“I’d rather not talk of that, Jo.” The childhood name came without thought, was curiously comforting, evoking echoes of an almost forgotten familiarity. “You’re beautiful, you know, you truly are. Not at all the skin-and-bones sister I remember! Joanna Plantagenet, Queen of Sicily, Duchess of Apulia, Princess of Capua. Were you happy, Jo, in Sicily?”
“Not at first. I was too young, too homesick. But William meant well by me, gave me no cause for complaint. He was some thirteen years older, treated me like a daughter until I was ready to be a wife. Yes, I was happy enough. But at thirty-six he died, leaving no heirs, and as you know, his bastard cousin Tancred seized the throne. Tancred not only denied me my dower rights, he put me into close confinement at Palermo. I sometimes wonder what would have become of me, Johnny, if not for Richard. He landed at Messina on his way to the Holy Land, and when Tancred balked at releasing me, restoring my dower, Richard laid siege to the town, forced Tancred into submission.”
Yes, John thought, and then he took you with him to the Holy Land, where he offered you to the brother of the infidel Prince Saladin. But he said nothing.
“Richard’s arrival at Messina was a godsend, in truth, and I will be ever grateful to him. Yet I do not doubt you’d have done as much for me, too, Johnny. So would our brother Henry. Even Geoffrey, provided it did not inconvenience him unduly. Any one of you would have come to my aid, I know that. And yet none of you would ever have come to the aid of each other. I’ve often thought on that.”
“When I was sixteen, Jo, Papa sought to persuade Richard to cede the Aquitaine to me. Our brother Henry was a year dead, and Papa promised to name Richard as his heir, but he thought it only fair that Richard should then yield up Aquitaine in return. Richard did not see it that way, flared into a rage and swore he’d be damned ere he’d agree. Papa flew into an equal rage, told me that Aquitaine was mine if I could take it from Richard. A sixteen-year-old boy has no money for troops. But the Duke of Brittany does, and Geoffrey offered to provide the men and money, told me this was the chance of a lifetime. So Geoffrey and I led an army into Poitou, and Richard burned damned near half of Brittany in retaliation…until Papa made haste to summon us all to London, told us he had not meant to be taken seriously.”
They were both silent for a time after that. John leaned over, plucked a primrose from the closest bush, and presented it to Joanna with self-mocking gallantry. “Tell me, Jo, why did you follow me out to the gardens? What did you want to say to me?”
“Do you remember what I would call you whenever we’d have a falling-out? Johnny-cat, because you were always poking about where you had no right to be.”
“I remember. I never liked it much.”
“I could not help thinking of that as I watched you and Richard in the great hall. You offered up your eighth life in there, Johnny-cat. You do know that?”
“Christ, Joanna, of course I do. Do you think anything less than that could have brought me to Lisieux?”
“Thank God you see that,” she said somberly. “I was so afraid you would not. Because I know Richard; he’d not forgive you again, Johnny. The next time you fall from grace will be the last time. For your sake, I do hope you never forget that.”
7
Yorkshire, England
September 1196
Too excited to sleep, Joanna awakened just before dawn on the morning of her fifth birthday. Taking care not to disturb her mother, she slid from their bed, pulled her gown over her head, and ran a wooden comb through her tangled dark hair. She knew she should wash her face, clean her teeth with a hazel twig, but she could not wait; the day, her very own, was beckoning.
In the outer room, Maud still slept, rolled up in blankets by the hearth. Joanna tiptoed around her, searching for food to break the night’s fast. The only furniture the room contained was a trestle table, a coffer chest, and several stools, but it was cluttered with household utensils: her mother’s distaff and spindle, a pile of reeds that Maud meant to plait into baskets, the hand mill that Maud used to grind their corn, several letten pots and pans. In the corner an armful of peeled rushes was being steeped in tallow fat; Joanna’s nose wrinkled at the pungent smell. Reassured by Maud’s steady snoring, she broke off a chunk of thick, black rye bread, smeared it with cheese, and headed for the door.
Outside, she detoured by the hen roost, soothed her conscience by scattering a handful of seeds in among the chickens. Joanna very much wanted her mother to think her responsible, did not mean to shirk her household duties. But the morning sky was clear and cloudless, the brilliant blue of her mother’s eyes, and the wind rippled through the moorland grass, stirring up a billowing green sea that swept all before it as it raced for the distant silver of the River Ure. Joanna let the wind take her, too; breaking into a run, she skimmed the grass, arms outstretched and hair streaming behind her like an ebony sail, and for a moment or two she actually was a small boat, bound for exotic, alien shores.
She slowed as she approached the cottage, home to Cedric, the young Saxon farmer who did for them those chores that required a man’s hand. Cedric’s cottage looked, at first glance, much like their own: thatched roof and timber framework, covered with clay, chopped straw, and cow dung. But it was much smaller, contained a single room for Cedric, his wife, Eda, and their three children. Joanna had once sneaked a look inside, knew they all slept on pallets around the hearth, lacking the straw mattress and wooden bedframe she shared with her mother. Nor did they have the feather pillows, the embroidered coverlets, or the hand mirror of polished metal, all of which Joanna’s mother had brought with her from her home to the south, the home Joanna had never seen.
As early as it was, Cedric’s family was already up and about. He was disappearing into the distance, on his way to the fields he worked with the other villagers. Eda was toting a bucket of milk toward the cottage, and the children were chasing the chickens out of the garden. They were making a noisy game of it, herding the hens in a circle, and Joanna felt a pang of envy, yearning to join in. She’d watched Cedric’s children for months, knew the boy was called Derwin and his sisters Rowena and Elfrida, names strange and foreign-sounding to Joanna. She knew, too, that they were not proper playmates for her; Maud had warned her often enough of that. Saxon peasants, she’d said scornfully, bound to the land, who could be bought and sold and were born to serve. That had confused Joanna somewhat, for she knew that Maud, too, was a servant. Maud had nursed her mother, called her “lamb” and “sweeting,” and yet she was still a servant; Joanna had heard her mother remind Maud of that more than once. So why, then, did she look upon Cedric and his family with such contempt?
No, Joanna did not understand. It mattered little to her that Cedric’s children were serfs, that they spoke an alien tongue. She would even have dared her mother’s wrath, so lonely was she, so eager for friends. But Rowena and Elfrida had shied away from all her overtures, stared at her with suspicious, wary eyes, and at last she’d stopped trying. Yet she still wondered why they would not play with her. Was it because she was Norman? Because Cedric addressed her mother as “my lady”? Or because she was “different”?
As young as she was, Joanna was aware of the irregular aspects of her homelife. She had no family but her mother. They had no friends, no visitors, and the past was a forbidden terrain, a land of dark secrets, secrets Joanna instinctively feared. There was so much she did not understand, but she sensed that what was wrong in their lives was somehow her fault.
Now the other children had noticed her, were whispering among themselves, laughing. Joanna turned, walked away.
But her spirits lifted, as always, at sight of the castle. She spent hours here some days, watching the people passing in and out of the bailey. Four times a year Maud would mount the steps into the keep, would pay the rent for their cottage to Guy, the bailiff for Robert Fitz Ranulf, Lord of Middleham. Joanna had begged in vain to accompany Maud on these quarter-day visits, and the world hidden away behind those timbered outer walls remained
a mystery to her.
Stretching out in the grass, she picked up a stick and cleared a space. Her mother was different from the villagers in yet another way; she could read and write. Very few women had such a skill, she’d told Joanna one night when wine had loosened her tongue, but her father—Joanna’s grandfather—had permitted her to be taught with her brothers. “He was so proud of me, Joanna…once,” she whispered, and when she began to cry, Joanna cried, too; she dreaded her mother’s tears even more than her slaps.
Now she patted the earth till it was smooth, took the stick and laboriously scrawled her mother’s name in the dirt: CLEMENCE. Then she traced JOANNA below it. But that was the extent of her knowledge; Clemence had neither the patience nor the aptitude to instruct, and her sporadic attempts to teach Joanna the alphabet had come to naught.
A solitary child is more given to daydreaming, and Joanna was no exception. She lost track of time; the morning drifted away on an easterly breeze. Yawning, she sat up in the grass, and then saw how high the sun was in the sky. It was nigh on ten o’clock; she was perilously close to being late for dinner. Joanna scrambled to her feet, began to run.
Sprinting through the village, with several barking dogs at her heels, she raced for home. Maud kept a water bucket outside the door and, proud that she’d remembered, she conscientiously washed the dirt from her face and hands. But she’d splashed water about too freely, and looked with dismay now at the splotches darkening the skirt of her gown. She was always displeasing her mother and Maud, and yet she tried so hard to be good, she truly did.
She hoped the mud stains would pass unnoticed, but at sight of her, Maud set down her bowl with a thud. “And where have you been, rooting about in the pigsty? For the love of the Lord, look at the child!”
Clemence, thus appealed to, turned from the hearth. “Oh, Joanna!” Ruefully. “What a slovenly little beggar you are.”
There was no anger in her voice, though, and Joanna’s tension dissipated in a rush of relief. But the bewilderment remained. The same misdeed that would, on one day, earn her a slap in the face might, at another time, be shrugged off with indulgent laughter. Her mother’s erratic tempers were baffling to the little girl, but they were disquieting, too. There was a perverse security in the constancy of Maud’s dour disapproval, none whatsoever in her mother’s quicksilver moods.
A special birthday dinner had been cooked for Joanna: a rabbit stew, flavored with onions, saffron, and wine; a thick bean pottage; stewed apples. There was cider for Joanna, red wine for Clemence, ale for Maud, and plum tarts for the final course. Sitting in the place of “honor,” Joanna was flushed with happiness. Their dinner usually consisted of soup or fish, bread and cheese, and she took this rich fare as proof that she was loved, in favor. She even dared to hope that her mother might have heeded her pleading, have gotten her the dog she so wanted. She held her breath in excitement now as Maud cleared away the stale bread trenchers that served as plates, as her mother rose, moved toward the bedchamber.
“Joanna, these are for you.” Her mother was smiling, holding out her presents: several scarlet hair ribbons and a wooden top.
Joanna bit her lip, blinked back tears. “Thank you, Mama,” she mumbled, and Clemence frowned.
“I told you we’d be having no dogs in this house. I thought you understood that.”
Joanna swallowed. If only Mama knew how much she wanted a puppy! She’d tried so hard to make Mama understand.
“Joanna! Joanna, I like it not when you sulk; you know that.”
“I’m not sulking, Mama, I’m not,” Joanna said hastily, and after a long moment, Clemence nodded.
“See that you do not. Now come here and get your birthday kiss.”
Joanna did.
Joanna sat on a stool, watching in awe as her mother loosened her thick blonde braids, shook her head in a swirl of brightness. Joanna was fascinated; when unbound, her mother’s hair cascaded down her back in a silky tumble of light, reaching well below her hips. She smiled over her shoulder at Joanna, held out the brush, and Joanna reached eagerly for it; she loved brushing her mother’s hair, took pride in making it gleam like gold.
“Mama…when is your birthday?”
“In less than a fortnight.” Clemence seemed to sigh. “My twenty-first. I expect that sounds very old to you?”
“Yes,” Joanna admitted, and they both laughed.
“Then I was almost born on your birthday, was I not, Mama? Mama…was I not?”
She felt her mother stiffen. “Yes,” Clemence said at last, a grudging one-word answer that thudded between them like a stone, and Joanna suddenly wanted to cry. Once again she’d managed to say the wrong thing.
“You have pretty hair, Mama,” she said imploringly. “So pretty, it is like looking at the sun.”
“That’s sweet, Joanna.” Clemence reached over, patted Joanna’s hand, and then picked up the mirror. As she shifted, Joanna saw her own eyes staring back at her. Not blue like her mother’s, but a strange color neither brown nor green, what her mother called hazel, slanting queerly at the corners. Joanna hated her eyes, just as she hated the straight, coarse hair that even now was defying her birthday ribbons.
“Mama…why do I not look like you? Why do I have hair black like a crow?”
“Because you take after him.” Clemence turned on the stool, gazing upon her daughter, the blind inward look that Joanna most feared, for she knew it meant her mother was remembering, not seeing her at all.
“That was all I asked of God, that I need not see him each time I looked into your face. Little enough to ask, I should think.” She laughed suddenly, unsteadily. “But we do pay and pay for our sins, it seems, and you grow more like him with each day that passes.”
Joanna shrank back. She knew who “he” was, the father who had not wanted her, who had made Mama so unhappy. “Mama…”
“Oh, God, how like him you are!”
Clemence’s eyes were not blind now; they were riveted on Joanna’s face with an emotional intensity that terrified the child; she thought she could read revulsion in them, and she sobbed, “No, Mama, I’m not! Please, Mama, I’m not!”
This was not the first time her mother had accused her of this bloodsin, but for once her tearful denial proved stronger than the pull of the past. Clemence blinked, sagged back on the stool. “Do not weep, Joanna,” she said, with an effort. “Hush now. It matters not if you’ve his coloring, as long as you’ve not his accursed, evil soul.”
Joanna’s tears dried; once more her mother had forgiven her for a sin beyond her understanding. But when she came back from the garden privy, she found the bedchamber door barred to her. Maud was already asleep, and she scratched softly on the door. “Mama? Mama, it’s me.”
There was no response. After a few moments she gave up, found a blanket, and dragged it over to the hearth next to Maud. This had happened before; there were times, Maud explained, “when your lady mother needs to be alone.” But as she edged closer to Maud’s bulky shelter, Joanna wished her mother had not felt such a need on this, her birthday.
The next morning, Clemence was moving about the kitchen by the time Joanna awakened. She was pale, hollow-eyed, and as she bent over to kiss Joanna, there was a sour-wine smell on her breath. But she seemed to have laid her ghosts to rest, at least for a time, and Joanna asked for no more than that. Nor did Maud, who set about cooking breakfast with unusual cheer.
It was midmorning. Joanna was weeding midst their cabbages and onions, chanting under her breath, “Plant a seed, pull a weed,” when she looked up and saw the cart moving slowly down the road.
The coming of the cart was an occasion in their lives, much like Christmas or Easter week, and she dashed to meet it. Three or four times a year, a tight-lipped driver she knew only as Luke pulled up at their door. When Joanna had been younger, she’d confused him with St Nicholas, for, like the celebrated saint, Luke brought riches, food, and blankets, and sometimes a pouchful of small silver coins. Dancing with excitem
ent, Joanna sought now to see what the cart held. Two crated geese. Sacks of salt and flour. A barrel of salted pork. Bundles of flax stems; Maud would soak them to separate the fibers, and her mother would then spin them into linen for sheets and clothing. Jars of honey and flagons of wine.
“Mama! Luke’s come, and with so much food! Can we have a goose for Michaelmas, can we, Mama?”
Clemence did not answer; she was staring at the object Luke was holding out toward her, a sealed parchment. Joanna slid down from the cart wheel. Mama had never gotten a letter before. She shivered suddenly, watched her mother break the seal with clumsy fingers.
“No! Oh, God, no…” The letter fluttered to the ground, and Joanna grabbed for it. But her mother had whirled, was fleeing back into the house.
“Luke? Why did the letter make my mama cry?”
He rarely acknowledged her, generally acted as if she were invisible to adult eyes. But he looked down at her now, said, “Her father is dead.”
The bedchamber door was ajar. Joanna gave it a push and it swung open. Her mother and Maud were on the bed, Maud cradling the younger woman as if she were no older than Joanna.
“I always thought…thought someday he’d forgive me. I had to believe that, had to…but he did not, died believing me to be a whore…and I’m not, I’m not!”
“I know, lovedy, I know.” Tears were streaming down Maud’s face. “My little girl, do not. I beg you…”
“And George…he’ll inherit all, will not pay the rent on the cottage…you know he will not! And what will we do, Maud? Mother of God, what will we do?”
Joanna could bear no more. “Mama…Mama, do not cry!” But her mother was beyond any consolation she or Maud could offer. She continued to weep as the day dragged on, sometimes silently, hopelessly, sometimes with deep, shuddering sobs that convulsed her in gasping spasms, until at last her body rebelled and she retched miserably into the floor rushes around the bed.