The First Princess of Wales Read Online Free PDF Page A

He was charming enough, she supposed, as she felt his gaze and blushed to see him stare, but she defiantly went on with one of the first songs her dear, lost friend Roger Wakeley had ever taught her:
                      
    “When the nightingale singeth,
    The woods wax green;
    Leaf and grass and blossoms
    Spring in May, I have seen.”
                      
    Her voice trailed off, and she sent Lyle Wingfield her coldest glance, but he was not to be put off so easily.
    “I know the words to that French
chanson, demoiselle,
” he said and grinned broadly to melt the frost of her stare. “You will be very welcome at court, I assure you,
chérie,
for your brother will not always be so close about, eh?”
    To her dismay, he proceeded to taunt her with the next two lines of the stanza which she knew all too well but had just decided not to sing:
                      
    “And love is to my heart
    Gone with a spear so keen,
    Night and day my blood it drinketh
    My heart in suffering.”
                      
    She surprised herself by laughing in delight at the tease. “Not I, sir. Speak and sing for yourself. I will have none of foolish love’s entanglements on me.”
    Why, it is easy and such fun to set a man back on his heels like this, she thought. Her laughter danced again on the forest breeze as she darted one quick glance through her thick-fringed lashes at the young man’s beaming face before she looked back to the road ahead.

CHAPTER TWO
    A t the great Priory of the St. Clares in bustling London town, the party of Liddell travelers spent the second night away from home. The prestigious sister house of the sprawling Abbey of the Holy Order of St. Francis just north of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the St. Clares’ was the frequent last refuge of pious noble ladies who, hearing the approach of death’s steady footfalls, took their vows and donned coarse gray habits to escape any possibility of hell’s fires. With full reliance that the purity of the holy, long-dead St. Francis, and their huge monetary contributions to the already wealthy abbey would assure them entrance into heaven, they remained within the gray walls cloistered with their memories and their continual prayers.
    Joan and her mother were housed by the nuns in their dormer while the men stayed next door at the huge abbey. Yet Joan saw little of her mother until she was ready to set out for the rest of the journey with Edmund and his men the next morn. Deep inside, Joan had expected no less; she had only hoped for some last night of trust; of conversation, acceptance, or revelation—of what, she did not know. Joan slept little and her pounding thoughts reverberated within her like the steady clanging of the distant chapel bell at compline: London, London. She was in London, and tomorrow, Windsor, the court. My new life. The royal court.
    At dawn she and Edmund bid Lady Margaret farewell in a small Gothic chapel lit by wavering candlelight. Already the St. Clares’ newest novice had clad herself in the order’s gray, shapeless robe with its small, attached hood, a cord belt around her slender form. Her feet, despite the chill of the smooth flagstones underfoot, were bare.
    Edmund and Joan both knelt briefly, awkwardly, as if to receive her blessing.
    “Do not worry ever for John or Joan, Mother,” Edmund whispered as he rose, his round face suddenly gaunt and drawn. “I will see that John gets on with the Salisburys and Joan, of course, will be fine at court.”
    Lady Margaret’s eyes darted to Joan’s bent head before the girl stood.
    “Aye, Joan,” her voice came, a wavering wisp of a sound in the wan candle glow. “Joan, at court with them. I will send for you when it is time, my dear Joan. When it is my time.”
    The words echoed in Joan’s jumbled mind: dear Joan . . . when it is my time, she had said. She called me her dear Joan.
    “My lady Mother, you must not speak of your