‘You are often in my thoughts, John,’ she said after a moment. ‘Do you continue to fare well?’
He shrugged. ‘I manage in daylight but I have no shield against my dreams, nor from waking from them. I shall never be whole, but I manage, and I have my children to protect and safeguard.’ He adjusted his cloak. ‘I shall go and ensure that young Guillaume de Munchensy sees to the proper shoeing of his horse and then I shall wait for William.’ He kissed her cheek and was gone.
Heaving a sigh, Joanna returned to the Queen’s chambers to continue packing.
On arriving at Windsor, Joanna hugged her children whom she had not seen in several weeks. Iohan had grown again and at seven years old was very much the man in waiting in his own eyes. Agnes had her usual sweet smile and hug for her mother. Margaret’s brown-gold hair, exactly like her father’s and wild with life, had been bound away from her rosy face by a garland of blue silk flowers. Little William was walking.
‘Oh, I have missed all of you so much!’ Joanna cried, and vowed fiercely to spend more time with them. All the wealth and influence in the world was not as precious as this. She hugged and kissed her cousin John’s daughters: Alienor bronze-haired like her mother, Isabelle dark like John, and baby William, a chubby red-cheeked infant in his nurse’s arms.
The Queen went straight to see little Katharine, who was giving her nurse cause for concern. She had been sick with fever the previous month and had not properly recovered, remaining listless and quiet. Although she had been weaned, a wet nurse had been re-employed to feed her to sustain her thin little body and at least she could be persuaded to take suck for comfort. Gazing at the little girl, comparing her with the other boisterous children in the royal nursery, Joanna was moved to tears. Well might the King have had a silver image made of Katharine to invoke God’s help. She had always been a fey ghost-child, never properly of the world, and now her presence in it was further diminished.
The morning after their arrival, Katharine developed a raging fever and a choking cough, and by the following evening, despite all the prayers and entreaties and nostrums, she died in the Queen’s arms, with the household praying in a semi-circle surrounding her bed. Grief squeezed Joanna’s chest, and fear too, because a child’s fragile life could be taken like a puff of wind disintegrating a dandelion ball.
That night Joanna knelt in vigil with the Queen in Windsor’s chapel where Katharine rested before the altar, surrounded by hundreds of candles, shining so brightly that the child’s body could barely be seen through the waxen forest of light. Alienor prayed, hands clenched upon her rosary beads, her voice a grief-drenched whisper.
Kneeling behind Alienor, Joanna felt the heat from the candles on her face and the cold spring evening at her back. By now a messenger would have reached Henry at Westminster with the calamitous news.
The dawn sent soft fingers through the church windows, smoky with incense and dull because it was raining again – a long, steady downpour that reminded Joanna of never-ending tears. The Queen refused to leave her daughter’s bier, but she had neither eaten nor drunk since keeping vigil at Katharine’s bedside, and although refusing to abandon her place, she could not sustain it and collapsed, and had to be borne back to her chamber half insensible. Her physician brought a tisane but she refused to drink it and turned her face to the wall.
At noon a barge arrived from London and the clergy came to take Katharine’s body away to Westminster for burial. Joanna had left the Queen fitfully sleeping and arrived in the hall to find William there, cloaked and booted, talking with the Queen’s steward.
Since they were in the public domain, she approached him formally. He took her hands and bowed over them. ‘The King has sent me as a secular escort to see that all is done fittingly for the lady Katharine,’ he said, and then touched Joanna’s face. ‘You look tired.’
‘I have not slept, and the Queen is ill,’ she replied.
He wearily palmed his face. ‘I was there when he heard the news – it was like the end of the world. He has taken it badly indeed, grief-stricken and weeping, but I think it is a vent for many other things.’
‘The Queen is the same,’ Joanna said. ‘She blames herself, but there was nothing anyone could do and the poor child had been ailing for some time.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘I need to go and hold our children and kiss them and tell them how much I love them, but not until I have washed death from my body.’ She shuddered.
Abandoning formality, William pulled her to him, and rubbed her back. ‘Hush now, it’s all right.’
There was a sudden commotion as the Queen stumbled into the hall, dishevelled and distraught. She still wore her chemise with only a cloak over the top and her hair straggled loose down her back. ‘You!’ she cried, as though William was her deadliest enemy. ‘What are you doing here?’
Joanna gasped at the venom in the Queen’s voice.
William took refuge in icy courtesy. ‘Madam, I am but obeying the King’s command. He has sent me to bring the lady Katharine back to Westminster for burial – or at least to escort the procession. He is grieving deeply, as we all are. I am sorry you do not think it fitting for me to be here, but my service is loyal and the lady Katharine is my kin.’
She swayed where she stood. ‘Why did it have to be you? Why couldn’t he have sent someone else?’
‘Because the King trusts me,’ William replied. ‘I have done exactly as he requested and I shall honour that trust. He was in no fit state to come here, for which I am sorry.’
Alienor’s whole body shook. She let out a long, grieving wail and collapsed to the floor, tearing at her hair.
William stepped back, wide-eyed. Joanna hurried to Alienor’s side. The physician came running and she was carried back to her chamber. Joanna shot a frightened look at William, before accompanying the Queen. As the ladies changed Alienor into a clean chemise, they realised she was burning with fever. The physician immediately bled her to try and balance her humours and shook his head over her condition.
Joanna returned to William and found him surrounded by various children, including their own. Little Margaret perched on his shoulders, her curls bobbing. He was feeding the youngsters sweetmeats from his pouch, like a falconer taming hungry young hawks.
‘The Queen is too unwell to travel,’ Joanna told him. ‘She has a fever and the physician is worried for her health.’
William lifted Margaret from his shoulders and set her down. ‘It is probably for the best,’ he said. ‘I should go. The King is waiting at Westminster, and like the Queen, he is not himself.’ He looked at her and the children. ‘When the Queen has recovered, I suggest you leave court for a while. I will be better for knowing you and the children are safe. I trust you to do what is necessary, and I will continue to stay with the King while he needs me.’
Joanna nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand, but be careful.’
Joanna watched the funeral cortege escorting Katharine’s bier set out from Windsor on the royal barge down the Thames. The little body had been wrapped in silk cloths and lay on a raised platform in the centre of the barge, covered by a canvas awning to protect it from the rain dimpling the river. Wrapped in furs and borne on a litter, Alienor insisted on coming to the wharf to see the barge depart. As the vessel cast off she made a sound like a wounded animal and reached her hand towards the craft. The rain increased as the barge sailed downstream and vanished from sight. With the physician walking beside her litter, Alienor was taken back to her chamber, weeping in harsh, gut-wrenching sobs.
Joanna turned away from the river, the hem of her skirts heavy with water wicking up from the grass, her last sight of William a misty figure through the rain. She gathered Iohan and Agnes under her cloak to bring them back inside.
Iohan looked up at her. ‘My throat hurts, Mama,’ he said.
