Reassured but still tense, Joanna tucked the safe conduct into her satchel and they set out for Dover.
They arrived the following day with a short space of time before the tide turned. John had procured a merchant ship bound for Royan to transport them and it rode at anchor, awaiting Joanna’s arrival. Joanna presented her letters of safe conduct to Dover’s constable and stood calmly while the documents were examined.
Some of the constable’s serjeants poked the wool sacks with their spears but she had wrapped the money with great care and they soon tired of their inspection, especially being under the hard gaze of the Earl of Surrey and Warenne, who might favour the de Lusignans but whose brothers were of the de Montfort faction. The ship’s master was keen to sail with the tide, and after a cursory show of officialdom, the carts were permitted on to the ship with the horses and passengers.
Joanna ushered the children aboard. ‘Soon we shall see your father,’ she said, and looked out across the choppy green waves. The biting wind brought tears to her eyes. At least it would be a little warmer where they were going.
She turned to bid farewell to John and embraced him with a full heart. The one person she had fully trusted over the last few terrible months, and the only one willing to become embroiled on her behalf.
‘You saved my life,’ she said.
‘Oh, come now.’ He rubbed her back with the flat of his hand. ‘We help each other and that is all there is.’ He embraced her a final time and then stepped to shore. ‘Tell William I look forward to sharing wine with him very soon.’
The ship cast off, and the waves hissed beneath her keel. As the land diminished behind a wall of sea, Joanna’s heart swelled with joy at having outwitted Simon de Montfort, and because she was bringing a full complement of treasure to her husband. His money, his children – herself. The latter two were anticipatory, emotional joys, but the first was so glorious and visceral she could almost taste it. What had been a defeat was now framed as victory. And if they had triumphed once, they could do so again.
32
Royan, Gascony, December 1258
The earlier rain storm had rolled away to the north and as Joanna’s ship sailed into the harbour at Royan, the sun sparkled through the clouds, gilding the houses in a wash of pale gold winter light.
The journey had been brisk but no one had been ill beyond mild nausea. The main difficulty had been controlling the children who were brimming with excitement at the prospect of seeing their father, and filled with the sheer joy of the adventure. She had reprimanded them several times for clambering around on the deck like monkeys, but she understood their exuberance. She too had the impulse to leap and scream to release her tension but she was not a child. She was the hub at the centre of the wheel, holding everything together.
Joanna searched the harbour side for William but could not see him and her stomach lurched as it had not done while they were at sea. She had sent messages ahead to announce their arrival, but did not know if he would receive them given the vagaries of travel.
The mooring ropes were cast and the walkway run out. Joanna took a deep, steadying breath, collected her dignity and ushered the children before her on to the dock. The solid feel of the land of exile under her feet sent an unexpected surge of emotion through her like a bow-wave. She stumbled, and Robert, her cook, quickly took her arm and helped her to a net mender’s stool. Joanna waved his concern aside. ‘I am but changing my sea legs for land ones,’ she said with a brave smile. ‘I will be all right in a moment.’ She took a sip from the wine flask he offered her, and looking up, saw William pushing his way along the busy dockside towards her.
She returned the flask to Robert and stood up. ‘William, thank God, thank God!’ She flung herself into his arms, uncaring of dignity, for in an instant it no longer mattered. He was alive and vital, and she could touch him. ‘I thought never to see you again!’
‘Oh tush!’ He hugged her. ‘I am still in one piece as you see for yourself – but missing you and the children sorely. My greatest fear was being unable to protect you and them.’
Breaking their embrace, he turned to their offspring. ‘Well done.’ He gripped Iohan’s shoulder. ‘You have brought everyone here safely, and how you have grown! I am looking at a man!’
Iohan flushed with pride and puffed out his chest.
‘And you, my little mistresses, what ladies you are!’ He stooped to kiss Agnes and Margaret.
Finally, he picked up curly-haired William and perched him on his shoulders. ‘And you are biggest of all!’ he said with a laugh, then turned back to a tearful Joanna. ‘I have a lodging outside the town for tonight – it’s only a short ride. We shall set out for Cognac in the morning.’ He returned William to his nurse and had the horses brought forward.
Joanna insisted firmly that the wool carts come with them under escort.
William eyed her askance. ‘Surely they can wait and go directly to one of the barns at Cognac?’
Joanna had no intention of letting them out of her sight, nor of revealing her secret here on the dockside. She wanted a full accolade for the achievement she had sweated blood to accomplish. ‘It is the finest English wool, and very valuable. Indulge me for now, husband.’
He raised his eyebrows, but smiled. ‘If that is your wish, of course – you know I will never gainsay your wishes.’
The lodging on the outskirts of Royan belonged to one of William’s childhood friends – a fortified house of warm, creamy stone. Its lord was absent elsewhere, but the servants took Joanna to a well-appointed chamber with a good fire and a comfortable bed. An adjoining room had been prepared for the nurses and children. Joanna, after a cursory glance around, insisted on going to make sure the wool carts were safely stored under cover in the stables, and that a guard remained with them.
William wondered at the privation she had suffered to make her so anxious. He could tell from her clothes, and those of the children, that she had been economising and a pang of guilt ran through him that his proud and beautiful wife, whom he would have given the world, should have been driven to worrying over something so mundane as a cargo of wool.
Joanna returned from her mission and said nothing more about the carts. She opened her baggage and changed into a much less dowdy gown of rose-coloured silk with thread of gold embroidery. While they dined on venison in pepper sauce, she told him all the news from England and he in his turn told her about being under siege in Boulogne. He also told her that besides renewing his contacts in Gascony and keeping diplomatic channels open in Paris he had been in touch with Edward.
‘Henry may be in a tight corner,’ he said, ‘but he and the King of France are well acquainted and understand each other diplomatically even in times of dispute. And they are kin. Sometimes the proper gesture at the right moment is worth a thousand swords.’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes it is the other way round too, but the future belongs to Edward, not to de Montfort and his allies, not to the Queen, and not even to Henry, and we should remember that.’
That night they lay together, the curtains drawn around the bed as they loved each other urgently at first, and then again, with tender slowness. Joanna wrapped her arms around him, a little tearful to have the security of his warm body at her side. To talk with him and despite everything to still be facing a future together. Hope trampling Despair.
He lay against her, heavy with satiation and sleepiness. ‘You are what has kept me strong,’ he said. ‘You have given me hope. I have often disappointed you I know, but I shall love you until I take my last breath – may God give me the grace of a lifetime with you.’
