Emma Campion - A Triple Knot (50 page)

Joan had not seen Ned in a long while. She hardly recognized him. Where he had been lithesome and sharp-jawed he was bulky and bearded, his hair darkened, as if all the blood he’d shed … She shook her head to clear it of such nonsense. But at the feast afterward she was loath to approach him, remembering how he had played her and Thomas against each other. He was every inch a duke and a prince now, straight-backed, muscled, and bold, with that habit she’d first noticed in Calais of surveying a room to see that all had noticed him even more pronounced, as if insatiable in his hunger for admiration. Even her boys shied away from him. It was the gentle King Jean who drew them out, remarking that their uncle had spoken true when he’d bragged about them—they were handsome boys, and clever. Now Tom and John approached their uncle and Ned laughingly greeted them, meeting Joan’s eyes with a warm smile as he exaggerated his surprise at how they had grown, challenging them to punch him in the stomach, stumbling back. They were all giggling by the time Thomas joined them, finding himself warmly welcomed by Ned and invited to a small dinner the following day to discuss the situation in northern France.

Watching how deftly Ned manipulated her sons and her husband, Joan worried that they too easily succumbed to his charm. But she hid her misgivings as Thomas told her that night how Ned had promised to speed up his elevation to the title of Earl. He’d assured Thomas that he knew it was his work and not Lancaster’s that had brought a modicum of peace to northern France.

“I was wrong about him, Joan. He does wish us well.”

Joan warned him to tread with care, not to commit to anything until they saw whether Ned was true to his word. “He respects and values your service to the Crown, I’ve no doubt. But he’s no better than his father in rewarding such loyalty.”

Thomas bowed his head. “Of course. You know him better than I do.”

Was that a hint of resentment in his voice? God help her, even when absent Ned cast a shadow on their happiness.

T
HE RHYTHM OF THE NEXT THREE YEARS WAS ONE OF ARRIVALS AND
departures for Joan. They were not long in the Channel Islands when Thomas was made custodian of Cruyk Castle in Normandy, then governor of the Cotentin Peninsula, based at Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. Now that they would be biding in territory devastated by the English, Joan sent Maud home, entrusting her to the care of Efa and Blanche. The land was so desolate, the people embittered, starving, with little to lose. It was no place for a child. Nor did Joan have the time to spend with her—as Thomas traveled across the peninsula, she remained at Cruyk, then at Saint-Saveur, receiving supplicants, mediating contested claims to commands, garrisons, properties, rights of way. Though she was surrounded by clerks, sergeants, and a complete administrative staff, they were all making do with minimal comforts. Their supplies ebbed and flowed. The few elegant gowns she had brought remained in locked chests,
along with jewels and silver plate, except when she entertained someone of sufficient rank.

It was only when Joan was quite certain she was again with child that she reluctantly returned to England. Reluctantly, for she enjoyed the work and how Thomas appreciated it, treasuring their discussions, how he valued her opinion—but, most of all, she wished to be by his side as much as possible, jealous of what time they had left together.

The dowager queen Isabella had died while Joan was away, succumbing to a summer fever. It was whispered that she’d taken her own life with dangerously large doses of her medications, but Joan did not believe it. No one with such sins darkening her soul would welcome her reckoning. Joan felt the air a little clearer at home, her family safer.

But Otho, too, had died, mortally wounded in battle. For him, Joan mourned. Not for Isabella.

I
n late summer, Thomas returned home to meet for the first time his youngest child, Jeannette, on her first birthday. Fair and blue-eyed, she looked like her mother, and Thomas yearned to hold her, but whenever he reached for her she shrieked. Efa assured him that it was Jeannette’s disposition, always dissatisfied. But why should she come to him? He was a stranger with a scarred face, gray, thinning hair, and a halting gait. Even Joan had been taken aback upon his return. Though she quickly recovered and rushed into his embrace, he’d seen her shock. He was well aware that he’d aged in the year and a half since she had seen him. He felt the weight of his years, the heaviness that robbed him of speed and dulled his mind. Joan had changed as well—her figure was fuller and worry lines had worn a crease in her forehead—but to him she was more beautiful than ever.

It was a double celebration, Jeannette’s birthday and Thomas’s elevation, at long last, to the earldom of Kent.

But before he might settle down, become reacquainted with his family and his lands, and take his place in Parliament, he had one more mission to carry out for the king. He was to return as Edward’s captain and lieutenant in Normandy to cleanse it of Bretons, Gascons, and English in preparation for handing it back to the French in the New Year. It was an honorable post,
but the goal was impossible in so short a time, and it required diplomacy. Thomas’s strength was strategy—for diplomacy, he needed Joan.

She was ready, though she balked at his insistence that the girls stay behind in Blanche Wake’s household, under Efa’s care.

“I want Efa with us. Let us not pretend you are well, Thomas. You have more need of Efa than do our girls. Jeannette’s wet nurse will be more than sufficient in Blanche’s household.”

He tried to reason with her—Efa could not accompany him on forays—but Joan was adamant, and he backed off. It was little to ask in return.

O
N THE CROSSING
, J
OAN FELT A DREAD DEEP IN HER BONES
. S
HE
told herself it was the natural after-effect of two crises that had rattled her composure on their last days at Donington. Two days before their departure, Maud had a bad fall while playing with her brother John, spraining an ankle and suffering a deep, dangerous gash in her forearm. Efa had to stay behind to nurse her, neither Joan nor Thomas trusting anyone else with such a wound. And on the eve of their journey Thomas could not find the white hart silk. He’d not worn it while at home, so it might have gone missing anytime in the month they’d been at Donington, or perhaps the week in Windsor for his investiture as earl. Yes, he remembered seeing it there, in the chamber where Hugh and his squire had helped him with his armor while Ned gave him last-minute advice. The boys had to be chased out several times. Might it have been lost in the ensuing confusion? He tried to shrug it off, a superstition his confessor often chided him for. But they were both troubled by it.

Joan stood on the deck with Thomas, his arm round her shoulders, drawing her close. All seemed peaceful, even the water, with just enough breeze for the sails. She rested her head against his chest and listened for the soothing trio of sounds—his
heartbeat, his steady breath, the wind snapping the sails. She sought to calm her own racing mind, her fear that their daughter’s injuries and the loss of the silk were omens. But Thomas’s heart beat irregularly, and his breathing was shallow. She hated Edward for insisting on this last mission. Why could he not have included Thomas in the company escorting King Jean to Calais for a meeting regarding his unpaid ransom? Why this final, too heavy burden?

On landfall, Joan’s uneasiness grew as she crossed the dock, facing a barren, blasted landscape. Two years ago, she had thought it a wasteland. Now it seemed impossible that it had ever held life. Thomas had been right to insist that they leave the girls at home. But he was her immediate concern. All Efa’s work to ease his limp had been undone by the journey, and the suffering caused by his halting gait was visible in the set of his mouth, the tension in his jaw and eye. She wished her second-born had not been so careless with his little sister, letting Maud fall, robbing his father of Efa’s care.

As the men organized the company for the further journey, Joan, Helena, and the other servants sat on chests, calling out directions as needed. During a lull in the activity, Helena pointed out a solitary man leading his horse through the crowd. He was dressed more like a merchant than a soldier, and moved through the crowd as if not a part of it and quite comfortable with that. Joan watched as he strode up to Thomas, bowing, speaking to him with much gesturing. And now he approached her, escorted by Sir Hugh.

“This is Simon, my lady, apprentice to Master Adam, one of the king’s physicians, sent by royal command to assist you in seeing to the welfare of my lord’s company.” Hugh bowed and left the stranger to her.

Joan did not like how this Simon avoided meeting her gaze, his heavy-lidded eyes regarding the ground in false humility, as if he thought she’d not seen how boldly he’d walked among the
company of soldiers. “Assistant to the king’s physician, yet you are not familiar to me, Simon. How can that be?”

“At court Master Adam prefers me in his workroom, my lady. On campaign, I play a more active role. My orders are to travel with Earl Thomas.”

“He has never been offered your services before. Why now?”

A gesture toward the lifelessness surrounding them. “Old campaigners such as the earl know where to find healing plants and soils in the countryside. But all that has been destroyed. I was sent with supplies that I pray will be sufficient for the duration of his mission.”

It seemed possible this unpleasant man was God’s answer to her prayers for Thomas’s well-being. Joan nodded to him and sent him back to Sir Hugh.

Through the ravished countryside they traveled in a large company—household, military and administrative staff—to Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, past burned fields, homes, towns, and villages destroyed, churches fortified to protect the survivors. They were an uncharacteristically mute party, speaking only when necessary.

Thomas spent the first week settling in, waiting for his team of outriders to report the lay of the land. He laughed at Joan’s continued discomfort with Simon.

“He assumes an authority he doesn’t deserve,” she said.

“A little power can turn the head of a little man, my love. I will relieve you of him on the morrow.”

As Thomas and his company of soldiers began their journey through the towns and citadels of Normandy, Joan settled with her women and servants in the château, well protected within massive walls.

As before, word spread that an English noblewoman was at the château. Joan gave what hospitality she could to a few disenfranchised noblewomen, widowed or left unprotected by husbands taken prisoner. Ignoring the advice of her counselors,
she encouraged the women to dictate their stories to the clerks, stating their needs and the condition of their properties, so that she might hand over the information to the French administrators who would follow. The women were frustrated that although Joan offered material comfort—cots, food—it was only for a few days at best. They thrust their children before them, lifting their tunics to show protruding ribs. But there was little enough for the garrison and Thomas’s large company, particularly when supplies were still uncertain.

Joan did what she could. Her heart was not easy.

T
HOMAS AND HIS MEN SLEPT ROUGH ON THE MARCH
,
KNOWING
better than to trust their luck to the hospitality of those King Edward had ordered out of their comfortable holdings. They spent their days riding down armed bands, surrounding the churches they’d fortified and smoking them out. Thomas was painfully aware that he was growing too old for such campaigning. The worst were the sudden attacks, when he must dismount without aid, rushing for cover. A week of it and his old thigh injury made mounting, dismounting, and any sudden movement an agony. Each morning and evening, Simon worked a soothing balm into Thomas’s muscles, but he did not have Efa’s touch.

Hugh urged Thomas to return to the château and use his sergeants for the forays. “Trust us. We can carry on as you would, my lord. I pray you, let us do this for you.”

When he became a drag on his men, Thomas decided that Hugh was right. He would participate in one more foray from the camp, then head back to the citadel.

On that morning his party came upon a renegade band and chased after them, too late realizing their mistake. They’d been led into a trap, an abandoned village surrounded by skilled archers. Seeking cover in the burned-out shell of a house, Thomas lost his balance and fell through rotten boards, tearing a long,
deep gash in his right thigh. As if that were not bad enough, the fall reopened an old wound below. He’d lost a great deal of blood before his squire, Giles, managed to stop the flow with a belt high on his thigh. Between the pain and the need to keep the belt taut, Thomas could not walk. While the battle raged he lay there, impotent, cursing himself for his stubborn pride.

Simon reached him from the camp a day later, sucking air through his teeth as he packed the wound with a foul-smelling ointment and sewed it closed.

Thomas refused milk of poppy to deaden the pain. “Not until we reach the château.”

“My lord, you must rest. Your body needs all the strength left to fight against the corruption of the flesh and blood.”

Had Thomas taken Hugh’s advice when offered, he would be safe at the château now. He finally agreed to the milk of poppy, swimming in and out of consciousness as slowly, by litter, they made the journey back to Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, his company focused on his protection.

A
RUNNER HAD BROUGHT THE NEWS OF
T
HOMAS
’
S INJURY TO THE
château, and Joan rode out to meet him with a midwife who had come to her offering her services in exchange for food. Joan trusted Gabriella far more than she did Simon. They wore men’s clothes to ride more swiftly, and she met the company before nightfall.