Joanna (19 page)

“Oh, yes, my flower, I would have preferred you a million times over to the pale bud I now have, and I can hardly bear to think of you wasted on”

“Please do not missay my husband to me,” Joanna whispered, her voice so tight with fury that she could scarcely force out the words.

“Ah, my love, you are perfection. Such sweetness of temper! I can scarcely believe you will defend him who used you so coarsely.”

Long red lashes veiled Joanna’s eyes. Behind them she saw the gouges her nails had left in Geoffrey’s hand, heard the snake’s hiss of her own voice as she told him what she thought. Such sweetness of temper! A giggle shook her. She caught her breath.

“Do not weep,” Braybrook whispered, leaning forward and sliding an arm around her.

A low growl rumbled in Brian’s throat. Braybrook looked down at the dog who had always been so friendly as to be idiotic.   “He does not like people to touch me,” Joanna gasped, lying fluently. Brian had reacted to her own stiffening of revulsion. He never growled when Geoffrey embraced her.

“Be still, Brian. Lie down.”

The words seemed an open invitation, but Braybrook did not notice that Joanna had surreptitiously tugged the leash so that, when Brian obeyed, the dog collapsed directly between them. That was a nuisance, but he did not dare disrupt the mood still further by telling her to move the creature.

“My rose,” he said softly, “you are such that a man must cherish you, not come drunken into your presence and refuse you your rightful pleasure in so small a thing as dancing.”

By now the whole thing had become so ridiculous that Joanna felt a sense of unreality. Besides, he was such an ass, he deserved to wear long ears. It was as if she and Braybrook were players acting parts in one of those risible farces of stupid husband, sly lover, and unfaithful wife. Joanna fluttered her eyelashes.

“My pleasure must be what pleases my husband,” she sighed.

“No, no,” Sir Henry contradicted softly. “That is too much goodness. Then you are a slave. A woman has also a right to be happy, and it is her husband’s duty to please her in such things as dancing and dress and using her with honor before others. When a husband fails in such matters, he has lost the right to his wife’s loyalty.”

“Oh, do you think so?” Joanna asked dulcetly, looking aside.

“Of a surety, my love. When such a prize as you, a very sun that lights the world with beauty is despised, the warm rays must be cast outward. They must illuminate a heart more ready to receive them.”

Again Joanna choked. Sir Henry was much more romantic than Geoffrey. Geoffrey had called her torch-head a few times, but that was not meant as a compliment. That made the conversation between Braybrook and herself even more unreal to Joanna. She must tell Geoffrey, she thought, that   she had been likened to the sun. He would probably inform her trenchantly that the reflection from the flames of hell on her head had been confused with a purer light.

“Oh, look at me,” Braybrook cried softly, “see how my heart has taken fire from your loveliness. I cannot bear that you should know a moment’s grief.”

Exactly like the lines in a play, Joanna thought, her eyes stubbornly fixed on Brian’s head lest the laughter in them give her away. No one really said such things. “I beg you, do not tempt me to sin,” she got out in a quivering voice, sure that whoever had designed the play would approve of her rendering of his lines.

“I do not. I do not,” Sir Henry assured her, seizing her hand. “It is your heart I desire. There can be no sin in a pure love.”

The heart you desire is between my legs, Joanna thought crudely, but you are speaking the lines correctly. She looked up finally, so taken up with her amusing concept that they
both
knew they were involved in a farce of infidelity that her glance was replete with approval. It was on this note that this act of a farce must end. And right on cue, came the “interrupter.”

“Say no more, my lord,” Joanna murmured, withdrawing her hand gently. “The queen comes.”

Braybrook was not surprised, but he was highly annoyed. It was Isabella who had sent him into the garden after Joanna, although he had not needed any urging. Sir Henry was reasonably sure that Isabella wanted to make trouble for the girl. He was perfectly willing to please her because it would permit him to take a most suitable revenge on Geoffrey. That Joanna should happen to be one of the most desirable pieces he had ever laid eyes upon was additional good luck. However, the queen was a fool. Joanna was no experienced court slut with whom a man could come to terms in five minutes. Doubtless she was heading speedily in that direction, but at present she was still green and needed elaborate coaxing. Isabella had not allowed sufficient time.   The queen herself, although not clever, had realized her mistake as soon as she saw Braybrook still standing formally before Joanna. She had not, of course, expected that Joanna would yield herself in the garden in the middle of the day, but she had hoped that she and her women would catch them in a more compromising situation. She did her best, turning aside with a shocked air to take another path, but Joanna frustrated that move. Leaping to her feet and tugging Brian, she called loudly, “Madam, pray wait, I beg you.

The sudden move his mistress made startled Brian, who also leapt to his feet. Meanwhile, Braybrook had stretched a hand toward Joanna to hold her back and half turned. Brian’s shoulder caught the courtier on the hip, spun him round, and knocked him backward right into the prickly arms of the roses. He emitted a shriek, half-startled and half-pained. The dog, seeing a human on his own level and apparently troubled, lunged forward and swiped a large, moist tongue comfortingly across Braybrook’s face, effectively pinning him into his ignominious position. Joanna stood quite paralyzed, choking, her only thought at the moment that this had happened at the wrong time. The oversetting of the sly lover did not come until the end of the play.

The laughter of the other women spurred Joanna into movement. She pulled Brian away with a breathless apology, curtsied, and ran toward the queen.

“Yourerfriend seems in need of help,” Isabella remarked coldly.

The play was over as far as Joanna was concerned. It was necessary to return to serious matters. “Worse happens to men in war,” she remarked humorously, not even glancing toward the thrashing sounds and low oaths that emanated from the roses. “I must beg a leave of you, madam, for a week or a fortnight.”

“Do you beg leave for Braybrook also?” Isabella asked.

Joanna’s eyes widened and an expression of total puzzlement covered her face. The jest was over and she had put it out of her mind. “What use could
he
be to me?” Joanna asked contemptuously. “I have serious business to do,” she   added. “I must away to Clyro and find more supplies for war by my lord’s order. I have no time for play or foolishness at all.”

“
You
must find supplies?” Isabella asked incredulously. “What have you to do with such? If supplies are needed, doubtless the bailiffs and stewards will be told.”

“I am my mother’s bailiff and steward,” Joanna said, keeping the pride from her voice only with great effort, “and my lord’s letter” she showed Isabella Geoffrey’s seal, “bids me make the greatest haste I may to forward the king’s desire. If it pleases you, madam, I will return as soon as my business is done, but I may not disobey the king’s will, which is named in my lord’s order.’’

However heedless Joanna might be in the pursuit of a jest, she was not at all foolish in the pursuit of a real purpose. The queen’s appearance on the heels of Henry de Braybrook’s silly attempt at lovemaking might be a coincidenceor it might not. Isabella’s insistence on connecting her request to leave with Braybrook’s presence might be a simple result of a love of scandal and having a dirty mind, which Joanna knew the queen to have, or it might be a deliberate attempt to smirch Joanna with the mud that so liberally bespattered the court. In any case, Joanna had realized that Isabella would not give her leave to go willingly. However, the queen never opposed the king’s will, at least openly, and Joanna had invoked John’s name to good purpose. Grudgingly, Isabella agreed. Joanna did not delay an instant but curtsied and went away.

Because she was annoyed with him, Braybrook stayed in Isabella’s mind. Her thought processes were neither quick nor clear, but through repetition of the unsatisfactory scenes of the afternoon came the feeling that Joanna had escaped the punishment that she deserved and that Braybrook was responsible. The skewed logic of Isabella’s brain then conceived what seemed a brilliant notion. She summoned a scribe and dictated an order that Braybrook accompany Joanna as escort to “perform all such services as will content that lady’s heart and body.”   Braybrook stared at the order, appalled. He had no intention of presenting himself to Joanna again as a suitor. The queen might be silly, but Braybrook was not. He had heard enough, even while struggling with the rose bushes, to understand that Joanna had been making fun of him all alongfrom the very first words about why she had come into the garden to read her letter. She was not at all ashamed of her skill; she had showed that letter to the queen as bold as brass. The little bitch had been toying with him, but he could see a way to turn that jest against her. Braybrook was now in complete sympathy with the queen’s ultimate intention. He was now firmly determined to broach Joanna, cuckold Geoffrey, and thereby have his revenge on both. He, realized, however, if Isabella did not, that her order would not forward the purpose in any way.

It was useless, Braybrook knew, to try to reason with Isabella, and he was her gentleman, constrained to obey her orders. Reluctantly, he set out to find Joanna only to discover that she had left with her entire troop some hours earlier. At first Braybrook was relieved, but on second thought he realized that, far from being a lucky chance, Joanna’s efficiency had landed him in real trouble. It would make no difference to Isabella that it was her order that came too late. She would blame him for not carrying out the order.

Suddenly, Braybrook stopped pacing the floor and snapped his fingers. Well, why not? If he stole away quietly, who would know he was not with Joanna? An unpleasant smile grew on his lips. If she denied his presence, he would shrug and smile and say he had the queen’s order to attend her butif the lady said he had not, then, since a gentleman did not contest a lady’s word in
such
matters, he had not, of course. Meanwhile, he could have at least a week and probably two of the uninterrupted company of his present mistress. She would not betray himwell, she could not, since her husband was with the king in Wales.  
p.

Much as she had cause to dislike him, Joanna came near to blessing the king’s name in the next three weeks. The feeling was purely personal. In financial terms, the war in Wales had cost double what it should have. From Joanna’s point of view, this was not a disaster because Ian and Alinor had foreseen that no war ever costs what is estimated and had left careful instructions. Ian had told Geoffrey what men to hire, where to obtain them, and how much to pay if the terms of service of the vassals ran out. Alinor had told Joanna where to find the money for this and other things and where to
say
the money had come fromwhich were two different things.

Even for those who had not the resources that Geoffrey and Joanna commanded, the Welsh war was no great strain. King John himself paid the costs for any man who was pinched, and he did not oppress the people with taxation. He wrung the loins of the Church, exacting such heavy fines that it was rumored he had extracted one hundred thousand pounds from this source. Joanna heard much of this from the church in Roselynde town and the abbey some ten miles to the east, which cried to her for help she could not give, although she promised the priest and monks that they should not starve.

So much business was thrust upon her by the need to supply Geoffrey’s troops, inform her mother and Ian of what was happening, and mitigate to some degree the terrors of the churchmen on her property that she had little time to fear for Geoffrey’s safety and no opportunity to return to court. For this the king was responsible, and Joanna was duly grateful.   To feed the war party, Joanna had stripped Clyro naked of provender. Then it was necessary to draw supplies not only from Roselynde but Kingsclere and other keeps to replace Clyro’s store and even to increase it in case this second assault on Llewelyn also failed and the king decided to try yet again. Unfortunately, Joanna had discovered that Sir Peter’s lady was truly a weak reed. While Joanna purchased cattle and sheep at Shrewsbury and dispatched them to Oswestry in the care of Knud and part of her guard, she had sent Lady Mary a message to make ready for cartage to Oswestry sufficient grain and dried meat to feed the men for three weeks and such salt meat and fish as was available. To her horror when she arrived at Clyro she found total chaos.

The sacks were helter-skelter all unmarked with no way to tell what was meal for bread or unground kernel for other purposes. The maker’s marks were on the casks of salt provision, but the stupid woman had not stopped to think that the men who dealt out the supplies came from all over the country and would not know which maker provided Clyro with salt fish and which prepared salt meat from the demesne cattle. It was all for Joanna to do: seeing that each cask was marked with the brand of a fish or an ox and each sack painted with a loaf of bread or an ear of corn. Also she had to attend to the purchase and borrowing of oxen and carts for transport. How Lady Mary thought the supplies would get from Clyro to Oswestry Joanna did not bother to ask.

In fact, unlike Lady Alinor who in her first rage might well have frightened Lady Mary out of what little wits she had, Joanna had merely cast her eyes up to heaven. Subsequently, she had patiently made what she wanted so clear, one word at a time, that Lady Mary was actually of some help. The usefulness, however, gave Joanna no mistaken notion that she had imbued the lady with either good sense or efficiency. It would be necessary for her to return to Clyro to oversee the replacement of the provisions she had commandeered and the stockpiling of the additional supplies. At least, Joanna thought, she was sure that she would be a welcome guest.   When the wains were loaded, Joanna engaged in a sharp struggle with herself. She had a violent desire to go with the supplies to Oswestry and found herself putting forward the most ridiculous reasons to do so. There was not the smallest purpose to going. A lettershort at thatcould tell Geoffrey all he needed to know. Besides, Joanna realized she would be most horribly in the way in a town overrun with men, an additional burden on poor Geoffrey, who would have to find her lodging and would doubtless also try to find some hours to give to her in an already overfilled day. Joanna told herself she could not imagine why she wanted so desperately to go, and then blushed hotly in the privacy of her own chamber. It was a sad strait when a person began to lie to herself. What she wanted, Joanna acknowledged, was to taste Geoffrey’s mouth again, to feel his hands on her body.