The Sister Queens (61 page)

As we move back toward the courtyard and our mounts, Marguerite finds my side and slips her hand into mine again. “Ride beside me tomorrow.”

“What other place would be mine?” I ask, kissing her cheek lightly before releasing her hand and slipping out into the torchlit darkness.

The next day we begin our ride toward Paris most satisfactorily. Marguerite and I are side by side just behind our husbands. Henry’s figure always looks best on horseback for he is long in the torso and therefore is not so much shorter than Louis when sitting down. I have made certain that he and I are dressed sumptuously in clothing that should have been worn in Castile had we gone. Our mantles are patterned with golden leopards to represent England, trimmed in ermine, and entirely lined in vair. Louis, however, again wears not a scrap of fur despite the winter chill.

“Will His Majesty not take cold?” I ask my sister. She herself is dressed in a manner more similar to my own than to her husband’s.

“He prefers woolens to fur,” she replies without glancing in his direction.

“And you do not worry for him?”

“What point would there be in doing so? His Majesty knows
his own mind, and it will not be changed by me. One of the many things I’ve learned in the course of my marriage is precisely how intractable my husband can be.”

“Oh, Henry can be stubborn as well,” I remind my sister. I assume this sort of commiseration is what she seeks. After all, we have been complaining about certain tendencies in our husbands for years, she and I. But rather than nodding appreciatively at my solicitous comment, Marguerite regards me as if I do not understand what she says.

“Not stubborn. Immovable.” Then she continues in our native Occitan. “You may have heard that His Majesty abhors blasphemy. Since our return, he has passed a law banning it outright.”

I am puzzled as to why she tells me this in the language of our girlhood, which none within hearing distance can understand. After all, a new law can hardly be a secret. “That is rather stern governance,” I reply, “but surely none of us likes to hear Our Lord’s name taken in vain.”

My sister gives me a piercing look. For a moment she is silent, and I can see she is biting the inside of one of her cheeks. Then she continues. “Last week, he had the lips of a tradesman caught transgressing his law burned off with hot iron.” Her words are spoken very low, but there is no chance of my missing them. I only wish I had. I give a sharp gasp. My sister’s eyes remain pitilessly on my face. “And do you know what he said when I reacted as you do now? When I begged him to forgo such cruel punishment in future in favor of a fine or something of that ilk? He told me he would gladly be branded himself, on the steps of the Palais du Roi for all to see, if by this act he could end all wicked oaths in his lands. This is not stubbornness. It is something else entirely.”

Marguerite’s look as she finishes is almost triumphant. But why should she glory in relating such behavior on her husband’s part?
Glory as if she detests him? I remember the happiness that radiated from many of my sister’s letters while she was abroad. Clearly there were periods when she was cheerful, joyful even. There were periods when Louis made her happy, even during those years when he refused to quit the Holy Land and bring her home. If she could be happy in the dust and sand of the desert, surely there must be some hope of achieving such happiness again now that they are home in France?

“He will recover himself with the passage of more time,” I say bracingly.

My sister gives a deep sigh as if I am being very difficult.

“The crusade changed him, yes. But it made him
more
of what he already was, not different. He is not like other men, not your husband, not any man you have ever known.”

This seems an extreme statement, but I cannot honestly say there is a man among my acquaintance who would do as Marguerite just described. Besides, I have no wish to argue with my sister, not after being apart for so long. Nor is it my place to defend her husband, I remind myself sternly. My place is ever and always to take her part—unless, of course, there is an argument between us.

I desire to turn the conversation to safer and less troubling subjects. Casting a glance to my left, I see Maude de Lacy riding with her lord.
Here,
I think,
is a perfect topic.

“Do you remember when you recommended certain gentlemen to my attention? The half brothers of Uncle Peter’s wife? Well, there sits one, Geoffrey de Joinville, beside his wife, my close friend Lady de Lacy.”

“Really?” Marguerite is transformed. All eager interest, she leans forward over her horse’s neck to look past me. “I remember your writing to me that he had arrived in England and that you married him well.” Then, absently, as if meaning the words only
for herself, she adds, “He is a fine man, but not so handsome as his half brother.”

I nearly ask her to repeat herself, but the strangeness of her remark leaves me momentarily tongue-tied. I struggle to recall the letter in which she first asked me to assist Geoffrey and his brothers. What did she say? I stretch my memory. It seems to me my sister gave me very little by way of reason for her particular interest in the gentlemen, merely some offhanded remark about their being related to one of the French king’s best and most trusted knights.

“Did the knight related to Lord Geoffrey survive the crusade?”

“What?” Marguerite’s attention is drawn back to me with force. My question was simple, but it has left my sister looking confused.

“Did the knight related to Lord Geoffrey survive the crusade?” I repeat.

“Yes,” Marguerite says. The word is clipped, and if it conveys either pleasure or disappointment in the fact of the gentleman’s survival I cannot decipher as much. I am puzzled by my sister’s manner. But before I can grasp the thread of my confusion and begin to unwind it, Marguerite moves the conversation forward.

“Does not Mother look well for a woman of eight-and-forty? I hope she will remain with us in France for some time. His Majesty has agreed to set aside Castle Nesle for her use.”

“I am jealous.”

“You must not be.” The sister I knew years ago would have said this sternly, as an admonition, but the Marguerite riding beside me today sounds a little like my Edmund when he reports some transgression to me but does not want me to be angry.

“Well, I have Uncle Peter.” I offer her a conciliatory smile. “He has been a most useful companion to me these last dozen and more years. Now tell me the news of your children. When you wrote
last, baby Marguerite was not taking well to her wet nurse and you thought to change her.”

“Another nurse has been brought in and does better. I would suckle Marguerite myself did I not have so much to occupy my time.” She sighs slightly, then looks for a moment at the pale winter sun. “That was the sole luxury we had in Egypt—time stretching on, sometimes without end. I nursed Jean Tristan entirely myself.”

HOW DIFFERENT MY FIRST GLIMPSE
of Paris is this time from last. The spires of the city’s churches appear on the horizon, and I am neither wet nor frightened. When we reach the city gates, the sides of the road are crowded with people singing and playing upon a great variety of instruments. They call out their approbation to their own king, but he seems oblivious. When they cry out to Henry, he waves good-naturedly and scatters coins into the crowd. The streets are decorated with garlands of fabric and evergreen boughs. Glancing behind me, I watch the crowds spill into the road and follow along after the last of our train.

For every person who calls out to the King of France, another voice seems to shout a message of praise or greeting for my sister. “Preserver of kings,” “mother of princes,” and “jewel of the house of Capet” are phrases I hear again and again.

“Your people love you,” I exclaim.

“They remember who it was that brought their king back to them,” she replies, raising a hand to acknowledge the crowd, “even if others sometimes do not.”

Perhaps this is it,
I think, moving my mind swiftly over the cold and even angry references my sister has made to her husband since we began our journey.
Perhaps Marguerite feels slighted by her Louis and feels he has too soon and easily forgotten all she suffered for him and all
she did, under great duress, to save him.
This would certainly explain much. I myself remember with pain the crushing sense of sadness that sat upon me during that single, dreadful period in my marriage when I felt forgotten by Henry. Well, at least on this point I know how to console and counsel her.

Our progress is stilled momentarily as people who have clogged the way are moved aside. A young man at the side of the road, taking advantage of the pause, steps forward and boldly kisses the hem of my sister’s gown. “That one should be so beautiful, so brave, and so just is astounding.” Then nodding in my direction, he continues. “That two should be so is miraculous.”

By the time we reach the Old Temple where Henry and I are to lodge, I am euphoric. Henry too seems ebullient, clasping Louis to him in leave-taking, oblivious to the awkward stiffness of the French king’s form.

As we are rushed inside, I raise a parting hand to my sister.

Our rooms are furnished in the greatest style. We, of course, travel with our furnishings and feather beds, but they will not be necessary. The beds are already piled high and made up with costly silks and velvets. Fires roar in every grate.

“Such a welcome!” Henry says, pulling me into an embrace and then releasing me again to examine my room. “I would do something to acknowledge it.”

“Perhaps an act of charity,” my uncle says from his seat by my fire.

Henry loves such gestures, but I know by my uncle’s look that he is thinking of something else—he is thinking how pious Louis will react to such an action on Henry’s part.

“Yes. The great hall here is of goodly size, perfect for feeding the poor. Five hundred. We will feed five hundred. Even in such a fine city as this there must be five hundred poor souls in need of succor.”

Peter rises. “Consider it done, Your Majesty.”

Henry takes my uncle’s seat and pulls me onto his lap as the door closes behind Peter.

“We are not expected at the Palais du Roi until tomorrow. Shall we have a small supper here, just the two of us?” His hand slides up the front of my dress until it is cupped around one of my breasts.

“Henry! Surely you are exhausted by a long day in the saddle.”

“Are you?” His eyes challenge me. And to be honest, I am not exhausted. So much has been made of us by the French—from tradesmen and students to noblemen—that I feel more the queen than I do ofttimes in England.

“No, I am exhilarated. I doubt I will sleep a wink tonight.”

“I will endeavor to tire you, lady”—Henry squeezes the breast in his hand meaningfully—“or failing that, to entertain you well in your sleepless hours.”

Henry is as good as his word. I sleep like a babe after his ministrations. In the morning we set out in great state for the Palais du Roi. Henry is invited to hear Mass with the King of France in his Sainte-Chapelle and then to examine every inch of the chapel. My husband has long anticipated this pleasure, but I have something even better to look forward to. At last I will have time alone with my sister.

Marguerite and I withdraw to her rooms where I have an opportunity to meet my nieces and nephews. I quickly see even from her manner of their presentation that my sister has two favorites among her children—Louis, a somewhat delicate but lively ten-year-old who looks a great deal like the young King Louis I met on my bridal journey to England, and four-year-old Jean Tristan. The first is completely understandable. What queen does not have a special place in her heart for her first male child, the
child who secured her seat on her throne and her husband’s line into the next generation? And as for the second, I suppose the partiality is explained by the fact that all of us have certain people, even among our families, whose souls are closer to our own and whom we understand better than we understand ourselves.

The children and their nurses withdraw. Then the talk begins. Words flow like wine at a banquet, ever faster and with greater abandon. Thanks to our numberless letters, we are dearest friends reunited despite nearly twenty years without sight of each other. And yet there is something so very different and wonderful about being physically together—about the sight, smell, and touch of my sister; about the sound of her voice as she relates the most recent happenings in her life. I am quickly engrossed by the details of Marguerite’s travels and travails in Egypt—things she could never have committed to paper—and gratified that Marguerite is eager to hear of Edward’s bride and of the recent actions in Gascony. When a servant brings word that Louis and Henry will go into the city to see Notre Dame and other sights of architectural import, we decline the invitation to join them.

“The men will not miss us,” I say. “They have a shared passion for the art of building. They have long been rivals without knowing each other. Perhaps familiarity will bring more harmonious relations. I cannot say what it would mean to us if Henry and His Majesty could come to a better understanding, particularly over Gascony. I do believe, having secured it at last from Castilian aggression and the avarice of its own barons, we could hold Gascony against all if we but had a new treaty with France.”

“And what of your husband’s intentions in Poitou and Normandy? Will his success in Gascony make him ambitious there?” My sister does not speak the words as a challenge so much as a true question, and she waits thoughtfully for my answer.

Is it disloyal, I wonder, to speak the truth? How can it be when bravado will only keep England and France enemies longer?

“Henry has no hope of regaining Normandy,” I say. “He knows this in his clearer moments. It is only pride and a deep longing to be thought a great king that keep him from admitting as much.”

“He is not thought a great king in England?”

“He is presently, of course, thanks to the victory in Gascony,” I say. “But as you well know, too often his barons do not show the respect for him that they ought. I am sure you are tired of hearing me complain on this point after so many years. But it never ceases to both vex and confound me. Why can they not show him proper deference? He is their anointed monarch and a good man.”