Joanna agreed that they would, indeed, remembering Cardinal Melior’s intense hostility toward Raimond. So he was the Count of Toulouse now. Surprised by how pleased she was to hear this, she decided it was because Raimond was bound to be a better ruler than his father had been.
When she relayed this to Berengaria upon her return to Chinon, Berengaria was pleased, too, expressing the hope that Raimond might be less tolerant of heretics now that he had the responsibility of ruling all of Toulouse. She thought they should write to Raimond and offer their sympathies, pointing out that he’d been very kind during their long journey from Marseille to Poitiers. Joanna agreed and that evening, she dictated a brief letter of condolence to her scribe, even though she doubted Raimond was all that grieved by his father’s death. But then she snatched it back and penned a postscript herself, writing that Raimond had been right. “At times I am too quick to pass judgment, as on a September eve in a Bordeaux garden.” She was sure that Raimond would understand this oblique apology, and she could imagine him smiling as he read it, a thought that made her smile, too.
THE EMPRESS CONSTANCE STILL had nightmares about what she’d endured in Salerno three years ago. Left behind by Heinrich after he and most of his invading army had been stricken with the bloody flux, she’d found herself in grave danger, for the townspeople panicked once they learned that the emperor and the German army were in retreat. Besieged in the royal palace by a drunken mob, she’d come close to death, rescued just in time by a cousin of King Tancred, who’d then turned his prize prisoner over to the Sicilian king. She’d never forgiven Heinrich for abandoning her in Salerno, or for refusing to make any concessions to gain her freedom. She had forgiven the Salernitans, though, for she knew they’d acted from terror, not treachery, and while she thought they deserved some punishment, she’d been horrified by her husband’s bloody vengeance upon that unlucky town and its citizens.
But she’d taken away from Salerno more than bad memories. The famed medical school of Salerno admitted women, licensing them to practice medicine, and in the course of her high-risk, improbable pregnancy, Constance had been very grateful to have a female physician. She was convinced that Dame Martina had gotten her safely through those early, perilous months in which miscarriage was most likely, and she had faith that Dame Martina would help her to give birth to a living male child; she never doubted that God would bless her with a son. Yet on this December night, she was not thinking of the dangers of the birthing chamber, for that afternoon she’d learned what her women had tried desperately to keep from her—that people believed her pregnancy was a hoax. She was too old to bear a child, they insisted, after eight barren years, but Heinrich needed an heir and so he had concocted this ruse. A baby would be smuggled into the birthing chamber, mayhap one of Heinrich’s by-blows, and it would be announced that the empress had given birth to a fine, healthy boy.
Constance was outraged that she should be the object of such scurrilous speculation and she was appalled that this mean-spirited gossip could cast a shadow upon the legitimacy of her son. If people did not believe he was her child, he would not be considered the rightful heir to the Sicilian throne. His enemies would use these foul rumors against him, a pretext for rebellion. In time, he might even come to wonder himself if they were true. Alone in the dark, she wept quietly. But come morning, she rose dry-eyed from the bed, hers the steely resolve that had enabled past de Hautevilles to carve a kingdom out of the Sicilian heartland. Summoning the head of her household knights, she ordered him to set up a pavilion in the town marketplace.
“And then you are to spread the word that I shall have my lying-in there, in that tent, and all the matrons and maidens of the town are welcome to attend the birth of my child.”
They tried to talk her out of it, scandalized by the very idea of a highborn woman making such a public spectacle of herself, sharing so intimate a moment with the wives of cobblers and tanners and innkeepers. But Constance was adamant. Only once did her icy control crack, when Dame Martina asked if she was sure she wanted to do this.
“Of course I do not want to do this! But it is the only way that I can disprove these vile rumors. The women of Jesi will watch as my son is born, they will bear witness that he is indeed flesh of my flesh, and nothing matters more than that.”
ON CHRISTMAS DAY IN Palermo, Heinrich was crowned King of Sicily. He celebrated by having the bodies of Tancred and his son Roger dragged from their royal tombs. Tancred’s widow, Sybilla, had yielded to Heinrich after he’d promised that he’d not harm her or her children; showing surprising magnanimity, he even agreed to let her four-year-old son inherit the lands Tancred had held when he was Count of Lecce.
On December 26, Constance gave birth to a son, witnessed by the women of Jesi; the baby was named Friedrich after Heinrich’s father. Several days later, Constance offered further proof that Friedrich was a child of her body by nursing him in public.