The Sister Queens (64 page)

When Marguerite’s sobs subside and she is quiet, I let her go.
She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her chemise. “You are no doubt tired,” she says in a voice so formal and out of place to the occasion that I experience the insane desire to laugh, “and will wish to return to bed.”

She is trying to restore the normal order, and I, God forgive me, am eager to let her. Eager because we have nothing to say to each other that cannot bring more pain or horror. “Yes,” I reply, “Henry might awaken and look for me.” I reach to collect my candle and take my leave.

“No one.” Her eyes search mine.

“No one,” I agree, nodding.

When I am almost to the door, I turn once more. My sister stands where I left her, a figure suddenly without substance in the low glimmer of her dying fire. “One thing I must ask in return,” I say. “Never speak to me of this again, nor of him. My forbearance cannot extend so far.”

“Never,” she agrees.

Then I go. But the heavy door falling shut behind me is not enough to banish the image of my sister’s empty eyes. I can feel them on my back as I flee in search of my room.

Back beside my slumbering husband, lying as still as I can so as not to disturb him, I hear my sister’s words again: “Dishonor, death—they mean nothing to me. I have given up the man I love.” Here then is the explanation for all the emptiness and listlessness I perceived in Marguerite’s letters since her return from Egypt, and in my sister herself when we were reunited. A part of her dwells in grief just as that emotion dogs the steps of her husband. Only her sadness comes not from the loss of armies. Does she grieve over the commission of her sin or over its cessation? In the dark, staring up into the curtains of my bed, I am oppressed almost to the point of screaming by a single thought: my beloved sister is damned. How
could this man, this Seneschal, be worth that, an eternity of suffering? Hot bitter tears roll down my face in the dark, as if I, not she, were guilty of her offenses. And I suppose twenty years ago had anyone predicted which of us would be capricious even to the point of her own destruction, none would have said Marguerite; not even I.

The bells marking the hours continue to find me awake, struggling to think how I can help my sister, or at least how I can forget what I know and wish I did not. Then, there is a man at the foot of my bed. He has his back to me. For a moment I think it is Louis, for no one else of this court dresses so plainly. Then he turns. He is a stranger. He tries to speak, but his words come out mumbled and slurred. I am not afraid, though perhaps I ought to be, but rather I am frustrated. I feel that he has some explanation to make for my sister’s conduct—that if I could understand his words, I could help her. “Speak up, man!” I admonish. “And hold up your light so I can see you properly.” Slowly he lifts his candle until his face is bathed in its glow. His incomprehensible babble is explained. The man has no lips, only horrible, red, puckered scars where his lips ought to be.

I awake screaming.

M
ARGUERITE
D
ECEMBER 1254
P
ALAIS DU
R
OI
, P
ARIS

I
send Marie away with the note even before my ladies come to help me dress:

All in my household are tired from the festivities of the night before. This is just as well, for it makes my low spirits less subject to observation. My mind wanders nowhere this morning. It is merely blank, wrapped in a shroud of pain. My sister despises me. My sin, which I thought to abandon on the deck of my husband’s
ship that it might do no one any harm, seems determined to lay waste to all before it.

Matilda is lacing up the back of my gown when her hands stop.

“Your Majesty!”

Every woman but I sinks in reverence. The sudden and most unexpected appearance of my husband leaves me frozen like stone. I struggle to conjure a smile.

“Do not let me keep you from your business,” Louis says to the ladies surrounding me just as Marie slides into the room. My husband comes to stand before me while my women, with some hesitation despite his admonition, resume their ministrations. “I’ll warrant you were not surprised to see the Seneschal of Champagne at yesterday’s banquet,” he says.

No opening of conversation could be better suited to unnerve me. Tired from passing half the night crying, I must expend considerable effort to keep my knees from giving way beneath me. Even so, my arm jerks involuntarily at Louis’s comment, causing the woman who is sewing me into my sleeve to prick me with her needle. She murmurs an apology, while Marie, who has come to my other side, gives me a look as if to say,
Go carefully, lady.

“Why should Your Majesty think so?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light as if I am curious, not terrified. I am about to protest that I keep no correspondence with the gentleman, but Louis plows onward.

“Joinville told me that he called upon you yesterday when he arrived and found that I was out. Just the sort of attention to form and nicety I would expect from the knight. Goodness, I have missed him.”

“Mmm,” I murmur, noncommittally, as I raise my arms and my ladies slide my
surcote
over my head, conveniently covering my face so that I may collect it. How glad I am now that my defensive
words were left unspoken. Still, I wonder if Louis taunts me. But no, when my head emerges, I see he is smiling.

“Your father must be happy in heaven this morning.”

“My father?” My husband is in such a state of bright agitation, and his conversation jumps about so unexpectedly, that did I not know him better, I would suspect he had begun the morning drinking.

“From his seat in that celestial home, he surely observed last evening that all the most golden threads in the tapestry of Europe are related to him by either blood or marriage.”

“Sir, it is kind of you to say so.” What can Louis mean by such hyperbole?

“I do not flatter.” The stern Louis returns for an instant. “Though he had no sons, his four beautiful daughters have married into a greatness that his sons could not have been born to. His wife is in every part a lady to be admired; his brothers by marriage, at least the Earl of Lincoln and His Grace the archbishop of Canterbury whom we meet here, have as fine an understanding of doctrine and of politics as I have seen. And his son the King of England—what can I say but that I am thankful we have had this meeting. Having fought the man in Poitou and heard reports of him, I could never have imagined King Henry as he is—a man of such devoutness, faith, and piety that I am not at all embarrassed to call him brother.”

I slide first one foot and then another into the slippers that my ladies hold out. I see now how it is—Louis is dazzled by the same domestic tableau that charmed his emissaries twenty years ago, that found places for my kin in the court of England, and secured husbands for us all. He comes full late to valuing my family connections. Yet, in my husband’s eager face I see an opportunity. I will throw myself into the making of peace between kingdoms. It is the
season for such things being in a period of
Treuga Dei
when warfare is suspended by order of the church, and with the celebration of the birth of Our Lord, the Prince of Peace, approaching. And more than this, it is a task by which I may, perchance, make meaningful my life, which is turned again to ashes in my mouth since Eleanor left me sobbing in the dark.

“I believe my sister’s husband is as Your Majesty finds, a very good man. I cannot think that such a man will march his troops into Normandy as we have been told for so many years, can you?” Here I must step delicately. It was an unquestioned pillar of my late mother-in-law’s canon that Henry of England maneuvered always and in everything to retake Normandy.

“This much is certain,” Louis concedes in a cautious tone. “If Henry gives me his word that he will not do so, I will trust that word as my own.”

“And has Your Majesty spoken with the English king about what it would take to secure such word? Or perhaps it would be more delicate to sound out my uncle Peter on the subject. My sister tells me he is much familiar with the mind of the king.” It costs me some considerable effort to mention my sister. The very thought of Eleanor conjures in my brain memories of our heated exchange in the dead of the night.

“And what else does your sister say? I had no notion that you ladies spoke of politics.”

It no longer baffles or insults me that Louis thinks as he does. I have had ample time to accept that, save for his mother, Louis cannot think of members of the fair sex as political creatures. “Husband, we speak not of politics but of family. Is it not the earnest wish of every wife and mother to see her family harmonious? Is it not well within her purview to work to make it so?”

“My lady wife, what you say is entirely sound.” Louis holds out
his arm to me now that I am properly assembled to greet the day. “Will you walk with me to Mass?”

“With pleasure, Your Majesty.”

And laying my hand upon Louis’s arm, I realize I will need its support to face this day. Will arriving in chapel in company with my husband mollify my sister? Will Louis’s leading me to my place make it easier for me to keep my eyes from the spot near to his own that Jean occupies? I can be certain of only one thing: both Eleanor and Jean are bound to notice the circles beneath my eyes that my husband overlooks entirely.

T
HE
S
ISTER
Q
UEENS
D
ECEMBER 1254
P
ALAIS DU
R
OI
, P
ARIS

I
glance over at Eleanor. She and I have come to the great hall to help Louis and Henry. Two hundred of the city’s needy gather to be fed on this Christmas Eve day, and our kings wish to serve the bread and fish themselves. She gives me a smile from beside a stack of trenchers, and I try to return it.

She has been cordial these last days. As if the events of that dreadful night, one week ago this very day, did not take place. Yet they did, and if I cannot forget them, neither can she. I see a sign of this in the fact that our conversations confine themselves to the most trivial things, such as the arrival of my son Pierre’s last tooth; the fabric of a gown; the elephant Louis brought back from crusade that the English king finds so marvelous. After so many years of maintaining closeness across many leagues and through so much living, we are estranged. I fear I have lost Eleanor’s respect, and her judgment of me matters greatly, whatever I may have said that night in the dark.

I move to my sister, pick up an armful of trenchers, and say, “Shall we lay the tables?”

She gathers an armful as well, and we set off, each along our own trestle, placing trenchers as we go. Jean is in the hall. Louis selected him to be one of those honored by participating in the washing of the hands. I watched him enter, all clad in a dark green
that becomes him well, but I have not looked at him a single time since; such discipline costs me greatly. I notice Eleanor glancing about as we work. Is she searching for Jean?

When everything is in its proper place, the doors are opened and the king, who has been waiting outside with Henry of En-gland, making conversation with the filthy, rag-covered souls whom he will now nourish, leads the way. The odor of so many filthy bodies crowding into the place is quite overwhelming. I curtsy to my husband across the room, then, going to Eleanor’s elbow, say, “Let us withdraw. We have done our part, and Louis and Henry could not be happier.”