Here Be Dragons

by Sharon Kay Penman

  “No, Will. No, it…it was not like that. My father was always good to me.”

  “I do not believe that, do not believe you. Why do you defend him to me? Christ, if any man knows the truth about John, I do!”

  “I am not defending him! I am not denying what he has done. You have every reason to hate him. But I will not lie to you. Whatever evil he may have committed, he was still a kind father, even a loving one.”

  “A loving father? God in Heaven, do you hear yourself? He was accursed, utterly evil and beyond redemption, and for you to—”

  “No!” Joanna’s voice was shaking. “My father repented his sins, died in God’s grace. His soul is in Purgatory, not in Hell. The Almighty says there is forgiveness for all, that—”

  “Not for John. Never for John!”

  “Do not say that!” Joanna was appalled. “He did repent ere he died, and God will forgive him. He was not utterly evil, he was not! He was capable of kindness, too, and the Almighty will take that into account when judging him.”

  “Kind? Because he gave you hair ribbons and sugared quince? Do you truly think such trifles can be balanced against the gallows, the rotting bodies?”

  “I was not talking of trifles!” Joanna drew a labored breath, sought to call to mind John’s acts of charity, of compassion. “My father truly loved England, as his father and brother did not. And he cared for his subjects’ weal. He was the most accessible of Kings, was hearing appeals even whilst fighting for his throne, that last fortnight of his life.”

  When Will would have interrupted, she cried, “No, hear me out! You asked for particulars and you shall have them. The son of a friend was recently stricken with leprosy. I know I need not tell you the horrors of such a fate. Yet, as pitiful as the leper’s plight is, it can be even more wretched if his king or lord lacks pity. Under such lords, lepers have ofttimes been burnt, even buried alive. But my father did pity them, Will, and he did whatever he could to ease their travail. At Shrewsbury he entitled the lepers to a portion of all flour sold at market. At Bristol he granted lepers a settlement of their own, where they could dwell under the protection of the crown. He even founded St Leonard’s Hospital at Lancaster long ere he became King, when he was but two and twenty! Do such acts sound like trifles to you? Would a man utterly evil care for the least of his brethren?”

  “You want to talk of John’s pity? Let’s begin, then, at Windsor Castle. I am sure my grandmother and uncle were fearful, for they knew John well. But I doubt even they could have guessed what he had in mind for them. They were dragged to an underground dungeon, thrust into the dark, and left to die. They were given no candles, no water, no food but a basket of oats and an uncooked ham. For ten days they were left alone in that hellhole, with the door barred against their screams. On the eleventh day the guards entered the cell, found them both dead. There was no way of knowing just when they’d died, how long their suffering had lasted. The guards could tell, though, that my uncle had died first and that my grandmother had gone mad at the last. Shall I tell you why, Joanna? Shall I tell you how they knew that?”

  “No,” she whispered. “No, please…”

  “Because my uncle’s cheek was bitten and chewed, as if gnawed by a rat. But it was not a rat who’d eaten his flesh, it was his own mother. Those were her teethmarks in his face. That was what she’d been driven to in the final hours of her life, by your father, by the man you call kind!”

  He’d grasped Joanna’s wrist, forcing her to listen. When he released her, she stumbled backward, fled the hut. Her stomach was heaving and she fell to her knees on the grass, lay prone as the trees whirled above her head, spinning in sickening circles. She clutched tufts of grass, clung as if the earth itself were falling away from her. She was weeping as Will knelt beside her. Gathering her into his arms, he held her as if she were a child, and for a time there was no sound but that of her choked sobbing, the whimpering of her spaniel.

  “I’m going to take you back inside now.” The voice was so gentle that she wondered if it was truly Will’s, but she obediently put her arms around his neck and he lifted her up, carried her back to the shelter of the hafod. “Here,” he said, handing her his flask. “Drink.” She did; the liquid was warm and so heavily spiced that she choked anew. It burned her throat, set her head spinning. She drank again, at his insistence, but shook her head weakly when he offered the flask a third time.

  The last of her tears squeezed through her lashes. “Will, I’m sorry, so sorry…”

  “So am I, Joanna. I ought never to have told you that. There’ve been times,” he confessed, “when I’d have given up my chances of salvation if only I’d not known, if only I could forget…”

  Joanna shuddered. “How could your father have told you? Why did you have to know?”

  He reached out, touched her tearstained face. “You were weeping for me? For that fourteen-year-old boy?”

  Joanna shuddered again, and when he put his arm around her, she did not move away. “There was no need for you to know, no need…” She turned so she could look up into his face, into eyes fringed with surprisingly long, fair lashes. “You were so young. How could you live with pain like that?”

  “By learning to hate. Not just John. The men he trusted, the men who waxed fat on his favor, men like Hubert de Burgh and Peter des Roches. Your Uncle Salisbury.”

  “And me?”

  “I wanted to hate you, thought I did…until I saw you again at Chester Castle. But you know that, Joanna. You know how much I wanted you, how much I want you right now.”

  “Will, I cannot…” But he was leaning toward her, covering her mouth with his. His breathing had quickened, but there was no urgency in his kiss, not yet. It was both unexpected and reassuring, this gentleness; he had about him such unsettling undertones of violence that it was startling, somehow, to find he could be so tender a lover. Joanna knew she had to protest now, while there was still time for protesting, for thinking. But when he kissed her again, she found herself responding, kissing him back.

  He was too practiced for awkward fumbling with clothing, slid his hand into the bodice of her gown. She gasped as he cupped her breast, and he gave a low laugh. “God, how I want you! It’ll be so good, I promise you…” And for Joanna there was only that moment, the feel of his hands on her bared skin, and an urgency to match his own. When he lowered her back onto the blanket, she reached up, drew him down into an impassioned embrace, and it was not long before he was murmuring, “Now, love. Spread your thighs for me. Ah, yes, yes…” There was a tense moment in which they feared he was too ready, too eager. But he was able to keep control, moving slowly at first, deliberately, until Joanna moaned, dug her nails into his neck, and then he did lose control, but it no longer mattered; there was for them both a shattering release, convulsive and complete.

  Will was the first to move, shifting his weight off Joanna and sitting up. She lay still, her head turned away, until he tugged gently on her braid, compelling her toward him. Leaning over, he kissed her possessively on the mouth. “You were worth waiting for,” he said, smiling, and Joanna flushed even darker.

  “What have I done, Will?” Her voice was muffled, almost inaudible. “My God, what have I done?”

  He tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. “What you wanted to do. For you did want me, Joanna, just as much as I wanted you.”

  Joanna’s lashes swept down, shadowing her cheek. Sitting up, she pulled her skirt down, began relacing her bliaut. Her fingers were unsteady, but when Will reached over to help, she shook her head. She was on her feet now, retrieving her mantle from the floor. “Will…I have to go.”

  He rose without haste, draped her mantle about her shoulders. “Give me a minute to make myself presentable, and I’ll walk back with you.”

  “No!” She pulled away, staring at him with such wide, frightened eyes that he was both touched and amused.

  “What do you fear, Joanna? That people need only glance at us now to know?” Laughing,
he caught her by the shoulders, drew her back into his arms. “My love, it does not show in your face. You look no different.”

  “I feel different. I feel…” Joanna’s mouth twisted. She turned away, moved rapidly toward the door.

  “Joanna.” She paused, with obvious reluctance, and he said, “I shall be here at noon on the morrow.”

  “No,” she said. “No.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  His words stayed with her as she walked back toward Rhosyr. I’ll be waiting for you. He’d smiled, as if her denial meant nothing, as if sure she’d come to him. Joanna stopped abruptly, stood motionless for so long that Topaz began to whine. Kneeling there on the path, Joanna put her arms around the dog. “What am I to do?” she whispered. “Lady Mary…” But she could not pray. Hers was a mortal sin. She had betrayed her marriage vows, betrayed her husband. And on the morrow, what then? For Will was right. She had wanted him, was as much to blame for what happened as he. She did not understand it, could not fully believe it even now, but she could not deny it. She did want Will.

  Will reached the hafod well before noon. Joanna had been too distraught to think of the blanket and basket. The blanket lay as they’d left it, still rumpled from the weight of their bodies, but the basket had been overturned, emptied by scavenging animals. Will righted the basket, smoothed the blanket, and sat down to wait. At half past twelve he left the hafod, stood for some moments squinting up at the sun. He was turning to go back inside when he heard a dog bark. Several birds broke cover, went winging over the hut. The spaniel appeared first, with Joanna following much more slowly.

  She was so tense, her approach so hesitant that Will instinctively stayed quite still. She reminded him of a woodland creature, untamed and poised for flight, and he said very quietly, “I was beginning to fear you were not coming.”

  “I did not think I was.”

  They regarded each other in rapt silence until Will deemed it safe to move. Stepping toward her, he took her hand. “I thought about you half the night. I kept remembering how you wept, wept for my pain.” He smiled, his familiar smile of self-mockery, but to Joanna, unexpectedly suggestive of sadness. “Over the years, many women have wept because of me. But I honestly could recall nary a one weeping for me…just you.”

  Joanna had wept again at night, lying alone in Llewelyn’s bed. But she did not know whether her tears were for the boy Will had been, or for this madness that had so suddenly come upon her, that had brought her back to the hafod, to Will. She closed her eyes, but could still see him behind her lids: tousled hair streaked by the sun, thin mobile mouth, golden lashes and beard, details she’d not even been aware of noticing—a small scar on his right temple, a shaving scratch on his throat. He was very close now; she could feel his breath on her cheek. Her lashes lifted and she saw his mouth soften, curve just before he kissed her.

  In the days that followed, Joanna felt as if she were drifting farther and farther from shore, from the sureties of the world she knew, the world she was terrified of losing. She had no appetite at mealtimes, and sleep eluded her; she lay awake some nights till dawn, rose hollow-eyed and racked with guilt, unable to understand why she was jeopardizing her marriage, perhaps even her life, for a man she did not truly know—and yet unable to stay away from him. She knew she did not love him. The sexual attraction between them was undeniably intense, and had been since that night at Chester Castle, for she could see that now, could acknowledge that it had first flared on a darkened stairway in Caesar’s Tower. But could she be so foolish as to risk so much for that, for lust? Why, then, had she never been tempted ere this? Why had she never even fantasized about any man but Llewelyn?

  Llewelyn. What would he do if her sin was found out? Joanna thought of the French Queen Ingeborg, held fast at Étampes Castle for no fault of her own. She thought of the innocent Lady Alys, confined by Richard in Rouen for six long years. And she thought of the look on Llewelyn’s face should he ever learn of her infidelity. But each afternoon she found herself walking in the meadows, toward the hafod where Will awaited her.

  They would make love on the blanket, and for a brief while Joanna could forget her fears, even her guilt. Sometimes they would eat food Will smuggled from Rhosyr, and they would talk. Lying with his head in her lap, Will was relaxed enough to let down some of his defenses, to trust her with an occasional truth. He spoke of his boyhood at Bramber and Buellt, of his exile in France, conceded he’d earned his reputation for reckless risk-taking. He was intelligent, ambitious, and could be very amusing. He was also cynical and not overly burdened with scruples, was quite candid in admitting that when he wanted something, he set out to get it, rarely counting the cost. But every now and then Joanna would catch glimpses of another Will, glimpses of the boy he’d been and the man he might have become, and at such moments she would feel the sadness of loss, and yet, at the same time, a curious sense of vindication.

  She encouraged him to talk about Maude, and as painful as it was, she forced herself to listen attentively, prompted by a hazy hope that dwelling upon happier memories might somehow help him to forget the other, the horror. He talked sometimes of John, with such venom that she suspected he was testing her. She listened in silence to these embittered outbursts, without protest. It shamed her to remember her yearning to visit Worcester, to pray at John’s tomb. Each time she thought of what had happened in the darkness of that Windsor dungeon, she was overcome with revulsion and self-loathing. To love a man capable of such cruelty was to condone it, even to make herself an accomplice of sorts. And yet she had loved him, loved him and then grieved for him. Topaz rings and Maltese lapdogs and honeyed words. How cheaply she’d sold herself. How little it had taken to claim her heart.

  “How could you have been so rash? Whatever were you thinking of, Will?”

  At first Will had been amused by Joanna’s anger, but he was beginning to lose patience. “This is ridiculous, Joanna. All I did was to greet you when you entered the hall. I kissed your hand. Why should that give rise to gossip?”

  “You kissed my palm, a lover’s kiss! Jesus God, Will, what if someone had seen?”

  He shrugged. “But no one did, so why are you so fretful?”

  “Because Senena was standing not five feet away! You know how she hates me. If she ever suspected—”

  He stepped toward her, silenced her with a lingering kiss. “Forget about Senena, love. Let’s not waste time quarreling.”

  “I do not want to quarrel. But it frightens me, Will, that you would take such a risk, and it frightens me even more that you seem to find it amusing.” Will was not listening, though, had pulled her back against him, encircling her within his arms, kissing her throat. Joanna yielded, allowed him to draw her down onto the blanket. “Promise me,” she said huskily. “Promise me you’ll not be so reckless.”

  It may have been the quarrel, the fact that they’d resolved nothing. It may have been her realization that Will was excited by the danger of discovery, by the very risks she found so frightening. But for the first time the magic failed to take. She could not shut off her thoughts, could not surrender unconditionally to her body’s needs, was unable to reach climax. And afterward she was caught up in despair, hers the panicked sensations of a swimmer swept far beyond her depth. She turned on her side so Will would not see that she wept. Never had her sense of foreboding been so strong, a terrified certainty that this could end only in tragedy. The Lord God was a God of wrath, would punish her for so great a sin, would punish her and Will as they deserved. But what of Llewelyn? He would also suffer for her sin, and where was the fairness in that?

  Will had been disappointed by their lovemaking; he was too experienced not to know when a woman’s response was genuine and when it was feigned. He was irked now by her prolonged silence, and he wondered why women had to complicate things so unduly, why they had to bring so much baggage into bed with them, remorse and regrets and, inevitably, recriminations. Such qualms rarely stopped them from sinning
, he thought, just from truly enjoying it. He’d hoped Joanna might be different, should have known what a frail hope that was. Knight’s widow or King’s daughter, there was not a one of them who seemed capable of taking her pleasure as she found it, not even a woman like Joanna, as passionate as any he’d ever bedded.

  “Are you still vexed about Senena? Or are you having conscience pangs?”

  “Is that so surprising? Need I remind you that adultery is a sin?”

  Will sighed, raised himself up on his elbow. “What kind of sins are there, Joanna?”

  “What kinds? Mortal and venial,” she said, sounding puzzled, and he shook his head.

  “No, my love. There are secret sins and found-out sins, and it is foolish to worry about the first until it becomes the second. Think on it, Joanna. Who are we hurting as long as no one knows?” Leaning over, he nuzzled her neck. “You’re not the fool most women are; you ought to have learned that lesson by now.”

  He meant that as a compliment, for he truly did think she was more intelligent than most of her sex, and he was taken aback by her reaction. She sat up abruptly, gave him a look of utter outrage.

  “And just how am I to have learned such a lesson? By practice? You think I’ve done this before?”

  “You’re saying you’ve never taken a lover? I’m the first?” Will was surprised and pleased, but somewhat skeptical, too, and it showed in his face. Joanna jumped to her feet, began tugging at her disheveled clothing. He rose, too, put a hand upon her arm.

  “I did not mean to offend you, love. I just did not expect it. You are a beautiful woman, after all, and must have had more than your share of offers.”

  “And you think that is what determinés infidelity—opportunity?” Joanna was even angrier because she saw he was not taking her anger seriously. “By your measure, the only wife to be trusted would be one as plain as homespun. How does your own wife figure in your calculations, Will? I hear she’s a handsome woman; am I to assume, then, that she takes lovers?”