The First Princess of Wales

by Karen Harper

  “There now. I know you shall both enjoy the day, and fine things shall come of this new friendship. See to her, please, Lord Thomas.”

  The man nodded, but his eye followed the queen’s bustling wake as she led them over to that part of her huge greeting chamber arrayed for a little chapel. An altar, tiers of wavering votive candles, and a large wooden gilded and painted statue of the Blessed Virgin lined one whole corner of the room.

  Fine things shall come . . . this new friendship, the queen’s last words echoed in Joan’s tumbled thoughts. This man, Lord Thomas Holland of Lancashire, dear friend to the queen and her lord king, still held her hand possessively in his own large, warm one until, surprised they still touched, Joan tugged hers back.

  “I fear that was a bit sudden, eh, Lady Joan? But perhaps some of life’s best surprises are that way.”

  “What? Oh, aye, indeed, my lord.”

  He smiled at what he considered her quick recovery of poise and control. The maid was young, but so fair and, no doubt, clever too. Her blood line was nearly impeccable, flowing from the great King Edward I, grandfather of the maid as well as of the present sovereign. It was rumored about lately, of course, that the Prince of Wales had been quite enamored of her, but then he himself had lived long enough to see clearly why. The Hollands were never fools or rebels when the royal handwriting was on the castle wall, and he would be no fool in this fine snare. Her Grace, Queen Philippa, to whom he had always been particularly attached since he had been in the retinue sent to deliver her safe from Hainaut as a blushing, lovely virgin bride seventeen years ago, had no doubt finally found for him the woman of his dreams—beautiful, young, and well attached. Granted, her father had died terribly under the foulest of questionable charges, but what was that to him if it did not bother the queen? People whispered of it less and less and any future Holland children need never inherit that cloud of shame any more than they would be born with one eye because their sire had lost his in battle.

  “Shall we move over there and kneel for the brief prayers then, Lady Joan?” he said and indicated she should precede him. He saw her quick eyes dart to his legs to assess why he leaned on his stick.

  “By St. Peter’s chains, ’tis nothing demoiselle,” he told her smoothly hoping to read some concern in her eyes and not disdain. Suddenly, he wanted to pull her aside and tell her of all his injuries earned in service to the king—in the Scots Wars, the crusade with the Teutonic knights in Poland where he had bravely distinguished himself—all his wounds, this healing, broken leg from the same joust in which Prince Edward had broken his arm—

  “The leg looks worse than it is,” he began again when she merely inclined her head. “I regret it does keep me out of the action today when I would rather be out there hacking away in the grande mêlée with the best of them. It will heal a bit more, fair lady, and then the limp will go, too, and I shall be back in king’s service before we rout the French when this bloody treaty is up, eh?”

  Her sweet mouth smiled graciously. “I am relieved to hear it is naught worse, of course, my Lord Thomas. And I will be appreciative of a guide today to tell me what to look for and expect out there.”

  She moved where he had indicated and knelt two rows back behind the queen on a silk-covered prie-Dieu in the area of the room the queen had ordered converted to a temporary chapel while she had been ill with birthing fever from her last child. This section of the chamber surrounding the delicate altar was exquisitely beautiful with Persian carpets, brocaded bed hangings, perfumed water in hand basins, cloth coverings, and rich tapestries on the walls over which jeweled light sparkled from panes of lead-glass, stained windows.

  Joan felt and heard Thomas Holland kneel heavily beside her on his good knee despite the pain it must cause in his healing leg. Out there, her last words dangled still in her mind; tell me what to expect out there.

  Aye, as the Prince had told her yesterday, she was not a simpleton, and now she was also quite undeceived about what to expect out here—anywhere, now. She would sit, this whole long, utterly endless day, beside this man the queen had chosen to watch her and to keep her mind occupied and for perhaps more, much more than that.

  The voice of the queen’s almoner droned on in Latin beseeching safekeeping and blessings on all the combatants today, especially the queen’s own dearly beloved husband, Edward III, king of England, by Grace of God, and the heir to the throne—Edward, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Prince of Wales.

  It had been only six brief weeks she had known him, Joan told herself, as her own unbidden prayers for the prince’s safety coursed through her brain. Pure, rank foolishness to fathom love in so short a span, so impossible a circumstance. Despite the powerful presence of the man kneeling next to her whose leg barely brushed her skirt folds, a vision of Edward rose up clearly in her mind’s own treasure store: Edward muddy and huge battering at the quintain as relentlessly as he had at her walled-up heart. And now—now—

  “Lady,” the deep-voiced Thomas Holland whispered and offered her his muscular, velvet-covered arm. Amazed, she noted everyone was standing and filing out. She rose quickly and gently shook out her skirts to stall for time.

  “Shall we join them then, my Lady Joan?” Thomas Holland asked, and his coppery eye under his reddish brow went most possessively over her.

  “Aye, my Lord Thomas, of course,” she said and managed a smile. Telling herself to feel nothing, she walked at his halting pace as they followed the others outside to the excitement of Midsummer’s Day at Windsor.

  The Prince of Wales rose from before the little altar in the corner of his huge gold- and azure-striped tent near the tournament fields. He had been hardly listening to the priest recite the prayers to the Virgin and his patron St. Edward, the Confessor; his mind had been on the grand and glorious jousting to come—and on her. Although he had little time to dally since it took over a half-hour to be suited and mounted, and he could hear the blast of trumpets splitting the air outside already, he dismissed all his attendants but the little jeweler who had ridden in hard from London.

  “I know the time was short, man,” the prince said to the stubby, dark-eyed craftsman who had never been summoned before and still blessed his lucky signs he had somehow been selected from the fifty-two goldsmiths along the Strand in London. When the order had come with the ducal and privy seal and the gold coins had been offered across the counter just like they were pittance—praise the BlessedVirgin—he had had such a stone to set as he was bidden!

  “Aye, Your Grace, and I pray it will earn your favor,” the goldsmith Jonathan Quince spoke from his low bow. He extended the beryl ring set in an intricate mounting to the prince and watched as the tall man’s big fingers plucked it out of its silk-lined, carved box and turned it over.

  A lady’s ring for slender fingers, delicate yet sturdy, the little goldsmith thought proudly. The royal instructions had been secret and most explicit: a small beryl ring set in gold with a filigree ivy leaf motif on each side of the clear blue-green stone to hold it to the ring. Beryl, the stone of faithfulness, victory, and protection in battle.

  “Fine, a fine job,” the words of praise were clipped, but pure delight to Quince’s ears. “I shall remember your quick and excellent service to me,” Prince Edward said. “I favor the way this green prism shifts to blue in the light—just so. My man has paid you?”

  “Aye, most amply, Your Grace.”

  “He told you to say nothing. You know you must not boast of or advertise this?”

  “I understand fully, my lord prince.”

  “Then my man will show you out.”

  His squires and pages were back through the tent flap instantly, but he sent them out again with a wave of his hand. “Hankin! Only my lutenist for a moment,” he bellowed.

  The brown-haired musician appeared immediately, lute in hand. “I have a special errand for you—a secret one on which I shall have your word,” the prince began without preamble.

  Hankin did not look in
the slightest surprised. “Aye, Your Grace, and gladly.”

  “It means I leave you behind a day when I set out on the morrow and you will follow soon after.” He extended the little box to the man although he seemed reluctant to let it go. “It is a beryl ring for Joan of Kent, Hankin, and you must give it to her in private with the words that beryl stands for faithfulness and protection in battle of all sorts.”

  “Aye, milord prince. No one shall see it but the lady.”

  “And then I want you to sing her the little song, ‘Go, Heart.’ Hide that box and sit here and sing it for me now. My men will be distracted if we do not get on with all this dressing for the tourney. There—sit over there and sing it for me as you will for her.”

  He shouted for his men and eight servants immediately crowded around him to clasp on his armor. Each of the approximately two hundred knights here today had at least two mounted squires, an armorer and five or six servants in livery to prepare him for and accompany him to the joust. But the prince, of course, had even more, including today his younger brother Lionel, Duke of Clarence, age six, who was here with two of his squires and a page just to watch. His four-year-old brother John of Ghent was still exiled to the ladies’ galleries.

  He tried to keep his mind on the words of Hankin’s plaintive song played ludicrously against the clanking of his chain mail and twenty-three separate pieces of armor. Over a heavily padded tunic to soften the blows of metal against muscle, they placed his hauberk of chain mail, then strapped on his big molded and finely engraved breastplate. Buckles linked piece to piece as the full weight of sixty pounds of armor went on in fitted, silver parts: huge shoulder pauldrons, layered faulds to protect his hips and pelvis, clanking leg and arm pieces. Over that, a sleeveless silk jerkin in stunning gold and azure bearing the proud Plantagenet leopards and French fleur-de-lis, quartered. For a moment he held his dressers off from yet placing his padded hood, which would bear the weight of the ten-pound helmet, to hear the words to Hankin’s song one more time:

  “Go, heart, hurt with adversity,

  And let my lover thy wounds see;

  And say her this, as I say thee:

  Farewell my joy, and welcome pain,

  ’Til I see my love again.”

  His gauntlets and rowel spurs clinked on last, and he slid his two-handed sword and eighteen-inch dagger in his belt. In the slightly gaited, rolling stride peculiar to warriors in full armor, he walked amidst his little retinue outside the tent. At over six feet tall, Edward, Prince of Wales, carried full armor better than most men and he knew it. But for him, mere skill and acumen in joust or mêlée did not make his reputation; he might wear his spurs, but he had hardly earned them. This stylized, grand mock battle was just that and everyone realized it—as pretentious, he thought, as thinking he had earned the willful heart of the fair-haired Joan when she probably cursed him for his apparent desertion of her when they were discovered. But he would win today—and he would win her back however long it took, whatever he had to overcome.

  In the blinding sun outside, he patted and spoke low to his huge destrier Calais. Like his rider, the horse carried molded plate armor and a decorative Plantagenet silk blazon. Chain mail draped itself over Calais’s high arched neck and the wild, excited eyes were barely visible in the horse’s head mask of decorative, etched metal.

  At the last moment, they placed and lowered the helmet, and latched it down. His world narrowed, darkened, and his pulse beat faster as it always did when he became fully encased in this heavy, iron cocoon. For now, he kept his visor up to see and breathe more easily. Leonard, a squire, fastened to his shoulder plate a scarf of the queen’s colors, by accident of necessity the one lady’s token he would bear today.

  The prince’s squires and armorer held the destrier and helped him to mount. Some knights even needed winching up onto their horses, but he had never favored that. Hankin stood now in the open tent flap directly in his narrow view as two squires mounted to lead his destrier to the lists. Despite the thrill of combat, of performing here today before the adulation of the raucous crowd, he wished for one tiny moment to trade places with the lutenist who would see Jeannette alone and give her the ring and song. Her face, petulant, enticing, floated through his iron-encased skull as he was led outward from the clusters of tents and metal men and darting, screaming squires.

  The backs of the loges for noble spectators went by; painted barriers loomed ahead as the combatants jogged forward in increasing numbers. Summer sun glinted on raised trumpets as their brassy blares silenced the excited crowds. Commoners who could not get a seat pushed and shoved to the barriers to be able to catch a glimpse of the show. The din of hawkers’ cries as they peddled food to the crowd added to the cacophony of snorting horses, clinking plate and mail, and the shuffling of hundreds of hoofs on grassy turf. Over his head as he entered the field, he noted bunting swaying and bannerets flapping in the sudden squally breeze, and he wondered vaguely if the pageantry might be dampened under rain to turn them all to mud knights as on that first day he had seen Jeannette here at Windsor.

  From her seat next to Thomas Holland at the side of Queen Philippa’s sheltered pavilion, Joan’s eyes scanned the rolling, jogging waves of shiny, iron knights entering with their squires and banners for the opening grand parade. Of course, she told herself, her excitement as she surveyed the various family crests was for her brother proudly mounted under their flapping family flag of the ever-alert white stag with ivy leaves behind. Anyone could see—everyone would expect—the king and the Prince of Wales to be easily visible since they were directly centered under the azure and gold leopards and French lilies.

  “Marvelous, is it not, Lady Joan?” Thomas Holland’s deep voice invaded her thoughts. “Damn this leg, but my blood aches passionately to be out there.”

  Joan darted him a quick sideways glance. His blood ached passionately—aye, she could sympathize with that yearning for something one could not have, and she hoped fervently this joust was all he ached passionately for.

  Swiftly, the entire field was jammed with knights astride their huge caparisoned destriers in complicated patterns. Armor clanked, leather creaked, men shouted, horses snorted in strange chorus. Despite her exhaustion and melancholy, a fluttering feeling stirred deep within her. Her cheeks colored slightly and she shifted forward on the cushioned bench and wet her lips. The king and prince were immediately before the royal pavilion now in the sea of silver surrounded by waves of colored shields and flowing flags emblazoned all with family coat of arms. In the first event, the king and prince would each lead half the warriors in a massive charge called the grande mêlée. As if drawn by a magnetic force, her eyes sought the face of the prince, but his pointed visor was shut and cold steel was all she saw.

  Although he was certain she did not know it, his thin-slitted line of vision took her in perfectly. She seemed to look directly at him; by St. George, surely she could pick him out easily. She had worn gold brocade. With her hair and gown in the sun, she looked all gold to him. And, as he had suspected, his lady mother had made good her subtle threat to have Jeannette—now of marriageable age, she kept repeating—meet some eligible knights of the court. Holland. Thomas Holland next to her there. It could have been worse, for Holland was older, no gay, charming gallant to go all misty-eyed; he was full loyal and very desirous of advancement. By the martyrs’ blood, if the lucky bastard had not broken his leg in the same tournament that had ruined his own blasted right hand, he would take Holland on tour with him on the morrow and then see what the queen made of that!

  The line the prince was in wheeled past the bevy of ladies who waved and applauded. The skirted horses ringed the field on two sides waiting for the marshals to signal the charge. He braced himself so that he was nearly standing in the long stirrups, relatively free to be able to deliver swift, swinging blows to either side. He fitted his lance carefully in his curved gauntlet as his squire Leonard ventured out in the press of horses and other squires to lift it
to him. Muffled cries, “For heaven and St. George!” pierced his quilted hood and heavy helmet. He steadied his lance, spurred the horse, and shot forward.

  The field churned with the onslaught. Ahead sword clanged on sword before he hit hard into the mêlée, unhorsing one surprised rider immediately. The shock of impact jarred him and his ears rang. He whirled the horse back, then charged farther into the cloud of din and dust and silver bodies. “For heaven and St. George!” Wave after wave of armor seemed to swell and rise and crash.

  The two jousting teams led by the king and the prince enjoined in mock battle, but real horses were down and real blood flowed. The dust and sweep of arms obscured all logic and any order in the struggle. Then the ruckus settled to single separate clangings as some riders were unhorsed and, burdened by their sixty pounds of armor, struggled like great, silver turtles to right themselves on the ground.

  The scrambling scene, Joan thought, would have looked ludicrous had not she pictured the prince as she had met him first that day six weeks ago charging relentlessly yet purposefully at that quintain. And had not he told her of his heart’s desire to someday lead the English knights and yeomen into battle against the flesh and blood French enemy? To him perhaps then, this was very real. He sat out there astride, in the mêlée still, over there, near her own brother, hacking at opponents with his two-edged sword, urged on by cheers and shouts of the crowd.

  Behind her a lady’s high-pitched voice she did not recognize whispered, “The Prince Edward is always exciting in tourney! I assume now that he has declared he is real flesh and blood at last by his little flirtation with Kentish Joan, he shall prove more exciting in other pursuits, too.” Muffled giggles followed, and Joan longed to turn back and shout at the rude maids, but Thomas Holland’s big hand moved to her knee in one quick touch before he took it back.