The Sister Queens (6 page)

I begin to weep. “Lisette? My ladies?”

“Must go back to Provence.” Uncle Guillaume takes me by the shoulders and looks me squarely in the eye. “Marguerite, you are your mother’s daughter—clever, beautiful, patient. You are surprised, but you are
not
undone. You have a duty to yourself and to your family to make of this marriage what you can. We will not abandon you. While you may be alone at Paris for now, your family will support your position in every possible manner.”

I dry my eyes on my sleeve. Uncle Guillaume is right. I am Queen of France, and that is nothing to weep over. And I am not alone; I am astonished that my uncle even used the term. I have Louis—handsome, gallant Louis. What is the loss of a childhood nurse or even separation from my uncles in comparison to this?

WE ARRIVE IN THE GREAT CITY
of Paris on the ninth of June. I do not exaggerate when I use that appellation. Never could I have imagined such a place! It teems with people. Louis tells me quite offhandedly that he believes there are more than one hundred fifty thousand souls living within the walls. And the streets are paved! At least those we travel. Louis assures me the rest will follow as he is continuing the work of his grandfather in that vein. Throngs of people line the streets. So many flowers are thrown at me or offered me that the arms of my ladies—no, they are not
my
ladies I remind
myself—the arms of the ladies given me are filled with blooms. We ride directly to the Palais du Roi, which sits on an island in the middle of the Seine. It is so large, I wonder how long it will take me to learn my way about.

“Come,” Louis says, handing me down from my horse. “I will show you your apartment.” We enter the palace and, moving along the ground floor, come to a goodly sized hall with views of an enclosed garden. I notice that the roses are beginning to bloom. “This shall be yours. And through here”—my husband opens a door as he speaks—“are your withdrawing chamber and your bedchamber.” Yolande of Dreux, wife of the Duke of Burgundy and now a member of my household, moves forward to throw open the shutters, revealing a beautifully furnished withdrawing chamber of charming proportion.

“And what of your bedchamber, Louis?” My husband seems uncomfortable, and I realize with embarrassment that I have addressed him by his Christian name in front of Lady Yolande. The lady, perhaps conscious of it as well, retreats to my hall, drawing the door shut behind her to keep the other members of my household from intruding.

I have never seen Louis blush. “My rooms are in the north wing of the palace where they have always been.” Then seeing my confusion, he continues. “The rooms en suite to mine would have afforded you no view and no access to the gardens. Besides, I have much business of state to attend to, and my mother fears you will distract me.”

“Do I? Do I distract you, Louis?” I do not mean the words to be provocative, but at less than two weeks married, Louis is easily excited, as I learned along our journey home.

“Indeed, Marguerite, but most pleasantly.” He moves forward
and takes me into his arms, kissing the side of my neck. “Do not be angry with me, little queen,” he pleads.

“Never, Louis.” I can feel his member swollen beneath his tunic, and my hand moves confidently down to touch the bulge. I am no longer the little girl I was a fortnight ago. My husband moans with desire and then, grabbing my hand, pulls me through the door to my new bedchamber. Without turning back the covers, he pushes me onto the bed and, grasping the hem of my skirts, lifts them above my hips to reveal my nakedness. Still half sitting, I eagerly help him lift his own tunic and draw down his hose and braies. Unlike the night he took my virginity, I no longer look away but watch with fascination as he disappears inside me. My body, though still tight, offers no resistance but rather flows warm and wet around him. There is no longer any pain involved, only pleasure as my mother promised. I kiss my husband’s face, his ears, his neck.

The urgency of Louis’s need for me makes our coupling brief. After a few-dozen swift hard strokes, penetrations that pin me to the bed with their force and leave me gasping for air, Louis closes his eyes and pulls his head up and back in that peculiar way I now recognize. A moment later he makes a strangled cry and, jerking as a rabbit caught in a snare, spills his seed into me. We lie quietly for a few moments, both content, and then a knock sounds on the withdrawing chamber door.

“Yes,” Louis calls out in obvious displeasure, withdrawing his now-shrunken member from me.

The voice of some unidentifiable attendant comes back across the length of the two rooms separating us from the door. “Your Majesty, the Dowager Queen would see you in her chambers if you are finished settling the Queen Consort into her apartments.”

Louis looks exasperated, but immediately straightens his tunic
and calls out, “Tell Her Majesty we will come at once.” Then, looking down at me, my knees still lifted and naked from the waist down, he offers a rakish smile and says, “Consider yourself settled.”

A MONTH LATER I DO
indeed feel settled in. I know which of my French ladies I can trust and which I cannot. I know that I am the best dancer at my husband’s court and that my manners are far above what passes for proper behavior here. I know I must write to the Vezian family of Montpellier if I want any really good rose water, for the stuff that can be secured in Paris is not worth wearing. This last is particularly important as Louis likes the smell of roses, in the royal gardens and on my person.

I am going to the gardens to meet him now with a Latin grammar book in my hands, for the king likes to amuse himself with improving my Latin. Entering the walled space from the archway nearest my rooms, I see him sitting beneath a pear tree, contemplating a book of his own, a religious work by a Cistercian monk. He is very taken with the Cistercians just now. Six years ago he founded an abbey for them at Royaumont. He goes there quite often to wait upon the monks as an act of charity and contrition, and he has promised to take me before the summer is out so I may see the refectory of which he is particularly proud.

As soon as Louis hears my footfall, he puts down his book. “Little queen,” he says, his delight evident. “How is my Latin scholar this morning?”

“Very well, Your Majesty,” I reply demurely, and then, opening my eyes as wide as I can, I add in feigned innocence, “But then I slept so very well last night.”

Louis chuckles. He knows that he kept me awake to all hours—so late, in fact, that he feared discovery as he crept back to his
rooms. Blanche, our mother, has given him a lecture on his “marital duties,” admonishing him that while the relations of the marriage bed are no sin, they are meant for procreation and as a remedy against fornication. Therefore, in her august opinion, engaging in them more than once nightly is lascivious self-indulgence. I wonder what she would think if she knew we engaged in them during daylight.

“Come, sit beside me and we will get to work.” He pats a spot on the carpet that he has spread beneath the tree. This is his favorite way to sit, and I find no fault with it though that officious, self-righteous Marie de Montmirall says it is unseemly and more appropriate for a shepherd than a king. Honestly I loathe that woman. In which opinion I am heartily joined by her daughter-in-law, Lady Elisabeth of Coucy, who is as favored a member of my household as her mother-in-law is disliked.

I drop down willingly at Louis’s side, and we set to studying. After some time, Agnes d’Harcourt, Princess Isabelle’s
chambrière
, passes on the path nearby.

“Spy,” I grumble to Louis.

“Never mind, little queen, we are quite blamelessly occupied.”

“How can you be so sanguine about it?” I ask, hands on my hips. For a moment I am more my sister Eleanor than myself. I lose my patience. “The spying I mean. This is
your
palace. You are
king
and I your queen; yet we must sneak about to see each other.”

Louis looks pained. I am myself again and bitterly wish the words unsaid. Only a few nights ago we had a dreadful argument on a similar topic. For the first time I took aim directly at Blanche of Castile and learned an important lesson. I may outsmart the lady, but I dare not complain of her. She is
perfect.
She is, according to
mon
mari
, the reason he has a throne to sit upon. Good God! But she is old, and I am pretty. I will outplay her, or outlast her.

“Never mind,” I say, gently touching Louis’s hand where it holds my book. “It is an adventure. We are like the lovers in the epic poems, defeating all to be together.”

We resume my Latin, but I know Louis is not yet at his ease. His posture tells me as much. Agnes d’Harcourt shuffles past again, and I make certain she can hear my conjugations, reciting in a particularly crisp, clear voice.

When she disappears into the palace I say, “I believe my hard work and scholarship deserve a reward.”

“Hm.” Louis pretends to consider me very severely, but I make a face and he laughs at once. “And what do you demand, little queen?”

“Might we walk in the rose garden?”

“Bien sûr.”
He rises with a grace born of natural athleticism and extends a hand to draw me upward. Together we move in the direction of the roses, which are in their full glory. The smell is intoxicating. Behind a particularly full bush Louis steals a kiss.

Yes,
I think,
I will give Louis what Blanche cannot, and love will conquer all.

HOW I LOVE PONTOISE. IN
a single day’s ride, my position in the battle between my “dear” mother and me, or as Yolande and I now refer to her privately, “the dragon from Castile,” improves markedly. I wheedle Louis to bring me here quite often and, given that he likes it as well as I do, I am generally successful unless the dragon can think of some manner of business that must be handled from the Ile de la Cité. This trip was particularly easy to arrange as the Foire Saint-Martin will be held in a week on Saint Martin’s feast day. As I told Louis, such a venerable fair, more than sixty years old, is not to be missed.

So the November-afternoon sun finds us in the king’s rooms, reclining near a set of windows with a view of the Oise River below while we play chess. We have already played at other things. And perhaps because Louis was satiated in that game, he is letting me win this one.

“Be careful,” he chides. “You are in danger.”

“Never, Husband, with you here to protect me.” I smile and rub my foot against his bare leg. In dressing after our encounter he did not bother to put on his hose.

“No, I mean your queen. Look to your queen.”

I see what he means and move accordingly, striking with that same queen to remove the threat. “Perhaps the queen can take care of herself.” I shake my head, putting my hair, uncovered and hanging to my waist, in motion.

“Can she?”

“Yes, but she
prefers
to take care of her king.” I rise and, going to a nearby table, pour a goblet of wine and bring it to Louis. Taking it, he motions for me to sit on his lap, and I sink there willingly.

“You are a very devoted wife, lady.” He offers me a sip, and then sets the glass of wine down on the floor beside him and takes my face in his hand, drawing it close to his. I know what is coming. Already my nipples stand at attention beneath my soft woolen tunic. And then there is a rap at the door.

“She comes,” says a muffled voice from the other side, and I spring up like a doe surprised by a hunter.

Grabbing my hose and shoes from a nearby stool, I race to the spiral staircase connecting my husband’s chamber to my own. Down the stairs I plunge. Slipping two steps from the bottom, I skin my calf badly and land in a heap. Elisabeth and Yolande are there to help me up. “Quick!” I whisper, but the admonition is needless. The scene in my chamber has already been carefully set,
and I need only be tidied and placed into the tableau. Three stools sit in a circle by the fire with an embroidery frame before each. Needles threaded and at the ready are stuck into two. On the stool before the third, a harp sits, and, even as Yolande fastens my shoes and tightens a girdle around my waist, Elisabeth seats herself and begins to play. Yolande hands me an amber-colored crespine. I give my hair a vicious twist and force it into the net, over which she places my coif and the barbette needed to hold it in place. In another instant I am on my stool, needle in hand.

Yolande carefully closes the door at the bottom of the stairs before taking her seat.

I can well imagine what is going on upstairs. Blanche has entered Louis’s chambers and is looking for evidence of me. She will not find any. When I go to Louis’s room, I take nothing. I drink nothing unless it be from his glass. We even have a special cloth we place upon Louis’s bed, when we use the bed, that is folded afterward and tucked away, so that Blanche may not spot or smell the product of our loins and discover us in that manner.

Generally, once she is satisfied that I am not with Louis, the dragon sits with him herself as long as she can—sentinel against him passing a pleasant hour with me. Occasionally she will appear at my door and be announced, searching for traces that escaped her
en haut
. Hence the very deliberate picture we have arranged and my choice of loyal company.

A moment later, the door at the bottom of the interior staircase bursts open. She has never done this! How bold she grows! Or perhaps, how desperate.

“Your Majesty,” I say, rising to offer the obligatory curtsy, “how you startled us.” I am not obliged to stand in her presence, so I return, as nonchalantly as possible, to my stool. I do not take
up my needle for fear that my fingers might tremble noticeably. I may hate Blanche, but I also fear her. “Will you join us?”

“And how have you passed your afternoon?” Blanche makes no move to sit and little effort to soften her voice to an acceptable level of
politesse
.

“As a Christian woman should, doing her duty.” I keep my eyes wide and innocent, enjoying the fact that I have made a statement that, while literally true, hints at the very activity she hoped to catch us in. “My ladies and I are working on pieces for the Eucharistic vestments His Majesty asked me to complete for the priest at Royaumont.” I gesture toward my frame, but Blanche shows no inclination to examine the work, so the effort that my ladies made last evening to advance it appears to have been wasted. “Pray, Your Majesty, how was the king, my husband, when you left him?”