by Karen Harper
“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.
When 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?’”
“Aye, of course, Your Grace, it is important to be fair and you have always been far more than that.”
Isabella leaned closer to Joan in a move that obviously annoyed her little bevy of ladies who could not overhear her next words. “Jeannette, I am so fond of you—so pleased you are back with us, if only for a little while. Stand here with me now, for I have a little gift for you and we shall then both face the king together, eh? Of all the things we shared before you went away, His Majesty’s occasional anger was one amusement, you cannot deny it!”
“Please, Your Grace, you cannot mean to do something to rile His Grace, the king, today. I have not even seen him yet since I have been back and—”
“Oh, fifes and fiddles! Annette, where is that gift for the Duchess of Kent, and someone help her change her surcote!”
One of the princess’s butterflies, a young and flawlessly complexioned maid Joan did not recognize, produced an azure and gold surcote studded with both the Plantagenet leopards of England and the gold fleur-de-lis of France—a perfect match to the princess’s own, except that it flaunted far fewer jewels. Yet each leopard wore a jeweled collar which linked it to the center of a lily, making a design so delicate and intricate it dazzled the eye.
“See, Jeannette, my love gift to you for all the years we have been apart,” Isabella’s voice lilted while the growing crowd around them gasped and stared.
Joan felt herself blush hot. “It is too beautiful, too generous, Your Grace. I could not possibly accept.”
“Blessed Virgin’s veil—of course you can. Plantagenet blood flows through your veins as readily as mine or that of the hero of Poitiers who will be here at any moment, and you know he will not be decked in hopsacking. Do accept it, my dearest cousin Jeannette, and then we shall all go out to the courtyard to greet them.”
A lady removed the white brocade surcote with tiny seed pearls Joan had meant to wear over the lilac-hued brocade kirtle which accented the color of her eyes and clung just tightly enough not to reveal the slight swelling from her third pregnancy. How long she had planned her garments for this day over the winter weeks at Château Ruisseau thinking of the moment she would at last see him again. Thomas would be there too, of course, hundreds of courtiers, and thousands of cheering English folk along the way, but she had wanted to wear white for her skin and lilac for her eyes when she first looked, alone, into his blue, blue gaze.
The new surcote felt heavy on her shoulders and it glittered even here in the dim lighting of the hall. For one moment she felt so warm and dizzy that she thought she might topple over, but of course these were merely early bothersome signs of her new pregnancy and she had handled them before. She breathed deeply and her head cleared.
“I thank you for your continued generosity and love to me, Your Grace,” Joan managed despite the sudden catch in her throat. “I hope your lovely gift will please them all—or,” she teased as they went out into the press of the others to the courtyard, “at least His Grace, the king, will have two of us to bluster at just as that day we rode in our own Crécy tournament years ago.”
The Princess Isabella’s peals of laughter permeated the gentle air as both Isabella and Joan with a swarm of ladies behind them faced the waiting king and queen in the courtyard. The king, mounted on a white charger, dazzled all in his glittering
white silk and full regalia of crown and massive neck chain. Jewels winked from his white-gloved fingers as he flexed his hands on his reins. Queen Philippa, also in white and blazing with jewels, sat in a chair someone had brought out for her. She looked older to Joan, plumper, paler—the only one who had evidently altered greatly over the years she had been away in Normandy. Both Isabella and Joan curtsied, but Isabella did it with her head up to observe her father’s face.
“Joan, Duchess of Kent, you are welcome back to our court on this most glorious day,” the king intoned grandly, evidently choosing to ignore the ostentatious show of fashion.
“Jeannette has been here with her family for three days, Your Grace,” Isabella chimed in, “and we have been having the grandest fun recalling old times.”
“Have you? Yet the duchess is much changed now of necessity, are you not, lady, with sons, ducal estates and a lord?” the king said, and Joan read the challenge of his tone and words almost as if he had tossed his gauntlet at her.
“Aye, my lord king, of course she is,” Queen Philippa put in before Joan could answer. “She has been seven years away and has two fine sons and a third child on the way, so my Lord Thomas Holland told me only yesterday.”
Joan’s jaw dropped. So Thomas had been with the queen and had not mentioned a bit of it to her, but then he surely had been other places, too, as she had only seen him at supper and at night the three days they had been awaiting the prince at Windsor. It seemed he was on sword point their entire time back, and his temper had been foul, despite the fact he seemed genuinely pleased to have her with child again.
“Listen, my loyal friends and subjects, listen! They come!” King Edward bellowed and everyone ceased whispering and chattering. Like thunder on a distant horizon, a rumbling swelled the air outside the massive walls of Windsor—horses’ pounding hoofs, cheers from a thousand throats. Isabella dragged Joan forward to stand behind the king and queen and their brood of children—John, Duke of Lancaster, tall and thin; Lionel, Duke of Clarence, at age twenty, over seven feet tall with the three-year-old youngest Plantagenet prince on his huge shoulders; Edward of Langley, Duke of York, and the little maids Mary and Margaret.
Joan felt herself go scarlet in the rush of emotion. Here—she stood here at Windsor in the Lower Ward awaiting her prince with his family as though she were an accepted Plantagenet at last. Now—though she carried another man’s babe beneath her heart—that heart itself was the prince’s and mayhap it had always been so. The sweet, poignant pain of their years of mingled passions bit at her and made her head spin again.
It was here, just through that little door in the wall over there, that she had seen the prince her first day at Windsor while he tilted madly at the quintain, and now he had tilted with the whole army of France and won. Down through that little door—she had heard that the crowds screamed outside that day too—her poor father had died while waiting to be rescued by his nephew, this king.
Trumpets blew from the ramparts. The deafening cheers and cries outside drowned the noise within the walls as the mounted men under a thousand silk banners clattered into the cobbled courtyard. There—there on a white destrier was Prince Edward, smiling, waving to all, and his tawny hair shone like flared gold in the sun.
“By St. George, Jeannette, is that big red-haired man beside our Edward King John? He is as fiery-haired as we are flaxen,” Isabella’s shouted words floated to her.
“I suppose it is, Your Grace, and that sullen boy there the French Prince Philip, no doubt. Saints, he will be a difficult one to amuse until that mammoth ransom is paid!”
Now it was Joan and not Isabella who kept talking, talking. She was not certain what she said, but it kept her from screaming out her joy or her love while everyone else cavorted around in frenzied, futile motion. After the prince’s men dismounted and he himself stood across the way between his two kings, the Captal de Buch appeared from somewhere in the crowd to bow to Isabella and give Joan a hearty kiss on her cheek.
“You know the Captal from Gascony?” Isabella queried as her quick eyes assessed the big, effusive man. “But he has only been about our court as the prince’s advisor since you have been away, ma chérie Jeannette. Le Captal, I always knew you were a rogue and a clever one,” she laughed and darted off toward Prince Edward.
“Sorry, Duchess, only—hell’s gates, what a wild three weeks since we landed, and I was not even thinking. Ah, is not Lord Holland here about? His Grace said he would be, I recall.”
“He went out with the few Garter Knights not already in the procession to greet you all, so I am certain he rode in with you. He must be here somewhere. Did you wish to meet him?”
She noted over de Buch’s big shoulder that the prince approached talking, laughing, kissing and hugging his family one by one and introducing them to the French king and prince whom he had in tow as if they were the best of boon companions. She felt terribly light-headed again. She knew de Buch was telling her something, but she had to concentrate on merely standing her ground unmoving. Prince Edward stopped a few feet away and his clear blue eyes all too obviously lighted at the sight of her. The Princess Isabella had draped herself on his left arm and was chattering in his ear. The French king’s gaze went over Joan from floating lilac head scarves to velvet toes.
De Buch stepped behind her and bowed; Joan bent low to curtsy unsteadily. And then, the cobblestones with the prince’s big, booted feet approaching rushed up to meet her.
“Jeannette!” she heard the prince shout.
Arms seized her, held her.
“Isabella, she is white as a sheet! What the hell is wrong?”
“St. Catharine, she was a little dizzy yesterday morning too!” Isabella’s musical tones floated to her from afar.
“Here—lean her here. I have her.”
“Sacrebleu—who is this beauty, Edward? And in Plantagenet trappings also,” a new voice said in flowing French.
Embarrassed beyond reasoning, Joan flicked her eyes open. She was sitting on the ground in Prince Edward’s arms, her back against his leg as he knelt on one knee, but her first glimpse was of the faces of both the kings of England and France pressing close.
“Give her a little air, my lord kings, si’l vous plaît,” Isabella’s high voice floated to her. “It is only that she is pregnant and nearly fainted in all this hubbub, I warrant.” The princess gently pulled her father aside and bent over Joan, chafing her wrists.
“Pregnant!” Prince Edward’s deep words rumbled close to her ear and she could feel his voice, too, where she leaned against his muscular thigh. “But how long? She looks fine.”
When the impact of it all hit Joan with stunning force, she struggled to rise. The press of people, the eager eyes royal and noble was too terrible, as if the fondest fantasy she had cherished all these months of rushing to his arms before them all had been stripped naked for everyone to see.
The French king helped her stand, his green eyes burning holes in her. “I realize the times are hurried and most unusual, mon Prince Edward, but this lady, I take it, is not another princess of your fair family?” he asked in strangely monotone French.
The prince’s strong grip still steadied her arm. “She is a distant cousin, Your Grace,” the deep, haunting familiar voice came to her ears again. “She lived at our court before she married to settle in Normandy. Not a princess, though her grandfather was also a king. May I present Joan, Duchess of Kent, your Royal Highness.”
The tall, flame-haired king lifted her trembling, white hand to his bearded lips and kissed it, something her own prince beside her did not or would not do. Saints, she thought, and straightened to stand clear of Prince Edward’s arm at last, I could as easily have this foreign King of France as this Edward, hero of Poitiers! The Prince of Wales was as far out of her grasp as some cold, distant star Morcar might have consulted once.
The whirling in her ears stopped; the rush of emotions fell off into some endless void and left her very lonely amidst that large cr
owd of noisy people.
“I beg your forgiveness, Your Grace, for that foolish display or any other I might have given,” she said quietly to the prince without quite looking at him. “As the Princess Isabella says, I am newly with child and we have traveled so far to get here, first at sea and then from the coast.”
“I, too, Duchess, have traveled far from fair France and not of my own accord,” the French king said, his eyes warm on her again. She returned his gaze in order to escape the magnetic pull of the prince so close, for if she even glanced into the fathomless depths of those blue eyes, her pretended strength would be mere dust and cobwebs in the strongest gale.
Blessedly, Queen Philippa’s approach rescued her, for she walked on the proudly proffered arm of Thomas Holland and their cold, stern faces provided the final jolt Joan needed to get a grip on the ruin of her dreams.
“See, Lord Thomas, you must look to your lady better. With the new babe coming, she keeled right over at the Prince of Wales’s feet and this fuss is holding us all up,” the queen drawled, accenting the last words.
“Aye, Your Grace, but for another Holland child, any little problems are well worth the price, is it not so, my Lady Joan?” Thomas said pointedly. He bowed to the kings and prince and took his wife’s hand in a possessive grip.
“Then to protect your unborn child,” Prince Edward’s voice cut in like the edge of a knife before Joan could summon up an answer, “I would suggest you take better care of the duchess and not let her be up and about if she is weak after travel. And most importantly, Holland, not even let her consider a jolting ride clear to London, whatever the occasion.”
“I quite agree, my lord prince, but we were indeed summoned months ago as well you know.”
Joan was astounded by the perceptible crackle of tension between the two men. The queen tried to hide a nervous smirk, King Edward glowered, and the curious King of France looked bemused at the whole, strange encounter.