The First Princess of Wales Read Online Free PDF

time,” Joan heard herself say. “You will be fine, too. You shall see, but I—I will come if you wish.”
    “Aye. And then we shall speak of everything.” Her mother faltered, but just as Joan raised her head to ask what things she meant, Edmund took Joan’s arm and pulled her to her feet.
    “We shall be off then. The court is yet twenty miles away, you know, Joan.”
    His firm grip on her arm tugged his sister a step back, and the girl nearly tripped over her skirts as she rose.
    “Aye, so far away,” Lady Margaret echoed. She raised one pale palm. “God bless you, my children.”
    “God bless, dear Mother.”
    “The saints keep you safe.”
    Joan and Edmund backed away from the unreal, stilted little scene, then turned through the low arched door of the small chapel.
    “She seems quite good this morn, more steady,” Edmund said, without turning his head as he hurried Joan down the corridor.
    “You did not need to make our farewell so sudden,” Joan shot back, not breaking her long strides to keep up. “She seemed to want to say something, and I do not like the way she spoke of ‘her time coming.’ She will live a long time yet. She must, Edmund.”
    A Poor Clare nun accompanied them now, scurrying along, evidently to bid them farewell in the courtyard, so Edmund lowered his voice.
    “Nonsense. It is only she is relieved to be here and safe, but I will feel better when we get you safely into the queen’s charge at Windsor. Yesterday you chattered all the way about the excitement of busy London. Just wait until you catch sight of beautiful, vast Windsor. It will lift your spirits from this silent place.”
    The petite nun bobbed her head as if to agree with Edmund’s judgment of the cloisters and swung open the narrow oaken door into the cobbled courtyard where their men and horses awaited. Joan and Edmund blinked in the blatant shaft of early morning sunlight.
    “I am excited about London, Edmund, Windsor too, the court. But Mother seems to fear it so. She always calls the king and queen ‘them,’ and looks so odd when she says it.”
    “Nonsense,” he repeated more sharply and gave her arm a quick shake as if she were a linen doll. He boosted her up on Sable’s waiting back and Joan fell belligerently silent while the little nun at the door waved and trilled,
“Benedicite!”
over and over.
    The avid-eyed Lyle Wingfield grinned to bid Joan a good morrow. And soon, though she meant it not to be so easy, her heart did lift again as their party departed the stony embrace of the sequestered priory in the middle of the busy city. Excitedly, Joan fingered the new little brass St. Christopher medal depicting the infant Jesus carried on the shoulder of the patron saint of travelers. The prioress had given it to her after vespers last night. They turned west on crowded Fleet Street amidst the screams of hawkers and vendors who sold from pushcarts or open shops guarded by huge hanging signs that advertised their trade.
    “There are over fifty goldsmiths’ shops on the next street, the Strand,” Lyle Wingfield called to her, and she shot him a smile. After all, Edmund had turned silent and sullen late yesterday as they got closer to leaving Mother at the St. Clares, and she needed someone to pump for answers to her myriad questions.
    “Are we nearly to the king’s palace at Westminster yet?” she shouted back to Lyle. “I wish to see it even though the court is elsewhere now.”
    “Wait until we clear this street, my Lady Joan. When you see the fair sight of any of great Edward’s palaces, you will know it for a fact!”
    And Lyle was right. When their little entourage cleared the press of narrow daub and wooden houses leaning inward above them, each succeeding story overhead shouldering out the sky, the vista of the western suburbs along the Strand opened up before their view: the beautiful stone homes of the rich swept down immaculate lawns to the sparkling Thames dotted by marble piers at which