The First Princess of Wales (37 page)

At last they halted in a cul-de-sac near the old Saxon Church of St. Martin where, it was said, St. Augustine had baptized King Ethelbert. The tiny room above a merchant’s narrow house where Roger was familiar with the people had slanted corners under the eaves, but it looked clean and newly whitewashed. The close space was crowded by fresh straw pallets in two of the corners, a tiny table with three chairs, and one carved coffer. When Roger saw that Joan and her travel sack were in, he grabbed two apples from the bowl on the table and darted off on his errand before she could halt him.

Left alone in the silent, strange room, Joan washed, combed, and coiled her hair; ate some fruit; and pondered how she had ever dared to pursue this scheme. For two and a half years she had not seen the prince; she had received no word from him, nor had she sent any. It was blatantly obvious their lives, once so intertwined, had gone divergent ways. Now, she dared, without protection of husband or brother, with only a minstrel, to come in secret and disguise to barge her way back into His Grace’s busy, powerful life for a favor. It meant, she knew, she would have to tell him her side of the de Maltravers story, or he would surely be clever enough to seek it out himself, and the king might get all angered and vengeful again. She could hardly afford such risk now with two sons to protect. And, when she told the prince, whether she directly accused his father King Edward or not, it was meddling at the least—treason at the worst—and she would have to be very careful and very convincing.

She hoped he still cared enough for her to help her—mayhap for Isabella’s sake, or mayhap even for his old minstrel Roger Wakeley, as he obviously used to favor him before he saw that she and Roger had once been fast friends. Perhaps she should don the blue kirtle she had brought in her side sack, but then it was no doubt terribly wrinkled and she could hardly convince a man like that with a mere pretty kirtle.

She absently fingered her lucky pilgrim’s penny on the chain about her neck. She paced the little, irregular room around and around the central table, her stomach tied in terrible knots. Perhaps he was at Leeds, he was too busy, or he refused to see Roger Wakeley. She stopped to look out the one small, smoky-paned window as twilight descended across the thatched or slate rooftops she could see from here. The casement overlooked a crooked close where the entries to several tiny shops were marked by frayed wooden signs suspended below her view. Across the narrow close, at the same level, an old, old woman leaned pensively on her crooked window ledge. When she spied Joan, her face crinkled into a web of lines as she smiled gap-toothed. Hoofbeats on cobbles clattered below, and Joan leaned out farther to try to see the street, but no one was visible, as if ghosts had ridden in to haunt the tiny cul-de-sac.

She had only begun to pace again when a soft rap on the door jolted her. Her pulse pounded instantly; she felt chilled. But the face at the door was Roger’s.

“Oh, I am so glad you are back! I was just starting to worry that he—”

“Lady Joan,” he interrupted, “a visitor is here who will see you now.”

She opened her lips to protest, but to no avail. No, she shrieked inside, no, it cannot be! It is too sudden, too soon! I cannot face him here.

Edward, Prince of Wales, filled the little doorway. He had to stoop to enter. He, too, like Roger and she, was garbed as a common pilgrim, but who would have not turned a head to follow his magnificent form and grace! His hood fell back from the tousled lion’s mane of tawny hair. In the fading light of the room, his blue eyes glowed as if lit from within.

She had forgotten he was so tall, she thought, and she had forgotten this overwhelming rush of uncertainty all mingled with joy when she was near him.

He took two steps in and the door closed quietly behind him. The tiny room shrank even further, dwarfed by the impact of the man. His gaze went completely over her. He held out one hand to touch her shoulder and then withdrew it. His finely chiseled features looked austere, perhaps even angry.

“Jeannette,” he said quietly, and that deep rasp of voice shook her to her toes.

She curtsied. “My lord prince. Please forgive this way I have sought you so strangely and in secret, but I have reasons.”

“I could not believe it when Wakeley came,” he began as though he had not heard her words. “I could not believe you were here. Last time, you may recall, when you dressed as a lad at the tournament, I was quite angered. And now, here you are again in jerkin and hose—” he went on hopefully until his words trailed off to silence.

She blushed to the very roots of her hair at the memory he recalled, and in her lower belly, little wild butterfly wings fluttered, fluttered.

“Your Grace, these are pilgrim’s garments. I thought it safer. I—the favor—I came to ask a favor of you, for I am in dire need of your help.”

He frowned and touched her elbow sending an icy, blazing jab through her arm at the mere pressure of his firm fingers. “Thomas Holland?” he stammered. “I heard—I assumed he is good to you!”

“Oh, indeed, Your Grace. This has naught to do with my Lord Thomas. In fact, I—well, the reason I come in secret is partly so he will never hear of this.”

The carved mouth under the full mustache lifted slightly; a wave of nostalgia at that familiar little quirk she had never forgotten washed over her.

“A secret plea without Sir Thomas knowing,” he was saying in that resonant voice. “Let us sit and you can tell me then.”

As soon as they were seated Roger knocked and entered with a thick tallow candle and wine. As if to encourage her, he winked at her over the prince’s shoulder and left them alone again.

“This favor, Jeannette, tell me,” he urged, leaning forward toward her, his form, his eyes devouring the space between them. He rested his hands on his knees to prop up his chin, and she saw he wore on the first joint of his little finger the beryl ring she had sent him with Roger.

“My lord prince, there is a man who greatly harmed my father years ago. He helped to—to have him executed most unjustly.”

The prince’s thick tawny brows crashed lower over his eyes while the sluggish candle flicked wan shadows across his features.

“Say on, lady. Name the man.”

“When we were in Bruges for the Princess Isabella’s betrothal feast five years ago, when I felt ill at the banquet, we walked out together. Do you remember?” Her heart thudded at his nearness, at the intense perusal of his stare more than at what she would divulge and ask.

“I remember much, Jeannette, much of that whole trip. To whom do you refer?”

“You pointed him out to me. You named him. John de Maltravers, my lord prince.”

“De Maltravers? The king’s ambassador to Flanders all these years?”

“Aye. The same. Saints, Your Grace, I heard tell the king intends to give the man back all his confiscated English lands—mayhap to welcome him home and pardon him with open arms also! It is all wrong, it is not fair! He cannot!”

She tried to rise to dart around the table away from his closeness, but he seized her wrist with one big hand and pulled her back firmly into her chair.

“Lower your voice, Jeannette. All the walls have ears though I came here well enough in disguise and Wakeley and my man are in the hall. Calmly, now. How little you have changed to be so willful—so impassioned.”

“I can tell you all about my father’s death, Your Grace, a terrible tale of betrayal. I swear I shall avenge myself on de Maltravers whether you will help me or not!”

“I know the tale, Jeannette, and St. George, I sympathize with your loss and your bitterness.”

She interlocked the slender fingers of her hands to keep from trembling at her eagerness. “You do? Then you will help me?”

He leaned back in his tall-backed chair at last and expelled a rush of air through his flared nostrils. “Jeannette, cannot the past be dead with the dead? By the rood, you tread quicksand to pursue this. St. George, woman, if I went after anyone who had ever wished ill of my sire, the fields of England would flow with blood like Crécy.”

She jumped away, this time before he could reach for her. “I see. I mean, after all, de Maltravers is of use to the Plantagenets, and then, too, such a halt to the heaped rewards the king plans for that villain would mean questions asked, rumors raised—”

The palm of one of the prince’s big hands slammed down hard on the tabletop, and the wine decanter and goblets jumped and shuddered.

“Hell’s gates, Jeannette, you never fail to rile me one way or the other! Now hush up and give me a chance to answer, or I swear I will stop that tempting mouth and you will listen then! For your own sake and well-being, you will absolutely cease whatever desperate schemes you are hatching in that wily brain of yours. I will look into this. I swear to you, I had not heard. If it is true and if I can dissuade His Majesty, I shall, but I will not argue against him if he is set and thus cause a permanent rift with you as the obvious cause of it all.”

“Oh, I see,” she dared, her voice laden with a sarcasm she knew full well was both dangerous and provocative.

He rose from his chair and the little room shrank again. Like a coward even before he moved toward her, she stepped back against the rough plaster wall behind her.

“I swear by all the saints, woman, you see nothing concerning me clearly. You never have. So I shall tell you a few things to set us straight for now.” He advanced toward her. Her eyes went wide, and he saw her lower lip tremble. He fought back the urge to press her into the wall, to hurt her for all the agony she had caused him over the years only to use those same wiles now to tempt him again whether she was innocent or guilty of that intent. He stood two feet away from her, not touching her, but he leaned down to rest a palm on either side of her champagne-colored hair coils, to fix her with a steady, hungry gaze.

“First, aye, I will do what I can, Jeannette. You will trust that and should I fail, there will be insurmountable reasons for that failure and you will make no protest. No arguing! Just listen. Secondly, you will behave yourself as circumspectly as I assume you have been doing these past years so that the king’s anger toward you which you brazenly aroused once will continue to fade so that you and your Lord Thomas may come home to court again. Are those two things understood and do you pledge to agree?”

“My lord prince, I have no desire to return to His Grace’s court. In Normandy and at Liddell, I have been quite content.”

The eagerness, the tenseness or expectancy of his face and stance fled. “So,” he said, his voice gone cold and sharp like a sword’s edge, “a virtuous, content woman these days—save, of course, for the desire for bloody revenge against de Maltravers. A dewy-eyed bride still. That is to be your shield and buckler with me now.”

“Saints, Your Grace, what do you imply? I have two young sons, you know.”

“Aye, madam, I am entirely aware of that.”

“Are you? I hear you also have two sons, and are you not well content?”

A flame flared in each crystalline, blue eye. “Hell’s gates, woman, of course I am content. Ecstatic! Jousting, signing papers eternally, moving around from manor to manor—from bed to bed—while waiting for the next damned French war to begin so I can command an army myself without His Grace watching every minute and waiting for a wrong move—ecstatic! And speaking of such delights, I left the prospect of a warm bed and a willing lady who knows her own heart to come here to see you, so I really must be heading back. But let me tell you, since you still seem so adept at your hard-hearted little wars, I only risk myself for what will profit me.”

She tried to calm the rush of blood she felt at his tirade all spoken with such restrained, threatening control. “My lord prince, I do not mean to sound ungrateful. And I have known you to be very kind and charitable to those in need.”

“Aye, Jeannette, to those in need, but
that
is obviously not your credential for help, is it? Never has little Jeannette been in need of what her prince could truly give her!”

“Please, do not say thus and with such bitterness.”

“It does not matter. Only, I have just changed the rules of the game. What will you exchange for this help you ask me for—to halt the return of de Maltravers’s lands—mayhap to stop his return home altogether?”

“Exchange?” she stammered. In her shock, her eyes strayed to the straw pallet so close, and she gulped audibly. “I cannot—just what do you mean?”

“St. George, Jeannette, there is obviously no tenderness here between us, so I am asking for a simple, mercantile bargain. I please you by helping head off de Maltravers, and in fair exchange, you please me.”

Blood pounded in her ears so she could hardly hear her own answer. “You are insulting me, Your Grace.”

“No, I am complimenting you. You evidently value this favor greatly enough to get all disguised in knave’s garb and come traipsing clear to Canterbury to seek me out. Likewise, I value your sweet favors, your willing, beautiful body in fair exchange.”

Her knees went weak, and she pressed back harder against the rough wall to steady herself. Her voice when she spoke in the dim silence between them was a ghostly whisper. “I cannot, my prince.”

“Can you not really, Jeannette?” he gibed and leaned down over her again. “You are thinking you have always put up with my unwanted attentions, are you not? Poor, little Jeannette.”

“No, that is not it.”

“Damn you, witch. I swear you will admit this feeling that pierces me. You shall!”

He leaned hard into her, his hands imprisoning her waist. She tried to pull back, but the wall was as unmovable as he. One big hand lifted to tilt her face up to his; the other cupped her
derrière
to bring her closer to him. She put her hands flat on his hard chest, but she did not push him away as she meant to.

“Oh, no, no,” she moaned before his mouth took hers and she met his demands with a frightening need of her own.

His kiss at first was harsh, but it softened, shifted and deepened with aching tenderness. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he crushed her to him. But suddenly he seized her wrists and pressed them to her breasts to push her a step away.