Lionheart (20 page)

“Joanna . . . you must tell me the truth.” Richard was no longer smiling. “Have you been hurt?”

The tight line of his mouth and the grim tone told her what he was asking, and she hastened to shake her head. “No, Richard, no. My honor is quite intact, I promise you. To give the Devil his due, Tancred saw to it that I was always treated with respect. My confinement was a comfortable one,” she insisted, thinking again of their mother’s captivity, and then she grinned. “Mind you, the wretched man did hold me hostage and steal my dower lands, so I’d not want to praise him too much!”

Richard put his arm around her shoulders again, saying, “Well, you’re safe now, lass.” And in the security of her brother’s embrace, Joanna could finally admit to herself just how frightened she’d been.

RICHARD HAD TAKEN JOANNA to the nunnery of St Mary’s, for he was lodging in a house on the outskirts of the city, the royal palace having been given over to the French king and his entourage. After a celebratory meal in the guest hall, the other women had retired for the evening, while Joanna and Richard sought to fill in the gaps of the past fourteen years. Only Mariam had not gone to bed. Sometime after midnight, she’d dozed off, awakening with a start to find Joanna leaning over her.

“I told you not to wait up for me,” she chided, as Mariam sat up, yawning.

“And when do I ever listen to you? What time is it? Is it dawn yet?”

“Soon,” Joanna said, climbing onto the bed beside her. “There was so much to say, Mariam! I wanted to tell him about William and my life in Sicily, and I wanted to know about the strife that tore our family apart. But Richard had few answers for me, not when it came to our father and brothers.” Joanna pulled off her veil and shifted so Mariam could free her hair from its pins. “It is almost as if some evil spell was cast upon them all. . . .”

“And is your brother as you remembered him?”

“Indeed—confident, prideful, amusing, and stubborn,” Joanna joked, leaning back with a contented sigh as Mariam began to brush out her hair. “He says we cannot stay in Messina, that it is not safe. There have already been fights between his men and the townspeople and he fears it will only get worse, so he means to find us a secure lodging across the Faro. I told him I wanted to remain here in Messina with him, but he would not heed me. As I said,” she smiled, “stubborn!”

“I’d say that was a family trait,” Mariam teased, and Joanna gave the other woman a quick, heartfelt hug.

“You are as dear to me as my own sisters,” she proclaimed, “and I will never forget your loyalty in my time of need. To prove it, I am going to divulge a secret. But you must promise not to speak of it to anyone else.”

“Of course I promise. What is it?” Mariam prodded, for she shared Joanna’s love of mysteries.

“I’ve told you about Richard’s long-standing plight-troth with the French king’s sister. Well, it will never come to pass. I know, hardly a surprise, for it is obvious to all but the French king that Richard has no intention whatsoever of marrying Alys. That is not the secret. This is—that Richard has agreed to wed Berengaria, the daughter of Sancho, the King of Navarre, and she is coming to join him in Sicily.”

Mariam knew more of Navarre than most people, for William’s mother had been a princess of that Spanish kingdom, Sancho’s sister. “Then you’ll be getting a cousin as well as a sister by marriage,” she said, “since her father was William’s uncle.” The Navarrese connection made the news more interesting than it would otherwise have been, but she was still surprised that Joanna seemed so excited about the arrival of a woman she did not know—until Joanna told her the rest, the heart of her secret.

“And guess who is bringing her to Richard? My mother! Yesterday I was not sure that I’d ever see any of my family again and now . . . now I have not only been reunited with my brother, but my mother is on her way to Sicily, too.” Stretching out on the bed, Joanna confided, “I never dared hope for so much. . . .”

Mariam was more eager to meet the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine than Sancho’s daughter, and she was delighted that Joanna would be given this rare opportunity to see her mother again; a foreign marriage usually meant lifelong exile for highborn young women like Joanna. Rising, she crossed the chamber to pour two cups of the night wine sent over by the abbess. “I am so pleased for you, dearest. Fortune’s Wheel has truly turned with a vengeance, has it not?”

When Joanna did not answer, Mariam glanced over her shoulder, and then smiled, for the young queen had fallen asleep in the time it had taken to lay her head upon her pillow. Returning to the bed, Mariam covered her with a blanket. “Sleep well,” she murmured, “and God bless your brother for justifying your faith in him.”

RICHARD RETURNED to the nunnery the next day, bringing two kinsmen for Joanna to meet: their maternal cousin, André de Chauvigny, and their paternal cousin, Morgan ap Ranulf. But Richard and Joanna had soon withdrawn to the nunnery’s parlor for more private conversation, as they’d just scratched the surface the day before. Left to amuse themselves, André began a dice game with several of their knights and Morgan took Joanna’s dog out into the cloisters.

He was intrigued by Ahmer’s appearance, for the Sicilian cirneco had ears like a rabbit and fur as red as a fox. Sicily was an unusual land in all respects, so it seemed only natural that even its dogs would be unlike dogs elsewhere. Morgan had never seen palm trees before, or birds that looked like feathered jewels, or churches that had once been mosques, giving the city an exotic aura all its own. The women were exotic, too, sashaying about the streets in silks and fluttering veils, bejeweled fingers decorated with henna, wellborn Christian ladies choosing to dress like Saracens. Morgan wondered if it was Sicily’s alien aspects that seemed to unsettle so many of Richard’s men. It did not help that the Messinians were overwhelmingly of Greek heritage, followers of the Greek Orthodox Church. Were they even true Christians? All knew that Rome was God’s City, after all, not Constantinople.

As a Welshman, Morgan had an outsider’s perspective, so he was willing to give the Messinians the benefit of the doubt, at least until they proved him wrong. But in less than a week, most of his comrades and fellow crusaders had become convinced that the citizens of Messina were bandits in the guise of merchants, vintners, and shopkeepers. Seated on a bench under a fragrant citrus tree in the convent’s guest cloisters, within sight of the turquoise waters of the straits, Morgan thought he’d rarely looked upon a scene so lovely or so tranquil, although he suspected that the tranquility was an illusion, a candle soon to be guttered out by the storms gathering along the horizon—the growing hostility between the townspeople and the crusaders.

Several of their knights had entered the cloisters, plucked an orange from a nearby tree, and began a boisterous game of catch. They paused, though, at sight of the woman gliding up the walkway. She attracted Morgan’s eye, too, for she was a vision in embroidered gold silk, with jangling bracelets, gilt slippers, and a delicately woven veil the color of a sunset sky. He’d been throwing sticks for Ahmer to chase, and he reached now for another one, meaning to toss it into the vision’s path, saying softly, “Go get it, boy. Act as my lure.” But one of the knights was quicker, swaggering across the mead to intercept the woman as she passed. Morgan shook his head, marveling that men could be such fools. Her elegant garb proclaimed that she was of high rank, either a nunnery guest or a member of the queen’s own household, definitely not someone to be accosted as if she were a street whore. “Come on, Ahmer,” he said. “Let’s go rescue a damsel in distress.”

He soon saw there was no need of that. She turned upon the would-be lothario with such outrage that none could doubt her privileged status. Morgan was still out of hearing range, but he could see the knight wilting under her scorn. By the time Morgan reached them, the man was in full retreat, his friends were roaring with laughter, and the woman was threatening him with the fate that all males most dreaded. To the Welshman’s astonishment, she switched then from fluent, colloquial French to an alien tongue, so foreign that he decided it could only be Arabic.

At the sound of Morgan’s footsteps on the pathway, she spun about, ready to take on another antagonist, and he hastily raised his hands in playful surrender. “I come in peace, my lady. My dog and I thought—erroneously—that you might be in need of our assistance. But I soon saw the poor fellow was the one needing help!”

She was taller than many women, with more curves than was fashionable, at least in France and England, her face half hidden by her veil. He was fascinated by what he could see, though, for her eyes were so light a shade of brown that they appeared golden in the sun. She’d glanced down at the dog, saying, “What strange company are you keeping these days, Ahmer?” But then she turned those mesmerizing eyes upon him, and he found he could not look away. “I must thank you then,” she said, “for your good manners, since so many men have no manners at all.”

“I’ll give you no argument about that,” he said cheerfully. “May I pose a question, though? I could not help overhearing some of the tongue-lashing you gave that fool. Was the tongue Arabic?”

Those almond-shaped eyes seemed to narrow, ever so slightly. “Yes,” she said, “it was Arabic. No other language can match its creative insults or its colorful curses.”

“Mayhap you could teach me one or two of them, then?” Morgan gave her his most beguiling smile. “In return, I will gladly teach you a few of mine.”

“I rather doubt that you know any I do not.”

“Ah, but do you speak Welsh, my lady? Or English?”

“No, I cannot say that I do. In fact, I’ve never even heard either of those tongues spoken.”

“The pleasure is mine, then.
Beth yw eich enw? Thou may me blisse bringe.
”

“Judging from your honeyed tone, I do not think those are curses, sir knight.”

“You’ve caught me out, my lady. I asked your name and then I dared to hope that you may bring me bliss. A smile would do it.”

“You are easily satisfied, then.” But as she reached down to pat Ahmer, her veil slipped, as if by chance, and his pulse quickened, for she had skin as golden as her eyes and a full, ripe mouth made for a man’s kisses. She did not attempt to replace the veil, instead saying coolly, “Staring like that may not be rude in your homeland, but it is very rude in mine.”

“
Mea culpa, demoiselle.
But I could not help myself. For you are truly the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes upon.”

“Indeed?” She sounded very skeptical. “I assume you are one of King Richard’s men. So surely you’ve met his sister, the queen.”

“Yes, I had that honor this morn.”

“Then either your vision is flawed or you are a liar, for the Lady Joanna is far more beautiful than I am.” Drawing the veil across her face again, she moved around him and began to walk away.

Morgan was not about to give up yet. “Yes,” he called after her, “but can the Lady Joanna swear in Arabic?”

She didn’t pause, nor did she answer him. But Morgan watched her go with a grin, for he was sure he’d heard a soft murmur of laughter floating back on the breeze.