Queen Joanna Read online

  Queen Joanna

  by Kate Danley

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  Queen Joanna

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  The thick, white damask and heavy beading of her wedding gown was no armor against their hate. She could feel their loathing burrowing into her back like a dagger. It was not just her corsetry which crushed her breath from her breast. Their silence there in the king’s chapel was more chilling than the screams of war. Still, the wedding continued. She looked up at the carved statues of strange saints over the altar, their long and sharp features judging her wrongful presence, just like every stone in the castle whispered back in her echoing footsteps that she should fly. She glanced at her bridegroom: this king, this widower, this enemy. How could she look upon this day with anything but the heaviness of duty? But she would do her duty, no matter the cost.

  But what cost! She was the daughter of a dead king, the man who killed the family and friends of these, her new subjects. Peace was her pitiful dowry, but peace bitterly bought by abdicating her rule, stolen from her by her uncle who would take over the northern throne while she ascended in the southlands as a despised queen. Here, she would be no more than a figurehead, a pretty bird in the courts with no more power than a sparrow.

  She glanced once more at this King Stephen, the man whose command was responsible for killing her father, whose armies slaughtered thousands of fathers and sons of her own people. The back of his rough, hairy hand was cold beneath her resting palm. It sought no warmth or comfort from her. In fact, it seemed to repel it. Or perhaps it was her own revulsion which thought it so. She was gladdened that he had no interest in her, that he did not even meet her carriage at the gate upon her arrival. There would be no pretense of affection. Only duty.

  There were whispers that King Stephen had once been a mighty king. His dark, blonde curls caused women to swoon, and his bear-like physique caused men to quake. But now he was broken. There were rumors that he still longed for his long-since-dead wife, unnaturally so. They said his cries for his Queen Mary could be heard echoing through the halls late at night.

  They said that the old queen went mad. That her death was by her own hand. That this king who was to be Joanna’s husband drove his wife to such ends with his cruelty and wickedness.

  The priest interrupted Joanna’s thoughts, murmuring the words which bound these two royal lines, these two people, Joanna and Stephen, together for eternity. King Stephen turned and took a necklace from a velvet pillow. He placed it over Joanna’s head, letting it dangle from her long, pale neck, his brown eyes still never meeting hers, his face blank and joyless. His tanned and weathered hand slid a large golden ring with a stone the color of blood upon her finger. He kissed her chastely upon the cheek when instructed by the cardinal, his coarse brown beard scraping against her delicate skin.

  And then the ceremony was done. Their guests broke out into polite, half-hearted celebration. It was only noise. All spirit was dead. Keeping her hand atop his, Joanna and this man made their way through the mirthless court, more actors in a pageant than new husband and wife.

  Thus begun the rule of The Mad Queen Joanna.

  SHE SAT STIFFLY IN her bed waiting for him. Her long black hair had been braided and arranged by her assigned handmaidens, every fold of her gown placed, the candles lit so that they highlighted her beauty and cast the rest in shadow.

  Her uncle swore it would be her head if she failed in this stately pact of marriage. He controlled her father’s armies, and so he controlled her. Thus she found herself sitting in this empty bridal bed waiting unwanted for a king.

  She wondered how many times Stephen came to this chamber when the old queen was alive. What passion had these walls seen? What was it about Queen Mary that caused him still to mourn?

  She knew his advisors used logic to convince him to take Joanna as his wife. The line of succession was barren and unclear. “What better way to ensure the peace than to have a child born with two bloodlines, of north and south, a child to heal the wounds of a centuries-old rift?” they had urged.

  Her uncle’s face had boiled red when she refused this plan. “You shall bend to the will of the state or else find yourself without! The lives of thousands of your subjects depend upon this. Do you forget your duties to those you lead? Your anointed duty to protect those who have pledged their lives to you? You shall win his heart, and if you cannot, we will find a woman who can!”

  The wind began to blow and howl outside, and suddenly her window swung open. She leapt up, undoing the enticing picture her ladies had painted for the king. She reached out and grabbed the lead-paned glass before it could smash against the stone of the building and break. She pulled it back into place and double-checked the latch, then grabbed the purple velvet curtains and drew them tight.

  As she turned, she caught her reflection in a looking glass over the dresser. She seemed a stranger. Who was this woman, she thought to herself, this new queen of the southlands? She stepped forward. Her face was tired from the travel, tired from the ceremonies, tired of all.

  “Do you think you can really make this king love you?” she asked her image, leaning until her nose almost touched the glass.

  Out of the corner of her eye she spied a dark figure at the edge of the mirror. The king! She turned quickly. But no. There was no one there. She looked again at the glass, pressing her forehead against its cool surface. She was alone. She climbed into bed, blew out the candle, and pulled the covers to her neck.

  The wind continued its empty howl.

  “DID YOU SLEEP WELL, my king?” Joanna asked Stephen at dinner the next night. The sounds of celebration in the Great Hall hid her words from prying ears.

  He did not look at her, his eyes glassy and blank. “I was sure you would be quite exhausted from the day’s festivities and did not wish to trouble you.”

  He picked up his golden goblet and drank the hot, mulled wine in one draught. A servant stepped forward and filled it again, then backed away and out of earshot.

  “I am at your command,” Joanna replied dutifully, just as she had promised when her uncle threatened her with violence if she uttered anything but words of seduction and support. “Shall I expect to see you tonight?”

  King Stephen bit into a turkey leg and chewed. “No.”

  She was unable to hide her smile.

  She reached out and placed her hand upon his. He stopped chewing and stared at her offending touch. She leaned closer to him, careful to project nothing but the image of a supportive wife, and whispered, “My liege, rest peacefully knowing that you and I perhaps share much more in common than you think.”

  She then withdrew her hand and settled into her own meal, feeling more content than she had in ages.

  SHE LOOKED UPON HIS indifference gratefully as the days passed. Indifference was better than forced interest.

  Winter crept in with its frozen breath, the short fall color having left the land. The trees were barren, skeletal. The ground was brown and dead, killed by the early frost. Joanna wrapped herself in her thick capes and frequently walked the grounds, her ill-tempered court trailing behind, wondering who this queen was that would force them to endure the elements when warmth and comfort for their gossip could be found inside. The winters were twice as bitter in the north, and Joanna did not understand their desire to cloister themselves in hot, smoky rooms when the final days of freedom still stretched before them.

  So the days passed. Each night, she would see King Stephen at the evening meal. Still his eyes continued to be glassy and blank, unseeing, unwanting. It was as if she didn’t exist. He was impervious
to the rumors of their unconsummated marriage and the kingly duties he would not partake of. His obsession for his dead wife made him blind and deaf.

  She heard that each night, the king retreated to a wing of the castle and threatened death to any that followed him. They said all the portraits of Queen Mary had been removed from the walls and that King Stephen kept them in a locked room which only he held the keys for—a chamber to which he retreated each night, surrounded by her presence so that her face would fill his dreams.

  Joanna only knew he did not trouble her, and that was all that she cared about.

  It was several months into their marriage when a wrinkled advisor stepped before Joanna and begged an audience. She turned and dismissed the ladies about her.

  “My queen,” he stated, bowing low. “There is great threat to the kingdom and I am afraid that you alone are the key to the stability of the throne.”

  “Pray, tell you, what is this great threat?” Joanna asked.

  “There is no heir...” he replied, awkward and uncomfortably.

  “Ah,” she replied, folding her hands and resting them upon the front of her wide, golden skirt. “And so I promise you that my door has never been barred to the king. These words of caution and request must fall upon his ears.”

  “Nay, my queen, we have advised him such, and he still is unable to part with the thought of his past wife. I know you women have wiles and ways to trick even the most chaste man to fall to his knees. I pray you, use such tools to sway him.”

  “You forget, sir, that I, too, had no desire for this marriage. It was brokered by my uncle, and if a childless family is what this bond brings, it rests entirely upon your head,” she replied.

  “Nay,” said the advisor, neatly arranging the sleeves of his coat before meeting her eyes, “I am afraid it is not my head that shall pay the price if you do not fulfill your duties.”

  Her blood turned cold in her veins. “What?” Joanna asked. “Do you threaten me, sir?”

  He withdrew a folded slip of paper from his sleeve and passed it to her. The words on the front were gibberish, but she did not have to break the wax seal to know who sent it.

  The advisor informed her anyway. “A message from your uncle.”

  Fear made her hand tremble. Her uncle had seemed so bent upon revenge for her father’s death, but then he betrayed her and forged this marriage contract. What cruel command did he send now? She bravely held out the message for the advisor to take back, her heart pounding. “You shall have to bring up this matter with the king.”

  He merely bowed. “Nay, it falls to you, my queen, to bring up such matters with His Royal Highness. Remind him that his duty did not end with the end of his Queen Mary. So many lives depend upon it.” His voice dripped with insinuation before he backed away and left.

  She stared at the advisor until he turned the corner and was gone. How she hated him. How she hated her uncle. How her loathing burned.

  She strode into her room and threw her uncle’s note onto her dressing table, unread, not wanting to know the words it contained.

  She stared at herself in the glass, gripping the gilt edges of the mirror. Could she turn this king? Could she melt his heart of stone to look upon her when she herself wanted it even less? Could she sway this king to save her own life?

  She thought she caught a reflection of something out of the corner of her eye, but when she glanced back, there was nothing there.

  Ah! she thought. Her mind would give her any distraction to keep her from this decision. But the distractions were imaginary. Nothing could forestall this forever.

  She looked back at the note and breathed deeply. She would see it was done. Whether she touched King Stephen’s heart or merely his loins, she would bind him to her and do what was demanded.

  But how? she wondered.

  If she was to know this man, know this enemy, she must discover his secrets, she decided. Where did he go each night when he dismissed all his guard and threatened death to any that might follow him? Surely he would not condemn his new bride if she was to see where he crept? What if there was some other secret he held and these pinings for a dead queen were nothing but a ruse? What if there was some secret she could use to gain his confidence, or to hold as power over him until he granted her the required child?

  She decided this must be her course of action.

  That evening, when her toilet was done, she turned to her ladies and said, “Begone. The king visits me tonight and I’ll not have you here.”

  They curtseyed deeply and stepped backward out of the room. When they were gone, Joanna did not wait. She grabbed a shawl to cover her nightdress and protect her from the cold. She pushed aside the tapestry to a hidden door in the wall, a door kept secret for those nights her husband might come, or she might need to escape and fly.

  Swiftly, she ran down the hallway, her black hair streaming behind her, her lamp flickering in her hand until she was outside the king’s chambers. There, she blew out her flame and waited for him to emerge.

  When he did, his face looked so ragged and worn that humanity and compassion would urge her to rush to his side in comfort, to reach out to him as her lord and master and ease the burden he carried.

  But she did not. The threat to her life if she did not capture his heart stilled her lips.

  Instead, she waited until darkness swallowed her, then she skulked in the shadows, following the bobbing light of his candle. He glanced neither right nor left, but walked swiftly as if on a mission. He did not even pause to see if there was someone matching his steps.

  He stopped before a door and withdrew the key from his belt. Carefully, he fitted it into the lock, pausing a moment with his hands leaning against the planks, his eyes closed in exhaustion, before he pushed it open and entered.

  Joanna ran behind him, placing her hand upon the door as he shut it so that the latch did not catch. Then she pushed it open just a crack and looked in.

  The room was like a private chapel filled with holy icons. The king knelt upon a velvet prayer stool, his hands clasped and his head bowed. But he did not pray to the gods. Surrounding him, on every wall, were portraits of the dead queen gazing down upon him.

  The blood in Joanna’s veins curdled. Queen Mary looked just like her. Her hair. Her eyes. The shape of their faces was the same. They could have been sisters, twins even. Joanna backed slowly away.

  Whose face did this king see when he looked into her eyes? And if it was a face which reminded him so much of this woman that he loved, that he longed for, why was he so repulsed? What happened to cause such guilt that he barred himself from Joanna’s bed?

  As she walked back to her room, the wind began howling across the flat and barren land around the castle. Joanna wrapped her shawl tightly around her arms as a draft swept through the hallway, chilling her to the bone.

  The wind picked up. It seemed to follow her steps and match her stride for stride. It whistled through the cracks in the windows and the nooks of the stone. It chased her down the passage, accusing her of her trespass upon the king. And then, there was a sound that made Joanna stop.

  “Staaaaay awaaaaay...” the voice whispered.

  Joanna spun.

  No one was there.

  “Make yourself known!” she demanded, her voice wavering.

  The wind continued to howl, but no one revealed themselves.

  Joanna’s heart pounded as fear tore through her.

  The wind gathered strength again and with it came the same voice. “Staaaaay awaaaay...” it said again.

  Joanna backed down the hall, peering into the darkness to see who taunted her. Suddenly, there was someone beside her! She turned. And could have laughed. It was her own reflection. Her own reflection! She placed her hand upon her heart. It was a looking glass hanging on the wall, and the face looking back at her was her own.

  And then the wind stopped.

  The face in the mirror was not her own. It was a face like hers—but not hers. It was the fa
ce she had seen in the portraits in King Stephen’s secret chamber.

  “STAY AWAY!” Queen Mary screamed from inside the mirror.

  Later, Joanna was found unconscious in the middle of the hallway with no sign of what the trouble might be. Her ladies helped her to bed, whispering that the king must have driven her fearfully from her chamber, perhaps terrified her to the point of exhaustion. They clucked and tended to her, but Joanna could not tell them what had happened. They would think her mad, just like their former queen. And indeed, Joanna thought, they would be right.

  At last tucked into her own bed, her lamp was extinguished and she closed her eyes to sleep.

  But her dreams were fitful, full of colors and shapes that crushed her. A razor voice pierced her eardrum like a needle. She needed to escape. She needed to get away. Suddenly, she was walking along the parapets of the castle. The inky sky was before her.

  She was all alone.

  Except she wasn’t. There was someone there. A woman. A queen.

  Queen Mary was suddenly before her. She stood there, this woman with Joanna’s face, but with burning eyes. Her gown was the color of midnight. Her black hair blew free. She pointed out into the dark void of the air.

  “Jump to your death!” the queen commanded. Her voice brooked no denial.

  Joanna could not back away, could not fight or protest.

  “Jump and die!” the queen commanded once more.

  Unwillingly, Joanna’s feet stepped up onto the parapet. The ground below was calling sweetly to her to leap into thin air, to shatter her bones in its embrace.

  “Jump!” said the queen a third time.

  Joanna placed her leg out, ready to take the final step, when strong arms wrapped around her waist and hauled her back to safety.

  And that was when she realized her eyes were open and she was awake. She was at the top of the palace wall, being held down by a guard, his heavy chainmail pressing into her skin. It had been real. She had been standing on top of the parapet. And if it had not been for the guard who had caught her just as her feet betrayed her, she would have leapt to her death just as she had been commanded in the dream.