Emma Campion - A Triple Knot (48 page)

“I could use your counsel. And I thought to impress upon
Master Owen and Sam Trent the personal interest I will take in their work on this leaking pile. Why did you not choose Woking?”

“Elizabeth wished to stay there.”

“Ah, the wilful widow.”

The timing of their arrival proved providential, for chaos ensued as the river rose with the summer storms. In no time, the carpenter and the mason understood the enormity of the work ahead.

And Joan was relieved by the brevity of Ned’s stay. He did indeed ask her advice about various members of his household, but, mostly, he focused on the boys, entertaining them with his gift of mimicry and his tall tales.

He visited often thereafter, showering the boys with gifts and spending time with them, while in the evenings playing chess with Joan and discussing practical matters. She began to relax with him.

Until one visit, when he told her something that he knew would upset her, something that Thomas had told him in confidence. She sent him away without permitting him to bid farewell to the boys.

T
HE BOYS WERE GROWING SO QUICKLY
—
THE BABY
, J
OHN
,
WAS ALREADY
two, Tom four. Thomas had been gone so much of their young lives that it took several days for them to feel easy with him. He had good news, some he shared with Joan right away (he was now the king’s lieutenant in Brittany) and some he could not yet decide how to tell her (his latest petition to the pope had been granted, and their marriage blessed twice over). He put off revealing his insecurity until he’d enjoyed some time at home.
Within a few days the boys were following him about, showing off their ponies, their dogs, their favorite climbing trees. And then, just as Thomas was ready to talk to Joan, Ned arrived.

He strode in with his entourage as if he were the lord of Donington Castle, eliciting shrieks of excitement from Tom and John as they searched his pack.

“Ned and his men are quite at home here,” Thomas noted to Joan as they lay in bed that night. “His men move through the castle with easy familiarity. How frequent are the prince’s visits?”

She’d been lazily drawing circles on his legs with her toes, teasing him, but stopped now, propping herself up on one elbow to see his expression. “Ned brought the mason and the carpenter, and sought my council, as he did when we were children. He said he did so with your blessing. Is that not true?”

“I recall no such thing. And I don’t like his staying here when I’m away.”

“Was it his suggestion that you petition the pope without my knowledge?” She nodded at his curse. “Yes, Ned told me.”

“He promised to tell no one, most of all you. God’s blood, how he played me.”

“Thomas, this is about us, our life together. Why could you not share this with me? Do you doubt the legitimacy of our marriage? I could not believe it. I sent Ned away as punishment for bringing such disturbing news. Why did you tell him and not me?”

He bought a moment to think how best to phrase it by pouring the remainder of the brandywine they’d brought to bed. “It was the new pope. I wanted to ensure that there would be no question of our children’s legitimacy. Especially Tom. Do you not want him to inherit if anything were to happen to me?”

“Of course I do, and you should have known that. Don’t you trust me?”

He raked a hand through his hair. “Of course I do. God help
me, I believed all Ned said about standing back, waiting for us to come to him.”

“He has a knack for overstepping.” Joan sat up, taking the cup from his hand for a sip. “So we are well and truly wed.” He relaxed when she took his arm and drew it round her, leaning her head against him. “No more secrets, my love,” she whispered. The storm had passed.

“It is time you joined me in Brittany.”

“Are you serious? Is this because of Ned?”

“I am. And so what if it is?”

She snuggled closer. “Yes. It
is
time.”

On hearing the plan, Ned urged them to send young Tom to the Tower with other noble youths, to ensure his safety in case, God forbid, something should happen to them.

“My sons come with us,” Thomas said.

The prince looked to Joan. “What says my sweet cousin?”

“I agree. We will go to Brittany as a family.”

The prince’s long fingers toyed with the hilt of his dagger, his eyes sweeping the room, pausing at the children at play with Efa in the corner. Thomas noticed her glance up, feeling the prince’s gaze, then bend to the boys and suggest that they visit the mews. The prince looked again at Thomas. He bowed. “May God watch over you.”

It was the customary phrase. But in Ned’s rendering it sounded like a warning of trouble ahead.

W
ET
,
WINDY
,
COLD
, B
RITTANY WAS NOTHING LIKE WHAT
J
OAN HAD
imagined. Though, to be fair, Thomas had warned her that the terrain was rough, and the men over whom he must gain
control rougher still. She’d assured him that she welcomed the challenge. But, at the moment, travel-weary and cold, with two whining boys queasy from riding in a cart with a wheel that wobbled, and frightened by Jester’s barking, Joan wished she were back home in Donington—better yet, at Upholland, lying in soft grass on a warm summer day, the boys rolling about beside her. Not huddled into her fur-lined cloak, her hood drawn down over her face, pacing back and forth on a slippery rock working out a cramp from riding an unfamiliar palfrey made skittish by the high voices of the boys and the yapping terrier. Thomas had ridden on ahead to alert the servants at the citadel that they would be there by sunset, and in need of a blazing fire, hot food, and dry beds. He’d been gone far longer than she’d expected.

Well, then. If she meant to prove herself a good partner, valuable to Thomas in just such difficult circumstances, it was time to steady herself and calm the boys. She picked up John, handed Tom Jester’s leash, and called to Efa and one of the men to accompany them on a walk. The boys were soon cheered by the activity, John kicking to be let down to look at the animal skull his brother had discovered beside a rock, Jester rushing about them, answering their happy shouts with raucous barking.

“They’ll keep the wolves at bay with all that clatter,” the guard remarked with a laugh. “You’ve good little travelers there, my lady. I wouldn’t have thought.”

The praise warmed her, and she crouched down by the boys to let them show her their precious finds—a beetle, the skull, a bird claw, a worn shoe, the leather brittle with age and moisture. Efa wove the items into a tale that enthralled them on the walk back.

Thomas’s face, on his return, challenged Joan’s resolve. The citadel that he’d been promised proved uninhabitable without far more work than they had either the time or the men to devote to it, having been abandoned to animals and the elements
far too long. But it was what they had until his men found a more suitable abode. Joan lifted her chin and suggested that they move on so they might have it set up before nightfall.

In truth, the citadel was but a stone shell precariously perched on a rocky outcrop over a rushing stream, the forest reclaiming it from three sides. Joan hid her dismay from Thomas, calling on Efa to organize the household. The boys thought it a grand campsite, particularly when Thomas’s men set up tents for them in what had been the great hall.

After the evening meal, all but those on watch lingered round the fire listening to Efa’s tales from her Welsh childhood. She was a gifted storyteller, a woman of many voices, and the men listened as raptly as the boys. Joan sat with her head resting on Thomas’s shoulder, John in her lap, young Tom snuggled beside her, holding Jester. A moment to cherish. But when Efa began the tale of the washer at the ford, Thomas suggested that it was time for the boys to go to sleep.

“I begin to understand why your mother sent Efa away. This is a tale presaging death. The boys will be fearful whenever your women wash at the river.”

Joan thought it prudent to instill in the boys a wariness of the waterways in this rocky landscape with their swift, treacherous currents, and of strangers, no matter how innocuous their occupations. But it grew late, and she was loath to spoil the evening with an argument.

That night, the wind wailed about them, setting their tents thrumming, and Joan wished Thomas were sharing her bed instead of Helena, Efa, and the two boys. But her husband’s place was with the men, ordering the night watch.

A few days later they moved to an abandoned farmhouse, small but quiet and dry, where they slept in one great room until Thomas’s men found a much larger, fortified manor house that suited their purpose.

But here they discovered a different problem. The house
was said by the local people to be haunted, and they refused to work there, forcing Thomas’s men far afield in their search for sufficient servants. Many of those they found did not speak French, and even those who supposedly did were difficult to understand. Efa’s knowledge of Welsh helped, and young Tom and John quickly came to understand Breton and the odd mix of French and Breton the servants spoke.

The “haunts” persisted. The locals had said they were vengeful spirits conjured by the blood spilled on the land. But Joan found it curious that these spirits never manifested in human form to frighten the intruder but, rather, seemed content to help themselves to supplies and occasionally topple furniture or spook the horses. Joan alerted the household to follow any locals they found on the property, reporting petty thefts and the destruction of property. The “hauntings” soon ceased.

Thomas’s greatest headaches in Brittany were his own captains. Many of them had been there long enough to take on a territorial ownership, holding the countryside ransom in order to pay for their needs and a little more. After all, the king’s council expected them to survive by rents from the landowners and towns they were “protecting.” It reminded Joan of the wounded soldiers waiting for passage home from Calais.

“My cousin the king plays at being King Arthur come again at tourneys, but in reality he has no chivalry, squeezing out the last bit of loyalty from his people and then discarding them.”

“Do you think I don’t see that, Joan?” Thomas rubbed his blind eye and reached for the brandywine.

“Forgive me. What can I do?”

“The wives are eager to meet the Countess of Kent, cousin to the king of England. It’s been several months. It is time. You will do this?”

“Of course!” Anything to tease out a smile from him.

And so Joan made it her business to seek out the captains in their own fortified manors in order to meet their wives, many
of whom were Breton or French. Thomas was partly right; her status proved a blessing in many instances, but a curse in others. Many of the captains and their wives warmed to her, looking on Thomas with new respect, that he should be wed to such a highborn woman. But some of the captains and their men resented any representative of the king they blamed for leaving them to fend for themselves. By extension, they blamed his man and the wife he’d brought along to impress them with a pedigree they considered poisonous.

At first, Joan was distracted by the animosity simmering beneath her hosts’ showy courtesy, truncating her visits when the discomfort grew unbearable. But gradually she grew more confident and ventured longer visits, farther afield. Too confident, and too ready to flaunt it. One afternoon, she chose to move on from one manor to another nearby, which Thomas had explicitly warned her to avoid, thinking to surprise him with her diplomatic skills. Before they reached the gatehouse, her small party was surrounded by a much larger one, weapons in hand.

“Run, my lady,” whispered the guard closest to her as he signaled to his men to charge their opponents.

Spurring her horse, Joan rushed into the trees, the captain’s men in hot pursuit. Using a move Ned had taught her, one of his favorite tourney maneuvers, Joan slipped her feet from the stirrups, drew her cloak tight round her, and flung herself sideways into the brush, rolling, rolling, as the horsemen thundered past, still chasing her horse.

Scratched and bruised but, thankfully, able to move her limbs, Joan crawled beneath a mound of fallen logs and lay still, fighting to stay calm, pushing away thoughts of what might be her fate if found, cringing as one of the horses bolted in her direction. God watched over her, or one of Efa’s charms, for the horse leaped right over her and galloped on.

The sounds of fighting faded, and still she waited, her head pounding, a scratch on her neck freely bleeding, an ankle throbbing
and sending shooting pains up her leg. At last she heard a familiar voice. “Show me, lad, take me there,” he said softly. It was Hugh, now Thomas’s first sergeant, his voice coming from the direction in which the horse had run. He was almost upon her when she found the courage to crawl out from her hiding place. The horse shied, but Hugh steadied him. “God have mercy, my lady,” Hugh whispered, dismounting, nodding his men on. “You’re bleeding!”

“It’s no wonder, throwing myself off my horse into these brambles. I’ve a sprained ankle as well.”

The men who had gone on called out that it was safe.

Hugh helped Joan onto the runaway horse and led her home.

Thomas held her tight in bed that night, asking if she wished to go home. But she wanted only to learn to defend herself.

“I should have brought my bow. All that practice and it never occurred to me.”

“You shouldn’t need it.”

“Just as you shouldn’t need to placate the king’s abandoned men?”

The very next day, Thomas’s retainers set to teaching her to defend herself with a dagger and even to wield a modest sword. Tom and John cheered her on as she trained in the yard, her skirts tucked up in her girdle, her hair gathered in a scarf, dancing about with one of Thomas’s sergeants, ducking and thrusting. She beamed with pride when the sergeant praised her skill to Thomas.