Chapter Four
Joanna hardly dared hope that Richard meant it but he was there the next morning. He had brought her a pony himself and threw her up into the saddle.
“We can’t ride in the bailey, you know. Any number of people will see you here. We’ll have to go outside,” he said.
“Outside?” she faltered. “But, Richard, I’m not allowed to go outside.”
Richard laughed. “You’re not allowed to be out here at all. As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. There’s a path that runs below the walls. We’ll go there. The watch will see us, of course, but I don’t think they’ll say anything if you’re with me.”
The path was little more than a sheep track on the grassy slope below the palace walls. Impatient to master the rudiments of horsemanship, Joanna did not look at the town of Poitiers that lay below them or the view that stretched beyond it, of plains and valleys and forest, to the blue horizon. She patted the pony’s rough, sun-warmed mane happily. Richard rode before her, twisted sideways in his saddle so that he could watch her and advise her. She learned to pull the reins across to turn left or right and to kick the pony into a canter.
They pulled up from a canter on the far side of the palace. The smell of crushed thyme and sheep droppings hung in the air. Joanna felt flushed from the ride and triumphant: not only had she stayed on, but she had matched the pony’s rhythm until it felt like a magical extension of her own body carrying her swiftly and effortlessly through the warm bright air.
“Well done!” Richard said, leaning on his pommel. “You learn fast. You’ll be a good horsewoman.”
Joanna basked in his praise. She smiled at him from sheer overflowing joy.
“We’re all the way round behind the forge,” he said. “Listen: you can hear the smiths.”
“So you can.” The clang of hammer on anvil carried clearly from the other side of the walls and the smiths were singing as they worked.
“Richard!” she shrieked. She pulled sharply at the reins and the pony stepped backwards. “They’re working. That means Mass is over and I’m late and—oh Mother of God—we’re as far as we could be from the gate.”
“You’re right,” he said swiftly. “Come on. We’ll go back at a canter.”
He wheeled his horse, passed her, and was cantering back along the trail before Joanna had even turned. Agitated, she pulled back on the reins and the pony stepped backwards.
“No, no,” she said aloud to it. “Turn!” She pulled again and the pony took another step back. “Richard!” she called but he was already out of earshot.
In a panic, she kicked the pony and he sprang forward. “Whoa!” she called. The pony stood still, but it tossed its head and flicked an impatient eye at her. How was she supposed to turn it? Richard had not taught her that. Her hands were sweating and the reins slipped. She wiped her left hand on her dress and took a firmer hold. She could have cried from frustration and impatience. She was desperately late and the wretched animal would not understand what she wanted it to do. She forced herself to think. Richard had taught her to turn left and right; if she kept turning until she had completed half a circle, that should do it. She pulled the reins across. The pony snorted and stamped. She pulled harder and kicked it. Reluctantly, the pony turned its head and kept turning. It worked. Now she had it facing the way she wanted to go. The pony put its head down and refused to budge.
Richard came cantering back down the path. It looked so easy when he did it. “Come on! What are you doing?”
“It won’t go,” she wailed.
“Hit him with the end of the reins. Here.” He came up alongside her and slashed at the pony’s hindquarters with his reins. The pony took a leap forward that almost unseated Joanna and then plunged off along the path. She clung to the pommel, bumped and bruised. There was no way of recapturing the fine, rhythmic ride of a little while before; it seemed that every time she came down, the pony’s back was coming up. She dared not let go of the pommel. She wondered if she would escape a beating if the pony threw her and she broke an arm. Grimly, she hung on.
Richard came through the gatehouse right behind her. “Run,” he said. “I’ll take the pony back.” He caught her bridle.
Joanna slipped to the ground. Her legs felt stretched into a permanent arch but she ran stiffly across the bailey. Perhaps Nurse had stopped to talk to someone, perhaps she had not yet noticed her absence. She slowed down outside her chamber, trying to look as though she were returning from some innocuous errand, though her heart was pounding and her sides ached.
Nurse was waiting for her, standing in the middle of the room, her face grim.
It was not the beating she minded so much, nor even Nurse’s anger, though she was miserable when she and Nurse were at odds. The worst part was that Nurse insisted on her attending Mass every day from then on, so that she could keep an eye on her, as she said. There was to be no more riding, no more clandestine exploration, no more secret meetings with her brother Richard. She saw him only at a distance, sitting at the High Table at dinner while she sat with the children at the far end of the Hall, or riding off with his friends to morning sword practice while she watched from her window.
“It’s so unfair,” she said, throwing her work down on the window seat and watching Richard’s fair head thrown back in laughter as he rode out at the gates. “Everything that’s fun is forbidden, either because I’m too young or because I’m a girl.”
“You have an obstinate character, my girl,” Nurse said. “We’ll have to stamp that out of you before you grow up.”
O O O
In the late autumn, not long after Joanna’s natal day in October, Henry and Marguerite left. Joanna did not miss either of them. They were to go to England where they would hold their own Christmas Court. The other children, except for baby John and Joanna’s married sister Matilda, spent Christmas with the Queen at Poitiers. Nurse was scandalized that they had not joined King Henry as usual at his Christmas Court in Normandy.
Christmas was the best time of the year. For all the twelve days of Christmas, everyday rules were relaxed and no one worked. On the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Richard was one of the boy bishops who presided over the service at the cathedral and on the Feast of the Fools, Joanna and the other children laughed to see the priests in masks censing the chapel with smoke from the soles of old shoes and eating sausages before the altar.
Richard and Geoffrey, each with his own mesnie, left a few days after Christmas. Joanna understood that they were going to an important meeting at Montmirail, to be held on Epiphany. From the women’s gossip, she gathered that the Queen had been deliberately omitted and that she resented this. Joanna knew little about it until Marguerite, returning from England, enlightened her.
“Your father is to do homage to my father,” she said, “for his Angevin provinces. Also he’s going to ask my father’s consent to Geoffrey’s marriage to Constance of Brittany. Henry and Richard and Geoffrey are all there. King Henry plans to present them all to my father and confirm their inheritances. Henry, of course, gets Normandy and Anjou and Maine, Richard has Poitou and Aquitaine, and Geoffrey will get Brittany with Constance. I suppose King Henry thinks that will ratify his conquest of Brittany. However, the really important thing is that Thomas Becket will be there. Let us hope that your father sees sense and is reconciled to him. In France nobody would treat an archbishop so. My father has always been the foremost defender of the Church’s honor in his kingdom. And Becket is such a good man. I shall never forget how kind he was to me when I first arrived in England. And Henry, I know, is furious with his father for driving him into exile.”
The news that really interested her, and took Marguerite by surprise, was that King Louis of France gave his daughter Alice to be betrothed to Richard, with the County of Berry as her dowry.
This was not, to Joanna, altogether good news. Alice was Marguerite’s younger sister and Joanna imagined another Marguerite, always on her dignity, always concerned with proper procedure and ceremony, always criticizing and complaining. Alice turned out to be quite different. She was nine years old, rather small for her age, and very pretty, in a babyish way. She had a round face, big frightened eyes, a little button nose and full pouting lips. Her hair was long and fine and very fair.
Marguerite took her under her wing at once and tried to teach her proper pride in her position as daughter of King Louis. Poor Alice, who hated to displease anybody, was hard put to it to display tact all round, but she generally managed it. At first, Joanna admired her sudden about-faces, but she soon came to despise them as sly and hypocritical. Still, Alice was always kind to her, so she much preferred her to Marguerite.
It was the expression in her eyes that first made Joanna call her “mouse-face” in her mind, a shifty look as though she were about to scuttle nervously for cover. Marguerite never succeeded in teaching her dignity.
Richard laughed the first time Joanna slipped up and referred to Alice as “mouse-face” out loud.
“Mouse-face? Is that what you call Alice? What on earth for? She doesn’t look a bit like a mouse!”
“It’s not so much that she looks like one. She acts like one, twitching and quivering, and have you noticed how she holds her hands up, so?” Joanna imitated one of Alice’s characteristic nervous gestures. “She looks as if she’s sitting up and looking out for the cat.”
Richard laughed all the more. “Oh, that’s perfect, Jo! That’s exactly Alice! Well, she’s a Capet, you know. They don’t have the courage of us Plantagenets. What about the others? Do Marguerite. What’s she?”
“Marguerite?” Joanna considered. “Something sharp and sniffy …”
“With its nose always in the air,” he supplied. “A hen, perhaps, squawking and flapping.”
“No, not dignified enough.”
“A ferret? A weasel?”
“Too low to the ground. I think Marguerite’s a … camel.”
Richard slapped his thighs. “Yes, a camel! And Geoffrey?”
“A fox,” Joanna said quickly. “And Eleanor’s a pussy cat and Henry’s a horse.”
“And you—I know what you are. A squirrel! A bright-eyed, quick, curious squirrel with tawny hair.”
“It’s not tawny!” Joanna said hotly. “My hair is fair.” This was a sore point with her.
“Well, fair, of course. But a touch of auburn. Not unattractive at all, not red hair,” he said and then teasingly, “well, perhaps just a little red.”
Joanna gave him a great push and he rolled sideways off his chair, then came at her very fast. She dodged him but he caught and tickled her.
“Cry pax, little squirrel?”
“Never,” she said breathlessly.
“Good. That’s the spirit.” He released her and sat back on his heels.
Joanna lay on the wooden floor of the solar, getting her breath back. Her ribs ached from laughing.
“And what’s my animal?” Richard asked. His hair stood out, tousled, all round his head.
She answered unhesitatingly. “A lion, of course. A great roaring lion with a golden mane.”
“A lion, eh?” He cocked his head on one side. “Yes, I like that.”
He roared and made to jump at Joanna again and she twisted away, giggling. He got up and began to pace the floor.
“Richard the Lion! Sounds good, doesn’t it? Trouble is, Matilda’s husband is already called Henry the Lion. Can’t have two in the family. But something with Lion in it. Richard the Glorious Lion! Richard the Brave Lion!”
“Richard the Mangy Lion?” Joanna suggested. He flung a cushion at her but she ducked and it missed.
“Richard the Great.” He strode up and down, admiring himself. “History will find a name for me. I mean to make my mark, I can tell you, Joanna. Richard the Magnificent!”
“Richard the Rooster! Richard the Peacock!” she said, giggling but envious. What title could a woman earn? She would never be Joanna the Great. To be Queen Joanna was her ambition, but that meant no more than wife of a king. A woman could become a saint; that was perhaps the only independent fame she could win. Joanna felt a familiar stir of guilt and mentally thrust that path from her. She wanted to be like her mother, who was certainly famous and admired and powerful, even if she had no sobriquet.
“And Mother?” she asked. “What animal is she?”
Richard stopped pacing. ‘‘Mother isn’t any kind of animal. Mother is a Queen.” His mouth snapped shut and he strode out of the room.