by Karen Harper
He sounded sleepy, almost drugged a few seconds later when he spoke again. “Look, Joan, if you promise to forget this de Maltravers revenge, I will take you to Liddell to see your brother for the summer. The boys are old enough to travel, and we have been gone two years. You could stay in Kent, and I could ride north to the lands in Lancashire. Things have gone well between us until this foolishness today and I know you would like to see your brother John and your old home. You must understand I would not want your carting the tots to London though. Agreed?”
Her heart leapt. Liddell, home! And a chance to make an attempt to do something about heading off de Maltravers’s return to England as honored, loyal citizen!
“Joan?”
“Agreed, Thomas. I have no desire to see London, so you need not fret for that.”
“And the de Maltravers thing?”
“I swear to you, my lord, you shall never hear aught of it from me again.”
His arm across her relaxed and he fell instantly asleep as he so often did after his love-making. But sleep would not come to Joan. She lay there, unmoving, next to him, her mind racing, plotting. Home to Liddell and a chance to stop de Maltravers, but how? How? A letter to the princess sent back with Richard Sidwell would be to no avail, for Isabella must surely be out of favor with her royal parents after that ruined betrothal. Again, again, her formless plan kept returning to the one person who could possibly be of help to her in this, but in facing him again after these two years, she was terrified that in one cold glance he would read her smothered desires.
Stir crazy from lying so long rigidly on the bed, she rose and carefully covered her sleeping husband. She picked up her dress, discarded in a blue pool by the bed, and slipped it on over her chemise. Her feet pushed into slippers, she took one of the two still low-burning cresset lamps to the garde-robe where extra clothes and linens were stored. Beyond this tiny tiring room lay their privy separated by yet another heavy tapestry.
She sat on a storage chest not even certain why she had come in here except to escape Thomas’s contented snores in the solar when she could not sleep a wink. Her brain still raced, but her body felt so spent and sluggish. She stared at the coffer filled with Thomas’s best armor, stared at the low cresset lamp, and felt the walls close in as her mind drifted.
How assiduously dear old Marta had worked to set this dusty room aright when they had first come here, she remembered. Marta! If only her crotchety Marta were here she would have someone to talk to who would understand. She knew then what she wanted to do. Marta was buried just outside the walls in a tiny grave plot on a slope near the forest, a place of her own choice, more like a Scottish glen, much preferable to lying until eternity under the cold stones of the chapel near others she had never known, she had insisted. If she were just out of the castle for a moment, near Marta, then she could come back and sleep.
At other times in daylight, she and Thomas had used the ancient siege exit which went from this room out under the walls and moat, clear into the forest. Thomas had said many French castles had such secret passages; they were as common as ghosts, he had teased her. But to venture through it at night, when he might wake and miss her was most foolhardy.
She pulled aside the tapestry which covered the small door’s outline and lifted her lamp. To be so alone down there in the dark was crazy; yet, the idea drew her onward.
She pulled the long, metal bolt. The heavy door, deftly balanced, pivoted inward at a shove. She glanced down at the pitchy oil remaining in her lamp. Surely enough left to just pray a moment at Marta’s grave and come right back. The spring night was balmy, the moon full. She stepped in and let the door close easily behind her.
The rubble of broken stone with which the downward slant of the passage was lined hurt her feet through the felt slippers, but she hurried on. The passage was dank from all the rains of late or else the moat over the ceiling at the far end was dripping through again. How many times in the nights of past years under enemy siege had secret messengers with pleas for aid and succor crept out this way? she wondered, but never just to visit a grave at the forest’s edge or to escape one’s own thoughts.
Her heart pounded as she went deeper in. The floor leveled out now and then slanted up. The passage was so narrow her skirts almost brushed each side where it was buttressed up by stout timbers under the heavy walls. A thick lacing of cobwebs etched her hair, her face, but her light caught the glint of metal latch on the door at the end of the tunnel which could only be opened from within.
When the reality of this foolish, adventurous whim hit her at the door, she almost turned to scurry back. Marta would have scolded her for days for this. Saints, she was so drained of all emotion she knew she could sleep now if she went back. If Thomas found out, he might be so furious he would never take her home to Liddell this summer!
Holding her breath, she slid the heavy, scraping lock open. The metallic, grating sound sent shrieking shivers up her spine. She leaned hard into the door and spilled hot oil on one wrist.
“Saints!” she shouted and her voice echoed in the corridor behind. The door protested with a low moan as it opened, and she breathed fresh, free air. How much fun the boys would have with this secret passage someday when they were older—and when it was broad noonday.
The passageway ended above her in a little mound screened by budded hollyhock and lilac on the forest fringe. She jammed a branch into the door so it would not close behind her and, lifting her lamp, stepped out. A slight breeze stirred the leaves, and the moon poured its pale glow down to make her lamp seem insignificant in this outer vastness. The turf was wet on her slippers and the hems of her skirts as she went quickly toward the little mound and arched stone that marked the grave. After harvest she would have one of the village stonecutters make a cross for it too. Aye, sweeter far to sleep beneath this fragrant, soft grass than any cold stones of the greatest cathedral, she mused, as she knelt at the very edge of the mound and touched the cool stone.
But once she was here, she felt nothing and was terrified again by the sweep of memories over which she had no control. Marta’s presence with her the last five years she had been at court was through his kindness—her Edward’s. She had vowed to forget him, to never see him again; yet now she planned to plead with him for yet another favor to stop de Maltravers’s run of good fortune and to help fulfill her promises to Mother on her deathbed.
The trees moaned and sighed in the burgeoning breeze. The cold castle walls loomed, waiting dark across the moat. She could feel her heart beating, struggling to keep calm and to forget.
“Goodnight, my Marta,” she whispered aloud but the breeze snatched her words away. “I am going home to Liddell. I love you, and I am so afraid I love him too.”
She stumbled to her feet and hurried away. At the entrance to the passageway, the wind extinguished her lamp, but she bravely plunged on, feeling her long way back in the dark. Mayhap it was a lesson to her, a warning not to do foolish things, she scolded herself, as she hurried along at a good clip in the black void, her dirty hands skimming either side of the tunnel. Mayhap it was like trying to find her way out of the wretched ruins she’d somehow made of things or of escaping from her own dark, secret longings.
When she emerged shaken and perspiring in the little garde-robe chamber again, she knelt to vow she would not be so headstrong in the future—unless it was the only way to do what she had to do.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For two heavenly weeks after they arrived for a visit at her maidenhood home of Liddell Manor in Kent, Joan reveled in the woods and fields as she had years ago. Barefoot, she waded in ponds and streams, showing little Thomas how to catch a fish. The family went on picnics in the forest; with her brother John she rode the entire small estate of Liddell from hedgerow fence to forest edge. Joan went berry and flower picking while Thomas and John hunted and the children took their long afternoon naps. She remembered, she enjoyed, and she planned.
She bid her Lord Thomas farewel
l on the first day of July. He rode north to his manor lands in Lancashire planning to return by mid-August. She had renewed her promise to him that she would not go to London despite the fact her brother John was going to take part in the king’s Summer Eve tournament at Westminster and she could easily have accompanied him. But Thomas Holland knew her at least well enough to realize she had no desire to see the king or queen. Of her hatred for John de Maltravers, Thomas said not a word as if that subject were at rest forever. As relaxed, as joyous as Joan had been to be home at Liddell, he could not have guessed otherwise.
Unbeknownst to her Lord Thomas, Joan’s quick mind had hatched a hundred schemes concerning John de Maltravers: she would write the prince; no, she must rather go to him in person to seek his aid. She would write to London to the princess and in that letter request to know where the prince was now. But that would be entirely too obvious, and what if Isabella told someone who misunderstood? This plan must be very clever, very discreet, and not subject to the common tattle of court rumors. The last plan she had just discarded since her brother’s retinue was preparing to journey to London for the tournament was to take him into her confidence, tell him Mother’s dying words, and ask him to share her vow to be somehow avenged on de Maltravers. But what if John later told Thomas Holland, whom he seemed to admire greatly, or what if John rushed off to challenge the vile de Maltravers to some sort of combat? John was all she had left of her family, and she must protect him by taking this on her own shoulders.
Then, after she had uncharacteristically prayed heartily to her favorite saints for help to know what to do, the pieces of her dilemma plopped into her lap, all beautifully meshed.
She sat barefooted between the two fish ponds at the south side of the manor in the late, lazy afternoon. She and Roger Wakeley, who had accompanied them from Normandy over her husband’s hearty protests, played their lutes, sang, and gazed half-mesmerized into the green, sun-splotched water. Beneath the glassy surface dotted with white water lilies glided pike, bream, and sunfish. Roger’s brown eyes studying her, he sang her a new song then, one she had never heard before, and with its plaintive melody and lyrics, the days of escape and rest here at Liddell jangled to a quick close:
“O man unkind,
Have thou in mind
My passion sharp!
Thou shalt me find
To thee full kind:
Lo, here my heart.”
The tune and words danced upon the water and floated away on the breeze, but her emotions so carefully tended for so long melted and flowed to painful reminiscence of Prince Edward.
“I have never heard that one before, Master Roger,” she managed, though her voice quivered. “A new one from that minstrel friend of yours who stopped here yesterday?”
“Aye. Do you not like it?”
“Of course, though it is very sad and I have felt so happy lately.”
“Ah.” His brown eyes went over her before he looked off into the distance. He plucked the strings with his quill again as he spoke. “Sacrebleu, Lady Joan, it need not be a sad song at all. My memories of Liddell were mostly happy, though there was sadness too. Now in this song, the lady obviously has suffered sweet passion’s pain and yet she vows kindness and ventures to give her heart to the man she loves.”
“Mayhap a great gamble,” she returned, almost wondering if Roger Wakeley’s talents did not extend to mind reading. “‘O man unkind,’ the lady said. She would do best to guard her heart with a good deal of carefully forged armor before she offers it to such a one.”
The minstrel chuckled as he began to repeat the melody, but Joan did not wish to hear the whole melancholy thing again.
“Your minstrel friend, Master Roger—however did he know to find you here? Saints, you have as many visitors at home in Normandy as my lord and I, but indeed, it is a wonder they found you here too.”
She thought a moment’s alarm registered in his clear, gentle eyes before he smiled. “Being a skilled minstrel makes one part of a secret sort of fraternity, my lady. It is so seldom many of us can be together unless we serve at court. However are we to share new music and our interests unless we try very hard when traveling about to see each other?”
“At least I hope this friend taught you a happier tune as well as this ‘passion sharp’ song,” she countered. Then she asked the question she had been carefully hoarding until it seemed the appropriate moment. “I suppose, of course, your traveling minstrel friends help to keep you up on news and such. Did that fellow come from London by any chance?”
“Aye, now that you ask, he did.”
“I suppose all the Garter knights are swarming to court for the midsummer jousting. I know my Lord Thomas wished he could stop there on his way north, but he had far too many duties to attend to. I wager most of the other knights will be there though.”
Roger Wakeley glanced at her sitting near him on the sedgy bank of the fish pond. She looked lovely, her kirtle the color of daffodils. But his instinct was surely right, for she looked tense and jittery of a sudden: now if ever, the time was ripe to discover if she would reveal she still cared for the prince, who had been secretly apprised that the Hollands were at Liddell for the summer. Whether or not His Grace would dare a visit the musician knew not, but he did know for certain that both King Edward and the Prince of Wales eagerly awaited the separate reports about the Hollands he forwarded to them every other month.
“My lady, Lord Holland should not have been so dismayed at missing the summer jousting,” he said hoping his voice sounded both innocent and jaunty. “After all, the Prince of Wales himself will not be there as he is presently at Canterbury.”
Her head jerked up so hard that the wayward blond curls across her forehead bounced. “The Prince at Canterbury? Who said?”
“My minstrel friend just come from London. Everyone at court knows it. He was staying at Leeds Castle but now he has gone into Canterbury to do yearly homage to the shrine there in the cathedral. He was educated in Canterbury by Prior Hathbrand for several years as a boy, you know, and he loves the city well. Then, too, next week is the anniversary date of the enshrining of the blessed martyr’s bones there so it is a popular pilgrimage time. Have you never been?”
“I—no, I never went far with my lady mother staying so close to home here and all. But, I would like to go now.”
“A special trip for most pious reasons,” Roger Wakeley was saying, but his words hardly dented Joan’s awareness. Canterbury was barely twenty miles from here and with all the pilgrims on the road, no one would notice one more penitent—or two traveling minstrels—come to entertain the benevolent pilgrims and worship at the holy shrine of the martyred Saint Thomas à Becket. And neither her Lord Thomas nor brother John would be here to say her nay if she left tomorrow.
“Master Roger, I need your help.”
“To learn the new song?” he asked, a tiny quirk of a smile teasing his thin lips.
“No. I wish to go to Canterbury. I will go to Canterbury to visit the shrine. And Roger, you must vow your silence on something, something very important to me and to the honor of my whole family.”
Two brown eyebrows arched up over Roger Wakeley’s intent eyes as she plunged on. “You see, to ask a boon, a favor I have secretly vowed to carry out, I must seek out the prince, Master Roger.”
He expelled a little rush of sigh between his pursed lips. “A boon, my lady? And may I know the nature of this secret vow?”
“I cannot tell you now. Will you go with me? I cannot risk taking Madeleine or Vinette for I do not want my Lord Thomas to know and the children need the maids here. My quest is secret from my lord only because it concerns my family’s honor and not his. Will you not help me?”
“Of course. The holy city is but a morning’s ride distant from this part of the shire, and you could bed at the priory of Christ Church where rich pilgrims stay. With so many on the roads we would be safe enough in daylight.”
“I intend not to be gawked at or question
ed. I plan to hire penitents’ garb when we are quit of here so I will not be recognized. I know that sounds unusual, but I hope you will trust me and agree—and understand.”
She rose with her lute and strode back toward the large stone manor house without another word or glance, as if she knew instinctively he would obey completely.
He grinned and shook his head hard enough in amazement to bounce his flat-combed, brown hair. Sacrebleu, what a strong-headed woman, but then she had been so the two maidenhood years he had known her. By the rood, he would not miss this little escapade for a year’s wages! It was only unfortunate he had not known of this yesterday to be able to send word to the prince when his messenger left Liddell for Canterbury, but the prince surely knew well enough by now no one could predict this woman!
He tapped his foot faster and the melancholy melody of “O man unkind” he had just learned yesterday dashed faster. She had hoped he understood her; now that was worth a laugh. Whatever plan she had in that wily, little head of hers, Roger Wakeley understood only one thing. She may not have shown it the last two and a half years off with her dour Lord Thomas in Normandy, but she still loved the prince whether she knew it or not. A secret trip to fair Canterbury with a beautiful, wild lady who would worship at the shrine of the Prince of Wales’s power and charisma; what poor lute player could ask for more?
Roger Wakeley’s laugh echoed loudly over the pond again as he strummed the sad notes at an even faster clip.
The pace the two hooded minstrels set for Canterbury was of necessity forced to a crawl the closer they got. From each road or land they passed on The Pilgrim’s Way connecting Rochester, the key city of the shire, to Canterbury, sundry folk swelled the traffic. Some ambled on horseback like Roger and Joan, who was well enough disguised as a hooded man, and the rich jolted along in their elaborately painted canvas and leather chars. From Tenterden, Cranbrook, and Woodchurch, from Old Wives Lees and Knockholt Green, the lines of pilgrims gorged the narrow way.