‘You can open it,’ she said.
He tipped a small object into his palm. Under a polished rock crystal cover shone a lock of bronze-gold hair twined with gold wire and secured with three pearl pins. He looked at her with a frown. ‘What is this?’
Aliza put her hand on his wrist and lowered her voice. ‘If anything happens to me when I bear this child – if I don’t survive …’ She gave him a direct, powerful look. ‘I am entrusting you to give this to John as I give it to you now. I want you to tell him that my life will continue elsewhere through my eternal soul and although he is my husband and I love him dearly, he must not mourn for me but continue to live his life in joy. If he does that, I will be more than satisfied. Put it away carefully, and keep it for me against such a day.’ She patted his sleeve and smiled.
Stunned, William wondered how she could contemplate such a thing in the midst of everyday matters. She was too deep for him and he experienced a moment of resentment because she was his big sister and supposed to comfort him. Confronting the possibility of losing her horrified him. And for her to tell him to exhort John to live his life in joy told William how little she knew about her husband’s response to grief.
‘If that is your wish, I shall keep it for you,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but I had better not have to use it.’
‘God willing you won’t.’ She flashed him a perceptive look. ‘You would set your house in order before you went into battle. It is the same thing.’
It wasn’t at all, but he put the token away in his pouch with a curt nod.
‘Thank you. I know it is a strange thing to ask, but I would not do so unless it was important for me and for John. It is settled now, and I do not need to worry.’
John arrived to escort Aliza to the travelling cart and she gave William a meaningful look as she rose to go with him.
William tried to imagine Joanna presenting John with such a token in similar circumstances and could not. Although they shared most things, he decided not to tell her about Aliza’s gift.
Joanna rocked her little niece in her arms and smiled into the baby’s cherub face. She had stood as godmother to little Alienor who had been born five weeks into Aliza’s confinement at Lewes and named, diplomatically, after the Queen. At three months old the baby was delightful, with Aliza’s bronze hair and John’s dark eyes. John had not complained once about her being a girl rather than a son and heir. Indeed, he doted on her, and Joanna’s affection for him had increased.
Cuddling her niece, Joanna’s heart filled with a longing to hold her own child. Sometimes she was envious of Aliza for conceiving so quickly and giving birth so easily, but would instantly feel remorse for that envy. The will of God was the will of God. Now they had returned to Westminster, perhaps she might have good news in the spring. She had spent an hour this morning in the King’s painted chamber, silently communing with the figure of Hope.
Sorting through the contents of a jewel coffer she had upended on the bed, Aliza picked up a smooth sapphire stone on a gold chain and dangled it before her daughter, who made a myopic grab for it. ‘It belonged to John’s mother,’ Aliza said. ‘She was a formidable lady and I was sorry not to know her well, and that she died before she could meet this little one.’
‘She was indeed formidable – the last of my Marshal aunts and uncles,’ Joanna said. John’s mother had been buried at Tintern Abbey in Wales beside her mother, her grandmother and her two youngest brothers. The passing of a generation like a breeze through a wheat field. Sad but inevitable.
After a pause, Joanna sighed. ‘William is organising another tourney – on Ash Wednesday again. You did warn me.’
Aliza shook her head. ‘Yes, I did. He has boundless energy and he has to expend it.’
‘Yes, but I wish it could be in other ways.’
‘He is talented too, despite what happened last time. Until he has proved himself, he will not let it go and you will not stop him.’
‘I know.’ Joanna chewed the inside of her lower lip.
‘Men bond in battle practice. They get drunk together and spend their time talking about horses and harness and weapons,’ Aliza said. ‘They will commiserate with each other about their wives fussing over nothing even while their wives complain about their childish, rash husbands, but somewhere, eventually, we make compromises and we meet in the middle.’
‘Yes,’ Joanna said wryly, and Aliza gave her a swift hug.
‘We are blessed to have each other, and we are blessed to have our husbands even if they drive us to distraction.’
‘There is no doubt about that!’ Joanna replied with an exasperated laugh.
Leaving little Alienor with her nurse, Joanna and Aliza went to attend on the Queen. Eleanor de Montfort was present among the ladies already surrounding the royal chair, while her husband, freshly returned from Gascony for the Christmas feast, held forth to a group of men on the far side of the room. Joanna noted William among them, hanging on the words as though they were jewels, and she tightened her lips.
Simon de Montfort had been blessedly absent from court since her marriage, governing Gascony for the King, but had returned for the Christmas season to make his report. He had a powerful, carrying voice and the charisma to dominate a conversation. Nine-year-old Edward stood watching him with wide-eyed fascination. The King was looking too, and Joanna noticed his tension. Henry was always uncomfortable when de Montfort was at court. All they had in common was Eleanor, sister to one and wife to the other, and she was a source of conflict, not unity.
Eleanor de Montfort had been speaking to the Queen, but now approached Joanna and Aliza. ‘I congratulate you and your lord on the birth of a daughter,’ she said with a smile.
‘Thank you, sister,’ Aliza said. ‘We have named her in memory and in recognition of the many illustrious ladies of that name and in our family.’
‘Indeed,’ Eleanor said graciously. ‘I wish I had a daughter to my brood, but my lord is strong and vigorous and thus far has only planted sons in my womb.’
Aliza smiled. ‘I am sure you will bear a daughter in the fullness of time. Girls can be such comforts to a mother, and make fine marriages for the family.’
‘You are wise, my sister,’ Eleanor said, and turned to Joanna. ‘No doubt your time will come even if it takes a little longer.’ Her voice, sweet and light, managed nevertheless to hint that Joanna and William were deficient breeding material.
