Extract from THE ROYAL REBEL
Chapter 1
Donington Castle, Leicestershire, June 1338
Extract from THE ROYAL REBELSitting at the river’s edge, enjoying the sun on her face, Jeanette was watching Grippe hunting water voles among the reeds when she heard her brother’s shout, and turned to see him running towards her.
The terrier splashed over to greet him, whiskered muzzle dripping, and John fended him off with laughing protests. ‘Mother’s looking for you,’ he announced.
Jeanette observed the antics of dog and boy, her amusement edged with irritation, although not at either of them. ‘What does she want now?’
John shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘Things to do with returning to court and crossing the sea. She’s not happy you gave your maids the slip.’
Jeanette rolled her eyes, knowing she would be lectured on her appearance, her deportment, her attitude. Walk don’t run. Think before you speak. Listen to your tutors and your elders. Don’t stare. Don’t be so forward. Remember the duty to your blood, and to your father’s memory. Remember you are royal. Every time she came home from court it was the same. She always hoped it would change, but it never did.
‘I wish I was going to Flanders.’ He was nine years old to her twelve, and eager for adventure.
Jeanette tossed her head, irritated by his envy. ‘You’ll be in Prince Edward’s household with your friends and training with weapons. You’ll be allowed to go riding and camping while I’ll be cooped up sewing with the women.’ All under the watchful gaze of the ladies of the court, including Katerine, Countess of Salisbury, who was her mother’s close friend and whom Jeanette heartily disliked.
‘But you will be crossing the sea on the King’s own ship and seeing new things!’
There was that, Jeanette conceded, although how much of Antwerp she would actually encounter was another matter. Queen Philippa was expecting her fourth child in the late autumn, and would keep to her chamber even if she did entertain guests. Opportunities to roam further afield would be few, unless they were clandestine – Jeanette had developed a certain expertise at absconding when driven by the desperation of boredom.
Sighing, she stood up and shook out her skirts. Grippe immediately sprang at her, leaving two perfect muddy paw-prints at knee-height on the pale rose velvet.
‘Hah, you’re in trouble now.’ John grinned, although without malice.
‘When am I not in trouble with Mama?’ Jeanette said impatiently, and with a sinking stomach, turned back to the castle.
John darted in front of her and practised running backwards. ‘She’s proud of us and scared for us – that’s all. She wants us to do well.’
‘Then she will forever want, because I always disappoint her.’
‘She’s just worried about you.’
Jeanette eyed his earnest, bright face and shook her head. Perhaps their father’s execution ten days before his birth, and the uncertainty and hardship of house arrest in the months afterwards, had imprinted upon his being and given him a different insight. As far as Jeanette was concerned, her mother’s worry was all about the family lineage and reputation, not her daughter’s well-being.
Jeanette often imagined herself as a caged hawk, eager to fly but thwarted by the conventions of her sex and the expectations of her rank as the daughter of a prince and cousin to the King. Next thing they’d be marrying her off to some flabby old baron as a sweetener to a peace treaty or a pact of war. She knew how it worked and wanted no part of it.
On her return from court a fortnight ago, she had been desperate to run to her mother, hug her warmly and be hugged in return, to have that contact and acceptance, but the moment had been as stilted as usual. Her mother’s embrace had been brief, her fingers hard and thin, patting Jeanette’s back, her kiss a cool peck, before she remarked how much Jeanette had grown and would need money for new gowns. In the next breath she had been asking how her lessons were progressing. It was about appearance and achievement, nothing of the heart.
Stiff with apprehension, Jeanette beat at her stained skirts to no avail, tucked a wayward strand of thick blonde hair inside her coif, and approached her mother’s chamber.
Margaret Wake, Dowager Countess of Kent, widow of Edmund, Earl of Kent, uncle to the King, was poring over account ledgers with her clerk, two deep frown lines scored between her brows. Glancing up at Jeanette’s arrival, she pursed her lips, her taut expression more eloquent than words. She dismissed the clerk with a brisk command, and after he had bowed from the room and closed the door, she regarded the paw-prints smirching Jeanette’s velvet skirts and sighed.
‘It’s nothing,’ Jeanette said defensively. ‘They will brush out.’
‘It is not “nothing”,’ Margaret snapped. ‘That velvet cost seven shillings an ell. We are not made of money – and are those grass stains? For a certainty they will not brush out!’
Jeanette pressed her lips together and stared at her feet, feeling mutinous
‘You must learn to be responsible for your possessions and your expenditure,’ Margaret said with exasperation. ‘You are of an age now to marry. Certain standards are expected of any bride that joins a family. I do not want to hang my head in shame at your behaviour. Your actions reflect on me, and also back to your father, God rest his soul.’
Jeanette blinked hard. She wanted to love the memory of her father, not have it used as a constant rod for her back. Her every action was measured against propriety these days. She had a vivid memory of playing at hobby horses with her brother and Prince Edward, and being told it was no longer seemly for her to straddle a pole – that she must be a lady, not a hoyden. Protests had been met with a day of bread and water, and the fierce, thin pain of a willow rod across the tender palms of her hands. It wasn’t fair; nothing was fair. And she certainly didn’t want to marry anyone.
‘You might have a position at court, but it costs silver from my coffers to equip you. That money is hard won by my toil, and not yours to fritter.’
Jeanette looked up. ‘I do not fritter!’
Margaret’s stare was relentless. ‘You would improve matters by not running wild with the dogs, letting them jump all over you, and by not riding through thickets, losing your headdress and tearing your sleeves. There is a difference between being lively and being wayward.’ Her mother’s frown deepened. ‘What am I to do with you? You pass the time of day with kitchen maids and servants as if it is an acceptable thing for a lady to do. Yesterday I found you sitting with the bee-keeper, licking honey from the comb and letting it drip all over your clothes.’
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 older brother 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 dragged off 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 closed it 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.