Emma Campion - A Triple Knot (45 page)

“I’ll miss you!”

Now King Edward stepped forward and kissed Joan’s hand. “I pray that you are happy, cousin, and give birth to sons who will serve the realm as well as their father has.”

“I am honored to have you and Queen Philippa as witnesses to this joyous day, Your Grace,” Joan said. “Will you come back to London with us for the wedding feast?”

“A gracious invitation I must sadly decline. But surely you’ll be more at ease with only your cousins.” He moved on to speak to Thomas.

God be thanked. Joan had promised Blanche she would extend the invitation, but she’d prayed that the king and queen would decline. It was a day for lighthearted joy, marred only momentarily by Thomas’s complaint that Ned’s kiss was hardly cousinly.

“What did he say to you? Do I have a rival?”

He’d never before asked so directly about Ned. “Neither was Otho’s hug very brotherly, Thomas. Or Raoul’s kiss. You’ve no rival, my love. You know that.” How could he doubt it after all she’d gone through to arrive at this day?

S
NOW FELL SOFTLY AS THE BARGE LEFT THE PIER
. J
OAN LEANED INTO
her husband’s warm solidity. Thomas draped his cloak around her. “I cannot believe my good fortune,” he said.

They would stay a few nights in Broughton, Thomas’s
birthplace, halfway between London and Upholland, then continue on to Lancashire. Efa had gone on ahead with Jester and a load of the wedding gifts.

“To wake beside you every morning—such a simple joy, yet it is everything,” said Joan. She felt at peace, wanting nothing more.

On their journey north, everything pleased her, and all who served the Hollands welcomed her with warmth. The king and queen had presented them with gifts of gold and precious stones on their marriage, but it was the generosity expressed in the hides, turned wooden bowls, stools, and animals offered by the servants and tenants that moved them most. An expression of their joy for their lord’s happiness and the honor they felt in having the king’s cousin as their lady.

The manor house at Upholland, where Thomas had lived much of his life, was a timber hall over a stone undercroft, the great hall simple, the solar freshly painted in bright colors and boasting a large bed, the most elegant furnishing in the house.

“You are accustomed to finer homes,” said Thomas.

“Husband, this is our home, and I shall love it. But I pray you be patient, for I’ve so much to learn!” Though by the evidence of the meal served on their arrival and the cleanliness of the hall and the solar, she guessed that the servants would more than compensate for her unfamiliarity. And she was confident that Efa would quickly know the lay of the land. Thomas had expressed concern about how the housekeeper, Besetta, who’d been in the household when he was a child, would take to Efa, but already the two seemed easy with each other. Broad-hipped and rosy-cheeked, with jowls that strained at the strings of the undyed linen hat she wore, a peculiar thing that hid most of her hair, Besetta seemed ageless. Indeed, she squealed like a girl when Thomas caught her up in a hug. All Joan’s tension fell away as she sensed the love in the hall.

As they were about to retire for the night, the steward, Andrew, pointed out a large chest in one corner. “It arrived a few days hence on a cart escorted by armed retainers in the livery of the Prince of Wales.”

Efa frowned at Joan and gave a subtle shake of her head.

“It will wait till morning,” said Thomas. “Right, wife?” He kissed her hand and put his arm round her, but she saw the tension in his jaw.

“Or midday,” she said with a laugh as she turned to the plank steps that led up to the solar, pulling Thomas behind her. Up above, Helena and Efa had lit lamps, warmed the bed with hot stones, and a small brazier cut the chill of the December night. Joan did not look, but she was certain that beneath the mattress Efa had placed charms for their protection. She had never felt so enveloped in love.

Beginning with his boots, Joan undressed her husband, fumbling as he stole kisses and then started undressing her, too impatient to wait.

“Thank God you aren’t wearing the gown with all the buttons.”

“One? I have several with many tiny buttons.”

With a roar, he fell back onto the bed, taking her with him. Clothes could be mended.

At dawn, Joan rose in the icy cold to open the shutter. Snow blanketed the countryside. Down below, a groom slowly made his way to the kitchen, with each step lifting his knee as high as he could.

“I’ve dreamed of this moment for so long, showing you the beauty of a snowfall in Lancashire.” Thomas enfolded her in his arms and rested his chin on her head.

“I wish it would snow and snow and shut out all the world but this happy household.” Joan turned and he lifted her, carrying her back to bed. By the time she called for Helena to dress her, the household was well into their day.

Down below, the servants excitedly asked whether they might stay to watch the opening of the great chest from the prince. Joan looked to Thomas.

“I’ve a mind to wait until Christmas to open it,” he drawled, yawning and stretching his legs toward the fire, but Joan saw through his nonchalance. It bothered him as much as it did her. “We’ve plenty to do to prepare, haven’t we, Besetta?”

“That we do, Sir Thomas,” said the housekeeper, “but it would be cruel to make us wait any longer. We’ve waited for days, wondering what treasures lie within.” Slowly, she ran her rough hand across the carved lid as if she might so divine its contents.

Thomas sat forward and bowed in fond acquiescence. “You’ve run this house for so long, I don’t dare cross you.”

Joan had two servants move the chest to the middle of the hall. She prayed that it was something impersonal—goblets, bowls, or perhaps matching saddles.… She glanced at Efa, who touched the corners of her mouth, suggesting a brave smile. Joan took her counsel, smiling as she said, “Let us see what treasures lie within, Besetta.”

The housekeeper’s thick arms strained against the fabric of her sleeves as she lifted the lid. Thomas went to her aid, propping it open. Besetta stepped aside for Joan. “My lady.”

Holding her breath, Joan lifted out a long, flat package. Cloth, she guessed, wrapped with care in parchment. To protect a dye or an embroidery. Laying it on the table, she cut the twine, pulled back the parchment. “Help me unfold this, Besetta.”

“Now that’s a grand thing,” the housekeeper said, wonder in her voice.

“The white hart.” Thomas looked at Joan. “Your father’s design, and yet not. This one seems so melancholy.”

It was a green velvet coverlet, with the white hart sitting in the center, the crown round its neck, the chain pooling over a foreleg. The border was sprinkled with embroidered flowers
and shrubs, the latter mostly plantagenets, or brush plants. Joan agreed that it was far more melancholy than her father’s design, the hart’s face and posture expressing the terrible weight of the crown round its neck.

Joan regretted her decision to open the chest. From anyone else she might have received it as a lovely tribute, the sorrowful air an accident, but not from Ned. It was a mean gesture on his part, a petty reminder of his fixation on the white hart silk she’d refused him. She quickly began to unpack the rest to dispel the strange mood the thing had cast. Jeweled mazers, green velvet drapes for the bed to match the hart spread, Italian glass goblets, lengths of the softest wool in beautiful shades of red, green, and blue.

“These are noble gifts.” Joan heard a hesitance in Thomas’s voice.

“The mazers and goblets are most welcome. But I would keep our chamber as it is. This is too melancholy to drape round our marriage bed.” Joan handed Besetta the bed hangings. “Wrap these as they were and put them in a dry place. The chest would do, if you find room for it out of the way.”

Thomas’s nod to the housekeeper conveyed far more than mere agreement.

“What of the wool cloth, my lady?” asked Besetta.

“Helena should see it, so that she knows what we have to hand. Then store it where it will be easily found when we’ve need of it.”

Later, when Thomas was showing Joan the stables, he expressed his relief in her acceptance of the housekeeper. “I know this is not the court, and our ways may seem strange.”

“They will be strange for only a little while. Then they will be
our
ways.”

“The prince’s gifts—they are very fine.”

Joan pressed Thomas’s arm and waited until he looked
down into her eyes. “I chose you, and he resents it. Put him from your mind, please, my love. I have all my heart desires.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

“You have no regrets?”

“Only the loss of so many years.”

A
s the snow deepened in the fields surrounding Upholland, Joan and Thomas spent their days and nights absorbed in each other, sharing a lifetime of stories, listening, watching, touching, while the household tiptoed around them. Joan was only vaguely aware of Helena and Efa, even less of the Holland servants. But, as Christmas approached, Thomas was drawn out of their cocoon to help with plans for a feast welcoming Joan to the wider community of the working manor and the village. And so Joan took her first tentative steps of settling into a lifestyle she’d experienced only on occasion as a child, when her mother traveled round the Kent manors and left Joan and John at one in the Midlands, in Efa’s care. Joan knew little of what it meant to be lady of such a country manor—Bisham was grander, with constant guests. Upholland was small and remote.

Most of the staff had always been in the service of the Holland family. It was clear that they found her strange. Her wit was misinterpreted, taken as anger or criticism. Her clothing needed simplifying. The grooms had difficulty adjusting to her order to have a horse ready for her at all times of day. And Thomas was uncomfortable with her riding without escort.

“Poachers and weather, folk who do not yet know you.”

Joan understood his concern and agreed to an escort at first,
but if she meant to make this her home she must learn the land. Thomas said that he would relax after all had met her. Then they would know her and watch out for her.

She threw herself into planning the big feast for all who lived on the manor and in the village. Dressed elegantly, as the folk expected, yet in what would have been starkly simple at court, Joan greeted them all, asking questions made possible by extensive coaching from Besetta and Andrew. She fussed over the tenants’ children, especially the babies, eliciting knowing smiles from their mothers, taught the girls a dance she’d loved as a child, and told the boys some of the stories she’d heard from soldiers in France.

“You have won their hearts,” Thomas said later that night.

“And they have won mine—the dancing, the laughter. They ate everything!” She hugged him tightly.

“It was not always so. There were years of sadness during Father’s troubles and after his murder. And all the households here lost at least half their number with the pestilence. They are sharing our joy in beginning again.”

Their lovemaking that night was different from before—slower, dreamier, as if at last they understood that they need not hurry, they had all the time in the world. And, being together day in, day out, they knew each other as they had not before. Joan learned Thomas’s moods, the languor that kept him abed many mornings, much to her delight, the single-minded concentration with which he tackled a project, the inexplicable silences, the buoyant energy after a good hunt or a long ride or any physical labor.

By Candlemas, Joan knew she was with child, and the realization filled her with such joy that she was almost afraid to speak the words and break the magic. But Efa, too, noticed the changes, and then Helena. Joan swore them to secrecy until she told Thomas.

That very evening as they climbed into bed, Joan drew
Thomas’s hand to her stomach. “Do you feel the miracle? Our child grows within. At last!”

He regarded her with wonder, then bent to kiss her bare stomach. “When?”

“At the very latest, the first frost.”

He pulled her onto his lap, covering her with kisses.

Determined to do nothing to risk the child, Joan stayed behind when Thomas rode to Windsor for the second gathering of the Order of the Garter in April. In truth, it was no sacrifice—she was happy to delay a reunion with her royal kin. She wanted nothing to spoil her happiness. And, as spring took hold at Upholland, she let Efa, Helena, and Besetta fuss all they wished as she wandered the manor proper, acquainting herself with its gentler seasons.

O
N THE RIDE FROM
L
ANCASHIRE TO
W
INDSOR
,
THROUGH THE TENDER
awakening of the earth, Thomas felt as if he were reentering the world from Eden. The months with Joan seemed as a dream in contrast to the haunted countryside. Though he, Joan, and all on the manor grieved for kinfolk and friends lost to the pestilence, the general mood had been one of hope, of looking forward and giving thanks to God. Now, to see the abandoned farms, shuttered inns, thinly populated villages, and the desperate looks on the wandering penitents and beggars, he vowed to do penance for having forgotten the misery. For the moment, he and his men were on the alert for the inevitable thieves. A few skirmishes had them in fighting form by the time they reached Windsor.

After the unnatural quiet of the countryside, he welcomed
the noise in the lower ward of the castle, knights and their retinues jostling to move about among the bright-colored pavilions.

“It’s too crowded for the cart,” Hugh said to the others. “We’ll unload here after I’ve found—”

“I’ll show you the way.” Otho appeared out of the crowd.

“That will save time.” Thomas embraced his brother.

“I’ve watched for you up on the walls. Where is Joan? You’ve not lost her?”

“She’s in Upholland surrounded by people I trust. I’m to be a father!”