by Karen Harper
“Aye, my gracious lady,” the sprightly little man gushed, “for the princess does send her love to you, her dear and gracious friend, and to your Lord Holland and bids me convey to you news of her great victory.”
“Her victory?” Joan asked. “Is she to wed?”
“No, no, my gracious lady—just the opposite! She said to convey to you she has escaped another snare—I do have a letter writ by her own scribe to you in my things, gracious lady—and she has gainsaid her royal parents and refused to wed with Bérard d’Albret, son of the great lord, Sire d’Albret of Gascony. The princess said that the Lady Holland, her dearest friend from other adventures, must know of this triumph to share it with her.”
“Triumph!” Thomas Holland snorted. “Rubbish, more like—insubordination and foolish headstrong deeds, Joan, of which I am glad to say you at least are well quit of.”
Richard Sidwell’s dark eyes darted back and forth to drink in the nuances of tension here, spoken or otherwise, between this Garter Knight lord and his so beauteous lady. He had heard of her comeliness of form and face, for rumors that the Fair Maid of Kent had ensnared the Prince of Wales’s heart had circulated for several years before her marriage to this man and their departure to live in Normandy on lands newly won at Crécy. But Sidwell had never glimpsed her himself before today, and never dreamed such a thing as ephemeral rumors could be so true. Aye, the lady was fair indeed—breathtakingly awesome.
Her abundant hair which tended to wayward curliness was pulled back in a single braid as thick as a man’s wrist, falling down her back to her shapely hips. Those tresses, he mused, were the color of wheat in noon sun or moonglow on clear, windless nights. Her face seemed perfection—a lovely oval with elegantly high cheekbones, a slender, pert nose, and a full, almost pouting mouth which had ever been the envied style at court. But the eyes were so rare—clear amethyst or the hue of fringed gentians within the thick, dark lashes. And wonder of wonders, the lady seemed so natural in stance and posture, as if she were quite unaware of her disarming beauty. Her loveliness, he mused still studying her through slitted eyes, was the more stunning for being unadorned. While his practiced eye was nearly jaded by the glut of rich fabrics and cosmetics, and the abundance of jewels in the Princess Isabella’s household where he served, this woman wore the simplest blue wool kirtle, soft and clinging, with only her linked belt, from which dangled her heavy ring of keys, about her waist. It was impossible to believe that a woman with that body had borne two children in two years. The breasts were full, but the waist and belly so tiny and flat he could almost span them even with his small hands. On her, no jewelry detracted the eye. She wore only a gold wedding band and a small beryl ring on her other hand, all set with some fine gold work of filigreed ivy leaves.
“My Lord Thomas,” the Lady Joan was protesting low, “the princess was greatly devastated at her desertion by her betrothed Louis de Male at Bruges, you recall, so she perhaps only feels here she has her revenge for that.”
“Nonsense,” the copper-haired Thomas Holland persisted, while Richard Sidwell pulled his eyes away from the Lady Joan to assess her lord in this interesting exchange of tempers. “Getting back at this poor bastard d’Albret is hardly getting even with de Male. The king and the prince did that well enough for her last year in that sea battle off Winchelsea when they trounced the fleet of Castilian ships de Male encouraged to wreak havoc on England. The princess is just too damned headstrong and Her Grace should have handled her daughter with more force.”
“As she did me, I assume you mean, my lord. Saints, I for one am all for the princess’s happiness. And would you so criticize the dear Queen Philippa about her daughter if Her Grace were standing here instead of poor Richard Sidwell, who is no doubt tired and famished and is in need of our hospitality rather than our heated words about the princess? Please sit at our table, Master Sidwell. Partake and then tell us whatever you know of events in London. Exactly why did the princess say she changed her mind about the marriage or had she never agreed to it at all?”
Despite her usual fears of hearing news from the court, Joan plied their visitor with hot food and wine while Thomas looked on glumly over a wine goblet, his little son on his knee. Between bites of mackerel and biscuits drenched in Normandy honey, Richard Sidwell told them how five fully laden ships, heavy with goods for the princess and her retinue, had been prepared to set sail for Bordeaux when the bride defected. Sumptuous gifts for the groom, a massive bridal trousseau—one robe of which took twenty-nine skilled embroiderers nine days to complete—everything was prepared when Princess Isabella refused to embark. The bridegroom was so devastated, rumors said, that he had taken holy vows as a cloistered Franciscan friar and left his inheritance to a younger brother.
“Pure insanity,” Thomas Holland’s voice cut in on the marvelous tale while Joan hung on every word, trying to picture it all. “Let your minstrel make up some sad song to sing about it then, lady, so you can get all misty-eyed over it again. All I can see is the princess has made a mess of a necessary alliance with her groom’s father. King Edward needs all the friends he can get in Bordeaux for this coming war and a woman upsets the whole damned apple cart!”
“Thus it has been since Eve, my gracious host,” Richard Sidwell ventured and spooned up more custard, noting how the grim-faced Lord Holland just eyed his lady wife askance and did not find the jest a bit amusing. Poor lady, to have so serious and dour a knight for husband in this walled, moated manor so far from the excitement and gaiety of the Plantagenet court, Sidwell concluded, and washed the custard down with another gulp of wine.
“Any other, better news?” Lord Holland asked when he was done eating. “News of war? I long for it sometimes.”
“Aye, so do the other knights, of course, I have heard, my gracious lord, but the new King John of France bides his time and so does our royal king. King John, ’tis said, in obvious jealousy and affront to England’s Order of the Garter, has founded a so-called Order of the Star this January, despite his depleted finances from the ruinous wars ending at Crécy.”
“Saint’s blood!” Thomas swore low. “The Order of the Garter shall vanquish the Order of the Star when English knights next meet French on a battlefield. Say on.”
“Well, my gracious lord, speaking of Crécy and all—His Grace, the Prince of Wales has not been affianced again, since the last negotiations fell through and ’tis rumored he bides his time waiting for the next French war almost in self-imposed exile from London at his vast manor holdings. ’Tis rumored too he has a second son now by another lady different from the one named de Vere who bore his first.”
Richard Sidwell, esquire, regretted that last bit of news the moment he spoke it, for the lovely Lady Joan’s face clearly showed shock and dismay before she covered it by turning away to take her copper-haired little son into her arms from his father’s lap.
“A raft of bastard sons will do His Grace no good,” she heard her husband say, but the words did not stop her flow of memories. “The prince will have to marry and soon to get himself heirs for the royal line of succession someday. Quite simply, the man has no choice as some of us did.”
While Thomas Holland and their wiry, little guest spoke of other things, Joan bounced her son on her blue-woolen knees, but his delighted smiles and squeals hardly permeated her thoughts. She, in perpetual, forced exile here with Thomas Holland, had two sons; Prince Edward, in temporary, chosen exile there, with different women had two sons. The wheel of Fortune had spun and cast them off in far different directions where they had perhaps much the same lives, but each alone.
Her vision blurred with tears which she rapidly blinked back. Damn this rush of silly feelings. Saints, damn this little messenger from Isabella who dared to remind her of what once could have been! She glanced down at the beryl ring the prince had given her over seven years ago. She should not have worn it. She would take it off and never look on it again!
“Lady, I said I thought I would take our guest d
ownstairs to his chamber now and I will be right back.”
“Oh, aye, of course. A chamber newly aired with fresh spring rushes on the floor I hope you will enjoy.” She managed a smile and a calm demeanor as she held her son to her to bid Sidwell good-night. “In the morn perhaps you would like to look around our lands here before you set out for Alençon,” she added. “I would like the princess to be told how well we get on here when you return to her.”
“Aye, Lady Joan. A gracious lord and lady in a most gracious French castle. Good even to you.”
The room breathed silence after their footsteps died away and Madeleine came to take little Thomas off to the nursery down the hall where she slept on a trundle bed in earshot of the Holland sons. Soon, Joan thought, soon Thomas would need his own room and then a pony—then a little quintain and blunted weapons, schooling, his own life of knighthood, and wars, and daily agonies of heart.
She pressed her fingertips to her eyes, suddenly exhausted. It had been a long day. She twisted off the beryl ring decorated with her family’s ivy leaf insignia and dropped it in her jewel coffer even as she heard her husband’s tread outside the door.
“St. Peter’s bones, that little esquire can jabber—and eat and drink,” he said immediately and sat at the cleared table to pour himself more wine. “Here—the missive from the princess,” he added and scooted the small, ribboned and wax-sealed scroll down the length of table toward her.
She came closer, sitting across from him to open it. “Do you know, Joan, besides stopping here, what the man’s task is for the princess—why he is traipsing around over here in hostile France?”
She looked up at him across the forsythia on the polished table. “No, of course not, unless I did not hear him tell us.”
“The poor knave is over here fetching figured brocade for her from Alençon! Clear across the Channel and a two-hundred-blasted-mile ride through French territory for figured brocade! The woman is daft—it is the new fashion at court, he says. By the rood, Joan, you are well quit of Isabella and the rest.”
“And are you well quit of them?” she parried.
“Your meaning?”
“Do you not miss being with the Plantagenets in their glittering realm? The queen, for instance?”
“I have been loyal to Her Grace ever since I was in the party of knights sent to fetch her from Flanders as a bride. I told you that. Are you implying something about our marriage, madame, that I owe her a debt for such? She let me down when she wed you with Salisbury, but I have long forgiven her for all that even if you have not. I have been well enough content to live here with you as wife because I took comfort in believing you were well content to get away from the Plantagenets. I should be most disturbed, madame, to believe one little word of His Grace, our prince’s private doings at home, would change any of that contentment.”
She leveled a cool, violet stare at his one-eyed challenge. “Not a whit, my lord,” she lied.
“Good. Then, it is off to bed for us. That damned brocade fetcher cost us a goodly part of a fine evening with such piddling news of trousseaus and bastard sons, fashions, and de Maltravers—”
Joan crunched the stiff parchment scroll in her hand. “What did you say? De Maltravers? I heard naught of de Maltravers. How—what did he say?”
“How the hell do you know aught of de Maltravers anyway, Joan? It is just more gossip Sidwell threw in when I took him to his room.”
“De Maltravers, the exile from Flanders? Tell me, Thomas!”
His mouth dropped open and he half rose out of his chair to lean toward her across the table. “Aye, that de Maltravers, John de Maltravers. But he has been gone from England for as many years as you are old surely. Now, what in the hell did you know of de Maltravers?”
“Saints, Thomas, do you know nothing of me? He is the man I despise most on the face of the earth now that Roger Mortimer is dead. He helped King Edward murder my father!”
Thomas Holland’s face went white as the parchment and he fell back heavily in his chair. He stared aghast at Joan. “The king’s uncle Edmund, your father,” he stammered. “I knew, of course, about your father and his execution under Mortimer. But King Edward? That is treason, lady, and I shall hear no more of that!”
“I would hardly expect you to hear of it at all, or especially to ever side with me in it. You wonder why I have held my tongue for two years about what matters to me most when you talk to me of treason the minute I try to share it with you?”
“And what does matter to you most that you have not spoken of finally, Joan? Poor sot that I am, I guess I thought it was this place and your sons if not their sire. I assure you that I have never been foolish enough to deceive myself on that!”
“Please do not scream at me, my lord. We do not need Vinette or Madeleine telling the villagers of this misunderstanding. I saw de Maltravers in Bruges just for one second and he looked at me and I knew he was vile. I wanted to meet him, to kill him—I do not know—but everything with the princess’s marriage fell apart then and we left so quickly I never saw him again.”
Thomas Holland lowered his voice, too, and came around the table to her as he talked. “This is pure foolishness, Joan. The man will not bother you here or when we do go back to England to visit my lands in Lancashire. We must do that soon if there is no French war forthcoming.”
“In England? De Maltravers is going back to England? Is that what Sidwell said?”
Thomas pulled her up out of her chair and put his arms heavily around her shoulders to hold her tightly to him. “No, not exactly. He only mentioned there was talk that for his loyal foreign service to the king in Bruges, His Grace might restore his lands to him.”
She tried to yank away, but Thomas’s grasp was like a vise. “No! Hell’s gates, my lord, loyalty in foreign service! The serpent is rewarded for helping rid this king of my father and any others who would dare to show concern for the old, murdered King Edward!”
“Stop it, Joan! It is all past, done, and no concern of yours. Your duty is to do everything you can for your family now, the boys and me, and not rile royal tempers over what is past. No wonder His Grace wanted you to be wed and live abroad.”
“Aye,” she gritted through clenched teeth and stopped struggling. “Mayhap that is why you got me at half price on the marriage mart of the court, my lord.”
He stiffened against her. “Well then, my Joan, since this seems to be truth time all around, let me tell you something. By the rood, aye, you were a bargain with your beauty and strain of royal blood to mix with a Holland’s from mere Lancashire and to please the queen I have long vowed to defend at all cost to my own person—a purely chivalrous vow, I assure you.”
“Treason enough in this family from my wildness, you mean,” she returned, her voice dripping sarcasm.
“I shall ignore that, Joan, to merely conclude that I am not at all dismayed by this dangerous little turn of events as long as you keep your comments to this little room. You see, lady, I have worried for over two years now that I was called in to get you hastily out of the royal sight because the prince had declared he loved you to them or some such insanity and so the king wrote the pope to help me out. Now, I have hope I might have been mistaken and, unless you choose to tell me about all that Prince of Wales business yourself, we shall go at least two more years not speaking on that subject while I tell myself the king wanted to be rid of you for your being your father’s daughter.”
“There is nothing to say about the prince or anything else then, Thomas.”
“And since neither the prince nor memories of him mean a whit to you, as you like to say, we are off to bed.” He loosed her only to scoop her up in his embrace and stride to the bed with her where he stood her on a small carpet.
She steeled herself to accept, to respond appropriately, warmly, despite her aching body and heart. De Maltravers—his lands back for loyalty to the crown; the prince—two sons for bestowing his magnificent body on other women; she, Joan of Kent—this
man, this bed, this life.
She allowed him to unclasp her keys and belt and pull her single, soft wool outer garment up over her head. He divested himself quickly of his own surcote, jerkin, slippers, and hose while she pulled down the coverlet and climbed in, wearing only her thin chemise. She stared up at the underside of the gathered gold brocade of their bed canopy before Thomas Holland filled her view. In the dim light of two cresset lamps, her eyes fixed on his stocky, broad chest and his shoulders lightly dusted with freckles and copper hair.
“We breed such beautiful sons together, sweet Joan,” he was saying as she forced herself to meet his thorough, one-eyed perusal of her body. “Give me another son with reddish Holland hair, or if he is towheaded, I will know while we live here in France the child has his mother’s fair looks, and that is all.”
As his big, square hand stroked the hem of her chemise upward, she recalled another time he had voiced the deep-seated fear that he would be forced to rear the son of the Prince of Wales. It was their wedding night at Eltham the last time she had heard Edward’s deep voice or drowned in the pool of those eyes. Edward—so he had asked her to call him on that first night in seaside Calais when their passion had swept them away, so long ago and yet she could remember it so clearly.
Even now, as Thomas reached for her, she recalled her Edward’s iron arms about her, the way he touched her and she responded as if they were one as she held to him and was utterly swept away . . .
His passion spent, Thomas lay watching her groggily, one arm still thrown possessively over her. “By the rood, ma belle,” he said, his voice raspy, “what did I do to deserve all that—ardor?”
She felt her throat and cheeks flush, but it was too dim for him to see. Rather than anger him or lie to him, she kept silent. She prayed he would never know that it had been another man—a man he both revered and detested—that had been in her bed and heart this night, and always.