Four Sisters, All Queens (48 page)

“You can’t hurt me,” Beatrice says, but she doesn’t sound sure.

“We shall soon find out,” Marguerite says. She starts to go, but then stops and turns around. “There is another thing you said while you were in labor, gripping my hand because you were afraid you might die. Remember? You told me that you’ve never felt like one of us, like a true sister of Savoy. Now I’ll tell you the truth: You are not one of us. And you never will be.”

Marguerite

A Slow Breeze

Acre, 1252

Thirty-one years old

S
HE MUST NOT
smile. Marguerite lowers her head and closes her eyes. Beside her on his throne, Louis cries out.

“
Ma mère!
Oh, Lord, take me, too.”

If only God were a
djinni
in a lamp, as in the Saracen tale, granting any uttered wish. Immediately she banishes the thought: in France, one cannot be queen if there is no king.

Marguerite turns to regard him, the father of her five living children and one yet unborn, he for whose sake she has remained in this godforsaken land. As he sobs and crumples to the floor in a most unkingly fashion, something seems to snap inside her. Her time of waiting has ended.

“Help the king to the chapel,” she instructs the guards who have rushed forth to peel Louis from the floor. When they have gone, she remains in place, summoning grief. She will be expected to cry.

Blanche de Castille is dead, her heart frozen by disuse, no doubt. France has no ruler: She and Louis must return to Paris. Home. She thinks of Lou-Lou, ten years old now, four when she left him. Reared by the queen mother, a fate she would not have wished for
any child, especially her own. She thinks of Isabelle, her only daughter, thirteen now, become a young woman without her mother’s influence.
Keep them safe, Holy Mother, until I return
. A knight watches her, certainly wondering why she sits so placidly while grief prostrates her husband. She rises and walks to the chapel.

Louis lies on the floor, as expected, crouched over as if to protect himself from injury, banging his head against the tile like a heathen Saracen in prayer. Surely such a show of emotion is unwarranted; already the servants snigger over Louis’s floggings and the scabs on his back and chest caused by his hair shirt. Since his defeat at Mansoura and the loss of sixty thousand men, no punishment is too severe for him, no penance too exacting.

“Darling,” she says, “my condolences over your mother’s death.” She kneels beside him and places a hand on his arm, but he seems not to notice. “I know how much you loved her. She was a fine woman.”

“You never thought so,” he says. He sits up and glares at her, eyes bleary with tears and a want of sleep, for he now prays in his chapel all night, every night. “You hated my mother. Admit it.”

“Blanche de Castille was a shrewd and capable queen. She made France the force in the world that it is today.”

“She despised you. She said that you were not good enough for me.”

Marguerite withdraws her hand. “I came to comfort you. But I seem to be doing the opposite.”

“She wanted me to marry a girl of distinction, someone who would elevate our status. You were the heiress to Provence—or so your uncles led us to believe.”

“You were happy enough to marry me, as I recall.” Her voice rises.

“I was taken by your beauty, as Adam was captivated by Eve. Mother warned me. She told me that beauty does not endure, that women grow fat from bearing children.”

Marguerite stands, her hands pressed against her belly, heavy again with his offspring. “I will be in my chambers, packing.”

“Packing? Are you taking a journey?”

“I assumed we would return to Paris. No one is ruling the kingdom now.”

“Alphonse can take the throne. God’s work remains to be done here.”

Marguerite’s eyes fill with tears. “We are not going home?” She wants to pounce on him and beat him with her fists, pummel away his notions of saving foot soldiers who cannot be found; of conquering Jerusalem without the troops Charles and Alphonse promised to bring; of punishing himself for the foolish behavior of his brother Robert, who has already paid the price with his life.

He scowls. “I am sick of hearing you beg to go home. You know the Lord has called me to this place, for this purpose. I must not forsake him as others have done.”

“God didn’t call you here, but the pope of Rome,” she says. “God loves the Muslims as much as the Christians, or as little, from what I see. He does not seem to care much who commands the holy city.”

“Blasphemy!” Louis cries. “Rarely have I known a woman so bold and yet so feebleminded. I should have left you in France.”

“Perhaps I shall go there now,” she says. “The kingdom needs at least one of us to rule.”

“That is the last thing my mother would have wanted. Not that you care about her wishes.” He starts to sob again, his arms folded across his stomach, and he bends down anew to bang his forehead on the floor.

Tears burn Marguerite’s eyes as she hurries to her room, conscious of the sideways glances of servants who must have heard Louis’s outburst. In her chambers, she sends out Gisele and her other ladies and sits in silence, contemplating her babies, trying to conjure their faces, their smells, the feeling of them snuggled next to her, but their names are only words in her mouth and their memories nothing more than the taste of salt on her tongue.

“My lady.” Joinville has come into the room; he sits beside her on the bed and places his arm around her shoulders. Marguerite at
last begins to cry, glad to press her face against his chest. He rubs her back; she breathes him in, remembers that returning to Paris means losing him to his wife and children in Champagne. Her tears subside.

“Why do you cry, Margi?” he says. “Surely not for the queen mother, whom you hated.”

To tell the truth would be to confess that she never wanted to remain here, that, if asked for her advice, she would have urged Louis to return home with Charles and Alphonse and the rest of their men. She imagines how Jean, who urged Louis to stay, would withdraw his arm from her if he knew her true feelings.

“I am crying not for Blanche, but for Louis,” she says. “The poor man is heartbroken. And my children: what will happen to them now, without their grandmother to protect them?”

The lie succeeds. Joinville’s gaze softens. “I have never known a woman so pure of heart,” he says. “When I think of how the king neglects you—”

“I don’t mind,” she says. “As long as I have you.”

His kiss is soft, barely a brush of her lips. His breath is warm on her face. He smells of the sun and strong tea. Marguerite sighs, and he drops his arm from her shoulders. When she opens her eyes, he has moved away from her on the bed. She sees fear in his eyes. She suppresses a smile for the second time that day.

“Please forgive me,” he says.

“Forgive you, Jean? For comforting me?”

“It will not happen again. I promise.”

“Do not make that promise. I don’t want it.”

“Because you fear I won’t keep it?”

“No,” she says. She lifts her face, lets him see her happiness. “Because I fear that you will.”

S
HE SLEEPS, AND
dreams of Beatrice in plate armor, a sword in one hand and a shield bearing the Provençal coat of arms in the other. Her sister stands atop the wall surrounding the castle at Tarascon, impervious to the arrows hurtling upward from
the ground below. Marguerite takes aim and, with a
twang
of the bowstring, aims for her sister’s heart. The arrow sticks—but Beatrice does not fall. Marguerite hits her again, but she remains upright. A third arrow hits its mark, yet still she stands. Marguerite, puzzled, lifts off the ground in flight and sees, behind her sister, Charles of Anjou propping her up. She fires another arrow, this time at him—but he moves her sister, using her as a shield, and the arrow pierces Beatrice’s forehead. Her eyes roll back and blood gushes from the wound. Charles looks at her and laughs.

And then she is awakened by soft kisses on her eyes and cheeks, and hands stroking her breasts and stomach. She opens her eyes to see Jean, soft hair falling across his face, his brown eyes smiling at her.

“You were having a nightmare,” he says. “I thought it might be time to wake up.” She opens her arms to him and Beatrice dissolves from her mind like fog overwhelmed by the sun.

Gisele’s secret knock on their door interrupts them. She stands at the foot of the bed, blushing, and informs Marguerite that Louis is coming to take them all back to France. “He arrives this afternoon, and wants to set sail at first light tomorrow. When shall we begin to pack your belongings?”

Marguerite sends her out, wanting just a few minutes more with Jean. “This is the happiest day of my life, and the saddest,” she says to him.

“Sad because of our sin?” His eyes turn down at the corners.

“Is it a sin to love each other? To believe that would sadden me. But, no, I will be sorry to say good-bye to you, Jean. To lose you so soon after consummating our love—”

He hushes her with a kiss. “We are not parted yet.”

“But it may be difficult on the ship.”

“Our journey will be long.”

“The longer, the better.”

He kisses her again. “One month, or one week, we will be together again. I promise it to you. Love will find a way.”