“I would like to see her, to offer what words
of solace I can,” said Father Ambrose.
“She’s sleeping now. My wife is sitting with
her. It’s a kind thought on your part, Father Ambrose, but you need
not concern yourself. Rohaise and I will take care of Joanna. I see
no reason not to have the funeral at Haughston, as you wish. Let’s
do it tomorrow; then you can leave at once on your journey to
Sicily.”
“I think now that I ought to postpone my
voyage,” said Father Ambrose. “With Crispin gone, Haughston will
need an administrator.”
“But the task is mine,” Radulf said, “and
glad I am that we had the arrangement written into the marriage
contract. Upon poor Crispin’s death, I became the administrator of
Haughston, and guardian of Crispin’s child.”
“Child?” Father Ambrose repeated, astonished
by this idea. “Crispin had no children.”
“We don’t know that yet, do we? Joanna may be
with child.”
“Dear heaven.” Father Ambrose let out a long,
sad sigh.
“The marriage was well and truly
consummated,” Radulf went on with satisfaction. “I went myself to
see the bloody bed-sheet the next morning, after Crispin and Joanna
had left the bridal chamber. Then, of course, they had several more
days and nights together.”
“Two,” said Father Ambrose. “Only two days
and two nights after the wedding night.”
“Well, it’s enough, isn’t it?” Radulf smiled
at the thought. “Even now, Crispin’s son may be growing in my
daughter’s womb: an heir to his estates and mine.”
Father Ambrose crossed himself and murmured a
prayer for Joanna’s continued good health and safety.
“Aye, Father, I’ll keep her safe,” Radulf
said. “Joanna means much to me, and all the more so if she’s with
child. Well, what is it, priest? You don’t look happy. Did you want
Haughston for yourself, so you could give it to the Church? Do you
think I gained control of those lands by a trick?”
“What I think,” said Father Ambrose, “is that
you are as honest as you know how to be.”
“Well, then, there’s no problem,” said
Radulf. “You can leave for Sicily immediately after the funeral
tomorrow.”
“Before I go I would like to see Joanna,”
Father Ambrose insisted. “I would join her in prayer for Crispin’s
soul.”
“
Why
don’t we wait until t
omorrow,” Radulf
suggested, “until we learn how she’s feeling
then?”
But on the morrow he informed Father Ambrose
that Joanna was too ill from shock and grief to have any visitors.
He saw no reason to tell the priest about the scene that had taken
place at dawn between his daughter and himself, with Rohaise
looking on.
“
I
will
go to Crispin’s
funeral,” Joanna announced.
“You will stay in this room until I say you
may leave,” Radulf told her.
“I am no longer under your rule,” she cried.
“I am a married woman.”
“You are a widow, returned to her father’s
care, and too grief-stricken to leave her chamber,” Radulf
said.
“I will obey you no more!” She did not flinch
when Radulf raised his hand as if to strike her. After a moment he
lowered his hand.
“
I have
spent long years of my life protecting my lands against the Marcher
lords,” he said. “I’ll not strike you and take the chance of making
you miscarry if you are with child. I’d not risk losing any chance
to have a rightful heir who will pr
otect my lands when I am
gone.”
“That’s all I am to you,” she said, torn
between joy at the thought of giving poor Crispin a posthumous
child and anger at her father’s coldness toward anything but his
own interests and ambitions. “It’s all I’ve ever been, isn’t it?
Just a vessel to carry your heir. You don’t love me. I don’t think
you love anyone.”
“Rohaise,” Radulf said to his wife, who had
been watching and listening to this quarrel with growing distress,
“call a servant and order brought to this room whatever you will
need for Joanna and yourself until I return from Haughston.”
“My lord?” Rohaise sounded as if she did not
understand.
“Do as I say, woman,” Radulf snapped.
“But, my lord, I have much to do today,”
Rohaise protested. “We have guests who must be fed and
entertained.”
“
Whatever
guests are still here after last night’s murder,” Radulf said,
“will go to Haughston with me for the funeral. I’ve sent a man to
command the servants there to prepare a funeral feast for us. When
it’s over
the guests may go home or to
the devil, for all I care. You, my dear and
obedient wife, will spend today in this room, with Joanna. I’ll
post Baird outside the door to be sure you are not disturbed. Now,
call that servant, for I am impatient to be on my way.”
“I want to see Father Ambrose,” Joanna
declared.
“You will see no one but Rohaise and myself,”
Radulf told her. “And don’t think to coerce Rohaise into carrying
messages for you. She knows better than to defy me, don’t you,
Rohaise?”
After a quick glance at Joanna, Rohaise
nodded.
“Yes, my lord,” she said.
“You are mad,” Joanna told her father.
“I know of no man who would say so,” he
replied with perfect calmness, “though there are many who would
count you maddened by grief for making such an accusation, so watch
your tongue.”
*
* * * *
At the end of the funeral service Radulf rose
to speak.
“
I do
entreat all of you, dear friends,” he said to the congregation
assembled in the tiny chapel at Haughston, “that if any of you
should learn the whereabouts of those two miscreant knights, Piers
of Stokesbrough and Alain of Woodward, you will capture and hold
them under close guard and at once send word to m
e of what
you know of them. I would not have Crispin’s mur
derers go unpunished. I have this morning sent a
message to King Henry, asking him to declare Alain and Piers to be
outlaws. I want to see both of them hanged for what they have done
– yes, hanged for all they were noblemen born! Beheading is too
good for men who would murder their own kin.
“Now, let us bury Crispin in the crypt below
this altar; let us lay him to rest with his forebears. I do
solemnly swear that I will have a memorial effigy of him carved in
finest marble and placed upon his tomb. I also swear to be a
faithful administrator of his lands, holding them in trust for the
son I pray his widow will bring forth to carry on his line.”
It was a
speech that was admired by all the men present, for though the
murder of kin was not unknown to some of them
– and was occasionally deemed necessary in
the interests of self-preservation – still they had their notions
of rough justice, and on that morning Radulf’s declarations
exemplified all that was finest among the Norman barons. Whether
King Henry decided to pronounce them outlaws or not, Alain and
Piers would not last long if either was captured. As for Joanna,
any man there would have done the same, would have insisted that
his daughter might – just might – produce the child who would
justify his usurpation of lands that had once belonged to
another.
*
* * * *
All the guests had gone and Banningford
Castle was quiet once more. Baron Radulf, now the ruler of twice as
much land as he had held a week previously, was totally confident
in his new powers when he confronted his daughter and his wife in
the bridal chamber where Joanna had remained after Crispin’s
death.
“Stop your weeping!” he shouted at Joanna.
“You may have enjoyed Crispin’s lovemaking, but it was nothing more
than physical pleasure. You did not know him at all, not any better
than Rohaise and I did. Will you stop that sniveling?”
“He was kind to me.” Joanna tried her best to
obey her father’s irritable
command. “Given time, his kindness and my gratitude that he was not
rough with me might have grown into mutual contentment. We might
have learned to care deeply for each other.” Se
eing the
disbelieving
way her father was
looking at her she fell silent, knowing he was incapable of
understanding her tender fondness for Crispin.
“It is my dearest wish to keep you safe,”
Radulf announced. “Therefore, you will remain in this chamber.”
“What are you saying?” Joanna cried. “Am I a
prisoner? If so, why? I have done nothing wrong.”
“Let us hope not. You will stay here, under
guard, until we know if you are with child.”
“
But that
will take weeks,” Rohaise protested. “I can understand if you do
not want her to ride, or to engage in strenuous activity that might
lead to a miscarriage, but, surely, my lord, you will allow Joanna
to spend part of each day in the solar, as she is accustomed to do.
Her needlework
—”
“She can do her needlework here,” Radulf
said. “There is light enough.”
It was, in fact, a lovely room, the best
guest chamber in the castle, high in the west tower, safe and
private. Because it was so high, situated out of arrow’s reach on
the level just below the lord’s own chamber, the windows could be
larger than the mere arrow-slits that broke the gray stone walls of
the chambers on lower levels. In this room there were two windows
set close together in the thick walls, so they formed an alcove.
Directly beneath the windows a wide stone shelf was padded with
pillows to make a seat. For greater comfort the windows had not
only wooden shutters but heavy woolen curtains that could be drawn
across the alcove on winter nights to keep out the cold. Crispin’s
belongings and his clothes chest had been removed from the room at
Radulf’s direction, but all of Joanna’s possessions remained.
“I see nothing wrong with this room,” said
Radulf, eyeing the two braziers that would in winter burn charcoal
for heat. “This is unusually comfortable. You ought to be perfectly
happy here.”
“I cannot remain in one room every day for
months,” Joanna cried.
“
But that
is just what you will do,” Radulf replied. “I cannot allow you to
converse with, or even to see, any man but myself until
I
know if
you are with child by
Crispin. Thus, there can be no doubt of the father’s
identity.”
“What if she is not with child?” asked
Rohaise.
“Why, then,” said Radulf, flexing his large
fingers as if he would wind them about his daughter’s slender
throat if she should prove barren, “I shall marry her to someone
else once her mourning is over and we are certain she carries no
child. I must have an heir. I must!”
“My lord, this is overly cruel treatment of a
girl who has only obeyed your wishes,” Rohaise persisted.
“Need I remind you that if you had given me
children, this treatment of Joanna would not be necessary?” Radulf
turned on Rohaise with the relish of a man who enjoyed browbeating
those who could not strike back. “Tis a grievous fault in a wife,
and if you prove disobedient in addition to being barren, I will
feel justified in casting you off and sending you to a
convent.”
“But if Joanna is with child and she takes no
exercise,” Rohaise declared, risking her own welfare for Joanna’s
sake, “she will grow weak and ill, and thus able to bear only a
sickly babe for your heir. I am thinking of your interests, my
lord, when I say that if you allow Joanna to walk on the
battlements each day, and occasionally visit the herb garden, I
will go with her to be certain she speaks to no one.”
Radulf looked from his wife to his daughter,
indecision written plain on his face, while Joanna held her
breath.
“
Joanna
may walk on the battlements and you with her,” he said to Rohaise,
“but only with Baird to guard you both.
He
will make certain no man
approaches Joanna.”
This was not what Joanna wanted to hear for
there would be no pleasure in walking with Baird, whom she
disliked. But she reminded herself that she was fortunate not to be
confined to her chamber at all times.
“Thank you, Father,” she said, as meekly as
she could, considering the rebellion festering in her heart.
“
Baird
will guard your door, too,” Radulf decided. “In addition to the bar
on the inside, I’ll have a strong lock ins
talled on your
door to bet
ter protect you from
intrusion. Baird’s woman, Lys, will clean your room and bring your
meals. You will not try to make a friend of her, and Baird will
guarantee to me that Lys will carry no messages for
you.”
“I have no wish to speak to Lys at all,”
Joanna said. “She is a dreadful woman.”
“
Nor
will
you
carry
messages to or from Joanna,” Radulf said to Rohaise. “Not if you
value your life.”
“As always, I will obey your wishes, my
lord.”
“For the present Baird and I will hold the
only keys to this room once the outside lock is on the door,”
Radulf went on. “Speak to one of us when you want to enter
here.”
“Yes, my lord.” Rohaise bowed her head in
acceptance of her husband’s orders.
When Radulf had gone Joanna sank down upon
the window seat, leaning her head against the stone wall.
“Is this all I am to be allowed to see?” she
asked. “Just the view from these two narrow windows? I will go
mad.”
“Don’t lose hope.” Rohaise sat beside
her.
“Thank you for trying to help me,” Joanna
said.
“I wish I could have done more. Without your
company my life would be loveless as well as childless. I will do
anything I can to ease your imprisonment, for that’s what this
confinement is. I would help you escape if I could find a way,
though where you might flee, except to a convent, I do not
know.”