Unruly Princess

Copyright © 2012 Marcelle Thiébaux

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination or fictitious reinventions.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Map of Margit’s World by Marcy R. Edelstein

Cover illustration and illustration of Ottakar are by Tamara Thiébaux Heikalo, VolanteMultimedia.com

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Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3768-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3767-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3769-6 (e)

1. Margit Árpád, Princess of Hungary, 1242-1270—Fiction. 2. Hungary—History—Fiction. 3. Béla IV, King of Hungary, 1206-1270—Fiction. 4. Premysl Ottakar II, King of Bohemia, 1233-1278—Fiction. 5. Saints’ Legends—Fiction.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012901015

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/25/2012

For my husband Cameron

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1  The Wedding Chest

Chapter 2  Friar Marczellus

Chapter 3  Mystical Marriage

Chapter 4  The Novices

Chapter 5  The Coming of Ottakar

Chapter 6  The Banquet

Chapter 7  The Parley of Béla and Ottakar

Chapter 8  Margit in the Morning

Chapter 9  Olympiada in Despair

Chapter 10  Histories of the Country at War

Chapter 11  An Interruption. Olympiada Concludes her Histories

Chapter 12  Margit Rides to the Dingle

Chapter 13  Margit Cooks Supper

Chapter 14  Calm is Restored

Chapter 15  The Stranger

Chapter 16  Cunegonda and Elle in the Garden

Chapter 17  Summer’s End

Chapter 18  Cunegonda and Ottakar

Chapter 19  January: Ten Years Later

Epilogue

Glossary

Afterword

Questions for Discussion

Acknowledgments

This novel owes its inspiration to the medieval Princess Margit of Hungary, and personalities in her court and convent circle. My thanks to my friends and fellow writers who read this novel wholly or in part in its different stages of development, and generously offered valuable suggestions; to my colleagues in the New York Writers Studio, Lucinda Holt, Carole Cohen, Kathi Hansen, Alison Higby, Scott Morgan, Michelle Seaton, and Shelley Stack; to attentive readers Jim Bengston, Michele Gallagher, Dorothy Helly, Eileen Kelly, Andrea Lee, Julia Frey, Giles Richter, Anthony Richter, Zsuzsa Rozgonyi-Krukovsky, and Sondra Spatt Olsen. To James D. Ryan who reviewed the map with his expertise as a medieval historian, and gave constructive advice. To my fellow members of New York City’s Friends of the Saints, whose founder, the late Jo Ann McNamara, initiated this lively and flourishing study group of scholars and hagiographers sharing their research. To the librarians and archivists of the libraries where I worked and the superb collections of these libraries: The Széchényi National Library in Budapest where my research began; New York City’s Columbia University, one of my alma maters, both Butler Library and the Avery Library of Architecture and Fine Arts; the Thomas J. Watson Library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and the collection of The New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. I owe special thanks to The New York Public Library for granting me a research desk in The Wertheim Study.

Thanks above all to my husband, Cameron Bloch.

I will fulfill my vows unto the Lord.

Psalm 116.14

My name is Margit Árpád. Much of this tale is about me, though not all of it. My birthplace was a fortress off the coast of Dalmatia, where my parents took refuge from the Tartar hordes close at their heels. That was in 1242.

The most important people in the story that follows are my niece Cunegonda, and our kinsman Prince Ottakar.Yes, the golden flourish we hear on this day is Ottakar’s horn as he gallops toward our kingdom and from now on our three lives will be unexpectedly bound together. It’s July of 1260 and I am eighteen.

Here are my story’s characters:

Maria Lascarina. My mother, a Greek Byzantine princess whose father was the Emperor of Nicaea, journeyed to Hungary to marry the king, my father. I look like her, people say.

Béla IV of Hungary, my father, rules with war and civility. He and my mother had nine children, two boys, seven girls. I was next to last.

Stephen is my mild-mannered brother. My father has pushed him constantly to be a leader. In the end, Stephen and my father will engage in bitter rivalry.

Ottakar II of Bohemia, aged twenty-seven, reigns as the most powerful, the richest, and most ambitious of the Bohemian princes in the house of Premysl, and in Europe. He is called the golden king. He loves the fine arts and literature as he loves hunting, drinking, women, and making war. He claims to love me.

Rudolf of Habsburg served Ottakar at one time as his loyal marshal. Who could have foreseen how Rudolf would faithlessly turn to betray him?

Cunegonda is Béla’s granddaughter and my niece. This sweet blond princess was a widow of fifteen when she first laid eyes on Ottakar.

Olympiada, my Greek nurse and duenna, came from Nicaea with my mother when both girls were in their young teens.

Agnes, Luczia, Judit, Alinka, Szabina, Frozia, Katalin, and Pinka. Oh, and I mustn’t forget Csenga, the steward’s daughter. These were among the girls at our convent. Not all of them were fond of me.

Marczellus serves as my confessor, spiritual advisor, and my champion against the world. He is Prior Provincial of the Hungarian Dominicans.

Ulrich von Hagenau, an Austrian court poet, traveled to Hungary in Ottakar’s retinue.

Elle d’Avignon. Another poet in Ottakar’s household, she was an illustrious trobairitz, a girl troubadour. During the burning of heretics and moneylenders in the south of France, Elle and her mother fled the region and Elle came eventually to our court in Hungary.

Chapter 1

The Wedding Chest

The world knows of my father and his brilliant campaigns, how he tamed the wild men of Transylvania and banished the sorcerers, sprites, blood-drinkers, and shapeshifters from the land. He is Béla, king of Hungary. He subdued the barbarians, Christianized the heathen, and brought a gentler culture to our Magyar kingdom.

This I can tell you of myself. I was an infant warrior. Around the time I was born, Tartar armies raced down across the steppes in circling columns, slaughtering, sacking, torching, hounding us, clamoring at the gates of our kingdom. With pointed helmets glinting and black-and-white signal flags snapping, the mounted archers came on, and our soldiers fell before the sharp showers of their arrows like autumn leaves.

I was with my parents when we drove the Tartars back to the depths of the Golden Horde. I lay innocent, and ignorant, but we enacted a blessed miracle. My father and mother vowed to give me to God in return for our safe delivery from the enemy. Because of me, God spared us. He turned our furious despoilers aside, and I have belonged to heaven ever since.

Now we’re in the beginning of a sultry July, and my father is away once again from our palace in Buda. He’s warring against the Styrians and Bohemians, notably against the formidable Ottakar. My cousin.

I fear my parents will want me to marry Ottakar. All along, they’ve been pressing me to marry other suitors they’ve brought around for my inspection. But my work has already been determined for me. That is to defend our Magyar land through mortification and prayer. And in my ongoing bargains with God, to beg him to stand fast before us, to be our shield. It’s what I’ve done since my birth, when I delivered my people from the murdering Tartars of Batu Khan.

It seems my parents have forgotten their vow.

My father would like me now to be married and have plenty of babies, perhaps one each year, like my sister. I’ve told him I cannot. He and my mother don’t understand I must live austerely, as I do. Not too much sleeping, not too much eating, no luxuries. I keep my vows. I’ve renounced earthly love and the consolations of wealth and rank. I have a holy mission and my own conviction of how I need to conduct my life. It’s not with an ordinary husband.

I am Margit of Hungary. I’m a princess royal, but rarely do my guardians approve of my carrying out my own royal wishes. I have been told to bathe, but I would prefer not to. Holiness is the naked state of the body, unadorned. I’m supposed to dress prettily to attract a man, but I care nothing for what other girls call finery. In winter’s cold and summer’s hammering heat, I don’t wear the comfort of under linen. The raiment I have on me is red velvet frippery given to me by my mother. She hoped I would wear it to look fine, but I’ve put it on to scrub the chimneys, making sure I get it filthy and full of holes. It’s in rags, but I don’t mind, I’m glad of it.

This oak chest I’m sitting on by my window is a handsome polished wood rubbed with lavender-scented beeswax. It’s carved with stags in flight. If there’s one thing we Magyars love, it’s hunting. The men do. This sumptuous chest is what my mother, Queen Maria Lascarina, calls a hope chest. It’s meant to hold creamy linens crusted thick with needlework, brocaded robes set with precious stones, rich garments a princess would wear to make herself—that is, myself—alluring to her beloved.

I slide to the ground and kneel before the chest, clasping my arms around it. I smile, but I want to weep. My arms are long and a bit skinny because I eat nothing. I undo the red-gold hinge and lift the lid of my treasure chest. It’s heavy. A replica of Saint István’s crown is set in bronze inside the lid. I have the chest packed with a wedding trousseau, but it’s not the usual kind. I have here my so-called nuptial veils, sashes, and ornaments I wear to honor my heavenly Bridegroom, to make me worthy and most pleasing in his sight.

What I call my marriage paraphernalia are really my dear instruments of self-discipline, scourges, hair shirts, and irons to sear my flesh. I offer up my penances and pains to my divine Spouse. To suffer as he did. It is my pact with heaven to keep my body pure and our kingdom forever safe.

Through my uncurtained window, a midnight wind blows black against my face, a wind muggy with gnats and damp with the fog rolling off the Danube. Outside, the waves lap and ripple against the shore of this island. We call it the Isle of Hares. Long ago, it was overrun with rabbits; at least, that is what people say. Always, there is the rustle of reeds and the slap, slapping caress of the restless water breaking without remorse on the strand outside our cloister walls.

I touch the beautiful things inside my treasure chest and turn them over, letting them sift through my fingers.

Chapter 2

Friar Marczellus

Marczellus sits at the writing table in his cell, sharpening pens. He’s putting fine points to a stack of goose quills after steeping them in hot sand to toughen them. He pares off the excess feathers and then wipes the quills on his white habit, which is already soiled. The black mantle fastens over the wool robe, excessively warm for the summer day. Dominicans, black friars like Marczellus, were sent from Toulouse not long ago, and they have scattered throughout central Europe to Cracow, Carinthia, Prague, and Hungary.

Marczellus remembers it’s Margit’s hour, when she’ll be at the chapel. He has terrible news for her. He also has a gift for her that will inspire her to more intense prayer and probably to more excruciating penances. But first, the two of them will pray together in the chapel, at Saint Elizabeth’s reliquary altar. He takes up the packet he’s prepared for her and hurries from his cell. His stone hovel is constructed against the outside wall of the convent chapel. Béla had the chapel built for his daughter out of the finest limestone from nearby Budaors beside the ancient Roman town of Aquincum, using French architects and local stonemasons. It was after the Tartars had laid waste to the country that King Béla rebuilt chapels, convents, and a strong defensive system of castles all over Hungary.

In the chapel, Marczellus finds Princess Margit wearing the white-and-black Dominican habit. Marczellus is moved by his princess’s wan and wistful face. He knows how scarred her body is; he’s seen her inadvertently. Her body is young; her breasts are lovely, small and high, covered like the rest of her with scratches, bruises, burns, and welts. She’ll never apply salves to soften the skin or heal the sores.

Bad news, I’m afraid, he says and places the silk-wrapped packet in her hands. Here in the chapel, he eyes her narrowly. He waits to see how she’ll take what he has to tell her.

Another husband, I suppose. Fretfully she rubs her eyes.

You won’t ever be out of that danger as long as your father’s alive. Only death, his or yours, is going to win you a reprieve.

I’m wholly prepared for mine.

"You’re not due for it yet, I think. But we will have to fend off your royal father again."

Her smile fades. "If my royal father wants to sell me to another one of those squalid foreigners of his, he knows what I’ll do. I said it when he showed up with Leo the Ukrainian,