Master Robert and the little canary-garbed lutenist were no sooner out the door than the room erupted in giggles and murmurs and darting females.
“Oh, I cannot believe what Her Grace chose for us to hear today,” the princess squealed, holding her sides. Tears of laughter streamed down Mary Boherne’s pretty face and the red-haired girl in green whose name had slipped by Joan was holding her sides in quivering laughter.
“The next reading tomorrow, demoiselles,” Princess Isabella went on, her girlish voice deepened ludicrously to imitate the stern tones of Master Robert, “will be about how all you young, sweet, and quiet little things must fall at your master’s feet if he but gazes on you with one grim glance, fall and kiss his muddy boots—”
“Aye, or kiss wherever he will have you,” Mary Boherne shrieked, and they all fell into gales of hysterical laughter again.
Joan laughed too, but the jest seemed hardly palpable. Did they hate Master Robert or such pious instruction so much they had to mock it so? All Mary Boherne’s words about kissing a lord’s muddy boots made Joan think of her “Sir Mud and Mire,” the man she had watched at the quintain yesterday, and how he had made her feel she wanted to kiss him—or maybe scream at him and so—
“Oh, Lady Joan, forgive us,” Princess Isabella got out between her attempts to catch her breath. “You see, we here have all taken a vow—and you, too, simply must join us, must she not?” the girl plunged on, not waiting for the assent which never came from her clustered ladies. “A vow to do all we can to seek our own pleasure and to have as many men in continual whirls as possible. If you will agree to keep it all secret, especially from all men, we shall tell you straightaway, will we not, mes chéries?”
“Aye, of course,” the red-haired Constantia Bourchier said, and several other voices chimed in.
“It is tremendous fun, of course, and we all pick out someone new at least twice a fortnight to—well, to entrance, to make our obedient and eternal slave in love forever. We tell each other all our secrets and even”—here the titters began again as if all sensed a marvelous jest was about to be reiterated—“well, we even entice the same gallant knights sometimes, compare our tactics and the men never know. Touché! We fight our own battles d’amour our own way.”
They all seemed to turn and stare at Joan. She hoped she did not register surprise—only, at most, interest and, hopefully, delight. “Oh, I see. A marvelous secret. Of course, no one would know, and I shall never tell. Only, I have never had a beau, you see, for there were no young men but a few pages and squires at Liddell until my brother Edmund came home with his retinue a fortnight ago to bring me here.”
The lovely, young maids looked taken aback, dismayed. “No swains, no beaux, no romance?” someone asked.
“Romance? Saints, I did not say that. I have read them all, Tristain and Isolt, Lancelot and Guinevere, and I can play romances on the lute and many French chansons about love.”
“But your home—your castle at Liddell,” Mary Boherne ventured. “Such a small household there were no galants?”
“Leave her be, all of you,” Princess Isabella swept to Joan’s rescue. “Just think, not a one of you plays the lute. Will that not be a novelty to attract the knights like little flies, oui? Why, even my pompous brothers shall be swept off their feet by that, and where will their rude teasings of our dear secret society be then, eh? Shoo, shoo, all of you now and let me talk with our chére amie Joan, and if anyone protests someone as lovely as Fair Joan of Kent being our new and dear friend, let not Joanna or me hear of it! Be off now. Oh, if only my eldest brother Edward had not gone off to his lodge at Berkhamstead now, I swear by St. Peter’s bones we would try your wiles out on him, dear Joan. He teases me unmercifully, though of course we adore each other. My dear Edward was never a quick catch like the other fools who snap at pretty bait and female cleverness.”
“The Prince Edward,” Joan asked, her mind reeling from the mere suggestion her dear new friend could mean she should tempt such a one as the next king of all England. “Our sovereign Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales?” Joan faltered.
Isabella tugged Joan back down to their stools as the remainder of the ladies trailed out the door with a mixture of fond or dart-eyed glances the princess seemed not to note. “Aye, the same. The stern, the grim, the most wonderful and terrible brother a maid ever had. And when you meet him upon his return, show him not the slightest trembling or deference like the silly ninnies all do, or he will chew you up and spit you out. I always speak up to him—when their graces are not about—and so we get on famously.”
“But, Princess Isabella, he is your brother. I could never—”
“Oh, a pox on it all—on him! He gets all the fun things to do, the wild days and nights. I wish I were a man. Would it not be wonderful?”
“Aye. I had thought on that more than once. Freedom—”
“But, dearest, that is just why we have our secret society. It is our way to freedom and a great deal of fun. Just wait and see. Let them preach fond obedience and meek compliance and marry us off to lords we have never seen and care not for!”
“Oh,” Joan sat up straight, her hands nervously smoothing the green, shimmery sendal over her knees. “Then you are to marry?”
“Of course. His Grace, my father, has eternal plans for me, for Joanna, probably for Mary, too, already, and she is but newborn. And your blood is blue Plantagenet, too, through our grandsire, of course. They will have you promised in marriage somewhere soon enough, so take your freedoms while you can, ma chérie.”
“But they could not possibly have plans for me. I have just arrived. I have met no one, that is, only one man, and I do not even know his name.”
“Indeed?” Isabella swung her petite foot jerkily and her silk slipper bounced and swayed where it clung tenaciously to her toes. “If you favor him, flirt with him. I tell you true, mistress, it is best to take your pleasures as you find them. We all do, though, of course, we are careful to never, never be caught at it. You must describe this one to me and mayhap I can guess who he is. And if he is someone else’s knight, oh, will that not be a delightful start for you?”
The description of the wonderful, angry, and muddy man crowded to Joan’s lips along with a hundred questions, but she read well by the princess’ fidgeting that her inquiries would have to wait. Surely, even if she joined the princess’s secret little clique, she could still keep her own heart intact and do things her own way. She had no intention of being forced to be sweet and charming to anyone she did not favor. Perhaps if her brother Edmund’s quick-eyed friend Lyle Wingfield were about, she could practice a bit on him to suit her new acquaintances. Certainly she had no plans of ever letting anyone know how the fascinating man on the big black horse yesterday had sent her heart fluttering clear down to the pit of her stomach!
“Joan. Joan! I said, ma chérie, do you promise? Will you keep it secret—the society and the motto?”
“Oh, aye, forgive me, Your Grace. Aye, of course. I would so much like to be your friend.”
“And the others?”
“Aye.”
“Then, here it is. We bend like this and whisper in the ear of any of our dearest friends, ‘Suis-je belle?’—Am I not fair?”
“‘Suis-je belle?’ Am I not fair?”
“Oui, Joan, for are we not all young and fair and in love with love? Is it not perfect? You especially are so fair—a perfect Plantagenet. Indeed, you favor my sister and me greatly, and wait until you see the rest of the Plantagenets. I tell you, dearest Joan, you could easily be one of us!”
Joan felt her cheeks flush at the astounding compliment, and a rush of affection for this sweet, charming girl flooded her. “Suis-je belle?” Indeed, why not? Fun, friends, freedom to help forget lost Liddell and Mother’s strange parting words. As long as Isabella’s predictions of some arranged marriage did not come true for a long time, surely she could be happy here. Mayhap she should just ask old Morcar about her future and settle Isabella?
??s foolish predictions that way.
“Your Grace, is—are you—betrothed to be wed?” Joan ventured and saw she had earned the maid’s immediate attention as well as a frown which furrowed her high, white brow above the pale blue eyes.
“Oh, aye, indeed. Eternally. When I was but three, they promised me to Pedro, son of the King of Castile, but that fell by the political wayside somehow. I did not even inquire how. Then to the Duke of Brabant and last year to the son of the Count of Flanders, Louis de Male. Flanders is where my dear mother came from, you know. I pay not the slightest heed to all their planning. Those men are all elsewhere and, remember, charmante, ‘Suis-je belle.’”
The young, lovely princess’s laughter echoed like brittle bells in the room and her clear blue eyes were strangely wild.
“Now I understand, Your Grace,” Joan said and entwined that laughter with her own. “What is there to fear then? ‘Suis-je belle?’”
CHAPTER THREE
Like a proud, young lion poised over his domain, England’s tawny-haired Prince of Wales surveyed the broad Thames Valley below. Lofty spires of the three great London cathedrals, countless bell towers, and toylike, beflagged turrets and towers of the rich and royal; a stone and timber, daub and straw city of twenty thousand souls: the very heartbeat of the kingdom lay at his feet as his massive, black stallion stamped and snorted impatiently under him at the edge of Epping Forest.
“I know, Wilifred, I know. But someday their love too will be ours when we have earned it so. Even the most valiant heart must bide awhile until the hour is fully ripe. Our great day will come, good lad. You will see.”
Edward Plantagenet, Duke of Cornwall, heir to the throne, Prince of Wales, loosed his taut, left-handed grip on Wilifred’s reins, and the horse turned back onto the road southeast to their destination, the prince’s big, stone London house on Fish Street. Though he did not glance back at his small entourage again, he knew full well what he would see if he did. Nine of his most select boon companions, themselves heirs to the greatest noble houses of the realm, followed their liege lord and future king closely with their small, private contingents of falconers, musicians, squires, pages, and packhorses. Indeed, they always traveled fairly light on these journeys to their prince’s personal properties like Berkhamstead Castle, or to his manors at Sonning on the Thames near Reading Abbey, Bushey northwest of London, Newport Manor, Cheshire, or the others. Today, since dawn, this traveling party hand-picked from his normal-size household of one hundred twenty men had made the journey of nearly thirty miles from Berkhamstead to London at a fast pace in just four hours.
He felt restless; he admitted it, more restless than usual. This spring—perhaps it was because his formal education with his tutors and his short sojourn at Oxford was over—he felt quite at odds with his life. He was poised, ready, waiting for something grand and wonderful, some sweep of circumstance to test his mettle and thrust him headlong into destiny. But to what, he knew not. And so, he bided his days in overseeing his vast and growing estates, in comradeship with those he would someday need to know to rule well, in observing his world, and in keeping in fighting trim in case this French thing ever came full circuit to a war, as he hoped it might. Damn, but this tenuous treaty with the French was only valid for two more years until 1346. He cursed quietly again and wished his broken arm from that bloody joust a month ago would heal and be done with!
As the horses clattered into the first narrow streets in the northwest suburbs of London, Hugh Calveley and Nickolas Dagworth, hands on swords, moved up to ride abreast with him, and Edward heard his faithful falconer’s voice directly behind as the strung-out band tightened into a closer group. Indeed, there was no need for the added security here among the Londoners, Edward believed, but he accepted their concern. Though his sire, the Plantagenet monarch, had been riding a crest of relative popularity these fourteen years since he had seized the reins of his kingdom from his mother Isabella, sister of the king of France, and her lecherous, treasonous lover, Roger Mortimer—curse his soul—it was always wise to be prepared. The recent English claim on the crown of France through that same misguided Isabella, now living in luxurious exile at Castle Rising in Norfolk, meant French spies or sympathizers would be hostile and, in such a crowded place as London, hard to recognize.
“My lord, though you choose to wear the darker colors like that forest green when you are absent from court, the people know you anyway,” Nickolas Dagworth turned to say.
Edward nodded. The deep green tunic and hose with riding boots hardly disguised him, for he hated hats or hoods and went bareheaded. He also noted how the stares the London folk would give to any large, armed band turned to expressions of joy or awe as they recognized him at the front of his men. Occasionally cries of “God save Yer Grace” or “Long live our Prince o’Wales” floated after them until drowned out by the clatter of the horses’ hoofs and raucous cheers.
He often wore the darker garments away from court festivities and frivolities, not because he meant to go unrecognized, for he seldom managed that, but because he truly favored them. The king always sported bright and riotous-hued velvets and silk but, by St. George, he had earned them in the Scottish Wars or in seizing the inheritance of his own throne from the damned Mortimer! But a prince-in-waiting—he felt like those ladies of the queen or of his lively sister Isabella, forever hovering, hanging on to someone else’s words and awaiting some order or task or honor. And, damn, but when his moment came, he would seize it and use it! If he could only stand this blasted, bloody waiting!
They entered the walled city across Holbourne Bridge through Newgate and rode past the huge Cathedral of St. Paul’s and down Old Fish Street to his three-storied stone house with the black slate roof. Unlike many of the older houses in the neighborhood, his London dwelling did not lean out over the street in each successive story. Rather, it stood straight and tall and boasted modern, large-paned windows and new-forged metal eaves and drainpipes.
Though it was the smallest of his properties, he greatly favored it over the other vast London dwellings of Westminster or Sheen which his family oftimes inhabited, and he often found himself imagining he was a rich, contented merchant, like Michael de la Pole or some such, just living here in peace and prosperity with a passel of strong children and a lovely, lively wife.
He shook his head to throw off the persistent, teasing fantasy as they reined in, scattering a children’s game of Hare and Hounds. The crowd in front of the house grew; a few women shouted and waved from upper windows. Women in his life, ah, women. He felt almost an emptiness there. Many women: pretty, smiling, meek, willing, so willing—but none he truly favored. None who moved him in his heart one whit beyond slaking his occasional quick thirst for one under him. His mind darted to the wild, stunning maid who had stopped his furious attempt to joust with his damned left arm broken last week. He smiled broadly and the crowd cheered. She, for a certainty, would not be meek or willing. She, like his most prized destrier or precious female peregrine falcon, would take some handling and some taming.
Nickolas Dagworth’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Your Grace, do you mean to sit in the street this fine May afternoon? The crowd will scatter if you go in, and the little ones whose game we ruined riding in like this are all peeking out and wanting to go back to play, I warrant.”
Edward stared down at his tall, black-haired friend. “Aye, Nick. Just pondering. Give the little knaves some coins and have them play Hoodman’s Blind. In truth, that is the way I feel half the time of late.”
Prince Edward dismounted and went in through the door the huge giant of a man Hugh Calveley held open for him. He noted the look of puzzlement his two friends exchanged over his last comment. St. George, let them wonder what brought on his black moods in increasing frequency lately. Damn, but even his closest friends did not need to know his every thought and whim just because they served him so assiduously. He was their liege prince, not their private property!
He whacked his
leather riding gloves on the narrow, polished oak table in the slate entry hall and paused. He could hear the crowd dispersing and his horses being unpacked and led away around to the mews on the next street already, and soon the bustle of the carrying in and the voices of his entourage would be upon him again. He took his favorite hooded female peregrine, Greta, from the gauntleted arm of his falconer Philip Pipe, crooked his finger to his lutenist Hankin, and stomped up the stairs with the musician in his broad wake.
The house, which was frequently his retreat and his haven from all the demands of who he was and what he must become, welcomed him this warm spring day with cool, quiet arms. Below ground, two huge cellars were stocked with food and choice wine for his closest friends, or for the rare occasions he chose to entertain here. On the ground floor were the oak-paneled hall and the parlor with its own fireplace, and the kitchen and larder at the back. The second floor above ground held his large combined solar and bedchamber with its own stone-lined fireplace and private privy and garde-robe rooms where his clothes were stored. Above, under the slanting eaves, were various chambers used almost exclusively by servants since, except during the day, only a few of his men stood guard and the rest stayed at their own London townhouses nearby.