Joanna (48 page)

“I told you it was a kitten,” he said irritably. “Your fool   of a maid was supposed to drug it so it would sleep, but I suppose she did not give it enough.”

While he spoke and got back into bed, Joanna undid the cord that fastened the small sack. Immediately, a tortoise-shell kitten popped out. It was pretty and in high dudgeon at the indignity just visited upon it, but as Joanna bemusedly stroked it and tickled it under the chin it regained its equanimity and began to purr.

“But Geoffrey,” Joanna protested, “why is it here? I mean, it is a very odd thing to find a kitten tied to the bed straps. It”

“What the devil is wrong with you?” Geoffrey snarled. “If you had not bled, what did you think I would do? Isabella has been taunting me for days. Did you not see her look me over, hair by hair, and cry out to all that there was not so much as an unhealed scratch on me. Where could I draw blood that she would not have marked it? She looked you over too. I would have bled the cat while it slept and”

He never got to finish the story and explain how he proposed to get rid of the evidence. Joanna flung her arms around his neck. “Oh Geoffrey, Geoffrey, I will be a good wife to you. I will be good and obedient and faithful until the day I die, I swear it. You are so kind”

“What a fool you are, Joanna,” he said softly, holding her tight against him and pulling her down. “You are truly mine now. Did you think I would let anyone hurt you in any way for any reason?”

The last words were muffled against her throat. A brief panic combined of memory of pain and of her previous inability to respond to Geoffrey’s caress was routed immediately by the warmth that spread from the touch of his lips. Joanna sighed and the tenseness went out of her muscles. Gently, Geoffrey pulled his arms from under her limp body to give him freedom of movement. He continued to kiss her for a while, then lifted his head to look at her. She made a tiny, complaining murmur when the caress stopped, and her eyes opened slowly.   “Are you willing?” Geoffrey whispered.

It seemed to Joanna a very strange question to ask. She had forgotten he had promised not to take her again if she did not wish to risk a second hurt. In any case, she had no desire to speak and merely lifted a hand to pull Geoffrey’s head toward her.

Geoffrey accepted the gesture as it was meant, but this time he took no chances. He kissed her and fondled her; he sucked her lips, her breasts, the little tongue between her nether lips. Joanna’s passive pleasure changed to active desire. She whimpered and wriggled and uttered little cries. Twice she tried to slip her body under his, but Geoffrey was enjoying the drawn-out titillation of his senses which was impossible with the whores he had been using. With them he lacked the inclination for foreplay beyond the necessary stimulation of his own desire; he was too aware that the response was merely a bored simulation to encourage his generosity in payment.

Joanna was real. Every sigh and cry she uttered sent a pulse of pleasure through him. The salt taste of blood and woman made his shaft move as if it had a life of its own. Joanna was nearly weeping with frustration and excitement. She clutched at Geoffrey frantically, unaware that her long nails were scoring his body. She kissed every part of him she could reach until, when he twisted completely around to give his mouth a better purchase, his shaft touched her cheek. Beside herself with passion, Joanna kissed that too, sought to swallow it whole. Geoffrey stiffened and groaned, then hurriedly reversed his position.

The second time was easy. Whatever pain of unaccustomed stretching Joanna endured merely added to the exquisite pleasure. Fortunately, she took no long time to come to climax. With her first cry, in which surprise mingled with thrilled release, Geoffrey yielded to his own need. They subsided together, gasping and sighing.

“My, my,” Joanna murmured, “oh, my, that was delightful.”   The naiveté of the remark and the voice, expressing the kind of pleasure one obtains from receiving a totally unexpected and totally welcome gift, set Geoffrey to laughing. “What did you expect?” he asked.

“How should I know what to expect?” Joanna responded reasonably. “To be told a thing is pleasant is a far cry from experiencing it oneself. Besides, pleasant is not the right word.”

“No? What would you say?” Geoffrey teased.

“I would sayNo, I will say nothing. You are already too puffed up with pride,” Joanna laughed. “If I praise you, you will become overweening and unbearable.”

Geoffrey at once adopted a most false, crestfallen expression. “But if you do not praise me, likely I will think I have failed in my duty as a husband and fall into a melancholy. Then”

Joanna made a swift movement, as if to box Geoffrey’s ear, and he caught her hand. In the playful wrestling, the covers were completely dislodged. Geoffrey grew still suddenly.

“How beautiful you are, Joanna,” he breathed.

She was looking at him also, but with more consternation than pleasure. “Oh, Geoffrey,” she cried, “look how I scratched you. I am so sorry.” And the word “scratched” connected with its usual companion phrase “like a cat” in her mind. “The kitten!’’ she exclaimed, “Have we killed it?”

They searched the bed and then under it only to find the little creature curled comfortably in a cushioned chair. When the violent movements of the larger inhabitants had made the bed uncomfortable, the kitten had removed itself, with all the self-possession of its older relatives, to a situation less subject to earthquakes. Joanna tickled its head and then turned to stroke Geoffrey’s scratches, again murmuring her contrition.

He laughed ruefully. “Had I known you were going to claw the skin from my flesh I would not have bothered   about the kitten. Even Isabella would not have noticed a deeper slash or two among what I have. And what she will say about this, I can imagine.”

Joanna lifted a shoulder contemptuously. “Let her say what she likes. You think she would not have discovered your stratagem? Or imagined one to describe even if none had been planned?”

“How would she discover it? Through your maid?”

“Edwina? No. She is utterly mine and her tongue does not wag unless I bid it wag, but I would imagine that others have sought through the room. Even if they did not find the kitten Oh, let her spew out her venom. Those who will credit what Isabella says
wish
to believe ill of us. Those who love us know what we are. Come back to bed, Geoffrey, I am cold.”

The casual attitude puzzled Geoffrey. He could not understand the apparent contradiction between Joanna’s premarital concern for the opinion of others and her postmarital indifference. It did not occur to him that the only opinion she really cared about was his own because it seemed so obvious to him that he would know the truth. He was too sleepy to worry about it and when Joanna had replaced the covers climbed gratefully into the bed only hoping that his wife would not be taken with a desire to talk. One of the court ladies had been so afflicted. Geoffrey had dispensed with her favors as soon as he discovered the condition was chronic, but one could not dispense with one’s wife.

However, Joanna had no particular inclination to talk. She was discovering another joy of married life. Previously, when she left her warm bed in the night it took some time on her return for her shivering body to warm the sheets and covers enough to provide comfort. Now she had to do no more than press herself against her husband and there was warmth. Geoffrey murmured a sleepy complaint about her icy hands and feet; he did not thrust her away, however, but drew her even closer, which added content to comfort. Joanna sighed and snuggled her head into the hollow of Geoffrey’s shoulder. For what remained of this blessed   night she would be perfectly happy. She would not allow herself to fall into the fault her mother complained she shared with her father. She would not look into the future and frighten herself with the dangers and sorrows to come.

In the normal course of events, Joanna would have had a long morning to clutch her joy to her. The custom was that, when the married pair woke and called for their servants, the noble lords and ladies would be summoned to inspect the sheets. Isabella, however, had no intention of allowing Edwina or Tostig to precede her into the bridal chamber. Both slept far more soundly than their master or mistress, well drugged. It was a lady of Isabella’s who entered, exclaimed a loud apology, saying that she thought she heard a call, and retreated so clumsily that somehow she bumped the table upon which were set wine and a few tasty tidbits for those who might be wakeful in the night.

Geoffrey was wide awake at once. He had snapped to alertness when the door opened, but had moved nothing except his eyes, assuming it was Edwina come to remove the kitten. The loud apology and jostling of the table brought both Joanna and him upright. They exchanged a single glance, and then Joanna called, “Edwina?”

“No, my lady. Your maid seems to have tasted a little too deeply of the wine.”

Behind the concealment of the bed curtains Geoffrey and Joanna exchanged another glance. Joanna had been right. Isabella either had known exactly what was planned or had simply been on guard against any assistance from Joanna’s maid. Probably one of the queen’s ladies had been on guard in the antechamber all night long. Geoffrey flushed briefly with rage, but Joanna was more amused than angered. What was important now was to smooth things over.

“Wicked girl!” Joanna exclaimed and then laughed indulgently. “Ah, well, on such a day one must be a little forgiving.”

On the words, Geoffrey pulled back the bed curtains on his side.

“I am sorry to have wakened you, my lord,” the lady   said, but she was not sorry. Their sleep was a guarantee that they had not altered anything in the room this morning.

As soon as she left, Joanna popped out of bed to use the chamber pot, pointing significantly to the door, which had, not closed completely. Geoffrey nodded, anger again darkening his expression, but he climbed out as she rose to relieve his bladder also. He opened his mouth to say something, not wishing the silence between them to seem unnatural but instead gestured with his head to the sound of voices in the antechamber. Joanna threw his bed robe to him and got back into the bed just as Isabella swept without warning into the room.

The indecent haste and improper purpose for which the queen had come was underlined by those who attended her. Without exception they were her own creatures or the wives of those who had reason to hate or envy the houses of Salisbury and Roselynde. It also underlined her stupidity. Ordinarily, there would have been jesting and conversation until the full group of witnesses assembled. Then the covers would have been drawn off Joanna, she would have been helped from the bed, reexamined to be sure she had not cut herself to supply the bloodall amid good-natured teasingand the sheets would have been removed by her maids to be retained as evidence of her purity. Instead, before Geoffrey could even shove the chamber pot out of the way, one of Isabella’s ladies was looking under the bed.

“It is gone, madam,” she announced with satisfaction. “There was a cloth bag with an animal inside it when I looked at the room last night.”

“Yes” Joanna began, but her voice was cut off by a snarl of rage from Geoffrey.

“How is that your business, madam?”

Isabella did not seem to hear the question. She produced the speech she had planned to answer the question Geoffrey should have asked. “I say that the blood on the sheets is not Lady Joanna’s but some other creature’s. My woman saw the maid, Edwina, conceal something, and I”

Geoffrey made an inarticulate noise and started around the bed toward the queen. The ladies drew together and   began to back away, all except Isabella who could not conceive of anyone offering violence to her sacred person. Joanna sprang from the bed and clasped Geoffrey in her arms so that he would have to knock her down and walk on her before he could get at the queen.

“Geoffrey,” she cried, “the queen means no harm. She only wishes to protect you. She could not know of our private jest. Think! Think!”

The desperate urgency of the last two words penetrated the surge of anger. To attack the queen would be to undo all the good his marriage to Joanna had accomplished. Geoffrey’s flush receded, leaving him with burning yellow eyes in a face the color of well-bleached linen.

“I assure you, madam, that the blood is my wife’s,” he said icily. “I had sufficient pain and trouble in taking her maidenhead to assure me ten times over of her innocence.”

“And the kitten is here,” Joanna added hastily, hearing Geoffrey’s voice begin to tremble. She gestured toward the chair. “Here also is the bag in which Edwina kept it. You can see that the fur inside the bag is the same as the kitten’s. I am sorry to have given you a fright upon your nephew’s behalf, madam.”

Isabella was not a clever woman, but she had told a convincing enough tale so that the women who had accompanied her had high expectations of a bitter confrontation between the houses of Salisbury and Roselynde that would end in further riving the kingdom. Great surprise and dissatisfaction was generated by Geoffrey’s guarantee of Joanna’s virginity and Joanna’s open avowal of her maid’s part in concealing the obviously healthy and content little kitten. This was written so openly on the faces of most of the witnesses that Joanna, rather than being angry, found great difficulty in stifling the impulse to laugh. She was enjoying the queen’s discomfiture intensely. A joke that backfired was often the best joke of all.

“You may examine the kitten,” she said gravely, although her voice was a little tremulous with inner mirth. “You will find it whole, without a scratch. I assure you, madam, it was brought to satisfy a private jest between my   husband and myselfsomething I would prefer not to repeat that he said concerning the nature ofof women. It had nothing to do with the blood on the sheets.

“Well, whoever said it did?”

The king’s rich and mellow voice came from the doorway, where he blocked entrance for the remainder of the witnesses. His smile was pleasant, but there was an odd note in his voice and an odd expression in the eyes he turned on Isabella. It almost frightened her. She had hardly ever seen John look at her with anything but admiration. Stupid, ungrateful man, she thought. John hated Geoffrey as much as she did, yet when she had taken this marvelous opportunity to shame Geoffrey before all, John was angry. And it was all Geoffrey’s faultlying for that vixen. Isabella was sure that Geoffrey was lying, either to save his own pride or, more likely, out of desire to make trouble. Shame was not sufficient; Geoffrey FitzWilliam would have to die.