She left the bed and went to pour more wine and renew the fire. The dogs were sleeping in front of the embers and barely stirred as she added a fresh log. ‘No, but it was hard.’ She swept her hair behind her shoulders, and returned to bed with their goblets. ‘Sometimes there was so much weight crushing me Ithought I would die, but each time I found the strength from somewhere to withstand another load and stay alive. In the end, the more they sought to stamp me down, the harder I resisted.’
She took a drink and folded the covers around her body. ‘Even now I do not know if we would be here in this bed if not for the pestilence taking my mother and William’s too. They were holding on to me like a dog gripping a bone. And William’s grandmother added her jaws also. I sometimes think they would rather have killed me than see me become your wife.’
He stroked her hair. ‘But God must have been with us. Had I not won that ransom in Caen, and if not for the pestilence . . .’ He fell silent again, for although the sickness had brought them their heart’s desire it had also destroyed so much in its surge and left tragedy in its wake too. ‘I wish that my mother and sister could have come to know you truly,’ he said quietly.
‘And I am sorry not to have known either of them beyond a word or two,’ Jeanette replied, although she wondered how she, Maude and Isabel would have fared together as women of the same family. She had experience enough to be wary, especially of mothers when it came to their sons. ‘Now we have to make it up to the King,’ she said. ‘The Queen is on our side and happy for us, as is the lord Edward, but I am not certain how his father regards the matter.’
Thomas set his wine aside. ‘We can win him round. We no longer have to contend with the Countess of Salisbury whispering in his ear. He values my service and Otto’s, and now that the pestilence has begun to recede he will be requiring our skills.’
Jeanette rolled her eyes and laughed without humour at the notion that he would think that leaving her and putting himself in danger constituted a solution she would be happy to hear. But then he was a soldier by trade – an excellent one – and hisoccupation was part of how they came to be sharing this bed at all.
The court started arriving for the Christmas feast ten days later, with the piled baggage carts rolling in first, accompanied by the servants of the Marshal’s department, to begin setting up the household and erecting tents. The weather was one of bright, crisp frosts and skies of enamelled blue.
Thomas and Jeanette helped to oversee the arrangements, and Jeanette was glad for them to have something to do now that well over a week had passed, for they could not spend every day in bed, much as they had enjoyed doing so. They had talked and wept and laughed and come to know each other all over again, but now it was time to allow the world back into their lives.
The King and Queen arrived at the same time by prearrangement, and Jeanette and Thomas knelt to greet them with the rest of the household. Tense and apprehensive, Jeanette was unsure how the King would receive them. Philippa had a warm conspiratorial smile for her and Thomas as she swept into the palace. The King cast a brief glance in their direction, his expression neutral. Prince Edward flashed them a reassuring grin and waved as he followed his parents.
Jeanette was swiftly summoned to join the Queen and her ladies, and knelt before Philippa with her head bowed.
‘You are glowing, my dear,’ Philippa said, her gaze full of amused mischief. ‘I take it that all has been to your satisfaction?’
‘Yes indeed, madam,’ Jeanette answered, smiling. ‘We have been making up for lost time – many years of lost time.’
‘Well, I wish you and your husband a fruitful outcome. We shall enjoy the festivities and witnessing your renewed vows.’
Prince Edward took her hand and bowed over it. ‘I am glad for you, cousin,’ he said. ‘I wish you all the joy in the world.’ He kissed her cheek and then her lips in a swift salute.
‘Thank you, sire,’ she said, and although her tone was formal, the look she gave him was full of warmth. ‘Thomas and I are indebted to you.’
‘None of that,’ he said firmly. ‘You are my dear kin, my friends, and as necessary to me as I am to you. We shall all go forward together.’
On his knees, Thomas bowed his head before the King. Jeanette curtseyed beside him dressed in her wedding gown of red and gold velvet with ermine trim and her father’s belt encircling her waist. Around her neck, exposed now, was the little pendant she had picked up from a muddy tourney field as an infatuated girl, and with it, on a gold chain, the recently polished ruby Thomas had once given her, now in a resplendent gold setting. A new wedding ring featuring two clasped hands gripping another ruby shone on her heart finger, made from the gold of her first one. They had recently come from the church of St Mary attached to the palace where they had been married before the entire court, and then celebrated a mass within the crowded candlelit chapel.
The King, resplendent in robes of gold and silver, gem-set rings on his long fingers, bestowed the kiss of peace on both of them. ‘Welcome to court as man and wife,’ he said, ‘and be welcome in any hall in the land in that capacity.’ He smiled widely at both of them, but Jeanette still sensed an undercurrent of reserve in his manner. ‘You have my word that this marriage will neither be questioned nor put asunder by anyone in the land now that judgement has been made,’ he continued. ‘I wish the best for you and may your line blossom and flourish. Let the past remain in the past from this moment forth, and let us feast and rejoice.’
The wedding was celebrated with entertainment, dancing and mumming, joy and laughter. There were mock jousts with one young man playing the horse, the other his rider, and attemptingto knock down opponents similarly mounted. By popular demand, Thomas had to bring Noir into the hall and make him bow to the gathering, before taking Jeanette up on his saddle and riding off with her to loud cheers. As she disappeared from the room, Jeanette caught the Queen’s eye, and the pair shared a warm and knowing look.
On Christmas Eve, Jeanette and Thomas rode out with the dogs on their own to spend a little time together before yet another round of entertainments and feasting. The air was crystal-cold with frost making ferny swirls in the puddles and crunching beneath the horse’s hooves. Nosewyse and Thomas’s swift black gazehound Onyx ran beside the horses, although Jeanette had left Snowflake behind in Hawise’s custody, hoping he wouldn’t chew his way through anything other than a bone during her absence. Thomas had brought Hawise with him in his entourage and she had returned immediately to her former position. Jeanette was supremely pleased to have her in her chamber.
Thomas smiled as they rode. ‘I have never seen anything as beautiful as your red lips and cheeks in the winter cold,’ he said admiringly.
‘You may praise me all you wish, not just my lips and cheeks!’ She laughed at him. ‘Which part of me do you like best?’
‘Oh, I could not say, for there is no part that is less beautiful than any other, and of course there are different parts of me that would consider different parts of you as their ultimate praise!’
She spluttered at his saucy reply and kicked her palfrey into a canter. He rode at her side, matching her pace, across the frozen grass and then into the trees, the trunks winter-black and moss-green, the branches bare. The dogs took off, scouting through the woods like wolves. Jeanette was exhilarated at the freedom. No grooms, no attendants, just themselves and time to do as they pleased.
Eventually they came to a charcoal burner’s clearing. Thomas produced a flask of sweet wine and some honey cakes and they paused to eat and drink.
He looked at her again. They had made love in the morning before they set out, and even though there was no urgency of lust for the moment, he still could not get enough of her. ‘When we leave court after Christmas, I want to take you to my manor at Broughton,’ he said.
Sensing a sudden tension in him, Jeanette raised her brows. ‘What of it?’
‘It will not be what you are accustomed to,’ he said, a flush rising under his skin. ‘I am not an earl of the realm. I earn a soldier’s wage and whatever I may glean in ransoms and plunder. I have a life interest in a few manors from my mother, but that is all.’ He took her hand. ‘You are the King’s cousin. Your brother is the Earl of Kent and William Montagu is the Earl of Salisbury, and his income is more than four times that of mine.’
‘I did not wed you for your money or your reputation.’ Jeanette stroked his cheek. ‘Had I needed that kind of comfort, I could have chosen it long ago.’
‘Even so, I want you to know we shall have to trim our sails to suit the horizon. Would that I could provide you with every luxury in the world, but it is not within my means.’
