Four Sisters, All Queens (36 page)

She wants to jump about and clap her hands, but it would never do for Charles to hear of it. Instead, she smiles more and more broadly as the army approaches and as, below, the men of Aragon shout and scurry about like ants whose hill has been kicked.

L
ATER, WHEN HE
has smashed his axe against their heavy door and sent it crashing to the floor; when he has flung the shrieking Beatrice over his shoulder, men slashing their swords all around them; when he has ridden off with her on his galloping horse, his whoops of laughter making music with her own; when he has dragged her into his tent despite her feigned resistance and overwhelmed her with his passion; as she lies beside him, swirling her fingertips in the hair on his chest, he tells her how he outfoxed the other suitors as well as the castle guards without drawing a drop of blood.

“I would have killed for you, my darling,” he says, “but the pope forbade it. And he is the man to please these days. He has the ear of God and the testicles of the emperor, and the keys to our future.”

But how did he do it? Beatrice smacks his chest, bringing him back to her. How did he get through all those men?

Charles flares his magnificent nostrils. “I told them that your mother had appealed to the pope, and that he had sent me to organize a series of contests. The winner, I said, would take you home as his prize.” As his men filtered among the competitors, explaining the “rules” of the games, Charles called to the Provençal knights inside the castle walls and invited them to compete for Beatrice, as well. “When they came out, I went in.”

“All those men, competing for my hand! Why didn’t you vie against them? Afraid you might lose, I warrant.”

“I don’t ‘vie’ for anything, my queen.” He rolls on top of her and pins her wrists to the ground, making her gasp. “When I want something, I take it. And the moment you knocked my pal Guillaume to the ground, I knew that I wanted you.”

Sanchia

A Countess to Make Me Proud

Wallingford, 1246

Eighteen years old

H
AVING A CHILD
is such hard work, and so painful. But feel the soft warmth of her babe in her arms! And see the delight on Richard’s face. He tickles their little son’s chin, but Sanchia is the one who laughs at his crossed eyes and his gurgling baby talk. He is not supposed to be in the birthing chambers during her lying-in period, but neither custom nor the Church can stop him from fulfilling his desires.

“He resembles me more every hour, doesn’t he?” He does, with that high forehead and honey-colored hair. Yet Sanchia sees something of herself, too, in his delicate nose, tilting slightly to the left, and his lips like a bow.

The babe opens his mouth and belches.

“Indeed, the resemblance is very strong,” Sanchia teases, as Richard’s eyes meet hers. She kisses his cheek. He slips his arm around her shoulder, pulling her in more closely. The cat in her lap, a gift from Richard, begins to purr.

“You have made me very happy.” He chuckles. “The curse is lifted.”

“Richard! There was no curse. The Lord does not work that
way.” Justine has told her many times how Isabel Marshall died in childbirth. Four babies, and only one of them lived, which must have made for constant sorrow in this house.

Sorrow has been her dinner, her supper, and her pillow to sleep on since coming to Wallingford, the castle he built for Isabel with the great nursery never filled. Yet she had rejoiced to leave Berkhamsted, where his Jew Abraham’s new wife stole Richard’s every glance. Sanchia feared his heart might follow. He had already lost interest in her. She couldn’t convince Eléonore to allow him to keep Gascony, and she couldn’t convince Beatrice to pay him the five thousand marks in dowry that Papa had promised. “My sisters do not listen to me,” she had told him, but he didn’t listen, either. When he realized the truth, he stopped talking to her, too.

Then the Jewess Floria arrived in her tight gowns and her shining black hair, causing Richard to light up like a sparked tinder whenever she appeared. “Flor-r-r-r-ia,” he would say, trilling the “r” in the way of a nightingale, his eyes caressing her as if she were made of gold. In bed with Sanchia, he closed his eyes and murmured the Jewess’s name, making her cry, which he hated.

Tension grew and stretched at Berkhamsted, quivering like a cord pulled too tightly before it snaps. Then some small thing would upset him: Sanchia had forgotten, again, to order his brandy. (“Between getting out of bed in the morning and keeping my brandy stocked, you are obviously overwhelmed with duties.”) Or he found her cat sleeping on his pillow again. (“At least someone in this household desires to share my bed.”) Each insult made a tiny hole in her heart that can never be repaired.

She always tried not to cry, but she always failed, and Richard’s sarcasms would turn to mockery and sometimes worse. Then, his temper exhausted, he became contrite. Floria forgotten, he would cater only to Sanchia, giving her jewels and gowns and delicious wines from Toulouse and sitting her in his lap the way he did when they first got married. Soon, however, his eyes would turn to Floria again, and Abraham would glare at Sanchia as if she were the cause of it all.

The baby opens his eyes—destined to be brown, although they are innocent blue now—and roots at her breast. She calls for the wet nurse, but Justine comes in, instead.

“I’ll take him to her, my lady,” she says, as respectful as can be now that Sanchia has had a child. “You must rest for your big day tomorrow.”

The day will be big indeed. At last Sanchia will claim her rightful place by her husband’s side. Her churching ceremony will show all of England that she, not Isabel Marshall, is the Countess of Cornwall now. She imagines herself on Richard’s arm, moving from guest to guest, welcoming England’s barons and best knights to her home. He is proud of her at last. “I had my doubts when first we married,” he will say, “but I was wrong. She was only a girl then. But look at her now! She has become a countess to make me proud.”

A countess to make him proud. Sanchia dresses the part the next morning, with Justine pulling and tucking and tightening and tying, and laying a net of diamonds over Sanchia’s curls. She looks as if she had dipped her head in stars. “You will be the most elegant and refined woman there. Perhaps then the tongues will cease their wagging,” Justine says.

“Tongues are wagging? About me?”

“Aren’t you one of the famous sisters of Savoy? Aren’t you married to the richest man in England? Everyone is talking about you, especially today, for you have given the count a real son.”

Sanchia’s laugh is uncertain. “A real son? Is there any other kind?”

Justine’s pressed lips make a thin line in her fleshy face.

All of England, it seems, comes for the ceremony. She stands at the cathedral door with Marguerite, Eléonore, and Justine, unable to enter for all the onlookers stretching their necks the wrong way for a glimpse of her.

“Is the pope of Rome attending, too?” Marguerite says. “I did not have so large an audience at
my
churching.”

“Everyone loves Sanchia,” Eléonore says.

She moves through the ceremony as if in a dream. On her knees before the altar of the Virgin Mary, she gives thanks for her splendid life, which she does not deserve, and for the love of her sisters who have traveled from afar to honor her. Richard’s gaze warms her like a lover’s breath although she thinks he does not love her—not yet. Now that she has borne his son, though, his feelings seem to be changing. For that she gives thanks, too.

After the service, she and her sisters cross to the field where today’s tournament will take place—the first tournament Sanchia has ever seen.

“I brought Joinville to fight as my champion,” Marguerite says. Her eyes hold a soft glow, like candlelight. “Wait until your English knights test his mettle! They will discover why France’s army is the most fearsome in the land.”

Sanchia smiles in spite of her dread. She has heard tales of blood and gore at these games, even of death. Their father never allowed jousts in Provence: “War is neither a game nor a spectacle,” he said. King Henry has forbidden them, and Richard hates them—but neither could refuse the French challenge to a contest.

She sits on the high dais beside the jousting field with her sisters, not a queen as they are but feeling like one, drinking wine from bejeweled cups and admiring the knights in their hauberks, plate armor, leather helmets, and shields bearing colorful coats of arms. “Beauty!” someone cries. “Beauty, these are for you!” A bouquet of red roses sails through the air but Margi’s handsome knight, standing just below, catches it in his gloved hands before presenting it to her.

“There, sister—Joinville has saved you from the thorns’ prick,” Eléonore cries.

“Now watch him prick the English vassals with his lance,” says Marguerite.

On the field, Richard and King Henry vie with the archers to split a tree branch with their arrows. The muscles ripple in Richard’s back and arms as he draws the arrow back in the stiff longbow—but he cannot quite make the full draw, and the arrow
falls short of the mark. He grins as King Henry slaps him on the back, but his face flushes a dark red. When Henry shoots the arrow true, Richard glances around as if to see who is watching—and frowns at Sanchia as though she had caused him to miss. She hopes she will not be made to pay for his humiliation. She takes a drink from her goblet and the flutters in her stomach subside.

“Any news from the boy king in Edinburgh?” Marguerite asks Eléonore.