The Sister Queens (28 page)

“Your Majesty is so kind,” she simpers, positively glowing and glancing about to see who is close enough to notice us walking arm in arm.

“Not at all. Are you feeling settled at Blois? It is difficult to marry so far away from one’s relations as I well remember. For many years I felt the absence of my family keenly.” I hold my breath, wondering if she will say what I wish her to. But, of course, the comment is so very obvious, surely it must come.

“It must be a great pleasure for Your Majesty to have your sister the Countess of Provence married to the Count d’Anjou, for now you will have her with you often.”

Leaning in, I lower my voice as if taking the countess into my confidence. “Not at all,” I reply. “The Countess of Provence is not the companion I would have chosen. I much prefer my English relations.”

Moments after she leaves me, I glimpse the countess across the room, deep in conversation with several other ladies of rank. When I see their eyes turn in unison to Beatrice, I know that rumors of my denouncement of her will be spread throughout the court before the sun sets.

E
LEANOR
J
UNE 1246
B
EAULIEU
A
BBEY
, E
NGLAND

M
y goodness, the bishop of Winchester drones on. The new abbey buildings are impressive, and they have cost Henry a good deal of money, but is it really necessary for his lordship to comment on the laying of every stone? Glancing past Sanchia at the Earl Richard, I wonder if his long looks are, like mine, induced by the endless speeches or by the fact that his first wife is buried not ten yards away just before the altar? Glancing to my other side, I see that Edward’s eyelids are drooping. I ought to give him a stern look or nudge him, but I haven’t the heart. After all, if I were only
seven, I would be asleep already. I reach out a hand to settle him comfortably against me and find his skin touched with fire.

Fever! I have no more time to waste on the bishop, and no thought for what is appropriate or polite. Rising, I lift the prince, wrapping his legs around my hips. His little arms naturally rise and clasp round my neck, but his head lolls back frighteningly and his eyes are unfocused as they seek my face. Henry gives a puzzled look as I start down the long aisle out of the church.

Outside, I glance about in panic and then realize that faithful Willelma has followed me. “Get the physician!”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

Responding to the urgency in my voice, she leaves at a run. I still have no idea where to go. Everyone is at the dedication.

“Mama,” Edward whimpers. Panic rises in me, pressing my chest and closing my gullet. And then Henry is there behind me.

“Eleanor?”

“He’s burning with fever.” I do not mean to shriek, but my voice sounds unnaturally high as it escapes my throat.

Henry reaches out a hand to Edward’s head, then draws it back as if burned. Wordlessly he takes the prince from me and begins to stride toward the living quarters of the Cistercians. I have to run to keep up. And all the time I can hear Henry murmuring reassuringly to Edward, talking about his favorite dog, the goshawk he got for his birthday, and how they will go hunting soon.

We install Edward in the abbot’s room. He is bled, but the fever shows no sign of abating. Physicians buzz around him like bees as I sit at his bedside holding his little hand. A few yards away the prior buzzes as well, like an angry hornet. My jaw clenches as I look at him. He is talking to Henry.

“I understand, Your Majesty, the queen’s desires to stay with
Lord Edward. Her Majesty’s feelings are becomingly maternal. But there are the rules of our order to consider. We cannot appropriately house women underneath our roof.”

“Cannot or will not?” Henry’s voice is as cold as my Edward’s cheeks are hot.

“Please, Your Majesty. I assure you the prince will be cared for day and night with the utmost skill until such time as he is well enough to be moved.”

“Listen to me.” I am on my feet and striding toward the prior. “His Majesty’s father built this abbey, and His Majesty can take it down.” The prior’s eyes open wide and his jaw drops. “And that is what will happen if another word is said about my leaving—down it will come, stone by stone, and I will help with my own hands.”

“Your Majesty!” The stunned cleric turns to my husband for relief.

“Mansel!” Our Lord Chancellor separates himself from a small knot of counselors standing near the door in response to Henry’s summons. “Her Majesty will be staying with our son. Please make the necessary arrangements.”

The prior sputters like a drowning man pulled from a river. Henry turns to him, raising his eyebrows slightly as if to invite further challenge, and says with great deliberateness, “Stone by stone.”

“WHY DOES THE FEVER NOT
break?”

“Your Majesty, we are doing all that we can.” It is the fifth day since Edward was taken ill, and the prince’s physician’s eyes are bloodshot with lack of sleep.

All that you can is not enough,
I think furiously. I know I am being unfair. The prince’s physician, the king’s physician, my own Peter de Alpibus, and indeed the abbey’s simpler are all doing their
best. They try remedy after remedy, but my Edward continues to burn, by turns shaking and delirious, and then stuporous. I never leave him, sleeping on the floor beside his bed, much to the distress of everyone but myself. How could I sleep elsewhere? At least as things are, when I wake in panic, desperately listening for the sound of his breath, I have only to reach out a hand to find him and reassure myself that he lives still.

Turning to the king’s physician I say, “I wish you to list for me every herb and tonic you have tried thus far.” Listening to his litany, I realize that most of the English remedies are unfamiliar. The medicines of my own childhood are missing.

“Have you no borage?” I ask. Henry’s physician looks back at me blankly. “Starflower?” Perhaps it is known only by its common name here.

“Your Majesty, I am sorry, but I am not familiar with such a plant.”

Turning from the doctor, I put my hands to my face in pure exasperation. I must admit that I myself have never seen the starflower growing on these shores. If only we were in Provence, where it grows thick this time of year. I would make a tea of its petals and leaves. Nothing is better for fever.

Henry slips into the room. He looks as wild as I feel, with dark circles under his eyes and hair unkempt. He has every monk not otherwise engaged in the day’s business praying for Edward. But, like me, I know he feels it is not enough. Both of us would
do
more, but there is nothing to be done.

“Eleanor, you must get some air. You begin to look ill yourself.”

I nearly laugh despite the horror of our situation. Being lectured on my appearance by Henry at the present moment has a touch of the ridiculous about it. “Henry, I am fine.”

“You are not fine.”

“No.”

“Nor am I.” He rests a hand on my cheek for a moment.

Henry has come to sit with his son, but I do not rise. It is not necessary. Henry always sits on the bed itself, as close as he can to Edward. His physician is not pleased by the practice. He worries the fever is catching. But Henry does not care. He takes the basin from a monk who has been laying compresses on Edward’s forehead. “I will do it,” he says firmly.

“Do you know what I saw in the field outside the gates this morning?” Henry begins speaking softly to Edward. The prince’s little eyes pop open at the sound of his father’s voice and search, with a painful fogginess, for his father’s face.

I feel damp upon my cheek and am surprised when my curious fingers find a tear. I must be crying. But just as Edward’s eyes
look
empty, I
feel
empty—not calm and removed, but hollow in a way that aches desperately.
Dear God, please do not take my little Edward. He is such a beautiful
thing, long limbed, fair, bright. I realize he seems uncommonly good for this life, but even if he would make a perfect angel, please, please leave him to his father and me.

Children die. I know it. But until this moment I never
felt
it. My own mother lost two sons before Marguerite was born. Marguerite herself has lost a child, little Princess Blanche. Blanche was only a year younger than Edward. What would my sister say to me now in my terror? Would she hold me in her arms as she did when as a girl I woke her from a sound sleep to tell her of my nightmares? No, it will not do to dwell on Marguerite; there is no comfort to be found in that quarter. In keeping with my declaration to Henry, I do not write to my sister. And the letters she sends me, offering excuses, do not move me. She will not admit that she plotted against me, instead insisting that we are equally robbed by our
sister Beatrice’s marriage. Her stunning lack of contrition rankles me. Even recent rumors of a public declaration that she prefers me to the Countess of Provence leave me unmoved.

I reach out my hand and touch Henry’s sleeve to get his attention. Then I hand him a cup so he can offer Edward a drink.

“I cannot comprehend why none of the usual medicines induce sweating.” The prince’s physician stands at the foot of the bed, shaking his head.

Willelma lays her hand on mine. When I turn, her wise eyes regard me with urgent meaning. It is clear that the physician’s last statement triggered some important thought or memory. “The sweating tea!” she exclaims.

And at once I feel a fool for not thinking of this remedy from my homeland myself. “Do you know how it is made?”

“
Plan segur
, who do you think brewed it for you when you were a child?”

I scramble to my feet, eager to be in motion now that there is something useful to be done. I am in the alley along the cloister in an instant with Willelma behind me. Monks flee before us, but I have no patience for their delicate sensibilities. “You”—I stop a wispy young man with my voice—“where are the kitchen gardens?”

“Good Heavens,” I exclaim to Willelma when we arrive. The herb garden is prodigiously large. As we search frantically in the late-afternoon sun, the monks working in a nearby vegetable patch scuttle away like beetles. Willelma secures a basket from one as he goes. The catswort and mint are quickly found. We are careful to keep them apart as we pick, lest their similarly shaped toothed leaves lead to confusion. The egrimoyne, however, is nowhere in evidence. I try not to panic. The heat and the pollen-laden air are beginning to make my breath labored. I concentrate on breathing
slowly. At last I spot the characteristic yellow flowers along a low stone wall at the garden’s rear. We go straight to the kitchens with our supplies, but no sooner do we cross the threshold than our path is blocked by a round monk with more chins than he has folds in his cowl. His hands are tucked under the front flap of his long sleeveless apron and remain there even as he makes a smooth bow.

“Your Majesty, with respect, this is no place for you.”

“And you are?”

“Brother Geoffrey de Middleton, cellarer of the abbey.”

“With respect, Brother de Middleton, Lady d’Attalens and I have medicine to prepare. Where else do you suggest we find knife, pot, water, and fire to brew it?”

“Confide the recipe to me and I will see it prepared.”

“You are a very brave man. If the tonic is not efficacious, are you willing to be responsible for its failure? Even with the life of the heir to the throne at stake?”

De Middleton’s chubby face colors. As I suspected, he is
not
a brave man, merely an officious one. “This way,” he says, leading us to a scrubbed wooden worktable. “Our kitchener, Brother Gilbert, will get you whatever tools you need.”