Joanna (27 page)

“Well, well, we will see,” Salisbury temporized, realizing that Geoffrey was attempting to offer a way to appease Ela. He did not believe she could be taken in, but he could see no reason to reject his son’s peace offer. Nor did he see any reason to continue the subject. “When do you expect Joanna?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Geoffrey replied. “I was sure she would be here already. Even if I traveled quicker, she had far less distance to come and I must have started some days later because the messenger” Geoffrey’s voice faltered into silence and the color drained from his face.

Until he started to add up the days, he had not realized how long it was between the time Joanna had been summoned to court and this day. He knew that Joanna traveled no more slowly than any man.

“Taken?” he cried, leaping to his feet. “Could she have been taken?”  
p.

It was easy enough for Joanna to guess that the young jackanapes the king had sent with his summons was more spy than messenger. She did not fear violence for he brought no entourage, but unfortunately, however silly his looks, this creature would not be so easy to befool as that vain ass Henry de Braybrook. He was not at all interested in Edwina, and was mean enough to betray her (as he thought) to Joannawho was heartily annoyed at having to pretend to punish her maid. Now, Edwina was pretty as a picture, as clean or cleaner than any gentlewoman, and if not as richly dressed, still very charmingly dressed. Few men would resist such an offer, and not one of John’s gentlemennot without a real reason. That fact alone would have set Joanna on guard, even if she had not been well enough versed in political realities to understand her summoning to Alexander’s knighting was a complete non sequitur.

Thus, Joanna’s message to Geoffrey had been sent off in complete secrecy and she sent no other. Moreover, she was careful not to betray the least reluctance or even surprise. Instead she ditheredif that word could be applied to such slow and placid indecisionuntil Sir Guy was forced to excuse himself and go away, knowing he would expose her either by laughing or by some exclamation of surprise. She packed and unpacked and repacked and then, when they were finally on the road, returned twice for forgotten objects. There was some chance that John’s man would have heard of her efficiency during the Welsh war and become suspicious, but the delay was worth the risk. Joanna could only believe that this desire to get her early to court was an attempt to further smirch her reputation and she was determined that Geoffrey would arrive before her to give her countenance.

There was also a full baggage train this time. To questions about what she needed house furniture for, Joanna replied that her previous visit to court had proved to her that she could not sleep or be happy except with her own furniture around her. Since it was common enough for the great nobles to furnish their own chambers, the gentleman thought no more of the matter. Joanna was greatly relieved. She had neither had to lie nor to confess that she had no intention of staying with the queen’s women as she had in the past. It was too vulnerable a position. Lady Alinor owned a house in London, and Joanna intended to establish herself there with fifty loyal men-at-arms to protect her and repel unwanted visitors.

The roads were miserable. The carts broke down. Even the weather cooperated. All in all, a journey that was an easy two-day ride stretched into near eight days and, with the two days Joanna had spent dithering over her packing, it was the evening of the first of March when the walls of Southwark came into view.

By now, Joanna’s escort was thoroughly exasperated. He knew he would be in trouble with the king, but short of knocking the girl unconscious or binding and gagging her there was nothing he could have done to get her along faster. He might even have tried the latter expedients, except that her master-of-arms and a hard-eyed and tight-mouthed second-in-command never let her out of their sight for a moment until she was closed into her tent or safe in the women’s quarters. To his request that they be dismissed, Joanna had replied that she had no power to do so. Their attendance, as that of the fifty men-at-arms who rode with them over the loud objections of the king’s messenger, had been ordered by her mother and Lord Ian.

“They will obey neither you nor me, my lord,” Joanna said placidly and mendaciously.

Thus, when they saw a large troop of men come thundering across London bridge, which they were headed toward,   it really did not surprise John’s man that Beorn should hail the leader with joy. It was all of a piece with the frustration, delay, and bad luck of this entire enterprise that the troop should be that of Lord Geoffrey FitzWilliam. It was fated, he knew. It must be that God’s hand was raised to shield this woman. The depressed conviction left no room for suspicion. It seemed natural enough that Lord Geoffrey should be summoned to the knighting and should come to escort his betrothed into the city.

The same conviction did not touch the king. He knew Geoffrey was not supposed to receive a summons. He cursed his man soundly for a fool and a clod. Doubtless someone, perhaps even the messenger himself, had given information of John’s summons to Salisbury and Salisbury had sent for Geoffrey as the easiest and most direct way to control the girl herself and suppress the tittle-tattle regarding her. John was annoyed, but not really angry. Obviously, his brother did not trust the little slut but, equally, he was not prepared to forgo her enormous dowry and inheritance. That was quite reasonable. The son, of course, was just the sort of hot-headed prig to repudiate the betrothal. John shook his head. William should have understood that he would be discreet with his brother’s daughter-by-marriage.

The matter was of very little importance, however. John was not hungry at the moment. He was well employed trying to get Isabella with child again, and there were a few other tasty pieces around. Besides, it would be more amusing to tumble the girl after Geoffrey was irrevocably tied to her by marriage. He smiled a slow smile, put back into complete good humor by the thought of Geoffrey’s torment. How his cockerel-proud nephew would squirm and rage. By then, even that loud-mouthed hothead would not be able to raise a protest. When Philip of France was humbled and Normandy was his own again, no man would dare complain even if the king should choose to spread-eagle that man’s wife on the high table in the midst of dinner.

To add a note of comedy to the whole, it was Geoffrey who was furious when he saw his betrothed safe and sound   and outwardly, at least, placid as a cow. There had been times in Geoffrey’s life when he felt the cold hand of fear, but never had his gut been twisted with such agony as when he conceived of Joanna as a helpless prisoner. Both Salisbury and Ela had cried out that he was an idiot. Salisbury had gone so far in an effort to calm his son as to say in plain words that, whatever John’s intentions, he would not use force at this stage. Ela had pleaded and reasoned that Joanna was not a fool. She would not ride out without adequate protection. Both had pointed out that it was quite mad to rush out seeking Joanna. He could not be sure which route she would take or whether or where she might have decided to visit someone on the way.

Nothing either said had the slightest effect on Geoffrey. He stormed out of the solar, shouting for his arms, his men, his horse. Salisbury started up as if to follow him, but Ela held him back, shaking her head at the fear bred by contagion in her husband’s eyes.

“Let him go. He is tired and dreaming horrors. Often I do not agree with you as to what your brother will or will not do, William, but this time you are right. John believes the girl is a whore. He will not think of force until she denies him. Perhaps Geoffrey will find Joanna, perhaps not. Even if he does not, he is better off on the road than making mischief at courtwhich he would do in his present mood.”

“If he does not find her, he will be a madman by the time he returns.”

“Perhaps, but by then Joanna will certainly be here and she can deal with him.”

“Joanna? God forbid. He will frighten her into refusing him.”

Ela laughed. “Not Joanna. She has her fears, no doubt, but no raging man can make her turn a hair.”

In that Ela was quite right. Joanna watched with mild amazement as Geoffrey faced down the king’s messenger and sent him off like a cat with a burr under its tail. When he turned upon her eyes that leapt like flames with his rage, she made a sharp gesture that sent Beorn and Knud back from   their positions just behind her to ride with the men.

“Where have you been?” Geoffrey asked, sounding as if someone had him by the throat.

Joanna blinked. “What do you mean, where have I been? Most lately I have been to Mersea, but you know that. I wrote”

“Where have you been since you sent to me to tell me you had been summoned by the king?” Geoffrey asked, sounding, if possible, even worse.

“Are you mad?” Joanna rejoined calmly. “I have been at Roselynde and then on the road here. Where else”

“Ten days? I make it ten days since you wrote to me. Do you expect me to believe it took you ten days to come some seventy miles?”

“Well, of course I expect you to believe it. Indeed, it was not at all easy to accomplish. If the weather had not helped me by turning wet, I should have had to feign illness, and I do not like to do that because it is too easy for the pretense to be discovered.”

That silenced Geoffrey for a moment. He took a deep breath. “Are you telling me you deliberately spent ten days on the road in February? For what purpose?”

Joanna was not quite certain what had sent Geoffrey into such a fit of ill temper, but since she had nothing to hide and was absolutely sure Geoffrey would approve heartily of what she had done once he understood it, she could not forbear to have her fun. She lowered her eyes demurely.

“Oh, no, I have not been on the road for ten days,” she replied, deliberately adding obscurity to confusion.

“You just said”

“I agreed it was ten days since I wrote you, my lord.”

Experience of Joanna’s sense of humor should have taught Geoffrey better, but he was so completely taken up with the rage that comes with relief that knowledge lost its power. “Where have you been then?” he bellowed in a voice that made Joanna’s mare shy across the road.

“I do not understand you, my lord,” Joanna replied meekly, bringing her mount back into position. “I have   told you already that I was on my way here.’’

“Joanna!” Geoffrey roared, but she had gone too far. Even rage could not obscure the deliberate idiocy of that answer. He stared at her balefully for a long moment, and then began to laugh. “I will pay you back for that,” he said, when he could speak, and then, seriously, “I was frightened out of my wits when I realized it was ten days since you had been summoned and you still had not arrived.”

That was heartwarming, very flattering. Joanna could find no fault with that reason for bad temper. She smiled enchantingly. “But you could not believe me such a fool as to arrive before you were at court to give me countenance. I will not live among Isabella’s ladies again if I can by any means avoid it.”

The words touched a sore spot, and Geoffrey frowned. “Why not?”

“Because I was near bored to death by them,” Joanna replied tartly.

Again Geoffrey was silenced. He had a strong inclination to make a nasty remark concerning the gossip about Joanna and Braybrook, but he was aware that he was vulnerable on a similar score and, what was more, was guilty. Meanwhile, they had clattered across the bridge, Joanna exclaiming with wonder at the tight-packed shops and houses that lined it and at the rushing water. She had not had occasion to cross it before. When she came to London with Lady Ela, they had taken a more northern route from Salisbury and had forded the Thames many miles to the west where it was narrow and manageable.

Disarmed by her delight, Geoffrey dismounted and gained admittance to the back premises of one of the shops so that Joanna could watch the watermen shoot the arches. The tide was running in, and boats were coming up-river toward Westminster. Joanna laughed with excitement at the perilous undertaking, wanting to know how the boats came down again. Geoffrey explained that they came down when the tide turned, which Joanna understood very well except, she protested, that tides did not run in rivers. When Geoffrey had explained about the estuary of the Thames and that boats could go both ways, although with effort, in slack water, Joanna wanted to go on the river in a boat. She had never done so because Lady Ela would not travel by boat, claiming it made her sick. Geoffrey promised that his father’s waterman would take her very soon and extracted a promise in return that she would go with no one else. It was quite dangerous, he pointed out, and a number of people had been drowned.

Then, since they were already dismounted, Joanna wanted to visit the shops. Geoffrey agreed indulgently, but he noted that the light of the short day was already fading. A compromise was readily reached. Beorn and Joanna’s troop were sent to escort the servants and baggage to the house while Geoffrey attended his betrothed in a tour. Actually, Joanna found little that was better or more exotic than the wares that came into Roselynde harbor, but Geoffrey did purchase a short cloak of long, silvery fur, light and very warm, that came from some barbaric land east of the Norse countries and, from the same source, a large clear yellow bead that held a beautiful winged insect imprisoned in its depths.

They were both in the best of good humors by the time Geoffrey lifted Joanna down from her horse in front of her house. “I will not come in,” he said. “I will ride up to my father’s house and tell him and Ela you are come.”

Joanna nodded equably. “And tell Lady Ela that I will wait upon her tomorrow. Will you return here to sleep, Geoffrey?”

“Do you desire it?” he asked softly.

Instead of answering his question directly, Joanna said, “When will it be safe for Ian to return to England?”

There was no chance that Geoffrey would misunderstand her. The date of their wedding depended upon Ian’s return. Geoffrey’s expression clouded and he shrugged. “The news is so good from Ireland that my fatherthings are not easy between us, Joanna. Although he does not accuse me he suspects me of wishing to retain Ian’s power and discouraging his return for that reason. Papa still believes the Welsh are cowed and will not rise. As for Ianif there is no trouble by summer, then Owain and I will both have been mistaken and Ian can come homeand no one will be more glad than I. I am bone weary and talked hoarse, and I am not sure I have accomplished my purpose.”