Four Sisters, All Queens (65 page)

“Simon de Montfort is coming to London,” their chancellor,
Robert Walerand, says. “Stories have spread about all the blood he has spilled. The people are terrified.”

“And so they chant his name?” Eléonore says.

“Simon and the Marchers have attacked castles held by your kin, my lady,” Richard says. The Lusignans are gone, but Simon wants revenge against her, as well. Already she has lost family members, incuding Uncle Boniface, who fled to France with a number of her cousins. “The Londoners fear he’ll punish them for supporting the Crown.”

“Simon has no authority for punishing,” Henry says. “I am still the king.”

“He sent a letter,” Walerand says. “He demands the city’s aldermen honor their vows to support the Oxford provisions.”

“They took those vows under duress, virtually at sword point,” Eléonore says. “Yet Simon accuses us of being the oppressors. And now, Richard, I hear that your son Henry has been sent to Boulogne, to capture our John.” Although not an “alien,” John Maunsell fled across the channel, as well, under attack for his service to them and narrowly escaping with his life.

Richard’s face reddens. “My boy is still young. And he believes Simon’s talk about the people’s right to govern themselves.”

“It is a very good talk, I hear,” Henry says. “Simon has always possessed a gifted tongue.”

“Yes, and that is why young Henry will benefit from his time in the French prison,” Eléonore says. Richard’s mouth drops open. “It will do him good to spend some time away from Simon’s influence.”

“Prison!” Richard’s voice is gruff. “My boy? Oh, this is too much to bear.” He sits down, suddenly looking as old as his fifty-four years. Good: Let him suffer, as Sanchia suffered when he left her to die alone.

“We must end this battle.” Richard rakes his hands through his thinning hair. “You must negotiate, Henry. Not long ago the barons tried to overthrow our father, and we were almost vanquished by the French. England cannot withstand yet another war with itself.”

“Negotiate?” Eléonore snorts. “Because Simon marches about with a band of ruffians, smashing up castles? Edmund has secured Dover, and Edward holds Windsor.” She grins every time she thinks of Edward’s ride to the New Temple with his knights, pretending that he had come for the queen’s jewels. Once inside, he smashed and looted the barons’ boxes—Simon’s money and that of his supporters, thousands of marks in coin and treasure.

“Simon and his men are furious. They blame the queen.”

Eléonore laughs. She wishes she had suggested the Temple raid, but that act of genius and bravado was all Edward’s. Without his hotheaded friends—including Henry of Almain—to distract him, he is becoming quite the remarkable prince, bold and courageous and smart. He will make a fine king someday. Perhaps someday he will look into the mirror and recognize his mother’s influence.

“Simon’s talk against ‘aliens’ excites people,” Eléonore says. “Now the common man has someone to despise—besides the Jews.”

“Do not be so quick to laugh, my dear,” Henry says. “Have you heard their new demands? They want all English castles returned to native Englishmen.” He pulls a parchment from his robe and opens it, squinting to read Simon’s scribbled hand.

“And what of Leicester? Will Simon abandon it?”

“All aliens must be expelled from the kingdom forever, except those they permit to remain.”

“Oh, how absurd!” Eléonore paces the room, glances out the window at the sea of anguish below, at the poor Londoners who think the hypocrite Simon de Montfort will help them. “Henry, we have St. Pol and his men here, and they are exceedingly loyal to us.” St. Pol is a little in love with Eléonore, and would do anything to win her favor. At forty, she has not lost her allure.

“You favor an attack, I presume.” Henry’s eyes are wary.

“We silenced Simon before, but he returned. Now we must silence him again—permanently.”

Richard’s skin pales. He is thinking, she knows, of his son, locked in French prison. A supporter of Simon’s, he will not be released should war break out.

“Killing Simon would make a martyr of him,” Richard says. “He would become larger in death than he is in life.”

Henry sighs and rolls the parchment, then tucks it back into his robe. “Richard is right. We cannot kill Simon, and we cannot ignore him.” Noise surges from the crowd as if the people had heard him. “We have no choice but to talk with him.”

“Talk?” The fling of her hands sends a vase crashing to the floor. “Our sons are under attack, and you want to talk?”

“For their safety, yes.” Henry walks to the window, looks out at the roiling crowd.

“For God’s sake, Henry! We’ve had talks and arbitrations and rulings at the highest level, all in our favor. Simon is like a cur with its teeth in our throat, refusing to let go, afraid we might bite him back. I say: bite back!”

“He is my sister’s husband,” Henry says. “He was once our friend.”

“He is a traitor and our enemy. He must be stopped.”

“But he is a friend to King Louis,” Richard says. “If we harm him, we may harm our relations with France.”

“Always the conciliator, aren’t you, Richard? Especially when your son is in the enemy’s camp.”

His eyes cloud. “You, with your woman’s heart, should understand my desire to protect him.” That term again! As if women had only hearts, and no minds.

“When I have two sons under siege at this moment, fighting for their lives and for the future of England? My ‘woman’s heart’ tells me to fight for my sons, with my sons. And that is what I am going to do.” She snatches up the gown she has been embroidering—useless, stupid waste of time, sheer vanity—and glares in defiance at the man she has loved for nearly thirty years. His drooping eyelid twitches. His face has begun, in its old age, to sag. Where is she going? he asks.

“I am going to join Edward at Windsor. He needs support, Henry, not these endless vacillations. This is his kingdom, too. Come with me!” She holds out her hand to him. He does not take it.

“I am sending messengers to our sons today, instructing them to surrender their castles.”

“No, Henry!”

“This kingdom is sick. Dying, perhaps.”

“All because of Simon. Eliminate him, and you have eliminated the disease.”

“He is like the Medusa,” Richard says. “Cut off his head and two more will appear.”

“Utter nonsense, and I am sick of it!” She turns to Richard with an exasperated sigh. “You sound like a braying donkey with your predictions of doom. Simon de Montfort is no Medusa, but only an arrogant mortal, as easily killed as any other man.”

Richard gives Henry a wan smile. “Did I say she had a woman’s heart?”

“Yes, and I thank God for it,” Eléonore says. Their glances of commiseration tell her that Henry and Richard will not fight, that they are committed to conciliation. “Seeing, as I do now, the weak, trembling vessel that is the heart of man.”

“You do not have my permission to leave,” Henry growls.

“I do not recall asking for it,” she says, stepping toward the door.

“Are you defying my authority?”

“Apparently so, if you insist on capitulating to the rebels.”

“I insist that you respect my rule. I am your king, and I command you to remain here.”

“As your queen, I refuse. Simon wants the kingdom, Henry. He will not stop until he gains it. By God’s head, he will not do so under my rule.”

“I can stop you, if I so desire.”

She narrows her eyes at him, ready with a challenge—but then Richard steps in, ready to smooth over their quarrel with his usual flow of words.

“My lady, you would be ill advised to venture forth in this melee. You will not venture far should you be discovered. You might be captured or even killed.”

“I am aware of the risks.” She turns pleading eyes to Henry. “Relent, I beg you. Do not force me to this.”

“What will you do if you cannot reach Edward?”

“I shall return here. But I must try, Henry. As father to our sons, surely you must see that.”

“You will not be allowed back.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you leave against my wishes, I shall not allow you to return.”

Her steps clip briskly on the floor. She calls to Agnes, instructs her to pack their belongings and to call for her uncle Peter’s protégé Ebulo di Montibus. She needs a boat, she tells him. She needs a crew and additional knights, for protection. They will slip out a back door and into the boat, then row upstream to Windsor in hopes of reaching her son before Henry’s messengers do.

One hour later they are on the Thames, slipping silently behind the backs of the crowd beating at the Tower walls with clubs and irons and trying to set fire to it, as though the castle were under siege, as though Henry were not at this moment conceding to all their demands. She would never have believed it of him—but Richard has always been a coward, too timid to fight even in Outremer, a flaw he hides under conciliatory words like hands trying to smooth a puckered garment’s wrinkles. He talked those French knights out of the Saracens’ grip and made himself a hero without shedding a drop of blood. His aversion to battle is why he urges Henry to negotiate with the rebels. Not that he is incapable of passion; she knows, from Sanchia, that he reserves his attacks for those weaker than he.

He tried to diminish her, with his talk of a “woman’s heart.” But she has never considered herself weaker or less capable than men—and why should she, given the examples of manhood around her? Sanchia was worth one thousand Richards of Cornwall, yet he left her to die bereft of love or comfort. He never even mourned her death; according to rumor, he began giving away her belongings before she died. And then he did not attend her funeral service at
Hailes Abbey. Therein lies weakness. And he is the one to whom Henry listens.

Edward, on the other hand, is strong. Now that she and Henry have rid him of the Marchers, he has ceased his carousing and jousting and has turned, at last, to the task of defending the kingdom. He possesses none of Henry’s impulsivity, none of his petulance—but all of his determination and will, as well as the self-confidence that Eléonore has instilled. If she were a man, she would be Edward. Does that mean that she has the heart of a man? It draws her to her son now, to stand beside him and fight—whether he would want her with him or not.

Their little boat slices the water without a sound as they slide past the Londoners whose shouts bounce off the castle walls and box Eléonore’s ears.

“Send your Provençal trollop home!” a man shouts, then turns and sees the boat. “The Queen!” he screams. “She is trying to escape!” The hatred in his eyes—why? A flash of his hand and then she is struck, the stone smashed into her forehead.

Her hand flies up to touch the wound; blood covers her fingers and runs into her left eye. “Oh!” she says faintly as another stone flies past her head. Ebulo lunges for her, his mouth open as if to shout, then falls, struck. The protesters have abandoned the castle and now face the river, hurling insults as well as rocks, sticks, and mud. The captain cries a command to pull away from the shore and the ship moves into the center of the stream, out of range of the objects hurtling toward them.

But they will not avoid the onslaught once they reach London Bridge, where the crowd waits for the boat to pass under. A boy of no more than four years, held aloft by his father, hefts a stone the size of a dinner plate. Four women wearing prostitutes’ hoods shake their fists. Henry’s red-haired whore is among them, packing a ball of mud and narrowing her eyes at Eléonore.

“Sorceress!” she screams. “You have bewitched our good King Henry.”

“Down with foreigners,” others shout. “Aliens out of England. Save England for the English!”

Eléonore looks about for shelter—a blanket or a mantle, at least, with which to cover her head. Hamo Lestrange sneers from the bridge. He holds a boulder, large enough to sink a great hole in her boat, poised above the spot where they will soon pass.

“Guard the queen!” another knight cries. “Please, my lady, if you will lie down, we will cover you and prevent more harm to you.”

“Stop,” she says. “Turn the boat around.”

“I beg your pardon, my lady? Do you wish to return to the Tower?”

She recalls Henry’s warning, that she would not be allowed back. Send a messenger, she says. Tell Henry we are in danger and must return.

Ebulo, his head bandaged, insists on going. Eléonore balks. He will be discovered and killed. But he knows a hidden path, he says, and can swim to shore undetected. In a moment he is gone and, as he promised, the crowd does not notice the tiny ripple he makes, or his stealthy reemergence in the brush.

Waiting, Eléonore sits in the boat in the middle of the river and ponders the angry faces. The hatred in their eyes. The attacks, the cries against her, accusing her of seducing the king with her “woman’s tricks,” whatever those are. Are these the people whose kingdom she has worked so diligently to increase?

Ebulo pops up from the water and pulls himself into the boat. His bandage is brown from the dirty water, and red with his blood.

“The king,” he gasps, “said, ‘no.’”

No? Eléonore frowns.

“You may not return to the Tower. He has sealed off the entrances to you.”