Dangerous Women Read online

  “You do realize what this means, Constance? William’s queen was barren, so that makes you the legitimate and only heir to the Sicilian throne. Yet there you sit as if I’d brought you news of some calamity.”

  Constance flinched, for she knew that was what people whispered of her behind her back. To Heinrich’s credit, he’d never called her “barren,” at least not yet. He must think it, though, for they’d been wed nigh on four years and she’d not conceived. So far she’d failed in a queen’s paramount duty. She wondered sometimes what Heinrich had thought of the marriage his father had arranged for him—a foreign wife eleven years his elder. Had he been as reluctant to make the match as she’d been? Or had he been willing to gamble that his flawed new wife might one day bring him Sicily, the richest kingdom in Christendom?

  “Joanna was not barren,” she said tautly. “She gave birth to a son.”

  “Who did not live. And she never got with child again. Why do you think William made his lords swear to recognize your right to the crown if he died without an heir of his body? He wanted to assure the succession.”

  Constance knew better. William had never doubted that he and Joanna would one day have another child; they were young and he was an optimist by nature. And because he was so confident of this, he’d been unfazed by the uproar her marriage had stirred. What did it matter that his subjects were horrified at the prospect of a German ruling over them when it would never come to pass? But now he was dead at thirty-six and the fears of his people were suddenly very real, indeed.

  “It may not be as easy as you think, Heinrich,” she said, choosing her words with care. “Our marriage was very unpopular. The Sicilians will not welcome a German king.”

  He showed himself to be as indifferent to the wishes of the Sicilian people as William had been, saying coolly, “They do not have a choice.”

  “I am not so sure of that. They might well turn to William’s cousin Tancred.” She was about to identify Tancred further, but there was no need. Heinrich never forgot anything that involved his self-interest.

  “The Count of Lecce? He is baseborn!”

  She opened her mouth, shut it again. It would not do to argue that the Sicilians would even prefer a man born out of wedlock to Heinrich. She knew it was true, though. They’d embrace her bastard cousin before they’d accept her German husband.

  Heinrich was regarding her thoughtfully. “You do want the crown, Constance?” he said at last. She felt a flare of indignation that it had not even occurred to him she might mourn William, the last of her family, and she merely nodded. But he seemed satisfied by that muted response. “I’ll send your women back in,” he said. “Sleep well, for you’ll soon have another crown to add to your collection.”

  As soon as the door closed, Constance sank down on the bed, and after a moment she kicked off her shoes and burrowed under the covers. She was shivering again. Cherishing this rare moment of privacy before her attendants returned, she closed her eyes and said a prayer for William’s immortal soul. She would have Masses said for him on the morrow, she decided, and that gave her a small measure of comfort. She would pray for Joanna, too, in her time of need. Propping herself up with feather-filled pillows, then, she sought to make sense of the conflicting, confused emotions unleashed by William’s untimely death.

  She’d not expected this, had thought William would have a long, prosperous reign and would indeed have a son to succeed him. They’d been arrogant, she and William, assuming they knew the Will of the Almighty. They ought to have remembered their Scriptures: A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps. But Heinrich was right. She was the lawful heir to the Sicilian throne. Not Tancred. And she did want it. It was her birthright. Sicily was hers by blood, the land she loved. So why did she feel such ambivalence? As she shifted against the pillows, her gaze fell upon the only jewelry she wore, a band of beaten gold encrusted with emeralds—her wedding ring. As much as she wanted Sicily, she did not want to turn it over to Heinrich. She did not want to be the one to let the snake loose in Eden.

  Constance’s forebodings about Tancred of Lecce would prove to be justified. The Sicilians rallied around him and he was crowned King of Sicily in January of 1190. Constance dutifully echoed Heinrich’s outrage, although she’d seen this coming. She was not even surprised to learn that Tancred had seized Joanna’s dower lands, for they had strategic importance, and Tancred well knew that a German army would be contesting his claim to the crown. But she was utterly taken aback when Tancred took Joanna prisoner, holding her captive in Palermo, apparently fearing Joanna would use her personal popularity on Constance’s behalf. Heinrich wanted to strike hard and fast at the man who’d usurped his wife’s throne. Vengeance would have to wait, though, for his father had taken the cross and was planning to join the crusade to free Jerusalem from the Sultan of Egypt, the Saracen Salah al-Din, known to the crusaders as Saladin, and he needed Heinrich to govern Germany in his absence.

  Frederick Barbarossa departed for the Holy Land that spring. The German force dispatched by Heinrich was routed by Tancred, who continued to consolidate his power and had some success at the papal court, for the Pope considered the Holy Roman Empire to be a greater threat than Tancred’s illegitimacy. In September, Joanna’s captivity was ended by the arrival in Sicily of the new English king, her brother Richard, known to friends and foes alike as Lionheart. Like Frederick, he was on his way to the Holy Land, and was accompanied by a large army. He was enraged to learn of his sister’s plight and demanded she be set free at once, her dower lands restored. Tancred wisely agreed, for Richard knew war the way a priest knew his Paternoster. For Constance, that was the only flare of light in a dark, drear year. And then in December they learned that Heinrich’s father was dead. Never reaching the Holy Land, Frederick had drowned fording a river in Armenia. Heinrich wasted no time. Daring a January crossing of the Alps, he and Constance led an army into Italy. They halted in Rome to be crowned by the Pope, and then rode south. The war for the Sicilian crown had begun.

  Salerno sweltered in the August sun. Usually sea breezes made the heat tolerable, but this has been one of the hottest, driest summers in recent memory. The sky was barren of clouds, a faded, bleached blue that seemed bone white by midday. Courtyards and gardens offered little shade and the normal city noise was muted, the streets all but deserted. Standing on the balcony of the royal palace, Constance wished she could believe that the citizens had been driven indoors by the heat. But she knew a more potent force was at work—fear.

  The Kingdom of Sicily encompassed the mainland south of Rome as well as the island itself, and as the German army swept down the peninsula, town after town opened their gates to Heinrich. The citizens of Salerno even sought him out. Although their archbishop was firmly in Tancred’s camp, the Salernitans pledged their loyalty to Heinrich and invited Constance to stay in their city while he laid siege to Naples.

  At first Constance had enjoyed her sojourn in Salerno. It was wonderful to be back on her native soil. She was delighted with her luxurious residence—the royal palace that had been built by her father, the great King Roger. She savored the delicious meals that graced her table, delicacies rarely available beyond the Alps—melons, pomegranates, oranges, sugar-coated almonds, rice, shrimp, oysters, fish that were swimming in the blue Mediterranean that morning and sizzling in the palace kitchen pans that afternoon. Best of all, she was able to consult with some of the best doctors in Christendom about her failure to conceive. She could never have discussed so intimate a matter with a male physician. But women were allowed to attend Salerno’s famed medical school and licensed to practice medicine. She’d soon found Dame Martina, whose consultation was a revelation.

  Constance had taken all the blame upon herself for her barren marriage; common wisdom held that it was always the woman’s fault. That was not so, Martina said briskly. Just as a woman may have a defect of her womb, so might a man have a defect in his seed. Moreover, there were ways to find out wh
ich one had the problem. A small pot should be filled with the woman’s urine and another with her husband’s. Wheat bran was then added to both pots, which were to be left alone for nine days. If worms appeared in the urine of the man, he was the one at fault, and the same was true for the woman.

  “I doubt that my lord husband would agree to such a test,” Constance had said wryly, imagining Heinrich’s incredulous, outraged reaction should she even hint that the fault might be his. But she took the test herself, and when her urine was found to be worm-free on the ninth day, her spirits had soared. Even if no one else knew it, she knew now that she did not have a defective womb; she was not doomed to be that saddest of all creatures, a barren queen.

  Martina offered hope, too, explaining that sometimes neither husband nor wife was at fault and yet his seed would not take root in her womb. But this could be remedied, she assured Constance. She must dry the male parts of a boar and then make a powder of them, which she was then to drink with a good wine. And to assure the birth of a male child, Constance and Heinrich must dry and powder the womb of a hare, then drink it in wine. Constance grimaced at that, glad she’d be spared such an unappetizing concoction until she and Heinrich were reunited. How would she get him to cooperate, though? She’d have to find a way to mix the powder into his wine undetected on one of his nocturnal visits to her bedchamber. She was so grateful to Martina that she offered the older woman a vast sum to become her personal physician, and Martina gladly accepted, tempted as much by the prestige of serving an empress as by the material benefits.

  But then reports began to reach Salerno from the siege of Naples. For the first time, Heinrich was encountering fierce resistance, led by Tancred’s brother-in-law, the Count of Acerra, and Salerno’s own archbishop. Heinrich had hired ships from Pisa, but they were not numerous enough to blockade the harbor, and so he would be unable to starve the Neapolitans into surrender. Tancred had chosen to make his stand on the island of Sicily knowing that his most dangerous weapon was the hot, humid, Italian summer. Heinrich’s German troops were unaccustomed to such stifling heat and they soon began to sicken. Army camps were particularly vulnerable to deadly contagions like the bloody flux; Constance had been told that more crusaders died from disease than from Saracen swords in the Holy Land.

  She’d hoped that the Salernitans would remain in ignorance of the setbacks Heinrich was experiencing, but that was an unrealistic hope, for Naples was less than thirty miles to the north of Salerno. She could tell as soon as word began to trickle into the city, for the people she encountered in the piazza were subdued or sullen, and the palace servants could not hide their dismay. Even Martina had anxiously asked her if she was sure Heinrich would prevail and did not seem completely convinced by Constance’s assurances. Salerno had assumed that Tancred would be no match for the large German army and self-preservation had won out over loyalty to the Sicilian king. Now they began to fear that they’d wagered on the wrong horse.

  When almost a fortnight passed without any word from Heinrich, Constance dispatched Sir Baldwin, the head of her household knights, to Naples to find out how bad things really were. Standing now on the palace balcony, she shaded her eyes against the glare of the noonday sun and wondered if this would be the day Baldwin would return. She would never admit it aloud, but she wanted him to stay away as long as possible, so sure was she that he would be bringing bad news.

  “Madame?” Hildegund was standing by the door. Most of Constance’s attendants were Sicilians, including Dame Adela, who’d been with her since childhood, and Michael, the Saracen eunuch who attracted so much attention at Heinrich’s court; the Germans were shocked that Saracens were allowed to live freely in a Christian country and horrified that William had relied upon the men called “the palace eunuchs” in the governance of his kingdom. Constance had taken care not to reveal that William had spoken Arabic or that it was one of the official languages of Sicily, and she’d insisted that Michael had embraced the True Faith, even though she knew that many eunuchs’ conversion to Christianity was often pretense. How could she ever make Heinrich or his subjects understand the complex mosaic that was Sicilian society? Hildegund was one of her few German ladies-in-waiting, a self-possessed, sedate widow who’d been a great asset in Constance’s struggles to learn German, and Constance gave her a fond smile, nodding when the other woman reminded her it was time for the day’s main meal.

  Dinners were very different now than they’d been at the outset of her stay in Salerno. Then the local lords and their ladies had competed eagerly for an invitation from the empress, and the great hall had usually been crowded with finely garbed guests showing off their silks and jewels as they sought to curry favor with Constance. For over a week, though, her invitations to dine had been declined with transparent excuses, and on this Sunday noon, the only ones sharing her table were the members of her own household.

  The palace cooks had prepared a variety of tasty dishes, but Constance merely picked at the roast capon on her trencher. Glancing around, she saw that few of the others had much appetite, either. Reminding herself that she should be setting an example for her household, she began an animated conversation with Martina and her chaplain just as shouting drifted through the open windows. Riders were coming in. Constance set her wine cup down and got slowly to her feet as Baldwin was admitted to the hall. One look at his face told her all she needed or wanted to know, but she made herself reach out and take the proffered letter as he knelt before her.

  Gesturing for him to rise, she broke her husband’s seal and quickly scanned the contents. It was not written in Heinrich’s hand, of course; he always dictated his letters to a scribe, for he never sent her a message that was not meant for other eyes. A low murmur swept the hall as those watching saw her color fade, leaving her skin so pale it seemed almost translucent. When she glanced up, though, her voice was even, revealing none of her inner distress. “I will not mislead you,” she said. “The news is not good. Many have died of the bloody flux and the emperor himself has been stricken with this vile malady. He has decided that it would be best to end the siege and yesterday his army began a retreat from Naples.”

  There were gasps, smothered cries, a few muttered obscenities from some of her knights. “What of us, my lady?” a young girl blurted out. “What will become of us?”

  “The emperor wants us to remain in Salerno. He says that my presence here will be proof that he intends to return and the war is not over.”

  There was an appalled silence. Taking advantage of it, she beckoned to Baldwin and led the way out into the courtyard. The sun was blinding, and when she sank down on the edge of the marble fountain, she could feel the heat through the silk of her gown. “How ill is he, Baldwin?” she asked, so softly that she felt the need to repeat herself, swallowing until she had enough saliva for speech.

  He knelt beside her, gazing up intently into her face. “Very ill, my lady. His doctors said he was sure to die if he stayed. I fear that his wits have been addled by his fever, for he did not seem to realize the danger you are in now that he is gone.”

  Constance did not think it was the fever, but rather Heinrich’s supreme self-confidence. He did not understand that the Salernitans’ fear of him was dependent upon his presence. When word got out that his army was retreating, the people would see it as a defeat, and they’d begin to fear Tancred more than Heinrich, for they’d betrayed him by inviting her into their city. She could feel a headache coming on, and rubbed her temples in a vain attempt to head it off. The wrath of a king was indeed to be feared. Heinrich’s father had razed Milan to the ground as punishment for past treachery, and her brother, William’s father, had destroyed the town of Bari as a brutal warning to would-be rebels. Was Tancred capable of such ruthless vengeance? She did not think so, but how were the frightened citizens of Salerno to know that?

  “My lady … I think we ought to leave this place today. A healthy army travels less than ten miles a day and this army is battered and bleeding. If w
e make haste, we can overtake them.”

  Constance bit her lip. She agreed with Baldwin; she was not safe here, not now. But her pride rebelled at the thought of fleeing like a thief in the night. How would the Sicilians consider her worthy to rule over them if she gave in to her fears like a foolish, timid woman? Her father would not have run away. And Heinrich would never forgive her if she disobeyed him and fled Salerno, for his letter had clearly stated that her presence was important as a pledge to his supporters, a warning to his enemies—proof that he would be back. She’d not wanted Heinrich as her husband; still less did she want him as her enemy. How could she live with a man who hated her … and he would, for her flight would make it impossible for him to pretend he’d not suffered a humiliating defeat.

  “I cannot, Baldwin,” she said. “It is my husband’s wish that I await him here in Salerno. Even if the worst happens and Tancred comes to lay siege to the city, Heinrich will send troops to defend it … and us.”

  “Of course, madame,” Baldwin said, mustering up all the certainty he could. “All will be well.” But he did not believe it and he doubted that Constance did, either.

  It took only two days for word to reach Salerno of the German army’s retreat. The streets were soon crowded with frantic men and women trying to convince themselves that they’d not made a fatal mistake. Constance sent out public criers to assure them that Heinrich would soon return. But as dusk descended, a new and terrifying rumor swept the city—that the German emperor had died of the bloody flux. And that was the spark thrown into a hayrick, setting off a conflagration.