Four Sisters, All Queens (50 page)

He looks at her. Something broken shows itself, like a piece of bone splintering through skin.

“Come to me tonight?” she whispers.

“I cannot.” A sound enters her ears like the roar in a conch shell. He moves his mouth. She looks down at the book. When she looks up again, he is gone.

That night, the sea pours forth from her eyes and carries her far away. Floating on her bed, she watches her life swim by and ponders happiness. She swore not to give up Joinville, but that was foolish; they have always known that their love must end. But what of the happiness she feels with him? Must she give that up, as well?

Once upon a time, she’d fancied that to be France’s queen would bring happiness enough. Ruling the kingdom certainly seemed to fulfill Blanche; she gave up love for it, and became the most powerful woman alive. Now that she is gone, what is to stop Marguerite from taking her place—at last—as the true Queen of France? Louis will need her if he is to continue the monk’s life of constant prayer that he began in Acre.

Perhaps she does not need Joinville to be happy. With him, she feels confident and quick, like a dancer. If she is those things when he is with her, isn’t she still those things when he is not? Can she find her happiness in spite of him? She sees herself in the court, deciding cases. She sees herself sitting in the great hall on Louis’s
right-hand side, interceding for petitioners, accepting obeisance, claiming her power.

Outside, thunder cracks. The wind bangs at her door, rattling the hinges. She gets up to check the latch—and the ship lurches, throwing her to her knees.
Mon Dieu!
She pushes herself off the floor in time to be tossed onto her bed. The ship bucks like an unbroken horse, jumbling her insides. Rain gushes from the sky as if their ships sailed under a waterfall. She clings to her bed, keeping her eyes open, battling nausea, waiting to gain her bearings—and then, as always, it comes to her, her equilibrium is restored, and she can rise and open the door to see who is knocking.

Jean looks as if he had just arisen from the grave. Marguerite pulls him indoors and holds him close against her, bending her knees to move with the ship’s surge upward, then plunge downward, breathe and relax, as if they were dancing on a magic carpet, nothing solid underfoot but stardust all around. It is the last time she will ever hold him. She does not want to let him go.

“Why did you come?”

“To make sure you are safe. This is a treacherous storm.”

“It takes more than a little thunder and rain to frighten me.”

A flash of light fills the room, illuminating him. The hair on her arms and neck stands on end. From outside, a scream pierces the howling wind. Marguerite runs to the door and throws it open. Their ship’s mast is struck, burning under the sheeting rain.

The ship lists, hurling her forward. If not for her hand on the door, she would be flung against the rails, perhaps tossed overboard. Joinville yanks her back—“Close that damned door”—and slams it shut. It rocks backward, sending them both stumbling across the floor, crashing a ewer against the wall, which, as they tilt, becomes the floor for a moment. They tumble down together. Joinville leaps up and pulls her onto the bed. She clings to him, staring into the dark.

“The ship is burning. We are going to die,” she says.

“Not you,” he says. “Not if I can help it.” He leaps from the
bed and staggers to the door, then out. Marguerite cries his name, heedless of who might hear. She grabs her cloak and pulls it over her head and runs out to find him. She must die in his arms.

She finds him clustered with other men at the front of the ship, where the captain wrestles with the rudder. The sailors are dropping their fifth anchor in attempt to ground the vessel before it hits the enormous rock looming like a sea monster before them. Marguerite crosses herself but she does not pray for forgiveness of her sins, for Jean has certainly not done so, and she would rather spend eternity in purgatory with him than a day in heaven without him.

Joinville has not seen her. He is looking down at the floor of the deck and shouting over the wind. She hears him say, “the queen.” She hears, “safety.” She moves closer and sees Louis lying prone on the boards, his arms stretched overhead, wearing nothing but a robe. He is shouting, too, but not to Joinville:
Pater noster qui es en caelis sanctificetur nomen tuum
. A prayer.

Gisele tugs at her sleeve with one hand and holds her cloak fast with the other. “Should we awaken the babes, my lady?”

Marguerite pangs: Fortunate babes. Children can sleep through anything. Any moment now, this ship is going to dash itself against that rock and break apart like an egg on a bowl, but the children will know none of the terror that she has been feeling this last hour. No, she tells Gisele, let them sleep and pass to the Lord in peace.

She feels a shudder, as though the vessel trembled in fear. She staggers forward to grasp Joinville’s hand. He turns to her with sorrowful eyes. “
Au revoir,
” she says to him, and grasps the rail just before the ship bucks, airborne on the crest of a wave as high as the wall at Tarascon. She will never see Provence again, or her mother, or her sisters. But, God willing, she will see her father very soon. When the ship comes down, it will crash against the rocks, killing instantly a fortunate few and leaving the others to drown.

“Go inside!” Joinville pulls her into his cabin and closes the door just as the wave crests and rolls over the ship, nearly snatching Louis away but for the courage of a sailor who remains
on deck to hold him fast. The crashing waters wash the poor man overboard without a sound heard by anyone—not even by Louis, who hears only his own shouted prayers. Then the ship does a most unexpected thing: It rocks and shudders some more, but it does not fly through the air. The anchors have held it fast. After a final spasm, the tantrum is ended.

Not that Marguerite notices. The moment that door closed, she and Joinville commenced to drink each other up and they are still imbibing as Louis is nearly washed overboard, as water fills the sailor’s lungs, as the storm rolls over the island of Cyprus and away from the ship, ripping branches from trees, tearing houses apart. In its wake, the sea laps at the splintered ship as innocently as a kitten’s tongue. A wheeling gull pierces the air with its cry. Louis lies still, praying his thanks to God for delivering him from evil. But by the time the thought of “evil” has sent him staggering to Joinville’s door, the lovers have parted.

Jean opens the door to Louis, and Marguerite helps him inside. “What are you doing?” Louis gasps.

She dries him tenderly with a towel, as if he were her little child. “Sir Joinville saved my life this day, by taking me in from the storm,” she says.

“No, my queen, not Joinville,” Louis says, gasping as if he were a fish flung forth by the waves. “It is I who saved you both—and all the ship—with my prayers.”

Marguerite kisses his brow, and helps her husband to stand. “Joinville,” he says. “Let us go.”

“Where are we going, my lord?” Marguerite asks. “You, Sir Jean, and I?”

Louis scowls at her. “To put me to bed,” he says.

Her laugh is as light as if she were thirteen again. “For that formidable and demanding task,” she says, “you need your queen. And no one else.” She helps her husband out the door and, hooking her arm through his, walks with him to his cabin with a glance back at her knight.

“Louis,” she says, “let us disembark at Marseille. We can visit
my sister in Aix, and your brother. I think that, if you and I work together, we can take Provence for our own. For France.”

“Together?”

“Yes,” she says. “As king and queen. Imagine what we could accomplish, Louis. Together.”

“I am thinking,” he says as he pulls her into his cabin and takes off her clothes.

Eléonore

The Heart of the Lion

London, 1252

Twenty-nine years old

S
HE MOUNTS HER
palfrey with Henry’s rebuke still ringing in her ears. Arrogance, indeed! She is only exercising her rights. He is the arrogant one, running to the courts with their every dispute and then lashing out when she wins.

This week the judges have ruled twice in her favor. First they exonerated her clerk, Robert del Ho, of wrongdoing after Henry accused him of fraud—his attempt to blame another for his own reckless spending. And today, they agreed with Robert Grosseteste, the bishop of Lincoln, that Eléonore might appoint the living from her church at Flamstead to her chaplain, without Henry’s approval. “Arrogance,” Henry muttered when the verdict was read, his drooping eyelid ticcing with rage.

Ignoring him, she stepped over to the bishop to thank him for his testimony. “I had hoped only for a letter of support, but you took the time to come and testify in person,” she said.

Henry was close behind her. “How much of my money did she pay you?” he demanded. Eléonore wished for a great hole in the floor through which to drop: Robert Grosseteste is one of the world’s most learned and respected men.

“Why, Henry,” she said, “I give of my own money for the Lord’s work, not only to Lincoln but to parishes throughout the kingdom. Would you view my financial records? I shall send them to you immediately, by way of my clerk—I believe you are familiar with Robert del Ho?” It is a good thing that angry looks cannot kill a person.

“Arrogance,” he said. “I never thought you would turn against me, Eléonore.”

The insult is almost more than she can bear. Turn against Henry? She would sooner have her heart cut out.
He
is challenging
her,
goaded on by those greedy Lusignans, who would take all for themselves were it not for her.

She has tried everything, it seems, to bring her husband back to her. She has given him gifts: most recently, a sumptuous robe of purple-brown velvet with a bejeweled clasp in the shape of a lion’s head which she has never seen him wear. She spends hours upon hours reading official documents, the better to advise him, as well as the romances he loves—including the awful
Roman de Renart
—so that they may discuss them together. She arranges dinners twice weekly at Windsor Palace for visits with the children undistracted by the kingdom’s demands. She has even given up her best friends for his sake, declining to testify for Simon and Eleanor in their disputes with Henry over money. The only court battles in which she would testify against her husband are the ones he initiates.