Princess Of France (The Queen's Pawn Book 2)

by Christy English

  But a cheer rose from the crowd when he touched me. This was better drama than they ever got to see at court. They were all so jaded that they could not have simulated love even if their lives depended on it.

  As they watched us, my brother’s courtiers drank in the sight of our love and pain as a drunkard takes in wine. I could feel their hunger as they looked at us, their thousand eyes pulling on me, though I would not raise my head. I kept my eyes down, on his face, so that I saw only him.

  Jean Pierre sat his horse, his pride rolling off him as waves onto an empty shore. He smiled at me, and I saw that he would not turn from his path, as if there were no other. In that moment, my sorrow at the loss of him and my pain to come faded, and I could see him just as he was, the man who loved me, the sunlight on his hair, and the pride of his house clear from the way he held himself erect on his borrowed horse, as if he were a prince himself. Though I knew his folly, I was proud of him.

  He raised his hand to me and lowered his halberd for his ride around the ring. The crowd called to him, casting down flowers, all thought of his foolish behavior in the great hall forgotten. For my brother’s court would forgive anything, even bad manners, if a good show was offered in its place.

  Jean Pierre offered them a show in earnest as he rode around the tiltyard, waving to the crowd who cheered him. Even my brother’s eyes had softened, and he relaxed against his heavy gilt chair, ready to take in the sport of the day for what it was, a bit of foolishness that would not last, all thought of challenge and dishonor forgotten.

  I alone did not forget as I watched my lover ride toward his death. I looked on as one who has already died, who has seen all the sins of the world, and sits idle as they pass, for she can do nothing. All possibility of action fled, and the river of death dividing her from all she once could touch.

  It was from this distant place that I watched Jean Pierre ride against the hulking Roland, a man whose horse alone was large enough to defeat an army. I watched as they made several courteous passes, no one scoring a point on the other, both enjoying the day and the warmth of the crowd.

  So, it came suddenly, as a surprise to all but me when Roland’s great lance broke off on his third pass, lodging in Jean Pierre’s side. My lover fell from his borrowed horse, and the crowd was silent. The only sound was of a lone woman, screaming.

  I heard this screaming, and I wondered, who would have the effrontery to behave so in my brother’s presence? For he was king and such unseemly behavior was better left to peasants, and those who tend the fields.

  It was then I felt my husband’s hands on me, grasping my arms, drawing me from the sight of Jean Pierre bleeding in the dust. I found myself standing in the shade then, in the dark gloom of the castle keep. William and I stood by the door that led back out into the sunshine. I could see the dust of the tiltyard from where we stood. I could hear the people milling about, shouted orders, and whinnying horses, the sounds of the chaos that come after a battle.

  The woman had stopped screaming, and still I felt as if I stood on the other side of the river Styx, as pagans had believed in the old myths, as if I was removed from the living and would always be so, that there was nothing that would ever take me back.

  Then they brought him in, and my pain came back. My foreknowledge drained away, and there was only myself, and my bleeding lover, the long wooden stake still stuck through his heart.

  I knelt beside him, pulling in vain at the wooden lance. I could feel then that it would not be moved, that to do so would kill him quickly, and that he did not yet want to die. His blood was all over his gauntlets and his cuirass. When he touched me, his gloves were caked in dust and blood. I could not remove them to touch his hands. I saw that my attempt pained him, so I stopped and instead bent over him, for he was trying to speak.

  “Be happy, love.”

  I thought perhaps his mind was wandering, that he had already begun to cross beyond the veil. I said a quick Act of Contrition for him, for there was no priest nearby to give him the last rites, only courtiers with a sporting interest in my lover’s death.

  Jean Pierre heard me and squeezed my hand when the Act of Contrition was done. He smiled at me, blood caked in his teeth and in his hair, for they had drawn his halberd off when they had brought him to me.

  I kissed him, blood and all. I could taste his blood on my lips when I pulled away. I held his hand, still warm in his leather glove. Only his blue eyes were the same as he looked up at me. I was reminded of the time we had stood together by the river near my husband’s house, before he left for the Holy Land, the day when we had both thought that we would never see each other again.

  Here we were again, beside another river. But this time, I clutched him as if the strength of my love might hold him, as if my tears might bring God to pity.

  But I knew that God had nothing to do with the love I bore this man. This affair was adultery and an affront to God. I prayed as I sat there, my silk gown trailing in the dust, covered in my lover’s blood, that God might spare him the burden of that sin, and place it all on me.

  I was thinking these things, turning to the Holy Mother, that in Her infinite compassion, She might move God to hear my prayer. It was then that Jean Pierre’s breath began to rattle, and I left off praying and clutched his hand.

  Jean Pierre still smiled at me, though it was clear he was in pain and had made ready to cross into the next world. His hand felt strong on mine, as if he had never been wounded. “I love you. Do not grieve. Whatever we have between us, let it go, and be happy.”

  He was slow to speak. I could see that the light in his eyes was beginning to fade, that soon he would be on the other shore, and far from me. I wept and kissed him, telling him of my own love, of how I would always carry him with me, of how I would always pray for him.

  I am not sure if he heard me. He drew his last breath and was gone. I sat in silence beside him a long while, my tears stopped. I held his hand in both of mine, able to draw his glove off now that it could no longer hurt him. His hand was blunt and wide, but tapered along the fingers, with square-cut nails and calluses along his palms.

  I held his hand until the priest came to shrive him, but it was too late. His soul had flown already.

  20

  My Husband’s House

  Little else was required of me. I sat with his body and would not leave it, even as the women washed him and bound him for burial. I watched as they did all this, not raising a finger myself, for it was not my place. Whatever else I was, and whatever I had become, I was a princess of France.

  William kept others away, so that I sat alone as the servants attended him, until even they withdrew. I thought to kneel and pray for his soul, but I knew the state of my own, and how deep in sin I was steeped. No prayers of mine could help him.

  So, I simply sat beside him, my hand touching his where it lay beneath the wrappings. I sat with him until his sister came to take him home and bury him, a married woman from the country, a woman who had never seen me before that day and looked as if she would be pleased never to see me again.

  She had no interest in greeting her brother’s lover, the notorious woman who had kept him from marrying, the princess who had simply added Jean Pierre to the long chain of immorality that she had forged since she was young, the harlot who had caused his death. This woman looked at me with scorn that she did little to conceal.

  I rose when she came in and stepped aside to give her pride of place. She took in her brother’s body wrapped in its linen shroud and knelt immediately on the prie dieu beside him. She did not hesitate to kneel in prayer, for she had no sin on her conscience as I did.

  As she knelt in the silence of that room, her rosary between her hands, I knew that she blamed me for his death. As I took in my lover’s face for the last time, I knew that she was right. I would have to live with that knowledge every day for the rest of my life and beyond, into Paradise.

  I would not have been able to walk out of that room, I might be stand
ing there still, if my husband had not come to take my hand and lead me like a child to bed. I did not sleep, and neither did he.

  William sat beside me all that night, next to the cold bed where before I had refused to let my lover touch me. My husband’s face seemed aged for the first time in sorrow, as he kept the rush light always lit, simply holding my hand.

  We left the next day. I stayed in Paris just long enough to watch the cart bearing Jean Pierre’s body sway out of the cobbled courtyard of the palace and down the road toward Valois. His sister was his last living relative and would bear his body to the family crypt. He was the last male of their line, and now the name of that house would fall to another.

  I did not weep as I watched her drive away, nor did she. This Mathilde was of an old family, which had gone down into the dust. I saw in her that she had been raised in the precepts of my childhood, devotion to duty, silence in misery, eyes always front, face blank, all emotion and its expression subdued beneath the iron mask of obedience. I watched her ride away and saw as she passed that her face was inscrutable, and it seemed impious for me to weep when she did not.

  So, I too stood in silence, until even the dust of the road had settled in the wake of their passing. I stayed there, the sun high and hot on my head, until William took my arm and drew me toward the barge. We would leave with the tide.

  My brother did not come to see us off, but his current favorite came and presented me with Jean Pierre’s sword. It was wrapped in layers of silk and lay in its scabbard, its handle worn from use. I saw that it had a jeweled hilt, and I wondered that Jean Pierre who loved all things simple and elegant, would have carried a jeweled sword. I realized later that he must have won it in the Levant. I, being his lover, had never seen it. There had never been any talk of war between us.

  I stared at this sword, uncertain what I was to do with it. I did not want to touch it, for to do so would make it real. As it was, it seemed to have nothing to do with the Jean Pierre that I had known.

  It was William who took it from the young man’s hands. He smiled at the boy and thanked him, wrapping my lover’s sword once more in the cloth. I think he made a pretty speech, for the boy seemed satisfied when he bowed and went back to the quayside.

  I had turned my thoughts from the sword altogether, watching the brown water of the river sliding by, focusing on it instead of my pain. William leaned down and spoke low in my ear. “I will keep it for his son.”

  These words blindsided me, breaking through my numbness as if I had been stabbed through the heart. For a moment I could not catch my breath. The world darkened at the edges of my vision.

  Marie Helene saw me falter, and she came to my side, helping me to sit, hiding me from prying eyes behind a hanging tapestry. My vision returned quickly, and my daughter’s nurse brought me a glass of watered wine.

  I sipped it slowly, grateful for their care, when I was the least deserving person on the face of God’s earth. Marie Helene said nothing but left my son and daughter in the care of their nurses. The children stayed at the back of the barge, watching the rowers as they worked, casting long glances at me. They had never before seen me weep, and now they waited to see if I might do so again.

  Marie Helene sat beside me all the way downriver, until we came in sight of Rouen. Something about the cathedral comforted me, as I watched its old towers rise against the sky in the distance. I had heard that they thought to build one in the new Gothic style, as the cathedral my father had begun to honor Our Lady in Paris. I would always love the old cathedral at Rouen, though. It was the last place I saw Richard, and Eleanor.

  The memory of that old pain comforted me, for it was dull with time. I had gone beyond it and found joy. As I sat in that barge, Marie Helene beside me, I did not know if I would ever feel joy again, but I seemed to see the promise of a future in the heights of the old cathedral. It was a promise I would have to take on faith, after much prayer. I had a great many things to beg forgiveness for.

  As we approached the city, the river drawing us ever closer to the distant sea, my children began to venture forward. They came first to sit near William, to listen to his stories of valiant knights who fought wars and slew dragons. I, of course, could not listen to this, so I did not hear when the stories ended. I felt it only when my little girl came to sit beside me, Marie Helene giving her place. Marie took my hand in both of her little ones and leaned against me, as if she might give me her strength.

  Jean came then, and I almost could not look at him, so much of his father did I see in him, so much that it almost overwhelmed me. His eyes were the blue of some distant ocean, clear and far seeing, as his father’s had been. Without displacing my daughter, I took my son into my arms, letting him sit on my lap, while Marie leaned into my side. I no longer had to look into Jean’s eyes but could gaze down on the soft curls of his blond hair, where his father and I had blended together as nowhere else on earth. My children and I sat that way until we docked at the Abbey of St. Guillaume, the haven my husband’s family had built, where the most pious of them were buried.

  I sat with my children that night as they fell asleep. I had never done so before, and I could see from their faces that they did not know what to make of it. I think at first Marie believed that she might be dying too, but Marie Helene whispered only that I needed to be close to them that night. My daughter’s face cleared of fear and filled with compassion. Her sympathy was almost my undoing, but I did not weep when she took my hand and told me very solemnly that I must not be sad, for I would see Uncle Jean again in Paradise.

  I kissed her and thanked her and helped her climb into the bed that she and Marie Helene shared, a giant, gaping bed that was far too big for either of them.

  I sat with Marie until she slept, taking Marie Helene’s hand over my daughter’s sleeping figure as I stood to go. I kissed Jean where he lay in his trundle, his nurse keeping watch beside him. She sat up all night in her great wooden chair, guarding him as if he were a prince in a German folk tale, a prince that someone might steal in the night, so valuable was he. I kissed him, and I kissed her, for guarding him so well when I could not.

  When I left my children, I thought to go to the chapel to pray, but the old abbot knew me well and judged me harshly as he should. I could not make my confession to him. So, I returned to the abbot’s rooms, the ones he had vacated for my husband.

  William was waiting there, his face drawn as he gazed into the fire. We had not spoken much since Jean Pierre had died. As I stood in the doorway, I wondered at how little there was to say.

  He did not speak but came to me where I stood under the lintel, neither in the room nor in the hall. He drew me inside and shut the door behind me to keep out the draft and the prying eyes of the abbey servants that were everywhere. He did not speak even then but drew me close to the brazier. He set me down by the fire, bringing a great wool blanket from the bed, for he knew that I would never sleep there again.

  He sat beside me, his chair drawn up close, and he held my hand as I had held Marie’s. We did not speak all that night.

  I sat, gazing into the fire, wishing for the impossible, for one more day to show Jean Pierre my love for him, for one more hour to sit by the fire with him, to hear him speak, to hold his hand, as William was holding mine. I could not pray, for I had not yet confessed, so I sat in silence without even the comfort of God.

  But William was there, standing between me and the dark. I did not sleep that night, and neither did he. He stayed awake with me and kept watch until dawn crept in at the windows, turning the darkness of the night to a cold, unrelieved gray.

  My life was gray for many days, though I spent a great deal of time with my children, smiling for them to keep them from worrying, though Marie worried anyway. She was five years old by then, and a little lady as I had never been. She took pleasure at stabbing at her embroidery frame, patiently stitching, even though most of her stitches had to be drawn out just as patiently, so that she could begin again, always in the ho
pe that she would make something recognizable with all of her labors.

  We had been home some weeks when the flowers from Eleanor arrived. I was sitting in the kitchen garden with my children. Marie was embroidering under the watchful eye of Marie Helene, and William sat nearby, keeping Jean out of the herbs.

  I sat on a bench, my face to the sun. The kitchen garden was the only walled garden on the grounds, and it was the only place I felt safe since Jean Pierre’s death. I knew that my fear was based on nothing, and I knew also that it would pass with time, as all things do, even grief.

  Spring had come again, and the scent of the warm summer to come rose from the river and drifted over my husband’s lands like a blessing. It had been an easy winter, in spite of my personal pain. The harvest had been good, and no one had died on my husband’s lands all that cold season.

  Jean ran between the neat rows of plants, always careful not to step on them. He was afraid to upset me, as both my children were now. They had watched me all winter with wide eyes, waiting to see if I might cry. I never wept in front of them, and I often smiled, but they knew me better than they had any right to.

  So, we were sitting as a family in the sun when Maisie brought the great basket out into the kitchen garden, a huge smile on her face. My first thought was that my roses down by the river had been raided, then I saw the brilliant colors, the deep red that I could not coax into growing in my own garden. I stood and crossed to Maisie before she could come any further, and I reached into her basket. It was filled with roses that had no thorns.

  I took one and lifted it to my cheek, the softness and the scent of it taking me back to the moment Richard had first given one to me, so many years ago, when I was still young enough to think that God would give me a man to love, and let me keep him.