The Sister Queens (51 page)

Jean, standing just behind le Brun’s shoulder, gives me a pointed look. We have not heard from the court of France for so long that we had begun to think they had forgotten their king.

In a single deft motion Louis breaks both seals. The letter appears long, but my husband’s eyes cannot have moved beyond the opening lines before he rises from his seat. “No,” he keens, “no, no, no.” His hands, still clutching the letter, beat his breast, then claw for the neck of his tunic. In a violent gesture he rips it open, revealing his customary hair shirt underneath. And all the time he continues to wail, “No, no,” as if denial could make whatever he has read less so.

“Your Majesty, what is it?” Le Brun’s eyes bulge like those of a man being hanged from a noose.

Louis stops wailing, but looks at him as if uncomprehending.

Hesitantly, I put out a hand and touch Louis’s arm. His eyes turn to me, and for the first time in a long while Louis sees me rather than looking past or through me. And I see Louis the man, not the oh-so-holy king. Then his hand jerks strangely in my direction and drops the crumpled letter into my lap.

Heart beating as if I were a rabbit cornered by hounds, I pick it up.
Not the children,
I think,
please, Holy Mary, not the children.
The writing is Alphonse’s, and the first words that catch my eye are “The bishop of Paris was with our mother at the end, and true to her pious nature, she put aside her crown and took the veil.” Raising my face to my husband’s once more, I say, “Our lady mother, Blanche of Castile, is dead.”

Louis nods. Then, as if this admission by gesture reminds him of his grief, he begins to keen again and, turning, runs from the pavilion. The eerie sound he makes fades but continues, leaving those of us who remain frozen in our places.

“Go to him.” My own voice breaks the horrified silence. Yet it is not my voice. For, hearing it as from a distance, I cannot imagine why it is so calm.

Jean nods. As he goes in pursuit of the king, I rise and flee as if from a scene of violence, with Marie chasing after me.

By the time I reach my tent I am shaking. Marie puts her arm about me from behind and guides me inside. Without this precaution I would surely collapse. As it is, I fall onto my bed and am immediately gripped by convulsing sobs. They roll through my body, tossing me like a galley in a storm. Gasping for air, I clutch the coverlet, balling my hands into fists and twisting the blanket.

“Your Majesty!” Marie sits down beside me, a look of wild concern on her face. “You will do yourself harm.” She tries to smooth my hair, but I push her hand away and, covering my face with my hands, curl up like an animal in a hole, sobbing through my fingers. “I am going to get the physician,” she says, standing up.

I lose all sense of time and cannot say, when the voice comes, if it has been moments or hours since Marie left me.

“I have heard that some women are foolish, fickle, and untrustworthy. But never would I have believed you among their number.” Jean’s tone is both incredulous and tender.

Taking my hands from my face, I look up to see him standing just inside the tent.

He shakes his head and continues. “What can I think but that you have lost your mind and forgotten your own interests? The woman who hated you most and whose loathing you returned measure for measure is dead; yet you weep for her as if you loved her like a true mother. It is unaccountable!”

Sitting up, I swing my feet to the floor. Jean closes the distance between us in a few strides and takes a seat beside me.

“I cry for joy because I am free of her,” I explain, turning to face him. “But also in sorrow for His Majesty.”

I know I can say this without hurting Jean. He understands me.
He knows that some small part of me still cares for Louis, and will always care. Jean loves Louis as well—even if he no longer blindly reveres Louis as he once did. What we feel for the man who is our king is separate and apart from what we feel for each other. Our love is that of one deeply flawed person for another. When we lie together wrapped in each other’s limbs and secure in each other’s affections, we are two ordinary people seeking the companionship and love that ordinary people require to face the world. We love Louis as we love God, knowing that he is above us in many ways, and that he does not need our love. Without our affection he would be as whole as he is with it. In part, it is this knowledge that holds Jean and me together with such force. We find the value in each other that appears completely lost upon Louis. “Did you see him?”

“He lies cruciform in his chapel, tearing at his hair. I tried to calm him, but he sent me away. I left him crying out his mother’s name,” Jean says, wiping my tears away gently with his thumbs. “It is terrible how he grieves. But it is foolish for us to dwell on it. Only God can help him in his sadness; we cannot.”

“Yes.” I lay my head against Jean’s chest as he slips his arm behind me. The fine wool of his tunic is soft against my damp cheek. “But God will help him; he always does. And perhaps this time he helps us as well. We can go home.
Surely
with Blanche dead, Louis’s thoughts and footsteps will turn to home?”

“I cannot imagine but that we will set off for Acre and our ships at once. Then you will see little Louis, Philippe, and Isabella, and you will be happy.”

I look up into his face and notice for the first time that it is tracked with tears as well. I want to kiss them away but worry where that would lead. Surely some of the camp must know that he has come to comfort me. “They will meet their new brothers and sister,” I say gently, reaching for his hand. “They will meet
Jean, and they will love his solemn little ways. Never has such an old soul lived in such a young body, except perhaps in his father.”

“We will be parted.” Another tear escapes the corner of Jean’s eye, and I touch it with my fingertip. Can it be that Jean, who is never selfish, cries not for Louis but for us?

“Never.”

“Yes. I must go home to see my sons, my wife.” He stumbles over the last word. Not because it will bother me, but because it bothers him. I have always been able to accept the existence of Alix with equanimity, perhaps because Jean never loved her. He told me once he even tried to extricate himself from his betrothal to her. “You will reign at last in your court,” he continues, holding my hand so tightly that it is painful.

“And you will return to that court to advise your king and to watch your other son grow to manhood.”

“We will never have the freedom we have enjoyed here.”

“That will not matter,” I reply fiercely. I know as I say it, it is not true. When we return to France, Jean will become someone I love but cannot have, oddly like the king himself was in our first days, distant even as he sits beside me at table. I begin to cry again, silently, but no longer in relief.

Jean senses the change. “I will never give you up, Marguerite, unless death separates us or you send me away.”

I put one hand into his curls, and, pulling his face down, kiss him with a passion very like when I kissed him the first time at Curias. “I will never send you.”

E
LEANOR
S
UMMER 1253
W
INDSOR
, E
NGLAND

“M
other, why can I not go?”

Edward has interrupted my afternoon in the gardens to plead and protest his exclusion from the campaign in Gascony. My ladies, who were gathering flowers and braiding them into chaplets, drifted out of the reach of our voices at the prince’s appearance. They are the souls of discretion even if my son is not.

“Because your father says you may not.”

“He treats me like a child.”

“You are his child.”

“But I am also a man.”

“At fourteen?”

“You yourself were married a whole year at my age.”

I do not know quite how to argue with that. When I arrived in England, I certainly thought of myself as a woman grown. It was not until years later that I realized I was wrong. It cannot help the present argument to tell Edward he is mistaken. On the other hand, I have neither the power nor the inclination to permit him to travel to Gascony and fight. “When you are one year married we will talk more on the subject.”

“Mother! If I am married, then there will be no need to speak of it. If John Mansel is successful, I will have a bride and there will be no battle.”

“If there will be no battle, then why must you fuss and fume so about going to Gascony with the knights?”

“Because they are my lands that are threatened. I have been invested with them for more than a year. My honor demands I defend them.”

Edward looks so solemn when he speaks of honor. I am touched. I would never jest with such earnestness. I gently lay my hand on his arm and say, “Your honor and your duty demand that you obey your father and your king.”

“Saints preserve me from argumentative women!” Edward says, shaking off my hand and lifting his eyes as if he were ancient. His expression is so at odds with his youth and naïveté that I nearly laugh out loud. “You would not contend so with Father,” he complains.

I would, but there can be no benefit to myself in admitting as much. Let Edward learn when he has a wife of his own what wives can say to their husbands. “Which is why I will not press him to include you in his party.”

“I will sneak aboard the ships.”

“I believe I would notice were you not at my side to see them off.”

Edward kicks the path in front of him in frustration, sending up a little shower of gravel.

“Find your friends and go riding,” I urge. Edward is as good on horseback as he is with a sword. A few races with his friends, races he is sure to win, will blow away his present bad humor.

“Edmund will want to come.”

“It is natural that your younger brother should seek to emulate you. You should be flattered.”

“I
am
vexed.”

“Tell Edmund that I will come and read to him and the smaller Edmund.” Sanchia’s son trails my youngest about much as my son shadows his elder brother.

Edward is clearly prepared to complain further, but the crunch of a man’s stride on gravel prevents it. Uncle Peter rounds a hedge, his face flushed. He makes straight for me, not even pausing to greet Edward, which is most unusual.

“It is accomplished!” he says, taking me by both shoulders and pulling me to him.

“I will be co-regent?” I ask as he releases me.

“You will be sole regent.”

“But the Earl Richard—”

“None too pleased at present, and destined to be but one of the sworn council established to advise you.”

I twirl about as if I am a girl of fifteen instead of a woman of thirty.

“Mansel and I will be with the king, but be assured the men you are given will support Your Majesty. I am suggesting William of Kilkenny, Philip Lovel, and John Fitz Geoffrey.”

“What of Geoffrey de Langley?” My uncle casts me a perplexed look. He does not like Langley and cannot seem to fathom that Henry and I do.

“Have him if you like him. There is more.”

“What more could there be?”

For the first time my uncle seems fully aware that Edward is with us, silent but observing all.