For Love And Honor (14 page)

“I’m not sure,” Rohaise began, but Joanna
clutched at her arms in near panic at the thought of the midwife
handling her baby.

They were
walking on the battlements, as they did each day, with Baird just a
pace or two behind them. Joanna’s body was so swollen in the last
stages of her pregnancy that if she wanted to get up the steps to
the top of the castle wall she was compelled to allow the detested
Baird to help her. She hated having him take her arm, but she had
no choice, and the walks were vital to her, providing not only
exercise but the only contact she had with the busy life of
Banningford. By her father’s orders no one was permitted to
appr
oach or speak to her, but she could see peo
ple going about their business in the
bailey and observe the men-at-arms who stood watch on the walls.
There were one or two of the men who always made a point of smiling
and nodding to her while Baird’s attention was elsewhere, which
made her feel a little less isolated.

“Rohaise, you must promise me.” Joanna linked
her arm through her stepmother’s elbow. “Swear that when my time
comes you won’t leave me alone with that filthy creature.”

“I will see what I can do,” Rohaise said, her
voice too low for Baird to hear. “I noticed how much the midwife
drank last night. Perhaps she can be bribed.”

“Whatever you do, do it soon,” Joanna begged.
“I don’t think I have much more time.”

In fact, her labor began an hour after she
returned to her chamber, the water breaking in a great gush and her
pains coming hard and close together from the very beginning.
Rohaise never left her side, but the midwife was in the room,
too.

“Please make her leave!” Joanna cried, seeing
the woman’s dirty face and toothless grin. Rohaise waited until
Joanna’s most recent pain had subsided before explaining.

“Radulf insists on her presence,” Rohaise
said, “so she must be here. But I have made a bargain with her. For
a large pitcher of wine and some coins I had saved, she will sit in
the corner and leave us alone. She has ordered Lys to bring up two
buckets of boiling hot water and has agreed to send Lys away
immediately afterward, so that we can be alone.”

“Thank you. I’m glad to be relieved of the
presence of Baird’s woman, too. I know what I am asking of you,
Rohaise. If something goes wrong and this child is born dead or
imperfect in any way, my father will punish you as well as the
midwife. And he’ll punish me, too,” Joanna finished, bracing
herself against the next pain.

“I would never leave you alone,” Rohaise
said, taking Joanna’s hands and holding them tight. “Hold on to me,
now.”

“It shouldn’t be coming so fast,” quavered
the midwife, putting down her wooden winecup to come closer and
look at Joanna. “It’s a first child; ye should struggle for hours
yet, perhaps days.” She would have put a grubby hand on Joanna’s
abdomen, but Joanna shrank back.

“Leave me alone. Don’t touch me.”

“Have yer own way, then. Ye’ll be screaming
for me to help ye soon enough.” With that, the midwife went to the
door to admit Lys with the water. True to her bargain with Rohaise,
she quickly shooed Baird’s woman out of the room, then bolted the
door.

“No one else will disturb us,” Rohaise said
to Joanna. Pointing to the corner, she told the midwife, “Sit down
and stay there until I call you.”

“Do what ye will. ‘Tis naught to me so long
as I’m well paid,” said the midwife.

Now began
the hard work of bringing forth new life, for as the
midwife
had noted, Joanna’s
body was
not dawdling through the usually slow first hours of labor. It
seemed to Joanna that her womb was as eager to expel the child as
she was to hold it in her arms. And through every grinding pain and
all the exhausting effort Rohaise was with her, holding her hands,
wiping her brow, encouraging her. Rohaise made her walk up and down
the chamber, and when she could no longer walk because her legs
were trembling so badly, Rohaise ordered her to squat on a straw
pallet on the floor and held her steady while Joanna pushed and
pushed until she thought she would die of weariness. Rohaise kept
her so concentrated on the task at hand and the child came so
quickly that though she grunted and groaned and even cursed once or
twice with the effort she was making, Joanna did not cry out until,
toward the very end, she felt something hot and wet sliding out of
her body. Then it was a shout of triumph, not pain, and Rohaise
cried aloud, too, catching the child and lifting it while Joanna
sank back onto the pallet. Quickly Rohaise cleaned the baby and
wrapped it in a soft cloth.

A thin, determined wail came from the tiny
mouth, and Rohaise turned the baby, holding up a corner of the
cloth so Joanna could see it was a boy. Joanna stretched out her
arms and Rohaise put the baby into them. Joanna held him against
her breast. The baby nuzzled at her and she laughed, the first
happy sound she had made in nearly a year.

“Help me to take off this dirty shift,” she
said to Rohaise. “My son Crispin is hungry.” A moment later the
baby suckled contentedly, but he soon drifted off to sleep.

“Well,” said the midwife, leaving her corner
and drawing near in an aura of wine fumes, “ye’ve birthed a fine
son, haven’t ye? I’ll tell ye wot. Let me inform Baron Radulf and
I’ll keep yer secret: that ye did it yerselves, without my
help.”

“I have already paid you,” Rohaise began, but
a happily relaxed Joanna stopped her.

“It’s all right; let her be the one to tell
my father, and let him give her the midwife’s fee. It’s nothing to
us so long as little Crispin is healthy and whole. But, woman, give
us a little time alone before you go down to the great hall.”

“
That I
can do, for ye’ve not been unkind to me as some folk are, and ye
gave me good wine. Ye birthed it so soon, girl, that the folks
below won’t be expectin’ any news for hours yet.” The midwife
peered over Rohaise’s shoulder, watching her wash the blood off
Joanna’s thighs and body. “At least she ain’t torn. Ye’ll heal
quickly, girl, and soon be
ready to receive a man again.”
Pouring herself yet another cup of wine, she retreated to
her corner.

“I have no interest in any man but this one,”
Joanna murmured, kissing her baby’s soft flaxen hair. “How fair he
is.”

“So he should be, with two golden blond
parents,” Rohaise said. “How sad that Crispin cannot see him.” But
she could tell that Joanna did not hear her. All Joanna cared about
just then was her son.

*
* * * *

Radulf was ecstatic. As soon as the midwife
had relayed the good news, he bounded up the stairs and burst into
Joanna’s room.

“A boy!” he exulted. “At last! Unwrap him,
Joanna, and let me see with my own eyes.”

Joanna did as he ordered, and Radulf gazed
down at his heir. The baby trembled at first in the cool evening
air, but then he stretched out his little legs and opened huge deep
blue eyes. Delicately, almost reverently, Radulf put out one thick
finger and for an instant touched the tiny male organ.

“Good. Good,” he said, now rubbing his hands
together. “Baird says there is a woman on one of my farms whose
child has died, leaving her with huge breasts full of milk. I’ll
order her to the castle tomorrow to be the wet nurse.”

“No.” Wrapping up her son again, Joanna held
him closer, as if to protect him from her father’s plans for him.
“I will nurse little Crispin myself.”

“Crispin? Never!” Radulf glared at her. “My
grandson will be called William, after the great conqueror who
granted these lands to my family.”

“Crispin,” Joanna repeated, giving Radulf
hard look for hard look. “He will be named for his father.”

“
I
said
William.”

She could tell he was angry. It never took
much to raise Radulf’s temper, but on this occasion Joanna had a
weapon and she was prepared to use it. Her months of isolation had
changed her. She would never again be cowed by her father. On the
surface she might appear to obey his wishes, but in her heart
rebellion was now permanently lodged.

“He will be christened William Crispin,” she
said. “I will agree to the William, and you will agree not to call
that wet nurse to care for him. After all, do you want your
grandchild nourished on a villein’s milk when I can provide noble
food for him?” She knew her father’s pride and saw that she had
judged him correctly. With a growing sense of power, she watched
him consider and accept her argument.

“Very well,” he said, as if he was conferring
a great honor upon her. “You may nurse your son.”

“And I will attend the christening,” she told
him. “I have given you the heir you wanted and no one can doubt his
parentage. Now my most unfair confinement is at an end.”

“Do you think so?” Radulf s eyes narrowed,
his lips twisted in a cruel parody of a smile. “Perhaps you do not
yet understand the lengths to which I will go to protect my
daughter and my grandchild. You, and the baby, will remain here, in
this room, where I can be certain that you will be safe.”

“
I will
attend William Crispin’s chris
tening.”
Never had she been so determined. “Even Baird
could not prevent me.”

“Baird.” Radulf stared at her for a long
time, his eyes cold, his face hard. She looked back at him,
matching his coldness, until she saw understanding come into his
eyes. Then he laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. She thought
he was surprised at her, and his next words proved she was right,
though he did not say what she thought he might. “Truly, my blood
runs in your veins. You should have been a man, Joanna, for you are
as stubborn as I am. Very well; I will grant this one concession.
You may attend the christening, but not the feast afterward. You
and the child will return to this room directly from the chapel.
Baird and Lys will escort you.”

“
I
will carry my
son.” There was a peculiar
sense of freedom about bargaining with him
as an equal. “William Crispin will go to and from the chapel in my
arms.”

“I will choose the godparents.” It was
Radulf’s counteroffer. He named the Earl of Bolsover and his lady,
and added the name of a priest of nearby St. Justin’s Abbey, a man
renowned for his holiness. Joanna had no objection to any of these
people, but she pretended to consider Radulf s selections for a
time before nodding her head.

“
I agree
to those godparents,” she told him. “Now, if William Crispin is to
be healthy, he will need more fresh air and sunshine than you have
granted me. In addition to one hour upon the battlements each
afternoon, I will take him for a second hour in the morning,
beginning the day
after tomorrow.”

“Do not press me too far,” Radulf warned, but
he did not refuse her demand.

“And Rohaise will attend me as she has been
doing,” Joanna finished, hiding a smile, for Radulf was looking at
her with a new respect.

“Very well,” he said. “Perhaps your fertility
will prove contagious to Rohaise. But ask me for nothing more, and
see that you take good care of my grandchild.” Turning on his heel,
he left Joanna’s room.

“How did you dare to face him down like
that?” Rohaise cried. “I cannot believe he gave in to you.”

“Not to me,” Joanna replied. “He did it for
his grandson’s sake. And I did not get what I want most; I did not
win my freedom. He will never let me go. He will keep me here and
use me to gain his own ends and not care that he ought to love and
cherish me because I am his daughter and because I am a decent and
honorable person who until recently has always followed his
direction. My daughterly obedience has led me to this, to a tower
room from which there is no escape.”

Joanna did not add what else she thought,
that her nine months of confinement had been in part a blessing,
for they had given her uninterrupted time in which to consider the
events surrounding Crispin’s death. As the months had passed and
the lingering shock and horror had receded, she had found she was
able to recall more and more of the details of that night, until
she remembered everything that had occurred. She wondered over and
over what the killer’s motive might be, until she reached her own
conclusion. She knew who, and she knew why, but she could not tell
Rohaise, for such knowledge would endanger her stepmother’s life,
and Joanna would not put anyone else in jeopardy for her sake. It
was enough that three good men had seen their lives destroyed.

Looking down at little William Crispin, she
reflected that now she had two reasons for enduring and surviving
whatever Radulf might do to her. The first reason was her son, whom
she loved with an all-consuming passion. She would see to it that
he grew up to be a different kind of man from her father. Perhaps
he would be gentle and thoughtful, as Crispin had been. Her second
goal was to bring Crispin’s murderer to justice. She did not know
yet how she would do it, how long it would take, but she was
determined to find a way, and that determination strengthened and
hardened her.

One week after her son was born Joanna
celebrated her fifteenth birthday.

Yolande

Sicily, 1135-52

On March 21, the same day on which Joanna’s
son was born, Alain, Piers, and Father Ambrose arrived at Palermo.
It had been a lengthy, and in many ways a painful ,journey.

After successfully avoiding Radulf s
searchers long enough to cross the border from England into Wales,
they had headed westward toward Bangor, where Ambrose knew several
monks at the abbey named for St. Deiniol.