He bowed the king into his house and gave him the spot closest to the fire and called for a blanket to wrap around his shoulders, and mulled wine and the inevitable pasties from the kitchen. Johanna returned from stabling the horses in time to polish off the dregs in the pitcher and the crumbs on the tray.
“Why, I know you,” the king said to her, as one coming awake after a long sleep. “You sang for me. In Bristol, wasn’t it?” He looked at Jaufre. “And you, too. And you, Alaric—Alaric de Claret, isn’t it?”
Alaric bowed.
The king stared from one face to another. “You’re not even English,” Edward of Caernarfon said at last. “Not even Wilmot. Why would you do this for me?”
“Good question,” Tregloyne said to Shasha, but he said it in a low voice that only she could hear.
“I did it because I took an oath to serve you, majesty,” Wilmot said.
Jaufre glanced at Johanna. “We did it because Wilmot said they were going to kill you, and we could not bear to have someone who was so kind to us so unkindly used, if we could help it.”
“I did it because my friend asked for my help,” Alaric said. “And because my father was your liege man, which means I am, too.”
The king smiled and shook his head. “You ran a dreadful risk.”
“God’s balls and that they did,” Tregloyne said to Shasha, angry all over again.
“There is something you should know, sire,” Wilmot said. “Something we have not had the time to discuss.”
“What is it, good Wilmot?”
“Your escape was arranged by your son, sire.”
There was dead silence. “My son?” Edward said at last.
“Your son, majesty. He had me brought to him after you were taken in Wales, and bade me watch you wherever you were taken and report back to him on your condition and the manner of your keepers. When I heard of Mortimer’s plot to murder your majesty, I rode to him and told him. He bid me arrange for de Berkeley and Maltravers to be called away to Bristol that night. Any guard is always lax absent supervision, no matter how well trained they are. You found it easy to get to the postern unobserved, I imagine.”
Edward looked a little deflated at the thought that he might not have escaped under his own power after all.
“Majesty, forgive me for speaking so frankly, but your son bade me tell you he cannot guarantee your safety. His mother and Mortimer rule all. Later, when he gains full power, it may be safe for you to return.”
Edward waved a hand and leaned against the warm stones next to the hearth, pulling the blanket more fully around his shoulders. “He won’t ever want me back here,” he said. “I am a danger to whoever rules England.”
“That you are, old man,” Tregloyne said. “I’m glad you finally recognize it.” This time he didn’t bother to lower his voice.
Edward either didn’t hear him or pretended he didn’t. “I am tired,” he said. “I don’t want to stay in England.”
Wilmot said softly, “What do you want to do, majesty?”
The king’s eyes were drooping. “I want quiet and safety. I want time, to confess, to repent, to make my peace with God. I have had enough of trying to rule an ungrateful people who so resent my friends that they rise up in rebellion against me.” He opened one eye. “And I have had more than enough of Isabella. Tell my son I thank him for his timely rescue, and that I wish him well.”
“But where do you want to go, majesty?” Wilmot said.
But the king was asleep.
“I know where he wants to go,” Alaric said.
Jaufre understood immediately. “Can you get him there?”
Alaric looked almost beatific. “No one is looking for him. He’s already dead.”
“Oh,” Wilmot said. “Alaric, of course. It would be the perfect place for him.” He hesitated. “He cannot go alone, and I must return to the king.”
“I will go with him,” Alaric said, “and I will stay with him as long as he needs me.” He paused, and said in a lower voice, “I have sins to repent me of, too.”
Jaufre looked at Wilmot, and something in the other man’s expression told Jaufre that that had been the plan all along.
The next morning they put it to Edward as they watched for a sail. “A monastery,” he said. “In Lombardy, you say?”
“Yes, sire. It is a good place, beautiful and peaceful. Wilmot says your son has provided sufficient coin so that we may travel in comfort. I will guide you there, and stay with you as long as you wish.”
The king smiled. “It seems I have my freedom, and a place to go. Now all we need is a ship.”
But the ship did not come that day. That evening, Tregloyne took Alaric aside and said, “Are you going to tell him? Are you going to tell either one of them?”
“Tell them what?” Alaric said.
“Jaufre told me that Edward recognized Robert’s family name, but Edward couldn’t remember why. You know why, don’t you?”
Alaric’s face was a perfect blank. “Do I?”
“The reason Edward knows the name of de Beauville is that he has heard the story of the lovely Ailene de Beauville,” Tregloyne said, “who caught his father’s eye and whom his father then caught with child. Unfortunately, she was married to one of his own knights, who couldn’t bear the sight of his fourth child, so unlike his other three, and so packed him off to the Knights Templar as soon as he was old enough to hold a sword. The sword, I am betting, that was given to Robert de Beauville by Longshanks himself before he left Outremer. The sword Jaufre of Cambaluc carries to this day.” He paused. “Edward of Caernarfon and Robert de Beauville were half-brothers. Jaufre is Edward’s nephew.”
“You have no proof of any of this,” Alaric said.
“I don’t need it. All I have to do is look at them. Jaufre is Edward in another thirty years, or would be if Edward’s recent time had not worn on him so. Why not tell them?”
“What good would it do?” Alaric said.
Tregloyne, goaded, said, “Why, then, bring Jaufre to the king’s attention in the first place?”
Alaric folded his arms and sighed. “I owed his father my life. It is a debt even yet unpaid. I had hoped—but Gilbert had already spent what we took from Ruad. There was none left to benefit Jaufre. So then I thought that if I brought Jaufre to Edward’s attention, that perhaps Edward would show the boy some favor, a knighthood, some land perhaps. Royal bastards never starve.”
Tregloyne snorted. “Jaufre’s not the starving type.”
Alaric’s mouth twisted up in a half smile. “No. No, he isn’t.”
“Does Wilmot know?”
“Like you, Wilmot knew the moment he set eyes on Jaufre.” He looked at Tregloyne, very stern. “We will leave it to him to tell the new king. If he does, then Jaufre will have to be told, I suppose, but that, too, I leave to Wilmot.” He looked across the room at the man dozing in Tregloyne’s chair. “As for Edward of Caernarfon, you heard him yourself. He only wants peace.”
The next day the Faucon came, and loaded a hold full of good English fleeces, one ex-Master of Glynnow, one ex-Knight Templar, and one ex-king, and set sail for Harfleur on the evening tide.
“Will we ever see Alaric again, do you think?” Johanna said.
They were standing at the top of the cliff, watching the ship sink below the horizon.
“I don’t know,” he said. He looked down at her and grinned. “We could always go visit him,” he said.
She smiled. “We could,” she said. “He’s still a member of Wu Company, after all.”
Hand in hand they walked home down the narrow cliff path.
20
London, December, 1327
Woman should gather roses ere
Time’s ceaseless foot o’ertaketh her,
For if too long she make delay,
Her chance of love may pass away.
A few ladies looked askance but Johanna proved she knew her audience well when the opening verse was greeted with a roar of male appr
oval. Well, and wasn’t it a man’s world? Certainly it was best to let them think so. Smiling, she continued.
And well it is she seek it while
Health, strength, and youth around her smile.
To pluck the fruits of love in youth
Is each wise woman’s rule forsooth,
For when age creepeth o’er us, hence
Go also the sweet joys of sense,
And ill doth she her days employ
Who lets life pass without love’s joy.
Johanna’s eyes met Jaufre’s and she sang the last verse directly to him.
And if my counsel she despise,
Not knowing how ’tis just and wise,
Too late, alas! will she repent
When age is come, and beauty spent.
There was thunderous applause from the men, tepid applause from the women, and Johanna took the moment to wink surreptitiously at Edward’s young queen, whose polite blankness eased into a brief but genuine smile. Nearby, Wilmot, dressed now in the livery of Edward III, gave Johanna a wry smile and a slight bow.
The full complement of Wu Company stood at her back, absent one. Alma, Hayat and Hari had returned for a long visit on Angelique’s last trip to Glynnow for the year. Tiphaine had acquired a timbrel and had worked up a flourish of different accompaniments to their most requested songs. She stood very proud in her new blue robes, a red ribbon tying back her black curls. Hari hummed as well as ever, and Shasha, Firas and Jaufre gave body and soul to every chorus.
For an encore, Johanna sang of the village of Ferlec, where whatever you saw first upon waking was what you worshipped for the rest of the day, be it your wife, the rising sun, or your neighbor’s pig. Always leave them laughing, she thought, and struck the final chord with a flourish as she laughed along with them.
Edward himself led the applause, and came forward to take her hands and raise her to her feet. “And what will you do to keep yourself occupied between songs, hmm?” he asked her, his brilliant blue eyes caressing the curves beneath the embroidery of her robe.
“Why, I believe I would like to raise horses, sire,” Johanna said demurely.
“Then so you shall, my dear,” Edward said, dropping a kiss on the back of the hand he still held. “So long as you pay me in song every Christmas. It is agreed?”
“It is, sire.”
“Good.” And then, because even at fifteen Edward Plantagenet was as much man as king, he turned Johanna’s hand up and placed another kiss on the inside of her wrist. He raised his head and looked at her with a smile and a query in his eyes.
She met his smile with one of her own, and withdrew her hand gently from his to place it on Jaufre’s wrist.
Edward gave up her hand with good grace, flicked Tiphaine’s nose with a finger, and clapped his unacknowledged cousin on the back. “Congratulations, Jaufre, Master of Glynnow. You have won name, hearth and hand this day.”
Edward had done his level best to make Jaufre accept a title. Jaufre had remained steadfast in his refusal, and when Wilmot reported that Jaufre and Wu Company were going to single-handedly double the tax revenue from that part of Cornwall, Edward desisted. All it cost him was an exclusive royal charter to buy and ship good English wool between Tregloyne and Harfleur.
Jaufre, whose eyes had darkened when Edward kissed Johanna’s hand, responded to the death grip on his wrist and managed to reply to Edward’s pleasantries with a reasonable amount of civility. Edward laughed out loud, interpreting the stilted phrases with no difficulty, and moved on.
Johanna sighed, and felt her body relax with the release of tension. “I was afraid you were going to hit him,” she murmured.
Jaufre looked down at her, at the changeable gray eyes, at the pure texture of her skin, at the unbound chestnut hair tumbling from brow to breast, at the lithe curves beneath the Robe of a Thousand Larks. It was five years since they had left Cambaluc, to begin the long journey that would bring them adventure and sorrow, new friends as well as new enemies, and, at long last, a home.
He said, the warmth of a smile in his voice, “So was I. But how can I blame him? I want to take you to bed, too.”
And they laughed, their voices blending together as they did in song, as their lives would down the long years at Glynnow. Wu Company laughed with them, and irresistibly so did the members of the court, even if they didn’t know why.
And if they did not live happily ever after, well, that is only to be expected. There would be children, who bring their own heartaches with them into this world, and there would be prosperity, but only after great toil, and there would be safety, although it would be paid for with precious blood.
But let it here be said that Jaufre of Glynnow and Johanna his wife lived longer, laughed louder, and loved better than many of that time, and they would not have changed their place with kings.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
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Supplemental
Timeline
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
About Dana Stabenow
About the Kate Shugak Series
Also by Dana Stabenow
An Invitation from the Publisher
Supplemental
Including the glossary, cast of characters, place names, historical notes, and the Silk and Song Bureau of Weights and Measures from all three books in Silk and Song.
Abraham of Acre – Wu Li’s agent in Gaza.
Agalia – Jaufre’s mother, Robert de Beauville’s wife. Sold to Sheik Saghir bin Nazari as the Lycian Lotus.
Alaric de Claret – Knight Templar.
Al-Idrisi – A Persian mapmaker of great renown.
Alma – An inmate of Sheik Mohammed’s harem, a scholar.
Ambroise de L’Arête – Also known as The Blade. Lord of L’Arête by marriage.
Arabic and Persian I have used names from both languages interchangeably, but mostly Arabic because they are most available.
Audouard – Second in command to Florian.
Angelique – Ship owner and captain, smuggler, sister to Alaric de Claret.
Anwar the Egyptian – Slave dealer in Kashgar.
Balasaga – An historical province of Persia, now Iran.
Bao – A personal seal. Chinese.
Basil the Frank – Wu Li’s agent in Baghdad.
Bastak – A small town in central Persia, ten days’ ride west of Kerman.
Bayan – Genghis Khan’s favorite general. Friend to Marco Polo.
Beda – Bedouin.
Bernart – Page to Ambroise de L’Arête.
Bible – All verses quoted are from the Vulgate Bible, English translation via the website vulgate.org. The King James version was three hundred years down the road.
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana – The National Library of St. Mark’s, in Venice. I have advanced its existence by several centuries so Alma wouldn’t drive everyone crazy that winter in Venice.
Blister – Foot-and-mouth disease, which produces blisters on cows and camels and anything with a split hoof. It is highly contagious and was indeed used as a bioweapon.
Bo He Dai – Fang’s doorman.
Brescia – Then a city-state in Lombardy, Italy. Now just a city.
*
The Silk and Song Bureau of Weights and Measures – No two nations back in 1322 measured anything the same way, so here for the sake of narrative clarity and my sanity time is measured in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years, and no notice is taken of that error in Julius Caesar's 45 BC calendar that wouldn’t be corrected until 1582 AD by Pope Gregory XIII.
Length is measured in fingers (about an inch), hands (about 4 inches), rods (16.5 feet) and leagues (3 miles).
Travel is measured in leagues, about three miles or the distance a man could walk in an hour.
Fabric is measured in ells from China to England. Smaller lengths are fingers (three-quarters of an inch)
and hands (three to four inches).
Google “weights in the Middle Ages” and you get over 8 million hits. Here, I use drams (one ounce), gills (four ounces), cups (eight ounces), pints (16 ounces), quarts (32 ounces) and gallons (124 ounces) in ascending order of liquid measurement.
Dry weight pounds then ranged from 300 grams to 508 grams, so the hell with it, here it’s 16 ounces or about 453 grams. Ten pounds is a tenweight, and yes, I just made that right up. A hundredweight is a hundred pounds.
*
Caffa – Now Feodosia, Crimea.
Calicut – Now Kozhikode, India.
Cambaluc – Built by Kublai Khan. Became the basis for what is now the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.
Ceylon – Today, Sri Lanka.
Chang’an – Now Xi’an, China.
Cheche – Pronounced “shesh.” A long scarf, usually indigo-dyed blue, worn by Tuaregs. It can be knotted many different ways to keep the sun out of the eyes and protect the neck and face from sunburn. The indigo leeched onto the face and hands of the wearer. Or, alternatively, depending on which story you believe, Tuaregs deliberately dyed their face and hands blue to protect themselves from the sun. I heard both in Morocco.
Chi Yuan – A powerful Mandarin at the court of the Great Khan, and Dai Fang’s uncle.
Chiang – Edyk the Portuguese’s manservant.
Cipangu – Now Japan.
Countries – France wasn’t France as we know it in 1322, and thanks to Henry II of England’s heritage and marriage they would be disputing boundaries with England for for a Hundred Years’ War. Italy certainly wasn’t Italy, being a haphazard collection of city-states like Venice that spent most of their time making bloody war on one another and who suffered greatly during the Hundred Years War at the hands of condottiere like John Hawkwood. Fortunately, my characters don’t go to Germany so I don’t have to try to explain the Holy Roman Empire or even mention Charlemagne, except here. I am relieved to report that England really was England. For convenience I refer to each by its modern name, and again I have moved up, pushed back and eliminated events to suit my plot. My book, my rules.
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