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Authors: Sherry Jones

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Historical, #Biographical

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BOOK: White Heart
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“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Who is running our kingdom?”

“Romano,” I said, forgetting to call him “the cardinal” or some other, less intimate term.

“You should have sent
him
here”—he stared at the floor—“instead of coming yourself.”

“Why,
mon petit chou
? Afraid for my safety?” I smiled and reached out for his hand, which he yanked away.

“Already I am mocked as a little boy who needs his mama’s help. Now my detractors will have an even bigger laugh, seeing how you rushed to my side at the first sign of trouble.”

I gasped. “I have come to help you!” I wanted to slap the pout off his face. “You should be grateful.”

“I asked for reinforcements, not for
you,
” he said.

Shouts arose from outside, and running footsteps. Brother Guérin burst into the hall, his eyes wild. “The rebel army approaches,” he said.

We hurried to the donjon tower to see. A vast army moved like a swarm of locusts over ground, pulling wagons filled with supplies as well as trebuchets and platforms. I touched my hand to the cool stone wall, yet perspiration dampened my brow. We had only forty men, including the twenty-five I’d brought with me, and only enough food for a few more days.

“We must leave now,” I said. “I have brought you a monk’s robes as a disguise. Hurry, Louis, before we are surrounded!”

“Turn tail and run from my enemies?” He snorted. “Am I King of France, or queen?” He turned to Guérin. “Send a messenger to the Cité Palace informing them
again
”—he shot me a dark look—“of our predicament. Did you bring any food with you, Mama? No, I did not think so.” His haughty tone made me feel as if
I
had been slapped.

“I have brought knights with me, direct from Rome,” I said.

“And archers? We need archers,” Louis said. He and Guérin descended the steps together, forgetting me—or so Louis might have hoped. But I was never one to sit idly by, mending stockings, while men took charge of affairs.

“Only a few knights are available at the palace,” I said, going down after them. “Send your message to the provost of Paris, Louis. He was recruiting an army for us when I left this morning.”

“A band of soft-handed, soft-bellied merchants is our defense?” he said, sending Guérin an amused look. “Good work, Mama. That ought to frighten the rebels.”

No one slept that night—not even, it seemed, the rebel army, whose fires illuminated the meadows and fields around the castle as though it were daylight. Louis should have sent his men to raze the nearby trees, or at least to collect all the firewood and large stones in the area for his own defensive use, but he’d spent his precious hours praying for God’s deliverance instead.

“God gave you a mind and a mother,” I grumbled. “He would expect you to use both, rather than relying on him for miracles.”

Louis narrowed his eyes. “One might think that, given all your time spent with cardinals of late, your devotion to our Lord would have increased, not diminished.”

My skin might have burned his hand had he touched me then. My devotion to God diminished? That might have been true until recently, angry as I was over my husband’s death. But I’d spent at least part of the previous night in the arms of the one the Lord had sent to comfort and aid me. Thibaut, not God, had taken my husband’s life, I’d realized. The Lord had not forsaken me, in spite of my own sin. And now, with Romano’s assignment to Paris—for the pope would surely allow it—I had even more cause to thank our Lord for his goodness. Yet I had not spent those last crucial hours in Paris on my knees. If I had, Louis would be lost now, and so would I.

“‘Honor your father and your mother,’” I quoted, then headed to the chapel to light a candle and pray for, yes, a miracle.
Though I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
How I would like to use a rod on my son! His mocking tone, his look of disgust reminded me more of his uncle Philip Hurepel than of the lad I cherished. Indeed, if the rebels had managed to turn him against me, I cared not whether they gained the kingdom. Unless his haughty manner changed, they had already won.

I heard a shattering of glass then, and saw a ball of fire burst through a stained-glass window overhead, landing on the altar where I had, the moment before, knelt in prayer. The wood ignited immediately; as smoke filled the room I yanked off my mantle and beat down the flames. The siege had begun.

I ran into the great hall to find Louis, and told him what had happened. “Pierre fought with your grandfather here, and may know of weaknesses in the walls or fortifications,” I said.

“Guérin sealed them last night,” Louis said, “while you slept.”

His accusatory tone struck me like a blow. Yes, I had slept, it was true, having learned from Philip Augustus the value of a clear and rested mind. Now, faced with my son’s surliness, I retreated to the donjon, where I might watch our attackers’ attempts to bring down our walls by hurling stones, digging tunnels, and throwing fire.

Louis, I must say, proved a calm and capable commander despite our dearth of supplies. When the rebels dug tunnels under the wall, he sent men with bellows to blow smoke into them, choking the diggers out. Lacking archers, he found bows and arrows somewhere and stationed several knights in the towers to fire them, admonishing the men not to worry about hitting any mark.

“We have plenty of arrows, so let them fly. We’ll make them think we have every man in the kingdom on our side! Their uncertainty will be our best defense.”

Yet the rebels appeared far from uncertain as they built a platform beside the main gate, then began to hoist a number of long-nosed contraptions up the ladder. Guérin called them hand siphons—used in Constantinople, he said, for sending out flames of liquid fire. Our “archers” tried to hit the men as they climbed, but their want of skill showed as the arrows pierced only the air around them. When the rebels started shooting flames against the gate, burning its wooden doors, even Louis turned pale.

“This, truly, is a time for prayer,” Guérin said. “We can do nothing to stop them now.”

And then, in the distance, I saw a torrent of men in chain mail rushing our way like a turgid river, swords reflecting the sun, banners bearing the fleurde-lis of France. The men of Paris had arrived, not just one thousand, as I had urged in my speech, but many more.

“Behold!” I cried. “Our rescue is at hand.” Tears sprang to my eyes.

A smile filled my son’s golden face like the sun moving from behind a cloud. But he looked at Guérin, not at me. “Praise be to God,” he said, “for answering my prayers.”

Never was such a procession seen in the history of France: thousands of the men of Paris swept around the castle, smashing the empty platform and the abandoned trebuchets, shouting
Vive la France! Vive le roi et la reine!
to the now-distant rebels running in fear for their lives. We threw open the gates and ran outside to them: the Parisian provost beaming at me like a proud suitor; the burghers all but leaping with joy, pleased by their easy victory; the soldiers hugging and kissing the women and children of the nearby farms and towns who’d lined the Orléans road to cheer them, and their wagons filled with provisions, with which our cooks prepared a feast for all. I longed to join in the revelry but contented myself with standing by, there being no one for me to embrace once Louis turned away, scowling, at the sight of my open arms. In that moment, I cared not about winning, or about kingdoms, or even about living. Of what use is life without love?

We set out for Paris amid the beauty of springtime: the crocuses blooming purple against pockets of snow, the trees tipped with shoots so vivid they hurt my eyes. The tender breezes kissed my skin, reminding me of Romano, making me wonder if we would ever kiss. His arms around me, holding me close. Romano in Paris, for the rest of our days.

I wore my queenly raiments for the journey home yet rode on horseback, there being no carriage, thank God, to jostle and jerk me over the pocked and rubbled road. On Romano’s palfrey I could see, and be seen by, our people who lined the road all the way to the palace, twenty miles of cheering crowds, smiling and shouting wishes of long life for Louis and, yes, for me. Love filled me like waters swelling a skin. I wanted to cry but could not, being a queen, so I put the emotion aside to share with Romano—again tonight, perhaps, in my bed.

I had been gone for more than a week. My frantic ride to the castle had taken one day. The siege ended, we tarried for three to repair the Montlhéry walls and add fortifications, then took three more days to return to Paris. With so many walking, and so many more by the roadside tossing flowers and gifts and bestowing kisses, it seemed we might never arrive at the palace. Louis rode in front, reminding me of a peacock in his bejeweled crown and mantles of blue and gold, but causing me also to remember my husband. The likeness astonished me, as it did all the world, but their resemblance was only physical. My husband had placed me beside him in every public display, while my son had scowled when I’d ridden up to join him.

“A king needs a queen,” I reminded him.

“A man,” he said, “needs
not
his mama.” He spurred his horse, which sprinted to the front of the procession.

“Vanity is to be expected in a lad his age,” Guérin said to me. “Pray that it will pass.”

I cringed, thinking of the horrors my own vanity had brought about. “What, besides prayer, would Francis of Assisi have advised?”

“Brother Francis had himself flogged daily, as a reminder of Christ’s pain. As St. Bartolomeu de Farne said: ‘We must inflict our body with all kinds of adversity if we want to deliver it to perfect purity of soul.’”

I glanced ahead to Louis, who was smiling, waving, taking flowers from girls and blowing kisses in return, glorying in the adoration he had scorned to accept from me.
What are you doing here?
he had said when I’d arrived. I cringed to recall the surly greeting. Did he think I’d placed my life in jeopardy out of pleasure? A highwayman, it was said, lurked behind every tree along the Orléans road. Did he realize what might have happened to me?

And yet, I hadn’t thought at all about my safety. I’d whipped the horse’s flanks and ridden as hard as I could make it go, and prayed to God for the first time since my husband’s death to
keep him safe, dear Lord, don’t let my boy be harmed, you’ve taken the father but leave me the son, O Lord, remember how your own mother suffered when you died at thirty-three, while my sweet Louis is barely thirteen.
God had kept my son’s body safe, for which I would ever be thankful, but now it was my task to guard his soul.

He met my gaze, then glanced quickly away as if he had not seen me. I wanted to cry out. What had I done to deserve this abuse? I would flog him myself, by God!

At last we made our way through the clotted streets of Paris, past all the revelers welcoming their king and queen home to safety. Let Pierre and his thugs try again to unseat us. The provost had said more troops had planned to join us from Orléans and Melun and a number of other towns. Never again would we have to fear for our lives, not even if every baron in the kingdom turned against us. We had the love of the people.

And yet I thought only of one man’s love as I dismounted my horse with deliberate slowness, taking care not to let my eagerness for Romano show. On the ground, I turned, and there he was, bowing before me, kissing my ring, sending shivers racing up my arm.

“All those men, sent for us from Paris!” I said. “You saved us, my dear cardinal. And you saved our kingdom.”

He looked down into my face. A lock of hair curled rakishly on his brow. His dark eyes crinkled and I saw, yes, there it was. Love.

“Not I, but you, my lady. I did nothing. Your speech roused them, Blanche. Your passion stirred theirs—delivered as it was from your pure, white heart.”

And then, suddenly, he was gone.

I should have recognized the portents: the whispers falling like snowflakes from the palace ceiling; the twisted grins on my chamber guards’ faces; the bawdy song performed during the Christmas feast about a lady and a priest—and, afterward, Thibaut’s pouting refusal to present any of his
chansons
. The palace reeked of scandal, and the only ones who didn’t smell it were Romano and me.

He came to me in the morning, weeping, before I arose. Pope Gregory had called him back to Rome—permanently. “Vicious rumors have reached his ears, my lady, about the two of us.” Apparently our one, innocent night in my bed had become, on the lips of the rumormongers, numerous wild nights of unrestrained ecstasy resulting, now, in my pregnancy. I would have laughed at the absurdity—how I wished to be guilty of the crime!—if I were not fighting back tears.

“But—our love is chaste! We’ve done nothing wrong. For what, then, would he punish you?”

“Punishment is not his intention,” Romano said. “By removing me, he aims to stanch the gossip. It is deleterious not only to the Church but to you also, and to the king.”

“Of course it is harmful to me,” I snapped. “Else why would my enemies invent these tales?” An affair with the papal legate was an especially juicy scenario, one that cast me as immoral in more ways than one. “Let me travel with you to Rome. I’ll tell Pope Gregory the truth about us, and make him see how much I need you.”

“No, my sweet.” A tear fell from his eye and landed on my hand. “His Grace will not be swayed. He demands my immediate return.”

I pulled aside my bedcovers, inviting him. He slid in beside me, placed his arms around me, and kissed me tenderly for an hour. Who cared, then, about scandal? We had done nothing but, given the penalty we faced, we might as well have done it all.

He left then, sending Mincia back to comfort me, but I turned her away, telling her I was sick and needed to convalesce in peace. She offered to call the healer, but I waved the suggestion aside, saying I wanted only quiet.

When she had gone, leaving me utterly alone, I was able, at long last, to cry.

BOOK: White Heart
3.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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