Here Be Dragons

by Sharon Kay Penman

  “Would you like a fig, Papa?” she asked, and then bumped into the trestle table, upsetting the chessmen and knocking the board onto the floor.

  “Papa, I’m so sorry! I truly do not know how I could have been so clumsy.”

  “Divine Providence?” John suggested, straight-faced, but his eyes were laughing.

  “That is one explanation, I suppose,” William de Braose said, favoring them both with a sour smile, and Joanna saw that he, too, knew her action had been deliberate. But John was looking at her with such amusement, such affectionate approval that nothing else mattered to her. She groped hastily for a topic of conversation likely to hold his interest, to exclude de Braose.

  “Did you hear any uncommon appeals today, Papa?” she asked, knowing as soon as she spoke that her question was inspired, for John shared his father’s fascination with the law. He genuinely enjoyed hearing court appeals, arguing points of law with his justices, issuing writs to right perceived wrongs, and he saw to it that the Exchequer published his itinerary weeks in advance so that petitioners might know where he’d be on a given day, so they could appeal to the royal court for justice denied in the shire courts.

  “Indeed I did, Joanna. A youth not much older than you, calling himself Roger of Stainton. He’d been amusing himself by throwing stones across a stream. By ill luck, one struck a young girl. She died and he was sentenced to be hanged.”

  “Shall you pardon him, Papa?” Joanna asked, pleased when John nodded.

  “How could I not? It was death by misadventure; a man should not hang for that.” John paused, looking up as an usher came into the chamber.

  “Your Grace, a courier has just arrived from Fontevrault.”

  John tensed; his good humor chilled into icy wariness. He’d been dreading this, his mother’s reaction to the loss of Castle Gaillard, Richard’s pride and joy, the castle he’d boasted he could hold even if the walls were made of butter. John did not want to be reminded of this by Eleanor; even if she did not reproach him directly, he did not doubt her disappointment would echo between every line. It was with considerable reluctance, then, that he said curtly, “Send him in.”

  The monk was young and visibly ill at ease. The black habit of the Benedictines camouflaged the grime of his journey, but the parchment he clutched was soiled from much handling, slashed and threaded through with a braided grey cord that might once have been white. He knelt, thrust the letter at John as if he longed only to be rid of it.

  John looked down at the wax sealing the cord ends; it was intact, but unfamiliar. “This is not my mother’s seal.”

  “The letter is from the Abbess Matilda, Your Grace. She bade me tell you…” The monk swallowed, no longer meeting John’s eyes. “Your lady mother…she is dead, my liege.”

  John heard his daughter cry out, plaintively denying death with an indrawn breath that broke on a sob. No one else spoke. John found himself staring at the monk’s clasped hands; they were rawboned, knuckles roughened, nails caked with dirt. Never had he been so aware of detail; he saw a sheen on the man’s habit, where kneeling had worn the material thin, saw the damp splotches under his armpits, the telltale signs of sweat, of fear. But he felt nothing, only a stunned sense of disbelief.

  Utterly unnerved by John’s silence, the monk squeezed his knees tightly together to stop his trembling, and stammered, “It…it did happen on Thursday last, soon after Vespers. But it may comfort you, my lord, to know that hers was a peaceful and Christian passing. She died in God’s grace, with our lady Abbess and Abbot Luke of Torpenay at her bedside; he’d been with her when your brother King Richard died, you may recall, and when she knew her end was nigh, she sent to St Mary’s Abbey for him.”

  Still John said nothing, and the monk drew several shallow breaths, speaking now almost at random. “It was your mother’s wish that she be buried at Fontevrault with King Richard and your sister, the Lady Joanna. Our Abbess saw that it was done. I hope that meets with your approval, my liege…”

  “Did she leave any word…any message for me?”

  “No, my lord.”

  Another silence fell. John crumpled the letter, unread, let it drop into the rushes at his feet. The monk made an instinctive grab for it, then jerked his hand back as if burned. Will cleared his throat, seemed on the verge of speech. John forestalled him, said without any intonation whatsoever, “Leave me. All of you.”

  The men did not need to be told twice; even Will obeyed at once. But Joanna’s discipline took her only as far as the door. There she whirled, ran back, and knelt by John’s chair. “Let me stay, Papa,” she pleaded. “Please…”

  The face upturned to his was waxen, wet with tears. John put his arm around her, and she began to sob in earnest. He drew her closer, let her weep against his shoulder, and after a brief time her sobs subsided, gave way to sighs and hiccups. Joanna’s first flow of tears had been for herself, for her own loss. But now she wiped her face with her sleeve, ready to share that loss, recognizing that her father’s sense of bereavement might be even greater than hers.

  “Papa…I’m so sorry.” Joanna remembered, too vividly, what it had been like to lose her mother, remembered not so much her grieving as her sheer terror. Did men and women grown ever experience blind, suffocating panic like that? She did not know. Her father’s face was shuttered, unreadable.

  “Papa…you have not said a word, not one. Do you not want to talk? How do you feel?” She looked up at him anxiously, no longer a child, not yet a woman, tears still glistening in the slanting hazel eyes, Eleanor’s eyes, and John was suddenly glad he’d allowed her to stay.

  “How do I feel?” He found that was not an easy question to answer, at last said, “Alone…very alone. And angry, so angry I can think of nothing else.”

  Adult emotions were no longer as mysterious or inexplicable to Joanna as they’d once been, but this was utterly beyond her comprehension. “Angry…at your mother? Because she died? But why? I do not understand, Papa.”

  “Neither do I, Joanna.” And in that moment John sounded no less bewildered than his twelve-year-old daughter. “Neither do I.”

  14

  Winchester, England

  September 1204

  Summoned by her father, Joanna left London on Tuesday morning of Michaelmas week. Traveling in the company of her Aunt Ela, Countess of Salisbury, they reached Winchester at dusk on Thursday. There they found other ladies of the court—like them, summoned to attend the King. But John had not yet arrived from Clarendon, had still not come by noon the next day.

  With so many people to be sheltered, beds were scarce, and Joanna’s aunt was given a cramped chamber musty with the rancid odors rising up from the castle moat. It was a far less desirable room than those taken by Maude de Braose and Isobel, Countess of Pembroke, but Ela voiced no objections. Although she had brought her husband an earldom, his fief was neither large nor lucrative; Will held only fifty knights’ fees, and no castles, although John did allow him to make use of Salisbury Castle. In contrast, William de Braose held no less than three hundred fifty knights’ fees and some sixteen English and Welsh castles. Ela, a shy, self-effacing young woman, accepted the realities of power without a murmur of protest, would never have dreamed of contesting wills with so aggressive a personality as Maude de Braose. It did occur to Joanna, who liked Maude not at all, but her youth and illegitimacy effectively rendered her mute.

  Joanna was standing now on the stairs outside their bedchamber, frozen with rage. The door was only slightly ajar, but the voices within came quite clearly to her ears, so audibly that she recognized the speakers without difficulty: Maude de Braose, Maude’s daughter Margaret de Lacy, wife to the Lord of Meath, and Isobel, wife to the powerful William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. She had yet to hear her aunt’s voice, however, and while that did not surprise her, it did anger her. Ela was her father’s sister by marriage; common courtesy, if not loyalty, should compel her to speak up for him.

  “I had a letter from my husband toda
y, Mama. Word reached Ireland a fortnight ago that Poitiers fell to the French on August tenth, but Walter refuses to believe it.”

  “After the defeats of the past year? After losing all of Normandy in less than a twelvemonth? You could tell me tomorrow that Philip had taken London itself, and I’d not think to doubt you!”

  “Ah, Maude, that’s not strictly fair. I grant you the King made some grave errors of judgment. My husband warned him it was folly to release the de Lusignans, no matter how many hostages they offered up as pledges for their loyalty. Nor did John help himself by relying upon so brutal a captain as Lupescaire; a man does not gain himself a name like ‘the Wolf’ without cause, and I doubt not he affronted many who might otherwise have stayed loyal to John. But—”

  “Yet men such as that do have their uses. In Wales we—”

  Most people found themselves at a distinct disadvantage when competing with Maude de Braose for conversational control, but Isobel of Pembroke was a remarkably single-minded woman, little given to self-doubt. “If I may finish, Maude,” she said, placidly overriding Maude’s interruption with one of her own, “not all of his troubles were of the King’s making. His lack of money—you know as well as I that Richard drained the royal treasury dry. And in all honesty, some of John’s difficulties with his Norman barons can be traced, too, to his brother’s reign. Richard laid a heavy hand upon the land, and there were many who chafed under it.”

  “I daresay there’s some truth in what you say, Isobel. But that changes not the fact that within two years of his triumph at Mirebeau, John did lose Normandy, Anjou, and Touraine, and now most of Poitou. Say what you will about Richard, but think you that he would have stayed in England whilst Castle Gaillard was under siege? Not if he had to swim the Channel with his sword in his teeth! Mayhap he, too, would have lost Normandy, but we may be sure that Richard would have lost his life, as well, would have died ere he’d yield up so much as a handful of Norman soil to Philip. You can scarcely say the same for John!”

  Joanna had not meant to confront them; girls of thirteen did not challenge their elders. But with Maude’s taunt, she forgot all else, grabbed for the door latch. The women within turned startled faces toward her; even Maude looked somewhat disconcerted. Recovering quickly, however, she said curtly, “I trust you were not eavesdropping, Joanna.”

  “I need no lesson in manners, Madame. Not from you.”

  Maude’s mouth tightened. “If you were my daughter, I’d slap you silly for that,” she snapped. “No child of mine would dare speak so insolently to her elders.”

  “But I am not your daughter, Madame. I am the King’s daughter,” Joanna said, and saw that she’d achieved the all but impossible, had the last word in an argument with Maude de Braose. Never had she been so rude to an adult, but now she turned her back upon Maude, crossed to her coffer chest. No one spoke, watching in silence as she knelt, retrieved a willow basket. She could feel their eyes upon her, all the way to the door.

  The lower bailey was awash in sun. A postern gate in the north curtain wall opened out into the gardens, and it was toward this door that Joanna hastened, almost running in her need to put the bedchamber scene behind her. Reaction to her rage had set in, and she was flushed, trembling. But she was proud, too, that she had stood up to Maude de Braose.

  Joanna had long since passed the stage where she thought every adult was all-knowing. Some were quite clever. Others were not. And some could be remarkably shrewd and yet surprisingly foolish, too. Joanna was slowly realizing that her young stepmother was one such, insightful about that which interested her—relationships between men and women—and unabashedly uninformed about all else. Now, as much as she disliked Maude de Braose, Joanna did not dismiss Maude as a fool. No, Maude and Isabelle were reverse sides of the same coin. Maude was quick-witted about that which interested Isabelle least. She could add up long columns of figures in her head, knew the names of all her vassals, could talk of Welsh border warfare as well as any man. But she had no understanding of people’s hearts.

  Joanna smiled. Precisely because she was so ignorant of emotional needs, Maude would be sure Joanna would repeat all to her father, would have some uneasy moments in consequence, for even Maude, who prided herself upon her outspoken, careless candor, even she would not want such a tale to reach the King’s ears.

  Not that she would ever tell Papa. He had burdens enough, needed no more. He was—Joanna calculated rapidly—only in his thirty-seventh year, but his hair was increasingly flecked with grey, and there were lines around his mouth that had not been there a year ago. Worst of all, his temper was honed to a sharp edge. He rarely shouted, as his father and brothers had done, but sarcasm, too, could scar. Even in good humor, he’d always trod that fine line between jest and mockery, and these days he was all too quick to turn upon others the sardonic lash of an unbridled tongue.

  Joanna sighed. Papa was so good to her, so good to Isabelle. And he was very clever, in truth he was. So why, then, did he offend people so needlessly? For he did, he was too suspicious, too quick to read the worst into men’s motives. Not, she added loyally, that he had no cause for mistrust. Many of the Norman barons had gone over to Philip at the first chance.

  Joanna had spent much time in the past year seeking to puzzle it out, how her father’s luck could have soured so swiftly in the months after Mirebeau. She’d even attempted to discuss it with John, but had been rebuffed with unwonted sharpness. And Isabelle had been no help whatsoever. She was interested only in consoling John for his loss, not in analyzing the whys and wherefores.

  It was from her Uncle Will that Joanna had gotten most of her answers. He’d admitted that John had blundered in freeing Hugh de Lusignan and in alienating William des Roches. But he’d told her, too, that John’s mistakes were threads woven into a larger pattern. “In some ways, Joanna, John is reaping the crop Richard sowed. Mayhap Richard could have held on to the lands for a while longer, but that is all. What is writ is writ. You remember that, lass, whenever you hear ignorant tongues wag.”

  Joanna did remember, sought now to dismiss Maude’s mockery as her uncle had advised. But anger was not so easy to subdue; resentment remained, and regret that others could not see into her father’s soul, could not know him as she did. Yet there was, as well, a realization that had no place within the borders of childhood, that was rooted in an adult understanding: that her father could make mistakes, could suffer from uncertainty and indecision, could share all the failings of mortal men. He was not a saint, after all, not the all-powerful knight without peer, Lancelot and Roland and Gawain, a child’s champion in the lists, her favor on his lance and her name on his lips.

  “He was a burning and shining light,” Joanna murmured, with some self-mockery, but not much. Why should she scorn the bedazzled child she had been? She had loved Papa when, in her innocence, she’d thought him to be perfect, and she loved him no less now that she knew he was not.

  Winchester had been a favorite residence of Joanna’s grandfather, the old King, and in days gone by, when he’d still cared about pleasing his Queen, he’d built for Eleanor vineyards to remind her of her native Poitou, chains of fishponds, a garden arbor. It was to these gardens that Joanna retreated.

  From her basket she fished out her lesson tablet and the bone stylus she used to mark the wax coating. But this was just a sop to her conscience, for she did not intend to study. Unrolling a sheet of scraped parchment, she smoothed it with a pumice stone, then dipped her pen into her inkhorn.

  To the Lady Eleanor, my cousin, greetings.

  I write to you from the gardens at Winchester Castle, on this, the Friday after Michaelmas, whilst I await my lord father the King to ride in from Clarendon. I have not seen him since he did meet last month with the Welsh Prince…

  Here she paused, having no idea how to spell Llewelyn. After some thought, she opted for a phonetic spelling, although she was not even sure if her pronunciation was correct.

  …Lliwelin. He had sworn to do
homage to my father more than three years ago, but he was not overeager to make good his word, did only this summer agree to meet with Papa at Worcester. I hope their meeting did go well, hope, too, that I shall have more time with my father now. I saw him but little this twelvemonth past, as you know. He was occupied in defending his lands against the French King, and I spent part of the year with my grandmother in Poitiers…

  Again she paused, remembering that her cousin, too, was Eleanor’s grandchild. Inking out “my,” she wrote “our” above it, and then added in an uneven hand, “may God assoil her.” It lacked one day of being five months since Eleanor had died at Fontevrault, but Joanna’s grieving was still green, her loss still keenly felt.

  She sat for a time, staring down at the parchment. Letters to her cousin were never easy, invariably written with a faltering, hesitant pen. But she felt compelled to persevere, knowing how lonely Eleanor must be. And then, too, Joanna liked to write letters. There was something almost mystical to her about the process. She enjoyed signing her name with a flourish, using large blobs of sealing wax, paying couriers with the silver pennies hoarded for such a purpose, remembering the little girl who could do no more than draw her name in the dirt with a stick.

  Did you get the saddle my father ordered for you? I do not yet know where Papa shall keep his Christmas court, but I am sure he will want you to join us. Since I saw you last, I have acquired a dog. I had one once before; she died when I was ten, was run over by a cart, and I swore I would never have another. But my stepmother the Queen gave me a puppy for my New Year’s gift. She is no bigger than a cat, with long, silky fur, comes from the island of Malta. My father suggested I name her Sugar because she was so costly!