And as sly.
“Tell me, my lord, how it is that Sir Thomas of Aquino has now declared the flesh of birds to be fit for monks to eat?” she asks Louis as Eléonore takes her seat.
“He has classified poultry as having aqueous origins, like fish,” Louis says in that I-am-trying-to-be-patient voice he uses with Margi.
“I declare that I never saw a chicken in, or near, the water,” she says. “Or a peacock, neither, nor a becfigue.” She lifts a morsel from the songbird on her plate, observing it. Becfigue was a rare treat when they were girls in Provence, served on special occasions roasted and stuffed with flower petals. “I have never seen a fish flying in the air, either. Nor does poultry taste of the sea.”
“God created fish and fowl at the same time,” Louis says, giving Margi a stern frown. “Read your scriptures.”
“He created man and woman at the same time, too. I wonder if that makes us the same, after all?”
“Many birds eat fish,” Edmund says.
“As do monks. Except for Thomas of Aquino. I have never seen him take a bite of fish at this table.”
“I have noticed the same. It seems that he does not prefer food from the rivers or the sea.” Jean de Joinville is grinning at her. Margi blushes even more profusely. “He does enjoy chicken greatly.”
“Sir Thomas is no longer a monk, but an esteemed philosopher,” Louis grumps. “He may eat what he wishes, yet he chooses to observe the monk’s diet. I dare say you would not utter these statements were he at table today. You border on blasphemy.”
“Questioning philosophers is blasphemy? Uncle Boniface, what is your opinion?”
Uncle Boniface, who has also added weight—to the detriment of his former good looks—shrugs and places a morsel of songbird in his mouth.
“I am certain Sir Thomas is glad to be absent from this meal,” Eléonore says, “for my sister’s arguments have always sharpened with her hunger, and grown more refined with satiety. He might find himself at a loss.”
“He would, no doubt,” Joinville says, smiling at Margi.
“Especially against a woman,” Margi says. “Thinking the female inferior to the male, as he does.”
But who cares, really, about the hypocrisies of the Church? Eléonore looks down at the little skinned delicate birds lying on the trencher, and sees their broken necks and glazed eyes—the eyes of her husband and son lying on the battlefield at Evesham, broken and bleeding, England’s future lost, and that of her children. But who cares about the future, either? Without her family, there is no future for Eléonore. Thank God Edmund is here with her, out of harm’s way although he has fumed and scowled many times these months as she has refused, again and again, to allow him to return to England and fight. She pushes the plate of birds away.
“Do you not enjoy the becfigue? I thought it was your favorite,” Margi says in a low voice. “We sent to the Aix market for them, hoping they would revive your appetite.”
“I am sorry.” Eléonore can barely speak. Her throat, like the rest of her body, feels tight with the effort of holding herself all in one piece. “Today, everything reminds me of death.”
One week has passed since Edward captured Simon’s son and his men at Kenilworth. The Earl of Leicester hastens to confront the Prince Edward, but the king’s age makes him a slow companion, Henry of Almain wrote. Eléonore smiled to think of her spry husband feigning tiredness, an aching back, an upset stomach, all to delay Simon’s progress. But she has not smiled since. She will never do so again, she warrants, until Henry and Edward are safe.
Margi orders peas for her, and carrots roasted with honey, and a salad of fresh greens. This she can stomach. She tucks in, but as Louis begins to talk of Outremer, Margi is the one pushing away her plate.
“The Sultan Baybars has taken Nazareth, the city of Our Lord,” he is saying. “The Turks will not stop until they have claimed every city we Christians have built, including Jerusalem.”
“Will there be another pilgrimage to Outremer?” Edmund asks, too hopefully for Eléonore’s liking.
“Should the pope of Rome issue the call,” Margi’s eldest son Philip says gravely. “And I shall be the first to take the cross.”
“You will be the second,” Louis says, beaming.
“Nonsense,” Marguerite huffs. “What is the use of dying a miserable death for a lost cause?”
Eléonore’s head begins to throb.
“A lost cause, the holy city? What cause could be more worthy?” Louis rises from his seat but, weakened from a recent attack of dysentery, he collapses before he can even unfold his legs.
“I agree with the queen,” Joinville says. “Christians have sent troops for nearly one hundred years, wave after wave, and we are repulsed each time. Perhaps God does not smile on the endeavor, since he has not seen fit to make us victorious.”
“God judges us in this world, as in the next, according to our sins,” Louis says. “The righteous he awards with victory, and the sinner with defeat.”
The words hit Eléonore like a slap. Is God judging her, then, by casting her family into danger? What sin has she committed to deserve this sorrow?
“Ruling any people far from home is too costly and too difficult to sustain for long,” Joinville says. “Just ask the good King Henry of England—or his queen.”
All eyes turn to her, but she brims with tears and dares not open her mouth to reply. She mumbles an excuse and rises from the table, bringing her ladies running over to carry her skirts. Voices float after, calling to her, but she can hear only her own questions as she hurries over the floor and up the stairs.
What is her sin? Ambition? Gaining Sicily, while expensive—God knows she paid enough to popes over the years for their battles against Manfred—would have reaped many rewards for England’s treasury. England’s power would have eclipsed that of France. Eléonore would have been the most powerful queen in the world, more powerful than any of her sisters.
But—who cares which kingdom has more power, which kings and queens have more lands? We fight and scheme for our children’s sakes and then we die, and they may lose all that we built up for them. There is nothing we can give to anyone that lasts—except love.
Is greed her sin? She has been accused of it. She has been greedy, yes, but for her children’s sakes, not her own. She wanted the best for them that life can offer. She wanted to ensure that they would never suffer hunger or fear as she did in Provence—and what did it avail her? Edward imprisoned, nearly killed more than once, his life in the hands of enemies. Edmund hiding here with her, not King of Sicily, never to be king of anything—and who cares? None of it matters to Eléonore now, not when her husband and son might lie dead on the ground, or in the gallows.
She should not have waited to make amends with Edward. She has neither seen nor heard from him since their quarrel at Windsor—years ago, before her attack at London Bridge. She pulls her arms to her chest. Holy Mother, save my son so that I might hold him close to me again.
Marguerite finds her lying on her bed. “Can you believe Louis’s talk of returning to Outremer?” she says, pacing the floor. “Apparently, our last campaign wasn’t enough of a failure.”
“Why are men driven to fight? They kill one another over castles, over a patch of land in the desert, over ideas.” She wonders if they realize how meaningless are their pursuits, if any man ever wishes he had given himself over to love rather than to killing. Love is the only thing that matters. Does any man ever know this?
Family comes first. Suddenly, Eléonore understands her mother’s words in a new way. Family is all. She has spent her life lifting uncles and cousins, nieces and nephews to greater wealth and status, and competing with her sisters for the same. Now, though, these goals seem as foolish as the games they played as children—although far more dangerous. Her efforts to gain Sicily for one son turned all of England against her, and may end in death for Edward and Henry.
Now Beatrice wants Sicily, but does she know th
e price? Her pursuit has cost her much of Eléonore’s love—and more of Marguerite’s, if there was any left to lose. Oh, it will be awful. Manfred is a fearsome warrior, and will fight to the death. Charles may be killed—and Beatrice may discover what Eléonore, facing the loss of her husband and son, has now realized. She threw all her weight behind the “Sicilian business” as though nothing else mattered—when, in fact, ruling Sicily mattered not at all.
Not even being a queen matters to her now, or Henry’s being king, or Edward’s being prince. Take it all, O Lord. Just let my son and husband live.
“Egypt is a brutal place. They will die if they go,” Margi is saying. “I don’t want my children to die.”
From outside the door, a flurry of female voices, the handmaids’ tittering. Margi’s maid steps in and, with a curtsey, announces Henry of Almain. Eléonore dries her tears but her hand is damp when Henry drops to one knee and kisses it.
“My lady, the battle at Evesham is ended.” He remains on the floor with his head bowed. A sharp ache twists under Eléonore’s breastbone.
“So soon! I only heard late last night that the fighting was at hand.”
“It began and ended in two hours’ time.” Why doesn’t he lift his face to her? “The Prince Edward fought most valiantly.”
“By God’s head!” Her pulse bounces about as if her heart had untethered itself. Tears gush forth from her eyes. “Have you come to deliver his epitaph?”
He glances sharply up at her. A smile tugs at his mouth. “Not an epitaph, my lady, but sad news for many. Our army trampled over the rebel forces like a thundering stampede. We are victorious.”
“Praise be to God!” She wipes her tears with the back of her hand. “Your downcast eyes told a different tale. Or”—she presses a hand to her chest—“do you bear bad news of Henry?”
“He is safe, my lady,” and no thanks to Simon, he tells her when he has stood. Maliciously, Simon placed his own helmet on Henry’s head and stood him amid a small group, weaponless, in the battle. “His Grace would not have been recognized save for his constant calling out of his name, and his crying, ‘Do not strike me! I am too old to fight.’”
“My Henry, too old to fight?” Eléonore smiles. “Were his tongue as sharp as a blade, he would have cut Simon down long ago.”
Henry of Almain lowers his gaze again. “Simon is dead now, my lady, and his eldest son.”
How strange that she feels no remorse, not even a shimmer of sorrow for a man whom, once, she called friend. But that was many years ago, before he tried to destroy her and the people she loved. “You are certain? You have seen his body?”
“I have seen his head, my lady, with his testicles wrapped around his nose.” He blushes, but Eléonore bursts into laughter. Roger, the Earl of Mortimer and Simon’s most impassioned enemy, killed him and sent his head thusly adorned to his wife, Dame Maud Mortimer, at Wigmore Castle.
“May he rest in peace, and his sons, and all the good Englishmen who died for his lost cause,” he says.
“Lost, indeed! Good riddance. England is better off without Simon, and will not even notice that he is gone.” Henry of Almain may feign grief all he likes—gloating over the deaths of one’s enemies is not considered chivalrous behavior—but she will not conceal her delight. “Have you come to fetch me home, I hope?”
“I have, my lady.” He pulls a parchment from his surcoat. “Here is a letter from Prince Edward, summoning you.”
Eléonore tears it open, her eyes filling with tears before she has read the first word.
O brave Queen Eléonore, you have saved us. Now come home and reap your rewards. All of London wants to kneel before you, to pay homage to you and beg your forgiveness—I, most of all.
Beatrice
A Queen at Last
Sicily, 1266
Thirty-five years old
THE WHOLE WORLD is white, the sky blankly ablaze, a page on which anything might be written, queenship or death, the snow like quicksand sucking at her feet and tugging at the furs swaddling her body, fur wet and heavy with the cold, white breath of God. Strange how she never thought of God as cold. Disturbing that she never knew.
The snow she expected. No one crosses the Alps in November without the sting of blowing ice, the numb of cold. Fingers are lost, the tips of noses. But her own tired desire surprises her, the yearning to float like a feather down to the pillowy white, to succumb, to enfold herself as though the snow were filled with sun instead of the lack of it, as if all that pale light could save her from the teeth of the biting wind as she slogs up the mountainside through the billowing snow. These could be clouds, the world is so far below. The crown that awaits her is a lifetime away.
Her head feels light. Oh, she is tired, so tired. Her eyes close, weighted with ice. She stumbles. “Hold on to my hand, my dear!” Uncle Philip is with her, his horse on the rein behind, stepping surely up the narrow path as though a single slip would not send him plummeting to his death. These are Savoy lands. He has traveled this route many times. He grips her hand and pulls her close, away from the falling edge. From behind, someone cries out. She lifts her head to look around but sees only white. Hears only the wind’s high moan. Has someone fallen? Dead for her sake. Her eyes so heavy. Uncle Philip’s arm tightens around her waist, lifting her. Almost there. Rome, near? She had not known it was so cold.
“Charles?” she cries. In the blowing snow, a dark shape. He will warm her. “I see him,” she says to Uncle Philip. He leads her onward, revealing a rock. This is not Rome. They are in the Alps. Rome is far away. Charles. If not for Uncle, she would be dead. Philip appeared while she was feasting her army, bringing with him one hundred men including St. Pol, just returned from England and whetted for a fight. Simon de Montfort made an easy conquest in the end. Had Charles known, he would have not bent his knee to him.
“We have reached the summit.” Uncle Philip’s shout whirls in the wind and blows to the back, prompting cheers. Six thousand knights, six hundred crossbowmen, twenty thousand foot soldiers. Beatrice’s conquests. She lured them with gifts, flirtation, cajoling, promises. Her cheeks became stiff from all that smiling.
But she could not convince King Louis. Not a cent from France. “I will be in need of my men and my money,” he said. But France is at peace. Margi’s doing. She holds the keys to the treasury. If not for Beatrice, she would have been revealed as an adulteress. She would hold nothing today except her rosary.
Now for the descent, turn after turn after turn. Philip grips her in an icy dance. She rests against his arm, lets her eyes fall shut, sees Margi with her long hair streaming in the Egyptian sun, bludgeoning a crocodile with an oar. Oh, to be like that. Something presses against her mouth, forcing her lips apart: Bread, stale and hard. You must eat. She gags and swallows. Her eyelids turn red. The sun’s white light splinters the clouds, exposing the sky’s blue underbelly. She breathes it in, filling herself with light. A ray touches her cheek. Warmth. Her uncle relaxes his hold. “Queen Courage,” he calls her. “Like your sisters. Were you men, you four would rule the world.”
This she knows. Charles could not muster an army for this campaign. Beatrice recruited the men of Provence, men who hate Charles but love money, and men from Flanders and Anjou. Her father’s daughter, she lured them with promises. To the Provençal nobles she offered lands in Sicily; to the Marseille merchants, commerce; to the rest, booty by the trunkfuls. “We will all be rich,” she said. If they can conquer Manfred. If they can recapture Rome for the pope. They will be rich and she will be queen, with as much power as a woman can wield.
Next Christmas, she will sit at the head table with Eléonore and Margi. The year after that, who knows? They might bow to her. “I will make you a greater queen than they,” Charles said. He dreams of an empire, stretching across the Mediterranean into Outremer. She will be empress of all, omnipotent. Then Charles may agree, at last, to award Tarascon to Margi. Provence will be as nothing to them, while, to Margi, it is the only home th
ere is. Giving it up would be a small price for the esteem of the sister she loves best.
WHEN YOU ARE being queened in a strange land, you peer into your audience as if seeking your reflection in a pool but find only dazed and curious stares, as if they were fish looking back at you. Their shouts of acclaim, rendered in their foreign tongue, swirl like snowflakes to land on your head and shoulders and then disappear. You walk into St. Peter’s Basilica with all the majesty you can muster, uncertain of each next step, as if you were an actor playing a spontaneous part, although you have rehearsed this moment in your mind many times. A chorus of monks pours music over the opulents—the cardinals, now gilded with song; the bishops and archbishops, tunefully illuminated; the velvets of the nobles, alight with melody—singing up majesty, singing up reverence, singing up gold in the shape of a crown ornamented with a lifetime of dreams.
“Smile, my queen,” Charles murmurs to Beatrice as they sit beside each other in their fur-lined robes, their cloth of gold, their unadorned arms and throats—for Beatrice has sold her jewels to pay their army—their conspicuous, soon-to-be-crowned heads rained upon with Roman love. These people are not even their subjects, no more than ten of them Sicilian if the truth be told, yet they exult as if Charles were the Christ and she were the Virgin Mother, and this were the second coming. They lay flowers at Beatrice’s feet, shout accolades, blow kisses, embrace one another. “Your bewilderment is showing. People seek confidence in their leaders, not confusion.”
“But why are they cheering so? We are not going to be King and Queen of Rome.”
“They enjoy the fête, these Romans. Decadent to the bone. Our celebration will last three days, so of course they love us. Plus, they hate Manfred.”
And no wonder, for the Stupor Mundi’s bastard son has proved shockingly ruthless, first trying to poison his young nephew Conradin, the rightful heir to Frederick’s throne, and then, after failing at that murder, declaring the boy dead anyway and crowning himself King of Germany and Sicily. When the pope excommunicated him, he invaded Rome.
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