The First Princess of Wales (58 page)

“As willful as always, my Jeannette, but then, I would have you no other way. You are the Duchess of Kent now and we will not go into my position here. You, my sweetheart, are rain-wet, your hair and mine look as if we have been cavorting in the forest pond. Your sweet lips are all bruised with my kisses of which I intend to give you more, and that low-necked emerald dress which drives me to distraction even now reveals the places where my lips and the stubble of my day-old beard have rubbed your fair skin rosy-hued. If we can help it, I intend for us to do this circumspectly, and I hope the Fair Maid of Kent will cooperate.”

“I am hardly a maid anymore, Your Grace—”

“And if you will not cooperate, I will have no choice but to go down in history not as a warrior-conqueror of France, but rather of one blond beauty who did not realize it was time for her to surrender to the inevitable. Come on, now, I said, we are going back in.”

He sent her up the back servants’ stairs of the York Tower while he went in some other way. In their hurried parting, they had decided that he would put in an appearance at evenmeal but she would not go at all. Everyone would be expecting him, but she could hardly walk in late and damp-haired also under everyone’s beady-eyed stares. He would order food sent up to her rooms, spend the evening reporting on his safe delivery of the French king to his royal parents. Then, early on the morrow, she had promised to ride with him to see the builders’ progress at his Palace of Kennington on the Thames near London.

Her two new English maids she had brought with her from Liddell darted up from their game of dice and coins on the parlor table when she went in. The princess had allotted her a lovely suite of chambers very near her own: she had this paneled, tapestried parlor with two spacious windows overlooking the park to the south, a charming bedroom, and a little
garde-robe
chamber.

“Oh, duchess,” the petite maid Gertrude gushed, “you got caught in the rain sure enough. The dress, your coiffure is a shambles! Oh, duchess!”

“Do not fuss. I am only glad you two are here to help. I have decided since I am such a sight not to go down to evenmeal. I would be late anyway, so I am having some food sent up.”

She went on into her bedroom, the two maids trailing after, appalled at the sodden destruction of their mistress’s appearance over which they had labored so carefully only a little while before. They had accepted well enough the fact their duchess often went barefooted in the ponds at Liddell or sometimes wore men’s breeches to ride the fields and meadows, but this was the great Plantagenet court!

Sarah and Gertrude peeled off her soaked gown, and Sarah sponged the soiled hem while Gertrude rubbed her skin with a tingling towel and combed tangles from her long blond tresses.

“Ye’ve caught a little chill or rash here, Duchess, all along your neck and throat,” the brown-haired maid observed and clucked her tongue.

Joan seized the silk robe from the girl’s hands and covered herself. “Never mind. And stop that clucking like a hen. My dear old Marta used to do that too, and I will not have it from you, girl—not until you are at least sixty. Now, go on to the door and wait for the food. Suddenly, I am famished.”

She sat at her lovely carved dressing table and combed her hair herself. Aye, she had a faint, pink glow where he had seized and kissed her like that again and again. Saints, she had loved it, cherished it, wanted it and more. Only, she must be very, very careful not to let it go further unless she had assurances he would not just love her only to leave her again. She had no intention of waiting breathlessly at Liddell or here for him to visit—especially not here!

The food came amidst delicious, wafting odors—a great deal of food, so she insisted Gertrude and Sarah take some too. Awed at the exotic dishes on fine plateware and being seated to eat at the same time their mistress was, the two picked at their portions until they saw the duchess attack her food with fervor, and then they, too, reveled in seethed pike in claret, slices of stag haunch, gooseberry pastries, Brie cheese, apricots, dates, and fine Bordeaux wine.

“Laws, my lady duchess, wisht you would eat everyday in your chambers,” the perky-faced Sarah giggled. “Never, never seen such fine victuals.”

“Aye and so much,” Joan murmured. “Does he think he is feeding his army?”

Both maids looked up wide-eyed and suddenly awestruck again at sitting so improperly while their mistress sat sharing her food. “
He,
my lady duchess?” Sarah breathed. “Is
he
come back then and you saw him out in the rain?”

Four shocked eyes darted to Joan’s neck and throat where her silk robe revealed the muted rosy rash which now blended with her blush.

“Now, you listen here, you two,” Joan said and was about to scold both of them when a knock at the door froze them all. Joan read the looks on their startled faces, no doubt a mirror image of her own. He would not dare to come up here like this! He had said they must be circumspect, careful of scandal.

A man’s voice boomed through the door even as Joan rose. “Duchess of Kent! The queen awaits an interview. Are you within?”

“Saints!” Joan cursed low and instinctively pulled her silk robe tighter. “No, leave the dishes there and, Sarah, fetch me some scarves,” she hissed at her maids. “And you, Gertrude, open the door slowly and say I will be right out.” She shoved Gertrude toward the door and ran after Sarah’s flying feet into the bedchamber.

She could hear Gertrude’s shaking voice as she opened the hall door. Joan wrapped four silk scarves around her neck and draped their flowing ends down her back while she heard Gertrude say, “Please to enter an’ your will, Your Grace. The duchess, she was only taking a little nap. I will fetch her direct, Your Grace.”

Joan shot herself a quick look in the mirror. The queen had sought her out here far from her own chambers when surely they were all still in the Great Hall at evenmeal. Why was she not with the king or her son just returned? She had seen her briefly with the princess the day she had come to Windsor, but there was no reason she should break propriety to come here. Even as Joan steadied herself to go back to the parlor, she heard the queen’s low voice which held only a hint of Isabella’s lively tones.

“My guards may wait outside and the duchess’s maids also are dismissed. I wish to speak to the Duchess of Kent quite alone.”

Joan halted in the narrow, paneled entry, her heart thudding. She heard people shuffling out, the door closing quietly. Why had she drunk so much of that fine Bordeaux wine he had sent her?

“Your Grace, forgive me for I was resting. What an honor to have you visit these rooms the Princess Isabella was kind enough to grant me for my short stay.” Joan curtsied low, nearly at the queen’s feet. “And, Your Majesty, please forgive the cluttered table, for I supped earlier.”

“Set for three? And not even going down to evenmeal?” Queen Philippa intoned as her blue eyes in the plump, white face scanned the table.

The queen was elegantly gowned and coiffed as usual, and the massive pleated wimple under her headpiece hid all her hair but the two foremost coils. A heavy necklace encrusted with rubies was draped across her ample, gold-brocade bosom, and a sprinkle of jewels studded the massive rings on her fingers which looked like small, white sausages.

“There seemed to be quite a lot of food sent up, Your Grace, so I fed my young maids. They are wonderfully in awe to be here at court, of course.”

“But how quaint, my dear Joan, eating with your servants. I cannot imagine anyone reared at this court and who lived through that vile, French peasant uprising doing that, but no matter. You may sit now, lady.”

Joan sat straight-backed in the nearest chair while the queen’s small eyes under the vast white forehead studied her. “Your maids are awed to be at court—and you these days, Joan?”

“I, Your Grace?”

“He is back, of course, and has been for almost three hours, but I have not seen him. I assume, my dear, that you have.”

“Prince Edward, you mean,” she floundered wondering, fearing what was coming. “Aye, I ran into him just after he arrived downstairs.”

“Indeed. Perhaps, then, since he obviously is not here, I may have a chance to see him soon, but for now I only wish to see you. Let us not mince words here, dear Joan, for surely we do want the same thing for His Grace, the Prince of Wales—only the best for him and his happiness always.”

“Agreed, Your Majesty.”

“Then you also realize he must marry—for England, for the family, even for himself.” The blue eyes glittered as coldly as the stones in her big rings, Joan thought.

“In that pursuit, I would certainly wish him all happiness, Your Grace, even as you.”

“Let us not mince words, I said, Joan. I want your promise you will not let the prince believe you will be waiting for him anytime he wishes to seek you out, nor will you entice the prince to marry you.”

“Entice him to marry me! Indeed, Your Grace, I shall not be so presumptuous if you will not!”

“I only came to be sure that you understood the import of this or—”

“Or what? Or I shall be married to someone convenient I hardly know to please others? I have already been through that, Your Grace. Or mayhap be sent away—exiled for misbehaving like the prince’s grandmother, banished to Castle Rising all these years, or like John de Maltravers to Bruges? But, Your Grace, I have had all of that for so many years. I am Duchess of Kent with titles, lands, enough of wealth and with three children to love and rear. Ask your son if you want such promises, for despite the burden of his birth, his life is surely his. And my life, at long last, for the great price I have paid, Your Majesty—is mine!”

Joan realized she had risen half out of her seat in leaning forward, and she sat back. The queen’s plump chin seemed to quiver; suddenly, she looked very much beaten. “I see,” she whispered and stared down at her tightly clasped hands. “Parents, royal or not, can never really trust their children not to hurt them,” she said low as if to herself. “This problem with Edward is Isabella all over again only it matters so much more. I only hope, Duchess, your little brood someday shall not cause you such grief as my children have me!”

The queen got to her feet ponderously. It seemed she had shrunk despite her increasing bulk over the years. Joan rose and curtsied.

“I thank you for your concern, Your Grace,” Joan said quietly, “and I pray you will not judge those too harshly who only seek love.”

At the door Queen Philippa turned slowly back. “Love,” she repeated, her face suddenly gone girlishly soft before it turned to pale marble again. “Love fades, poor Joan, and then there is only duty and remembrance.”

Joan heard the guards snap to in the hall when the queen opened the door herself and went out. Long after it closed again, she just stood and stared at it, her thoughts racing futilely to find escape from her own duty and remembrance which pressed in on her like the stony castle walls of Windsor.

S
oon after dawn stretched her rosy fingers into a cloudless sky the next day, Joan and Prince Edward set off for Kennington Palace with a guard of four discreetly armed men who rode a ways back, so it almost seemed they were alone. They chatted and reminisced but there were no plans or proposals, Joan noted, beyond showing her the fine new London palace he had been expanding and remodeling. By midmorn, almost unrecognized because of their plain riding garb, small entourage, and lack of royal banners, they arrived at Westminster to take a barge across the Thames. It was shorter, the prince said, and they would not have to be slowed by crowds in busy London that way. Scandal, Joan thought, a scandal to be seen with me. And again for the hundredth time even today, she vowed she would not be swept away by passion only to feel its reverberating pain thereafter.

The bargemen pulled hard to row them upstream past the barren Lambeth moors to finally tie up at the newly constructed Kennington pier. Through a screen of trees, Joan saw the clean stone walls of a large palace where already a flag with the three white ostrich feathers and the Prince of Wales’s motto
“Ich Dien”
waved from a turret in the warm, river breeze.

“It is a lovely site, Your Grace,” she told him as he lifted her from the barge onto the pier. His hands lingered on her waist when he need only have held her hand while she stepped out herself. She had worn a dark blue kirtle and matching
surcote
all embroidered with summer flowers and her riding boots made a hollow sound on the wooden pier even as his did. They had laughed that he wore almost the same hue of perse blue tunic today under his fine embossed leather jerkin.

“A lovely site, indeed, my Jeannette—near the city and yet definitely in the country. By autumn, this path up to the buildings will be all terraced and planted. And,” he went on as he tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and held it tight against his ribs, “you did promise to call me Edward today.”

“So I did, Edward—my only promise for the whole day mayhap. Oh, saints, it is huge!”

Before them rose up a newly constructed Great Hall and complex of adjoining rooms with glittering windows facing the Thames. At right angles to that wing of the palace lay the prince’s private quarters with views of freshly planted gardens.