Four Sisters, All Queens (64 page)

Richard is awake, as she knew he would be. He likes to stay up late with his money and his books and his men—Mr. Arnold; his son Henry, when he is not off competing in tournaments with Edward; and Abraham. She thought he might smile at the sight of her sitting up in bed, but instead he frowns as though she has disappointed him yet again.

“Should you lie down? Do not over exert yourself,” he says.

“I am much improved,” she says when he has sat on the bed beside her, “and I have some matters to discuss with you.” He must
intervene with the barons on behalf of Henry and Eléonore. “Their lives are in danger. Only you can help them.”

He pats her hand. “I will take care of my business as it befits me,” he says. “As I always do.”

“Don’t speak as though I were a child,” she says. He lifts his eyebrows in surprise. “Your first ‘business’ ought to be to your brother and my sister. Family comes first. And if not for them, you would have nothing.”

“Henry might say the same of me. If not for my loans, he would have forfeited Gascony.”

“And that is as it should be. Each of you depends on the other. I have a letter from Eléonore. Richard, you must assuage the barons. You must convince them to placate the people. Simon de Montfort is not our friend. Henry and Eléonore are.”

Abraham arrives with a tray bearing her goblet and a flagon. “My lady is much improved, I hear,” he says. “Strong enough for a bit of wine, perhaps?”

Richard’s frown deepens. “Or strong enough to say ‘no.’” Abraham takes a step back and begins to turn toward the door.

“No!” She looks at Richard and laughs. “I mean, no, I would love a glass. I feel so much better; it is time to celebrate, don’t you think?” Abraham sets the tray on the bed and fills her goblet. “Richard, join me! Just this once.” Perhaps the feeling of the wine in his blood will warm him to her.

“I will fetch your goblet, my lord,” Abraham says, lifting the tray. Will he take it all away again?

“Nonsense! He can drink from mine. Set down the tray, Abraham.” He stands in place with his mouth open, waiting for Richard’s instructions. His face is strangely pale.

“I will gladly bring you a goblet of your own, Master Richard,” he says. “It will be more celebratory to drink a toast together. And my lady’s illness might be contagious.”

He would have become ill by now if she were contagious. She would say so but Richard is shaking his head and saying, no, he
does not care for wine no matter how it’s watered, and that he needs nothing to drink at the present.

“Since you are recovering, I will leave tomorrow for England,” he says. “You are right, my dear, I must intervene for my brother, who, as usual, cannot manage his own affairs.”

Sanchia lifts the goblet to her lips and drinks deeply, relishing the deep fruit, the heat in her veins. Abraham fills her goblet again, although it is only half-empty. “Do not dull my senses before I have fully regained them,” she says, laughing again.

“You do not need it, Sanchia,” Richard says. “You are enough without it.”

She takes another gulp, and thinks of how she will leave him soon, how she will go to Hailes Abbey and live there, and never have another drop of wine to drink. It will be her sacrifice.

“You may go,” she says to Abraham, “and take the flagon with you. This will be my last drink.” She lifts the goblet in a toast to Richard. “Out of honor to my husband.” Richard clasps her hand. He thinks, of course, that she is speaking of him.

O
H, THE BURNING
, the burning, there is a fire in her belly, she cries aloud and then she is vomiting pure red liquid,
this is my blood which was shed for you
and Elise is crying out as her gown is splattered—Sanchia’s gown, one of her favorites, a gift from Elli. Elli always loved fashion. “Richard!” she cries, there is something she needs to tell him, about Abraham, but he is gone, gone to England, and her bowels spill in the bed and she is cold as they clean her, shivering.

“Richard!” Here is Melody, another of her ladies, wearing Sanchia’s dress of green with roses of red cloth, and Abraham then, when all have gone, grinning and pouring wine down her throat.

“You called my name. I knew what you wanted.”

“You are poisoning me,” she says, and he nods.
Killed my wife, you murdered her.
Sanchia’s body seizes and twists, a rustle in the
bushes as she fled from Floria’s house, a glimpse of flaxen hair, Richard’s hair. Not Abraham, not Abraham. Richard’s coldness to her not love for Floria, not love but the opposite of love.

Pain shoots up her arm; her heart begins to clang like a struck bell.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Where are you? Dear God! My Lord!

I am here. You are She.

Eléonore

A Woman’s Heart

London, 1263

Forty years old

T
HE ANGER IS
what stuns her, the twisted and violent faces of the crowd pressing up against the walls surrounding the Tower of London. These are not the usual villeins and beggars (for the poor always have grievances). From her window she sees merchants, too, in their colorful linens and silks, and the cone-shaped hats of Jews, and old women, and young women with babies in their arms, snarling and brandishing fists and shouting insults and demands that occasionally organize themselves into chants.

“Send the foreigners home!”

“England is for the English!”

“No more for Eléonore!”

Stupidity. They have no idea what they’re talking about. They only repeat, like parrots, what they have been told by Simon’s followers—or, to be more precise, by Roger Leybourne, Roger de Clifford, and Hamo Lestrange. Savage youths, rapists and murderers. Now they’ve turned their anger on her and on Henry, who divested them of the castles Edward had given to them and sent them back to the Welsh Marches, as far away from their son as possible.

When they came to her last year, their faces held the same expressions as she is seeing below, their mouths like wounds, their eyes bulging with thunder. Leybourne’s weak chin quivered under the weight of his outrage, but he should have known better than to try to turn Edward against her. Lestrange glared as if he were a bull. She gripped the arms of her throne, fully expecting him to charge. Roger de Clifford, meanwhile, stood in the background picking his teeth and grinning like a hyena, the same as he had done during his hearing on charges of molesting his female tenants—three children born last year to young women in his household. It is no wonder that Eléonore insisted on seizing their castles.

“I gave them these honors, for they are my friends,” Edward said. “You can’t simply take them away.”

“They’re a lawless and reckless bunch, and will only cause you harm,” she said.

“‘What you scorn may be worth much more than you think.’”

“If you have read de Troyes, then you know that your friends’ behavior hardly conforms to the chivalric code.”

“My friends are loyal and courageous knights. And they would give their lives for me in battle.”

“Off the battlefield, they will destroy your life. A man is judged by the company he keeps—and you are no ordinary man.”

“I would proudly be judged according to my friends.”

“Roger Leybourne used a sharpened lance in a jousting tournament to exact vengeance on one of our knights. He spilled the defenseless man’s entrails all over the field. Chrétien de Troyes would most certainly not approve.”

“And he has paid the price. Papa sent him to Outremer to atone for the deed.” Indeed, Eléonore and Henry hoped he would not return.

“Hamo Lestrange tied up the Lincoln bailiff and whipped him until he fainted.”

“We caught him beating his horse with a cat-o’-nine-tails.” His eyes sparkle. “He should thank God that Hamo didn’t use it on him.”

“Your laughter is the reason why I am sending these boys away,” Eléonore said. “The farther they go, the better you will fare.”

His drooping eyelid twitched as Henry’s does when he becomes angry. “We are not boys, Mother, but grown men, and hardly in need of your discipline.”

“There is more to being a man than exacting murderous revenge and self-styled justice.”

“What do you know of manhood? But I forget that you are more man than woman.”

She bristled, recalling a time when Henry said the same to her. “Strength of character does not make me a man.”

“Where, then, is your woman’s heart?”

“My mother’s heart would protect you from the errant knights whom Simon de Montfort has assigned to you.”

“Henry of Almain and Roger Leybourne are my closest companions, and I would trust Hamo and Roger de Clifford with my life.” Tears filled his eyes—a grown man, indeed! “You may deprive them of my gifts, but you cannot—will not—deprive them of my love.”

Instead, Eléonore seems the one so deprived. After leaving her that day, Edward and his friends joined Simon’s army of rebels, opposing her and Henry. What did he hope to gain from this mutiny? Didn’t he realize that Simon craves the throne for himself? When he ran out of money, he discovered who are his true friends—and he came back to Henry. But not to her. He still has not spoken to her.

Losing Edward must have been a great blow to Simon’s cause—the latest of several setbacks. The pope has nullified the provisions forced upon her and Henry at Oxford, and the French and Castillian courts have sent knights, including the famous Count of St. Pol, to defend their God-given rights as king and queen. The influx of foreign mercenaries, however, is partly to blame for today’s protest. As the Londoners rail against “aliens,” they seem to have forgotten that Simon, too, is a foreigner.