says. “Try to look like you are enjoying yourself.”

  She wants to kick him under the table for speaking to her as if she were a child. But he must be as tired as she. Their week began with a journey by sea to Holland, whence William of Holland’s prothonotary, a man named Arnold, escorted them up the Rhine to Aachen. Sanchia found the town charming and quaint, its houses reminding her of gingerbread, and the Aachen Cathedral more beautiful than most churches in England—with its painted arches, and intricate stained-glass windows, and ceilings painted with majestic falcons and characters from scriptural tales in flowing robes. Perhaps the German people are not as crude and brutal as she has been told. “They break wind right there at the table,” the Countess of Brabant told her. “Their hair grows as wild as weeds, unchecked, all over their bodies—on the women, too.”

  The servants set down heaping platters of food and refill their goblets, and soon everyone is pink-cheeked and smiling, including Sanchia, who devours the meats and boiled barley as though they were the delicate sauced partridges and sweet peaches of Provence. The flavors do blend well with the beer, which is tasting quite nice now.

  The barons rise and begin giving speeches that, to Sanchia’s ear, sounds like throat clearing and gargling. Richard’s grin widens with each tribute. “The more money I spend here, the more they like me,” he murmurs.

  And why shouldn’t they? she wants to say. Richard has spent thousands to improve castles and towns throughout his new kingdom. God knows it needs improving. Its choice of drink is not its only shortcoming. Germany is cold—not only its weather, but also its people. The wild, inscrutable landscape makes her shiver, as well. Could all the money in the world lend warmth to this awful place? It is a wonder that she, who craves the sun, should be sent ever more deeply into shadow and chill. What does the Lord mean by all these trials? What does He want her to learn?

  Trumpets blast; the crowd rustles. The doors to the cathedral open. The herald announces Ottokar of Bohemia, who swoops like a falcon down the steps and through the hall, as tall as a tree in brown and green wool and an ermine-lined mantle the color of plum, his heavy beard blanketing his face in flaxen curls. People sway toward him as he passes. Here is the man so powerful that his vote decided, at last, who would be King of Germany. Here is the man who caused the crown to be offered first to Alfonso of Castille, then rescinded, then placed on Richard’s head. An indecisive man, one might say, except that he carries about him the air of one who knows exactly what he wants. When he looks at Sanchia with those gray eyes, what he wants is very clear.

  “May I have this dance?” he says.

  As if on cue, the music begins. Sanchia takes a drink of her beer. Ottokar offers her his arm. She feels delicate beside him, he is so big and tall. He leads her into the circle of dancers. She follows, laughing, for she does not know the step and the music is fast. She twirls with him, faster and faster, growing dizzy, closing her eyes. She should have known German dancing would be bold and rough—and the music raucous, just like everything here, in her new kingdom. Slow down, she wants to say, but he would not hear her and besides, everyone is twirling and laughing and shouting and looking at her, happy to share their music and their life with her, their new queen.

  Then Ottokar releases her to join the circle which is forming around them. She steps back as he does, looking left and right for outstretched hands, but whose hand should she take? Blushing, for they are all watching her now, waiting for her to join the dance, she lurches toward Ottokar whose palm touches her bosom, making her cry out in surprise and stumble backward. As she falls to the floor, the room whirls and people look down at her and she gasps, right into the scowling face of Richard, on whose head sits the crown of the kingdom and on whose arm hangs a young woman with rosy cheeks and laughing mouth and hair as pale as the cold German sun.

  Eléonore

  A Parliament Gone Mad

  Oxford, 1258

  Thirty-five years old

  SHE TRIES NOT to stare as Uncle Thomas picks at his meal of songbirds that are admittedly scrawny but, to a hungry queen, mouthwatering.

  “I am a broken man, Eléonore,” he says, pushing his cold meat around in its congealed brown sauce. “My captors tortured me most cruelly. The brutality of humans! It has left me little appetite for ruling them.”

  “Or for food,” she says. She wonders what the servants will do with his leftovers. In the past, they would have given them to the dogs, but the
dogs are not as fortunate these days. These days, they get only the bones, and the servants are the ones licking their masters’ plates.

  “I have tasted little meat these past weeks.” She hears the note of accusation in her voice, but cannot help it.

  “One grows accustomed to hunger.” He passes his trencher to her and she falls upon his leavings as if she were that poor, deprived dog. “This famine has been hard on you,” he says when she has finished.

  She laughs self-consciously as she savors the last bite of sauce-soaked trencher. “At least I have finally taken off the weight I gained with Katharine.” Three years on this Earth and not a trace of her left, now.

  “My dear, when did she die? Six months ago? Yet you continue to mourn.”

  “She was the joy of our lives.” Eléonore accepts his handkerchief and wipes away her tears. “You would have loved her. Everyone did.”

  “The servants who settled me into these chambers remarked that the palace has been cheerless since she died. They sounded disapproving.”

  “Should I fret over the opinions of servants? Really, uncle.”

  “Your subjects’ opinions do matter.”

  “When they’ve walked in my shoes, I will gladly listen to their opinions.”

  “Only a few ever wear such privileged shoes. Are the rest unimportant?”

  “What do they know about administering a kingdom?” She stands, knocking her chair aside. “I am besieged by critics, all of them ignorant.”

  Simon de Montfort has turned his personal grudge against her and Henry into a public vendetta. He criticizes their “excesses” at every meeting of the barons’ council, and rails against the favors given to “foreigners”—not only the Lusignans, but the house of Savoy, as well. Never mind that her uncles have benefited England in countless ways. Uncle Peter raised funds to quell the Gascony uprisings and negotiated Edward’s marriage to Eleanor of Castille. And now Uncle Thomas, rescued from his imprisonment, can at last pay the sum needed to place Edmund on the Sicilian throne. If Richard becomes the next Holy Roman Emperor, England will be the world’s most powerful kingdom—far greater than France. And all because of her “alien” uncles.

  Simon, however, cares only about his lands, his castles, and his legacy to his sons. Henry will never have a day’s peace, he swears, until he gives to the Montforts the money and lands they claim. Never mind that others claim them, too.

  “Now he complains because Henry gave to the pope the tax he collected for his campaign in Outremer,” she says. “We thought the idea most excellent. We won’t need to tax the barons, now, for the Sicilian campaign.”

  “But the barons are unappreciative?”

  “We do not know what they think,” Henry says as he sweeps in, followed by his usual entourage: William de Valence, Uncle Peter, John Maunsell, and Edward, bleary-eyed again. “But, after today, we do know what Simon thinks.”

  Eléonore stands to embrace her son, whom she has not seen in weeks. He has been in Wales, showing off his castles to his bride.

  “Simon thinks the world revolves around him,” Eléonore says. And then, whispering, “Are you getting enough sleep, Edward?” He winces and turns his bleary eyes away. How she would love to separate him from those wild youths he carouses with these days: the reckless Henry of Almain; Simon de Montfort’s cruel sons; his lazy Lusignan cousins; the violent sons of the Marcher barons.

  “Montfort wishes the world revolved around him.” John Maunsell paces the floor while Henry sits on the bed and the others, including Eléonore, take chairs.

  “He is working diligently to ensure that others think it does,” Henry snaps.

  “He is arranging secret meetings with the barons, I hear,” Peter says. “They are drawing up a charter.”

  William snorts. “A charter? That was tried with King John, wasn’t it? I don’t know why they think it would succeed with us.”

  Uncle Peter leans to murmur in her ear: We must talk.

  “King John had to ask the barons’ permission before levying new taxes or fees,” he says aloud. “Simon would require the same of King Henry.”

  “How can anyone rule a kingdom if they must continually beg for funding?” Eléonore says. “What if an emergency occurred?”

  “Such as in Wales,” Edward says. “Mother, the Welsh have overrun my castles in Gwynedd. Deganwy is stripped to the walls, everything gone—the paintings, the tapestries, even the candlesticks.”

  “Savages,” Eléonore says. “If not for you, dear, I would have urged your father to divest England of Wales. After all our attempts to civilize them, the people are still heathens.” They are like small and bony fish: too troublesome to bother with, they are best thrown back into the sea.

  “Llywelyn calls himself Prince of Wales,” Edward says. “He struts about like a cock with full reign of the coop—and asserts himself on our lands.”

  “A prince! Was his father a king, then? Of what—London Tower?” She rolls her eyes. Gruffydd ap Llywelyn was never king of anything; his brother ruled a small portion of Wales while Gruffydd languished in the Tower until he fell to his death from a window.

  “Llywelyn would appreciate your notion to abandon Wales,” William says, sending Edward a pointed glance.

  “Of course I spoke in haste,” Eléonore says. “Those lands belong to Edward. Think of the example it would set if we let them go.”

  “The Gascons would take note,” John Maunsell says.

  “God forbid it,” Henry says. “I have never known a people so resistant to rule.”

  “The solution is simple. We must crush Llywelyn,” Eléonore says.

  A stunned silence follows. “The king had thought to negotiate, my lady,” Maunsell says.

  “Negotiate? Destroy him, I say. Llywelyn is too ambitious to be trusted.”

  Edward springs up in his chair as if he has just awakened. “I have made the same argument, Mother.” Mother. How cold the word sounds. “Mama” is more affectionate, but speaking English is the fashion—in spite of its harshness to the ear. “I’ve been begging Father to let me fight. I’ll show Llywelyn who is prince.”

  “Yes, yes, we must invade Wales,” Henry grumbles, hating as he does to be challenged or corrected—especially by Edward. And by Eléonore.

  “Invade Wales! What a brilliant idea, Henry,” she says. The others nod. But how, Maunsell asks, will they pay for an invasion?

  A discussion ensues: What remains in the treasury? (Almost nothing.) Can they levy scutages from men who pledged to take the cross, then did not go? (Richard has already collected from all who pledged, and from many, Eléonore suspects, who did not.) When did Henry last raid the Jews? (Too recently to profit from another raid.) Can the clergy be forced to pay? (They have already given fifty-two thousand pounds for the war in Sicily.)

  Henry covers his face with his hands. “Wales is lost.”

  “Thousands spent to gain Sicily for Edmund, and nothing left for Edward?” William says, frowning at Eléonore. “I thought a mother loved her eldest child the most.”

  “That may have been true of your mother,” Eléonore retorts, “but I love all my children with all my heart.”

  She goes to the bed and places her hands on Henry’s shoulders, blocking his view of his smirking brother and his glowering son.

  “Not everyone in this kingdom feels as Simon does. The barons of the Marches will support a war in Wales once they realize their holdings are in danger. The Earl of Gloucester will insist that we invade.”

  “But the barons of the Marches are not here.” Henry drops his hands; his face droops.

  “Why not summon them? And the other barons, too.”

  “Call a council of the Marcher lords?”

  “Call the full Parliament into session. Henry, we must eradicate this so-called ‘prince.’ If not, he will return to threaten us again. But we will need money, for knights and weapons and armor and food—”

  “I’m sure we all know the price of war,” William says.r />
  “Here’s what you do,” she says to Henry. “Call a grand meeting, not just of the barons but of your friends, too. Invite King Louis. Invite Alexander from Scotland. We’ll talk about the Welsh problem, and what to do about it. Before it ends, the barons will declare war against Llywelyn—and they will think doing so was their idea.”

  HENRY’S HANDS TREMBLE. His beard quivers. His voice, however, rings like a great bell across the tiled floor and through the high arches of Oxford, up through the ceiling to the Lord God and his angels.

  “This is an insult,” he roars. “How dare you humiliate us with your petty complaints and your foolish demands, when the future of England hangs in the balance? Wales is on the brink, and all you can do is push your ludicrous charter at me.”

  “We are squeezed dry by your follies,” Simon cries. “You have drained our lifeblood to pour it over Gascony, Scotland, Sicily, and now Wales!” The hall fills with shouts.

  Eléonore leaps to her feet. “Do you think we preferred to wage a seven year war in Gascony? Lord Leicester, you of all people know what a formidable challenge we faced there. And we have made peace with Scotland after years of strife.”

  “You have thrown pound after pound down the bottomless hole that is Sicily, and for what?”

  “For England,” Eléonore says. “The more territory we command, the greater our position in the world. We all gain.”

  “The pope gains,” Simon says. He turns to the barons. “And gains, and gains, and gains. At our expense!” They begin to shout again.

  “Sicily has cost you nothing,” Henry roars.

  “Our parishes paid, and paid dearly,” Gloucester says. “And we all contributed to the fund for your so-called expedition to Outremer—which is, apparently, not going to occur.”