The First Princess of Wales (57 page)

“Hunting. Oh, aye, that. I did mention that, did I not? And since the hunting at Great Park is disappointing, you have chosen to hunt elsewhere, is that it? Come, Edward, we shall not joust over this,” he challenged his son when he saw a frown crush the proud brow so much the mirror of his own. “Do not pretend you do not catch my drift. Isabella let slip today she has invited the widowed Duchess of Kent to come to court—and the lady has accepted.”

“Aye. Then you have heard the news too that Isabella and I have offered our services as godparents to the two Holland heirs. The elder has already gone off to Warwick to the Beauchamps a fortnight ago, so I hear.”

“Really? So you hear! And are you not in contact more directly with the lady then, too?”

“No, Your Grace, but since you have reared me to be a warrior like yourself and since you do not wish to joust, I shall tell you flat out—I shall be in close contact soon with Jeannette if I have my way.”

He watched his father’s sharp, blue eyes widen at his blatant admission. Years ago such a look of dismay on his royal sire’s face would have sent him into paroxysms of activity to amend the fault, to fulfill any command. But now, for this, he just met steel gaze with steel gaze. He had waited for this attack to come, and he only hoped it might save Isabella or even Jeannette some of the brunt of the battle later.

“She is hardly suitable for you, Edward. A widow with three children by a knight of the northern, small-landed gentry who—”

“She is descended from the same royal grandsire as I, my lord father—indeed, your own father, King Edward II.”

“Aye. Then there is that too. If you ever considered marriage, you would need papal dispensation for your ties to her by second and third degree.”

“Permission is granted by His Holiness freely and frequently, Your Grace. All the simple complications aside, I have thought perhaps the biggest stumbling block is Joan of Kent’s long-held conviction that you let Roger Mortimer and that slippery bastard de Maltravers dispose of her father.”

The king stood and moved to stand behind his tall-backed chair, so Edward, who never sat in his presence, rose also. The king’s hands gripped the chairback so hard his fingers went stark white, but his voice was deceptively low.

“That is all long, long past. The maid was deceived by that insane mother of hers who locked herself in some little room at their manor for years before she died. No one thinks on that now that de Maltravers disappeared over two years ago and no one needs to discuss it with him now. It is over—over and that woman need pursue such treason no longer!”

“She does not pursue the treason, Your Grace, although it almost killed her once.”

“I never thought to harm her—never! I only told her to keep her foolish thoughts to herself or she could join de Maltravers in exile.”

“I am sure you told her such—and more, but I meant not that you ever threatened her with death over it. She was certainly sent off to exile anyway, was she not? Married to Holland and exiled for a price, and so I have been without her for so many years—”

King Edward’s mouth dropped open in surprise, the prince thought, a king who always hid his real feelings so cunningly. It was suddenly as if he were seeing his father for the first time.

“And for so many years, you have longed for this woman, separated from her, while she was married to another?” the king floundered as if some great illumination shone on him at last. “So long ago since she first came to court. You have been longing for one particular woman when you could have had any—have had many? This is why you never lifted a finger to help with marriage arrangements? This is why you choose now to coerce your sister and go behind my back to gainsay my wishes?”

“I will have Joan of Kent, my lord king—if she will have me.”

“
If?
St. George, boy,” the king shouted in a half-laugh, “but would that not be just like the little vixen. Shall I pin my hopes on that then? There are French princesses who will gladly have you—and solidify the new alliance, too.”

“One of the reasons I have been so zealous for the Treaty of Brétigny to be completed and ratified, Your Grace, is because it serves as far better Anglo-French binding than any bloodless political marriage ever could.”

The sullen blush of controlled anger suffused the king’s fair skin as he stared almost awestruck at his son and heir. “And Aquitaine?” he said low.

Again the tension of tugging wills nearly crackled with energy between the two tall blond men. “And Aquitaine?” the prince parried.

“Holy saints, Edward,” the king shouted as if he would lose control of himself at last. “For the past few months I have been right on the verge of announcing to the world I intend to name you Duke of Aquitaine, to send you there to rule the southern half of our long-coveted France until you shall rule here someday in my stead! I cannot allow the scandal of your marriage to a recent widow, a woman engaged to one man once, then wed with another—aye, petitions for her fair hand have nearly flooded the pope’s desk before—I simply cannot allow the announcement of that marriage to conflict with your becoming ruler of Aquitaine. Indeed, my son and proud heir, you will have to choose!”

Prince Edward fought to keep his own volatile Plantagenet temper in check. Often in the exhaustion of a fight on the battlefield he had seen the victor was the man who kept his head however hard his blood boiled. His voice, when he answered, was controlled but much too strident and too loud.

“I
have
chosen, my lord father. I cannot love Aquitaine, or need Aquitaine the way I love and need this woman. I cannot fill my soul with Aquitaine—or get sons by it for our family’s throne.”

“But all you have spent—years of work, battles, flaming victories for France—”

“That is just it. Hell’s gates, Your Grace, I am thirty-one this June and I have done all that, but I will not ignore my destiny to love her! The people cheer me in the streets and I cannot make myself care anymore. I am contentious to my servants, bitter to my men, and have never been yet able to accept how the Plantagenets sold Jeannette to first Holland, then Salisbury, then Holland again. Isabella is like a mirror of me—she flits about and longs for love, rushing here and there to avoid being truly alone—”

“We do not speak of the Princess Isabella here!”

“No? Do we not? Then let us speak of that other one you mentioned but a while ago and thought I would not heed. If de Maltravers disappeared over two years ago, then, of course, no one may speak with him now, but that is not how you meant those words of him, is it, Your Grace?”

The wily, blue eyes in his father’s face darted off, then refocused in slits of pure challenge. “St. George, my boy, state your meaning blunt.”

“You spoke of de Maltravers as if you knew where he was. You implied he was quite well, my lord father.”

“Quite well!” the king sputtered, his eyes shifting nervously again, so that the prince sensed he had the advantage in this dangerous skirmish now. “Holy saints, I shall explain your ‘quite well’ then and tell you why no one shall ever question de Maltravers again. Two years ago in the spring, he came back to England from Flanders to see his wife in Dorset. I knew he did from time to time, of course, but he stayed not long and it hardly mattered. But it seems he had a vile accident, fell down some stairs or had a seizure of some sort. I never did get all the sad details. At any rate, the poor wretch is greatly paralyzed, his entire left side, and his speech is dreadfully slurred. I sent a priest down to see him in Dorset and it is true.”

“John de Maltravers is in Dorset?”

“Hell, would you begrudge him that, my son? He served me well enough once, and I choose to let him die at home in his own bed when and if God wills it.”

“Served you once well enough? Not only those years as liaison in Flanders, you mean.”

The king heaved a great sigh; his tawny, silvered head drooped; he reseated himself slowly in his chair as if he had capitulated. When his ice-blue eyes threatened tears, he hunched over his quill pen and slid the stack of unsigned papers before him once again.

“Kings, as you will learn all too soon, my self-righteous son, have much to do, too damn many things to take the time to worry about them. But for foreign enemies, this crown has not had to fear traitors for years. Not since I allowed my fond, dear uncle Edmund of Kent to be tried and beheaded.”

His pen scratched out his name on the paper as the prince standing over the table held his breath.

“Aye, it was treason, my son, for Edmund of Kent would have even roused the populous and my fledgling advisors whose good will I needed desperately to move against Mortimer who had so bewitched my lady mother to become his—paramour. She was besotted with him, and I had to take the crown from them by force. I was only fourteen. In truth, my guilt over my uncle’s sad death was not that he did not deserve it but that he had betrayed me and yet that I owed him much for what he did for me.”

“Did for you? But you just said he was a traitor to you.”

“Aye, but he was sadly misled—a fond, trusting man. And it was his defection which made me realize I must strike soon to seize my throne from Mortimer. When I heard how the man with his de Maltravers at his side had literally rammed the call for Edward of Kent’s immediate execution down the throats of Parliament, then sitting here at Windsor, I knew I had to strike and soon. I have my uncle, your Joan’s father, to thank for that precious lesson despite his treason.”

“Then, Father, for that debt, will you not bless my love for her?”

The pen scraped erratically across another parchment which he shoved away. “Mayhap. I shall think on it. But do not deceive yourself about her. She is prideful, willful, and stubborn!”

“And are we not all so, Your Grace, and does not that as well as her fine royal bloodline make her the perfect choice for England’s Princess of Wales? I will have sons by her, my lord father, or none to sit the throne at all. Declare my brother Lancaster Duke of Aquitaine if you will, let the people shout his name in the streets. If the lady will have me, I am hers alone.”

When his father stared up at him almost vacantly without a word, Edward, Prince of Wales, bowed and left the room. The door closed solidly. The king stared down at the last parchment he had signed and the French words seemed to rise and blur before his eyes. Unheedful of the hard work it had taken his scribe to complete the order, he tore off a huge square corner of it and dipped his quill in the ink pot again.

“My dearest Philippa,

The princely walls were attacked, but hardly breeched. Your son is adamant. Despite it all, his almost desperate love for her touched my own tired heart. It seems our only hope lies with the lady herself, but who can predict the wild wind?

How my thoughts turned to the old days, my Philippa, when he spoke of his passion for her. Tonight after council, plan for me to visit you.

Your fond husband,

Edward R III

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A
sultry, mid-July threatened rain on the day the Prince of Wales had awaited for so long. Below his view across the twisting green ribbon of Thames lay Windsor Castle in all her haughty grandeur. From this distance, the watchtowers seemed to beckon like stony fingers; the vast sweep of walls circled the central keep like rings around an inner target. Aye, that was what it reminded him of. At last, he was an arrow shooting straight for the inevitable joining with the core of his desires, Jeannette, down there at Windsor waiting for him.

He knew by his messengers she had arrived from Liddell Manor at Windsor three days ago as she had promised in her last letter to Isabella. Meanwhile, for almost five weeks the king had managed to keep his heir apparent busy on important royal errands to remind him who he was. Only yesterday the prince had returned from Calais across the Channel where he had finally delivered the French King John back to his nation after another massive exchange of hostages and ransoms.

“But now let His Grace try it,” he said aloud, oblivious to the stares his men exchanged whenever he talked aloud lately to no one in particular. “St. George, I am here to stay a good while and let him try to send me elsewhere then!”

He spurred his huge black mount Sable faster down the incline into the valley sheltering the town huddled about the castle’s gray stone ramparts. His retainers, squires, standard bearers, and the ever-present Nick Dagworth soon left their train of packhorses and handlers behind in a fine trail of dust.

Amidst the usual cheers in the streets, they clattered into Windsor straight through the Lower Ward and past the Round Tower to the Upper Ward where they dismounted noisily. Prince Edward swung his sharp glance around the nearly deserted cobbled area; his blond hair prickled along the base of his scalp and at the back of his bronzed neck as though he could feel her eyes already on him. But no. At first perusal, at least, the windows fronting the ward looked blank and no lovely white face with hair the color of champagne gazed out the leaded panes set ajar to catch any breeze in this heavy heat.

After all, it was nearly evenmeal time and courtiers might already be gathering in the Great Hall. Damn, but he should have pushed his entourage harder; he did not intend to be reunited with Jeannette after all this time at a public gathering where everyone could gawk and whisper.

Although he knew fully well what a fine suite of rooms she had been given in the wing close to his sister’s chambers as they had planned, he headed not for those, but to see his accomplice, Isabella. He did not have far to go, for the laughing princess rounded the first turn of stairs, draped on the elegant silk and jeweled arm of young Ingelram de Coucy.

“My Lord Edward,” her musical voice chimed, “I knew you would be here today. I said so, did I not, my Ingelram, that no storm on the Channel like the one threatening here today would stop him once he got rid of that red-haired giant, your King John le Bon?” She gave her brother one of her lightning quick hugs, then stepped back to take de Coucy’s arm again.

“
Certainement,
Your Grace, Prince Edward, that is what
ma demoiselle charmante
said—that and more.”

Even his instinctive mistrust of this proud French peacock could not stop the prince from returning de Coucy’s sly grin. “St. George, my dear de Coucy, but you are learning, you are learning.”

“And you, Your Grace, are a vile tease as usual,” Isabella pouted, amused by her often stern brother’s blatantly buoyant mood. “My Ingelram and I are off to evenmeal and then we had thought to stroll the ramparts if it does not rain. And you, my brother, do you expect to sit with anyone special in the hall tonight or would you like to join us? Our lord father has taken to giving us great signs and suspicious, sideways looks of late though he pretends he hardly cares a whit if we keep to our own end of the table, but we will soon have company enough on that, I warrant, when you find your Jeannette.”

“Enough teasing of your own, my pet,” the prince warned Isabella. “I know you can give out as well as receive when you have a mind to. Now, where is she?”

“
She,
Your Grace, went for a walk outside over half an hour ago. I am surprised you did not see her as you came in.”

“Around the grounds? Such as where? Unguarded?”

“I believe so. I am certain she would not venture outside the grounds, my lord prince, truly, but she is so moody of late and takes it into her head to just go off alone sometimes, though I am certain your arrival will change all that. She was dressed for dinner in brightest green brocade so I am certain she has not gone far. A few drops of this threatening rain would simply ruin her gown and she used to be almost as fussy about fashions as I.”

“I will be in to dinner later then, even though word will spread soon enough I am back from Calais.” He nodded to de Coucy, dropped a fast kiss on Isabella’s rouged and powdered cheek and spun to hurry back down the curving stairs ahead of them.

Isabella had looked absolutely glowing and that made him move faster despite the way the clattering of his spurs on the stairs must tell the couple above that he was nearly running. Love—this great shooting of hot passion through every vein, this livening of the senses—had come at last to Isabella, too. It made him happy for her but even more desperate for himself.

A few folk hurried or strolled the Upper Ward, but no slender blonde in brightest green brocade. To random greetings or pointed stares, he strode the cobbled length of courtyard in his full riding regalia, despite the persistent, clinging heat. He could feel the leather jerkin over his tunic stick to his back muscles as he walked faster. Then, suddenly, the walls of Windsor reverberated from their very foundations with the low roll of thunder.

Under the circular, crenelated Round Tower, he stopped to scan the Inner Ward from the Norman Gate. Surely, she would not have come down this far toward the city gates, and yet, when had he ever predicted Jeannette aright?

He stopped to reason it out as the first big drop of rain plopped on his leather jerkin and deep thunder rolled again. If she had gone to walk alone, there were three places she might favor, but one of them was in view of the royal apartments and she would probably not go there. Besides, she might harbor bad memories of the little private garden where she had been caught once on his lap by the queen or of that little trysting place just outside the postern gate where he had first tried to take her and all hell had broken loose.

“St. George, but I should have asked Isabella what sort of humor she has been in since she has been here,” he scolded himself, and despite the rain, hurried down into the Lower Ward to investigate the third spot.

The Curfew Tower loomed over his head as a band of knights waved and shouted to him. When they had passed, he turned his back on the ward almost furtively and stepped into the tiny alcove with the recessed wooden doorway which led to the irregular, narrow little area on the other side. The door creaked open. From the top of the flight of stone steps, he saw Jeannette instantly.

She stood in the middle of the little area in a green gown that shocked the gray encompassing walls to muteness. She leaned against his old wooden quintain post now stripped of the swinging arm against which he had often done furious battle. She leaned—and, in the pelting rain, she actually embraced—that rough, dirty wooden post as if it were a person.

Oblivious to the sprinkles, even as she, he moved down the stone steps. Her slender back was to him and her lifted arms accentuated the narrow waist and the swell of her rounded hips. His heart pounded in his ears to outdo the patter of rain on his leather jerkin. He hoped, he prayed, that her embrace of that stalwart quintain post was a reaching out for a memory of him!

“Jeannette.”

She stiffened against the post only a mere six feet away now after all this time. “Jeannette, my sweetheart, it is raining and you cannot simply stand out here. This whole courtyard swims in wretched mud and mire when it rains. Do you not remember?”

She did not move toward him as he had hoped but clung tighter to the post and swiveled her elegantly coiffed, uncovered head to face him. Then she lowered her arms and curtsied, one now-mottled green brocade shoulder touching the post as if for support. He could not be certain in the rain, but he believed she had been crying. He wanted to embrace her, he wanted to say so much, but they both simply stood and stared as if awestruck in the rain.

“Aye, my Lord Edward, I do remember,” she said at last when he could not recall what he had said to her.

He took her elbow and escorted her up the steps and under the narrow stone arch over the door. Sheltered there from the increasing deluge in the courtyard, they each leaned against opposite stone pillars and gazed into the other’s eyes.

“So very long, Jeannette.”

“Aye. Over two years this time.”

“And so long since we first met here in this courtyard. You were holding for dear life onto that quintain post just now, my Jeannette. Were you remembering when you came here all those years ago and saw me charging hellbent against it?”

Her beautiful lavender eyes lowered, then rose to meet his steady gaze again. Saints, she thought, one mere touch on my elbow, those devouring eyes like that and I am undone already, but she said only the other truth so she did not make a fool of herself instantly at his booted and spurred feet.

“In truth, Your Grace, I came here for another reason. My mother told me once, you see, that in this little quintain yard, it was long ago that—it was here they built a scaffold and executed my lord father.”

His heart fell to his feet at her ominous words and teary-eyed face. He had hoped for so much—smiles, laughter, a welcoming, clinging embrace. And here was a barrier again rising up before their love, their union he had planned so hard to attain.

He reached out both big hands to touch her trembling shoulders. “I am sorry, Jeannette. I did not know it had been here.”

“I did not either—at first. It rained the first day we were here, too. Do not think, my lord prince, I carry only sad memories about in my foolish head. I wanted to be here to come to terms with not only my father’s death, but I was thinking of us, too. I guess I always do, you know.”

He pulled her to him and she rested her wet cheek against the middle of his chest where it fit so perfectly. Her arms encircled his strong waist, and she could feel his powerful thighs pressing against her trembling legs through the rustle of her damp green gown. He bent his big, tawny head to drop a single caressing kiss in her fragrant hair. Yet they stood still, quiet, together. The moment in the gathering dusk and whispering rain was nearly heaven.

“I am sorry about Thomas Holland’s death, Jeannette,” he said low at last, and held her at arm’s length as if to study her. “I wanted you to know that before we go any further.”

“Thank you, Your Grace. His death was terrible, but I warrant he thought his life with me was, too.”

Prince Edward frowned and she thought for a moment he was angry. “Then he was a bigger fool than I took him for,
ma chérie,
but we must talk of other things now too.”

“Aye, I do thank you and the princess for godparenting the children.”

“You are welcome. It is an honor, but I spoke not of that, though I would like to see all three so you must bring them next time you come. Young Thomas, you wrote, is off to Warwick.”

“Oh aye, you should have seen how proud and serious he was the day he set off from Liddell, my Edward—”

She gasped to realize she had called him by that most intimate of terms, his own given name, an honor forbidden and insolent unless he granted permission. But she had thought of him for years now deep inside as her own, dear Edward even when she knew she could never have him, and now—

He took both her hands in his big, warm ones and lifted them to his mustached mouth. She could feel his breath stroke her fingers. Slowly, lingeringly, with his piercing blue eyes steady on her, he kissed the backs of her fingers, then each palm.

“You do care for me, Jeannette, tell me you do,” his deep voice rasped so quietly she almost lost his words in the rush of rain.

“Of course, I do. You know I do, Your Grace.”

“My Edward. I want to hear that again, and I want to hear it all the time. I want you with me everywhere in my arms like this.”

He gave her a little tug and she was against him, mindlessly lifting her mouth to meet his. The kiss began tenderly but swept them both away in a whirling vortex of repeated kisses and searching, caressing hands until a jagged bolt of lightning crashed and hissed nearby to shatter their trance.

“Oh!” she breathed and pressed her open hands flat on his leather jerkin to catch her breath and stop the shaking and the swaying of the world. “Did it hit the quintain or what?”

His breath was ragged, his voice broken. “Somewhere up on the towers, I think. We had best start back or everyone will be scandalized, and they will have enough of that soon anyway when they hear my plans. You are soaked and trembling, and I will not have you catching a chill. We will walk back along the north walls where we are protected and try to spirit you upstairs to change this gown before anyone sees you.”

“I am not so very soaked, Your Grace, nor am I trembling from a chill,” she shot back but she did not ask what she wanted to know most. If the court would soon be scandalized by his plans, he must be hoping to openly make her his mistress, that very thing she had vowed repeatedly to herself she could never be again. She would tell him that; she would make that entirely clear. But, foolishly, she had already shown him how weak she was with him and how one little touch could send her reeling into his arms where he could do with her whatever he wanted.

“What is the matter?” he asked over his shoulder as they hurried along in the rain shelter of the thick, stone wall. “You are pulling back. Come on, it is dark and no one will see us in this drizzle.”

“And what if they would?”

He turned back to face her and pressed her lightly between his big, dark form and the stone wall as if to protect her from the rain.