The First Princess of Wales

  “And you do, I suppose,” William shot back. “Aye, you are such a romantic, of course, Holland, and that is why you never married all these years until the queen bid you—”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Joan cut in and placed a palm of each hand on their arms. “The jousting was the last two days and tonight is charming and romantic as Lord Thomas says. I do not wish to see either of you if you cannot act like the king’s Round Table knights for one evening without this bickering. Excuse me, please, as I am supposed to be attending the princess.”

  She walked calmly away, but despite her chatter and laughter with others as she wended her way toward Isabella and her ladies across the dim room, the two men had quite unsettled her. They ought to be banished rather than honored this evening, she fumed, while she thanked Euphemia de Heselaston for her compliments on her garter-studded skirt. Saints, Euphemia probably hated the showy display, but soon enough she would no doubt be wearing them herself.

  That story about William’s mother and the king—and then his daring to use it to warn her! Still, it did show she was not alone in having parents wronged by this king, so if ever she were forced to remain married to William, perhaps he would understand her own plans for retribution. And then that unfortunate mention of the plague in southern Europe! Tonight was supposed to be all fun and delight, and he dared to haul the specter of that in here.

  Isabella was easy to locate since her silvery, perpetual laughter was like a beacon in the dimness of the high, vaulted hall. Joan noticed couples pairing for the dance already, and servants who would act as linkboys to distribute the newly lighted torches to each male dancer had entered the hall. The music from overhead quickened as fydels, lutes, and sackbuts romped through song after popular song. The lyrics of this one told of a blond maid who lost her virtue to an errant knave—oh, damn, why did she have to think of that—of him—right now? In the darkness along the walls lit by few torches, couples embraced and kissed. One quite tipsy man whose face she could not discern dared to put a hand down the bodice of his giggling lady’s gown. She had not thought of that sort of thing here with the king and queen overdue!

  Trumpets blared just as she reached Isabella’s side and the room rippled with anticipation like the waves of a velvet and silk sea. Ladies’ tall headdresses dipped, men bowed as the king and queen entered, both garbed in magnificent gold velvet, brocade, and purest ermine. The royal Plantagenets blazed with jewels when they caught the reflected flare of torchlight. Applause welled up before it was drowned by the renewal of the music far above the crowded scene.

  Despite her attempt to appear nonchalant, Joan stood on tiptoe and scanned those who had entered with the king. Their sons, John of Ghent and the tall, gangly Lionel, Duke of Clarence, were in evidence. Even seven-year-old Edward, Duke of York was in tow, though the others of the royal brood were no doubt too young. And poor Princess Joanna, so beloved of Isabella, had died of disease last January on her way to marry Pedro, heir to the throne of Castile. Suddenly a shiver raced along Joan’s spine as an unbidden foreboding racked her. Tall shadows darted up the lofty stone walls as the servants began to light the pitch-pine torches and pass them to each male dancer as the couples lined up. Joan’s mouth dropped open in surprise as she caught sight of old, feeble Morcar standing along the wall behind the king. The gray-haired astrologer, once such a familiar figure about her dear home of Liddell, stared directly at her.

  Isabella had drifted off with one of Prince Edward’s closest friends, Sir John Chandos, and Joan slowly followed. Suddenly there was no one close by she knew. She should not have dismissed both Thomas and William like that; saints, but she would not stand about like some scare-the-crow in an empty Kentish field while they all danced. She caught Morcar’s glance; his gaze glinted like a cat’s eyes in the shifting torches.

  She jumped when a warm arm encircled her waist, and she turned expecting to find Thomas or William. But where a face should be she stared at a man’s powerful blue velvet chest. Wide shoulders and a tawny head towered toward the ceiling.

  “Oh, my lord prince. You—startled me. Must you always be popping up to surprise me?” She felt herself blush but, thank heavens, it was too dim for him to tell. He had grown a full, clipped blond mustache in this last two months’ absence, and it made him look older and somehow austere.

  “You look ravishing, my sweet Jeannette, even if that rash of garters you and Isabella flaunt are a little too much. Now, do not get all shrewish and flustered, for I have not been able to breathe your sweet air for a long time, and we must not waste our few hours arguing before I leave again. I have missed you, too.”

  He took her arm firmly, and they joined the line awaiting to claim the torches. Her heart beat a wild tattoo to match apace the lively music from the balcony. “I do not recall ever saying I missed you, Your Grace,” she returned as icily as she could manage.

  He laughed low and she turned to study him for the first time. Like most of the fashionable men, he sported a jaunty, flat velvet cap perched sideways on his head, though she knew he detested that style as much as she hated these heavy, tipsy headdresses. Velvet, the hue of a deep Persian blue, stretched across his broad shoulders decorated with a massive, draped gold and jeweled chest chain. The surcote over his jerkin was edged with ermine as if to match her own, and when he smiled, it almost seemed as though his teeth reflected the glow of the dazzling, white ermine in the dimness. Each time she was away from him for so long, he looked taller, his eyes bluer, his shoulders broader. But now with the mustache, he looked somehow forbidding, too.

  A feeling of unease spread through her like numbing cold as she glanced past the prince to see Morcar’s continued, unwavering stare. But to her complete surprise, the old man also nodded in approval and his bewhiskered mouth moved in some sort of weird smile as if he were talking to himself.

  “What ails you, chérie?” the prince’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Another giddy knight I shall have to ward off to have this dance?” He turned to follow her line of vision. “The wizard Morcar? Aye, it is strange to see that old falcon down here among all the twittering nightingales. Shall we bid him good evening then, before we get our torch?”

  “I—we could talk to him another day. Besides, I have not promised to dance with you, and I am certain, from what I have heard of late, you have other ladies to see.”

  One rakish blond brow shot up and his mouth quirked in amusement. He lowered his voice but she felt herself blush at the gibe anyway. “Nonsense, sweet Jeannette. I believe you promised me this first dance and any other I would have when you were flat on your beautiful backside in the straw last October.”

  She tried to yank her arm free of his grasp, but his fingers tightened to iron. “You most vile rogue, you knave—” she sputtered as low as she could, desperate to keep her face composed whatever insults she threw at him. She was not such a fool to think everyone was not staring and that the prince’s attentions to her would not cause a stir however dim this vast room was. He had pulled them up next to Morcar along the wall before she settled her ruffled feathers.

  “Good evening to the king’s most trusted soothsayer, Lord Morcar,” Prince Edward said. “The Lady Jeannette thought perhaps you wished a word with us.”

  Morcar nodded almost imperceptibly. He was enswathed in a black velvet robe, and against the shadowy wall, he seemed invisible but for his parchment face and white head. His narrow eyes studied Joan’s face, then returned to the prince’s before his voice, creaky like an old door, answered.

  “My lord prince, I have long wished to speak with the lady over several things, but she is so busy here and there she has no time for an old man from Kent. I understand that well enough.”

  “Marta keeps me well informed how you fare, Morcar, and I have no desire to know my future. The reading of stars and planets—saints, that is for kings and nations, mayhap princes, too. I intend to control my own future, that is all.”

  She could not decide if Morcar’s look
was disappointed or merely tolerant. “And have you done such so far here at great Edward’s court, Lady Joan? You know the stars never rule our futures, for what will be will be. They only inform, not cause.”

  Prince Edward felt her stiffen beside him. He regretted already bringing her over to this old astrologer, for the last thing he wanted tonight when the whole court was here was a foolish scene from this willful, little vixen. He should have stayed with his original strategy to pretend to ignore her, or at least treat her like one of the other demoiselles, and then attempt to see her alone after. But she had forced him off his battle tactics again: the moment he had seen her he had been pulled by her allure like a fox to an all too obvious snare.

  “Morcar cast a chart for me several months ago after our return from Calais, ma Jeannette,” he cut in before she could respond to Morcar’s incisive challenge, but she was not to be put off.

  “Morcar, I know the king values your wisdom greatly and it appears the prince also, but—” she began.

  “And your father, Edmund of Kent, dear lady,” Morcar dared to interject, “and I know you have not forgotten him.”

  Joan’s chin jerked up and the scarves and tippets on her tall headdress danced and swayed. “Of course, I never forget him, Morcar, though some of those like you and Marta who knew everything of the old days would have me be ignorant of all that, I warrant. Saints, since you chose not to tell me the past before when I needed to know, I choose now not to hear the future from you either.”

  To the prince’s astonishment at her bitter, cryptic words, she whirled away and took several steps before she was hemmed in by the line of couples awaiting their torches.

  “I apologize for the lady, old Morcar,” Prince Edward said quietly. “I should like to see the chart you cast for her even if she does not, and to hear more about what frets her so about her father. Until then.”

  “My lord prince, forgive, but I must not share the lady’s chart with aught but her. I swore it to her lady mother once, before we all left Kent. I vowed that only Lady Joan or her old woman Marta could know. What puzzles me is that I believed that once she was married, she would desire to know the truth herself, but perhaps I misread that. She has been wed to young Salisbury now for ten months and yet she obviously cares not a fig to know her future.”

  “Aye—well, women, you know, Morcar. St. George, all the planets in the heavens could not keep up with this one!”

  The prince forced himself to a slow pace as he walked after Jeannette to where she stood tapping her slippered foot and chatting amiably with Princess Isabella and Sir John Chandos as though she were merely passing the time of day. He knew he dared not scold her or try to pick up the threads of their conversation again so close to ready ears, so he merely guided her back into line and took his newly lighted torch from the link boy without a word.

  The lofty Great Hall was ablaze with lifted torches as the long line of couples followed the king and queen in the intricate procession of the torch dance. Each tall, pointed lead-and-glass window lining the other wall reflected rows of torches within torches. The music swelled, deliberate, grand, majestic at first as the lines wove and curved inward to make a great coil of couples. It was awesome, almost solemn, and Jeannette’s hand was warm and quiet in his at last.

  He was unbearably curious about the casting of her future from the stars which Morcar had mentioned; yet he did not put much stock in such and really did believe, as Jeannette had so stubbornly insisted, that people must make their own fortunes and futures. But his own chart, which Morcar had completed for the king, bespoke of the victory battle of Crécy clearly enough—Venus adverse to Mars that very month of the glorious French victory when he had finally earned his spurs.

  And in the Seventh House touching on marital bliss after great trials, there had been the promise of great love and joy and he so hoped, aye—longed, for that. Like a floundering fool, he had clung to that one promise, for had not he and Jeannette been through enough grief and inharmoniousness already? St. George, he had not yet found the way for them to be together, but as soon as Salisbury got tired of waiting and the pope had ignored Holland’s plea a little longer, he would seize some strategy to circumvent his mother’s nervousness over the lady and his father’s infatuation with her to claim her as his own! He would ask old Morcar to tell him more tomorrow or at least entice Jeannette to see how her future must surely link with his own. He smiled down at her beautiful face, his heart thoroughly ravished again by the sensual allure of both her lush body and vibrant spirit.

  The king and queen had now reached the very core of the coiled links of the torchlit serpent’s body. The stately rhythm of the music lightened, quickened, as the inward couples began to retrace their steps out, this time weaving among the others and changing partners at will, to stop and circle in place, then move farther outward. Soon, Joan knew, she would be partnering the prince no more, and it upset her to admit she felt not a bit relieved at the thought of that deliverance.

  His eyes were intent upon her, lion’s eyes glowing in the torchlight, devouring her under that tawny mane of Plantagenet hair. His deep blue velvet garments molded elegantly to his powerful, amazingly graceful body. Behind his huge silhouette, torches moved, cavorted, blurred. Massive dancing shadows shot up the stone walls and hammerbeam ceiling overhead. She quickened her steps to match the dashing rhythm swelling in the room. The twisting line of dancers snaked by, enclosing, encroaching on them. Everything whirled and tilted, except his glowing eyes and his hand, there to steady her.

  People near her stopped and applauded as she tore her gaze away. The prince had suddenly halted. His torch, held high, illumined the king and queen. The prince reluctantly loosed Joan’s hand, and she felt for a moment she would fall. Queen Philippa, plump, white-faced, seemed quite out of breath, but the king looked fit and hale as ever. Queen Philippa had turned away to be partnered with Isabella’s gallant, Sir John Chandos, before Joan realized what was intended. The prince disappeared from her line of vision and she dared not turn to see whom he had chosen in this exchange of ladies. She heard Isabella’s laughter nearby and fell back into step, this time partnered by King Edward.

  Now she was at the head of the writhing, weaving line facing all those heading in, and she tried desperately to concentrate on the little running steps. The king’s strides were fully as long as the prince’s, only he took the floor at a faster pace since they had no one to run into directly ahead.

  “Ravishing tonight, ma petite,” he whispered, apparently not a whit out of breath. “Ravishing. My son cannot seem to resist seeking you out, by the rood, and frankly, sweet Jeannette, neither can I.”

  “Your Grace is as smooth with words as with his feet,” she said breathily. Surely, it was time for them to stop so they could all shift partners again on their outward pattern. She was too warm with all this bounding and hurrying, and the rampant glow of all these torches on them at the very center of everyone’s attention made her feel as if she were in a furnace furiously fueled by burning eyes.

  To her dismay, she felt a garter on her thigh loosen and slip. Her white stockings were tied by four garters each to mold them to her legs, but she missed a step and almost stumbled as she tried to keep this one from sliding down. The king’s eyes were hot on her; yet he looked somehow amused as they turned in place, their hands held high. In the blazing torchlight she saw the blue silk garter with its single winking jewel under the king’s slippered feet the moment he did. He halted. The surrounding dancers hushed at once believing another exchange of partners was imminent. Two couples back, Joan’s eye caught Prince Edward’s as he stood there holding hands with the flame-haired Constantia Bourchier.

  Joan prayed no one else would notice the garter, but the king bent and retrieved the dark blue ribbon of embroidered silk to the surprise, then amusement, of the surrounding courtiers.

  “By the Virgin, Jeannette,” Isabella’s musical voice called out, “mayhap to establish this new fashion we wore jus
t one too many. I shall send my partner Sir John back to scour the floor for one of mine.”

  “And if I can lay my hands on one stray garter anywhere I deserve at least a kiss—or mayhap to put it back on the pretty thigh where it belongs,” Sir John laughed, and everyone roared with laughter.

  The musicians in the gallery overhead had stopped at the sight of the dancing coil dissolving into one swelling circle around the king.

  “There must be more where that sweet garter came from!” a deep male voice in the growing crowd called out.

  “Shall we deem that another trophy from a well-waged battle, our warrior king?” some other voice added, and the pressing audience shouted their approval again.

  Joan blushed scarlet and did not even pretend to laugh now. Under the ornate curls of her coif her earlobes burned with embarrassment, and she could feel the blood course through her veins. Other titters and murmurs rose and fell in those few suspended moments the King of England stood there with her jeweled blue garter dripping through his raised fingers.

  How dare they all smirk and jest, they and their king who had let her father die, she fumed silently. Now was the time to scream out her challenge, her accusations at him while she stood rooted to this little square of floor like an entrapped coward. She had opened her mouth to shout something when the king quieted them all with his booming words.

  “Cease! Cease, all of you,” His Grace ordered, his voice commanding despite his guilty smile at Joan. “Evil to him who evil thinks,” he warned holding the blue garter aloft as if it were a sword or chalice. “The time shall shortly come when you shall attribute much honor unto such a garter! Our order of chivalry shall be a new fashion, so ’tis apropos it be named for the court’s other fine new fashion. Chivalry and glory and the blue garter. The Order of the Garter! God wills it! For England and St. George!”

  “For England and St. George!” the room echoed, drowning all thoughts of Joan’s protest. “For England and St. George!”