Four Sisters, All Queens (49 page)

When Louis arrives at the castle in Jaffa that afternoon in bare
feet and the rags he has worn these last four years, Marguerite feels compelled to admonish him. “I hope you plan to don your furs and silks before we land in France. You look like a beggar, not at all befitting a ruler.”

Louis narrows his eyes. “Who is this brash wife, telling me how I should dress? Has the desert heat affected your mind?”

“Your subjects will accuse you of the same if you go into France in those clothes.”

His smile does not reach his eyes. “I will gladly let you dress me, my queen, on one condition: that you allow me to choose your attire, as well. Paring down your extravagant clothing budget would no doubt save the kingdom a fortune.”

This from a man who has spent one million livres fortifying castles in Outremer—nearly all the money in the French treasury. Marguerite presses her lips together and he turns away, but she remembers her night with Jean and the precautions they did not take.

“My lord,” she says, unfastening her gown. He turns toward her, and she lets it drop to the floor. Louis’s eyes flicker. For all his inattention, she can still evoke his desire.

“Is this the apparel you had in mind?” she says.

When their ship sets sail the next afternoon, tears sting Marguerite’s eyes as she watches the shoreline fade. She remembers the queen Shajar al-Durr, her strange beauty, her determination in the face of danger. She is married now to her Turkish general, her only recourse, Marguerite supposes, after the Muslim caliph refused to allow a woman to rule. She thinks of Joinville’s struggle to his feet in the Mansoura prison, how his eyes shone as he crossed the room to her—in contrast to Louis, who sat in the corner and pretended she did not exist. She thinks of her babies born, Jean Tristan in Damietta, Pierre in Acre, and now, Blanche, born in Jaffa only a few months ago. She would have named the baby Eléonore, but Louis forbade it. The White Queen’s death has left France vulnerable to an English invasion because the truce between the kingdoms
has not been renewed. The queen mother is to blame, her sister has written, but Louis points the finger at Eléonore and Henry and their hunger for French lands.

Louis stands beside her at the rail, waving good-bye to the Christians amassed on the beach, who toss flowers to him. “Our most pious king,” they call him. “A true saint.”

He sees her tears, and arches his brows.

“How touching that you have found affection for the land where our Lord once walked,” he says. “It is a pity that you did not experience it while we lived here. I would have enjoyed even one day without complaints from you.”

She thinks of the laughter she and Joinville shared in her chambers while Louis camped on the Damietta beach with his men, those long nights of talk when she found a friend so like her that they might have been brother and sister—but, thank God, are not. She remembers their first kiss, six months ago when she was heavy with child and sorrow over Louis’s decision to remain in Acre even after his mother’s death. She prayed to the Virgin Mother all night after that, begging her to change Louis’s mind. In the miraculous way of the Lord, his mind did change. The citizens of Acre, when they heard that Louis intended to remain, sent their most prominent men to urge him to go. They said they were thinking of France, but Marguerite knew better: After she and Louis arrived, the Saracens increased their attacks on the city. It is why he sent her—with Jean—to Jaffa.

The daylight hours stretch and yawn like a cat in the sun. Marguerite has nothing to do except try to help her children amuse themselves and nothing to read but the same worn psalter that she brought with her six years ago. She longs to pass the time with Jean, but Louis must have him ever at hand, “my most faithful knight,” he calls him, which makes Joinville blush with guilt and shame—but not Marguerite. If she loves another, Louis has only himself to blame.

As in Damietta, they steal time together when everyone else
sleeps—but not, now, to talk. Marguerite counts the nights. When they have seventeen to go, she closes her eyes and inhales him, moving her nostrils over his hair (sea spray), his back (sweat), his flanks (thyme). On the thirteenth night before they land, she tastes him, committing to memory the softness of his earlobes, the sweetness at the backs of his knees. When seven nights remain, he whips off her gown and presses her body to his, inch to inch, until they are practically one, and they whisper their love until they doze, warmed by the heat from the stove. Until there is an acrid smell and Marguerite cries out, and he sees a flame pass by the bed and the cabin door open and he leaps up and sees her run naked out onto the ship’s deck and throw overboard her burning nightgown.

She slams the door behind her, laughing, her body whirring with life, and fastens the latch and pushes him onto the bed. “I see fear on your face,” she breathes.

“We nearly set the ship on fire.”

“What do you expect from a love such as ours?” She laughs again. Someone knocks on the door.

“My lady?” They hear the quavering voice of Bartolomeu, Louis’s chamberlain. “The king sent me. We heard there was an incident? Are you well?”

“All is well, thank you,” she calls. “I left my nightgown too close to the stove is all. I cast it into the sea.”

“And the Lord Joinville? I have just called at his cabin and he does not answer. His Grace is unable to sleep and is summoning him.”

“He was here a few moments ago, making sure I was not hurt,” she says. “He went to see the king, I believe.”

“Very well, my lady. Most likely we have only just missed each other.” Even as Bartolomeu speaks, Joinville is pulling on his leggings. Marguerite shakes her head no, but he dons his tunic. He has his slippers on and is fastening his mantle when the old chamberlain steps away.

“Bartolomeu is so slow he won’t shuffle back to Louis until tomorrow morning,” she says, unfastening his mantle. “Louis sends
him out to be rid of him. He talks in streaks, which Louis cannot abide.”

“Marguerite. I must go to the king.” His kiss is perfunctory. “I will see you tomorrow night.”

He opens the door, and is gone. Marguerite stands naked without even a nightgown to keep her warm. She throws open the door and sees the deck empty except for him.

“Jean!” she hisses. “Come back! When you are finished with Louis, come back! No matter what the time.”

She cannot even see the sun when she awakens, so high is it overhead. Her head throbs as she peers out the little window. She hears a knocking at her door, and Gisele’s call.

“My lady, are you awake and ready to be dressed? Jean Tristan is crying for you.”

Marguerite opens the door to her maid, whose cheeks the ocean breeze has kissed to pinkness. Gisele must have a sea captain in her ancestry, sailing invigorates her so—or else, her queen’s love affair quickens her blood.

“Did Sir Lancelot come last night?” she asks as she rolls a pair of leggings over Marguerite’s feet and calves.

“Don’t call him that!” She forces a laugh. “Yes, he was here. But only for a short time. The king summoned him.”

“In the dark hours?”

“I asked him to return, but he never did.”

“Perhaps you fell asleep and did not hear him.”

Marguerite says nothing. She lay awake until sunrise. Jean did not return.

She passes by his cabin on her way to her children, but the door is closed and she dares not peer into his window with men milling about. She finds Jean Tristan in his nurse’s lap, crying. His ear hurts, and, fearing an infection, she sends for the healer, who prescribes garlic oil. There is no garlic on the ship, so she makes do with warm compresses and a mother’s love, holding him for an hour, rocking him, and singing softly until at last he falls asleep. The nurse takes him from her and she slips out in search of Joinville.

She wanders the ship, Gisele beside her and sheltering her from the sun with a parasol, the best discovery she made in Outremer. As they stroll, Marguerite looks to her left and to her right, seeking Jean among the men clustered on the deck, but he is nowhere. She steps into the dining room, where members of the crew are erecting tables, and then into the chapel. The young priest approaches with a shining face, as if she were the Holy Virgin. Of course he thinks she has come here to pray, or to confess.

“I am seeking my husband.”

She is not far from the mark, for His Grace spent the better part of the morning here, he tells her. He departed for the captain’s quarters. Marguerite arrives there as men are filing onto the deck: the Lord Beaumont and his Saracen serving boy; Odo, the pope’s legate; and then, at last, Jean.

“My lady,” he says, glancing around as he bows to her. Seeing no one nearby, he murmurs, “The king suspects us.”

Marguerite feels an ache in her chest as if he had struck her there. “How do you know?”

“He has said so.”

Louis emerges, then, with the captain behind, his red-rimmed eyes staring at Marguerite as though he knew her thoughts and found them disgusting. She returns his gaze. For once, she does not blush, although her pulse flutters. She will not give up Jean.

“My queen,” Louis says. “Have you business with me, or with my loyal knight Joinville?”

“My lord, your son Jean Tristan is ill. His ear has become infected.”

“Not again?” Louis’s frown hardens. “You have borne me a sickly child. Have you considered whether it is your own doing?”

“I am sorry, my lord. I do not understand.”

“Is your conscience clear? Might God be punishing you for something?” He glances up at Joinville, whose face has turned a furious red.

“I gave birth to him in extreme heat, in a pagan palace, with terror running through my veins as the Turks besieged Damietta,”
she says. “I was there at your command.” He rolls his eyes, having heard these complaints before.

“But I’m not here to point the finger of blame. Our son is ill. Shall we land at Cyprus on the way home to obtain medicine for him? The healer prescribes garlic oil.”

“Delay our arrival in France? I thought you were anxious to see our children.”

“To stop would be a necessary evil, of course. But—”

“Evil,” Louis says, “is never necessary.” He links arms with Joinville. “My dear knight, tell me your conclusions after that meeting. Ought we to heed the captain’s warning of a storm amid this calm weather, and take shelter in the nearest harbor? Or should we press on, confident in the Lord’s protection?”

I
T BEGINS AS
a slow breeze, a sweet relief from the summer sun’s reflected heat, which shimmers as if the sea were a mirror and the ship a pile of kindling to be lighted. Marguerite sits on the deck in the shade, feeling air kiss her cheeks, not as pleasurable as Joinville’s kiss but the only kind she is getting these days.

He has ceased his visits to her cabin. On the first night without him, she paced the floor, anticipating his knock, ready to hear all that Louis had said to him and rebuff each accusation as if her words were fingers massaging away knots of guilt. Of what do they deprive their spouses by giving love to each other? Certainly the seven children she has borne, including the dead (and for what did God punish her with those sorrows?), prove well enough that she has not denied Louis her body. How have they been unfaithful, when Jean’s spouse is far away in body and Marguerite’s in spirit? What is the meaning of loyalty? Was Jean’s wife unfaithful when she refused to accompany him to Outremer? Is Louis faithful when he ignores her as if she were a statue without a head?

She awakens the next morning with an ache all over from sleeping on the floor by the stove, trying to ease the chill in her bones. She does not seek Joinville that day, but waits for him to
come to her. She has some of the ship’s men move her chair and footstool into a shady spot, under a place where the upper deck overhangs the lower. There she reads de Troyes’s
Erec and Enide,
which Joinville had loaned to her, and dozes and dreams of him. In her dream, he comes to her in a panic, having lost his penis. She awakens herself laughing and feels a hand touch hers.

“I am glad to see that your nightmares have ceased.” Jean stands beside her, glancing about.

“What makes you think so?”

“Your laughter, my lady.” So—she is “my lady” again.

“Laughter can be helpful when one wishes to avoid crying.”