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Romano. What a great error that nearly turned out to be! My cousin poked out his lower lip like a giant baby and glowered at the legate, his arms folded over his chest, until Romano at last invented a headache and left us alone. Then, after I’d ordered wine and roast pigeons for Thibaut, we began negotiations, if they can be called that. Having boasted to Pierre that I would do his bidding—the reason, no doubt, Pierre had sent him—my cousin betrayed him utterly by agreeing to every one of my conditions.
    He returned to Mauclerc the next morning with a contrived report that hundreds of additional troops had joined my camp. We were preparing, he said, to sweep like a tornado across Thouars unless he capitulated—which Pierre did. Never had a battle been so bloodlessly fought, or so easily won, the chroniclers proclaimed. Easily won, yes, if you think it is easy to disguise revulsion and hatred with sweet words and kisses. Oh, the things I have done for France.
    Such pleasure it gave me to see Pierre de Dreux and Hugh de Lusignan kneel at the feet of my son! I had to resist the urge to kick the soft dirt into their faces as they bent their heads to kiss his ring. It would have been a far kinder act than throwing them into the jail, which was what I really wanted to do. Admonished by Romano’s cautionary gaze, however, I feigned forgiveness. Romano had already shown me the power of mercy. At his suggestion I had released the treasonous Count of Flanders after ten years’ imprisonment—and he, in return, had sent troops to Loudun in my support. His wife, Johanna, who had hated me when we were girls, embraced me as though we were loving sisters and declared herself mistaken for thinking me “insufferably vain and self-centered.” As tall as a man and horse-faced, she had always been, understandably, jealous of my graceful good looks.
    Now my task was to win the devotion of the rebels. As they knelt to kiss Louis’s ring, I beamed every speck of warmth that I could muster while Hugh’s scheming wife, Isabella, King Henry’s mother, stood nearby tossing me haughty sneers. No doubt she’d plotted this entire coup, craving my throne for herself. Otherwise why would she refuse to pay homage to Louis? “I am a queen, and bend my knee to no one,” she said. We would see about that.
    We rode home in high spirits, tossing coins to the folk who came out to cheer our success. The way our faces shone with pride, one might have thought we’d conquered Jerusalem for the pope, but privately I worried. I’d seen Pierre exchange devious glances with Isabella after he kissed Louis’s ring. Forced allegiance makes for an inconstant friend. He would try again to oust me, I knew.
    Yet my heart felt as light as a song. Let Pierre and his malcontents plot and scheme and attack all they wished! We were invincible. After the news spread of our success at Loudun, the grateful merchants and mayors of Melun, Sens, Bourge, and Orléans fêted us as we passed through each town. For Pierre to control France would be disaster for them, they said. Everyone knew he’d taxed Brittany’s bishops so severely that the pope of Rome excommunicated him. Then, undaunted, he’d refused to grant a self-governance charter to the town of Rennes, saying that the land was Brittany’s and that, as their “duke” (the title of count, apparently, not being prestigious enough) he had the right to make villeins of them all.
    “We are traders, not knights or foot soldiers, and would be loath to leave our shops for battles we are ill-prepared to fight,” the mayor of Orléans told me. “We hope, my lady, that you will honor the agreements made by King Philip Augustus, and grant us the freedom to govern ourselves. In exchange, we offer you our loyalty and love as well as a portion of our profits.”
    At the Cité Palace, Romano and I discussed the townsmen’s concerns with Guérin. “Many a villein and not a few knights have balked when pressed to fight,