He did not lay heavy penance on her as she expected, but said only that she must be obedient and make a pilgrimage of thanksgiving regardless of the outcome.
She felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted and although the strain of waiting was great, in moments of torturing doubt she remembered his words.
It was good to feel alive again, and as the days passed and Edward's easy manner helped to health the awkwardness between her and William she began to enjoy her freedom. A grave-face Carmelite friar came to see her on behalf of the Cardinal of St Anastasia's and questioned her closely. He would give no opinion, nor commit himself in any way, but a clerk wrote down everything she said. Edward had tactfully taken William out hunting while the friar was with her, but on the following morning sent Audley to the ladies' bower to request her to come to his private suite.
When they were alone he said, 'Jeanette, I hope that solemn friar will speak well for you.'
Wondering, she asked, 'I did not know how you felt, whether you were for William as you asked us here. And yet you chose Tom to be one of your knights of the Garter.'
His vivid eyes were fixed on her face. 'I'd not hurt William, I've known him too long not to appreciate his qualities, but Tom has also been my friend and we have fought together. This business must be disentangled and in truth it is you I care about. If you want Holland then I want the judgment to be for him.'
'Oh Edward –' she came to him – 'dearest Edward, what would I do without you?'
He bent and kissed her. 'I mean to act the peacemaker. I've asked my father to let us all spend Christmas together. I thought that would please you.'
'Yes indeed,' she said, but there was a little hesitation. 'Only it will not be easy to face the court. You know how a piece of gossip is bandied about, how people look and then look away and talk behind their hands, and this, Jesu help me, is a rare piece of scandal.'
'And Isabel is among the worst offenders,' he added. 'I shall have a word with my little sister, I promise you, but my lady mother is looking forward to seeing you and she will still the busy tongues. She told me to give you her dearest love.'
'No one was ever so kind. Perhaps I shall not mind it all so much with her to stand by me.'
'And if I,' Edward said, 'make it plain that I find no fault in you, no scandal, others had better not, by God.'
A party of jugglers came to entertain them at Berkhamstead but even while the company laughed at their antics, a certain fear that had come with them hung over their performance, for they had, brought ominous news. A sailor landing from a ship on the Dorset coast had brought the plague to England; the ghastly poisonous buboes already on his body so that he died within two days in terrible agony.
Fear spread as did the plague. It broke out in Bristol and snaked its way eastwards, and on a hot morning in early September one of the Prince's huntsmen suddenly tumbled from his horse and vomited violently. Edward had him carried to a peasant's hut but by evening there were dark spots on his arms and chest and the next day he was dead. The peasant and his wife fled and some charitable monks hastily buried the stinking corpse.
The great bustling bailey of the castle fell oddly silent, the men sitting about in groups, the women working without their usual chatter. In her chamber Joan looked often at her arms and her white breasts in terror lest she should see the awful signs, lest her life might end suddenly and she never see Tom again, nor ride in the sunshine, nor dance by candlelight.
The gates were kept shut now but in the village two men sickened and died. Joan's squire, Robin Savage, who had gone to take food to the widow of one who had seven children, collapsed there himself. He was carried to a small house and a frightened woman brought the news to the castle. The sentry would not admit her for fear she carried the disease, but Joan sent a skilled monk to attend Robin. On the third day as he still lived she resolutely told Emma to bring her cloak and accompany her into the village.
Emma gave a little shriek. 'For pity's sake, lady, don't go near. I've told ye – the plague is terrible – and I couldna bear to see ye –'
'I must go and at least see he is properly cared for,' Joan said. 'It was I who sent him into the village. If I hadn't maybe he'd not have the disease now. But if you are afraid you need not come.'
Emma wrung her hands but it seemed that nothing would dissuade her mistress and she followed her out through the small door in the great gates. Both of them carried a nosegay of herbs and Joan went only as far as the dour of the small wattle and daub cottage with its single room and hard earth floor. There was a sickly sweet stench in the air such as she had never smelt before and she sniffed at her nosegay as she looked inside. Robin lay on a narrow bed covered by a blanket and he looked ghastly, the spots dark on livid flesh, his eyes seeming enlarged in his disfigured face.
'Robin,' she said, 'oh my poor Robin! God ease you of your pain.'
He gave a hoarse cry. 'My lady! For God's sake, what are you doing? Go! Go! Don't come near!' He tried to drag himself up, pushing aside the brown robed figure who was bending over him.' Woman, are you mazed to bring our lady here?'
'I told her not,' Emma retorted and tried to pull Joan back. 'She would come, but oh, lady, let us go now.'
'Aye, aye . . .' Robin sank back, a trickle of dark blood coming from his discoloured lips.
Joan spoke to the monk who had straightened and was glancing at her in some admiration. 'He's dying, isn't he? Can you do nothing?' But to her surprise Brother Richard, holding a stinking cloth in one hand and Robin's raised arm with the other, answered her with apparent cheerfulness. 'Lady, I think he will live. The boil in his groin has burst and another here in his arm pit and the poison is out. Will you order branches of juniper to be brought in and I'll burn them to cleanse the air. And pray to Our Lady.'
'I will,' she said. 'Robin shall have all our prayers.' Nausea filled her and as Brother Richard turned back to deal with the seeping pus she hurried from the house.
'My dear cousin,' Edward said, 'you should not have imperilled your health for a mere squire. I beg you not to go there again.'
'As you wish,' Joan agreed readily enough. 'It was wrong of me to risk bringing the infection into the castle, but Robin is very dear to me.'
'Your life is worth more than his,' Edward answered.
Joan sent each day to hear how Robin fared and by some miracle he recovered and no one inside the great walls took the disease.
Robin's gratitude for her concern, her bravery in coming to see him made him more her slave than ever. But across the country men continued to die, the fearful disease striking high and low alike, old Archbishop Stratford being one of the first victims. William's mother died suddenly though not of the plague but some low fever, and William and Joan rode to Bisham, some twenty-five miles from Berkhamstead, to see her laid to rest in the little church by the river where for so long she had been a benefactress.
There were a great many mourners and this time John de Montague's grief was more genuine than it had been for his father. After the burial mass he said to William, 'Perhaps you'll honour her more in her death than you did when she lived. At least she left me more in her will than you – the King gives you enough, by God. And I want to marry.’
‘We'll talk of it later,' William said. 'I'll deal fairly with you, brother. As for our mother, I always honoured her.'
John's eyes flickered to his sister-in-law in her mourning robes. 'Did you indeed?' he queried. 'Yet I think she would not have wished the Lady Joan here.'
'By Our Lord Christ!' William spoke in a low voice. 'If we were not at our mother's graveside I would strike you for that. She always cared for –' he paused to emphasize the words – 'my wife. It was just that she did not understand some things, things that are my affair, not yours.'
The brothers parted coldly and Joan said, 'I have brought naught but shame on you, William. You did not deserve that.'
'Nor you,' William answered and led her away, his hand holding hers firmly, to the little manor wh
ere food was laid out for the mourners.
CHAPTER TEN
At Christmas the court assembled at Otford, near Sevenoaks, and here the King gave his godson livery of his lands. William thanked him in his quiet way and Joan, rising from her obeisance, found herself trembling, so much had she dreaded this meeting. But the King had been prevailed upon by the Queen not to be too severe. 'Well, little cousin,' he said. 'You are a Plantagenet, and we are ruled by our passions so I suppose I should not condemn you for that. I see your anxieties have not robbed you of your beauty.'
Oh God, she thought, surely he cannot still want me, not now! She remembered Prior de la Mare's words and lowered her eyes. 'Your grace is kind as always.'
He rubbed his chin. 'It is an odd business. But you are welcome at the Christmas feast with us and let us pray the Holy Father is not too long about it.'
His mother the Dowager Queen was more outspoken. She had come on one of her rare visits from Castle Rising and she looked Joan up and down. 'Yes,' she said reflectively, 'my son is right about your beauty. You are bound to have men fighting over you. The tale of your doings is as good as the romances from my own country that are all I have the energy to occupy myself with these days.' She clasped fat fingers over her large stomach, and when Queen Philippa tried to change the subject went on, 'But beauty was my undoing, and you would be wise to walk more carefully in the future. There are enough predatory men at court to turn any girl's head.'
The Princess Isabel put her little sister Mary down on the floor where the baby toddled, taking her first shaky steps, and said idly, 'I wonder you did not stay quiet until the Pope gives his ruling. I swear I would be embarrassed to have two husbands.'
'You are jealous,' her grandmother retorted, 'because your sister Joanna is on her way to wed the King of Castile and you do not yet have one husband. Why did you have to quarrel with that young Gascon you fancied – what was his name?'
'Bernard, the Lord of Albret's son.' The one person Isabel was really in awe of was her grandmother, and she answered meekly; ‘we did not suit.'
'Ah, I recall him now. If you did not suit, which seems to me quite without importance anyway, it was a pity you went so far as to have that expensive wedding gown made.'
'It is safely packed away,' Philippa said complacently. 'When Isabel is wed it will be there ready for her.'
'Well, next time I trust my son will be firmer with her,' the old Queen retorted. 'I hear that poor young man is now in a monastery.'
Isabel shrugged expressively and Joan, finding it hard to restrain a giggle, was thankful the conversation had turned from her own affairs. Some of the older ladies were scandalized to see her dancing with both William and Tom, and the new Arch bishop of Canterbury, Simon Islip, told the King that it was not seemly, but was requested to hold his tongue.
‘Beauty is not to be wasted,' the King said, yet though he paid her attention as before he made no effort to see her alone. She wondered what he truly thought, but she had no hint other than his marked affection for William and the gift of a manor made to him on Christmas day.
The Prince of Wales gave her a gift and she unwound the linen wrapping to find a fine goblet. She turned it in delight, letting the light catch the delicate silver chasing.
'I shall treasure it always, dear Edward.'
'See that you do,' he said, laughing. 'It cost me a great deal of money.'
'It is time you had a wife to lavish your gifts on,' she told him. 'I think Queen Isabella looks for grandchildren and is angry with Isabel for losing two suitors.'
Both Edward and Joan were well aware that every marriageable lady at court cast longing eyes at the handsome heir to the throne. Since the campaign in France all Europe had talked of his daring, his skill in warfare, his courage, and there had been several tentative offers from foreign rulers.
'I'm glad my father did not pursue the possibility of the King of Portugal's daughter,' he said. 'I was told she was built very low and dark and had bad teeth. Ugh! Not even for England's sake would I want such a wife.'
Joan laughed. He looked splendid tonight in black velvet, his legs encased in parti-coloured hose, one black, one white. With his tawny-gold hair he was right in that he looked his best in black. 'You need spend no more time with a bride other than to beget heirs,' she pointed out, 'but it is better if you can love too – as your father loves your mother.'
'Aye,' he said slowly, 'but I think I am not like him.' And seeing the amusement in her eyes he made a grimace. 'You think I care nothing for women, that I'm cold? I know what it means to lie with a pretty woman.'
'Do you?' She laughed again. 'I did not know.'
'I've a wench in New Fish Street,' he said seriously, 'near my house there. She has hair the colour of honey and eyes as green as emeralds. She's only a merchant's daughter but she is careful of her person. I'd not bed a girl who was not.'
'No, I don't think you would. Do you love her?'
'Love her?' He considered the word. 'I desire her, and I like it that she cares for me, so if that is love I suppose I do.'
'It is not.'
'Then I don't love her, for there's no more. But I think she's with child and I'd like a son.'
'I'll pray God the plague does not take her,' Joan said, and was aware of an odd feeling of relief that he had not lost his head over a girl in Fish Street, though why she should mind she was not sure. 'Is the sickness still as bad in London?'
'Aye, there are more houses painted with red crosses than not. Everyone who can has fled, but thousands have died and the Prior of Clerkenwell says God is punishing us because we grew too rich and too proud after Crecy.'
'I'll not believe that.'
'Nor I,' he agreed. 'God Himself was with us on that day. But it is a terrible scourge and maybe He is angry with us.'
'Then He is angry with the whole world,' she said. 'Aren't men dying in France as well?'
A few days later a stricken messenger came with the news that the Princess Joanna had fallen victim to the disease on her way to her bridals and the whole court was plunged into grief. The King, who had loved Joanna the best of his daughters, wept unrestrainedly, while her brother Edward spent the night on his knees in the chapel praying for her soul. Joan remembered the nursery days at Woodstock and paid for Masses to be said for the dead Princess.
All through the spring and summer men and women continued to fall victim to the plague, and if a man collapsed ill in the street his neighbours ran from him, no one daring to tend him. Folk died alone, lying in their own stench and only a few heroic souls tried to care for the sick. A few recovered, as Robin had done, but the graveyards burst with the numbers needing burial and Sir Walter Manny bought a piece of land at Spittle Croft and gave it for that charitable use.
In September Lady Margaret was taken ill at Chilham and a messenger rode for her son and daughter, suspecting she had the disease. Joan was at Eltham with the court and she hurried into Kent without waiting for her brother who was at St Albans. At Chilham a scared and very ancient doorkeeper admitted her and Robin Savage and Emma who had accompanied her, mumbling through broken teeth that the lady was indeed sick with plague and most of the servants gone except his wife who had had it in her youth.
Joan went into the hall where the fire was dead, the trestles uncleared, and she stiffened angrily. Had they not all to carry on with the business of living, she thought, and told Emma to go to the kitchen and see if she could find food and drink. Stifling her own fear she went up the stair to the big bedchamber. An old woman sat alone by the bed, gnarled and dirty hands clasped on her stained skirt. She was nodding half asleep, but as Joan thrust open the door she struggled to her feet and cried out, 'Don't come near, my lady. 'Tis the plague.'
'I know,' Joan said and looked down at her mother in horror. Lady Margaret lay naked in the great bed, a sheet covering her only as far as the waist, the spots there, a great swelling on one sagging breast, her face almost black, a dribble of blood at her mouth. The bed was foul wi
th vomit and the room with the awful stench Joan remembered from Robin's illness.
'How long has she been like this?' she demanded. 'Why have you not looked after her properly?'
'I can't do aught,' the woman whined. 'I be half crippled in my bones and the maids, God curse 'em, be fled.' A priest had come, she went on, and gabbled absolution from the door but no one else would dare.
Joan made as if to go to the bed but Robin caught her arm. 'Don't go any closer, for Jesu's sake, my lady! Stay by the door and I'll help her. I'm safe from it now.'
Without hesitation he stripped away the filthy sheet, finding a clean one in the chest the old woman indicated. She struggled to her feet and lumbered out at his demand for water and a towel, and when she brought them he sponged the livid face and sweating hands.
'Dear Robin,' Joan said and her eyes filled. 'You are as gentle as any woman.'
He paused to look up at her. 'How else can I show my gratitude that I lived through this? And I know what will ease her.'
Joan sent the woman to the kitchen to ask Emma to make some broth and when it came Robin fed Lady Margaret himself. She could take little but it seemed to revive her, for she opened her eyes and after a moment through a haze of fever and pain recognized her daughter in the doorway.
'You!' she muttered and gave a sigh. 'How did I come to bear . . . a child to be a . . . whore?'
Robin cried out, 'Lady, you are bewitched to say such a thing. I'll not let you speak so, sick though you be.'
If the situation had not been so tragic Joan could have smiled at his defence, a mere squire taking her formidable mother to task. As it was she fell on her knees where she was, her hands clasped. 'Mother, I ask your forgiveness now for all the hurt I've given you. I never wanted it so.'
'Whore,' Lady Margaret said again and then seemed to be rambling. 'Joan . . . such a pretty child . . . Edmund said, so long ago . . . a pretty babe. But he is dead . . . they put his head on . . . London bridge . . . for the birds to peck at . . . Oh Jesu!' Her voice rose suddenly and then faded into inarticulate muttering as Robin tried to cool her forehead.
Lady of the Garter (The Plantagenets Book 4) Page 12