Joanna (53 page)

The problems of one minor French prisoner were pushed out of Geoffrey’s mind by the new storm gathering in England. When John had the news of the brilliant success of Salisbury’s expedition, he dismissed the army gathered to resist invasion. This was now completely out of the question since Philip’s ships and supplies were either in his enemy’s hands or burnt to cinders. The news from Flanders in the next weeks remained excellent. Philip withdrew under severe pressure from the coalition of Lowlanders and German duchies under the Emperor Otto that Dammartin had been working for years to establish. There was no doubt that the French king had suffered a heavy reversal, Geoffrey told Joanna when he was finally given permission to return home. Not only was Philip short of men and money, but the confidence of his allies was shaken. It was the perfect time to recapture Normandy and to make good the other losses on the Continent in John’s opinion.

“And he is perfectly right,” Geoffrey said heavily to Joanna in the privacy of their bedchamber.   The joy with which Joanna had received him back from his foray into Flanders had done something to mitigate Geoffrey’s doubts about her feelings. When he now said to himself, “I know she loves me” there was somewhat more certainty in himbut there was still something missing.

Joanna touched Edwina, who was brushing her hair, and gestured for the maid to leave. When the door closed behind her, she said, “Your Words are very fair, my lord, but your looks are sad. A year ago you seemed eager enough to go to France, and only last month, you could hardly wait to go aboard ship for Flanders. Since I cannot believe that you have so soon had your fill of fighting, I cannot understand what troubles you.”

He raised his eyes from the dregs of the wine in the goblet he was turning round and round in his hands. “It is nothing to do with
me
. You may laugh at me, Joanna, but I am sorry for my uncle.”

“You too?” Joanna exclaimed with disgust. “My mother writes that she believes Ian’s softness of heart has gone to his head. Like you, he is overwhelmed with pity for the king. I do not know what ails you both. John has surely given you sufficient proof of his peculiar lovehe would love to have both your heads delivered to him on a silver salver.”

“That is past”

“Past? Do you too suffer from softening of the head? Have you ever known John to forgive or forget a grudge?”

Geoffrey laughed wryly. “At least you know whereof you speak. I have never come across any person, man or woman, more tenacious of a purpose than you.”

“You are not just,” Joanna protested. “I may be tenacious of purpose, but not of hate”

“Not of hate? What do you call your feeling for my uncle?”

“I do not hate the king,” Joanna said indignantly. “Why should I? He has never done me or mine the least harm. Nonetheless, I do not forgetnot ever, not for a momentthat he
wishes
us harm. We are only safe from him so long as we watch to see that we fall into no traps he has laid. Do   not you be a fool, Geoffrey. Your uncle has tried more than once to end your life, and he will never give over trying.”

“Perhaps” Geoffrey shrugged. “But he seems much changed and chastened. Mayhap this reconciliation to the Church has gone deeper than we first thought. Ian says”

“I know what Ian says,” Joanna interrupted impatiently. “I love Ian dearly. He has been a father to me, true and tender, but you know what he is. If the devil himself came to Ian with a sad story, Ian would soon be dropping tears over him and trying to help.”

Geoffrey could not help laughing, but his frown returned. “In any case, this is naught to do with Ian or myself. It is true that if John attacked Philip now he would have a fair chance to win back Normandy and strengthen his position in the south. It is the best chance there has been or is like to be, yet the barons will not agree. They excuse themselves by saying that John is still excommunicate, but it is only an excuse. They do not wish to go to France.”

“And why should they?” Joanna rejoined. “Perhaps a few who lost lands there might desire the return of their holdings, but most have no interest. Moreover, you should ask yourself whether Normandy will welcome King John. It has been told to me that when the Norman barons begged for the king’s help in 1204 he could not be bothered to come to them. Another thing, to speak the truth, is that Philip is a better overlord than John. He is greedy, desiring to swallow all, but once the lands are his he is not unjust or unreasonable. It is my belief that the Norman barons would fight hard to repel John.”

That was the truth. Geoffrey rose restlessly and paced the room, fingering the gold-embroidered curtains of the bed and adding a little more wine to his goblet. “All this is nothing to the point,” he said irritably. “I said I was sorry for my uncle, and I am. This time he is right in the sense that it is the most favorable time to make war. If we went now, we might succeed; if we go later, when Philip has had time to regather his strength, we may not. Yet John will never give up the hope of retaking Normandy. That means that sooner   or later we
will
go, and if we lose John will be bitterly blamedand it will not be his fault.”

For the next few months, however, it did not look as if there would be much chance for John to achieve his purpose. The king took the first rebuff of his barons with amazing calm. Instead of thundering threats and denunciations, he did all in his power to remove their objections. He urgently summoned the archbishop of Canterbury and the exiled bishops to come home and absolve him of excommunication, sending assurances that they would be safe and restitution would be made. On July 16, Stephen Langton landed at Dover. The king met him and fell prostrate at his feet. The archbishop lifted him and kissed him. Within a few days the formalities were completed. John was absolved of all sin and renewed his coronation oath. All was sweetness and light.

Again John called a great council to be held at St. Albans on August 4. Between July 21 when the summons went out and the actual convening of the council, John made all the arrangements for governing England while he was absent in France and recalled his barons to war service. They came, but they had conceived a new device for frustrating the king’s purpose. They complained that the long period they had spent guarding against invasion had impoverished them. They would go to France with the king, but only if he paid their expenses.

Now the velvet glove slipped a little. His differences with the Church settled, John felt he had a strong ally. Nonetheless, he was reasonable. He said that he was more impoverished than his nobles. He had contributed to their expenses while they waited for Philip on Barham Down; he was strained to the uttermost paying restitution to the Church while they had benefited from the Church funds he had taken to spare them the expense of the Welsh war. Most important, they
owed
him service by the law and custom of feudal tenure, and he would not yield to their extortion.

At this point, Ian sent Alinor and little Simon home to Roselynde. It was not easily accomplished. Alinor was   ready to send Simon home to be cared for by Joanna, but she wished to stay. She feared that John would see her departure as a first step on Ian’s part toward treason. Ian acknowledged that it might arouse the king’s suspicions but he would not take the chance that Alinor might be seized and used as a hostage. Geoffrey, who had answered the king’s summons, would not take Joanna to court for exactly the same reason. Throughout the hot days of early August, the two women busied themselves as well as they could with the daily duties of the keep and landsand kept one ear constantly cocked for the hasty tread of a messenger.

In a few days they knew the worst had befallen. John ordered the men to set sail, and they refused. In an attempt to shame them all, John himself, with his closest companions and his household, took ship. Salisbury was among those who followed and Geoffrey went with his father, unwilling and heavy-hearted at taking part in a fiasco that might turn into a real disaster, but incapable of adding to Salisbury’s misery.

On shore, the unifying determination not to be dragged into a foreign venture when they were already drained did not last. Two parties formed, those who wished to defy the king utterly and force him to acknowledge that he could call upon the lords only when they wished to be called and those who did not wish to serve abroad but wanted to show that they were willing to obey the king in other things.

The more rebellious of the two groups was largely composed of northern lords who had no interest in France at all. These struck their tents and promptly left for home as soon as the king departed. With them went Ian, still hoping against hope that he could bring them to reason and prevent armed rebellion. He left messages for the king to this effect with Peter des Roches and Aubery de Vere, but there was little hope in any of them that John would believe him or, rather, there was little hope John would not seize the opportunity to declare Ian an outlaw.

The next news came in an agonized letter from Geoffrey. Seeing that his device had failed, the king returned to England. When he realized what had happened, he flew into a rage that drew force from every humilation he had swallowed with seeming patience since the Welsh rebellion. Abandoning all pretense at legal procedures, John ordered those men who remained in camp to march on and attack those who had left.

“God help me,” Geoffrey wrote bitterly, “which shall I betraymy father or my dear father-by-marriage, my loving begetter or my kind lord? We have reasoned and wept and prayed upon our knees. My father has been struck across the face by the king for only begging that those who left be sent warning and ordered to return and explain themselves. We are all mad here and far too close to you for my liking. Close your gates, my love, and do not open them even if Ian or I should come begging shelter.”

Joanna’s voice faltered and her lips trembled so that she had to stop reading aloud for a moment. The two women clung together, shivering with horror. This was the ultimate disaster, worse than either had feared. Whatever terrors they had conjured up, it had never occurred to them that their husbands could be pitted against each other.

In the end the inconceivable did not happen. John had trusted too much to the pope’s acceptance of the idea that any act against the king was an act against the Church. The pope was far away, and Stephen Langton was by no means of the same persuasion as his master on this subject. He was a northerner himself and, in spite of being a long-time resident in France and Italy, he was well aware of the notions current in the north. Langton hurried to intercept the king at Northampton and warned him that the arbitrary punishment of the barons without due process of law would violate the oath he had taken when he was absolved. He had sworn then “to judge his subjects according to the just decrees of his courts” and not according to his own whim or temper.

This interference was not well received. The king turned angrily on the man he had humbly called “father” only a month earlier and told him he had no business to meddle in the secular affairs of the country, that the king’s authority   over his barons was not subject to the Church. With renewed furyalthough it did not seem to those with him that the fury needed renewalJohn left Northampton and set out for Nottingham. Grimly, Langton pursued him and, openly defiant, told the full court that the violation of an oath sworn on holy relics was the business of the Church whether the oath concerned secular or religious matters. Furthermore, said Langton, he would excommunicate every single man in the entire army if they moved one step farther with the intention of illegally punishing men who had not been tried or given an opportunity to explain or defend themselves.

At this point John realized what kind of man he was dealing with. This was no mere mouthpiece of the pope. The king’s most faithful supporters, the Cantelus, de Bréaute, even Salisbury, had backed away. They would not have done so in the face of a full army, John knew. Yet before a single man, unarmed, gaunt and tired, dressed in a simple priest’s robe covered with dust, they quailed like children about to be beaten. John looked at his archbishop, at the firm mouth, the hard jaw, the burning dark eyes and conceived a hatred that put all his other animosities into the class of love.

For one long moment John was tempted to cry out, “Kill him! Kill him!” as his father had cried out in rage when Becket spited him, but the king’s voice was frozen in his throat by Langton’s glance. Then the insane impulse passed. John remembered what it had cost Henry to make peace with the Church after Becket’s murder and the difficulties he had himself undergone to bring himself into the pope’s good graces. There were other, far more effective ways to deal with Langton. Slowly, the king swallowed the hot bile of his rage until it coiled, cold and purposeful, under his heart.

Softly and reasonably, he spoke to the archbishop about the rights of a king in the face of overt rebellion. Langton replied more gently but no less firmly that there was no rebellion. No man had raised a weapon or uttered a threat. The king had left the men, and they had taken that as dismissal and had gone home. Put it aside, for now, John said   and invited Langton to wash and eat and rest so that the matter could be discussed more fully and more calmly.

John had no real expectation that Langton would change his mind, but what the archbishop had said opened a door. If the barons of the north could be prodded into threat or attack, the king would have won his case out of Langton’s own mouth. But the court was not deaf. As soon as John had retired, Geoffrey and Tostig with only three men-at-arms were riding hell-bent for the lands of Ian’s chief vassal. That Geoffrey was welcomed in, despite his relationship to the king, was a mark of the respect and affection Ian’s men had developed for him over the period of Ian’s absence. The vassal listened to what he had to say and, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to send for Ian. The next day he came, hollow-eyed with worry and fruitless effort.

“Do you mean,” Ian cried joyfully after hearing Geoffrey’s news, “that the king will turn back and bring the action to be judged by a court of peers?”