The First Princess of Wales (11 page)

Caught up in the frivolity and excitement of the moment, Joan threw four weeks of caution to the winds. Though she had refused such suggestions or inquiries before, today she had decided to meet Prince Edward alone as he had asked—only for a moment—since this summer idyll he had made for her at Windsor was nearly over. He would be going off on a lengthy progress through the midland shires and she might not see him ’til Yule time, he had whispered. After all, he had been such a true, chivalrous gentleman these last weeks she had almost come to believe her initial assessment of him as arrogant, teasing, and demanding was quite wrong.

She crushed the little note he had sent her in her warm palm as she set out with a quick wave to Mary and Constantia. A tiny, walled private garden directly under the Brunswick Tower, the note said. Outdoors in a garden within the castle walls—indeed, that sounded safe enough, she had reasoned. It was hardly some private room in a deserted side hall of the labyrinth of the castle or some distant, forest pond.

She had chosen her garments more carefully lately than she would like to admit. This mauve-hued kirtle and
surcote
were one of five the queen had ordered made for her; the Plantagenets were generous to their own chosen few without a fault. The embroidery on the split-sided
surcote
depicted cavorting unicorns, and Joan loved it dearly. The enamel- and ivory-studded girdle low on her hips was another trinket from Isabella; yet in quiet moments, Joan had wondered if some of the bounty had been encouraged by Prince Edward. How pleased, how thrilled her dear brother Edmund would be to see how she’d gotten on here in the world of the great Plantagenets in the six weeks he had been gone. He was due here by today surely, for the tournament was tomorrow and both he and her younger brother’s liege, Lord Salisbury, were entered in its extensive pageantry of the joust.

Easily enough, she found the little garden tucked into the northeast corner of the castle walls between two towers directly under the prince’s suite of rooms. The two same impassive-faced guards who always trailed the prince about when he divested himself of his laughing, noble cronies stood outside the little wooden door. The wall of the garden was high, a very private place from all.

She was pleased with herself at feeling so calm of late whenever she faced him. Her pulse never failed to beat faster and the little butterfly wings fluttered when she looked directly into his crystalline, blue eyes; yet she was calm. It was as if lately they had been one happy and friendly family, not that the queen was quite like a mother, not like Marta had been, and she could never picture the avid-eyed King Edward as a father. Still, Isabella, young and flighty though she seemed, could mayhap be the sister she had never had and Edward—

He sat on a little stone bench under a quince-apple tree directly in the center of the garden when the guard swung wide the door for her. Leggy rose bushes in midsummer bloom above stark purple- and blue-fringed gentian edged the small, grassy space. The prince was garbed all in deepest, midnight blue with a huge linked-gold neckchain stretched across his shoulders and chest and a plain, wide leather belt low on his narrow hips.

“
Chérie,
you came this time!”

She returned his eager smile and let him take her hands. “I was not aware there were other times you were languishing in some garden and I did not come, Your Grace. The other times I told you clearly I could not come.”

“Would not come,” he corrected. “And will you not call me by my name, just when we are alone?”

“I—I do not think it a good idea. After all, we are so seldom alone.”

“Not my fault,
chérie.
But agree to my wishes and I can arrange it anytime you send for me.”

“I send for you! My dear lord—”

“My dear Lord Edward, then. I will have it so, my little Joan. Jeannette.”

The diminutive French sobriquet he had taken to using lately to address her when no one could hear hung there between them tender and affectionate.

“My Lord Edward, then,” she breathed softly.

“Since we are soon to be parted, my Jeannette,” he went on as if he had rehearsed some difficult speech, “and since I have taken the calculated risk of introducing you to many knaves about the court who may not be so restrained and circumspect when I am gone, I wish you to listen most carefully to the words I have to tell you.”

His eyes skimmed her intent face and dipped once to the high, sweet breasts he had so often dreamed of touching, of possessing and tasting. “These last few lovely weeks when I have tarried here at Windsor, we have been almost family, have we not? Dear friends, at least. And I believe you trust me now.”

Her quick smile wrenched his heart, and he felt the too-familiar cresting passion she always aroused in him though lately he had carefully cloaked his desires beneath the crushing armor plate of self-control to win her heart. “Just listen, Jeannette,
s’il vous plaît,
” he managed.

“I do not wish you to be misled about my true feelings for you,” he went on. “I have three sisters and they are quite enough. I do not wish another nor do I seek only a female confidante, though indeed you have become somewhat that to me with your firm, independent mind and tart, honest tongue.”

“My Lord Edward, I think—”

“And so, if that clever little brain of yours can calculate half as well as I deem it can, you must conclude my need for your company is of quite some other sort.”

She colored as she always did so tantalizingly when he teased her or gave her a direct, piercing look which unbeknownst to her shook him as completely as it did her. “This cannot be, Your Grace.”

“St. George, it is, and you know it, too! You are no simpleton, Jeannette, though an untutored country maid in the world’s ways still. I flatter your intelligence and show you my total concern for your well-being by telling you plain in words before I claim what must be mine.”

The old stunning impact, the flowing, desperate sweet rush of emotion she had first felt with him turned her limbs to jelly as their eyes held. “I must go, my dear lord. Please.”

“No. Sit here and listen to me. You are not some coward to flee. Sit here. I am trying to just explain and not to touch you yet.”

“We cannot—even should I consent. The queen. Isabella. We cannot.”

“I will be gentle and tender. I will cherish you and protect you. These things can be accomplished in secret. You could have your own room and a discreet tiring maid.”

“I would like to have my own room and my dear Marta from Liddell, but—”

“And would you not like to have me,
ma Jeannette
? I desire you very, very greatly and have since I first saw you that rainy day you just appeared. I have a townhouse in London. You could go to visit your mother once you are at Westminster. There are disguises, secret rooms, excuses to escape—”

His words pierced her, shattering her steely calm and shredding her little world of peace within. Images of a rapt kiss, his hands on her body the way the other
demoiselles
whispered about such things screamed at her from her deepest dreams and most buried, secret desires. How many times had she heard Mary or Constantia elaborate such things between a willing maid and a forceful man? But this was her, the queen’s sensible Joan and the Prince of Wales!

His hands were gentle on her shoulders as he turned her firmly to him. “Jeannette, we are both young but let me show you a prince who knows how to please you.”

“You speak not of love, my lord,” she managed, her voice a shaky whisper. “I am certain you are used to merely commanding any lady you fancy and she is yours to do with as you will, but you cannot expect—you have no right,” she floundered. “After all, I am untutored, as you say, and well enough born so that the queen said I may expect a fine marriage, and I will not bear someone’s bastard children even if they be yours!”

He looked as though she had struck him. Had he been so certain of her, of his power and charm then? She was afraid for the first time as she saw his jaw set; his wide eyes grew ice-cold, glinting blue.

“St. George, Jeannette, I offer you the Prince of England’s heart and you sit there like stone and will have none of it. The hell with reasoning words!”

His grip on her shoulders tightened, and he slid her to him across the tiny space of bench. Soft thigh pressed to iron one as he wrapped his arms around her and crushed her back. His mouth was warm, firm, demanding the response of open lips she gave him mindlessly. His hands skimmed her back and hips, kneading, caressing. She slipped sideways so that he held her cradled across his chest. She could not breathe, could not think. Fascinating, violent colors jumped and reeled through her stunned mind.

“Jeannette, Jeannette, my sweet, you will yield to me, you must.” She felt him tugging at the low neckline of her kirtle, impatiently brushing the mauve brocade from her shoulder. Dizzy, she returned kiss for burning kiss until the shock of realizing he had bared her breasts. Yet there was more, for under her skirts, a big calloused palm stroked up her hose, past her knees.

“Jeannette, you will come to me. You will let me,” he gasped. She wanted to deny him but found herself nodding wildly.

From somewhere then, out there in the world, a quick knock resounded with the words, “My Prince, the queen!”

Edward cursed and hauled her roughly upright against him to hide her breasts. Flushed, disheveled, holding to each other, they faced an open door filled terribly by the gaping Queen Philippa and Joan’s livid brother Edmund.

The prince spun Joan away while she tugged up her sleeves and bodice, but she could hardly stand. A trembling racked her from deep inside. The queen’s sharp tone lashed them like a whip.

“Edward! Joan, like this! My Lord Edmund, I had no idea, I swear to you—no idea!”

Joan’s stomach nearly heaved in shame and agony, and the rose bushes and tall walls cartwheeled crazily as she covered herself and turned to face them. To her dismay and surprise, the prince was in such a sputtering rage he could not speak.

“And this is why you condescend to remain about our court an entire fortnight when you could hardly abide an overnight visit lately, my son?” Queen Philippa demanded. “For shame, and with my dear and once-trusted young ward whom Lord Edmund here has entrusted to our royal house for safekeeping. I thought you had always been above such foolish philanderings. Your royal father may be amused, but I assure you, I am not.”

The prince’s tone was fully as outraged as his mother’s. “Leave off, Your Grace. I will not be whipped like some fond schoolboy. It just happened. You may believe it or not as you will, but it is the first time like this and honorable.”

“Honorable?” Edmund of Kent roared, and Joan was thankful his foul temper was reined in by the fact the prince was the one he had caught with her. “Your Grace,” Edmund shouted until he remembered he was addressing his queen and lowered his strident voice, “I did not rear the little chit to act like a wanton, I assure you. But she has been badly spoiled in my absence at Liddell over the years and her willfulness has gotten quite out of hand. Joan, come with me now and we shall deal with this.”

“Calm, calmly now, my Lord Edmund,” the queen intoned, her plump chin quivering in her restrained passion. “The Lady Joan has been entrusted to me here and I promise you I shall keep a closer eye on her. Besides, our dear son Edward leaves us for several months after the tourney tomorrow. Joan is quite lovely—naïve and tempting—and of marriageable age, of course. I see now I must give some time to thinking of that and soon.

“Lady Joan, you may go now to my rooms and await me there,” the queen continued. “His Grace, the Prince Edward, will be quite busy now preparing for his part in the tournament tomorrow and then, unfortunately, departing from us until Yuletide. I assure you, my Lord Edmund, had I not been so indisposed after the birth of the Princess Mary, such foolishness never would have happened.”

Joan pulled free of the prince’s light steadying touch on her elbow. Never had she felt so humiliated or beaten. Ignoring Edward though she should have curtsied as she left him, she dropped a low curtsy only to the queen. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. It was great foolishness on my part, as you say, and I hope you may find it somewhere in your kind heart to forgive me for I shall never forgive myself or let some such occur again.” Her voice was cold, haughty. Why did he not say something, she thought—curse her or blame her at least? It would be just like him!

Yet just as she walked stiffly around the queen and her still-furious brother, she heard an icy voice to match her own.

“Aye, forgive us both, my lady mother. It was but a moment’s whim and got quite out of hand. Summer days and rosebuds, you know. The maid spoke aright—a mere moment’s foolishness which shall not be repeated, and as you say, after the morrow, I shall be gone. Little Joan, I daresay, is a bit of an innocent, so I would not rush to marry her off to some poor scoundrel who just wants some good Plantagenet blood to breed his heirs, by St. George.”

Fury and palpable hate pounding in her ears, Joan fled headlong up the curving tower steps toward the queen’s apartments only to curse Edward Plantagenet, Prince of Wales, when she was halfway up and beat and kick the uncaring stone walls until the last shred of her strength was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
he rest of that fateful day had been endless agony. The queen had been kind enough, especially when Joan had assured her there was no true feeling or ties between herself and the prince. Her utter hatred and contempt for him she dared not voice. And her brother Edmund had stayed away until he calmed down enough to be civil. He was pleased, he admitted, that she had found such favor with the king, queen, and Princess Isabella despite the one most grievous and dangerous error with His Grace, the Prince of Wales. And now, he assured her, Queen Philippa would be certain to make her a marvelous matrimonial match.

Joan knew her eyes were swollen from hours of silent crying into her pillow, and her face was pale and drawn from lack of sleep as dawn lit the window of her little room the next morn. Yesterday’s shameful memories were further inflamed by the note the prince had dared to send her through his lutenist Hankin. She had read it again and again, memorized it, before she burned it as he had bidden, though she believed not a word it said:

Ma Jeannette,

Please understand my words to them were for your own protection since I must go away. My dearest wish was to wear your token before them all at the jousts tomorrow, but now for your sake I must not request it, nor may you offer it.

If they speak of marriage for you, do not resist; neither agree nor take any vows.

Please trust me in this, and we must surely meet again soon.

Hold to that moment we both wanted to be as one, before the serpents crashed into our apple garden in Eden.

My deepest admiration and unalterable affection.

E.

Curse him, she thought for the hundredth time since yesterday.
He
was the serpent, the evil temptation, and she was well rid of him. Let him carry anyone’s damned token to the lists—anyone who was foolish enough to believe he was an honorable knight. Let him lose at the joust and let him go off for months to his castles or palaces or fine houses in London. Meet him there at some private house in London! Submit to his treacherous caresses or fall victim to his words meant to trap and ensnare? Never! Love him? Saints, she
hated
him and always would. She could not wait until the morrow when this terrible charade they called a tournament of honor was over and he was gone.

Bitterness welled up inside at her own stupidity. What had suddenly become of all her vows to herself, to Marta, and even to Lyle Wingfield about never allowing any forbidden love—any love at all—to hurt her? It was not really love, of course, but here in just a little over one brief month she had managed to get her life into terrible tangles. If only she would not have had to face her brother Edmund and the queen. She wished she had been ordered back to Liddell Manor in quiet Kent forever!

She watched through prickly eyelids as gray turned to silver, then to gold at the window of her little chamber. She pulled herself off her mussed pallet, for Constantia and Mary shared the only real bed in the room and she would rather sleep alone anyway. She washed her face with last night’s cool water, rather than calling one of the maids, and mechanically began to comb through her snarled hair.

She would get through this day and with a smile on her face, she vowed. She must. Her only consolation was that surely neither the queen nor Edmund would tell anyone what they had seen and surmised in the little walled garden, and the guards would not talk unless the prince did. Oh, saints! What if he boasted of his easy conquest to some of his sophisticated, laughing cronies? If he did, she would kill him—kill him and be beheaded for treason unjustly even as her poor father had been.

“Up so early,
petite
Joan?” Constantia’s sleepy voice came to her. “Your first tournament, I know, and your prince is always so magnificent in them, is he not, Mary?”

“Um? Oh, aye, always
magnifique.
”

“He is hardly my prince, Constantia. I need to be dressed early because I am to go to the queen’s apartments to walk down with her.”

“Oh, dear. Since when?” As Constantia sat up and stretched, the bounty of her russet hair spread like a rich cloak to cover her full, naked breasts where the sheet fell away. Joan averted her eyes not for modesty but because Constantia’s pointed breasts recalled her own too much as the prince used them yesterday for his own amusement.

“Since last evening when I spoke with her in her rooms,” Joan answered. “I forgot to tell you. I hope our dear Princess Isabella will not mind.”

“Mind? By the Blessed Virgin, what can any of the royal brood say when the queen orders? I just wonder what it means.”

“It means naught but she wishes me to sit near her, I warrant. I am her legal ward despite the fact my brother is here from Kent for the tournament now. I will just dress first and be gone out of your way.”

“Fine, only call one of the maids which ladies are supposed to use, Joan. The Princess Isabella has nine though she only favors a few. You, at least today, could benefit from the use of one.” Constantia snuggled back under the down-filled coverlet, and Joan quickly turned away before she could see she had been crying.

The remark about calling a maid to help her today—was that an indirect remark about her lack of cosmetics or her hairstyle? Saints, what did it matter now? she thought. When the prince disappeared, they would probably all revert to their initial mistrust of her anyway. All she wanted was for this once-so-promising day to be over. She went wearily to the door to ask a linkboy to summon a maid.

A
veritable parade of important-looking persons were filing from Queen Philippa’s suite of rooms as a lady-in-waiting announced Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, and Joan entered. Queen Philippa sat on a heavy, carved chair within a circle of courtiers, all gorgeously arrayed in their tournament finery of rich brocades, silks, and velvets. Then Joan realized the entourage was almost all women, and the few men standing about or talking quietly were quite elderly, save one reddish-brown-haired man leaning heavily on a walking stick and wearing a rakish-looking patch over one eye. By now, she thought, the celebrated young or middle-aged warriors of the realm were decking themselves in shiny metal armor as hard as Prince Edward’s heart.

The queen caught Joan’s eye and summoned her over with a flick of a plump finger. Beautifully attired in golden-figured brocade, the queen looked stiff and suddenly foreboding. A jeweled coronet was cleverly attached to her high, angular headpiece and a gauzy, gold-hued wimple framed her white face.

“
Ma belle,
Jeannette, here, over here,
ma chérie,
” Her Grace called, and the woman’s clever eyes noted well how the girl started at her use of the pet name by which she had been told her son, the prince, was wont to call her of late. “As soon as the royal and very persistent Doctor John Gaddesden is finished peering at a perfectly recovered and healthy woman, we shall have a brief blessing for today’s events and go out. Doctor John,
are
you quite through? Here, Joan, hold Duchie while I chase this dear old pest away.”

Joan’s hands were immediately filled by the queen’s favorite white lapdog, and she tried to hold the squirming, little hound so he would not shed white hair on her golden gown. When she had him settled comfortably, she breathed a small sigh of relief. The queen today seemed friendly and normal despite her use of the little nickname the prince had dubbed on her. Then Joan noted that old Doctor Gaddesden stared not at his royal patient but at her. His voice was high pitched, like old leaves rustling.

“This is the maid from Kent then, I have heard spoken of. My friend Morcar from your home castle speaks well of you,
demoiselle,
and, I believe, reads grand things for you in the heavens as surely as I could read them on your face, I daresay.”

“My lord doctor, I do of course know Morcar, for he was once my father’s astrologer and now has come to court when I did to serve the king privately. Morcar has come for king’s service, I mean, and not I, milord.” She felt herself color slightly at the
faux pas,
realizing several of the queen’s intimates standing about had hushed to hear the conversation.

“Ah, of course, lady.”

“As for Morcar’s prognostications, Doctor Gaddesden, I believe you are mistaken,” Joan added, hoping their conversation was not annoying the queen whose avid eyes under her pleated wimple and jeweled headpiece seemed to take it all in. The little dog wriggled in Joan’s arms giving her an excuse to look away while the doctor cleared his throat and shook his brown head which seemed sifted with a snow of white hairs.

“Ah, indeed, as you say, Lady Joan. Then perhaps I did not hear Morcar aright. I must tell you though, my dear, you look drawn and exhausted. Some sort of midsummer fever perhaps and, Your Grace, I would suggest for the
demoiselle
an herbal tea brewed of ash leaves and butterbur for—”

“Be off, my lord doctor,” the queen’s voice interrupted him, suddenly impatient. “The child is as well as I, nothing a good several days’ recovery with rest alone after the excitement of today will not cure. Is that not right, Jeannette?”

Joan caught the intent, the cloaked warning even though the fumbling Doctor Gaddesden seemed not to as he continued to stand about in his distinctive doctor’s gown of purple and red with its furred hood. But the queen, quick and pert despite her corpulence, bustled up and shifted the little lapdog Duchie to yet another’s hands before her beringed hand gently took Joan’s wrist.

“There, my dear little charge, do not look so dismayed,” the queen whispered, bending close. “As I told you clearly yesterday, I shall not hold a foolish indiscretion against you and no one shall know of it. I have quite promised my son Edward that, stubborn tyrant that he can be at times. Besides, there will be no need for further ado.”

A stubborn tyrant indeed, Joan mused. And had the knave then promised his mother he would never pay court to Joan again or some such? Saints, it would be just like the conceited, despicable wretch.

“And so, dearest little Joan, before our mass here for the success of our dear, royal family and the safety of all at the lists today,” the queen was saying grandly, no longer whispering, “I should like to introduce you to your noble escort for the day, Thomas, Lord Holland from Lancashire, a dear, dear friend to me and my lord king.”

From the cluster of staring folk stepped a man she had noted: tall, stocky, leaning slightly on a carved walking stick, and wearing a brown silk patch over his left eye. His other eye was an intense coppery hue that matched his reddish-brown hair; sun freckles dusted his ruddy skin. He seemed much older than Joan, yet perhaps not old—about her brother Edmund’s age of thirty and four or five years, perhaps. His face was pleasant enough, bearing a wryly amused or merely curious expression. His velvet garments of deepest russet made him appear almost coppery-colored from head to toe.

Joan dipped in a slight curtsy, wide-eyed at the suddenness of the queen’s unannounced and blatant matchmaking. She steeled herself as the queen reached out and joined both Thomas Holland’s and Joan’s hands within her plump-fingered grasp.

“There now. I know you shall both enjoy the day, and fine things shall come of this new friendship. See to her, please, Lord Thomas.”

The man nodded, but his eye followed the queen’s bustling wake as she led them over to that part of her huge greeting chamber arrayed for a little chapel. An altar, tiers of wavering votive candles, and a large wooden gilded and painted statue of the Blessed Virgin lined one whole corner of the room.

Fine things shall come . . . this new friendship, the queen’s last words echoed in Joan’s tumbled thoughts. This man, Lord Thomas Holland of Lancashire, dear friend to the queen and her lord king, still held her hand possessively in his own large, warm one until, surprised they still touched, Joan tugged hers back.

“I fear that was a bit sudden, eh, Lady Joan? But perhaps some of life’s best surprises are that way.”

“What? Oh, aye, indeed, my lord.”

He smiled at what he considered her quick recovery of poise and control. The maid was young, but so fair and, no doubt, clever too. Her blood line was nearly impeccable, flowing from the great King Edward I, grandfather of the maid as well as of the present sovereign. It was rumored about lately, of course, that the Prince of Wales had been quite enamored of her, but then he himself had lived long enough to see clearly why. The Hollands were never fools or rebels when the royal handwriting was on the castle wall, and he would be no fool in this fine snare. Her Grace, Queen Philippa, to whom he had always been particularly attached since he had been in the retinue sent to deliver her safe from Hainaut as a blushing, lovely virgin bride seventeen years ago, had no doubt finally found for him the woman of his dreams—beautiful, young, and well attached. Granted, her father had died terribly under the foulest of questionable charges, but what was that to him if it did not bother the queen? People whispered of it less and less and any future Holland children need never inherit that cloud of shame any more than they would be born with one eye because their sire had lost his in battle.