The Sister Queens (44 page)

“I am sorry,” I say.

Jean puts his hands over his face. “Go,” he mutters.

“He is my husband, Jean.” My voice pleads for understanding, but I do not understand myself. Why do I find myself thinking of Louis in tender terms?

He looks up. “I know, and I hate him for it.”

“You do not hate him any more than I do,” I protest. I try to kiss Jean, but he holds me away.

“What. Will you let me have you now? How can I with his traces still wet inside you?”

“Please,” I whisper.

“Go away, Marguerite. Leave me alone.”

Turning, I run from the house as if it were on fire, barely able to keep my composure in the street.

I GO TO LOUIS’S ROOMS
to see him take his meal. His physician tells me when the king dines alone, sometimes he entirely forgets to eat. He holds out his hand to me as I enter; when I offer mine in return, he kisses it.

“I thought you told me that when you called upon him two days ago, the Seneschal of Champagne was well.”

“So he was.” I have not been to see Jean since he ordered me out of his lodgings on the occasion of that visit, thinking that his wounded pride might better be salved in solitude.

“Well, we have not seen him.”

“If Your Majesty desires his company, send for him. I am certain he will come. After all, he is such a friend.”

“He is indeed.”

Louis falls into staring ahead. I gesture to his bowl and he takes a spoonful of broth. Then he stops again.

“On the day my brother the Count d’Artois passed from this world into paradise, I and the knights under my command faced furious battle. We were between the river and a brook of goodly size. One party of infidels was at us from the direction of the river and a second thought to strike us from behind. But Joinville, seeing the little bridge they would use, understood its importance and set himself to defend it with a small party. All afternoon they held that bridge, though Joinville himself took five arrows.”

I do not know what to say to this. Jean has never related the story of the bridge to me. More often than not, when I ask about his scars, most still angry and red, he brushes off my questions. “It does not matter how I got the wounds,” he tells me. “I am content that none was so grievous as to prevent my coming back to you.”

Shaking his head in wonder, Louis continues. “At nightfall when my crossbowman reached his party to offer relief, they found him joking with the Count of Soissons about how useful tales of their exploits might be in charming the ladies, as if the situation were not grave and their service not important. But I tell you, Wife, had the bridge been lost, I would very likely have been lost as well.”

Louis finishes his soup as I watch in silence. Then, placing his spoon down upon the table, he says, “Perhaps you should go
have a word with Joinville for me, and take some of this consommé. The Sieur told me when he dined with us that Lord Peter of Courtenay was refusing to pay four hundred livres the seneschal is owed. Joinville may be in difficulty without the monies. Tell him that I will pay him and deduct it from some money I myself owe de Courtenay. Let Lord Peter complain to me if he will.”

With the story of Jean’s bravery fresh in my heart, and the prospect of bearing such news to him as he will be glad to have, I make up my mind to go. If he is still vexed with me, I will remind him how many months he longed to see me and could not and how silly it is to hold a grudge now over something that neither of us can prevent nor control.

When Marie and I reach the little house leaning against the ancient and venerable Church of Saint Michael, no one answers our knock. I try the door, but it is locked. It seems odd that Jean should be out and about in the city when he is not yet strong and stranger still that if he felt up to going out, he did not come to sit with us at court.

“If Caym is with the Seneschal,” I say to Marie, “surely that creature Guillemin is at home.” I do not like Jean’s other new servant. He has a shiftiness about him that puts me on my guard.

“And no doubt he is napping when he should be working, Your Majesty,” replies Marie, no more impressed with the man than I am. “Pray knock again.”

I pound for several minutes but to no avail. Having come this far, I would not go away again without leaving the broth Marie carries or a note. Besides, I feel a strange unease, an instinct really, that something is not as it should be. Then I remember something Jean told me on one of my early visits—that he took great solace in the ease with which he could pray day or night in his new lodgings
thanks to their communication directly with the church by way of a small vestry.

Rounding to the front of the church, I push open the heavy door. As it is time for neither a service for one of the hours nor a Mass, the place is deserted. The mosaic scenes from the life of Saint Michael that cover the walls glint in the light from a series of small high windows. Behind the altar there is a door that surely must connect to the living space. Opening it, I am surrounded by the vestments and accoutrements of the Mass. I am greeted by the smell of aging fabrics and incense, but underlying this there is another smell—one of sickness and decay.

Throwing open the next door in frantic haste, I am confronted by a fearful sight. I stand just at the head of Jean’s bed. He is in it, eyes closed, lids translucent, face as white as death. Beside the door on which I knocked so futilely and at the foot of the bed lie Jean’s servants, looking no better than their master.

For a moment I am frozen where I stand. Surely, oh Lord, Jean did not survive so much in the last months to die at Acre? The door drops shut beside Marie and, taking in what horrified me before her, she lets out a little cry. At the sound of it, Jean moans and shifts fitfully beneath his covers.

This proof of life frees my feet. Moving to his bedside, I lay a hand upon his forehead. “He burns!”

“The smell!” Marie sets down the broth on Jean’s small table and covers her mouth and nose with her hand.

“Yes.” Turning back Jean’s covers, I find him lying in his own filth. With all who serve him suffering from the same illness that felled him, there was clearly no one to help him to the stool.

“Heat some water,” I bark at Marie, “and find new linens if you must run out to the market to buy them.” Ignoring the stench, I lean in and say, “I am here, love. You will be well now.”

Jean mutters something through cracked lips, but I cannot make it out. I find wine, pour a small amount, and lifting his head, urge it upon him. He swallows greedily.

Finished kindling the fire and putting the water on as I asked, Marie is rummaging around in a trunk near the wall, pulling out the few items of clothing Jean has managed to accumulate since his return. I am happy to see that a shirt is among them. Taking the neck of the shirt Jean wears in both hands, I rip it open, continuing to tear down its whole length. Untying his soiled braies at the knees and unrolling their waist, I try to tear them free of him as well, but the fabric will not cooperate. Taking my knife from my girdle, I use it to carefully rend the fabric at one hip, then tear furiously until the undergarment too falls away.

“Help me roll him,” I call to Marie who is closing the trunk again. We turn Jean on one side, thankful in this one instance that his frame is still underweight. I am conscious of the great heat of his skin beneath my hands. While I hold him in place, Marie pulls away the remains of his shirt and braies and casts them onto the fire. But the linens beneath him are dirty as well.

“There were no sheets among his things and no doubt the straw is soaked through,” she says grimly.

“Go home. Bring sheets, a feather bed, and a blanket.”

“From where, Your Majesty?”

“I do not care. Take them from my bed if you must. But be quick.”

I cannot stand the thought of laying Jean back in filth, but there is nothing for it at present, so, placing him on his back, I draw up the fetid cover again. Pulling a stool beside the bed, I sit and take his hand.

“What am I to do with you?” I say, talking merely to break the silence. “Ever since we set foot in the Holy Land, I cannot let you
out of my sight for a moment without your finding trouble of one sort or another.” I am surprised to see Jean’s eyes open weakly.

“It would be better then if we were not parted.” His voice is faint and tremulous, but I can make him out clearly nonetheless.

Putting a hand against his burning cheek I reply, “It would be better. Take care to remember that before you think of doing anything foolish such as dying.”

“I feared I would—lying here, when no one came—would die without seeing you.”

“Well, I am here now, so lie quiet.”

Like an obedient child, he takes another sip of the wine I offer, then closes his eyes and drifts to sleep.

When Marie returns, the real work begins. Supporting Jean from either side, we struggle to move him to a stool. Though he is awake again, his legs are of no use to him. Once there, he cannot sit on his own. I put my arms around his chest from behind and struggle to keep him upright while Marie removes his soiled sheets and straw-filled mattress and then makes the bed anew. Then she holds him in turn while I clean him with basin and sponge, dumping dirtied water again and again out the window. It is a blessing that Jean is sensate only part of the time or he would be mortified. When his eyes do open, they struggle to follow my movements. Satisfied at last with my handiwork, we slide a new shirt over Jean’s head and bear him back to his bed. I am utterly exhausted.

“We should send for a physician.”

“And so we shall, only let me feed him first.”

While I warm the broth, Marie checks on Jean’s servants. I must own in all the time I labored never once did it occur to me to wonder whether these men lived. I know this is unchristian, but it is the truth. Both, as it turns out, are still of this world. Marie does her best to bathe their faces and give them each a drink, while I lay
Jean’s head in my lap and, gently rousing him to consciousness, ply him with broth from a cup.

“It is my own fault,” he says, resting between swallows. “This illness flows from my sin.”

He is becoming agitated. I try to soothe him by stroking his face, and I put the cup to his lips again, but he pushes it away.

“When you were here last, I was so jealous. Jealousy is a special sin in my case, as I am jealous of the king for loving what he has every right to love.”

“Louis does not love me. He is fond of me to be sure, but love me as you love me? No.”

I do not think this a lie. There has been a thaw in my relations with my husband, but does Louis love me? I do not believe or even hope as much. Nor am I love struck and foolish as I was as a bride. But even as I reassure Jean, I wonder what might be if Louis continues to behave as he has been since returning.

“I think you are too hard on yourself.” I bend to kiss Jean’s forehead. “Is not God a jealous God? Why then should you be above the emotion?”

“Ah, but the Lord is jealous only for what belongs to him by right. I am jealous for what I have stolen.”

“Fool,” I reply, kissing his brow again, “you steal nothing, for I give you everything with the greatest of pleasure.”