White Heart by Sherry Jones

in hauberks and mail suits strutted and laughed among horses being saddled and fed by servants. I frowned: These were Romano’s men, their horses sporting the red and gold colors of Rome. Would he leave me again so soon?
    I found him in the great hall, sending a messenger out the door with an admonition to hurry: “The king’s life depends upon your haste.”
    “He’s going to Flanders,” he told me. “The Count of Champagne has already agreed to send men, without even hearing your speech today. Blanche, what a triumph it was! You astound me daily.” The look in his eyes made me want to weep with joy.
    “I see your horses and knights preparing to travel,” I said, hating my own breathlessness. “Are you going somewhere?”
    “Not I, but you, my lady.” Together we walked to my chambers, where Mincia had laid out Romano’s clothes: a flowing white tunic, a blue velvet robe, a broad-brimmed hat. “These are for you,” he said. “To disguise yourself.”
    After leaving my bed the night before—as I’d slept—Romano had gone to work, calling together his own knights to escort me to Montlhéry, and petitioning everyone he could think of, even the pope, to defend me and my son. “After your rousing plea today, I have no doubt that the Parisians will respond. And now, you must go.”
    “I cannot leave now. The Parisians—”
    “I will take care of everything. Your son needs you, and you must go to him.”
    “In your clothes?” I fingered the soft fabric, imagined it against my skin, this tunic that he had worn.
    “Not even a common robber would dare attack the papal legate.” I, however, would be in greater danger than Louis were I discovered on the Orléans road. I alone stood between the rebels and the throne.
    Mincia dressed me in a hurry. I would need to ride immediately if I wanted to make it to Montlhéry today. At Corbeil, said my spies, confusion reigned. When the rebels heard of Louis’s taking refuge in the castle, they’d cursed, their plans for a surprise attack foiled. Pierre and Philip Hurepel, both hoping for the crown, were quarreling. Philip wanted to storm the castle, while Pierre, knowing how heavily fortified were its walls, wanted to wait until Louis ventured out and then swoop down like a hand to snatch him up. They aimed, as I’d suspected, to separate him from me and take the throne for themselves. But they hadn’t reckoned on me.
    Romano’s kiss on my forehead. His mint-scented breath. The look in his eyes—what was it?
    I wondered, settling into the saddle on his white palfrey, how I would endure the long hours that reaching my son would require. I wished that I could fly, and indeed as I whipped my horse to go faster, faster, the countryside passing in a blur, its hooves seemed never to touch the ground. The rebel barons were well versed in the art of siege warfare. Many of them had taken the cross, and learned from the Saracens terrible new acts of devastation. Please, O Lord, do not let them harm a hair on his head. I remembered Romano’s admonition the night before, that if I were afraid I might pray for God’s comfort. You are the answer to my prayers, Romano. Indeed, he was the prayer itself.
    We reached the castle before dusk, our horses lathered, my legs weak from the long ride, my hair straying from under my cardinal’s hat. The rebel army had not arrived yet, praise God. The castle guards stared as if I were a wraith, astonished to see a woman in a man’s attire—especially the cardinal’s holy vestments—but they lowered the gate to me without delay and I hurried into the great hall to see my beautiful, marvelous, regal—sullen—son.
    “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