A King's Ransom (57 page)

In the three weeks since they’d left Carcassonne, Joanna had allowed herself to enjoy the count’s company, but she had taken great care to make sure they were never alone, and she sensed his growing frustration. That was why she’d asked Mariam to accompany her tonight, for a garden conversation in full sunlight did not offend propriety, whereas one lit by starlight and camouflaged by swirling shadows could compromise her honor and break her heart.

He greeted them both with courtesy not even the cardinal could have faulted, but then he took them by surprise by throwing down a direct challenge. “I have become quite fond of you, Lady Mariam, and I think your Welsh knight is a very lucky man. But what I have to say is not for your ears. I’d be eternally grateful if you were to take a tour of the gardens. Any chance of that happening?”

Mariam looked to Joanna for guidance, saw her hesitation, and leaned over to whisper, “If you want to talk with him, the dogs and I can stand guard to make sure no one else will see the two of you together. If you do not, nothing will pry me from your side.”

Joanna would have sworn that she’d have walked barefoot in sackcloth and ashes before she’d have met privately with Raimond in these seductive surroundings. So she was startled to hear herself say softly, “Take the dogs for a walk. But do not go far.”

Mariam nodded, squeezed her hand encouragingly, and then gave Raimond a warning look that conveyed her message without need of words. He acknowledged it with a nod of his own and for several moments, there was no sound but the splashing of the fountain and the crunch of Mariam’s receding footsteps on the pebbled path.

“Shall we find a place to sit?” He glanced toward a trellised arbor, raising his hands when Joanna frowned, a gesture she took as a promise that he’d not take advantage of the semiseclusion. She was not sure if she could trust him to keep that promise, for how well did she really know him? But then, could she trust herself? Deciding that she preferred this conversation to be conducted by the light of a full moon, she shook her head, pointing toward the edge of the fountain. He did not argue and showed his good manners by making sure the marble was clean and dry before allowing her to sit. Once they were settled, she realized that the moonlight was a double-edged sword; it enabled her to read his face, but he could read hers, too, and her own emotions were in such turmoil that she did not welcome his scrutiny.

“I am not sure if Lady Mariam did me a favor,” he said, “for I am probably about to make an utter fool of myself.” As he turned toward her, she caught the glimmer of a smile. “I asked myself what I’d come to regret more—saying nothing or playing the fool? I have a lot of practice doing the latter, so I decided that was a regret I could more easily live with.”

Joanna had always been charmed by self-deprecating humor and Raimond’s smile was so bewitching by moonlight that she realized there were two fools in this garden. She ought never to have agreed to this. Mariam’s offer to arrange a tryst had forced her to admit how drawn she was to this man, and she’d realized how fortunate she was that he was married. If not for his wife, she might have yielded to temptation, and she did not believe that a queen had that freedom. What if their liaison had become known? Such a scandal would damage her prospects for remarriage and hurt Richard’s chances of making a needed alliance with a foreign prince. And what if she’d gotten with child? She could not have raised the child as her own, yet how could she have borne to give her baby up? No, Beatrice Trencavel was a blessing in disguise. Reminding herself of that now, she tensed, preparing to make an embarrassing retreat from the gardens, seeing that as the lesser of evils.

Raimond did not give her the chance. “I think that we ought at least to acknowledge it,” he said, “for it is rather rare—like being struck by lightning and living to tell the tale. I’m not sure when the bolt hit you. For me, it was in the great hall at Narbonne. It was not as if I were blind to your charms until then. But you’d made it clear I was to keep my distance and so I vowed to be on my good behavior. And then you came to my defense like an avenging angel, telling the cardinal that Sicily was blessed, not accursed, and I knew my heart was yours for the taking—along with any other body parts you might want to claim.”

His tone was light, but with undertones that sent a shiver up Joanna’s spine. Deciding that her best defense was to act as if he were merely flirting, she said coolly, “I believe your heart is already spoken for, my lord count. And I must warn you that I am not susceptible to the ‘My wife does not understand me’ school of seduction.” She could see that her mockery had stung and, perversely, she now found herself regretting her success in rebuffing him. But she dared not let him see how vulnerable she really was to his blandishments.

“Actually, my wife understood me all too well,” he said, with a coolness to match her own. “Women usually read men with insulting ease. You seem to be the exception to that rule, Lady Joanna, for you have misread me, for certes.”

“Have I?” she said, striving for nonchalance. “I see a man who by his own admission likes women, a man of undeniable charm, but a man with a wife. We may be entitled to our own beliefs, my lord count, but not our own facts, and those facts are yours, whether you like it or not.”

“Actually, they are not. You see, I no longer have a wife. I ended our marriage this past January.”

Joanna stared at him in shock. Whatever she might have expected him to say, it was not that, never that. Her initial response was pure panic, for her defenses had just taken a mortal hit. “And how did you perform this feat of magic?” she said, with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “How does one make a wife disappear?”

“I did not turn her out to beg her bread by the roadside,” he snapped. “She entered a . . . convent.”

He’d hesitated almost imperceptibly, and she seized upon that as a shield. “How convenient,” she said witheringly. “Whatever did men do with unwanted wives before convents? My mother’s grandfather packed two of his off to Fontevrault Abbey and my father would have sent her there, too, if he’d had his way.” Remembering then that Raimond and Beatrice had a child, Joanna felt a surge of indignation that was no longer feigned. “What a wonderful example you are setting for your daughter, my lord, teaching her at an early age that women are as easily replaced as horses or hunting dogs!”

By now they were both on their feet, glaring at each other in the silvery moonlight. “Are you always so quick to pass judgment?” he asked challengingly. “But then your family is not known for their sense of fair play, are they?”

Joanna was grateful for the reminder that he was an enemy of her House. “We are done here,” she said and started to stalk away.

“Joanna!” She hesitated before turning reluctantly to face him. He was obviously still angry, but he showed now that his anger had not affected his eerie ability to see into her soul. “Do you know what I think? It is not outrage that is chasing you from this garden. It is fear. You saw my wife as a barricade, one that safely kept us apart. Now that the barricade is gone, you do not have the courage to admit you want me as much as I want you. I could respect you for deciding the risk was not worth it. But not for lying to me and to yourself.”

“This may come as an unpleasant surprise, Count Raimond, but not every woman finds you as irresistible as you seem to think you are. I assumed that you were worldly enough to take our flirtation for what it was, an amusing way to pass the time on a tedious journey. If you have read more into it, that is your problem, not mine.”

Without waiting for his response, she spun around and strode off, head high, heart beating so loudly she feared he might hear it. She was thankful to see Mariam hurrying toward her, drawn by their raised voices. When Raimond called after her, “I do not believe you,” she flinched but did not look back.

F
ROM
B
ORDEAUX,
they headed north, accepting the hospitality of Geoffrey Rudel, the Lord of Blaye, who had a small castle on the right bank of the Gironde Estuary. It was claimed that the hero of the Chanson de Roland, a nephew of Charlemagne, was buried in the Basilique St-Roman, but even Roland was overshadowed by Geoffrey’s father, the celebrated troubadour Jaufre Rudel. Jaufre had fallen in love with the Countess of Tripoli, a woman he’d never seen. Taking the cross on her behalf, he’d accompanied the French king and Eleanor to the Holy Land on their ill-fated crusade. According to legend, he’d taken ill and had been carried ashore at Tripoli. Being told of his devotion, the countess visited him in his tent and he’d died in her arms.

Joanna was familiar with this romantic legend and under other circumstances she might have enjoyed staying in the love-struck troubadour’s castle. As it was, her stay at Blaye was not a pleasant one. Raimon de Miraval and Peire Vidal had left them at Carcassonne, and when the women expressed disappointment that they could not hear Jaufre’s famous songs about his beloved countess, Raimond offered to perform one of them himself. His rendition of “During May, When the Days Are Long” was enthusiastically received. Only Joanna, applauding politely, took no pleasure in it. It seemed to her that Raimond was looking directly at her when he sang of Jaufre’s “faraway love” and lamented, “I do not know whenever I shall see her, so far away our countries are.” When he concluded, “Never shall I enjoy love, unless I enjoy this faraway love,” some of the women blinked back tears, but Joanna yearned to pitch her wine cup at Raimond’s dark head, knowing full well that he was laughing at her.

She was all the more furious with him because he was right. She
was
afraid to confront her feelings for him. Now that she knew she’d not be committing adultery, she feared that he might tempt her into a less serious sin, but one that she knew she’d regret afterward. For a queen, too much was at stake. So she did her best to keep her indignation burning at full flame, reminding herself repeatedly that he’d treated his wife rather shabbily, most likely putting her aside because she’d failed to give him a male heir, after just one daughter in fifteen years of marriage.

She also did her best to limit their interactions, although that meant spending more time with Cardinal Melior and his clerics. Raimond took note of her new strategy, looking at her with mock sympathy when he saw her choosing to sit beside the cardinal at meals or ride beside him on the road. The papal legate seemed pleased that she was once more treating Raimond coldly and regaled her with stories of the impiety that hung over Toulouse like a storm cloud. There was not even a separate quarter for the Jews, he said; they dwelt wherever they pleased! The people of these benighted southern lands chased after pleasure the way a dog pursued rabbits, and since they allowed their women so much freedom, they were no better than they ought to be. Count Raimond encouraged their frivolous pursuits and wanton behavior and he probably tried to ensnare them in Cathar nets, too.

Joanna listened dutifully to these lectures, knowing she’d brought them upon herself by her defense of Sicilian tolerance. She did not dare to tell the cardinal that, like Raimond, she believed the Almighty would not have created a world of such surpassing beauty without wanting them to glory in it and in all of its earthly pleasures.

I
T WAS MID-
O
CTOBER
and the nights were noticeably cooler. From Blaye, they spent a night in a castle at Mirambeau, and then stopped at the Abbaye aux Dames de Saintes. Eleanor had been a generous patron of the convent in the years before and after her captivity, so the nuns welcomed this opportunity to receive her daughter and her son’s queen. Saintes had once been a Roman town, and they marveled at the remarkable Arch of Germanicus, towering above an ancient Roman bridge, still in use so many centuries after the empire’s fall. But few were curious enough to visit the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, for their enthusiasm for sightseeing had waned and their only interest now was in reaching Poitiers, eighty-five miles to the north.

Their next stop was at Niort, whose castle had been begun by Joanna’s father and completed by Richard. They’d just settled in when a stir was created by the arrival of Joanna’s cousin, André de Chauvigny. They’d not seen him since their departure from Acre a year ago and they had an emotional reunion. André had a surprise for them. They’d dispatched letters to Germany before they left Rome, letting Richard know of their plans, instructing the courier to meet them at Poitiers, and he’d arrived that past week, André said, bearing letters from Richard; he even had one for Mariam from Morgan. These were the first letters that Richard’s wife or sister had received from him, and they snatched them up eagerly. Berengaria took hers up to the privacy of her bedchamber, while Joanna retreated with hers to a window-seat in the great hall.