Four Sisters, All Queens (23 page)

The Curse of Beauty

Aix-en-Provence, 1239

Eleven years old

R
AIMOND OF
T
OULOUSE
licks his lips. Sanchia bursts into tears. Mama frowns, but she only cries harder. “You are eleven years old—nearly a woman,” Mama said as she dragged her away from her game of Fox and Geese with Beatrice. “If your sisters endured this test, so can you.”

But she is not her sisters. Marguerite and Eléonore wanted to be queens. And Raimond of Toulouse is no king, but an ugly man with greedy eyes. She covers her chest with one arm but Mama shakes her head. She stares at her mother. Is this the ogre who attacked their château in Aix while Mama lay within, giving birth to Sanchia and praying for God’s protection? “Toulouse frightened the wits out of Sanchia,” Eléonore used to snicker.

She is not as stupid as they think. She might not be witty, but she does have wits. When Papa danced in joy over the salt mines Romeo opened, Sanchia chewed her nails. Salt is exceedingly costly, being rare. “Now everyone will want to conquer us,” she fretted. Papa laughed at her, but what happened? Stupor Mundi sent troops to attack them, and the White Queen sent Toulouse to
marry Sanchia. Blanche de Castille wants Provence more than ever, but she can’t pay for Raimond’s attacks now because her treasury is bare. The French spent all their
livres
on the Crown of Thorns and the True Cross.

She cannot marry anyone; she has told Mama this. She is already married to Jesus. She promised herself to him in a beautiful dream. No one believes her, though. Last month, she asked her parents again to let her join the convent, but Mama laughed. “Your beauty is your curse,” she said. Sanchia couldn’t agree more. With so many men wanting her hand, she cannot possibly hide herself away. Family comes before everything, no matter what Sanchia desires. Family, Mama said, comes first.

Romeo and Uncle Guillaume want to make a queen of her, like her sisters. But marriageable kings are scarce. For that favor, at least, she thanks God. She has visited Margi’s court, and Elli’s. How she would hate that life, all slippery words and watchful eyes! Queens have little time in which to play the harp, or paint landscapes, or even to pray. Privacy is only a dream. And queens may not be shy.

Nothing is shy about Raimond of Toulouse, who has brought a marriage contract even though he is already married. “I have asked the pope for an annulment,” he says, picking his teeth with a long fingernail. “Twenty years is long enough to wait for a son.”

Papa doubts that the pope will grant Toulouse’s request, and so he signed the marriage agreement with a smile, thinking of the peace it would bring. Toulouse will stop his attacks now. In celebration, the men drank a bottle of wine. Then, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Toulouse asked to view Sanchia.

“A man desires to see the goods before he makes the purchase,” he slurred.

Now, as she stands before him, the count exclaims loudly, making her flinch, “What a beauty!” He opens his arms. “Come here, sweetheart. Let’s find out if you’re as soft as you look.”

Sanchia whimpers. Mama steps in front of her. “Forbear from
laying hands on our daughter, I pray. You are yet a married man.”

Toulouse’s cheeks burn a furious red. “You dare to chastise me? By God, I could crush you all like ants.”

“If you could, you would have done it by now,” Mama says. She holds Sanchia’s hand. “And if you were to attack us again, you would lose the prize of Provence.”

Toulouse bares his dirty teeth. Sanchia’s stomach churns.
Please take me to heaven now, oh please please…

“I wouldn’t risk this sweet treasure,” he says. “We will meet again, darling, and soon.” He stands and walks out of the castle.

Sanchia falls to her knees before her Papa. “Please don’t make me marry him,” she says. “I will die.”

He pats her head. “Not to worry. You will not marry Toulouse, no matter what he thinks. And, with no more wars to drain our treasury, I will be able to amass a proper dowry for you and your husband—whomever that might be.”

Eléonore

Sacrificial Lambs

London, 1239

Sixteen years old

S
HE RESEMBLES A
sunlit cloud, Marguerite says, jealousy pinching her tone, as Eléonore turns before the mirror in her gown of creamy silk, pearls, and gold thread, and shimmering undertunic of pale saffron. She feels like a cloud, too, filled with light, glowing about the edges. Her skin tingles; her blood hums in her veins.

Today is the most important day of her life. Moments from now, the entire kingdom—indeed, all the world—will honor her. At last, after three years of doubt, the dark cloud under which she married Henry will roll away. The barons will cease their mumurs against her. The taint of illegitimacy will fade, and the Count of Ponthieu will seek another match for his daughter Joan. Eléonore has given the king an heir, the kingdom a prince. She is, at last, England’s undisputed queen.

“Are the pearls in my hair too much adornment? I hope Edward doesn’t cry during the service—he has been quite fussy lately. Margi, where are my slippers? No, these are gold. I want the white ones. Help me with this clasp? My hands are shaking.”

“Breathe,” Marguerite says, sounding like their mother. Uncle Thomas would have brought Mama today, but Papa has fallen ill
again, his heart a clanging bell under the strain of Toulouse’s newly redoubled attacks. Marguerite, for all her efforts, has not been able to stop them. Until she gives King Louis an heir, she has no power in France. In spite of herself, a frisson of triumph trills through Eléonore at the sight of her sister’s face drawn, like a hound’s, to a jealous point.

“Afraid the Count of Ponthieu will come charging in again?” Marguerite says. “He can’t harm you now.” So why does she quiver on the walk to the cathedral as if the devil awaited within?

Her ladies—Marguerite, Eleanor de Montfort, Margaret Biset, and the countess Dame Maud of Mortimer—surround and guide her, and a retinue of knights guards her (or tries to) from the crush of villeins and townspeople eager, it seems, to tear her apart. A woman’s hand snatches at her skirt, trying to tear off its pearls. Another grasps her hair, knocking her crown askew. “Knights! Are you sleeping?” shrieks the Dame Maud as she knocks the offenders aside with her fist. In fact, the knights are too few to stanch this roil. Eléonore struggles for breath as the crowd presses in until, giving up all semblance of dignity, she lifts up her skirts and runs. My God! Are these the same Londoners who, only a year ago, screamed for hers and Henry’s heads because they’d married the king’s sister to a Frenchman? How fickle is the love of the English.

At the cathedral door the bishop of Winchester waits to bless her, his smile as calm as if only the two of them stood on the stair. He hands her a candle and spreads a piece of purple velvet at her feet on which to kneel, then sprinkles her with holy water. “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward,” he intones.

She is blessed: No bishop need tell her this. Already she gives thanks every day for Henry. He has won her heart completely with his goodness and his keen intelligence—and with his love. When she miscarried their first child, he comforted her, telling her that God had another, better soul waiting to be born to the throne. And yet, had she never conceived another, he would not have set her aside. “I will never forsake you, my dear,” he said. His words return
to her now, as she steps into the splendor that he has commanded in her honor.

The cathedral is a flickering fairyland, alight with the flames of so many candles that it looks as if the night sky had been turned upside down and the stars shaken into it. White silk drapes the ceiling and walls, fairly glowing in all that light. A choir of monks sings a haunting melody; young novices chime bells. Frankincense from Outremer exudes its expensive perfume of spice and pine. The women follow Eléonore through the crowded cathedral, nobles dropping to their knees as they pass, to the cloth-draped Offertory table at the front of the chapel. Marguerite presents a miniature of the madonna in gold, and the others fill the table with equally exquisite gifts: an illuminated psalter, acquired from a monastery in Northumbria; a child’s rattle, encrusted in jewels; a basket of ripe fruit, sending up the fragrance of tangerines like a breeze.

They await the celebration of the mass on a cushioned pew. Across the room, Henry’s brow furrows and his jaw tics as he listens to Uncle Thomas. His face reddens. His drooping eye twitches. What could Uncle say to anger Henry so? Perhaps he has decided to ally Flanders with France instead of England. Henry covets his county as a launching point for an invasion of Normandy—which will never happen, of course, until his barons agree to pay the costs.

After the mass, the women step back across the lawn to the palace, where a feast awaits. “The king looks strangely unhappy for a man who has just sired an heir to the throne,” the Dame Maud says, arching her brows at Eleanor de Montfort as if she were the reason why.

Eleanor takes no heed. She scans the crowd for Simon, due any moment from Rome, where he went to ask Pope Gregory to free her from her chastity vow and legitimize their marriage. Whether the pope agreed no one knows, for Simon sent no messengers ahead of him.

“To sway the pope, one needs money,” Eleanor says. Her laugh sounds forced. “We have none, not until Henry gives to me my marriage dower.” Which, Eléonore knows, is nearly two years
late—but, thanks to the intransigent barons, Henry’s coffers are as empty as Simon’s.

Minstrels sing St. Godric’s “Virgin Saint Mary” and servants have just presented her favorite dish, a salmon and fruit pie, when a herald announces the arrival of Simon de Montfort. Eléonore nearly leaps up from her seat, then feels Marguerite’s eyes on her and settles quickly down again. She cannot help staring at him, however, as he enfolds his wife in his arms, looking more handsome than ever after six months away. Eléonore had almost forgotten the flecked blue of his eyes, like robin’s eggs, but his smile has haunted her dreams. He meets her gaze as he kisses Eleanor’s hair, spurring an erratic knocking in her chest.

Eleanor leads Simon to the royal table, where he kneels in homage before his king and queen. Pleasantries form on Eléonore’s lips but they drop away at the sight of Henry’s scowl and his face on the verge of bursting into flame.