by Karen Harper
He retreated swiftly without another word but left the door wide open. She brushed away her tears instantly and tried to catch her breath from her tirade. She rose to stare at her blurred image in the mirror and dusted rice powder on her cheeks and nose to mute their shine. She seized a green ribbon to tie her masses of hair back, slipped on her comfortable old felt shoes, and walked out.
She went down by the servants’ back staircase toward the end of the courtyard near the gatehouse. They would probably all laugh at her but she would make amends for yesterday’s rampage by standing there to encourage them while they repaired the drawbridge and lowered it. Word would be all over the shire soon that the Duchess of Kent had gone daft.
She heard Vinette Brinay’s plaintive voice down the lower hall where she had a small room in the servants’ quarters. Joan was glad she had brought the poor wretch with them from Normandy despite the fact she took some watching and kept people awake by chattering to herself at the oddest times. Aye, having the girl here was a sad reminder of earlier, unhappy times, but then she had never really felt more desperately unhappy than she did now, so what did it matter?
She stopped at Vinette’s door, pleased to see the chamber’s window was open wide and Lynette the cook had taken a few minutes to visit. Lynette peeled peaches and Vinette merely stared at nothing, talking to herself in her singsong voice.
“Oh, milady duchess, you are up,” Lynette cried and tried to gather her bowls to stand.
“No, sit, just sit. I only thought to look in on Vinette before I go out to help the men lower the drawbridge.”
“Oh, aye, an’ that is good. Drovers and carters be through soon enough mayhap an’ they would not believe their eyes if it be closed after all these years.”
“Well, aye, but we shall fix it right away. I really just wanted it tested in case we ever need it. And how are you, Vinette?”
The gaunt, eternal haggard look of grief never left the maid’s face but her eyes lighted somewhat at Joan’s voice or her own name. “I am fine, fine for such a sad day,” the girl went on as Lynette’s eyes popped to hear less than gibberish from her. “Is he here yet then? Has he come?”
Joan’s heart leapt at the strange questions, but she beat down both her annoyance and surprise. “No, my dear. Not yet, but never give up hope.”
“Oh, I do not, no, never. I used to, but now I know he will come back for me.”
Joan’s eyes filled with tears as she nodded to the startled Lynette and backed from the room. She leaned against the wall in the corridor and summoned back by sheer will her newly won self-control. She forced herself out into the warm July sunlight of the cobbled courtyard. The brightness nearly stunned her and even as she repeated Vinette’s foolish words to herself—I know—he will—come back—for me—she heard her men’s excited voices from the crenelated battlement above the drawbridge of the gatehouse.
She lifted her skirts and hurried up the steps. Four of her men were leaning through the stone elbow rests for archers which cut into the wall at regular intervals, and Roger Wakeley was with them already.
“Roger, what is it?” she demanded. “Did they get it to go back down?”
When he spun to face her, a huge grin transformed his features. “I just sent a squire to fetch you, Duchess Joan. No, the bridge is not fixed, but see for yourself—there is someone demanding entry and I only hope you are prepared to deal with it.”
She pushed past the hovering man into the narrow embrasure. Below, on the part of the solid bridge left before the gap where the wooden drawbridge had lifted away, all alone on a tall black destrier, sat Edward, Prince of Wales. She gasped and only Roger’s hand on her waist kept her from toppling dizzily backward.
“St. George, Duchess Joan of Kent, it is about time you dared to show your pretty face!” Prince Edward bellowed up at her.
And saints! Saints, one hand rested on his sword hilt—but he was smiling!
Her whirling mind and pounding heart almost kept her from grasping his next words: “If you, Jeannette, are not the most difficult, impossible, willful woman in the kingdom, I will give up Aquitaine! Have your men get this damned bridge down before I return with my men I left down the way at an inn, storm this little place, and take its mistress hostage!” He grinned up at her again in a blinding flash of white teeth under the tawny mustache.
“The mistress of this little place may be difficult and willful or what you say, Your Grace, but she is prepared to hold out until she hears your terms!” Her own brazen words and tone of voice shocked her; several of her men gasped, and Roger Wakeley had the nerve to snicker behind her.
Despite her bravado, her men ran back into the upper room of the gatehouse off this small rampart and she could hear them hammering and cursing at the old rusted drawbridge chains within. Below, at the edge of the bridge, Prince Edward dismounted and gazed up at her, despite the July sun bright in his face.
“Terms, my sweetheart? All right, though I had planned for a more private place. I will have naught from you but unconditional surrender and yet I offer you the same. St. George, my love, the Archbishop of Rochester should be here soon to hear us plight our troth and it will be spread throughout the kingdom that the Prince of Wales’s princess-to-be makes a dolt of him by locking him out of her home! Now either get that damned bridge up or toss me a rope!”
Roger Wakeley cheered while Joan just stared. Her Edward looked so frustrated, so handsome, so in earnest as he stood below, shading his blue, blue eyes with one big hand to see her better. She tried to answer, to tell him she loved him, but tears coursed down her face and she could only nod wildly. In the tumble of thoughts and joyous emotions, she heard the grating creak of the old, iron chains lowering the bridge.
She wiped her wet cheeks on her sleeves, leaned out once more to be sure he was really there, then ran down the narrow steps to the courtyard. She stood waiting, trembling, while the grinding, creaking chains lowered the bridge and inched up the iron portcullis. Her legs shook beneath her as she stood rooted to the small piece of cobbled courtyard while the horse and man appeared bit by bit through the shaded archway. The drawbridge thudded into place and in that instant she darted toward him.
Either she jumped or he picked her up to swing her; she was never really certain. His kiss was demanding and possessive; his hands strong and sure as always.
“I ought to break your beautiful little neck for this stupid trick,” he cursed low among the love words, but when she nodded tearfully, he added, “but instead I shall just tie you to my life and to my bed with every legal and religious chain I can find.”
She spoke so incoherently through her smiles and tears that he finally just scooped her up in his arms and strode in out of the hot sunlight with her. Her arms held tightly to his neck and she did not budge even when she heard him order someone to ride for his men at an inn down the road or when Roger Wakeley called out to him the directions upstairs to the solar. She swayed in his embrace up the curve of stairs, pressing her cheek to his tunic, her senses overwhelmed by his nearness.
In the cool dimness of the room he strode to the bed with her, but evidently decided suddenly against putting her down on it. Instead, he stood her by the open window, leaning her back against the high sill and holding her steady with both strong hands on her waist.
“Are you all right, my love? It is essential you understand what I am saying—what I am asking of you.”
He was so big, yet suddenly he looked more like a frightened little boy. She bit her lower lip to keep from bursting into tears of joyful hysteria and nodded.
“I would have you for my wife, to be Princess of Wales. All is arranged with the king and queen. All is agreed. My esquire has returned from Avignon with dispensations and a marriage license from the pope. I have hired chantry priests to pray for us, and as you have seen, Kennington awaits its lord and lady after their wedding this October. Say aye, my sweetheart. Say something. St. George, my Jeannette, we have been through hell and back these
many years we have known each other, but I have never doubted this moment. Tell me ‘aye’ or, so help me, I will force your compliance!”
Through a blinding veil of tears, she smiled and lifted three fingertips to his mustached lips. “I surrender, my dear love Edward. You do have my compliance. I love you so. Forgive me for fleeing Windsor, but I was so afraid and confused, so terrified of being parted again from you that I was crazy enough to cause that parting myself.”
He curled her fingers around his and pressed them to his warm lips as she spoke. “If marriage is what you want, then nothing will stop me from facing it with you, only I do not want to be a scandal, Edward, a problem, or disappointment to you ever. The queen—”
“She told me what she said to you and that you claimed a right to rule your own life now, my love. I wish you had told me she had come to you. I was trying very hard to protect you from all that, but it is all behind us now. They do want me to marry, Jeannette. They know your beauty, your strength, and your fine blood—Plantagenet and pure English, and they do want an heir from their Prince of Wales.”
She smiled and, to her own dismay as well as his obvious delight, blushed hot at the thought of unhurried nights in bed, nights no longer forbidden but sanctioned, and even hoped for.
“My exquisite little maid Jeannette,” he murmured and pulled her gently full length against him. “My fiery little maid who blushes as fair at thirty-one as she did at sixteen. I always meant to have you, my sweetheart, even from the first look that day in the muddy quintain yard. You drove me out of my senses thereafter, and I could not fathom anything but having you to wife.”
She snuggled closer. “I know, but I fought so hard at first because of what had happened between our fathers and my fear you could control me at your whim.”
“St. George, no worry for that,” he said, his velvety low voice suddenly gone to that familiar, teasing tone she had grown to love. “Just try to get rid of me and I will follow you anywhere, storm any well-fortified castle single-handed, yank down an armored drawbridge with one blast from my royal nostrils—”
She giggled then despite the solemnity of the hour. Her laughter warmed him so, he laughed too until they clung together weakly, silent again.
They lifted their heads at noise in the courtyard, the clomping of many hoofs on cobbles. “Probably my men,” he said and the spell was broken.
“Or my children with their nursemaid and the Wrothesbys.”
“Or the Archbishop of Rochester with his entourage. I guess it will be like this for us from now on, my Jeannette, but I swear to you, we will have private moments too, even beyond those hours in our own curtained beds, wherever we may be.”
She tilted her head to smile up at him. “Aye, my Edward. Big beds, I hope, for you are much too tall to abide a small one.”
He smiled but she could tell his quick mind was dashing ahead. Gently he took her wrist and pulled her over to the table in the center of the room.
“Look, love, before we go out, we shall say the words—alone, before we say them for the archbishop and all the staring faces. In my fury to leave after I saw those notes of yours, I left the ring I had chosen and the other jewels at Windsor, so this big signet ring of mine will have to do for now.”
“Wait, my lord. I have a ring that will do—one you gave me years ago and I have cherished always.”
He watched her move away to open a little carved oak coffer. She knelt and shoved aside clothes and dried herbs, then her precious treasures she had hoarded over the years—his letters, Morcar’s star charts which had foretold their mutual destinies, and then the little green beryl ring entwined with gold filigree of twisted ivy leaves.
“The beryl ring,” he said in a hushed voice as she placed it in his big palm. “A beryl ring which gives victory in battle and protection. And it has done that for both of us. Aye, my love Jeannette, this ring will do for now.”
It looked so delicate in his fingers as he slipped it on her hand. “I, Edward, plight thee, Joan, my troth, as God is my witness,” he said low.
She stared down through dazzling tears at her hands in his. “I, Joan, plight thee, Edward, my troth, as God is my witness.”
He bent eagerly to claim his betrothal kiss, a sweet caress of tenderness which then deepened swiftly to stun her with its sensual power. She swayed against him even as a man’s voice coughed pointedly behind them. The kiss was ended; they both turned, still in their embrace, to face a beaming Roger Wakeley.
“Everyone is arriving, Your Grace,” Roger managed. “His Eminence, the archbishop too. The kitchens are going mad to prepare a meal. And I believe the duchess has not eaten for going on two days now, so—”
“No food?” the prince glowered at her, but then he winked. “St. George, my love, I have not eaten for too long either, but we shall see them all below and then make up for lost time—all the lost time over all the years, I swear it.”
As they gazed raptly into each other’s eyes, the watchful man, the room, duties all faded to nothingness. Then, someone yelled in the courtyard below; someone bellowed a distant laugh. The prince’s head jerked up and he shot a grin at Roger Wakeley.
“Hell’s gates, musician, do not just stand gawking. I do not intend to take you with us to Windsor, Kennington, or clear to Aquitaine to just gawk. Give us a tune—a good one of love conquering all—a good romance of love’s sweet passion victorious at last.”
Roger and the prince laughed loudly at some enormous unspoken jest, and tears of sheer joy clung to Joan’s lashes as they went down together to greet their guests.
AFTERWORD
Joan, Duchess of Kent, stood stock-still on the morn of her wedding, October tenth, 1361, while her maids-in-waiting and the hovering Princess Isabella fussed over the final touches of her hair and crown. Outside, the courtyards of Windsor Castle echoed with the continued pealing of chapel and town bells which would be silenced today only during the actual marriage ceremony. In the St. George’s Chapel, arrayed more magnificently than it ever had been for an Order of the Garter Ceremony, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Islip, four bishops, and the abbot of Westminster awaited; in the Upper Ward of the castle the great and noble of the realm awaited; on the roads of England between Windsor and Kennington Palace in London, their honeymoon destination, thousands awaited; and most thrilling of all, downstairs, Edward, her beloved Prince of Wales, awaited.
“The perfect touch—all these jewels and this gold-threaded embroidery,” the Princess Isabella was saying again. “Gorgeously exquisite, lovelier by far than that dress of mine I had at Bruges, do you remember, Jeannette? Oh, and this beautiful foliated princess crown Their Graces gave you! By the Virgin’s Veil, I shall have some way to go to outdo this when I wed with my Ingelram!”
Joan smiled, nodded, and forced back tears of joy. She felt very calm and peaceful deep within, and yet all of the festivities of the last few days, the arrival of a papal blessing, the replighting of the troth four days ago, the excitement of her children—she felt utterly swept away by everyone else’s joy as well as her own. But she wanted to savor, to cherish every moment of this precious day.
Two maids tilted a big mirror for her so she could glimpse herself before they went down to join the prince. Aye, it was magic. How proud dear old Morcar would have been to see his predictions come true and how her precious, long-departed Marta would have scolded that she had told her so, and why did her bonny lassie never listen?
Saints, she was bonny on this day of days, she marveled. Two huge wheat-colored plaits of hair encircled the rest of her tresses as they tumbled down her back, and a gold princess crown set with rubies and emeralds graced her head. The ivory-hued kirtle of rich India silk draped to a four-foot train edged in gold embroidery to match the ribbing of her tight-fitting bodice and sleeves. Over her kirtle, a gold satin surcote lined in royal ermine fell away to reveal a graceful girdle of golden links set with rubies to match her crown.
Every time she breathed in she smell
ed sweet essence of roses from her body and hair, and tiny embroidered rosebuds even decorated her pointed ivory satin slippers. Her only jewels other than the crown were her big betrothal ring, an emerald circled with opals, and the delicate beryl ring she wore today on the small finger of her right hand.
It had taken fourteen seamstresses four weeks to embroider and create all of this, but Joan and Isabella had been careful to guard its view from the court. Soon enough though, this bridal array would be as public as her busy life these last few months of their betrothal, and soon all this exquisite grandeur would be public domain as their wedding procession rode from Windsor to Kennington through a wildly bedecked London.
“Are we ready to go down, Jeannette?” Isabella’s musical voice lilted.
“Aye, of course, only I told the guards my lutenist, Roger Wakeley, was to be admitted up here before we joined the others. Has he not arrived? I just want to know what my Edward thought of the song I wrote for him.”
“You can ask him soon enough yourself, Jeannette,” Isabella scolded and shooed the clustered maids away with a quick flick of royal wrist. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, here he is then. Aye, summon that man in! He is no spy, I warrant.”
Joan caught Roger Wakeley’s eyes at the princess’s last, unintentioned words, and they laughed together in the awkward silence.