White Heart by Sherry Jones

She sweeps into the hall clad in spotless white, the color of angels and mourning queens. Pierre Mauclerc’s eyes gleam at her, lurid with imagined sin, but he has seen nothing as yet. He sits on his bench with his lips to the ear of Hugh de Lusignan, whispering lies while forty other barons of the realm mill and chatter, their exclamations and barks of laughter bouncing about the stone walls as Blanche begins to remove her clothes.
    She stands in their midst, her head high, her white-gloved hand lifted to the white cord tying her ermine-lined mantle across her chest. Down it falls into the waiting hand of Mincia, her maid. Pierre’s mouth ceases to move. Heads turn her way; eyes pop at the sight of her face, made up in the shape of a startling and, she hopes, poignant, heart. Her lips are white, her eyebrows. They used to call her “white in heart” and they will again, by God.
    She slides her white velvet surcoat over her arms and drops it into Mincia’s care. The hall falls hush as if words were birds settling in the rafters, rustling their wings. Mincia draws a knife from the sheath on her hip and, with a flash of the blade, cuts the threads tying the sleeves of Blanche’s gown to her outstretched arms. For this occasion she has donned her tunic of white silk embroidered with white fleurde-lis, the emblem of France. Five pearl necklaces drape across her chest, hiding her flush but not her breasts, which must be fully revealed.
    Mincia dips to the floor to grasp the hem of her dress. Slowly she lifts it as the barons watch, jaws dropping (a frisson of pleasure runs through Blanche’s veins. Let them gossip about her now!), revealing her white calfskin boots and white silk leggings—a queen must not cry, blow her nose, or bare her feet and legs in public.
    “My lady!” Robert de Gâteblé, Pierre’s elder brother, leaps to his feet. “Please stop.” He looks as if he might weep, the poor man. He fears she might debase herself—but it is too late for that. Her enemies have already degraded her, and gleefully so. To what lengths will they go to wrest the Crown of France from her? No matter: To keep it, she will always go further.
    A woman’s power lies in her beauty. So said her grandmother, Eléonore d’Aquitaine, who ought to know. Today, beauty feels more like her undoing. But no. Were she as ugly as Medusa, these men would murmur against her, for she possesses what they most desire: power.
    Continue, she whispers to Mincia, who has halted with Blanche’s gown in her hands, waiting to see if she will change her mind. Hoping. Do not give them the satisfaction, my lady, she begged just moments ago as Blanche looked down over the hall, waiting for the room to fill. She is doing the opposite, can’t Mincia see that? They will not be satisfied until she is ruined—which will be very soon, unless she puts an end to these lies.
    Mincia lifts the heavy garment up, up, blocking Blanche’s white-hearted face from view, exposing the rest of her. Someone sucks in his breath. She hears a curse. Good! The room’s chill air grips her torso with icy hands. Gooseflesh ripples her skin. She bends her knees; Mincia pulls the tunic over her head without even knocking her crown askew. Exclamations fill the hall.
    Blanche never drops her glance. She knows how she appears, her nipples pushing darkly against the thin chemise of fine white linen, her belly not only flat but concave, her hipbones jutting, the sheer fabric clinging to the hair between her legs.
    “ Monsieurs, we have heard rumors,” she says. Her voice does not quaver, although her bare arms shiver. The barons’ eyes slide down her body; jerk back up to her face, their cheeks reddening; then slide downward again. She might as well be naked before them, which is her intention. Isn’t this how they have imagined her?
    “Look upon us, yes! Fill your eyes.” Pierre Mauclerc—“Bad Clerk,” his name means, and although no one knows how he acquired it, Blanche