Emma Campion - A Triple Knot (54 page)

That had been the most difficult part. “If God can forgive, who am I to refuse to do so?”

“Hmm … I see that the fire is lit within you. How will you live?”

“As Countess of Kent. Or Princess of Wales. That is up to my cousin the king. I’ve banned Ned from Donington for now, while the sickness threatens. I’m keeping the children close to me, in Efa’s care. He has promised to tell his parents by St. George’s Day.”

“I shall look out for earthquakes and bloody portents in the skies. Though at least Isabella is not here to poison it.” Blanche sighed. “I pray you know what you are about.”

P
HILIPPA CHOSE A PERFECT SPRING MORNING ON WHICH TO INVITE
Joan for a conversation in the rose garden. A gauzy pavilion suggested shade, Italian glass in enchanting blues held the watered wine, the fruits and cakes. She had to admit, her daughter-in-law looked the part of a queen as she approached, softly swathed in green and blue silk, her hair catching the sunlight, the loose strands curling prettily around her pale neck, teasing the cleft between her generous breasts. She’d taken to wearing low-cut bodices, a new style for her that had men walking into servants, spilling wine, generally making fools of themselves. So many would be disappointed when they learned that she had already remarried.

“Your Grace.”

Philippa averted her eyes from Joan’s bosom as she bowed. “I wouldn’t lean over quite so far if I were you, my dear,” she said. “Come, sit down, daughter.” A startled glance. How alert she was, to catch that last word. “Yes, I know all about it. I should have expected it.”

“Do we have your blessing, Your Grace?”

“Does it matter?” It didn’t. Edward and Ned had returned from Calais so smitten by the idea that she’d known better than to waste her breath protesting. She’d reminded herself of her affection for and gratitude toward Joan’s father, Edmund of Kent, the first one to befriend her at court. And she had grown closer to the young woman in recent years. Indeed, Joan had the grace and intelligence Ned would need in a queen. She shook her head. “No, you needn’t answer that. Just tell me this. Do you love him?”

“I would be a fool not to.” She spoke of how kind and generous he’d been when Thomas died, how her children loved him, how particularly good he was with her son John, who reminded
her of Ned as a boy, imperious, believing rules did not pertain to him. “Ned has been good for him. He understands.”

It did not escape Philippa that Joan had not answered her question. “You love him for all this, of course, but what of your heart? Is he as dear to you as Thomas was?” Joan had fought for that one for nine years. Would she have done so for Ned?

“I don’t understand—you have always worried about my loving Ned, Your Grace. And now that I have pledged myself to him, you doubt me?”

“I am a fond mother, worried about the happiness of my firstborn. When you face your Tom’s intended, you will understand.” She patted Joan’s hand. “In truth, I imagine your father smiling down on you. With this marriage, you will mend the terrible rift Isabella caused in this family.”

That night, Philippa confided in Edward that she believed Joan was marrying their son for the sake of the children only, that she did not particularly
like
Ned.

Edward laughed. “You often don’t like me! It is the way with men and women. It’s the bed sport that matters, and Ned tells me that is very good indeed. Don’t worry.” When she did not laugh, he said that he was certain Joan loved Ned, always had, and reminded Philippa of Joan’s experience in Brittany and Normandy. “She is just the wife for him as he works to unite the Aquitaine.”

That much was true, and she had noticed a change in Ned, a softening, more laughter, as if Joan brought him a confidence that allowed him to relax the heroic posture off the field. Perhaps she just had a habit of distrusting Joan. She would work on that.

O
NCE THE KING AND QUEEN GAVE THEIR BLESSING
,
THEY INSISTED
that all should be finalized as soon as the papal dispensation was received. Ned would soon take up his duties as Duke of
Aquitaine and Joan must be with him. But, more important, Philippa and Edward were anxious to legitimize the marriage bed.

“Surely it is little to ask, Joan, when we feared they would never agree?”

Joan distrusted how quickly the king and queen had agreed to their marriage. “Why such haste? We have vowed to stay apart until we wed. Do they not trust us?”

Ned promised to observe Thomas’s first-year obit on the Feast of the Holy Innocents with a full service, almsgiving, and a royal feast. “His children will see with what respect we honor their father’s memory.”

“I will hold you to that. Every year.”

“Every year, my love.”

By the end of summer, Ned had cleared all foreseeable arguments against her crowning, seeing to yet another papal bull acknowledging the legitimacy of her marriage to Thomas so that no one could claim bigamy, as Will yet lived. The king had dissolved their initial marriage, and petitioned the pope for the dispensation for Ned to wed his cousin.

T
HE FORMAL ESPOUSAL WAS CELEBRATED ON
6 O
CTOBER
,
BOTH
Joan’s and Ned’s households wearing his livery of green and white, with his ostrich plumes and her white hart prominent motifs in the decorations of Windsor’s great hall. The celebration lasted long into the night.

For the first time, Joan and Ned shared a bedchamber in the castle. It was there she had dressed in the morning, but
while they had entertained their guests the chamber had been transformed into a nighttime woodland, with the white hart the centerpiece of the great bed. She gasped at the discovery. Helena and Efa quickly prepared her to receive her prince, then departed. There was a moment, as Helena glanced back, when Joan remembered the chamber in Katarina’s home, how nervous she’d been, how Thomas had reassured her.

The memory dissolved as Ned stepped through the side door, shedding his cloak, revealing his gorgeous nakedness. “Do you like the room?”

“I feel I’ve walked into a dream.” Ned’s arms encircled her from behind and he held her close, his breath stirring her hair, warming her, as Thomas might have done. “I never want to wake up. Never,” she said, turning in his arms.

F
OUR DAYS LATER A MUCH LARGER
,
MORE FORMAL GATHERING WITNESSED
their marriage in St. George’s Chapel, at Windsor, officiated by Archbishop Islip. Joan wore a deep scarlet gown of finest silk, so heavily embroidered with gold thread and powdered with gems that it weighed her down, as did the magnitude of her decision. All her life she had run away from the royal household, and now she was joining it in a most intimate way.

Two days earlier, Ned had laughed as he recounted to Joan how Islip had originally doubted, then retreated in apologies. “Had I worn a sword when he questioned your honor, I would have drawn it and committed a grave sin. How dare he.” Like quicksilver, Ned’s moods, darkening like a sudden summer storm when his honor was questioned, brightening with breathtaking speed when his opponent was vanquished. “We considered every angle with great care before I ever approached you.”

“We?”

He’d kissed away the question.

Now, standing beside Ned, regal in red brocade and cloth of gold, she remembered that “we” and hesitated before speaking her vows. But he looked on her with such love. Surely only good could come of this. She straightened, once more vowing to obey him unto death. When they kissed the bells rang out, and she looked up to behold a face that she loved so well, she could not see how she would ever have denied him.

M
aud was like a tinderbox when her brother John was around, and he her spark. She resented him for the long scar on her arm, a reminder of the accident that had kept Efa in England, a change of plans that she blamed for her father’s death. Their arguments were legion, and Joan seldom paid them any heed. But one morning she came upon them fighting over a piece of cloth, their faces red with the effort, her daughter shrieking that John was a thief, a sneak, a murderer.

“What is this?”

Startled, Maud lost her hold and John stuffed the piece behind his back.

“Give it to me, son.” Joan held out her hand.

He backed away. She might have left it but for the look on his face—trapped, frightened. She lunged for him, twisting the cloth out of his grasp. God help her. It was Thomas’s white hart silk. Her hands went cold. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it in his chest,” said Maud. She began to cry. “It was Father’s, wasn’t it? His protection.”

“How did you come to have it, John?” Joan demanded.

“Found it.”

“When? Where?”

He shrugged, then suddenly shouted, “I hate you, both of you!” and ran out of the room.

Joan sank down on a bench, dumbstruck. Her daughter climbed up beside her, putting an arm around her. “He said Uncle Ned gave it to him and told him to keep it hidden.”

Ned. Joan’s mind spun as she consoled her daughter, assuring her that the prince had not meant her father harm, nor had John, and silently praying that it was true. She took her doubts to Efa, who whispered something in Welsh and bowed her head.

“I am so afraid, Efa. I don’t want to know. If Ned planned it. Simon, the ambush … He had the power.” Thomas’s accused murderer had not been found.

“You must confront him with the cloth, my lady. Look in his eyes. There is every chance he is innocent. But you will never know if you don’t ask.”

Joan brought it out that night, as they shared a mazer of wine before sleep.

Ned sucked in his breath and looked away. “I’m sorry you’ve seen it.”

“So am I. Now tell me why you took this.”

“It’s so long ago.”

“Not so long you don’t remember.”

“It dropped as his squire was helping him with his armor on the day he was made earl. No one noticed. I’d always wanted it—you know what it meant to me. So I took it.”

She slapped him. So hard her hand tingled. “What right had you?”

“Do you think I’m so callous I haven’t felt a twinge of guilt? But surely a piece of silk holds little power over life and death. Thomas was frail, Joan. Fading.”

“What else did you do to speed his death, Ned? What else to clear the way?”

“Joan, my love. I did nothing. Nothing. Faith, I love you, but I would not dishonor myself for you.”

“But you did by taking the silk.”

He hung his head. “I’ve done penance every day since—for my weakness, my selfishness. And when Thomas died—God help me, I knew I must make it right, I must take care of you and the children. I must do this for him.”

Her head spun. He spoke from his heart, she felt that, but such an act. Such consequences. “Why give it to John? Was Maud’s injury—”

“No! How could you think such a thing of your son?”

He’d responded too quickly. “Then why?”

“John is not so unfeeling as he pretends. When you and Thomas returned to Normandy, he missed you. See? I loved him even then, all four of your children. I have always wanted the best for them.” Ned reached for her.

She leaned away. “I want to believe you, Ned. But this—” She held up the silk, shaking it at him.

He grasped her wrist, brought her hand to his mouth, kissed it. “You must believe me, Joan. I love you more than my life.”

It was a familiar feeling, wanting to believe Ned, feeling sick that she thought him capable of such cruelty. “You would swear before a priest?”

He did not hesitate. “I would swear before the Holy Father himself. Look what I’ve given you, Joan. I’ve restored your family’s honor, and Thomas’s. You will be queen.
My queen
. Just as I promised so long ago, that night beneath our tree. Remember?”

Then, it had been a comfort. Now?

“Joan, please. Forgive me. Let me have the silk. I’ll wear it as a penance.”

She hid it behind her back. “No.”

He bowed his head, pressing it into her shoulder, a gesture familiar from their childhood when she’d found him out. And, more recently, when he confessed to drowning Bruno. She felt a panic rising. What had she done?

“I would do anything for you, Joan. Anything. I will walk
barefoot to Canterbury in penance. Forgive me. It was such a little thing. Your heart was in that square. I knew what it meant to you. When I saw it there … I am only human, Joan. I’d waited so long.”

There was no going back. She had pledged him her troth, knowing he walked in darkness. She had wanted him so—it was not just for the sake of her children. Now he was hers, in all his complexity. And she was Princess of Wales, Duchess of the Aquitaine, and would someday be Queen of England. It was what he had promised her. He’d never wavered.

God forgive me
.

I
wish to thank Anthony Goodman for bringing Joan of Kent to life for me. Tony’s notes toward a biography of Joan, his thoughtful and thorough answers to my questions by letter and e-mail, and our enthusiastic discussions about her over lunches in York, our special city, breathed life into a woman who intrigued but mystified me. How I shaped her story will undoubtedly surprise him; I foresee some lively arguments on my next visit.

I am blessed with an abundance of fine historians working in the field of fourteenth-century studies: Richard Barber, Lisa Benz St. John, Hugh Collins, Mark Ormrod, Clifford Rogers, Jonathan Sumption, Juliet Vale, and Martin Vale to name just the ones whose books and articles on the period covered in this novel spent the most time on my desk during the past several years, bristling with book darts. As always, I am grateful for the welcome I’ve received in the Society of the White Hart sessions at the annual Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo.

My heartfelt thanks to Laura Hodges and Joyce Gibb for thorough readings of several drafts of this book, to Lorraine Stock for hunting down a crucial article for me, and to Mary Evans for encouraging me all along the way. And to my editors Suzanne O’Neill and Anna Thompson for guiding me all along the way, Kim Silverton for shepherding the book through the final stages with such grace, Dyana Messina for painless publicity, and Sarah Pekdemir for making marketing fun.