CHAPTER 5
The following day, the queen-duchess received Guérin de Lasalle in her apartments, alone, giving strict instructions not to be disturbed. When the Countess de Nevers was allowed to see her mistress, her odious nephew nowhere in sight, Sabine found the queen strangely renewed, and it worried her. The visit, however, appeared to be soon forgotten.
The Duchess of Aquitaine dispatched William Marshal as her emissary to the Count of Angoulême and to the count’s half brother, the Count of Limoges. The aim was to bring together during the coming summer an alliance against the Frankish king consisting of her son the Duke of Normandy, the Angoulêmes—and the slippery Lusignans. But the queen-duchess had more in mind than a round of drunken revels, loud boasting, and skirt-chasing, the kind of affair into which these gatherings inevitably degenerated. She therefore sent a messenger to her son in England, requesting him to visit his ailing mother, and then called for the Countess de Nevers.
Sabine curtsied and folded her hands with the air of a hound about to be sent into the sedges.
“I have decided to secure one of John’s fiefs for your nephew,” the queen said.
“You can’t!”
“Sit down, Countess. I don’t want your opinion of my decision. Marshal knows how to twist arms. Lasalle thinks he is in for garrison duty.”
“Your Grace, you are handing a fief to a kidnapper, ravisher, and a murderer—”
“If I were to drum out of my service every kidnapper, ravisher, and murderer, I would have no vassals left with the exception of Marshal, and I would not stake my last penny on him, either. Admittedly, your nephew leads a dissolute life, but unlike Lupescaire and the rest that John favors, your nephew is not baseborn. His selection will not ruffle the Normans’ feathers as much as my son’s usual choices. And I do appreciate ingenuity.” The queen’s rouged lips puckered. “Especially mine.”
“I see. Then my help is not needed after all,” the Countess de Nevers said very calmly, her eyes defying her words of capitulation.
Aliénor wanted to tell her lady that in tight corners, she and her nephew looked much alike, but decided to save it for another occasion. She handed Sabine a parchment. “It is. You may inform our Sister Scholastica that she is to take a husband.”
Since Sabine could do little about her nephew’s undeservedly good fortune, at least that was good news. “Very well.” Sabine curtsied, her dignity restored. “Whom shall I tell her she is to marry?” In an instant she knew the answer, even before she saw the smile on the queen’s face. “Oh, no! No, Your Grace, that is entirely—”
Aliénor held up her hand. “Lasalle takes Tillières and that girl with it.”
“That snip of a girl? He’ll have her in her grave and her mesne in his hands before the year is out!”
“Your nephew will hold the viscounty of his wife. He’ll forfeit it if anything happens to the girl before she gives him an heir. After that”—Aliénor shrugged—“Tillières belongs to the child. Should it become orphaned, John will claim custody of it and the viscounty.”
Sabine rolled out the parchment, a standard-enough document. “That will not guarantee her safety. Madame, you will have that girl on your conscience should anything happen to her.”
“Many things are on my conscience. Sister Eustace is the least of them. You may inform her that her choice is Tillières and Lasalle or her lonely little cot at Fontevraud.”
Shivering in her felt slippers, a bedcover over her shift, most of her short red curls tucked under her night veil, Sister Eustace arrived in Sabine’s room. Sabine settled the girl in her own bed, sat on the edge, and told her that the queen had found a new master for Tillières. The girl looked surprised but not unduly so. Sabine offered her a cup of wine. “Don’t you wish to know who your husband will be?”
Juliana shook her head and hugged her jumpy kneecaps. “I wouldn’t know him, anyway.”
“Oh, but you’ve met him already.” The countess removed the cup from Juliana’s hand and enclosed the ink-stained fingers between her own. “The queen has chosen my nephew. You will be my niece-in-law.”
The countess Sabine’s lips were moving, but the roaring sound in Juliana’s head drowned out the last words. That was not possible. How could the queen . . . how could the queen chose someone like . . . like that execrable man? Why him? Why couldn’t the queen find for her someone honorable and lighthearted like the Earl of Pembroke? “And . . . and if I refuse?”
“You are to take your vows.”
Juliana heard those words.
Sabine touched the girl’s cheek, trying to assure her as much as herself. “My dear, if you choose . . . the queen seems to think there is nothing to fear.”
“F-fear? Nothing to—!” Juliana wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, her thoughts scattering like pigeons. One came back and roosted in her mind and in her breast and in her very marrow. “I will lose Tillières. How can the queen ask me to give up my heart?”
The next day, after the convent retired and the servants went to their beds, Juliana was called unexpectedly to the queen’s quarters. From her chair, the Countess de Nevers smiled reassuringly at her. Juliana returned a wan response and bowed her head.
“It appears”—the queen set aside her book—“that you are questioning the marriage I have decided to settle upon you, Lady Juliana.”
Juliana cast a frightened look at the Countess de Nevers. “No, Your Grace.”
“You are not a good liar, girl. You’ll need to acquire that skill. You know we have little choice in whom we marry. Even queens. Particularly queens.”
“But he is a murderer.”
“We are all murderers. We couch it in bloodlines and privileges, and wattle and daub the rest in courtliness.”
“I haven’t murdered anyone.”
“One day, you will.”
Tears, burning and bitter, gathered under Juliana’s eyelids. She swallowed, desperation making her bold. “My choice is to remain in a place not of my choosing or to wed a man like . . . him.”
The queen tapped her finger on the open page. “A dilemma, isn’t it? One does not enter marriage expecting to find love there like a pair of mislaid slippers. You know that a woman’s silence is taken as her consent. Remain silent then, if you wish, but do try to give your husband an heir before the next year is out. A man marries a fief. Sometimes he marries for love or passion, but passion can destroy, if you are the object of it. Love can destroy too, if you are subject to it. And one day, both simply vanish.”
“And . . . and honor?”
“Honor, like love, comes in many guises. One day you will learn that too, Lady Juliana.”
