The Sister Queens (37 page)

There are too many men to fit comfortably in Louis’s cabin, so when the last of the small boats is moored, the knights merely stand near the forecastle to begin their discussions. I wonder if the sultan’s warriors on the shore can see them, but as most do not have their armor on, I doubt they glitter despite the brilliant sun.

“I would attack at once,” says Louis, “using every boat available with hull shallow enough to approach the shore.”

“Your Majesty,” rejoinders Philip of Nanteuil, “would it not be more prudent to wait for your men and arms that were blown off course?”

“You urged me to wait at Cyprus, and I did wait,” Louis replies, “but this is the second time God has seen fit to scatter some of my forces asunder. There is a message in this. God wishes my troops to be as they are—not one man more, not one man less. Besides, we greatly outnumber them as we are. What honor could there be in waiting for more overwhelming numbers?”

“None, Your Majesty.” I thrill at the sound of Jean’s voice. “But what of those of us who have no galley available to go ashore?”

“Here is a man after my own heart, eager to be slaying infidels,” says Louis, his face flushing with pleasure. “My Lord of Beaumont, see that the Seneschal of Champagne has a galley at his disposal.” Erard of Brienne slaps Jean on the shoulder in delight. The two have been inseparable since they traveled to Paphos, and no doubt he thinks to row to shore with Jean. “What do you say, Beaujeu?” the king asks, turning to his constable expectantly.

Beaujeu did not rise to his office by fighting losing battles. “Your Majesty speaks with reason. In addition, unsheltered as we
are in this place, it would only take another surge of strong winds to scatter the rest of our ships.”

“Tomorrow then, at dawn, we will teach the Sultan of Cairo what Christian men may do with the blessing and in the name of their God.”

Dawn. Must I then send Jean into battle uncaressed and uncried over? So it would seem. The leave we took of each other in Cyprus will have to see us through this greater separation.

He lingers till the last, till only half a dozen men remain to retreat to their boats, then gives me a peculiar look over Louis’s shoulder as they embrace in parting. Even as I have profound confidence in him, I wonder, when I see him next, will he be alive or dead?

IT IS THE PROVINCE OF
women to wait. I feel as though I have been waiting my whole life—waiting to bear a son, waiting for the dragon to surrender her hold on the king, waiting for Louis to realize he can love God and love me. I excelled once at patience and acceptance, swallowing my disappointments; counting on perseverance and time to change what I could not. But, having finally been granted the heart of a good man, time and fate now have the power to take away as well as give. So, as the boat bearing my husband and his standard makes for shore, my heart beats faster than the rowers’ oars. I pace back and forth along the ship’s rail, heedless of the stares of my ladies.

I can have no hope of spotting Jean and his men among those heading to battle. Other than Louis’s boat, the only vessel distinguishable belongs to the Count of Jaffa. This boat is so thoroughly covered with his coat of arms that no man on shore or at sea can doubt whom it carries. Then, as the landing party nears the shore,
a vessel crammed with men and horses passes the boat carrying the king and his royal standard. I know with a certainty of the heart if not the eyes that the boat that has taken the lead is Jean’s. It draws up to the shore and men begin to pour from it like ants.

“The king!” Matilda cries, and my eyes snap back to Louis’s boat. It is not yet to the beach, but someone is in the water, waves lapping at his breast, arms over his head. When I see the royal standard in those upstretched arms, I know my sister-in-law is right. Louis has jumped from his boat.

“Eager fool!” I clutch Marie, thinking of the weight of Louis’s armor. “He will drown himself.”

But as I watch, Louis struggles to the shore, standard still in hand. Boats are falling thick upon the beach. Frenchmen set their shields into the sand and their lances as well, creating a deadly and pointed wall between themselves and the sultan’s men who ride forward. And like that, the battle begins—we can see horses in motion, lines of French bowmen making easy shots across the sandy expanse, men falling—yet at this distance it all seems strangely unreal, down to the muted cacophony of drums and horns, cries, and grunts.

I cannot say if the time is long or short, so fascinated am I by the constant motion of the fighting. I am trying to find Louis among the fray when my sister’s voice sounds.

“The cowards run!” she shouts.

Deo gratias
, I believe Beatrice is right! The forces of the sultan have turned, and with our knights in pursuit, they move at breakneck speed toward the outlines of Damietta. As quickly as it began the skirmish is over. The beach so full only moments before is largely empty. Only boats and the bodies of the fallen mar the golden tan expanse. I wonder how many we have lost and, more important, if any I knew or loved are among them.

“SOMETIMES IT IS A BLESSING
that Louis neglects you.”

This is the first moment I have had alone with Jean since I sighted him on the deck of a galley rowing out to the royal ship. Louis, it seems, cannot waste his time bringing me ashore, and delegates the task, even though it means another has the pleasure of announcing the victory.

Throwing my arms around Jean’s neck, I give him a long kiss by way of reply. We are in my cabin, alone save for Marie who is packing my things. My other ladies are readying their own belongings. It is three days since Louis’s boat rowed to the beach. The city of Damietta is his, and soon we will be escorted to it.

“Don’t you want to hear about the taking of the city?” Jean asks.

“No,” I reply, reaching up to put both my hands in his curls, headless of the sweat and dust that cover him. “All that I needed to know of the battle I knew when I saw you alive and whole.”

“And I was counting on an opportunity to spin tales of my bravery.”

“I promise to hear every word of your stories, only save them for a time when I am better able to attend. Marie, get me some water and a clean cloth, so the Seneschal of Champagne can wash.”

“Ought we to be so publicly alone?” Jean asks as the door falls shut behind my retreating companion.

“No one will notice. Everyone runs back and forth preparing to disembark. Besides,” I add longingly, “what can we do in a few moments anyway?”

“Not what I want to do, that is sure.” Jean smiles. “Every moment of the three weeks since I held you last I have thought of nothing else.” Then, perhaps seeing my skeptical look, he adds, “Well, every moment except when I was in battle.”

Marie returns bearing a basin and a length of linen.

“Food and wine,” I say. “Surely, even with all the tumult of packing, a man fresh from battle can be fed.”

Then, walking Marie to my cabin door, I add under my breath, “Do not hurry.”

I help Jean remove his tunic, then the coat of mail and the padded pourpoint underneath. Seating him before my mirror, I dampen the cloth and begin to wipe the dust from his face and his neck. He sits completely still and silent. There is something oddly reverential and deliberate about my washing of him, and at the same time something painfully erotic. I kneel to remove his chausses and then, when he sits in nothing but his silk
gamboised cuisses
, I begin to wipe his chest. He moans with pleasure, watching my every move in the mirror. Dropping the cloth, I unlace the front of his
cuisses
. In a single fluid movement I lift my skirts and lower myself onto his engorged member. We sit face-to-face and, as I raise and lower myself rhythmically upon him, Jean devours me, kissing my face, my neck, my ears.

“Oh God, how I’ve missed you,” he murmurs, his arms entwined around me, pulling me against his damp chest.

The abstinence imposed upon us by the voyage to Egypt assures that all my sensations are exaggerated. Each time I settle upon him, the feel of his flesh sliding against mine nearly overwhelms me. I cannot pull him in deep enough, nor hold him there long enough. Yet, even as I experience this pleasure, I dread the moment he will break it off and pull himself, unsatisfied, from me. I stop moving.

“What is the matter?” Jean asks, his eyes wild.

“I want you to give me your child.”

“Marguerite, you cannot ask it.” The words come out in a shocked gasp.

“But I do ask it. The battle for Damietta was but the first. We
will be parted again and again, and each time I will fear your loss every moment until your return. Give me a part of you to hold in my arms and as a talisman against your death. Give me your son.”

“If someone should guess.”

“Why would they?”

“Louis hardly touches you, and if no one else knows that, he certainly does.”

“The day I know my womb is quickened, I will do whatever is necessary to bring Louis to my bed. He will never deduce the child is not his, while I will have the joy of knowing for certain that it is yours.”

“My son…” I can see the longing in Jean’s eyes—not a sexual longing, but the same desire I feel, to create something solid and beautiful from our love, damnable though it may be. “Yes,” he says simply.

Slowly I begin to move my hips once more. Jean’s lips are upon mine. His organ, which had started to subside in our pause, hardens again to stone. As I begin to gasp with pleasure, glad that his mouth dampens my moans so that no one but he can hear them, I feel a change in his breathing. It is rapid and ragged. Then his arms pull me to him and, with his face buried against my shoulder, he cries out into the fabric of my dress and lets himself go.

I find myself praying for the first time during the act of love.
Holy Mary, most blessed of all mothers, forgive me my sins and bless me with the child of my beloved.

I SIT ON A BENCH
in the autumn sun, waiting for Jean. Now that it is obvious I am with child, we meet alone quite openly. It is beyond the imaginings of the noblemen and ladies surrounding us that anything improper could take place between the king’s favorite and the
king’s pregnant wife. Nor has there been a breath of scandal about the babe itself. Louis is quite inordinately and surprisingly delighted to be the father of a child destined to be born in the Holy Land. As for the real father, Jean could not be more tender or attentive.

I run my hand over the arch of my belly, enjoying the curve of it. The late-afternoon sun no longer reaches my seat, but the rays that bathed it for most of the day have left the stone warm. It amazes me to think that in Paris they shiver already. For the second winter in a row I will be where the cold cannot touch me, but, as wondrous as my life has been since my eyes last lingered on the French coast, I cannot reflect on the passage of so much time without a touch of sadness. My little Louis will be six in February. The fluttering of a new life within me makes me think more often of my golden prince. Can he still remember my face? Is he counting the days as I asked him to, even though their number are now five times what he ever thought to tally before I came home again?

I cannot help but think that Robert, usually the favorite of my brothers-in-law, is the reason we are not home victorious already. After Damietta fell, an offer came from the Sultan of Cairo to exchange the holy city of Jerusalem for it. Imagine! Jerusalem in Christian hands after only a single battle! Jean and I were sure Louis would accept, as were any number of the king’s advisers, but Robert of Artois set himself against it, arguing that the sultan would make such a trade only if he felt Jerusalem likely to be lost in any event. He painted pictures of a broader triumph, and Louis, flush with confidence in God’s blessing after finding the gates of Damietta open and the city largely deserted before him, listened. Installing the court in his new city, Louis, so eager to fight when we first sighted shore, resolved to wait for the ships that had gone astray and for the arrival of Alphonse and Jeanne, who had initially remained in France to assist the dragon in establishing her regency.

So, I have lived in Egypt nearly as long as I did in Cyprus. The memory of the battle on the beach has become distant, replaced by the reality of daily raids on the camp surrounding the city walls—of men left beheaded in their sleep; of our crossbowmen picking off Saracen riders at a distance—juxtaposed with long stretches of time unbroken by useful activity for the majority of Louis’s troops.

Then two days ago, the sails of a ship on the horizon brought the promise of change. The Count and Countess of Poitiers have arrived at last on Egyptian soil, so Louis’s council meets to decide on battle plans.

Jean arrives, rounding a clump of low palms and looking cross. “Well, the Count of Artois continues
much
in favor!” he says as he approaches. Whatever was decided at the meeting, it is not to Jean’s liking.

“What is the matter, love?” I pat the bench next to me, but he either does not see or is too agitated to sit.

“We are
not
going to Alexandria.” Jean runs a hand through his curls in exasperation.