‘I hope you are,’ she said reprovingly, and then looked towards the messenger being escorted up the hall to the dais. He bore a letter for Joanna, and as she read it, her heart filled with dismay. ‘It’s Cecily,’ she said, giving William a stricken look. ‘I must go to her.’
Cecily lay near the window in her sickroom, the summer light falling on the plain blanket that covered her frail body. Her sallow skin was stretched taut across her cheekbones and her lips were blue. Joanna knelt at her side and touched her stick-thin arm, and Cecily raised her lids and turned her head on the pillow.
‘You came,’ she whispered. ‘I did not know if you would be in time.’
‘Of course I came! I am so sorry to hear you are not well.’
‘I shall be better by and by.’ Cecily’s tone gave Joanna the clear meaning of the words. ‘The wait is wearisome, but I am glad you are here. I have something for you.’ She pointed to the chest at the side of the bed. ‘I want you to have my prayer beads. Take them, and use them well.’
Joanna swallowed the lump in her throat. Cecily had few possessions; in many ways she was a secular nun, and these well-used, ordinary-looking wooden beads were precious to her and imbued with years of devotion to God. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I am not worthy, but I shall treasure them and do my best to honour your trust. I shall think with gratitude of all your care and diligence, and how you were a mother to me when I had no mother.’
‘Just so.’ Cecily smiled and closed her eyes.
Joanna kissed her brow and sat with her, holding her hand and praying.
Cecily died a short while later as the sunset burned the horizon with fiery gold, and Joanna did not weep. Cecily would have had no patience with tears and her end was a rightful and natural thing.
Joanna stayed in St Alban’s for the funeral, held in the chapel of St Andrew, where Cecily’s shrouded body was laid to rest in a stone vault before the altar. Eleanor de Montfort had travelled to the deathbed but not arrived until the morning after Cecily had passed away, and now stood amid the mourners, her lips tight and her eyes shadowed with grief. A look of distaste crossed her face as she saw Joanna, and when she noticed the rosary beads, her cheeks flushed with anger.
‘It is a great grief, but also a great happiness that our tutor and mentor has gone to be with God,’ Joanna said courteously to Eleanor.
‘And you were there as I was not,’ Eleanor said stiffly.
‘I know you would have been there if you could.’ Joanna tried to be solicitous.
‘Do not presume to know anything about me,’ Eleanor snapped. ‘You would be wrong, and you know nothing.’
‘I know what I learned from Cecily and I will always thank her for it in my life and in my prayers and try to follow her example.’
Eleanor gave her a disparaging glare and stalked off. Joanna remained quietly in prayer until she had recovered her equilibrium. By the time she left the church she was at peace, and Eleanor had gone.
20
York, late December 1251
Joanna gave Henry’s daughter Margaret a warm hug. ‘You look very beautiful,’ she said. ‘A perfect bride.’ It seemed barely possible that Margaret, whom she had seen born in Bordeaux eleven years ago, was about to marry the nine-year-old Alexander of Scotland to whom she had been betrothed since she was four years old. Alexander’s father had died in July, and Henry was moving to secure the match even though the young couple were under age and would not come into their rule for many years to come.
Striving to conceal her sadness, Joanna smiled at Margaret, who was excited to be the centre of attention and loving her beautiful gold dress and embroidered slippers. Joanna hoped the child would be treated with kindness and affection away from her family and that she would bond with her young bridegroom. With good fortune they would grow up together and be friends first and more intimate companions later, but there was no certainty of such an outcome. The forthcoming marriage of such young heirs had unsettled Joanna, even though she knew that Henry and Alienor were concerned parents. The imminent parting had churned up the silt from her past, reminding her of all the painful partings in her life. Her mother, her brother, her uncles, and Cecily. And with each farewell, everything changed.
‘Don’t be sad, Aunt Joanna,’ Margaret said, patting her shoulder.
‘I am sorry to leave you, that is all,’ Joanna said. Dear God, the child was comforting her when it should be the other way round. ‘You will be a great queen, just like your mama.’
The royal company processed to the chapel, a small, elite gathering of close relatives and interested parties surrounding the young royal couple. Margaret and Alexander performed their parts flawlessly and were seen to smile at each other, which everyone took as a good sign for the future.
That night, when everyone had retired and the newly-weds were settled in their separate households, Joanna folded clothes to keep her hands busy, feeling irritable and out of sorts. There had been much talk at the marriage feast of wardships and alliances and plenty of covert match-making had been taking place.
‘I would never consider marrying our daughter at eleven years old,’ she said, the words emerging forcefully like steam bursting out from under a cauldron lid. ‘I hope you would never consider it either.’
William looked up from pouring a last cup of wine. ‘What has brought that on?’ he asked warily.
‘Listening to the talk, hearing all the bargaining. Wardships are bought and sold for the land and the profits and the right to marry the heirs that come with them. I was a ward myself, but I was seventeen years old when I married you. Our sons and daughters shall not be children when they wed, for it is not a good thing.’
William poured a second cup of wine and brought it to her. ‘It is different for the King and Queen. They do not have the leisure to wait because of the necessity to the kingdom.’
‘Then I am very glad we are not high royalty.’
‘There is a clause that the marriage is not to be consummated for four years, and in that time they will come to know each other,’ William said in a reasonable voice. ‘The King and Queen will keep a close eye on both of them. They are doting parents.’
