Four Sisters, All Queens (21 page)

“He reminds me of a serpent,” Eléonore says. “His eyes look sly, and he is always darting out his tongue.”

“Like a serpent, he has a poisonous bite.” Uncle reaches out a hand as if to push the shutter open again, but thinks better of it. “Let anyone refuse to pay, and he is soon hit with an interdict. Pope Gregory excommunicated Roger de Quincy, I hear.”

“A penalty well deserved, no doubt,” Henry says with a snort.

“Try telling that to his villeins. With the churches closed, who will bury their dead? Who will conduct their weddings? Who will baptize their infants, or perform their last rites? Lords have been murdered over less.”

“Eleanor’s wedding to Simon is only an excuse for rebellion,” Eléonore says.

“The barons want Otto sent back to Rome, but Henry has refused. Perhaps they think Richard would comply.”

“Richard would not do this to me.” Henry opens the shutters again, looks out at his shouting subjects. “He can be arrogant, even avaricious, but we are brothers.”

“But—haven’t you heard?” Uncle stares at him. “No, I suppose not. If not for my knights, I would not have penetrated this crowd. I cannot imagine that messengers are getting through.” His furrowed brow portends bad news. Eléonore clutches Henry’s arm, bracing him—and herself.

“I landed at the Cinque Ports yesterday,” he says. “The Earl Richard of Cornwall was there, hiring mercenaries.”

Henry’s jaw drops. “For what purpose?”

“To attack you, my lord. They say that Sir Richard intends to seize the crown.”

“Impossible!” Henry looks as if he might be sick. “Not Richard. My God. Mutiny? And then what—imprison me in the Tower? Have me hanged? All because I didn’t ask his permission before giving our sister’s hand?” He looks as if he had wandered off the road spinning fancies and now surveyed a strange and bleak horizon. “If only he knew the truth. But then he might attack Simon, instead.”

“He doesn’t want to attack anyone,” Eléonore says. “Richard isn’t a warrior, remember?” Henry has told her the stories: How, as a youth, Richard shied from fencing lessons. He avoids tournaments, even as a spectator: The sight of blood sickens him. He is known not as a fighter but as a negotiator, preferring talk to battle.

“And yet he killed one of his servants a few years ago,” Henry says. “Caught him in his treasury, stuffing a sack with coins. Ran him through with his sword. Richard loves money more than he loves his soul.”

“Then we know what we must do.”

“I do not want to fight against him, and I will not imprison him,” Henry says. “Our kinship means something to
me,
at least.”

“We don’t need to fight Richard if he can be bought,” Eléonore says. “We need only discover his price—and then, no matter how much it hurts, we must pay it.”

Marguerite

A New Jerusalem

Sens, 1239

Eighteen years old

H
EAVY WITH COINS
and hope, Marguerite’s purse thumps against her thigh as she walks. Sunlight streams through the high windows, illuminating the long aisle of the Notre Dame Cathedral. At the end waits Father Geoffrey of Beaulieu, his round face pink and sweating, his hand moist as he kisses Marguerite’s ring.

“The king speaks of you with the utmost love,” she says, even as she wonders which of her secrets Louis has confided in the private recesses of the confessional. “If you love King Louis, too, then you must help him.”

The Father smiles, but his gaze seems out of focus, as though a competing voice clamored for his attention. She opens her purse and pours silver into his hands. “I’d like to make an offering to my name-saint, Marguerite.” The patron saint of pregnancy. “Will you help me, Father?”

The clouds clear from his eyes. He looks at the coins, licks his lips. “You say the king is having difficulties? He has not spoken of it. Come, my lady. Sit in my inner sanctum and tell me how I can help.”

What she asks for, sipping fine Languedoc wine with the Father
amid red-curtained walls hung with gilded crosses, is not much. A few words. A nudging of Louis in her direction. A reminder that God has blessed their marriage and their marriage bed, and that the union of husband and wife carries no sin.

“He desires only to please our Lord.” And his mother. She puts down her wine, its taste grown suddenly bitter.

Father Geoffrey lifts his nose. His nostrils flare. Sniffing for scandal, perhaps. Marguerite slides more coins across the table. He lowers his nose.

“Nothing pleases God more than heirs to his anointed king.” He scoops the money off the table and into the pouch at his waist. “I will remind His Grace of this fact tonight, after prayers.”

As she is bidding farewell, a young man in cleric’s robes bursts through the door. “
Père! Père!
A most wonderful thing!” He stops at the sight of his queen and, blushing, drops to one knee. Her ladies-in-waiting are searching for her, he says.

“They are preparing for the journey even now,” he says as he stands. His face gleams pinkly, as if he had been running. “The king has given orders to depart as soon as possible. May we go, Father?”

Marguerite arranges her face, hiding her surprise. “I have spent much more time here than I intended,” she says. “Forgive me, Father. I must hasten away.”

“But—to where, my lady? Where are you and King Louis taking us?” the priest says. Noting her blank stare, he turns to his clerk, who is hopping from foot to foot.

“To Villeneuve-l’Archevêque, Father,” the youth squeals. “The Emperor of Constantinople awaits us there—with the Holy Crown of Thorns!”

A
MOUSE SQUEAKS
, and then is silent—awed, perhaps, by the golden box on the table. Standing under the high arches in the chapel where she and Louis married, Marguerite can hardly breathe. It is the same with everyone; no one makes a sound—not
Louis nor his mother, not the grinning Robert, Alphonse, nor the little tyrant Charles, who hides behind his mother’s skirt and sticks out his tongue at Marguerite; not Isabelle, whose protruding eyes glow like a bride’s; not Thibaut, the Count of Champagne, standing scandalously close to his beloved Blanche who, for once, allows him to touch her sleeve; not the Count of Brittany, nor Hugh of Lusignan or the hundreds of nobility, clergy, monks, and nuns gathered here; not the archbishop of Sens, who prolongs the excitement with his long contemplation of the box, his hands folded before him. Why does he tarry? Marguerite longs to lunge forward and lift the lid. Will angels sing? Will the chapel fill with light? Will she be transformed at the sight of the Holy Crown of Thorns?

The archbishop chants the liturgy. He waves incense, as if the relics were not already blessed enough. The cathedral bells ring. He places his hands on the lid, then pauses, checking the seals to make sure they are intact. He, for one, revels in the drama. Marguerite grits her teeth and prays for patience. The Crown will appear in God’s time. Will it be stained with Christ’s blood? She imagines his anguish as the sharp thorns pierced his scalp, sending blood in rivulets down his face like the tears streaming down her cheeks now.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
She will faint if he delays any longer. And then, as if he had heard her thoughts, the archbishop lifts the lid, oh, so slowly, revealing the box’s contents. Marguerite’s hands fly to her throat.

What Crown? What thorns? All she sees are a few straggly rushes, arranged in a circle on a velvet cloth. Has her eyesight left her? She looks at the others around the table, who blink and squint and frown. Thibaut shakes his head as if to clear the clouds from his vision. A laugh forms inside Marguerite’s mouth. Louis will be livid. For this forgery, France paid thirteeen thousand pieces of gold.

Beside her, a cry. The queen mother, as pale as a corpse, slumps toward the floor. While Robert and Alphonse revive her, Marguerite sends a look of sympathy to Louis—who leans over the
weeds with his hands clasped and his face toward the heavens, as enraptured as if Jesus were descending through the ceiling.

“I see him!” he gasps. “On the Cross, sighing and bleeding, dying for my sins. My Lord! Oh, my poor, suffering Christ.”

Blanche, too, begins to moan and sway in the arms of her sons, her face wet with tears. “I see him, too!” she sobs. “He walks among us.” She grabs Charles and pulls him to her breast, clutching his hair. “Don’t look, darling! The wounds in his hands are bleeding, his head bleeds, his holy blood is everywhere. Mother Mary! Pray for us sinners.” Around her, others weep and exclaim, crying Jesus’s name and praising God, until the chapel fills with shouts, sobs, and moans of rapture.

Marguerite rocks in silent mirth, struggling to hold in her laughter. Is she the only one here who sees? The thing is a mockery. The emperor Baldwin has made a fool of France in order to replenish his empty coffers. Surely the archbishop must realize—but, no, he continues to chant his Latin liturgy and wave his scepter, his eyes closed.

Louis strips off his mantles; Robert follows. And then, as if they had planned it, they remove their shoes, their hose, their tunics and belts and rings, and fall to their knees wearing nothing but undertunics—Robert’s of fine bleached linen and Louis’s of goats’ hair. Around the collar, Louis’s skin puffs and oozes, scabrous and swollen, irritated by the hair; as he lifts his hands to the heavens, he reveals long, gashlike streaks of red on his forearms. Marguerite looks away, wishing she could disappear, while the others stare at the naked, suffering body of her husband who has, once again, put himself in the place of the Lord.