Four Sisters, All Queens

by Jones, Sherry

  “My son and I purchased this Crown, and the fragment of the True Cross soon to arrive, for the many blessings they will bring to France,” Blanche says. “They add to the glory of our country, and make of Paris a new Jerusalem.”

  A new Jerusalem! The woman is brilliant. Is this the same Blanche who railed at her over the relic’s price? Now, apparently, the Crown of Thorns is the best bargain the kingdom has ever struck—and Blanche and Louis are to be thanked.

  And Marguerite is diminished, shoved aside, and publicly so. Everyone saw Blanche step in front of her, and watched as Marguerite shrank back like a chastened child. In the past, the White Queen concealed her disdain behind false smiles and solicitous words, but today she shows the world that she reigns as queen, and that Marguerite is nothing.

  Marguerite heads to her chambers in a blur, suppressing her tears. On her desk she finds a letter from Eléonore, announcing—oh, how cruel!—that she has given birth to a son.

  We have named him Edward, after Edward the Confessor. He is a beautiful baby, strong and healthy.

  Tears blur her letter of congratulations, smudging the ink. She throws the quill across the room. How triumphant Eléonore must feel! Yet, were this a contest, her sister would hold an unfair advantage: No jealous mother-in-law thwarts Elli’s success. Henry’s mother, Isabella of Angoulême, lives across the channel, now Countess of Lusignan. If only Blanche would move away, too.

  Marguerite lies on her bed. Her future now rests in the hands of Pope Gregory—who wants more than ever to please Blanche. His war against the Holy Roman Emperor relies on France’s support. Her father’s help against the Cathars means nothing to Pope Gregory now, for Papa cannot spare a single knight to fight Frederick for him. The pope will grant the White Queen’s request. Toulouse will take Provence and exile her parents, or imprison them. Eléonore, disinherited, will lose what little respect she has gained in England. Sanchia and Beatrice will not marry kings; they will be fortunate to be paired with minor counts. She has failed her family utterly.

  Exhausted by her tears, Marguerite falls into a deep and dreamless slumber. She awakens to a face above her own and a hand on her mouth, stifling her startled cry.

  “Shhh,” Louis whispers. “Make no sound, or your maids may run to awaken my mother. It is time, Marguerite! In the midst of my prayers with Father Geoffrey, the Lord spoke to me this night. Praise be to God! He is ready to bless us with heirs.”

  Sanchia

  The Curse of Beauty

  Aix-en-Provence, 1239

  Eleven years old

  RAIMOND OF TOULOUSE licks his lips. Sanchia bursts into tears. Mama frowns, but she only cries harder. “You are eleven years old—nearly a woman,” Mama said as she dragged her away from her game of Fox and Geese with Beatrice. “If your sisters endured this test, so can you.”

  But she is not her sisters. Marguerite and Eléonore wanted to be queens. And Raimond of Toulouse is no king, but an ugly man with greedy eyes. She covers her chest with one arm but Mama shakes her head. She stares at her mother. Is this the ogre who attacked their château in Aix while Mama lay within, giving birth to Sanchia and praying for God’s protection? “Toulouse frightened the wits out of Sanchia,” Eléonore used to snicker.

  She is not as stupid as they think. She might not be witty, but she does have wits. When Papa danced in joy over the salt mines Romeo opened, Sanchia chewed her nails. Salt is exceedingly costly, being rare. “Now everyone will want to conquer us,” she fretted. Papa laughed at her, but what happened? Stupor Mundi sent troops to attack them, and the White Queen sent Toulouse to marry Sanchia. Blanche de Castille wants Provence more than ever, but she can’t pay for Raimond’s attacks now because her treasury is bare. The French spent all their livres on the Crown of Thorns and the True Cross.

  She cannot marry anyone; she has told Mama this. She is already married to Jesus. She promised herself to him in a beautiful dream. No one believes her, though. Last month, she asked her parents again to let her join the convent, but Mama laughed. “Your beauty is your curse,” she said. Sanchia couldn’t agree more. With so many men wanting her hand, she cannot possibly hide herself away. Family comes before everything, no matter what Sanchia desires. Family, Mama said, comes first.

  Romeo and Uncle Guillaume want to make a queen of her, like her sisters. But marriageable kings are scarce. For that favor, at least, she thanks God. She has visited Margi’s court, and Elli’s. How she would hate that life, all slippery words and watchful eyes! Queens have little time in which to play the harp, or paint landscapes, or even to pray. Privacy is only a dream. And queens may not be shy.

  Nothing is shy about Raimond of Toulouse, who has brought a marriage contract even though he is already married. “I have asked the pope for an annulment,” he says, picking his teeth with a long fingernail. “Twenty years is long enough to wait for a son.”

  Papa doubts that the pope will grant Toulouse’s request, and so he signed the marriage agreement with a smile, thinking of the peace it would bring. Toulouse will stop his attacks now. In celebration, the men drank a bottle of wine. Then, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Toulouse asked to view Sanchia.

  “A man desires to see the goods before he makes the purchase,” he slurred.

  Now, as she stands before him, the count exclaims loudly, making her flinch, “What a beauty!” He opens his arms. “Come here, sweetheart. Let’s find out if you’re as soft as you look.”

  Sanchia whimpers. Mama steps in front of her. “Forbear from laying hands on our daughter, I pray. You are yet a married man.”

  Toulouse’s cheeks burn a furious red. “You dare to chastise me? By God, I could crush you all like ants.”

  “If you could, you would have done it by now,” Mama says. She holds Sanchia’s hand. “And if you were to attack us again, you would lose the prize of Provence.”

  Toulouse bares his dirty teeth. Sanchia’s stomach churns. Please take me to heaven now, oh please please…

  “I wouldn’t risk this sweet treasure,” he says. “We will meet again, darling, and soon.” He stands and walks out of the castle.

  Sanchia falls to her knees before her Papa. “Please don’t make me marry him,” she says. “I will die.”

  He pats her head. “Not to worry. You will not marry Toulouse, no matter what he thinks. And, with no more wars to drain our treasury, I will be able to amass a proper dowry for you and your husband—whomever that might be.”

  Eléonore

  Sacrificial Lambs

  London, 1239

  Sixteen years old

  SHE RESEMBLES A sunlit cloud, Marguerite says, jealousy pinching her tone, as Eléonore turns before the mirror in her gown of creamy silk, pearls, and gold thread, and shimmering undertunic of pale saffron. She feels like a cloud, too, filled with light, glowing about the edges. Her skin tingles; her blood hums in her veins.

  Today is the most important day of her life. Moments from now, the entire kingdom—indeed, all the world—will honor her. At last, after three years of doubt, the dark cloud under which she married Henry will roll away. The barons will cease their mumurs against her. The taint of illegitimacy will fade, and the Count of Ponthieu will seek another match for his daughter Joan. Eléonore has given the king an heir, the kingdom a prince. She is, at last, England’s undisputed queen.

  “Are the pearls in my hair too much adornment? I hope Edward doesn’t cry during the service—he has been quite fussy lately. Margi, where are my slippers? No, these are gold. I want the white ones. Help me with this clasp? My hands are shaking.”

  “Breathe,” Marguerite says, sounding like their mother. Uncle Thomas would have brought Mama today, but Papa has fallen ill again, his heart a clanging bell under the strain of Toulouse’s newly redoubled attacks. Marguerite, for all her efforts, has not been able to stop them. Until she gives King Louis an heir, she has no power in France. In spite of herself, a frisson of triumph trills through Eléonore at the sight of her sister’s face drawn, li
ke a hound’s, to a jealous point.

  “Afraid the Count of Ponthieu will come charging in again?” Marguerite says. “He can’t harm you now.” So why does she quiver on the walk to the cathedral as if the devil awaited within?

  Her ladies—Marguerite, Eleanor de Montfort, Margaret Biset, and the countess Dame Maud of Mortimer—surround and guide her, and a retinue of knights guards her (or tries to) from the crush of villeins and townspeople eager, it seems, to tear her apart. A woman’s hand snatches at her skirt, trying to tear off its pearls. Another grasps her hair, knocking her crown askew. “Knights! Are you sleeping?” shrieks the Dame Maud as she knocks the offenders aside with her fist. In fact, the knights are too few to stanch this roil. Eléonore struggles for breath as the crowd presses in until, giving up all semblance of dignity, she lifts up her skirts and runs. My God! Are these the same Londoners who, only a year ago, screamed for hers and Henry’s heads because they’d married the king’s sister to a Frenchman? How fickle is the love of the English.

  At the cathedral door the bishop of Winchester waits to bless her, his smile as calm as if only the two of them stood on the stair. He hands her a candle and spreads a piece of purple velvet at her feet on which to kneel, then sprinkles her with holy water. “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward,” he intones.

  She is blessed: No bishop need tell her this. Already she gives thanks every day for Henry. He has won her heart completely with his goodness and his keen intelligence—and with his love. When she miscarried their first child, he comforted her, telling her that God had another, better soul waiting to be born to the throne. And yet, had she never conceived another, he would not have set her aside. “I will never forsake you, my dear,” he said. His words return to her now, as she steps into the splendor that he has commanded in her honor.

  The cathedral is a flickering fairyland, alight with the flames of so many candles that it looks as if the night sky had been turned upside down and the stars shaken into it. White silk drapes the ceiling and walls, fairly glowing in all that light. A choir of monks sings a haunting melody; young novices chime bells. Frankincense from Outremer exudes its expensive perfume of spice and pine. The women follow Eléonore through the crowded cathedral, nobles dropping to their knees as they pass, to the cloth-draped Offertory table at the front of the chapel. Marguerite presents a miniature of the madonna in gold, and the others fill the table with equally exquisite gifts: an illuminated psalter, acquired from a monastery in Northumbria; a child’s rattle, encrusted in jewels; a basket of ripe fruit, sending up the fragrance of tangerines like a breeze.

  They await the celebration of the mass on a cushioned pew. Across the room, Henry’s brow furrows and his jaw tics as he listens to Uncle Thomas. His face reddens. His drooping eye twitches. What could Uncle say to anger Henry so? Perhaps he has decided to ally Flanders with France instead of England. Henry covets his county as a launching point for an invasion of Normandy—which will never happen, of course, until his barons agree to pay the costs.

  After the mass, the women step back across the lawn to the palace, where a feast awaits. “The king looks strangely unhappy for a man who has just sired an heir to the throne,” the Dame Maud says, arching her brows at Eleanor de Montfort as if she were the reason why.

  Eleanor takes no heed. She scans the crowd for Simon, due any moment from Rome, where he went to ask Pope Gregory to free her from her chastity vow and legitimize their marriage. Whether the pope agreed no one knows, for Simon sent no messengers ahead of him.

  “To sway the pope, one needs money,” Eleanor says. Her laugh sounds forced. “We have none, not until Henry gives to me my marriage dower.” Which, Eléonore knows, is nearly two years late—but, thanks to the intransigent barons, Henry’s coffers are as empty as Simon’s.

  Minstrels sing St. Godric’s “Virgin Saint Mary” and servants have just presented her favorite dish, a salmon and fruit pie, when a herald announces the arrival of Simon de Montfort. Eléonore nearly leaps up from her seat, then feels Marguerite’s eyes on her and settles quickly down again. She cannot help staring at him, however, as he enfolds his wife in his arms, looking more handsome than ever after six months away. Eléonore had almost forgotten the flecked blue of his eyes, like robin’s eggs, but his smile has haunted her dreams. He meets her gaze as he kisses Eleanor’s hair, spurring an erratic knocking in her chest.

  Eleanor leads Simon to the royal table, where he kneels in homage before his king and queen. Pleasantries form on Eléonore’s lips but they drop away at the sight of Henry’s scowl and his face on the verge of bursting into flame.

  “I bring good news from Rome,” Montfort says. “The pope has released my wife, your sister, from her vow of chastity.”

  A cheer arises from the surrounding tables and Eleanor Montfort, her face shining, embraces her husband again. Henry’s shade of red brightens even more. “At what price?” he snarls.

  The room grows quiet. Simon clears his throat.

  “Forgive me, Your Grace, I do not understand your question. Our son, your nephew, is now legitimized—”

  “At what price?” Henry says, more loudly this time.

  “I—I paid what was necessary to secure your sister’s future—”

  “Her future? As the wife of an impoverished foreigner?”

  A maelstrom of questions spins and whirls in Eléonore’s mind, chief among them being why Henry is so angry?; quickly followed by must he confront Simon here and now? This is supposed to be her day. And, when did Henry start to use the word “foreigner” to describe Simon? He sounds like his barons, who use the word to describe Eléonore—while wearing a sneer. It is as if Englishness were everything—in spite of the horrible weather, the bad food, the pasty complexions and the crude, garbled language.

  Simon’s jaw drops open at the insult, but his wife appears undaunted.

  “Henry, we are here to celebrate your queen and your new son,” she says. “Why don’t we discuss this tomorrow?”

  “Because we wish to discuss it now.” He never moves his glare from Simon de Montfort’s bewildered face. “How much did you pay, Simon? We demand to know!”

  “Stupidity,” Simon mumbles.

  Henry pounds the tabletop with his fist, clattering the dishes, making Eléonore jump. “Speak so that we can hear you!”

  “I said that His Grace would not want the details of our agreement to be made public. I am loath to displease him.”

  “And what of displeasing your king? Is that not a concern?”

  Eléonore touches Henry’s arm, hoping her soft touch will calm him. “Perhaps your sister is right,” she says softly. “Let this wait until another time.”

  “If you want to please us,” Henry says to Simon, “you will give us two thousand silver marks.”

  “Henry.” Eleanor Montfort’s tone is stern. “You know we do not have it. We are still waiting for my dower from you.”

  “And you will wait even longer now that your husband owes us this enormous sum.”

  Simon snorts and shakes his head, curls his lips. Murmurs ripple through the hall. Henry’s eyes bulge, his pupils now tiny points. He bares his teeth. Eléonore cannot tear her eyes from him. Soon, he will be frothing at the mouth. She must find a way to calm him.

  “Something amuses you, Sir Simon?” the king says with a sneer.

  “Forgive me, Your Grace.” Simon bows his head, hiding his scorn. “I do not recall incurring any debt from you. I think the opposite is the case. My wife has waited nearly two years for the dower that you promised upon our wedding.”

  “Wedding? There was no wedding, only a secret marriage made in haste to avoid scandal!” Henry shouts. Dread gathers like storm clouds in her belly. Henry must be stopped before he says too much—but how? In their years together she has not found an effective remedy for his temper. “You seduced our sister under our nose, with one goal—to increase your wealth and stature.”

  Through the hall,
gasps fly upward like shot arrows. Eleanor Montfort’s face turns as red as Henry’s. Under the table, Eléonore clasps her fingers together so tightly she winces against the pain.

  “We risked everything to cover up your indiscretion,” Henry rages. “We married you in secret, knowing it would incur the wrath of our brother”—Richard of Cornwall, dark and clenched, glowers from the front table—“and our barons, who would have wed her to one of their sons. And how do you repay us?”

  Simon drops to one knee and slaps his hand to his chest. “With my loyalty and my love, my lord. As ever.”

  “Is it loyalty, or treason, to promise that the king will guarantee your debts? Because the Count of Flanders brings word that you have done so.”

  Simon knits his brows at Uncle, in the seat of honor beside the king.

  “King Louis of France has sent me to collect the two thousand silver marks you borrowed,” Uncle Thomas says. “Didn’t you swear that King Henry would repay it?”

  Simon’s smile quavers as he rises. “Yes, I did make the pledge. But you told me, Your Grace, that you would give any amount for our cause.”

  “I never did.”

  “Don’t you remember?” Simon sounds as guileless as a pleading boy. “You predicted that the pope of Rome would command a high price to legitimize our marriage—as, indeed, he did—and you vowed that England would pay it.”

  “After extorting it from your lords, no doubt!” Roger de Quincy stands, his large moustache twitching. “Your Grace, I demand an explanation.”

  “Treasonous lies,” Henry says, and orders the Earl of Winchester to sit. “Sir Simon, I command you to the Tower this day. You will remain there until you pay your debt.” Eléonore jumps up, losing her composure at last.