‘No,’ Joanna said. She could find no love for him, and it only added to her resentment and guilt.
Aliza grimaced and rubbed her stomach, and Joanna was immediately attentive. ‘It is nothing,’ Aliza said, ‘just after-cramps.’
‘I will get the midwife to make you a tisane,’ Joanna said with sympathy. ‘I know how painful they can be.’
The next day Aliza’s cramps were worse. The discharge from her womb was red and copious; she had a fierce headache and a fever. She vomited up the potions the worried midwife gave her to drink, and as the day progressed, her condition deteriorated.
Joanna bathed Aliza’s face and hands with rose water, while the baby suckled from the wet nurse with gusto.
John came to the lying-in chamber and looked at his wife with anxious fear. ‘You must get well,’ he told her. ‘For me, for our children.’
Aliza turned to him, her hair soaked with sweat. ‘I am doing my best,’ she said, her voice weak and hoarse. ‘God will do as He decides …’
‘Then I will defy God!’
Joanna gasped at the blasphemy and bit her lip.
‘Hush,’ Aliza whispered. ‘None of that, John. Know that I love you and will always love you.’
He turned away, pinching tears from his eyes. Joanna reached to him, but he pushed her off and went around the bed to sit at Aliza’s other side.
Silently, Joanna wiped Aliza’s body and tidied and plaited her hair.
John took his wife’s hand, and Aliza fell into a restless slumber. Her eyes moved rapidly under her lids, now and then fluttering open, but they were rolling and white. When the chaplain arrived to administer the sacrament, she barely roused from her increasing delirium. John jerked to his feet and strode from the room, and Joanna hurried after him.
‘I will send a messenger to William and bid him come immediately,’ she said. ‘He is less than a day’s ride away.’
John nodded tersely. ‘Do that,’ he said, and swallowed. ‘Joanna, I cannot bear it.’
‘I know … I know.’
‘I won’t let her die.’ He flashed her a look filled with anguish, and Joanna returned it steadily.
‘I will write to William now,’ she said, touched his arm, and hurried away to see to it.
Sitting at a lectern by the window, she penned the letter without a scribe, wiping her eyes so that her tears would not blot the ink, and it was the most difficult thing she had ever had to do – to summon her husband to his sister’s deathbed.
The messenger had been gone a little over two hours and evening had taken the light when Aliza shuddered and ceased to breathe.
‘No.’ John stared at Aliza in disbelief, her folded hands clutching a cross, chrism oil glistening on her brow. ‘No!’
Joanna gazed on the body of her sister and her friend. Just two days ago they had been laughing together as they joyed in the triumph of the birth of a healthy baby boy, and now her life had blown out like a snuffed candle.
‘I will never find anything so beautiful in my life again!’ John sobbed, leaning over her body. ‘You have taken my life with you; there is nothing left for me!’
Joanna attempted to speak to him but grief was a wall of thorns for both of them, and when she tried to put her arms around him, he threw her off so violently that she staggered and almost fell, but he did not apologise, for he was wild and beyond reach.
Leaving him in the care of the priest and his senior knights, she pushed down her own anguish and set about organising the household. Other letters had now to be sent, and instructions given. The King and Queen had to be told. Someone had to do these things, and applying herself to practical matters was a way of coping. She had to put her faith in God, even as John was denying Him. As mortals they could not see the patterns of His infinite wisdom. William would know what to do when he arrived. Of anyone, he would have the words and perhaps the comfort as John’s closest friend and brother-by-marriage.
William cantered into Lewes on a sweating, hard-ridden palfrey. He had received the news from outriders looking for him and could not believe Aliza was dead. Had she experienced a premonition all those years ago when heavy with her first child? The token she had given him had taken some finding at the bottom of his coffer and he was sick with sorrow and with dread at finding the words to say to John.
He dismounted, threw his reins to a groom and hurried into the keep. Joanna ran to greet him and flung herself into his arms, sobbing. He drew her against him, full of gratitude that he still had a wife, and grief that he no longer had his beautiful sister.
‘I am so sorry,’ Joanna said in a breaking voice. ‘The childbed fever took her and we were powerless. She was overjoyed to have a son, and by God’s mercy he thrives, but John refuses to look at the child. You have to know what to say to him. For he will not listen to me.’
William brushed away her tears on his thumb and kissed her wet cheeks. ‘I will go to him,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’
‘In her chamber.’
