Four Sisters, All Queens (35 page)

“Yes,” she says to Isabelle, “your papa is very ill.”

“Will you become ill, too?”

“Do I appear ill?” She gives a little laugh, tickles her daughter to make her laugh, too. “Do not worry yourself, Isabelle. Your papa will not infect me.”

“Or me? Will I get his sickness?”

“Absolutely not.” Marguerite caresses Isabelle’s fine, dark hair and contemplates Blanche. She has inflicted her son with her madness, but she will not affect these children.

“Do not worry, my darling.” She kisses her daughter’s cheeks, holds her sleeping son a bit more closely. “Nothing will harm you. Mama will see to that.”

A
HAND ON
her shoulder awakens her. Gisele hovers like a spirit in her white nightgown, a burning candle in one hand and Marguerite’s gown in the other. “You are summoned to the king’s chambers, my lady. Hurry!”

And then she is running from her room, her gown thrown on but not tied, her bare feet slapping on the floor, racing death. But the tall shadow of the priest thrown against the wall, the soft hiccuping sobs of the maids, and the cover laid across her husband’s face tell her that she is too late, that she has lost the contest. She
stands over Louis’s bed looking down at his body which can redeem him no more. His soul is on its own.

Thank God I gave him an heir.
With a son to rear for the throne, she remains France’s queen, and may even rule as Blanche did until young Louis comes of age. Otherwise, she would be sent home with empty hands. Louis never endowed her with a single castle, and her dowry was never awarded. She has nothing except her children to call her own.

Blanche’s cry cracks like a limb snapping off a tree as she throws herself into the room and, shoving Marguerite aside, onto Louis’s bed. “My love,” she shouts. “My darling, do not leave me. Come back to me, Louis. Every man I love, taken from me! Oh, why is the Lord so cruel?”

As she sobs, prostrate over his body, she inadvertently pulls the cover off his face—and his eyes open. Gisele gasps and grabs Marguerite’s arm. Blanche continues to sob, her face pressed against his stomach. His lips move. “The cross,” he rasps.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Tears stream down Gisele’s face. “It is a miracle.”

“The cross,” he says again, more loudly. Blanche sits up, looks at him, and faints to the floor. “Father, give the cross to me.”

Marguerite stares, enthralled, at the gentle confessor, Geoffrey of Beaulieu—Louis’s other flogger—as he removes the crude wooden cross from the wall and hands it to Louis. Louis brings it to his lips as, beside the bed, Blanche’s ladies revive her.

“I am going, Father,” Louis says. “To the Holy Land, to fight for Jerusalem. Praise the Lord for calling me back.”

Blanche struggles to her feet. Her face is nearly as white as if she were wearing her makeup. She stares down at Louis with eyes so red from weeping that they seem to glow in the candlelight. “You are going nowhere,” she says. “You are delirious.”

“God has given me a new life this day, Mama.” He sits up in bed. His voice rings with an authority Marguerite has never heard. “And I am going to use it for his glory.”

“You have a kingdom to rule.” Blanche’s tone is pleading. “You don’t know what you are saying. You cannot go!”

“Summon the barons, Mama. Send for Joinville.” Marguerite’s gaze careens about like a startled bird, smashing against the windows. “We must notify the pope of Rome, and begin making preparations.”

The room is abuzz with chatter. Giselle shushes two bickering chambermaids, each blaming the other for covering the king before he was dead. Louis sends out messengers to announce his decision to take the cross. Blanche pleads with him to reconsider. And all the while, the priest chants, in Latin, a prayer of thanksgiving. Standing in the middle of it all, Marguerite has stopped waiting for Louis to acknowledge her and has started waiting for something—someone—else altogether.

Joinville is coming back.

“Summon the tailor Antoine,” she says to Gisele as they walk back to her chambers. “I’m going to the chapel to give thanks for this miracle—and then I wish to celebrate in a new gown.”

Beatrice

The Rules of the Game

Aix-en-Provence, 1245

Fourteen years old

M
AMA HAS BEEN
reading her letter for a long time. She stands beside one of the Tower windows, squinting at the parchment in her hands, her eyes moving over the words from left to right, top to bottom, then returning to the top to start again. Beatrice, huddled in furs against the Tower’s chill, watches from her chair as the frown on her mother’s face deepens, sees emotions flicker like shadows from a cloud-strewn sky: Confusion. Disbelief. Dismay. Anger. Resignation. She peers out onto the roil and clash of the men at their feet.

“My God,” she says. “I have made an enormous mistake.”

Beatrice braces herself for more bad news, the only kind she has heard in the months since Papa died—three
months and two days, according to her marks on the Tower wall since the day the Aragonese began battering their gates and shooting fire into the palace windows. The knights of Provence have fended off the attackers thus far, being skilled at resisting siege after years of battling Toulouse. But the Emperor Frederick, blocked from landing in Provence, leads one thousand men overland, coming for her. In a panic, Mama appealed to the pope of Rome for aid. For three months and two days they have waited for his army. Judging from Mama’s stricken face, Pope Innocent has not responded as they had hoped.

“We must comply, Beatrice.” Mama moves over to sit beside her. Her expression is grave; trouble clouds her eyes. “The pope has declared that you will marry.”

“No!” She jumps to her feet and walks to the window, sees Alfonso of Aragon with his knights trying to light a fire under the fortress wall, as bumbling as jongleurs—but no one is laughing. “Not a man down there is worthy of me,” she says.

Mama’s laugh is dry. “Pope Innocent seems to agree.”

She turns to her mother. “He has chosen someone else?” Her mother avoids her stare. “Not the emperor’s son!”

“Heavens, no. His Grace aims to defeat Frederick, not to enhance him.”

“Who, then? Tell me!” She snatches the letter from Mama’s hand.
As brother to the French king, Charles of Anjou will be amply equipped to keep Provence out of Frederick’s control.

Charles of Anjou. The beaked nose; the sardonic wit; the braggadocio of the youth in the garden come rushing back to her. Her heart begins to thump.

“That strutting rooster? He crows more loudly than the rest, but can he fly? That’s the only way he’ll reach me here.” Her blanket falls to the floor as she looks out the window again, to the north. To Paris.

“He is the worst possible choice for you, and for Provence.” Mama pats the seat beside her and Beatrice settles herself into it. Her mother takes her hand. “My poor darling, please forgive me! Charles is his mother’s baby, a spoiled and selfish young man. At your sister’s wedding I heard him boast that he will become the King of France someday.”

“What treason!” Beatrice cannot help her grin. Charles is so far removed from the throne that a half-dozen men and boys would have to die before he could claim it. “What ambition,” she says.

Noting the breathless edge in her voice, her mother slaps her hand. “Arrogance may excite from a distance, but, like the shark, it turns ugly when viewed up close. Charles would exploit you, and our land, to gratify his desires.”

Beatrice pulls away from her mother and moves to the window again. Is that dust rising from the northern hills?

“He knows nothing of Provence,” Mama says. She could teach him, Beatrice thinks. “He cares nothing about family, not his own and certainly not yours.” She could influence him. “He desires only to compete with his brother.” She knows that feeling all too well. “He hungers for power.” She and Charles of Anjou, it seems, have much in common.

A knock startles them, loud and ringing. Mama’s handmaid ushers Romeo, rarely smiling these days, into the room. The emperor’s forces have swept through Marseille, he says. They took all the food in the city and one hundred horses, besides. “They have been given orders to kill every man on the field and every servant in our castle, if necessary, to reach our Beatrice.”

Beatrice rankles. When did she ever belong to Romeo? But her mother is shouting and pulling at her hair. “Where are the pope’s men? My God, why did I turn to him for help? Whose idea was that?”

Romeo glances at Beatrice, who is tempted to stick out her tongue. She doesn’t recall any suggestions from
him
that day. “It was Romeo’s plan,” she lies.

He smiles, but his eyes glint anger. She must look out the window again, or laugh. The day she marries Charles will be Romeo’s last day in this castle.

“Mama!” Beatrice grips the stone at the base of her tiny window. “Come quickly. Look!”

In the distance, dust clouds rise. Dark shapes crest the hills, then spill over the top like a dark river. “The emperor’s army,” her mother says. “God help us.”

“No,” Beatrice says. “See their flag?” Blue, with the fleur-de-lis: the flag of France.

“Just in time,” her mother breathes. “Thank the Lord.”

“Thank the pope,” Romeo says, eager to claim the idea now that it pleases his mistress. Beatrice laughs, drawing a dark look from him.