Four Sisters, All Queens (31 page)

T
HE
E
ARL OF
Cornwall holds Sanchia’s hand. His palm is as soft as if he had never used it. The skin on the back of his hand reminds her of parchment, pale and slightly rough, an old man’s hand. Her papa’s hand. The Earl Richard is not like her father, though, except that they are both old. Papa is not rich. The earl can afford to feed the entire city of London, it seems, at a feast that fills the Westminster Palace hall and spills onto the lawn. Each dish is delectable: snails in butter sauce on flaky pastry; spicy greens topped with smoked eel; a large pie out of which a dozen snow-white doves fly; pears floating in a saffron-cream sauce. Sanchia has never tasted such food, not even in Provence.

Also, unlike the Count of Provence, the Earl Richard adores fair hair, as he demonstrates by stroking hers at the table, holding it up to the light and letting it shimmer through his fingers. “Liquid gold,” he murmurs. He lifts a spoonful of pear to her lips, cooing over the perfection of her mouth and tongue, “as pink as a kitten’s,” he says, saddening her for a moment, for she never found her kitten after that day in the woods.

“The Gascons will adore you,” he says.

Sanchia frowns. Are they going to Gascony?

“Darling, we are going to rule Gascony. As soon as you convince your sister to give it back to me.”

“Convince Elli—of anything?” She gives a little laugh. “I was never good at that.”

“You will have to learn, then. If you want to be a duchess.”

“But I don’t.” Richard’s eyes snap. “I don’t want to be a duchess. I just want to be a good wife, and serve God.”

“I want to be the Duke of Gascony,” he says. His hand tightens around her arm. “And you are going to get the title for me.”

“But I can’t! I—Elli doesn’t listen to me.”

“You will have to make her listen. Talk to her tomorrow, before we leave for Cornwall.”

“No, Richard. Please don’t make me! I—”

“I thought you wanted to be a good wife.”

“I do. I can do anything you’d like. Except for this.” Eléonore would laugh at her, or get angry. Sanchia couldn’t bear either, not from Elli, her protector. She has defended her against Marguerite’s tart remarks since they were girls. When their tutor struck her in the mouth for bungling her Latin, Eléonore punched him with her fist, bloodying his nose. Whenever Papa challenged Sanchia at table with a philosophy question, Eléonore defended her answers, no matter if she was wrong. Elli made Papa banish a troubadour from the court for writing a bawdy song about Sanchia. And now she has saved her from that awful Raimond of Toulouse. Eléonore is the last person Sanchia would offend.

“But Sanchia, this is all I require of you, to influence your sister
on my behalf. Now you say you will not help me. Have I married you, then, in vain?”

“I—I thought you married me for my beauty.”

Why is he staring at her? He looks as surprised as if she had sprouted a tail.

“Darling,” he says, “the world teems with beautiful women. But only one has the love of my brother’s queen.”

“You married me because of my sister?” He offers another spoonful of pear, but she averts her face.

“Not for her, but for what she can give to you. To us both,” he says. She shakes her head, confused. He puts down the spoon.

“What is the use of being brother to the king—or sister to the queen—if one cannot profit from the relation?” he says. “The more I know of my brother’s plans, the more we stand to gain. Queen Eléonore confides in you.” He grins, lifting his eyebrows. “And now you will confide in me.”

Sanchia gasps. “You want me to spy on Elli? But she is my sister.” She grips the bench to stop herself from fleeing.

“And I am your husband, whom you have pledged to obey. Now”—he lifts the spoon again—“open your pretty mouth. And try to look happy, my pet. All of England watches you today.”

Beatrice

A Pretty Alliance

London, 1243

Twelve years old

S
HE STABS HER
pigeon with her knife, imagining that it is the pregnant belly of the high and mighty Queen Marguerite. “Mind your manners,” her mother hisses. “We are dining with the kings of France and England.”

She stabs the bird again, so hard it flies off the platter and onto the floor. “You are a naughty child,” her mother says. “To the nursery you go.” She sends her off with a maid, who stops in the crowded hall to jest with a knight. Beatrice sees her opportunity, and takes it.

She slides around the edge of the room, looking to see if Mama has noticed. But no, she’s laughing with the Earl of Cornwall, while Sanchia smiles and blinks as if she might cry. Married not even an hour, and already he has offended her. The earl is not a nice man, in spite of what everyone says, but no one has asked for her opinion. Papa would have listened to her, but he is in Provence, gathering his strength.

Mama has forgotten her, as usual. On her other side, Eléonore and Marguerite chat with their heads together, scheming another match, probably. They had better not try to arrange a marriage for
Beatrice. Who wants a husband telling her what to do?
You are the only man I want, Papa.
He laughed when she said this, and told her his secret. When he dies, she won’t need anyone else.

Her sisters will foam at the mouth, especially Marguerite. But why should Beatrice care? Marguerite treats her like a servant, not a sister. When Mama took her to Paris, Marguerite caught her sitting on the queen’s throne and made her move to a little stool, saying, “No one may sit on the same level with the queen.” Beatrice cried and threatened to tell Papa, but she only laughed. “Do you think he would take your part in a quarrel with me?” He would, in fact, as Beatrice knows. Marguerite will know it, too, someday.

She had thought Eléonore would be kinder—Eléonore, who used to hold Beatrice on her knee and read the stories of Lancelot to her. But she never said a word on Beatrice’s behalf today, when Marguerite scolded her and sent her away. This is the sister called “Eléonore the Bold”? Beatrice could tell the “Eléonore” stories in her sleep, she has heard them so many times: Eléonore scaling a cliff on a dare from Marguerite, then being unable to climb down. Eléonore attacking the Count of Toulouse at the Marseille market with a tree branch, surprising him so much he fell over. Eléonore insisting, against Mama’s wishes, on marrying King Henry when she was only twelve years old. Mama wanted her to wait a year or two, but she refused. “The English king changes his mind with the seasons, I hear. I’m going to him now, before the winter turns to spring and he finds another queen.” She would not be outdone, she said, by Marguerite.

Marguerite and Eléonore. Eléonore and Marguerite. So young was Beatrice when they left Provence, she doesn’t remember Marguerite at all, and Eléonore only vaguely. But she has heard about them her entire life, has imagined them in her play, has written them letters that she never sent because, who is she? What does she have to say to the most famous women in the world, even if they are her sisters?

Now Sanchia has joined their ranks, or nearly. In their glittering
company, Beatrice wonders again: Who is
she
? What is she, except the baby and her father’s favorite?

Romeo once promised to make queens of all the daughters of the Count of Provence. So goes another of the legends that have sprung up around their family. But then Papa engaged Sanchia to Raimond of Toulouse, a nobody. Now Sanchia is married not to a king, but to the brother of a king, which is nearly as good, and the Count of Toulouse is said to have his eye on Beatrice. And Beatrice, judging from the way her sisters treated her today, is the nobody.

The maid approaches, her face bright with relief. “At last, I have found you!” she cries—and Beatrice runs again, through the milling crowd, careful not to jostle the servants with their platters of food, for to cause a spill would alert her mother that she is still in the great hall instead of snoring over psalters and dolls in the nursery. She ducks into the garden and hides behind a tree, catching her breath, when she hears two young men talking and laughing in the strange, harsh French of the north.

“She is the best looking sister, don’t you think?”

“And as sweet as a summer breeze. Unlike that bitch Marguerite, whose blood is as cold as a dead man’s hands.”

Beatrice resists the urge to leap out and defend her sister. She doesn’t want to be seen—and besides, how could she argue? Marguerite
is
a bitch.

“Sweet Sanchia of Provence. What a dream! It is too bad that she had to marry that greedy English bastard.”

“What is wrong with a bit of greed? Take whatever you can in life, I say.”

“Ah. Spoken like a brother of the King of France.”

She peers around the tree, beholds the king’s brother who hates her sister. He is not tall, but his body is muscular; not handsome, but interesting in appearance, with a prominent nose and snapping dark eyes. “Not just any brother,” he says. “I will be the richest and most powerful of the sons of Blanche de Castille—even more powerful than Louis.”

His companion laughs. “Charles! Your modesty astounds me. Where will you begin your conquests? With a beautiful heiress? Why didn’t you seek the hand of Sanchia of Provence? Or—why not the youngest daughter? I hear she is nearly as lovely.”

“Bah. Provence. That little backward county? It might have been worth the taking if Count Ramon Berenger hadn’t drained his treasury to entertain simpering minstrels and third-rate poets.”

“Careful, man. I come from Toulouse, you know, where the air is fragrant with the troubadours’ song.”

“Heretics!” Charles spat. “They’re all Cathars, you know. The Church would have wiped them out if your Cathar-loving count had not defended them.”

“Even as he tried to conquer Provence, do not forget. That ‘backward county’ must be a more desirable possession than you realize. Their salt mines are more valuable than gold. And the youngest daughter is almost of age to marry, I hear.”

“That would be a pretty alliance! Charles, brother of the king, and the daughter of a poor count? If I wanted Provence, I would have no trouble grabbing it by force. That old woman Ramon Berenger would be no match for me.”

“Old woman, ha ha! I have met him, and he is as soft as a fawn. It is no wonder that he sired only girls.” The youths erupt into laughter—which stops when Beatrice jumps out from behind her tree.