Jeanette jutted her chin. ‘I wanted to learn about the bees,’ she said. ‘A lady should know about such management.’
‘Do not be impertinent with me,’ Margaret said frostily. ‘You went out riding with your merlin earlier this week – astride, with only a single groom for company – the youngest one and no fit escort. Have you no sense of propriety? You are becoming a woman and it is neither safe nor respectable to behave in such a wise. In faith, daughter, you make my head ache. How is it that I can manage the affairs of an earldom and yet find it so difficult to deal with you?’
Jeanette sent her mother a resentful look. ‘I know what is set upon me, mother. I am good at my lessons. I can read anything you ask of me in French and English, and even Latin –anything– and understand it well. I know animal husbandry and estate management. I can curtsey to match any woman at court and play chess to rival any man. Why not praise me for those things?’ A lump was growing in her throat, tight and painful, attached to her heart. ‘I’ll never be good enough for you to accept me, will I?’
‘It is not a matter of being good enough,’ Margaret said, her knuckles blenching. ‘Until you heed the rules and boundaries of your sex and your position, all the learning in the world will avail you nothing.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘Why do you not understand? You are coming to womanhood and men are beginning to look at you in that light. It is not meet to smile at them and flirt, for it will encourage them to take liberties that will sully your reputation and mine.’
Jeanette folded her arms, pressing them around her body in a gesture of self-defence and defiance at the same time. There was nothing she could say or do when her mother was in this kind of mood. The words were like blows, and with each verbal slap she felt the sting and then the numbness.
Her mother sighed heavily. ‘My first husband died in battle, when I was little older than you are now,’ she said. ‘Your father was executed for alleged treason a few weeks before John was born. I was confined at Arundel under house arrest, not knowing what would become of us. You had to stand as godmother at John’s baptism because I had no one to turn to. I lost your brother Edmund when he was just five years old. What would have happened if I had spent my time in frivolity and running amok instead of doing my duty? Every day that dawned after your father’s death, every breath in my body, every heartbeat, I was engaged in a bitter fight for your inheritance. One day John will be Earl of Kent and he has a position with the King’s oldest son. You are being raised at court, in Queen Philippa’s household. You are the King’s cousin with a dowry of three thousand pounds to your name and that makes you a highly valuable marriage prize. You will not squander all my striving because you want to kick and rebel like a spoiled brat. People will look at you and see a girl who has been given too much liberty and has turned to wanton sin. Is that how you would repay your family? How can anyone take such wilful disobedience to their heart?’ Running out of breath, a pink tinge in her cheeks, Margaret pressed her hand to her throat.
The moment hung between mother and daughter like a bloody sword. Jeanette dropped her arms, and the tightness that she had been containing inside her chest surged painfully upwards. ‘Then do not love me, for I certainly do not love you!’ she cried. Spinning on her heel, she ran to the door, fumbled the latch, and fled the chamber, tear-blind, furious, distraught.
Jeanette paced her chamber, wiping her eyes with a piece of scrap linen and sniffing. The initial storm, verging on a tantrum of grief and rage, was spent, cried into her damp bed pillow, but tears kept leaking, and her throat was still tight. She had draggedoff her headdress and her thick blonde plaits were messy with wisps of loose hair straggling free, and she was still wearing her smirched gown. If she was a hoyden, then so be it. She would show her mother! But she didn’t want it to be like this between them, and she felt horrible – sick and angry, and defiant.
She turned to the baggage bags and chests that were being readied for her return to court in the morning. Gowns and undergowns, shoes and two cloaks. Combs and veils. Cloths for her fluxes which had been coming regularly for six months now.
And the jewel box. It stood on the empty chest at the foot of her bed – a beautiful thing enamelled in blue and scarlet and gilded with gold. The finest work of Limoges craftsmen. In a moment of defiance, she had taken it from her mother’s chamber and brought it to her own, for it belonged to her by her father’s will. The father she had known but could not remember because he had been executed when she had been too small to have such cognition. But this – this box – at least was tangible.
She unlocked it with the golden key, also purloined from her mother’s chamber, opened the lid, and gazed at the contents. Her father’s rings of ruby and emerald. A cross on a gold chain set with pearls and sapphires and crystals, various brooches, but most wonderful of all, a belt of embroidered gold silk, featuring an enamelled white doe on the buckle plate, with a crowned chain around the base of its neck. Jeanette had always loved this piece, and she stroked the image for a moment before restoring it gently to its designated place and closing the lid.
The door opened and her mother walked in. Her face too was blotched, but her eyes were bright, although that might be from the wine she always drank when she had one of her headaches.
Margaret’s gaze fell on the enamelled box in Jeanette’s hands. ‘What are you doing with that?’ she demanded.
Jeanette’s cheeks burned beneath her drying tears. ‘I am taking it with me. It’s mine!’
‘You took it from my coffer without permission – how dare you!’ Margaret snatched the box smartly from her hands. ‘This might be your father’s legacy to you, but they are part of the estate and not to be worn frivolously. They are jewels for a grown woman who has accepted responsibility and position. When the time is right, you shall have them, but that time is certainly not now.’ She opened the lid to inspect the contents and make sure they were all still present; then she snapped it shut and fixed Jeanette with a hard stare. ‘You may think me harsh, but when you show me you are trustworthy, then we shall discuss the matter. Your father would agree with me in this, I am certain he would, for I was his wife, and you might be his child but you were barely in the world when he died – and that is my grief as much as it is yours.’
This time she was the one to leave the room, holding the box to her breast in a way that she had never held her daughter.
Empty now of tears, Jeanette turned to the waiting baggage chests and wished she was already on the road.
The next morning, Jeanette was ready soon after daybreak to set out on the return journey to court. She had an escort of two stalwart men at arms, her personal maid, Hawise, and a staid, middle-aged groom for the horses. The sunlit morning beckoned, drenched with all manner of possibilities as soon as she was out of these gates and away from her mother’s scrutiny. The bridle bells jingled as her black mare tossed her head, as eager to be off as her mistress.
‘Write to me, as I shall write to you,’ Margaret said stiffly. ‘I shall keep you in my prayers.’
‘Yes, mother.’ The words were easier to say from Ebony’s back. They had barely spoken since the jewel-box incident. ‘I will pray for you too.’ The words sounded more like a retort than a beneficence.
‘Remember your family,’ Margaret said. ‘Remember your lineage, and be humble before God.’ She folded her arms inside her cloak.
Jeanette’s brother lightened the moment with a gift, his grey eyes bright as he handed up a linen cloth, tied at the top in a rabbit’s ear knot. ‘Almond tarts for the journey,’ he said. ‘Don’t eat them all at once or you’ll get fat.’
Jeanette laughed. ‘As if I would!’
‘Hah, as if you would not!’
She made a face at him, but his gesture had lifted her mood. ‘Be a good boy,’ she said. ‘Look after Grippe – talk to him about me every day – I don’t want him to forget me while I’m gone. And tell Edward I shall miss him!’
‘My word on it, sister.’ He stooped to pat the dog leashed at his side. ‘Grippe will be waiting your return to muddy your dress again. And I promise I’ll remember you to the Prince. Come back safely.’
Smiling through a sudden sting of tears, she blew a kiss to him and Grippe, nodded brusquely to her mother, and reined Ebony to face the castle’s open gates and the road back to court.
2
Port of Orwell, Ipswich, July 1338
‘You’re being watched,’ Otto warned his brother.
