Chapter Seven
Joanna lay on her stomach in the warm, dry grass. She swung her feet lazily, up over her back and then down, scuffing her toes in the dirt. In front of the girls, an insect struggled across the ground between the grass stems. She put her head down on her arms and watched it. Close to the ground, she could hear all the clickings and murmurings and buzzings of myriad tiny lives. She held a blade of grass in front of the insect and laboriously it climbed over it, not to be diverted from its path.
Beside her, Eleanor was threading daisies into a chain. There was a pile of them next to her. She picked them up one at a time, slit the fat green stems with her thumbnail and carefully poked a daisy head through the stem. The chain hung down to her lap now and curled round her knee.
It was rare for Joanna to spend time with Eleanor these days. She always seemed to be busy with fittings for her trousseau or with Spanish lessons. Now that they were together, Joanna did not know what to talk about. She felt that Eleanor had grown away from her and seemed quiet and distant and much older.
She sat up suddenly, scratching her bare arms where the grass had tickled her, and looked at her sister.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said for the hundredth time.
“I know.” Eleanor slit one of the daisy stems too sharply and tore it. She pulled it out of the chain and threw it away. “I don’t want to go, either.”
“Why can’t Alfonso come here instead and we could all live together?” Joanna asked.
“That’s not the way it works, silly. Alfonso is King of Castile. He has to stay in his kingdom, of course.”
“But it doesn’t seem fair.… You have to leave me and Mother and your home and he doesn’t have to leave anything.”
Eleanor bowed her head further over the daisy chain, but Joanna could see how her lip trembled. “It could be worse,” she said huskily. “Spain is not all that far …” She hesitated momentarily, “… and you must come and visit me.”
“At least,” Alice observed, “Alfonso is young and not some doddering old widower of fifty.” She was lying on her back, chewing a grass stem. “How old is he? Eleven?”
“He’s fifteen,” Eleanor answered, “and he’s been King since he was three.”
“Oh dear, that’s not so good. He’ll be used to having his own way. And watch out for his mother. People say mothers of young kings are always dragons.”
“Well, it’s better than my sister Matilda,” Eleanor said. When she married Henry the Lion—the Duke of Saxony, you know—he was thirty-eight and she was eleven.”
“Don’t you think you’re too young to be married?” Joanna asked hopefully. “I mean, if Matilda was eleven … You will only be nine next month. Perhaps Father would let you wait two more years. Especially as he’s so ill now with the tertian fever.”
“Hmph!” Alice snorted. “Your father married Henry and Marguerite when she was only three. My father wasn’t too pleased about that, so I’m not to marry Richard until I’m fifteen. Five more years! Of course, they weren’t really married nor will you be, Eleanor, not for years. But don’t you wonder about Henry and Marguerite? You could ask her, Eleanor, find out if they’re properly married yet. She won’t tell me but it would come naturally from you since you’re about to get married yourself. You know, ask her what it’s like.… Actually, I don’t think they are or I would have heard something of it from my ladies-in-waiting.”
“What do you mean, properly married?” Joanna asked, confused. “Henry and Marguerite are really married, aren’t they?”
“No, but I mean,” Alice dropped her voice although they were alone in the wide field, “have they lain together? Henry’s old enough, but I don’t know about Marguerite. They say you go mad if you do it before your monthly courses start.”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying,” Joanna said. “What’s so special about lying together? Eleanor and I used to lie together every night until her betrothal.”
“No, you silly, lying together in the way of men and women. Making love. Don’t you know anything? How do you think babies are made?”
Joanna shook her head dumbly.
“Alice, she’s still young,” Eleanor protested. “Her nurse will tell her when the time comes. We’re not supposed to talk of such things.”
“Oh, nonsense! I’ve known for years! It’s like …” She searched for the right words. “Well, you’ve seen when a bull is led to the cows … or when a dog mounts a bitch …”
“Of course,” Joanna said impatiently.
“That’s how people breed, too.”
There was a moment’s silence while Joanna digested this in horror. “People do that? I don’t believe you. Eleanor, she’s making it up, isn’t she?”
“No, it’s true.”
“Everyone who has children has done that?” Joanna was still turning over this information in amazement.
“Of course. Why else do you think the Virgin birth was such a miracle? Because the blessed Virgin didn’t do it. You know how she says, ‘How shall this be, seeing that I know not a man?’ That’s what it means by know, in the Bible.”
Eleanor stirred uneasily. “Alice, I don’t think you should talk about the Holy Virgin and all this at the same time.”
“Why not? I’m only telling her the truth, aren’t I?”
“You mean,” Joanna asked slowly, “that Father and Mother have done that, too?” She counted on her fingers. “Mother has done it eight times?”
“Ten,” Alice said triumphantly. “You’ve forgotten her marriage to my father and their daughters, the precious Countess Marie and her sister. In fact,” she became confidential, “I think they do it more often. Lots of times.”
“Why would anyone want to?” Joanna was bewildered. “I think it’s disgusting.”
“I don’t know,” Alice said vaguely. “I think they like it.”
A bee, buzzing up from a thistle flower, droned lazily between them and startled them.
“Marie, too?”
Alice pouted. “There’s nothing so special about Marie! And she’s quite old, you know. She doesn’t like anyone to know her age, but I heard some of her ladies talking the other day and they mentioned the year she was born and I worked it out.”
“How old is she?” Joanna asked.
“She was born in 1145, so she must be twenty-five now. That’s twelve years older than Richard, which makes it ridiculous for him to be mooning after her like a love-sick calf.”
“Richard doesn’t moon after her. He just admires her. She’s his idea of a great lady. She and Mother, of course. Look, there are some of them coming back from falconing. It must be almost suppertime.”
They sat and watched a group in the distance riding back to the palace. The sound of talk and laughter and jingling bridles carried clearly in the still air. The ladies’ long skirts hung down over the horses’ rumps. Men and women carried falcons, hooded now, on their gloved wrists. Greyhounds ran alongside them. The children watched in silence until the group had moved on out of earshot.
Eleanor stood up and brushed leaves and grass from her gown.
“I’m going in,” she said. “It’s hot out here. Are you coming?”
“I suppose so,” Alice answered languidly. “Though there’s nothing to do inside, either. I wish I were grown, so I could go hawking. Or dance. Or do something interesting, instead of just lessons and needlework.”
Eleanor hung the daisy chain round Joanna’s neck. “There you are, Joanna. That’s for you.”
Joanna fingered it, smiling. She slipped her hand into Eleanor’s. “Couldn’t you sleep with me again tonight? Please! Ask if you may. I hate being alone.”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask.”
Joanna swooped suddenly on something glittering in the grass. “Look, look here.” She picked up a piece of metal and held it on her open palm.
“What is it?” Alice asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a ring,” Eleanor said. “A piece of ring-mail. It’s been straightened out a bit, but see, if you bend it again … it’s a ring.”
“Yes. Remember the tournament?”
They looked around them at the wide empty field, momentarily imagining the cheering crowds, the thundering horses, the flashing swords and bright pennons.
“Three men died here. Perhaps one of them died right here, on this very spot,” Alice hissed, and Eleanor crossed herself. “Look harder, Joanna, perhaps you’ll find the Gascon knight’s eye!”
“Don’t be horrid, Alice!” Eleanor exclaimed.
“Ugh!” Joanna said. “Suppose I step on it and it goes squish?”
She stared around her, holding up her skirts. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll race you back!”
“Too hot,” Alice declined, but Eleanor took up the challenge.
They reached the palace breathless and dishevelled.
“Don’t forget now, Eleanor, to ask about tonight.”
That night she slept alone, though, listening to Nurse’s snores and the sighing of the maids on their pallets.
O O O
“Turn round. Slowly. Yes, that’s good. Very good. You’ve done a good job, Jeanne,” the Queen said, turning to the wardrobe mistress. “How many complete outfits does that make?”
“Four, my lady.”
“Hm. And the jewels to go with each, of course?”
“Yes, my lady.”
Eleanor stood still in the centre of the room, her arms away from her sides to avoid crushing her skirts. She looked utterly miserable.
“I hope you won’t pull a long face like that in Castile. Do, for heaven’s sake, try to look pleasant. Otherwise, I think you’ll do me credit.” The Queen sighed. “All right. You can take it off her now. Pack it with the others.”
Eleanor moved toward the next room, accompanied by her maids. The Queen looked after her thoughtfully, then crossed the room to the window seat. She sat down and leaned her head against the wall.
The room was very quiet. Joanna uncurled herself from the low seat where she had been watching and crept across the room to her mother’s side. The Queen’s eyes were closed. Joanna stood near her and studied her face. Close up, her mother looked older. Usually, Joanna saw her at a distance, seated behind the High Table at dinner or enthroned in the Great Hall. Now Joanna could see the furrows between her brows, the faint line of hair along her upper lip, the pouchiness of the skin below her eyes.
“Will you miss her, Mother?”
The Queen’s eyes opened, moved round to where Joanna stood beside her. Their heads were on a level.
“Miss her? I suppose so.” She studied Joanna. “But I’ve always known she would go. It’s a mistake to become too attached to one’s daughters.”
Joanna had always liked the way her mother never talked down to her. Queen Eleanor spoke to children as though they were adults, without caring whether they understood or not. This time, as so often, Joanna did not understand her words, but sensed the meaning from the tone of voice. She was filled with anguish, without quite knowing the cause, an almost physical pain that swelled in her throat and seemed to choke her.
“You don’t love … her,” she said. “Just because she’s a girl. I don’t want to be a girl. I won’t be a girl. Girls have to go away and be married and Eleanor doesn’t want to, I know she doesn’t, but nobody cares about that, and it’s all so unfair!” Tears stood in her eyes and she pouted in an effort to suppress them.
The Queen sighed and sat forward. “Fair? Of course it’s not fair. Whoever told you life would be fair? Life is full of injustice and disappointment and pain. Parents die, children grow up and move away, husbands are tyrannical and lovers are faithless, women grow old and lose their power over men.… You always seem to ask the wrong questions, Joanna. Love … fairness … that’s all irrelevant.”
“I don’t want to get married. Not ever.”
“Of course you do. You complained about being a girl. I admit I’d rather have been a man, too, but it’s a waste of energy rebelling against something you can’t change. You have to assess your situation realistically, decide what its advantages are and how best to use them. A woman needs to marry if she’s to do anything with her life. Would you want to be an old maid all your life, handed on from one relative to another, a hanger-on, a parasite, with no position, no influence, no household of your own, always dependent on a brother or nephew or cousin?”
“I could live with Richard,” Joanna said defiantly. “Then I could stay here for ever. He’d let me.”
“There’s no point in even thinking about it. A king’s daughter must marry. She’s too useful in making alliances to be left single, so you may as well resign yourself to that and hope your father chooses well for you. Life is a battle, Joanna. Leaving home, going to a foreign country, coping with a strange husband, a hostile mother-in-law, whatever it may be, those are the bad parts of the battle, like being wounded or unhorsed. But the wounds heal in time and one fights on. With whatever weapons life provides. Sons, Joanna, are a woman’s best weapons.”
Joanna felt again that hot rush of distress and resentment. Sons, always sons! Daughters were of no account, to be married off and forgotten. Her mother was still speaking, but she seemed to be looking through Joanna, not at her. Joanna heard without listening, incomprehensible phrases, “extensions of ourselves into that male world of power,” “husbands are, at the best of times, unreliable creatures, but a loving son …”
Her mother got up to go.
“It is hard sometimes, being a woman, Joanna. Eleanor will be sad for a while and so will you, but it will pass and you’ll both be stronger for it. It’s another battle wound that life inflicts, that’s all.”
After her mother had left, Joanna sat in her place on the window seat. She felt confused and melancholy. All this talk of battles … She and her mother always seemed to talk at cross-purposes. Joanna bit her lip. It must be because she, Joanna, was so stupid. She wanted to know that her mother loved her, wanted comfort because Eleanor was leaving, and hope that perhaps she herself would not have to go too one day, but her mother had not given her hope or comfort or love. Yet strangely, in spite of that, she felt less sorrowful. Her mother’s words had inspired a kind of fierceness in her, to suffer bravely, to return to the charge like the Gascon at the tournament.… She slid from the seat and, straightening her shoulders, went to find Eleanor.
O O O
On the eve of her departure, Eleanor came to Joanna and said, “Tonight I can share your chamber again. I asked if I could, this one time.”
The day had seemed unreal to Joanna. Each moment of it had marked another small death, the last dinner she would share with Eleanor, the last time she would listen to music with her or hear the bells ring for Nones with her. She had even gone to chapel for Vespers because it was the last time she could do it with Eleanor and she had wept quietly all through it.
“You must not be so upset, lamb,” Nurse chided her. “You take everything so much to heart.”
“How can I not be upset when I love her and she’s going away for ever?”
“Yes, you have a loving nature, child. I wish you could learn to love the Good Lord even as much as you love your friends on earth. Life is full of separations and deaths and trials. Learn to resign yourself to God’s will.”
“It isn’t God’s will, it’s my father’s,” she sniffed, unconvinced and far from reconciled.
She willed the day to go slowly, but it moved inexorably forward. At last they were together in Joanna’s chamber. Her ladies had helped to disrobe her and put her to bed. The shutters were closed and the room was warm and stuffy. It was late August and it had been a long day as the sun still went down late. They were tired but could not sleep. One by one, the others in the room dropped off to sleep. Now there was no sound but regular breathing and the distant sound of music from the Hall.
“Joanna! Are you still awake?” Eleanor whispered and reached out for her.
“Yes, I can’t sleep.”
They rolled toward each other and lay embraced.
“Joanna, I’m so afraid. I don’t want to go,” Eleanor breathed. Joanna lay silent but she held her tightly. “I don’t want to leave you and Mother and France and everything.”
“You’ll come back. You’ll come back as a Queen, very grand, for us all to admire.”
“You know I won’t. Matilda has never come back, has she? You don’t even remember her, do you? She was married just three years ago; it was this time of year. You were only a little girl. You won’t remember me either, you’ll see.”
“I will, I will! Eleanor, I’ll never forget you!” Her throat ached and tears were forming behind her eyes. “No one’s ever been as kind to me as you. Not even Nounou, she scolds me a lot. I can’t bear you to go.” She began to cry softly in the dark.
“Ssh! You’ll wake them. Perhaps I’ll come back. Mother travels, doesn’t she?”
“Anyway, I’ll come and see you,” Joanna said, sniffing.
“Yes, and then I can show you the court. We’ll have such fun, Joanna. They’ll have to do as I say, if I’m the Queen, and I can tell the minstrels to play our favorite songs.”
“And make the cooks bake special treats every day. No fish. And marzipan at every meal.”
“And I can give you lovely presents, Spanish dolls. Do you think they’re different from ours? And necklaces.”
“And there’ll be no lessons, we’ll just play all day,” Joanna said happily, forgetting to whisper.
“Ssh! You’ll wake your Nurse.”
“I won’t bring Nounou. She wouldn’t let me play all the time and eat lots of sweets.” She added anxiously, “But I’d miss her. I’ve never been away from her.”
They lay in silence for a while.
“Christmas, Eleanor. Perhaps Mother would let me come at Christmas. That’s not too far off, is it? It will be warmer in the South.”
“Yes, come at Christmas. We’ll have a wonderful time together.” Joanna knew from the sadness in Eleanor’s voice that she did not believe it would happen.
“How do you say Eleanor in Spanish?”
“Eleanora. Yo seré la reina Eleanora de Castilla.”
“It sounds almost like French. ‘I shall be Queen Eleanor of Castile.’ Is that what you said?”
“Yes. It’s not hard to learn. It’s sort of in between French and Latin.”
Joanna sighed. “You’re so clever, Eleanor. I hope I don’t have to learn a foreign language when I marry, English or German or something. Even Latin’s bad enough.”
“You speak langue d’oc as well as northern French.”
Joanna widened her eyes in the dark. “That’s not a foreign language. I’ve always spoken it.”
They lay clasped in silence.
“I wish I could have been a nun. That’s what I’d really like,” Eleanor whispered suddenly.
“A nun?” Joanna was shocked that Eleanor, on the verge of becoming a Queen, should prefer any other destiny. “But—you’d never do anything that was fun. Just praying and reading and singing.” She felt uneasy. Eleanor was so much more virtuous than she was.
“I like all those things. I don’t like wars and politics and tournaments and noise and violence. Oh Joanna, I hope the court of Castile is not like Father’s court, all dogs and shouting barons and drinking and swearing.”
“If it is, then you must change it,” Joanna said firmly. “You’ll be Queen. Make it more like Poitiers, with music and poetry and ladies in beautiful gowns.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “But those are not the most important things in life, Joanna. We are put here to work out our salvation. That’s all that matters. And I think it must be easier in a nunnery.”
Joanna stirred uneasily. People had been saying things like that to her ever since her birth, it seemed, and she felt guilty that life on earth was more real to her than salvation. At least Richard understood her ambition and did not criticize it.
“I’d like to be the Preceptress at Fontevrault and spend my life teaching the little children there. I love children. It would be such a peaceful life and worthwhile.”
“You’ll have your own children, Eleanor.”
“Yes, I hope I do. I will raise them to love God. That would be a worthwhile life too, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course.” Joanna sensed that she had found something that comforted her sister. “You’ll be a wonderful mother, Eleanor, the best.”
“You will too, Joanna, I’m sure, when your time comes.”
“No, I don’t think so. I’d rather spend my time with adults than with children. I can’t wait to be grown up.” She remembered what the next day would bring. “Except that I don’t want to go away and marry a stranger and learn a foreign language and never come home again.”
“No.”
Joanna bit her tongue for reminding Eleanor.
“It’s all right, Joanna,” Eleanor said, sensing her discomfort. “I don’t feel so badly now. I always knew this time would come. You cheered me up by saying that about my children. Perhaps in a small way I could help to make Christendom truly Christian. My sons and daughters can spread Christian virtues to every court of Europe.”
Joanna giggled. “Perhaps some of them will even be saints.” She was serious again. “Knowing you, Eleanor, I shouldn’t be surprised.”