The Hammer of the Scots

Chapter IV THE RETURN OF JOANNA

The reunion of Edward and his Queen resulted in two more pregnancies.

There was a certain anxiety during that bleak March at Windsor as the Queen’s time drew near. It was two years since the sad little Berengaria had made her brief appearance, and there was a general feeling that although the Queen was clearly fruitful her children were inclined to be weaklings.

Alfonso’s health had not really improved. He was now five years old, approaching the danger period. There were days, however, when he seemed to grow stronger and in the summer he would often appear to be quite a healthy little boy. But during the winter he deteriorated and they had just come through one. Hence this anxiety.

‘This one must be a boy,’ said the Queen Mother somewhat peremptorily as though she were ordering the Queen – or perhaps God – to behave with a little more consideration for them all this time.

Such talk made the Queen uneasy but she knew that the Queen Mother was right. It must be a boy.

‘If,’ went on the Queen Mother, ‘it should prove to be a girl then she must become a nun.’

‘That must be a matter for her to choose,’ said the Queen with a slight touch of firmness.

‘No, indeed, my dear,’ insisted the Queen Mother. ‘Heaven must know this child is to be dedicated to its service. Then perhaps God will relent and if He has already decided on a girl He might change the child for a boy.’

This seemed strange reasoning to the Queen but she did not contradict the Queen Mother. No one did – not even Edward, who usually smiled and listened to her advice and then went away and ignored it.

The Queen’s time came. She lay in her bed eagerly waiting, but in due course she heard the disappointing words: ‘Another girl.’

But this time it was a healthy one, quite different from the ill-fated Berengaria.

‘There is no doubt,’ said the Queen Mother, ‘that this child should become a nun. I have chosen Amesbury, where one day I shall retire myself … when the time comes and if the Pope will give me a dispensation which allows me to keep my dowry. I have no intention of giving it up for any convent on earth.’

They called the child Mary and the Queen soon forgot her disappointment and knew in her heart that she would not have changed her for all the boys in the land.

The Princess Eleanor was delighted. She had noticed that her father was especially interested in her. He had always shown that she was his favourite and much as he longed for a boy that had never clouded their relationship. She believed that she could read his thoughts.

If the Queen kept producing girls and Alfonso’s health did not improve, then the most important child in the royal nurseries was the Princess Eleanor. She loved her little brother, but she liked being important too, and she could not help noticing that as she grew in years so did she in importance.

She was rather pleased, therefore, that little Mary was the new addition to the family and not some bawling boy who would have detracted from her importance and demanded all the attention.

Her thoughts concerning her position were undoubtedly based on fact for she noticed how, on their return from Worcester, her father seemed to spend more time in her company. Like all the family there was a deep bond of love between them but the Princess felt that there was something special between her and her father; she was devoted to her mother of course but she did not find the same thrilling pleasure in her company as she did in that of her father.

She liked to walk in the gardens with him and he, strangely enough, although so many people were wanting to see him, would find a little time for her.

Now that he was back she asked him about the war in Wales and he was quite ready to talk to her, as though she were one of his generals, and he took a great delight in her intelligent questions and comments.

‘You are growing out of childhood,’ he said on this occasion. ‘Thirteen is it. What a great age!’

She agreed with him solemnly.

‘I think it is time you had a household of your own. What think you of that? A complete set of attendants … your very own.’

‘How I should like that!’

‘Why not? Are you not my eldest daughter? And so much older than the others. Joanna will have to come home soon.’

‘It is strange,’ said the Princess, ‘that I have never seen my own sister.’

‘She will come home soon for we will have to contract a marriage for her. There are already negotiations going on with the King of the Romans. His eldest son is Hartman who will himself be King of the Romans one day. I like to see my daughters queens.’

‘I wonder what Joanna is like.’

‘Spoilt a little, I imagine. Her grandmother was inclined to pamper her as a baby and no doubt she continued.’

‘Then,’ said the Princess with a severity which amused the King, ‘it is time she came home.’

‘Oh? So you do not think your parents spoil their children?’

She took his arm and pressed against his side. ‘Dear Father, your children are treated as children should be treated. Everything you do is … perfect.’

‘What an opinion for a child to have of her father!’

‘When you spoke to me so solemnly I was afraid you were going to talk to me about my marriage. I could not bear to leave you, dear Father, and my mother and even my grandmother too.’

‘It will be some time yet,’ he murmured soothingly.

Why? she wondered. She had been betrothed to the Infant of Aragon for many years. His grandfather, the King of Aragon, had recently died and his son Pedro had become King. So Pedro’s son, Alfonso, the Princess’s betrothed, was direct heir to the Aragonese throne. In the circumstances there should be no delay in getting her married. Panic seized her. Could it be that this change in her father’s attitude towards her meant that she was to go away from home?

She cried out: ‘I could not bear to leave you all.’

‘I promise it will be a long time yet.’ He took her hand and held it firmly as though implying he would not let her go. ‘I wanted to talk to you about your new household. That is a much more pleasant subject.’

‘It will be a long time, will it not, my dear lord?’

‘Rest assured, my love, it shall be as long as I can make it.’

‘But you can do everything you want. If you said I should never go away, then I never should.’

‘I can see you are a dutiful daughter who has the right ideas about her father.’

‘My father is the King,’ she said proudly.

He was overwhelmed by his love for her. If I had another boy, he thought, I should never love him as I do this daughter of mine.

‘Now,’ he said briskly, ‘a chamberlain, eh, a keeper of the hall, a groom of the bedchamber?’

‘A cook,’ she went on, laughing, her fears dispersed, for if he were giving her a household as he was suggesting he could not be thinking of letting her leave the country. ‘A salterer – yes I must have a salterer.’

‘Indeed you must! What royal household would be complete without one? What a grand household you will have!’

‘Grand enough for a king,’ she said. ‘But then I am the King’s daughter … his eldest daughter. Poor Alfie could be jealous … if he were of a nature to be. But he will just be pleased for me.’

‘Alfonso is a good boy,’ said the King, frowning.

And there was an understanding between them. If Alfonso should die as his brothers had and there was no other boy then she, the Princess Eleanor, would be in a very important position. She would be the heir to the throne.

They continued their walk and discussed the household she would have.

They were both deeply aware of the significance of that.

The Princess Joanna had sensed that something was wrong. Her grandmother’s eyes were red-rimmed which indicated that she had been weeping. An unheard-of thing. There had been several occasions when she had snatched up young Joanna and had held her tightly against her in a manner which had been most uncomfortable and had aroused indignant protests from the child.

‘Oh my darling!’ had been her grandmother’s response.

It was very strange. Precocious seven-year-old Joanna had been born with a fiery and imperious nature and it had quickly become apparent to her that she was a very important person at the Court of Castile. Her grandmother doted on her, which gave her a sense of her own importance, and since the Dowager Queen was constantly thanking Heaven for little Joanna it could not be anything but exhilarating to consider oneself as a gift from Heaven for whom everyone had to be grateful.

The little gift from Heavan knew herself to be beautiful to look on, that her mental powers were something to be marvelled at, that she only had to show a desire for something and it was hers – providing of course it would not be harmful to her, a concession which, when she grew older, she was ready to grant.

So when she saw that her grandmother was decidedly upset she guessed it was something that concerned her.

It was no use asking the Bishop. Suerus, Bishop of Calixien, was her tutor and like her grandmother he adored her. Indeed Joanna could not believe that she was anything but completely adorable. ‘Filiola’ was his pet name for her. It meant little daughter. ‘Which I am not,’ she pointed out to him. ‘My father is the King of England and my mother the Queen. One day I shall be with them.’ She liked to say that because when she did they cast down their eyes and murmured a prayer to God which she knew meant they were asking Him not to take their darling away from them. Suerus had replied, ‘It is true that you are the daughter of the King and Queen of England but to me you are as a daughter … a very dear child.’

The only one who did not show such adulation was her governess, the Lady Edeline, whom her parents had left with her when they went on their way to England. Joanna knew that Edeline loved her just as much as the others but her love showed itself differently. Edeline could scold and criticise and even punish. Joanna could not quite understand why it was, but in spite of all this Edeline was really the one she loved the best.

So of course it was Edeline to whom she must now go to discover the truth.

Edeline was mending the lace on a gown of Joanna’s, which had been carelessly torn in play. Edeline had scolded her about that.

Joanna ran to her and threw herself against her governess’s knee.

‘Careful, child,’ said Edeline. ‘You have made me prick my finger.’

‘Oh poor, poor Edeline. It is really bleeding. There, I will kiss it and make it better.’

‘So you think you have some special power to do that, do you?’ said Edeline. Joanna smiled. Edeline always thought she must be taken down a little. It was all for her own good. But she had liked having her finger kissed to be made better.

‘Everybody has special powers when they kiss to make better. But never mind that now. Why is my grandmother sad?’

‘Has she told you she is sad?’

‘She has crying eyes.’

‘Perhaps you should ask her.’

‘I want to ask you, Edeline. You will tell me the truth. Am I … going away?’

Edeline was silent.

‘I am then! I am!’ cried Joanna.

‘It had to come some time, did it not?’ said Edeline. ‘Your mother left you with your grandmother when you were a baby.’

Joanna frowned into her governess’s face. ‘They should never have left me.’

‘They didn’t want to. Your mother was very, very sad. But your poor grandmother pleaded so and at last your father said you might stay for … a while.’

‘And that time is up now? That’s it, is it?’

‘You are going to England.’

For the first time Joanna was afraid. She threw herself at Edeline. ‘I shall leave Grandmother … my uncle the King … all the people here I know …’ She raised her eyes to Edeline’s face fearfully and dared not to ask the question which rose to her lips. Edeline answered it. ‘I shall come with you.’

Joanna sighed deeply. It was clear that she had found great comfort.

‘When shall we go?’

‘It will not be long.’

‘Oh my poor, poor grandmother!’

The Dowager Queen of Castile could have echoed those words. What would she do without the child on whom she doted? Life had been unfair to Joanna of Castile. She had never been loved as she had longed to be. Henry III had once asked for her hand and then when she had believed herself to be on the verge of marriage he had discarded her for Eleanor of Provence. It had been humiliating beyond endurance. Her mother had been similarly treated in a way and by an English king. Richard whom they called Coeur de Lion had been her betrothed and as a young girl she had been sent to England. But she had at least been beloved by Henry II who had seduced her when she was a child in the schoolroom and kept her as his mistress so that it was only natural that Richard should reject her. Then she had been married late to the Earl of Ponthieu who had been Queen Joanna’s father and they had produced but the one girl child. This child – rejected by the King of England – had at length been married to the King of Castile, but when he was old and she was almost past child-bearing, so she had had only one daughter – her dear gentle Eleanor who was now the wife of Edward of England. It had been a humiliating life and when her daughter had married and gone out of it she had yearned for someone to replace her.

Then had come Edward and Eleanor on their way home from the crusade with their dear little baby, who had been born in Acre, and when she had seen the child – named after herself, which seemed to make her more especially hers – she had implored them to leave the child with her. Rather to her surprise and to her intense delight they had done so. Of course they had stressed the point that one day little Joanna would have to come home, but she had refused to think of that day. Now it had come.

They had made a match for her. A match, thought the Dowager Queen indignantly. A match for a baby!

And they were going to take her darling away from her. She could not bear it.

There was no one she could discuss it with except the Lady Edeline. Her half-brother the King had his own affairs and that of a child being returned to her parents seemed a very small one to him.

Lady Edeline came to her and told her that the Princess Joanna had guessed that she was going to England.

The Queen opened her eyes very wide and stared at Edeline. ‘But how … could she know?’

‘She noticed your melancholy and thought it had something to do with herself and from that she guessed.’

‘Is she not a very clever child, Edeline? Fancy! So she knew.’

‘She is bright and sees herself as the centre of life. Everything that happens she believes must concern her. That was how she came to her conclusion.’

‘How can they take her away!’

‘She is their daughter, my lady.’

‘And this match … a child.’

‘It is the custom.’

‘Do you think they will send her to Germany?’

‘I should think that is probably the intention. Her future husband’s family will wish her to be brought up in their ways.’

The Queen clenched her fists together angrily. ‘It is a cruel thing to be a royal princess, Edeline.’

‘Perhaps so, my lady, but there are advantages.’

The Queen raised her eyes and studied Edeline. Calm, honest, precise, she would never flatter, always say what she wished. The Queen said fervently: ‘I thank God that you will be with our child.’

‘I thank Him too,’ said Edeline.

It was a long journey from the Court of Castile to that of England, but the Princess Joanna was excited at its prospect.

There was a tearful farewell with her grandmother – but the tears were really on her grandmother’s side. Joanna would miss that doting kindness which was more like adoration, but there was so much to look forward to. The Bishop had embraced his Filiola for the last time, and they had left the sunny land of Castile and passed through the rich vineyards of France and in time they came to the coast. How the poor little Spanish attendants chattered in near-hysterical fear at the sight of the rough waters they had to cross and how the boat heaved and sighed, and how sick so many of them were and how young Joanna loved the pull of the wind and the protesting groaning of the ship’s timbers as she ploughed her way across those frothing waters to the coast of England.

And then … home.

She was picked up and smothered with kisses. This was her mother whom she regarded coolly. Why did she leave me? she asked herself. Oh I know my grandmother begged and pleaded, but she left me.

Her father was there – big and splendid. She had never seen such a man. She bowed – very ceremonially as they did in Castile – and he laughed and picked her up.

‘Ah, we have a little beauty here,’ he said, and kissed her rather roughly. She gave him her cool smile. He, too, had abandoned her. ‘We are pleased to have you home, little one.’

Then there was her sister, the Princess Eleanor – fourteen years old, very grown up and beautiful; and very important it seemed by the way everyone treated her.

‘Welcome home, Joanna,’ said this important sister. ‘And come and meet your brother Alfonso.’

Alfonso was five years old – nearly two years younger than she was. He was rather meek too; and a little shy. He looked at her as though he were appealing to her to love him. She liked that.

‘And Margaret.’ A three-year-old who was only just aware of what it was all about, but delighted, as they all were, to have a seven-year-old sister presented to them.

‘Mary is in the nursery,’ said the Princess Eleanor. ‘She is only a baby.’

So now she knew them all – her family. She could reign supreme there as she did in Castile but there was one who might prevent her and that was her important sister the Princess Eleanor.

The first tussle came over the attendants. The Spanish ones suddenly disappeared.

‘Where are they?’ she asked her sister.

‘They have been sent back to Castile,’ she was told.

‘But I do not want them to go back to Castile.’

‘Our father has sent them.’

‘I will see him and they will be sent back to me.’

The Princess Eleanor laughed aloud. ‘They went on the King’s orders.’

‘But they were my attendants.’

‘I don’t know what happens in Castile, but here when the King gives an order it is obeyed without question. You will have to realise that, Joanna.’

‘But these attendants came with me.’

Her sister shrugged her shoulders.

‘I want to go back,’ said Joanna.

‘Don’t be silly. You are home with us now and we are your family.’

‘My grandmother was my family and she would never have sent my attendants away if I wanted to keep them.’

‘This is not your grandmother’s court and you have been spoilt there. Someone said it the other day.’

‘Who?’

‘I am not telling.’

Joanna seized her sister’s wrist and cried, ‘Tell me. Tell me. Whoever said that shall be punished.’

The Princess Eleanor quietly pulled the child’s fingers away from her wrists. ‘You must not be disrespectful to me. I am the eldest and I have my special household. The King talks to me. I will not have this behaviour in the nursery.’

Joanna was abashed. ‘I … I …’ she stammered.

But Eleanor waved her aside. ‘Our mother says we are to be kind to you, to help you to know our ways, so I shall not punish you this time.’

‘Punish me … But … nobody punishes me.’

‘Nobody did. They will now.’

‘Who?’

‘Edeline, I suppose. She is your governess.’

‘Edeline would never dare …’

‘I think she would. You are with your own family now, Joanna. We want to love you … everyone does. We want you to be our dear sister. You have been allowed too much of your own way in Castile where you were alone in the nursery. It will be different here.’ The Princess Eleanor suddenly knelt down and put her arms about the little girl. ‘We all want to love you … we want you to be our little sister … but there are several of us and you cannot be of any more importance than the rest.’

Joanna was silent suddenly. Then rather pleased. It would be more fun in England than it had been in Castile, she was beginning to think. And if they had taken her Spanish servants – about whom she cared little – she still had the Lady Edeline about whom she cared a lot.

After that she began to settle in. She was different from her sisters and certainly from little Alfonso. She was more volatile, high-spirited and quick-tempered. Edeline was constantly trying to restrain her but without much result. The Queen said that Joanna, having been born in a torrid climate, was different from the others. The attendants referred to this constantly, making excuses for her behaviour. It was characteristic that they should want to, for she was very pretty. She was dark, which seemed appropriate since she had been born in such a land, and she had her mother’s Castilian looks rather than those of the Plantagenets. She was referred to as Joanna of Acre and she liked that. It set her apart. She was constantly at the centre of some nursery storm and she liked that too. She had to call attention to herself for her sister Eleanor was a very important person indeed and after having reigned supreme in the Castilian nursery she must make her presence felt at home.

There was much that she missed – the warmer climate, the adulation of her grandmother, the feeling that she was at the very centre of their lives. Strangely enough she was happier with her family. Her mother loved her dearly and wanted to make up for having left her in Castile; her father was proud of her but instinctively she knew that her elder sister, the important Eleanor, was his favourite; little Alfonso thought her wonderful. She had been warned to be careful of him and not to knock him over or treat him roughly because he was delicate. Margaret was only a child – two years younger even than Alfonso so she did not count for much and as for Mary the baby she was too young to be of any significance whatsoever.

She, Joanna, was old for her years. She had been born with a certain knowledge, the attendants said. ‘You may be sure that there will be trouble when that one grows up,’ they said. She heard them and liked to think it was true. She liked the way they nodded their heads and curled up the corners of their mouths when they said it.

Sometimes the great sister Eleanor condescended to talk to her. They talked about marriage, for they were both betrothed.

Poor Mary the baby would never marry. She was going into a convent. How did they know that? Joanna asked. Mary was a baby as yet. What did she know of convents? The Queen Grandmother had said so. It was to please God who had given their mother so many babies who had not lived and two of them boys at that. Alfonso was weak too, and it was Eleanor’s opinion that he would never be the King because he wouldn’t ever grow up enough.

It was all very interesting.

She, Joanna, was betrothed to Hartman who sounded interesting. She wondered about him. He was a German and would be a king, so she would be Queen Joanna. It was quite a pleasant prospect.

Eleanor told her that she was to have an Alfonso, who would be King of Aragon.

‘So you will be a queen too,’ said Joanna.

‘I long to be a queen,’ replied her sister.

‘You are old,’ said Joanna, ‘you should be one by now.’

‘I should have to wait until Alfonso’s father died, as you will have to wait for Hartman’s to die.’

‘But they marry people before they are kings and queens, don’t they? You must be very old.’

‘I am fifteen,’ said Eleanor.

Joanna shook her head commiseratingly. ‘It is very very old.’

‘What nonsense! It is not old. I shall go to Aragon when … I am ready.’

‘But,’ persisted Joanna, who would never stop worrying a subject until she had made her point, ‘you are old enough now. Why don’t you get married now?’

Eleanor smiled secretly.

‘Because, baby sister, I do not think our father wishes it.’

Joanna studied her sister with great respect. A secret. Since she had been in England she was now and then beginning to realise that she did not know everything.

It was like a pattern which repeated itself. The Queen lay at Woodstock praying for a boy.

She was fruitful enough. It seemed almost as though no sooner was one pregnancy over with its inevitable disappointment than another had begun.

She had wanted to come to Woodstock. She had an idea that it might be lucky to change the place of her confinement. She had never given birth in Woodstock and she had asked Edward if she might go there for the last weeks of waiting and, indulgent husband that he was, he was ready to give way to her whims.

She had loved the peace of the place. She had walked in the woods with her daughter Eleanor and young Joanna, their attendants following a little way behind them. The trees were so beautiful for it was the month of May – surely the most beautiful of all. She was anxious that Joanna should love the English countryside which was so different from that of Castile and she took a great pleasure in pointing out the buds and blossoms of the hawthorns and the fruit trees which at this time of the year were laden with blossom. She listened to the birdsong and tried to teach Joanna to recognise a bird by its singing.

Joanna liked to be the centre of the lessons and to astonish her mother by the quickness with which she could learn.

The child loves praise, thought the Queen a little anxiously. It was true that her own dear mother in the excess of her loneliness had made too much of Joanna and instilled in her a certainty of her own importance.

The Princess Eleanor made a daisy chain and hung it about her mother’s neck. How concerned her eldest daughter was. She was always nervous when her mother was expecting a child. In fact she seemed to be aware of the pregnancy before she was told. Dear children, what a comfort they were to her! She could look at those two bright healthy faces and take comfort. If she could not get a healthy boy she could get some fine girls.

So they had walked through the woods and there were always those who would urge her not to tire herself. She did not in the peace of Woodstock. A different place might bring better luck.

The Lady Edeline had said: ‘You should not fret, my lady. It is better to let matters take their course.’

What a wise woman Edeline was. It was a great comfort to know that she was so close to Joanna. When the child went to Germany to marry Hartman she would beg Edward to let Edeline go with her.

Of course she should be going soon. Her future father-in-law wanted her to. But Edward said she was too young. As for Eleanor he was always putting obstacles in the way of her going to Aragon.

‘No, no,’ he often said, ‘let them grow up first. They are but children.’

The truth was he wanted to keep them with him. He was a loving father – and oddly enough although he craved for a son it was his daughters whom he loved.

Oh, if I could but give him a son! she thought.

Lying in her bed she thought of what had happened in this palace in the years gone by. It had stood here for many many years – in a different form perhaps, for it was natural that places such as this should be added to during the centuries. Here the Saxon kings had held their Wittenagemots. King Alfred had lived here and a more recent ancestor, Henry I, had set up his deer-fold into which he had introduced wild beasts for the amusement of all those who came to watch the behaviour of these creatures.

But it was the ghost of the fair Rosamund who haunted Woodstock more than any other. Legends had been created about the fair Rosamund, so beloved of the King, who had incurred the jealous fury of that virago Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Queen was not sure that she believed that that fierce lady had offered Rosamund the choice of a dagger or poison, but that was how the song went.

And in her bower, which Henry had built for his beautiful mistress, Rosamund had waited for the birth of her child which was the King’s also.

Had she too prayed for a boy?

And she had given the King boys – two strong ones. Poor Rosamund who had died in nearby Godstow Nunnery repenting her sins.

The Queen prayed for the soul of the Fair Rosamund.

When her daughters came to sit with her she talked to them of Woodstock. There were so many stories about the place. She did not wish to discuss that of the Fair Rosamund with her daughters, but they knew that their grandfather Henry III and their grandmother, who was so much a part of their lives, had once stayed at Woodstock and had wandered together from the palace and into Rosamund’s Bower. In this romantic spot they had spent the night. And this had proved to be providential. For that very night a mad priest had gone to the King’s bedchamber and in the darkness had thrust a knife into his bed again and again, thinking the King was there, which he would have been had he not been at Rosamund’s Bower.

‘Imagine if he had killed your grandparents,’ said the Queen. ‘Then your father would never have been born … so nor would you.’

Joanna was awestruck at the prospect. She could not imagine a world without Joanna of Acre.

The next day the Queen’s pains started.

It was, as usual, an easy confinement. It was, as she had thought before, the same pattern. The quick labour, the girl child … a weak one this time over whom the women shook their heads.

The children came to see their mother. Eleanor alert-eyed, Joanna curious, Alfonso frightened, Margaret bewildered.

‘Dear lady,’ said Eleanor, ‘how fare you? It is a girl, they tell us.’

‘Another girl,’ said the Queen. ‘She is very small.’

‘I want to see her,’ said Joanna.

They were taken to the cradle where she lay and stood silently looking down with amazement and dismay at the wizened little creature who was their new sister.

The Princess Eleanor came back to the bed.

‘Dearest Mother, you are not ill, are you?’

‘No, my child, I am well. Your father will be disappointed but the next one will be a boy.’

The Princess was worried. Her mother looked wan, and the thought had occurred to her that if the Queen died her father would marry again. He was a young, virile man. Suppose he married a young woman who could get boys?

Her mother misconstrued her looks of alarm.

‘You must not fret child. A woman is exhausted after an ordeal like this. I shall be well in a few days.’

The Princess knelt by the bed holding her mother’s hand.

‘Oh dear lady, get well, get well.’

The Queen touched her daughter’s hair and smiled at the others who had come back to the bed.

Edeline came in to lead them away.

‘The Queen needs rest,’ she said.

The Queen needed comfort too for within three days the puny baby was dead – and the long ordeal, the vigil of hope and prayer, was proved to be once again in vain.