Richard put his arm around her shoulders again, saying, “Well, you’re safe now, lass.” And in the security of her brother’s embrace, Joanna could finally admit to herself just how frightened she’d been.
RICHARD HAD TAKEN JOANNA to the nunnery of St Mary’s, for he was lodging in a house on the outskirts of the city, the royal palace having been given over to the French king and his entourage. After a celebratory meal in the guest hall, the other women had retired for the evening, while Joanna and Richard sought to fill in the gaps of the past fourteen years. Only Mariam had not gone to bed. Sometime after midnight, she’d dozed off, awakening with a start to find Joanna leaning over her.
“I told you not to wait up for me,” she chided, as Mariam sat up, yawning.
“And when do I ever listen to you? What time is it? Is it dawn yet?”
“Soon,” Joanna said, climbing onto the bed beside her. “There was so much to say, Mariam! I wanted to tell him about William and my life in Sicily, and I wanted to know about the strife that tore our family apart. But Richard had few answers for me, not when it came to our father and brothers.” Joanna pulled off her veil and shifted so Mariam could free her hair from its pins. “It is almost as if some evil spell was cast upon them all. . . .”
“And is your brother as you remembered him?”
“Indeed—confident, prideful, amusing, and stubborn,” Joanna joked, leaning back with a contented sigh as Mariam began to brush out her hair. “He says we cannot stay in Messina, that it is not safe. There have already been fights between his men and the townspeople and he fears it will only get worse, so he means to find us a secure lodging across the Faro. I told him I wanted to remain here in Messina with him, but he would not heed me. As I said,” she smiled, “stubborn!”
“I’d say that was a family trait,” Mariam teased, and Joanna gave the other woman a quick, heartfelt hug.
“You are as dear to me as my own sisters,” she proclaimed, “and I will never forget your loyalty in my time of need. To prove it, I am going to divulge a secret. But you must promise not to speak of it to anyone else.”
“Of course I promise. What is it?” Mariam prodded, for she shared Joanna’s love of mysteries.
“I’ve told you about Richard’s long-standing plight-troth with the French king’s sister. Well, it will never come to pass. I know, hardly a surprise, for it is obvious to all but the French king that Richard has no intention whatsoever of marrying Alys. That is not the secret. This is—that Richard has agreed to wed Berengaria, the daughter of Sancho, the King of Navarre, and she is coming to join him in Sicily.”
Mariam knew more of Navarre than most people, for William’s mother had been a princess of that Spanish kingdom, Sancho’s sister. “Then you’ll be getting a cousin as well as a sister by marriage,” she said, “since her father was William’s uncle.” The Navarrese connection made the news more interesting than it would otherwise have been, but she was still surprised that Joanna seemed so excited about the arrival of a woman she did not know—until Joanna told her the rest, the heart of her secret.
“And guess who is bringing her to Richard? My mother! Yesterday I was not sure that I’d ever see any of my family again and now . . . now I have not only been reunited with my brother, but my mother is on her way to Sicily, too.” Stretching out on the bed, Joanna confided, “I never dared hope for so much. . . .”
Mariam was more eager to meet the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine than Sancho’s daughter, and she was delighted that Joanna would be given this rare opportunity to see her mother again; a foreign marriage usually meant lifelong exile for highborn young women like Joanna. Rising, she crossed the chamber to pour two cups of the night wine sent over by the abbess. “I am so pleased for you, dearest. Fortune’s Wheel has truly turned with a vengeance, has it not?”
When Joanna did not answer, Mariam glanced over her shoulder, and then smiled, for the young queen had fallen asleep in the time it had taken to lay her head upon her pillow. Returning to the bed, Mariam covered her with a blanket. “Sleep well,” she murmured, “and God bless your brother for justifying your faith in him.”
RICHARD RETURNED to the nunnery the next day, bringing two kinsmen for Joanna to meet: their maternal cousin, André de Chauvigny, and their paternal cousin, Morgan ap Ranulf. But Richard and Joanna had soon withdrawn to the nunnery’s parlor for more private conversation, as they’d just scratched the surface the day before. Left to amuse themselves, André began a dice game with several of their knights and Morgan took Joanna’s dog out into the cloisters.
He was intrigued by Ahmer’s appearance, for the Sicilian cirneco had ears like a rabbit and fur as red as a fox. Sicily was an unusual land in all respects, so it seemed only natural that even its dogs would be unlike dogs elsewhere. Morgan had never seen palm trees before, or birds that looked like feathered jewels, or churches that had once been mosques, giving the city an exotic aura all its own. The women were exotic, too, sashaying about the streets in silks and fluttering veils, bejeweled fingers decorated with henna, wellborn Christian ladies choosing to dress like Saracens. Morgan wondered if it was Sicily’s alien aspects that seemed to unsettle so many of Richard’s men. It did not help that the Messinians were overwhelmingly of Greek heritage, followers of the Greek Orthodox Church. Were they even true Christians? All knew that Rome was God’s City, after all, not Constantinople.
As a Welshman, Morgan had an outsider’s perspective, so he was willing to give the Messinians the benefit of the doubt, at least until they proved him wrong. But in less than a week, most of his comrades and fellow crusaders had become convinced that the citizens of Messina were bandits in the guise of merchants, vintners, and shopkeepers. Seated on a bench under a fragrant citrus tree in the convent’s guest cloisters, within sight of the turquoise waters of the straits, Morgan thought he’d rarely looked upon a scene so lovely or so tranquil, although he suspected that the tranquility was an illusion, a candle soon to be guttered out by the storms gathering along the horizon—the growing hostility between the townspeople and the crusaders.
Several of their knights had entered the cloisters, plucked an orange from a nearby tree, and began a boisterous game of catch. They paused, though, at sight of the woman gliding up the walkway. She attracted Morgan’s eye, too, for she was a vision in embroidered gold silk, with jangling bracelets, gilt slippers, and a delicately woven veil the color of a sunset sky. He’d been throwing sticks for Ahmer to chase, and he reached now for another one, meaning to toss it into the vision’s path, saying softly, “Go get it, boy. Act as my lure.” But one of the knights was quicker, swaggering across the mead to intercept the woman as she passed. Morgan shook his head, marveling that men could be such fools. Her elegant garb proclaimed that she was of high rank, either a nunnery guest or a member of the queen’s own household, definitely not someone to be accosted as if she were a street whore. “Come on, Ahmer,” he said. “Let’s go rescue a damsel in distress.”
He soon saw there was no need of that. She turned upon the would-be lothario with such outrage that none could doubt her privileged status. Morgan was still out of hearing range, but he could see the knight wilting under her scorn. By the time Morgan reached them, the man was in full retreat, his friends were roaring with laughter, and the woman was threatening him with the fate that all males most dreaded. To the Welshman’s astonishment, she switched then from fluent, colloquial French to an alien tongue, so foreign that he decided it could only be Arabic.
At the sound of Morgan’s footsteps on the pathway, she spun about, ready to take on another antagonist, and he hastily raised his hands in playful surrender. “I come in peace, my lady. My dog and I thought—erroneously—that you might be in need of our assistance. But I soon saw the poor fellow was the one needing help!”
She was taller than many women, with more curves than was fashionable, at least in France and England, her face half hidden by her veil. He was fascinated by what he could see, though, for her eyes
were so light a shade of brown that they appeared golden in the sun. She’d glanced down at the dog, saying, “What strange company are you keeping these days, Ahmer?” But then she turned those mesmerizing eyes upon him, and he found he could not look away. “I must thank you then,” she said, “for your good manners, since so many men have no manners at all.”
“I’ll give you no argument about that,” he said cheerfully. “May I pose a question, though? I could not help overhearing some of the tongue-lashing you gave that fool. Was the tongue Arabic?”
Those almond-shaped eyes seemed to narrow, ever so slightly. “Yes,” she said, “it was Arabic. No other language can match its creative insults or its colorful curses.”
“Mayhap you could teach me one or two of them, then?” Morgan gave her his most beguiling smile. “In return, I will gladly teach you a few of mine.”
“I rather doubt that you know any I do not.”
“Ah, but do you speak Welsh, my lady? Or English?”
“No, I cannot say that I do. In fact, I’ve never even heard either of those tongues spoken.”
“The pleasure is mine, then. Beth yw eich enw? Thou may me blisse bringe.”
“Judging from your honeyed tone, I do not think those are curses, sir knight.”
“You’ve caught me out, my lady. I asked your name and then I dared to hope that you may bring me bliss. A smile would do it.”
“You are easily satisfied, then.” But as she reached down to pat Ahmer, her veil slipped, as if by chance, and his pulse quickened, for she had skin as golden as her eyes and a full, ripe mouth made for a man’s kisses. She did not attempt to replace the veil, instead saying coolly, “Staring like that may not be rude in your homeland, but it is very rude in mine.”
“Mea culpa, demoiselle. But I could not help myself. For you are truly the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes upon.”
“Indeed?” She sounded very skeptical. “I assume you are one of King Richard’s men. So surely you’ve met his sister, the queen.”
“Yes, I had that honor this morn.”
“Then either your vision is flawed or you are a liar, for the Lady Joanna is far more beautiful than I am.” Drawing the veil across her face again, she moved around him and began to walk away.
Morgan was not about to give up yet. “Yes,” he called after her, “but can the Lady Joanna swear in Arabic?”
She didn’t pause, nor did she answer him. But Morgan watched her go with a grin, for he was sure he’d heard a soft murmur of laughter floating back on the breeze.
JOANNA HAD NO TROUBLE reconciling her memories with reality; the nineteenyear-old brother who’d escorted her to Marseille and the waiting Sicilian envoys was recognizable in the thirty-three-year-old man who’d pried open the door of her gilded prison. But for Richard, those fourteen years had wrought dramatic changes in the little girl he’d remembered with such affection. “Are you sure you’re my sister?” he joked. “I have never seen such a remarkable transformation. Well, not since I last saw a butterfly burst from its cocoon!”
“Are you calling me a caterpillar?” Joanna feigned indignation, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow, so easily had they slipped back into their familiar family roles. “I was an adorable child!”
“You were spoiled rotten, irlanda, for you took shameless advantage of your position as the baby of the family. You managed the lot of us like so many puppets.” Richard paused for comic effect. “Though I suppose that was good training for marriage.”
“Indeed it was,” she agreed, for she believed that a woman with brothers had a decided advantage over other women when it came to understanding the male mind. “But I was not the baby of the family. That was Johnny.”
Richard did not want to talk about John, for he knew that would inevitably lead to further conversation about Hal and Geoffrey and then their father. So far he’d been successful in avoiding a serious discussion of their family feuding, but he knew sooner or later he’d have to answer her questions. Just not yet. He sensed she’d be hurt by the truth—that he’d detested Hal and Geoffrey—for she’d had an inexplicable fondness for the pair of them. She did not know how Hal had plotted with rebel lords in Aquitaine to overthrow him, how Geoffrey had twice led armies into his duchy, once with Hal and then with Johnny. He held no grudge against Johnny, for he’d been only seventeen at the time. But he was not sorry that Hal and Geoffrey were dead. Nor was he sorry that their father was dead, although he did regret that the ending had been so bitter. He’d not wanted it to be that way, had been given no choice. How could he expect Joanna to understand all this, though? A pity their mother would not be here for months. It would have been so much easier if he could have left the explanations to her.
To deflect any questions about their family’s internal warfare, he said quickly, “When I warned Tancred that you must be released straightaway, I demanded the return of your dower lands, too. Moreover, I told him to include a generous sum as recompense for your ordeal.”
“Did you truly, Richard? Very good!” By Joanna’s reckoning, Tancred owed her a huge debt, and she thought it was wonderful that she had so formidable a debt collector in Richard. “Tancred owes you a debt, too.”
Richard was immediately interested. “What do you mean?”
“William died without a will. But he meant to leave our father a vast legacy, to be used in freeing Jerusalem from the infidels. He would have wanted that legacy to pass to you now that Papa is dead, for the fate of the Holy City mattered greatly to him.”
“Do you know what he intended to bequeath, Joanna?”
“Indeed I do. A twelve-foot table of solid gold, twenty-four gold cups and plates, a silk tent large enough to hold two hundred men, sixty thousand measures of wheat, barley, and wine, and one hundred armed galleys, with enough provisions to feed their crews for two years.”
“Bless you, lass!” Richard swept her up into a jubilant embrace. “I bled England white for this holy quest, would have pawned the crown jewels if Maman had let me. A bequest like this is worth more than I can begin to tell you, and might well make your husband the savior of Outremer.”
“William would have been so pleased to hear you say that.” Tilting her head so she could look up into his face, she gave him a smile that somehow managed to hold sadness, satisfaction, mischief, and even a hint of malice. “And if Tancred balks at honoring the legacy, I might remember other items that William wanted to bestow upon you. Be sure to tell him that, Richard.”
Richard was laughing, delighted to discover that his little sister shared the family flair for revenge. But just then they were interrupted by one of his men with surprising news. The French king had arrived to pay his respects to Joanna.
PHILIPPE WAS NOT looking forward to his courtesy call upon Joanna, for he found it stressful to spend any time in Richard’s company. Moreover, he was bone-weary of the fuss Richard had made over his sister’s predicament, for he was convinced that the English king had an ulterior motive for his most innocent act. Since he found it hard to believe that Richard could still be so fond of a woman he had not seen for fourteen years, he’d concluded that the other man was using Joanna in a subtle attempt to make him look bad, wanting people to contrast Richard’s concern for Joanna with his own lack of concern for his youngest sister, Agnes. He found it very irritating. What was he supposed to have done—launched a war against the Greek Empire? Led an army to lay siege to Constantinople?
But like it or not, he felt obligated to welcome Richard’s sister to Messina, knowing that failure to do so would have made him seem petty and discourteous; she was a queen, after all. Accompanied by his cousin Hugh, the Duke of Burgundy, Jaufre of Perche, and Mathieu de Montmorency, he was in a better mood by the time they reached the convent, for they’d been cheered in the streets by the townspeople. The Messinians were showing far more friendliness to the French than to their English allies, and Philippe was gratified that they had not been seduced by Richard’s usual theatrics.
r /> The abbess herself escorted them into the guest hall. The irrepressible young Mathieu came to an abrupt halt at sight of the woman standing by Richard’s side. “My God, she’s gorgeous!” Jaufre had taken the teenager under his wing, having seen how easily he irked Philippe, and he gave the boy a reproachful look, for lavishing praise on Richard’s sister was no way to regain the French king’s favor. But when he glanced toward Philippe, Jaufre was astonished to see that he was staring at Joanna with the same rapt expression as Mathieu. He was even more astonished when Philippe strode forward to greet Richard with impeccable courtesy and Joanna with outright enthusiasm.
“I am honored to make your acquaintance, Madame. I do have a bone to pick with your lord brother, though, for he never told me how very beautiful you were.”
This was familiar ground to Joanna, who was an accomplished flirt. “My brother has indeed been remiss, my lord king, for he did not tell me how gallant you were, either.” And when Philippe offered his arm, she allowed him to escort her toward a window-seat so they could converse in greater privacy.
This was a side of Philippe that none had ever seen before, not even his own men, and they watched in amazed amusement as the dour French king was suddenly transformed into a courtier, ordering wine to be brought for Joanna, displaying so much animation that he seemed to shed years before their eyes, reminding them that he was but twenty-five and in need of a new queen to grace his throne and his bed.
Richard showed no obvious reaction to the French king’s unexpected interest in his sister, for he’d long ago mastered that most valuable of kingly skills—showing the world only what he wanted it to see. But those who knew him well were not deceived, and the Duke of Burgundy could not resist sauntering over to make mischief. “Our king and your sister seem right taken with each other, even smitten. Passing strange, the ways of fate. Who knows, mayhap there might be a double wedding in the future, you and the Lady Alys and my cousin Philippe and the Lady Joanna.”