by Anne O'Brien
‘Tell me what Ned has not yet told me,’ I demanded. I was sufficiently concerned to be brusque to the point of ill-manners.
John’s expression was more amenable than Ned’s but still saturnine. ‘What do you wish to know?’
‘Why Ned is dispirited. And more.’
John shrugged and proceeded to enlighten me. ‘The English position was untenable in the end. Ned did not trust any of his allies, nor do I blame him. A massive armed presence was needed when the deeds of obligation – the amount of money owed to us – were exchanged with the wily Pedro at a ceremony in Burgos. We felt a need to have five hundred men at arms, as well as a company of troops to occupy one of the gates of the city and one of the main squares, to guard us from our so-called friends.’ His disgust was self-evident as he inhaled. ‘The calculation of what was owed to us took a month, and still it is not paid. As for Charles of Navarre, no one on this earth would trust him to keep a God-given oath. All the promises of remuneration – not worth a flea bite. And I’ve plenty of those!’
I nodded. ‘It explains much.’
And indeed Ned explained even more, when we sat together at the feast and another cup of wine had smoothed away the heat of his fury.
‘I swear the Devil himself dragged me into that war. Pedro will escape paying by any means he can. “I owe you much gratitude for the glorious day which you have won for me,” he said. Fulsome praise, but I swear that’s all I’ll get from him. His gratitude for the glorious day will not be paid in gold coin, by God! I presented him with an account for service rendered. Not a trifling sum, and larger than we first agreed but I would have accepted less if he had made it up with a score or so of Castilian castles or the province of Biscay. So I accepted Pedro’s oath in the cathedral at Burgos, that he would soon fulfil his obligations, because I had to, or we would still be sitting there like carrion waiting to pick over a dying carcase, but I hold out little hope. Pedro announced that he would not pay a foreign army standing on his own land, which was, in effect, an invitation to get out and not return.’ He considered the lees in his cup, his hand white-knuckled around the stem. ‘I thought about looting, but it’s not the way a Prince should conduct himself. Perhaps I should have done it. It might have been the only recompense I get.’
‘But now you are returned, and with honour.’
‘I’d rather have the promised gold.’ He pushed the cup away, flattening his hands palm down, frowning at some distant scene that disturbed him. ‘And then my forces were laid low from the bloody flux and the sweating sickness. I needed to come home. And here I am, complaining to you when I should be giving you my full attention, or even taking the time to kiss you. Which I haven’t yet done to my satisfaction.’
As he turned to look at me, my attention once again was drawn to the dual lines between his brows, the grooves in his cheeks where he had lost flesh, not unusual in itself through a fierce campaign, but enough to put its mark on him.
‘Kisses can wait. Did you suffer from the flux?’ I asked.
‘I had a dose or two before I shook it off.’ He shook his head, making it of no account, and the scowl was gone. ‘It’s good to see you.’ His hand covered one of mine, his face softened but he was more weary than I had ever see him. I could read it in the set of his head, in the rigidity of his shoulders. ‘All is still unresolved. But it was a superb battle.’
‘Forget battles. You need to rest before the next one. First you will eat. Then I will arrange for my women to fill a bath with heated water and scented herbs when this interminable feast is over.’ The pages were bringing in the dishes that proclaimed our cook’s artistry with sauces and marvellous subtleties, the castles and heraldic devices proclaiming Ned’s victory over Enrique of Trastamara. ‘It will restore you to health and good humour.’
‘Women’s work!’ But he smiled, the old lines of laughter dispelling the new of disillusion. ‘I’d prefer to hunt.’
I sighed. ‘So we will go hunting. But tomorrow, not today.’
He lifted his cup in a salute to me. ‘Tonight will be our own.’
Before we retired: ‘Has Ned been ill?’ I asked John.
‘Yes, gravely, and he has taken long to recover. But we were all affected with the flux. He will soon be restored to health. I’ve already forgotten about it.’ John grimaced. ‘Except for the ignominy of constant vomiting and uncontrollable voiding of bowels.’
‘Thank you, John,’ I said. ‘Very graphic.’
‘Well, you did ask. It was nothing more than any of our men suffered. Just the penalty we pay for poor food and rank water.’
Which suggested that all was indeed well. John saw no need for concern over his brother, thus I need not worry either.
Cleansed, scented against his wishes but not against mine, now lacking the fevered tension that had held him in thrall since he rode into Bordeaux, and perhaps had held him for the whole of the past campaign, Ned took me to his bed, or I took him to mine. We neither of us had a clear memory of how we reached that point in our reuniting. There was born, between the roast meats and the subtleties, an urgency. A desire that flamed and took command. A sort of madness born out of absence, awakening a physical longing to be clasped close in each other’s arms.
‘Do you know how much I have missed you?’ he asked, his face buried in my hair which lay fragrantly loose on his shoulder. Had I not been preparing for this moment? ‘You remained anchored in my mind, even when I wished you would not, even when I was trying to come to some sort of terms with King Pedro. There you were, and the thought that I would soon be returned to you. Did you miss me?’
I missed you, and missed you, and missed you…
‘A little.’
His kisses were becoming heated along the line of my throat.
‘Only a little?’
‘More than a little.’
My breath caught as I felt his mouth smile against my skin.
‘Are you admitting at last that you love me, dearest wife?’
‘I believe that I am.’
‘Say it, Joan. You are allowed to say it.’
He was stern. He was the Prince. So I did.
‘I love you.’
‘Say it again.’
‘I love you, Ned.’
I meant it too, every short word of it.
‘There, that was not difficult. You should know that I love you too. Let us give credence to it between those magnificently clean linens. Not a louse to be seen.’
‘You missed the clean linen more than you missed me?’
There was no need of a response in words. Action was everything. Hunger was everything. The desires of the flesh ruled us both.
We knew each other well. Had we not had two children together? But that night we came to know each other with an intimacy that we could never have guessed at. A tenderness shook him when he disrobed me. He shivered when I touched his skin. I shivered too. It was a night of all the passion and desire that I might have dreamed of.
The bells of the churches of Bordeaux rang to celebrate Ned’s return but we were deaf to them. The stars gleamed on naked flesh but we were blind to them. We were not deaf and blind to each other. It was a banquet of touch and sensation and miraculous taste.
While Ned finally slept the sleep of the dead, I took a more leisurely survey of the man who had fought and come home because he needed to. The exhaustion I accepted after a strenuous campaign. His face was leaner, a touch of hollowness here beneath his eyes, and there in the hollow of his throat, a dullness rather than the usual sheen of his hair. He had lost flesh too, as I had initially thought, his ribs more prominent beneath the skin, but all would soon be remedied with rest and good food under my care. No, there was no need for undue concern. His energies had been incomparable; now he would be restored and so would his spirits.
My dearest Ned. My exceptional Prince. My heart unsteady in its beat with this unexpected lesson that he had taught me, I could not resist touching my fingers to his hair, his cheek, lightly so
that he would not wake. I allowed the thoughts to come to me.
I had no experience of courtly love, where all was well lost for it, where troubadours and minstrels sang of its glory, more powerful than any other human emotion. In my life it seemed that love, declared so passionately, was more often a means to an end, although my mother would have denied it, and so would the Queen. They would never deny the power of love in their marriages. And indeed had I not felt its heated breath against my nape? Had I not been carried away by the enchantment of it, the intrinsic glamour of being desired as a woman as I pledged my oath to Thomas Holland, a famous knight in the making?
Without doubt it existed, my love for Thomas; a true emotion, the love of a young girl, full of flirtation and excitement, my first experience of a longing, a sheer physical thrill when a man already of repute kissed my fingers and asked me to wed him. I was wooed and courted, secretively, determinedly, all so appealing to my youth, by a suitor of charm and good looks even if he was short on romantic declarations. How could I resist falling in love with him? And I had chosen to stay with him when I could have denied him, our attraction deepening with our life together and our children.
But Ned. Ah, Ned, as he rode through the streets of Bordeaux, glorious, heart-wrenching in his brilliance as conqueror and Prince. What was this emotion that made my heart rap like the tuck of a drum in his military entourage? This love had taken me aback. Here was no youthful frippery, no flirtation, no succumbing to glamour. I had known Ned all my life, for better or worse with all his faults as well as his imperious skills. This emotion was mature and deep, accepting of duties and demands, accepting of his faults, as he accepted mine. As I waited on the steps, holding our son’s hand, it had been a bittersweet strike of power at heart and mind. I suspected that it would never leave me.
So what was this that had struck me down, with the heat of a summer fever? A bond that had arisen from nowhere as Ned returned from battle, a desire to own and be owned. A physical longing to be claimed by him. A fear that I would be alone and despairing if he died by a blow from some faceless knight’s sword.
I had loved Thomas.
I suspected that I had yet to experience the full might of this emotion that Ned had so inexplicably ignited in me. I feared it. I desired it.
I leaned and kissed his brow. He was home and he was mine. He would not be averse to my lavishing love and care on him. Or, at least until the next battle.
My eyes were opened. The ever-circling pleasures of love were pushed aside as difficulties crammed their way into my thoughts to the detriment of all else. Not before time, Sir John Harewell, meticulous and careful Chancellor, would have said, except that his politeness was legendary. I should have seen the way of things, but I did not, until now.
The triumph at Nájera was as untrue as a false dawn. All was not right with us. Nothing could take away the magnificence of that victory, but, by the end of the year King Pedro of Castile was dead by assassination, his debts to us unpaid and his bastard brother Enrique of Trastamara ensconced in Castile. So all Ned’s negotiations and battles were for nothing, only disaffection in Aquitaine and an impossible drain on our finances. Our alliance with Castile was over; with Enrique at the helm they were rapidly hand in military glove with France, where King John had died a tragic death still in captivity in England, his ransom unpaid. His successor King Charles the Fifth, had no intention of giving up the French claims to Aquitaine. To him the Treaty of Brétigny meant nothing. Although not strong enough to engage us in outright battle, he was quick to encourage treachery amongst the already restless Gascon lords who had returned from the Castilian campaign empty-handed, thus stretching their allegiance to their English and ever-present overlord to the limit.
As we all knew, one day, when he was strong enough, King Charles of France would make a forceful bid for Aquitaine. It was a matter of when, not if. The Treaty of Brétigny was in effect dead.
How facile were our Gascon lords, how treacherous in their smiles, kneeling before us while they sent off their couriers to Paris with offers of allegiance in return for their debts being paid by France to win them over. I should have understood. Ned too. The lords had been drained dry by war and taxation. But we were unable to give succour. Our coffers were as empty as theirs. France reaped the crop of our weakness.
I had envisioned Aquitaine, had I not, as a blank page, on which Ned would write a future for a new principality in his own hand, without interference from England. It was a blank page on which Ned would assert his independence as a Prince in his own right. It was not a perfect blank page at all. Aquitaine was a state full of dangers and turmoil, unexpected undercurrents. Ned’s writing on that page was, to my grief, becoming more and more ineffective. I could see it so clearly. There could be no denial despite my confessed love for him.
Was it Ned’s fault? Was the blame to be laid at his door? Perhaps it was, but the underlying problems were not of his making, that I would swear.
On a battlefield the Prince was all raw courage and insightful decision-making. He led his men with charismatic brilliance so that none would deny the glamour of Edward of Woodstock. His victories legendary, all clamoured to fight at his side and win glory, his reputation was second to none despite his autocracy in affairs of discipline. Would not a commander of such merit be determined on obedience? I thought so.
But in affairs of government Ned lacked the essential patience. Lacked understanding. Lacked the willingness to listen and judge and wait. He had no tolerance for those who questioned his right to rule. Arrogance? I supposed that it was. He did not always see the complexities that lurked below the surface, only the brute resistance to his rule.
‘Listen to them,’ I advised. ‘Take heed of what it is that troubles them and drives them to insurrection.’
But Ned could not acknowledge that the Gascon nobles would rather shuffle off to renew their allegiance to France than give up their prized independence to a despised English prince. Ned would never allow his Gascon lords the autonomy they had enjoyed in the past, as he made perfectly plain in hard words that worried me. I could only hope that experience would show him the clear path to winning his subjects to his vision of Aquitaine, rather than dismissing their complaints when they demurred at some new project of which they had no experience.
Higher and higher taxation was not the way to win their loyalty. Yet how would he pay for the troops necessary to hold this state in some degree of security? France, we soon learned, was fast recovering from her defeat, fast encouraging rebellion amongst our disaffected nobility which Ned was slow to see, and could not always remedy. There were too many Gascon lords prepared to be disaffected.
And I? Did I see?
My eyes were opened at last. Now, at last, I could acknowledge what was happening but could do nothing to staunch the flow of blood from the wound. Oh, I could give advice, I could soothe and persuade, but Ned was a man with a mind of his own and a will to have his way. I was his beloved Jeanette but I was not his counsellor and never would be. I tried, but sometimes even I did not see the the crevasse that was opening at our feet until we tottered on the edge. The expense of our government, the extravagance of our household was as much my fault as Ned’s. And yet, in my bleakest moments, I was driven to admit that there was no future for us here in this province, that our future here would be nothing more than a terrible unravelling, like the hem of a silk gown dragged too many times along the uneven flags of a floor. We had had such hopes of Aquitaine emerging as the jewel in Ned’s crown until he could assume the more magnificent one of England. Now all was falling apart before our eyes.
I tried again.
‘Why not allow the Gascon lords a voice in your councils? Summon their representatives and at least listen to them. It might dissuade them from absenting themselves to give their homage to the French King at every opportunity.’
Ned’s reply showed no desire to discuss the matter with me or anyone. ‘And allow them to interfere in my affairs? I want n
o parliament with its grip on finance here in Aquitaine. I’ve seen what damage a parliament can do in England when it holds the purse strings!’
No, all was not right in Aquitaine. Nor was it right in England or with our far-flung family. It was difficult to know which news affected Ned most strongly. In October of the year 1368 news had come to us from England of the death of Lionel, Ned’s brother, the one closest in age. Travelled to Milan to wed the wealthy Violante Visconti, daughter of the Duke, he had submitted to some mystery fever, induced, some were quick to say, by judicially administered poison. Ned mourned, but not as heart-wrenchingly as he did when, almost in the same breath we were told that Philippa was ailing, sufficiently for there to be a real concern for her life. We held a High Mass for Lionel’s soul and Philippa’s comfort, which was all we could do. Never had the distance seemed so great. How long couriers took to travel the miles with their sad news. Nor did Ned have John’s company that they might mourn together, for he had returned home.
If our financial state was as bad as Ned had calculated, for me to ascertain where our money was lost, and without his knowledge, which was easy enough to do since he had no liking for finance other that the striking of impressive coins, I had the ledgers and tallies brought before me. Should I have done this before when Sir John challenged me to consider the extravagance of our way of life? Most assuredly I should, but better now than not at all. I spent a morning, following the pointing fingers of clever clerk.
It was a slap to the senses, open-handedly sharp.