The First Princess of Wales (25 page)

“Come on, come on, little warrior,” he taunted. “You have overstepped now, my Jeannette, for it is treason to draw a sword on the heir apparent. Lay to, then—and to the victor belongs the vanquished.”

He feinted a little sweep at her raised weapon, a mere tap. She began to tremble. He was playing with her. She hated him. All of this marriage mess—how mixed up she felt about him—this whole spider’s web, as Marta put it—was all his fault.

Furious, she lunged once at his sword and clanged it soundly. He parried, but retreated when he could have pursued her to the wall. He waited, grinning, his eyes going over her as if to size her up. It hit her with an impact which almost buckled her quaking knees that she had ludicrously raised a sword against the finest fighter in the land, the Black Prince, hero of Crécy.

He tired of the play and advanced differently this time when he saw the look of awe and fear temper the anger on her face. She lifted her sword to ward off a blow, but he only swung once and whacked her heavy weapon over the rail into the next stall. He threw his sword behind him.

“Have you a dagger to stick in my ribs, Jeannette? Or any other sword and buckler?”

“I—my husband.”

“In name only and one to appease the queen, not you. As soon as Holland arrives, he will get
that
called off, and I know for a fact the marriage is in name only.”

“Then Holland will—”

“Will probably petition the pope to have your betrothal reinstated, a lengthy, tedious process, I hope. A sticky mess the queen has got us into, but we shall weather it somehow.”

“But—for what end?” she demanded. “I’ll be wed to someone else and learn to love him, not you.”

His eyes narrowed. “I do not believe you desire that,” he muttered, “and let me show you why.”

But as he came at her again, the stable door creaked open, throwing a shaft of light between them and revealing four mounted knights in the doorway. Behind them, she could hear the prince’s boy Robert telling them this area was off limits, however much they ignored him.

The prince jumped to stand between her and the men as she spun her back to them.

“Out of here!” he shouted. “Get out. You have the wrong stable.”

“This is ours, for certain!” someone yelled back.

Oh, saints, she thought. They didn’t recognize their prince, but at least that meant they didn’t recognize her either. As Edward hurried toward them, she swept up her discarded tunic and the satin turban wraps and darted around the edge of the stall. Ducking behind it, she yanked on the tunic, then edged closer to the open door.

“Oh, my lord prince,” she heard one of the men say as she held the wadded wraps up to the side of her face and ran through the door into bright sun.

Behind her, one of the men hooted a laugh, so someone must have seen her. She was very certain it was not the prince who found her flight amusing.

T
he summons to the queen’s suite Joan was dreading came the next afternoon when she had begun to hope she might be spared. She dressed carefully in lilac velvet and violet brocade, feeling she was girding herself for yet another battle. Her Grace must be furious about the mockery at the joust yesterday. Mayhap in punishment she now intended to hand her over in body as well as name to her husband, Lord Salisbury, to chastise. Worse yet, saints forbid, someone had seen the prince abduct her or had reported she had fled, disheveled and mussed, from him in a straw-filled stable.

But as Joan entered the solar of the queen’s rooms, she sensed immediately she had been mistaken. Indeed the queen was there, but so was the king in a most rare visit to his royal consort’s chambers. And to her surprise, a nervous, seething Thomas Holland stood behind the monarch’s two, big oak chairs.

She curtsied to their majesties, then angry with herself at her reaction, blushed to the roots of her hair at the steady perusal of the queen and her once-betrothed, Sir Thomas. The king’s stare, she thought later, had been more of a devouring leer. How much Prince Edward looked like the king, even to the magnetic probe of icy blue eyes.

The queen cleared her throat in the awkward silence. “My dear Jeannette, as you can see, Lord Thomas has returned to us from Lancashire quite mended from his grievous wounds at Crécy.”

“Aye, Your Grace. I am glad for it—both for the healing and his presence,” she said politely, relieved that the queen’s tone was not scolding and that Her Grace seemed more on edge than Joan herself.

“There, my lord king, you see it is as I have said,” Thomas began but he cut his words short when King Edward raised his bejeweled right hand for silence. Despite that implied censure, Thomas stepped forward, bowed to Joan, and lifted her offered hand to his lips. He looked well, finely garbed in russet and sable, the black eye patch somehow strangely highlighting the fact he looked pale and thin, but then, of course, he had been ill a long time.

When the king spoke, Joan realized his sharp eyes had been studying the little reunion scene before him while his queen looked elsewhere.

“It seems your status, little Joan, is in somewhat of a legal tangle,” King Edward began, “and several most important and influential sources are quite concerned.”

The king looked as though he expected a reply but when she merely inclined her head to listen, he plunged on. “And so, Her Grace and I have hearkened to Lord Holland’s plea that he be allowed to petition Pope Clement VI at Avignon to settle the matter.”

“To settle it that she be married to me as was promised in the lawful betrothal here at Windsor chapel and before the queen,” Thomas Holland inserted.

“Ah, by the rood—that is what you have declared, Sir Thomas, but the Salisbury thing, you know—” the king said, significantly raising his voice and one eyebrow.

“Aye, a marriage with my Lord Salisbury before the queen at the altar in Calais,” Joan added, her heart beginning to pound beneath her velvet bodice. The heady feeling of deserved retribution swept through her like a warming wind. But the ultimate recipient of any revenge she might seek must be the king himself and not only his dear wife and precious son.

“As I have told my lord king,” Her Grace said, her voice sounding pale and colorless next to the vibrancy of the three others, “I only acted in accordance with circumstances as I viewed them. It was obvious to me, my dear Jeannette, that you needed a steadying hand I could not always lend in lieu of my heavy burdens with my children, despite the fact our Isabella benefited—it seemed—from your presence. And now, I am not certain that—”

“St. George, my dearest, I bid you pass over that silliness if you intend to bring that all up again,” King Edward interrupted. “Mere frivolity in the joy of the moment in that little parade yesterday, eh, Lady Joan?”

Joan bathed her king in the most dazzling smile she could manage. It amused her mightily—a hero rescuer in the king himself to ward off the queen’s meddling and, perhaps, even the blatantly rude and boorish behavior of the court’s esteemed and adored Prince of Wales.

“Aye, my lord king,” she said, the pouting smile still curving her lifted lips, “just a delightful jest to bespeak our joy for your wonderful French victories. I know proper
demoiselles
are never to admit such things, but in my heart, at times, I wish I had been there, a warrior to help. It must have been so exhilarating, so glorious to be there with you that day.”

The queen’s eyes narrowed ominously, but the king’s gaze was riveted to Joan’s and he neither observed his wife’s icy expression nor Holland’s frown. “Aye, Lady Jeannette, it was all that and more. They—your friends—do call you Jeannette, do they not? And has no one told you the tales of how we managed it all outnumbered at Crécy as we were? Holland, I know you were sore wounded, but have not you or Salisbury or the prince recounted the blessed victories the Lord in heaven saw fit to entrust to his servants to this fair lady?”

Joan chose to answer herself to ward off Holland’s sputtering frustration. “Of course, many spoke of it, Your Grace,” she said, remembering the long talks she and the prince had shared of his battle stories, but she could hardly tell the king of that—or of the warm bed near the seaside in Calais where they had loved and spoken far into the night. Indeed, had the wily prince gone to his royal sire himself to arrange this strange scene playing itself out here today?

“How wonderful it would be,” she went on, “if you could spare those of us not frequently about your presence some time to tell us the real, heart view of those glories.”

The king stroked his blond beard and mustache as if suddenly plunged in deep contemplation. “St. George, aye—a heart view of it all,” he mused aloud. “A heart view.”

Joan nearly smirked to think how easily such a snare had been cast. She had never fathomed this dangerous strategy in her fruitless longing for revenge against those who had doomed both her father and mother. This man was the center of the web, and through him, she could strike at them all—that loathsome de Maltravers hiding like a coiled serpent under a rock in Flanders even. She had seen the king so seldom from anything but a distance—and now, perhaps there was a way to choose this new path for her as yet formless retribution.

“By the rood, Sir Thomas, do not stand about gawking, then,” King Edward scolded as he clapped his big hands together once. The queen jumped but Holland still hesitated. “Be gone, man, petition His Eminence or what you will and the queen shall summon young Salisbury to explain it all to him. Meanwhile, the Lady Jeannette of Kent shall remain in Her Grace’s and my royal protective custody as companion to our beloved daughter, the Princess Isabella, until such time as we untangle all the strings. Come along then, Lady Jeannette, you shall walk with me to council. By the rood, I am overdue, but tonight at high table I shall tell you a few battle tales to set your little heart aflutter, eh? Come along now.”

“My lord king,” Queen Philippa began, and rose to stand beside him. “I need to see you but one moment then—”

“Alas, my dearest, off to council, late already. I shall have someone send Salisbury up directly if we can track him down. You would not know his whereabouts, I take it, lady?”

“No, Your Grace, I am sorry, but the queen made me vow—”

“Aye, I quite understand. Follow me, then, Thomas. Lady Jeannette.”

He is so big, magnificent in bearing, voice, and presence, Joan thought, as she curtsied to the queen without looking at her and swept out in the king’s broad wake. She tried to ignore the meaningful, avid look Holland shot her in the hall. The king’s guards and some courtiers waiting about fell in behind them as she walked properly several steps behind the king.

Power and victory assailed her: the king, doting on her, gazing fondly on her, yet unknowing of her true intents and purpose. She fought to keep from skipping from amusement at the fact that his strides were much too long, just like the prince’s.

Saints, she realized, as the king began to speak about his army’s flight through France to the village of Crécy where he met his enemy at last—perhaps now that she had really met the enemy, she could yet have a victory of her own. She had long heard of this king’s reputation as a
roué,
but it had not concerned her before. Like sire, like son, she thought grimly, but then, mayhap there was something in that.

She smiled up at King Edward through her thick lashes as they turned down the long corridor with the whispering, wide-eyed courtiers at their heels.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
he glory and prestige of England and the Plantagenets flew as high that day as a flapping banner on the tallest tower at Windsor, as high as the prince’s fine gerfalcon as it sought its prey. It was April twenty-third, 1348, the day King Edward III had ordained the celebration for his new Order of the Round Table. Twenty and five knights, heroes of the French campaign, were admitted as charter members of the honored group. Religious services, tournaments, and feasting had filled the three-day celebration. Tonight, the fête would end with a huge torch dance to honor the new embodiment of the legendary King Arthur’s round table, resurrected centuries after its demise. The Princess Isabella teased Joan that most of the names of the regal, new Lancelots sworn in early that bright spring day read like a list of those who were attracted like little flies to the Fair Maid of Kent: Sir Thomas Holland of Lancashire; William Montacute, earl of Salisbury; Prince Edward of Wales; aye, Isabella had said—even the king himself.

Isabella had laughed at the jest but Joan knew she did not find it amusing. Anyway, Isabella laughed too wildly at everything these days. These last five months since King Edward had rescued Joan from a sure scolding by the queen after the fourteen
demoiselles
had paraded at the Crécy tournament, the king had greatly favored her, though Joan had managed to keep him at arm’s length even as she had her stoic betrothed and her fond husband. She sometimes wondered if her aloofness with them was not her allure, but what did that matter. . . .

The prince was much about the kingdom and she seldom saw him; though she told herself his absence suited her, she had begun to realize things were only truly exciting when he was at court. How long it was since they had been alone together! Always now, something or someone was in the way—saints, not that she ever wanted to be alone with the royal rogue ever again. For once Marta was so right: her whole life had become a terrible, tangled web.

Relationships at court, she had finally come to realize, were always in flux. She and Isabella spent much time in each other’s company planning wild pranks, but they were no longer as close. Joan’s legal guardian Queen Philippa nearly shunned her, letting her do as she pleased without reproach as if Joan were now protected by some invisible barrier. And tantalizing rumors of the prince drifted through the court from time to time: some whispered he had a mistress kept at Sonning or Berkhamstead—perhaps there was even an illegitimate child. Or, maybe he would marry a daughter of the old, dead Count of Flanders, a sister to Isabella’s vanished bridegroom, Louis de Male.

Like Joan, the Princess Isabella usually let the continual rumble of the rumor mill go on with the blur of beaux, fashions, and giddy games. But
that
last rumor Isabella almost choked on.

“Can you even conceive of such a thing, Jeannette?” she screeched half between indignation and contempt at the thought. “My dear brother Edward vowed to me when that coward Louis de Male fled Bruges that day he would make him pay. You remember, Jeannette. You were there. By the blessed saints, the Prince of Wales taking Louis’s sister to wife to be our next queen would hardly be making him pay! I swear to heaven, I shall ask Edward of it at the torch dance tonight the first time I see him!”

“Dearest princess, you know court rumors. Just ask your lord father and he will explain away this foolish story.”

“A pox on it. I care not. Besides, the king would tell you if you asked him before he would tell me, I warrant.”

Half-dressed for the evening’s festivities, they perched on opposite sides of Isabella’s huge feather bed, a hundred jeweled garters spread like a rainbow between them on the coverlet. Garters, multi-hued on everything, were the coming rage at court. Of course, the lovely things had long served their purpose to hold up and shape hose to both masculine and feminine legs, but now they cavorted everywhere that Isabella, Jeannette, and their young butterfly friends could wear them: kirtles, headpieces,
surcotes,
gowns, their infamous, diaphanous night chemises, cloaks, and robes—everywhere. Garters lent an aura of scandal, or naughtiness at the very least, Jeannette thought bemusedly. It was like coercing the whole court to admit they were a double-minded bunch: aye, why hide their scandalous behavior like their garters when it was much more amusing for everyone to admire their colorful glitter?

“Perhaps you should wear all those blue ones and I shall stay with red just peppered across our gowns tonight,” Isabella interrupted Joan’s thoughts. “We need something—well, arresting—to set off these white dresses for the dancing. I warrant they will not take either of us for brides, though we be garbed in white. Do you think they believe we are as wicked as we like them to think? And here we both are, celibate as nuns in a cloister,” Isabella sighed.

She stood beside the bed and summoned her maids to lower her elaborate white and gold India silk gown over her head and her voice came all muffled. “I have not worn white since that farce at Bruges last year, you know, Jeannette. Hurry to get yours on and let’s go down early to parade around a bit. Besides, I swear, it will take a good hour to have all these garters attached and tied. I am so relieved my lord father has a special garter maker at the Tower to manufacture these. They say he works day and night, you know.”

Isabella’s voice went on like incessant chimes, but as was increasingly true these days, Joan only heard and did not listen. She stood stock-still like a quintain dummy while her soft silk dress of gleaming ivory was dropped into place. She lifted her arms as they buttoned her long wrist slits closed and adjusted her white figured brocade
surcote
with the delicate raised embroidery of lilies-of-the-valley lacing the long liripipes dangling from the elbows, the low bodice, and sculptured hemline. A delicate edging of ermine lined the liripipes and bordered the brocade
surcote
.

Four of Isabella’s nine maids darted about both young women, draping garters, arranging coifs, and balancing their tall headdresses which trailed diaphanous silk scarves. As a last touch to their coifs and cosmetics, Yvette dusted essence of gillyflower on their hair, necks, and bosoms. A sneeze stopped Isabella’s ceaseless, wandering commentary at last.

“Oh, dear,” she managed and sneezed twice more. “I do not think men are worth this, really I do not, Jeannette. Let us go meet the others, and I do not mean to carp on last year’s journey so. I know I was not the only one annoyed by a vile man when we were on that trip.”

No, indeed, you were not, Joan thought, but she kept silent. It was not even her forced marriage to Salisbury which gave her terrible nightmares on that trip, though she would surely never tell Isabella or anyone else. It was two very different men, yet both rogues and villains who haunted her thoughts: the traitor de Maltravers and, of course, the Prince of Wales with all his deceitful, seductive tricks. At least de Maltravers looked a villain on the outside, too! Then, also, the trip Isabella still talked of entirely too much annoyed Joan for another reason she could not share with anyone but old Marta: when word of Queen Philippa’s pleading for mercy for the six old burghers of Calais had spread across England, the people had hailed her as a new heroine of saintliness. Saintliness, indeed, Joan fumed for the hundredth time. She would never have pleaded for the old burghers’ lives at all had I not begged her and had she not seen a perfect way to coerce me to obey her will and marry someone I care not a whit for! If only the fond people of England knew that, what would they say?

Joan followed Isabella out into the hall to join her gathered ladies so they might descend the staircase to the Great Hall together. The other
demoiselles
were awed at their daring display of garters, and that mollified Joan’s ruffled demeanor somewhat.

“Any word from the pope yet, Jeannette?” Mary Boherne whispered, her wide eyes counting the number of gracefully draped garters on Joan’s skirts and obviously comparing that reckoning to the princess’s red ones.

“Nary a Latin syllable from the pope, Mary,” Joan told her and rolled her eyes for effect. “It is such a sticky tangle it could be another five months. Mayhap, my Lord Holland and my Lord Salisbury will get bored with waiting for the flower to open and just buzz away back to their hives.”

Mary laughed musically. “Jeannette, you are so wry about it all. I daresay about just everything. How clever and breezy you always are in the face of adversity.”

Clever and breezy in a pig’s eye, Joan thought, but she smiled to acknowledge the compliment. She never deceived herself that if the king did not find her so amusing, Mary Boherne and the rest would just as soon shred her fashionable dresses and her intriguing reputation to tatters.

Courtiers already stood about in the dimly lighted hall tapping their curl-toed, slippered feet to the melody lilting from the musicians gallery overhead, but of course, no one dared dance until the king and queen arrived. The
demoiselles
were no more out into the Great Hall with Isabella cutting a laughing, gartered wake through the pressing crowd than William Montacute, Lord Salisbury, appeared at Joan’s elbow.

“Joan, my dearest, may I speak with you before all this begins? I have hardly seen you except for a tiny glimpse at the morning service. Here, dearest, step over here by the wall. Most other knights of the Order had their ladies in the first rows today, and I think despite all Holland’s fuss with the pope, the queen should have let you sit there, too.”

She walked reluctantly away from her friends with William, hoping none of them overheard all this. “It was not the queen’s bidding one way or the other, Will. I merely sat where the king suggested—”

“By the rood, I should have known that,” he interrupted and his broad mouth turned sullen. “I warn you, Joan, he can be a hawk after an unsuspecting little dove, but then, I hardly picture you as that.”

“I do not wish to have this entire discussion again, my lord. You have made yourself plain on it. Look, smile a bit. I am proud of your investiture to the Order of the Table, and you look absolutely resplendent tonight.”

His eyes lit at the compliment, but he still looked more like a peevish, scolded page boy than an honored knight. “You, too, as always, my dearest Joan. Dazzling in that gown of bridal hue but all those garters—have not you and the princess overstepped a bit? Everyone started buzzing the minute you two fashionmongers sailed into the room. I have not seen such a stir since that ludicrous parade of women in men’s garb you staged at the tournament last autumn.” He lowered his voice as an increasingly bitter tone crept in. “By the Virgin, woman, you will have the king and prince so starry-eyed they will not be able to lead off this snake dance.”

“It is a torch dance, Will, as well you know, and I am excited to see it. I have never been to one so I shall let my good mood this evening allay my retort to your silly remarks about the king and prince.”

“Listen, dearest wife.” He glowered at her and dared to seize one silk wrist in a tight grip. “I have some rights in all this royal mess, for I fully hope and pray Lord Holland’s pleas to the pope will go awry. The pope, no doubt, has more to occupy his ear, with the plague in Europe and all these rampant Anglo-French hatreds, than settling some petty dispute over which knight has the right to some lovely, willful maid from Kent.”

“Let me go, my lord. You are hurting me and pulling this sleeve so—”

“I said listen to me,” he hissed, but released her, blocking her in against the dim wall. “You avoid me. You are always too busy, so you will listen now. I must tell you something before you glide off with one of your other men in this dark hall—before the queen links you up with someone else.”

“Tell me quickly then. I see Lord Holland over there and he appears to be looking for me.”

“My mother, bless her, was once almost taken in by this king’s wiles even as you, Joan. You must arm yourself if it is not already too late. By the Virgin, I have seen how he looks at you!”

“Keep your voice down if you insist on scolding me. And I do not see how your mother relates to all this, because she is never at court.”

“No, but over two years ago, the king went to her. During the Scottish wars, King David’s Scottish warriors besieged our home, Wark Castle. My lord father was prisoner in France, so my mother led the castle defense against the Scots from inside the walls. King Edward’s forces arrived in the nick of time to chase the barbarians off well enough, but when she offered him a conqueror’s hospitality and vacated her own rooms so he might have a soft bed, he demanded much, much more.”

Joan’s lilac-hued eyes widened and her mind raced. “But I heard your lord father was one of His Grace’s beloved friends, a most trusted knight.”

William snorted deep in his throat. “Listen to the lesson then, my foolish Joan. Do not you see it? He desired a beautiful woman, so her ties to whomever mattered not a whit to him. And the fact that she was wed—by the rood, we all know how that flimsy ploy is handled at court.”

“I am sorry for this with your own mother, my lord, but you must not let it make you bitter—nor dare to imply that her situation could compare to mine.”

“Damn, Holland has seen us,” he groused with a quick turn of his head. “Now, hear me, Joan—I do not compare you to my mother and that is my torment. She had a husband she loved and she managed to turn the king’s demands down. His Grace, King Edward, left the next morn at dawn without having enjoyed her favors, and he no doubt admired her for it later as he immediately ransomed home my father. You, however—I fear you have no lord you love and so when the king’s demand comes, as surely it must—” He bit his lower lip and glared at the floor as Thomas Holland joined them.

“Good evening, my dear. Lord Salisbury.”

“My Lord Thomas,” William managed, his impassioned eyes raised jerkily to Joan’s carefully composed face. “I thought you would be somewhere lurking about in this dim cavern.”

“I rather like the dim halls for torch dance, Salisbury, and this is Joan’s first one at court, is it not, my dear? You look exquisite. I fear my Lord Salisbury does not appreciate the charming, romantic lure of the dark for dancing with a lady.”