Joanna (16 page)

Geoffrey’s eyes, which had been dull, lightened to bright amber as color strained his face. Salisbury put up a warning hand and took a step toward his son, but there was no way to reach Geoffrey before he spoke again.

“My lord, it is each vassal’s duty to lay what knowledge he has before his liege lord. The Welsh have driven more than one English army from their lands. In their halls, they sing of how this was done. There is a kernel of meat under the shell of proud words.”

“Rotten with worms,” John sneered, and then, aware of Salisbury’s eyes on him he said, “Well, what is this meat?”

“What I said already,” Geoffrey got out with a   semblance of calm. “That you will not find Lord Llewelyn himself no matter where you seek. You would do better”

“Oh, enough!” John exclaimed contemptuously. “When a boy-child, swollen with unmerited honor, begins to tell a war council what it had better do, it is time to cry enough. You are free to leave us, Lord Geoffrey, and to obey the orders we give you.”

There was a moment of trembling silence while Geoffrey looked, not at the king but at his father. “Yes, my lord,” he said softly, and bowed, and left the room.

A short walk brought him out into the cloister where he stopped to try to calm the rage that was threatening to send him back to speak his mind. Having swallowed that lunatic impulse, which left him feeling rather sick, Geoffrey wondered what next he should do. By choice he would go back to camp, but if he wished to speak to his father about Joanna it was necessary to wait until the council was over. As if his thinking had conjured her from thin air, a page tugged at his sleeve and told him that the lady awaited him in the garden.

Summoning to mind his own not-so-distant miseries when he had served in the same capacity, Geoffrey did not snap the child’s head off, strike him, or refuse to accompany him. He closed his eyes, prayed for patience, and said, “Very well, lead on.”

It would have been better if Joanna had been at a distance, but she had settled herself conveniently near the entrance to the pleasure grounds. Geoffrey had no time to cool and, when she rose to greet him, smiling pleasantly, snapped at her, “How can I serve you, madam?”

Long years of living with two volatile temperaments had made their mark on Joanna. Instead of shrieking, “Is that a proper way to greet me, whoreson?” as her mother might well have done, she said softly, “I have caught you at a bad time. I am sorry for it. I will not keep you. I promised your father I would make my peace with you before you returned to camp. Only let me say I am sorry I teased you last night, my lord.”

Geoffrey rubbed at his forehead as if to scrub away the   lines between his brows. “I think it is more my place to say I am sorry. It seems to me I was not overcivil last night, nor yet just now.”

“Last night you were drunk,” Joanna said with a shrug. “I knew it. And today” she raised her eyes to his, “today you are troubled with something of note.”

“You may say that more than once,” Geoffrey replied bitterly. “I have been listening to a pack of old foolsmy father includedtalking of how they will conquer Wales by bringing Lord Llewelyn to a pitched battle and capturing him.”

“That is ridiculous,” Joanna cried. “Even I know”

“
You,
” Geoffrey snarled, “are a fool of a girl, and I am boy-child swollen with unmerited honor who needs still to be at my nurse’s knee, according to the king. How can what we know be of merit?”

“But did you say nothing? Did you not point out that no one has
ever
brought the Welsh to a great battle?”

“I did not have time to point out anything. As soon as I raised my voice, I was scolded like a child and sent from the room, I”

“Stop, Geoffrey,” Joanna protested, quite alarmed at the color his face had turned. “There is no sense in raging against the king. You know him to be a churl and a fool. Let us rather consider what we can do to soften the ill that will fall upon us. Come, walk with me in the cool of the garden. Do not think upon that idiot’s mouthings.”

“There is nothing I
can
do! I am twenty. They have spent their lives making war.”

The very truth of what he said was calming. He had known the council would not listen. It was sheer bad chance that not one lord of the Welsh Marches was present. Every man there had fought amost exclusively in France or in small private battles in England. None could really imagine what Wales was like, especially in the western parts. And as for the kinghe never missed a chance to sneer at anyone if he could find it.   “It was partly my own fault,” Geoffrey sighed. “Instead of only telling what I knew, I began to offer advice on what should be done. I am not used to holding so high a place that my words are directed to earls and bishops and kings.”

“Never mind that now. I do not think they would have listened no matter how you spoke,” Joanna soothed. “I did not mean what you could do to change the king’s plans. I meant what we could do to save our men as much as possible. I remember Ian said how they nearly starved to death when he went with my father into Wales.”

“Yes, that was how Ian came to meet Lord Llewelyn. Ian’s troop was foraging for food and captured him. That was what I wished to tell themthat Wales is not full of farms that can be stripped for provender, nor are there wide roads to carry the ox carts.

“Then you will need asses and mules.

Geoffrey nodded. “For myself I have enough, and I think our own vassals are convinced and will buy where they can. But there are not sufficient animals in the country to carry provender for the entire army for the time needed. A few weeks while we assail a stronghold is no great difficulty, but to pursue Llewelyn”

“So long as you and our men do not starve, I do not care,” Joanna said callously. “I care for my own first.”

“Then you had better care for all, unless you wish to see us engaged against our own comrades,” Geoffrey remarked sharply.

Joanna’s eyes misted with thought. “You are right. Whatever the leaders say, to the men an empty belly comes first. Geoffrey, if you know a better way to settle this matter, you had better convince your father and let him deal with the king.”

“Of course. I said I was a fool to speak as I did, but I was surprised. It had not occurred to me that my father had never fought in Wales or that he and Ian should never have discussed the ways of war there.”

“Ian would not!” Joanna exclaimed. “It would seem to   him an act of treachery against his clan brother.”

Geoffrey uttered an obscenity and then added, “I had not thought of that! Where does this place me? In God’s name, can I, in honor, use what Ian has taught me against his friends?

“Do not begin to unravel a silk thread,” Joanna said hastily, cursing herself for raising the question. “If you can, in honor, bear arms, then you must bear them as wisely and as well as is in your power. That is like asking whether you should fight at half your strength because your enemy is the friend of a friend. Ian expects you to use whatever you know to the fullestexcept”

“Except what? Can there be an exception to honor?”

Joanna did not curse aloud nor raise her eyes to heaven nor sigh nor give any other sign of the exasperation that aroused in her an urgent desire to kick her betrothed in the shin. She realized she was meeting for the first time the bête noire that was her mother’s nightmare. The conflict between honor and good sense had sparked more bitter quarrels in Joanna’s home than any other problem.

“I do not know,” she said quietly, “but there must be sometimes a compromise with necessity. Do you think Ian should have cut off one of his arms and sent it to Llewelyn while the rest of his body went to the king?”

That produced a laugh, as she had intended, but Geoffrey did not, as she hoped, abandon the subject. He said, “Do not talk like a fool of what you do not understand. Honor cannot be compromised, nor has Ian compromised it. He has fulfilled his obligations to each overlord completely.”

There was a brief silence while Joanna considered whether she should drop the problem she had meant to bring to Geoffrey’s attention. The keeps her stepfather owned in Wales were neither large nor of great significance. In an ordinary way, unless the path of the army happened to cross them accidentally, they would be left in peace. It was not impossible, however, that John would deliberately go out of his way to attack them just to injure Ian. If John knew where they were, probably there was nothing Geoffrey could do to   prevent that anyway. The question remained whether Geoffrey would feel obliged to lead the army to Ian’s strongholds if asked to do so.

They were walking slowly side by side through the garden while the sun flicked in and out behind the hurrying clouds of early morning. The roses were still in full bloom. When their scent came to Geoffrey, memory came with it. He glanced around, drew Joanna into the shadow of the tall canes, and kissed her hungrily. She permitted the embrace passively, her mind still fixed on the problem of how to protect Ian’s property from Geoffrey’s honor.

After a few moments, Geoffrey released her lips. “Are you angry because I was not here to greet you?” he asked softly, “Or because of what I said last night?”

“I am not angry at all,” Joanna assured him, a trifle absently.

“Then why” he began, but before he could finish the question the explanation most obvious to a jealous mind overtook him. “I suppose you have already found someone more to your taste. I beg your pardon, I am sure, for forcing my attentions on you.”

“What have I done?” Joanna gasped in the blankest surprise. “Why should you accuse me of such a thing? We are betrothed. How could anyone be more to my taste? What would it matter if anyone was?”

Naturally enough, Geoffrey did not answer any of her questions. He did not know how to describe the difference between her warm, eager passivity in the garden of Roselynde and the cold, indifferent passivity of this last kiss. As to the final two questions, they provided him equally with reassurance and with pain. Both betrayed that Joanna was completely innocent of and totally ignorant of love either for him or for anyone else.

“What is wrong?” Joanna repeated anxiously.

Even as she spoke, realization came to her. Somehow Geoffrey had felt that she was not paying attention to his kiss. It did not seem to Joanna that she had acted in any way differently from the previous time he had kissed her. Then   too she had stood quietly and permitted him to do as he liked, but she had to accept what was obviously true. In Roselynde, she had felt his kissand somehow Geoffrey knew that this time she had not. In instant contrition, she put her arms around his neck.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. Then curiously, “How did you know I was not paying attention? I am troubled because of Ian’s Welsh lands. If the king wished to attack them but did not know where they were, would you have to lead him there?”

Instinctive reaction made Geoffrey fold his arms around Joanna when she embraced him, and he started to drop his head toward hers to renew their kiss. Now he pulled away, his lips tightening.

“Lead him to my father-by-marriage’s property? Even the king could not ask that of me.”

“Who knows what King John can ask?” Joanna insisted, intent upon wringing a promise from Geoffrey that he would not contribute in any way to the destruction of her stepfather’s lands.

“He cannot ask me the where-abouts of Ian’s keeps unless his purpose is to make open bad feeling between us. He knows I will not lead the army there nor would my oath of loyalty to him demand that of me. The blood bond must come first. If we should come upon one of the keeps by accident, however, I am less sure of what I must do. I know their weak and strong points, of course, as I know the shape of my own fingers. Must I hold my peace and see some of the men I lead die? Or must I betray my lord to save the lives of his vassals? It is a sweet choice.”

Since Geoffrey was already thinking along the lines she desired, Joanna did not press him further. If they came upon the keeps by accident, they would be taken whether Geoffrey gave aid or not. Satisfied, she raised her face a little more, to an angle that would better facilitate lip meeting lip. “I will pay attention now, if you kiss me again,” she murmured invitingly.  
p.

Joanna paid attention to Geoffrey’s kisses with such effect that Geoffrey found himself reluctant to raise the question of her departure. In fact, he did not have the chance because he did not see his father again until they were a week’s march into Wales. Joanna was still at court, but Geoffrey had something more important on his mind. He did his best to follow Joanna’s advice and convince Salisbury to wage a new kind of war. Salisbury listened politely, but he did not give much thought to what Geoffrey had said, putting down what seemed to him an exaggerated respect for a rather barbaric people to the influence of Owain apLlewelyn, who had been the senior squire when Geoffrey served under Ian. A few days later, however, the conversations he had had with his son were brought forcibly back to Salisbury’s mind. A sneak raid in the night cost them some men and a large number of horses and oxen. During the next few days men were lost on the march also. In any heavily wooded area, a fusillade of arrows might suddenly fly outor might not. To pursue was useless and dangerous, the leaders of the army found. The number of men hurt was actually insignificant. The damage done to their nerves and spirits was far more important.

By the end of the second week, Salisbury was recalling his talk with his son with a sinking heart. The guides sent by the prince of Powys were pointing out the area where they believed Lord Llewelyn and his army lay hidden. Salisbury had argued that no army could get up a trackless mountainand the guides had laughed. They agreed that no army with carts of supplies and tents with furniture for its nobles and oxen to drag all could accomplish it. But an   army could if its meat was still on the hoof, its grain in sacks to be carried by men and mules, its shelter and comfort the leaves of the trees and the open heavens. Salisbury thanked them and said he would consider; they laughed again. If he did not go now, they said, he would lose his prizeif it was not already gone. When he brought this news to John, Salisbury found that his feeling of hopeless frustration was not shared. John suggested that, since Geoffrey had been so foresighted as to be provided with the proper equipment for such a venture, that Geoffrey should go. If Salisbury thought Geoffrey unable, he could either appoint some other man to lead or ask Geoffrey to barter his supplies and animals for cars and oxen.