The First Princess of Wales (45 page)

Bittersweet, she thought, my lord Prince Edward and I. Aye, bittersweet, but never poison. And yet in life, she knew such things happened. Her years of supposed friendship with Master Roger Wakeley had turned to bitterness and mistrust. Upon her return from Monbarzon, she had scolded him terribly and would have sent him away but for the fact her Lord Thomas would have asked a hundred questions and Roger Wakeley knew far too much. Better to keep him here so
she
could spy on him, she had decided. And so, she had made a truce in their little war, expecting promises from Roger that he would only send the prince messages she wished to go and none of his own.

She played the sad song’s melody again almost without hearing it. Nursing Thomas at night when he called out, caring for the boys, worrying so about the English army, she was nearly exhausted. Her hand dropped to her lap and the shaft of sun on her face made her very drowsy. Surely they must hear soon how good this day felt—and bittersweet—over there, “o man unkind, lo, here my heart. . . .”

She jolted awake with a start, bumping her head on the rough hickory bark behind her. Aye, that was it—her maid Vinette shouting her name from a distance.

“I am down here, Vinette!” She stood unsteadily holding her lute and shook the leaves from her skirts. “I am coming!”

The red-haired maid rounded the corner of the château wall to motion to her as she hurried forward. “Is it my lord? Is he all right?” Joan called.

“
Oui,
Lord Thomas is awake now and sits by the fire in the solar,
madame,
but there is a messenger here to see you from the English Prince Edward.”

Edward! Safe, alive, perhaps coming this way! Joan broke into a run along the tall castle wall.

“Where? Where is he? What did he say?”

Vinette Brinay’s attractive, freckled face turned obviously bitter at her words. “He bids you hear yourself,
madame,
but the heart of the matter my man Pierre has heard in the village for days is the same. The French king is defeated as nine years ago at Crécy and now the taxes and griefs on the backs of the poor serfs will double again to buy their noble armor and fill the royal coffers. To see the king humbled, ’tis well and good,
certainement,
but not at the expense of our downtrodden folk! We shall not suffer it. They will see!”

Joan stopped and stared as though she had been doused with icy water. Vinette’s light brown eyes glared wide into Joan’s startled lilac ones before the girl lowered them evidently amazed at her outburst. “The man awaits—he is in the great hall,
madame.
”

Joan touched the girl’s shoulder in a comforting caress as she hurried past, but she felt the distinct shove of Vinette’s shoulder as she shrugged her off. She must talk to the maid about such behavior and feelings, though mayhap if Thomas could merely stop that tanner Pierre Foulke from seeing her, it would halt the nasty bent of her tongue and temper of late. Vinette seldom went to her village home, so she was hardly being filled with such poison there.

The messenger awaiting her by the low-burning hearth of the great hall was Michael Brettin, one of the guards who had accompanied her on the grueling ride back from Monbarzon only three weeks ago. The knight wore no armor and she noted he was with only one squire who warmed his hands at the hearth and straightened to stand at attention when she entered.

“Sir Michael. You must have almost turned around to come straight back. Welcome! I have sent my maid to the kitchen to fetch food and wine.”

“Truth is, my lady duchess, I had to go clear south to Chalais to find them, but I rested only two days before I headed back. By the rood, though I am proud to serve my prince in any capacity needed, Duchess, you made me miss the greatest English victory of the age!”

“Oh, I am sorry, my lord—sorry you missed it, I mean, but I never thought of that or I would have ridden back here all by myself. But a great victory—saints, that is what matters, my lord!”

The brown-haired, long-faced man smiled at the eternally stunning impact of the natural beauty of the woman. “I meant not to sound severe, Duchess. And the prince has rewarded me handsomely for my part in things, only—” Here he lowered his voice and winked at her conspiratorially, “I shall have to break my knightly code of honor and lie to my grandchildren someday about my assigned tasks during the battle, eh?”

“And you had best keep the truth silent here, my lord. The prince told you, did he not, that the nature of my visit to him was to bring sensitive material to his attention and so—” Her voice trailed off as she saw Sir Michael’s long chin tremble as though he might dare to laugh in her face. Saints, had not the prince told his men that story and were they not bound to believe it as he was their sovereign liege lord? What if their secret three days of heavenly tryst at Monbarzon were common knowledge—with this man, this doltish-looking squire by the hearth, the whole damned English army!

“Follow me upstairs, if you please, Sir Michael,” her voice now edged with steely aplomb cut the air. “My dear Lord Thomas is home from his duty with Prince John and he would hear of your message as eagerly as I.”

That wiped the amused hint of smile from his pompous face, Joan mused, as she led him up the stairs. Bitter and sweet her memories of those three days might be, but she had no intention of letting such implications poison her reputation or her position here as chateleine of Château Ruisseau!

Despite two weeks of the flux, weight loss, and the flare-up of his old pains in the leg he had broken years ago, Thomas Holland, fully dressed, insisted on rising to meet the prince’s messenger.

“My Lord Holland. I find your Crécy treasure castle a treasure indeed,” Sir Michael Brettin began.

“Brettin, good to see you after these years. Crécy—fine memories, fine. But now you come with official word of another victory we have heard whispered of—or mayhap a summons for me?”

Sir Michael’s amber eyes linked with Thomas Holland’s probing stare before the knight looked away. “For you, Lord Thomas? Alas, no, not a summons, that is, at least not to battle or to join the prince’s force. His Grace has gone far south back to Aquitaine with the royal prisoners, the French king and his young son, Prince Philip, to Bordeaux, and come early spring, they will be sailing home. For that day of glory, though, I do bring you summons—you and your Duchess of Kent—to join His Grace’s force at Sandwich this spring and to proceed from there to London for triumphal entry.”

“Us with him to London when we had no part of it?” Thomas demanded. “I was sent to serve with Prince John, you know, Brettin, and not with His Grace, Prince Edward, as I had ever been wont to do before this campaign.”

“Aye, so I do recall, Lord Holland, but that was probably only because you could serve nearer to your precious lands here in Normandy while King Edward sent the Prince of Wales south to Aquitaine.”

“St. Edward’s holy blood, man, does His Grace think a little ride south to join with the prince would be some sort of hardship for me? I would have gone and gladly to meet him. I have a protective force I can leave here.”

Sir Michael’s sharp eyes lifted to catch the duchess’s warning frown over her husband’s shoulder. By the rood, but the humor, the irony of this pleased his jaded senses mightily, Sir Michael thought, fighting to stifle a grin. Lord Thomas here wished to do what his lady unbeknownst to him had willfully and fully accomplished, though saints knew, her joining with the prince was of a far different nature.

Sir Michael cleared his throat awkwardly. He was tired from riding and needed time to compose himself. Whatever his mission, he never wanted his great prince to think he had not served him with utmost loyalty and sincerity, and riling this lady could be a very bad step.

“I have many details to convey to you about the battle, Lord Holland, and to the duchess, and I shall be pleased to tell them all whenever you so desire,” he said smoothly as if tossing the matter in the lady’s lap. As he had thought, she was as clever as she was lovely.

“My Lord Thomas, Sir Michael had only just now ridden in and there is food awaiting him and his squire in the hall. After he has supped, we may hear the rest. I shall take him down now and be right back.”

“No, please, Duchess, sit here with your lord, and I shall be fine going just down the stairs.” Sir Michael bowed curtly and moved away before she could follow, but she read his thought of escape well enough, and she let him go without a word. The man had almost grinned at Thomas’s mention of riding south to join with Prince Edward, and none of this was a whit funny!

“I expected you to be elated at the news of an English victory, my lord,” she began as soon as the door closed, hoping that by going on the offensive she could discourage that scolding tone Thomas often fell into of late.

“And I expected you to be all in whirls over the opportunity to go home in triumph with the prince—my duchess.”

“Really? The victory parade will hardly be passing through Liddell and that is the only place I favor at home, as well you know.”

“Let us not argue, Joan.”

“Fine. I do not wish to.”

“I know you have not seen the royal Plantagenets for years and care not to now for all those vile memories of your father and mother which you finally chose to share with me.”

“Aye,” she said only, as her mind skipped back over all the buried bitterness. Amazingly, except for her well-tended hatred of John de Maltravers, who was evidently still exiled in Flanders thanks to her support by Prince Edward, she hardly hated over that anymore. Except for de Maltravers’s wily face in her dreams, it all seemed so very far away at times, even as did that little sprawling, third-story room in the inn where—

“What did you say, my lord?”

“Saints’ blood, Joan, cannot you listen and not go about so dreamy-eyed all day? I said I only resented the man here because he was fortunate enough to be with the prince’s army at the victory and I was not. Tonight, I intend to hear every detail of it while you worry about such things as proper fashions for our London return and whether the Plantagenets have forgiven you enough to let us both back to court from exile now and then.”

She turned away and gazed out through the leaden-paned westward windows over the riotously painted forest trees stretching away to the blue ribbon of autumn sky. To London in the spring, to see him there, return with him in triumph, but to what? She felt no part of the court now; her laughing pranks with the gay Princess Isabella and all her
demoiselles
seemed but a pale memory.

To be with him as they had been at Monbarzon? But Thomas would be there, and the king, and a thousand staring eyes and whispering mouths, so that never could be again. Better not to go—to stay here watching this French woods of Pont-Audemer turn to gray-etched skeletons and then to yellow-green buds again.

But hiding here even in this room or down there underground in that dark tunnel of her old nightmares, she would never find escape any more than her poor mother had escaped reality hidden away at Liddell all those sad years. She, though her mother’s daughter, had always chosen to go on, to face the world with a song that hid her heart if need be, and she would do so come this spring.

“Would it make you feel better to take a little crisp, fall air, Thomas?” she heard herself ask. “I was out before and it was lovely.” She forced herself to turn around to face him squarely, and her lips lifted in a steady smile as she held out her hand to help him rise.

W
hen autumn and the winter filled with long, long hours and days revolved at last to spring, Joan and Thomas Holland went to meet the prince’s great victory retinue at Windsor. Prince Edward had landed, because of a change of plans and a vile storm on the Channel, far southwest at Plymouth. For three weeks, in a parade of royal captives, booty, and gaily bedecked heroes, he rode in triumph through the sweet May of England toward Windsor.

Joan, Thomas, and their little brood of sons and servants had come across the Channel to Sandwich with Prince John of Lancaster’s Normandy forces and had made ready with the rest of the court to join the prince’s cortège for the final, glorious jaunt into frenzied, rejoicing London.

Now, Joan’s old friend the Princess Isabella swept into the Great Hall where everyone important awaited the prince’s imminent arrival. The fair-haired, laughing princess was garbed in Plantagenet azure and gold brocade literally encrusted with swirls of gems. In the three days Joan had been back at court, she had seen little of her Lord Thomas but a great deal of Isabella. She found her continual chattering was beginning to fray her nerves, but because of the sadness in the princess’s lovely blue eyes, Joan smiled and nodded and let her ramble on. She rose from a little curtsy to the princess and accepted one of her sweet-scented, lightning-quick embraces.

“You look absolutely stunning, Your Grace,” Joan told her. “You will blind the eyes of the people in the sun and your brother-hero will be taxed with you for taking all the glory.”

Isabella’s musical voice chimed in laughter, and many gorgeously appareled courtiers craned their necks to see. “It will not be my dear brother Prince Edward taxed,
ma chérie,
but my father King Edward when he sees the gownmaker and goldsmith bills, I warrant, but then, as I have always vowed,
‘Suis-je belle?’
”