The Sister Queens (41 page)

“Not with five hundred knights, Your Majesty.” The duke lowers his eyes as if embarrassed by this fact.

“They are so many, the Saracens?”

“They continue to arrive even now.”

“Can we hold the city?”

The duke looks up again, his eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed. He clearly did not anticipate my desire to stand our ground. “Your Majesty?”

“Can we hold the city?” I repeat slowly and distinctly.

“I believe we can.”

And suddenly I feel it, that distinctive tightening in my abdomen.
Oh God,
I think,
must it be now?
I shove all thoughts of childbirth away, and, staring directly into the duke’s eyes, I say, “Then hold it. Hold it as if it were the most important thing you have ever possessed, because if in fact the king lives, it may be.”

The duke bows and starts for the door. As he reaches it, a second pain spurs me to make a request. “Your Grace, I would be pleased if you would send me one of the most venerable of the knights under your command. He need not be young, but he need be a
preudomme
who knows his duty to his queen. This man I shall make my personal guard.”

As soon as he is gone, I call Marie and tell her to make my chamber ready, not for confinement but for birth. “Do not shutter the windows,” I say. I must know what goes on in the city and without its walls or I will go mad with terror. “And let no one but my ladies know that my time has come.”

Those who have attended me through delivery before gather, their eyes red and their faces tear-streaked. I walk about my chamber, stopping to lean on a chair or the bed as the pains take me. When the knight sent by the Duke of Burgundy arrives, Marie shepherds him in. He has lived more than sixty years if he has lived one, but he has kindly eyes and a strong chin. I nod my head to acknowledge his bow.

“You see, good Sieur, that your queen has great need of you at present. I labor now to bring forth a prince or princess of France. I have no choice in the matter, though the timing be ill; God wills it should be so. Yet things are so uncertain that even as I bring forth this new life, the Saracens may breach the city walls and storm this place. I command you that should that happen, you must draw your sword and have it at the ready. Delay as long as you can to give my child a chance to be born and spirited away, but under no circumstances let me be taken. At the first sign that the infidels have entered this palace, you must strike off my head with a single blow.”

Matilda gasps and, pressing her fist against her mouth, begins to sob.

The knight’s face, however, remains strong. “I shall strike without hesitation, Your Majesty. You have my word. Never would I see a queen of mine subjected to the hands and whims of an infidel.”

Another pain takes me, stronger than those before it, causing me to cling to the post of my bed. When it passes I say, “Marie, place a chair for this good gentleman. It is time.”

I do my best to labor in silence. Had anyone told me such was possible, I would have denied it, but my fear is stronger than my pain and my sense of duty is stronger than both. Louis may be dead. Jean may be dead. I may, therefore, wish I were dead. But I am not dead and I am Queen of France. The men and women brought to Egypt by my husband who live still, whether within the walls of this city or captive God knows where, need me to be a queen first and a woman second. So, when the pain takes hold of me, I bite my lip till I draw blood, I moan low and long, but I do not scream. Somewhere in the agony of it all there is a loud knock on the door of the room beyond. Marie departs and returns with
the Duke of Burgundy. When he sees me, knees drawn up, straining, he starts and looks away.

“He insisted on speaking to you,” Marie says in a low voice as the pain subsides and I relax back onto my pillows.

“It is nothing, Your Majesty,” the duke stammers, without turning his head in my direction. “It can wait.”

“No,” I gasp. I hold up my hand to bid him to wait, then push through another dreadful pain.

“I can see the head,” the midwife declares with satisfaction.

“Be quick,” I command the duke. I am nearly beyond listening thanks to the unbearable pressure in my loins, but I fight to keep my mind focused.

“The Pisans and Genoese pack to depart.”

Even in my present circumstances I recognize the serious nature of this threat. Without those men and their boats, the city will have no source of supply; nor will we have means of retreat. The ability to come and go by sea is a necessity.

“Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me,” I moan. The pain is rising. I close my eyes against it and against the light of this impossibly cruel day, pushing with all my might. I know the babe is born before I hear it cry; I know by the blessed relief that descends the instant it is free of my body.

“Praise God, our king has another son,” the midwife declares.

A son! I have given Jean a son. And now I must find out what happened to him, to Louis. I must trade this city for them if they live. I must have Damietta; without it I have no hope.

“Your Grace,” I say, eyes still closed so that I can see my own thoughts clearly, “I will speak with the leaders of these men—”

“But Your Majesty—”

“In one hour.”

MY ROOM IS FULL FROM
wall to wall. Either these men are curious to see a queen in her childbed or the number of those who lead equals that of those who follow. On the whole, they look uncertain, and that is a good thing for I would have them change their minds.

“Gentlemen”—I glance round, trying to catch the eyes of as many as I can—“I understand that you think to depart. I beg you not to leave this city. We cannot hold it without you, and if we lose it, His Majesty and all those brave warriors taken captive with him will be lost as well.” I pause, expecting a response of some sort, but no one speaks. “If this does not move you,” I continue, “think of my ladies and of me, in no condition to even rise from my bed, mother of a babe not two hours old. What horrors shall be our fate if you desert us?”

“Your Majesty,” a man in his prime with the skin of one who has been used to the sea speaks from the foot of my bed, “what choice have we? We have neither food nor the funds to buy it.”

I do not know if they are truly hungry or merely greedy. I do not care. Gold and silver I have; more of it than I have men, that is sure. Louis showed me the many chests on our ship with pride. “And if I keep you at His Majesty’s expense, ordering all the food in the city to be purchased in my name?” The Duke of Burgundy standing just to my left looks stricken; I can see his knuckles whiten on the hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Likely he disagrees with my decision. I do not care.

When the men are gone, persuaded to stay by my bribe, I call for my son. The midwife brings him in trailed by Marie. With them is a nurse I recognize as the same who suckles Lady Coucy’s daughter, who is now nearing her first birthday.

My baby is quite marvelously perfect with an abundance of dark curly hair so similar to Jean’s that under other circumstances I might worry that others would notice. Presently, however, I have other cause for concern. “You must take him to be baptized at once,” I admonish Marie. “Ask Jeanne to stand as godmother and the Duke of Burgundy as godfather. Or, if the duke cannot be spared, ask whatever nobleman you can conveniently find, but on no account delay. There is more peril to threaten this prince than a mother need ordinarily fear.”

Marie nods. I hand the child back to the midwife reluctantly. “Bring him back to me directly from the font,” I plead. Then turning to the nurse I add, “Though you may have the charge of him, I will suckle him myself. If I cannot know where his father is, I will keep the son as close at hand as I can.” Of course, the nurse thinks I mean His Majesty, as should Marie, though perhaps she is too clever to be fooled.

“And the name, Your Majesty?”

I hesitate. ’Twould be safest to name him after one of his uncles or, perhaps, my own father. But I cannot be wise. If, God forbid, one Jean has been lost to me, moldering somewhere in the desert sun or suffering at the hands of his Saracen captors, I must have another. “Jean Tristan,” I say, “and we will call him Tristan for he has been born into great sadness, and it is only by the grace of God that this prince, and indeed any of us, shall live to see happier times.”

“A BARGE MOVES DOWN THE
river, Your Majesty.” The Duke of Burgundy brings this news himself. “It is very large and appears to be loaded with yet more men.”

We have held the city for three weeks, watching every day as
towers and pavilions are erected outside its gates. One tower in particular fascinates me. It is taller than all the rest and, like the elaborate tent beside it, bears the standard of Sultan Turan-Shah. Sometimes when I go to our battlements late at night and peer out at the Saracens’ camp illuminated by hundreds of fires, I glimpse a shadow at this mighty tower’s top and wonder if I have seen the sultan and if he can see me.

“I will have a look.” I hand the slumbering Jean—for whatever I have instructed others to call him, I think of my son by the name he shares with his father—to Matilda, and make my way to the battlements.

“Do you see it?” His Grace points, and I do indeed, pulled along by at least one hundred oars. I cannot say why, but my eyes leave the river and scan the top of the great tower. I can see no one there, but if the tower is occupied, surely whoever stands at its apex is on its other side watching the river and the progress of the barge as I do. “Can such a conveyance hold enough men to tip the balance of the siege?”

“We will count them as they unload,” the duke replies, evading the heart of my question.

I am on the verge of turning to descend when I am stopped. My eyes, sweeping the infidels’ encampment with a parting glance, see something most unexpected—a column of dark black smoke rising beside the tower.

“It burns!” I cry, returning to the wall.

And sure enough, at the tower’s base I can see flames licking it greedily—flames stoked by dozens of men. I do not understand why they would destroy their own tower.

“Mamlu¯ks,” the duke says, the tone of his voice betraying that he is as bewildered as I am. Then suddenly he gestures wildly. “My God!”

A magnificently dressed man has emerged from the tower’s base preceded by two soldiers. He clears a group of armed men near the doorway, even as his two companions fall holding them back from him, and he sprints toward the river. A dozen Mamlu¯k warriors chase after him. There is nowhere for him to run. And he must know it, for at the river’s edge he turns to face those who pursue him. Without hesitation one among them knocks him to the ground. For a moment he is obscured from view by a mass of warriors. When they part, he lies motionless, limbs oddly askew, his splendid white and gold robes stained red with blood. I wonder who he is, or rather, was. Could it be the sultan himself lying lifeless in the dust?

“And these are the men who hold the king,” I say, finding my voice once I am safe in the shadows of the tower stairway.

SOMETHING OF GREAT IMPORTANCE WAS
clearly begun by the death I witnessed on the riverbank. Seven days crawl by during which the infidels no longer seem to pay any attention to us. Their small forays toward the city wall by night to see if my archers sleep at their posts have stopped. The drums and horns, once sounded to frighten us, are silent. The barge remains moored in the great river without troops coming ashore. And all the time the corpse lies where it fell, scavenged by birds, but otherwise unattended.

I spend a curiously large amount of time thinking about the dead Egyptian, not so much pondering who he was as wondering why no one mourns him. Surely he had a loyal friend? A devoted servant? A wife? Perhaps none of these felt as they should for him. Was this his fault? Was it theirs? These are not idle questions. For, after my initial relief that Louis and his army were not destroyed, I am finding it hard to worry for him as I should—or at least as the
other wives worry for their husbands. I pray that the king is alive, and for his deliverance. But my words come from a sense of duty and a fear that if he is dead, my little Louis, too young by far to rule, will be destroyed by his uncles or dominated by his grandmother. When I try to muster tears for the
man
who is my husband, they do not come. It seems not enough fondness remains in my heart to weep for Louis, and the guilt for what I do not feel is oppressive.

The eighth day after the tower burned is the Lord’s day. On my knees at Mass, I find myself unaccountably praying for the fallen man, infidel or no. When the service ends, my ladies stay where they are to offer yet more prayers for their missing husbands and our missing knights, but I rise. If God does not know my heart by now, another litany of its hopes will not help.

The light in the courtyard is blinding after the dim of the chapel, so at first I sense rather than see that something extraordinary is going on—there is a sound of snorting horses and running feet—and then a group of noblemen becomes clear, crowding around a man on horseback. The rider’s face is down because he speaks to someone standing beside his mount. The Duke of Burgundy and several others, who must have exited the chapel just behind me, rush past, jostling me slightly as they go. The rider looks up, his face is as gaunt as that of a beggar in the street; yet I would know it anywhere—it is my Lord Geoffrey de Sergines! Lifting my skirt, I run to join those clustered around him. And while the others do not immediately notice me, de Sergines does. Climbing with difficulty from his horse, he staggers forward on unsteady legs to bow before me.