Alys Clare - The Tavern in the Morning

She fell silent. Josse said gently, ‘Joanna, there is no need to tell me this. I can guess what happened next and I can see that it was in no way your fault.’

She repeated softly, ‘My fault.’ Then: ‘No, Josse, perhaps not.’ After another pause, she said, ‘Denys was — touching me, where I hadn’t ever been touched before. I — for a moment I thought he would — But he didn’t. The man in the bed began to kiss me and then he was touching me, and I knew in a flash that it was he who’d seen me dancing, he whom Denys had spoken about, and that they’d brought me here for him. I started to struggle, because although, God help me, I was prepared for Denys — I knew him, I thought I quite liked him, and he wasn’t unattractive — I didn’t want the man in the bed. But he wanted me. Oh, he seemed to think it was all a laugh, and when I tried to wrest myself out of his grasp, he thought I was joining in the fun, just pretending not to be as eager for him as he was for me.’ She suddenly closed her eyes, squeezing them tight shut. ‘He said to the other men, We’ve got a little wriggling fish here, you’ll have to help me get her on my hook! and then the men took hold of my hands and laid me on my back, and Denys took hold of my ankles and forced my legs apart, and the man got on top of me and took me.’

Josse, horrified, watched as two slow tears emerged from Joanna’s closed eyes and made trails down her cheeks.

‘Joanna, I-’ he began.

‘He sent for me every night over Christmas,’ she whispered. ‘At first the others were there too — sometimes the same men, sometimes different ones. And, each night, they were drunk, they were laughing, they acted as if it was all part of the jollity.’ Crying openly now, she sobbed, ‘And I did, too! Oh, Josse, that’s my sin! It was my fault, because I went along with it, pretended it was great fun, all a laugh, and exactly what I’d expected, what I’d come to court for!’

‘You were sixteen,’ Josse reminded her.

‘As I reminded you just now, many women are married and have families at sixteen!’

‘Perhaps,’ he acknowledged, ‘but you had led a sheltered life, you knew nothing!’

‘I soon learned,’ she said grimly. ‘My new lord and master made sure of that.’

‘What happened at the end of Christmas?’ Josse asked.

She shrugged. ‘Everybody went home with their own husbands and wives and got on with their ordinary lives.’

‘Including your seducer?’

Including him. But then, in February, I discovered I was pregnant.’

‘And your lord, having gone back to his wife, would not help you?’

‘I didn’t bother to tell him.’ She flashed angry eyes at Josse. ‘I’d had enough of him to last a lifetime.’

‘What did you do?’

‘My mother virtually expired on the spot when I told her, so I knew there would be no good ideas issuing from there. The only person I could think of was Denys — he’d been there, he knew what had happened, and he was the one person who wasn’t going to throw up his hands in horror at my condition.’

‘So you sent word to him?’

‘Yes. He came to see me — Mother would have none of it, she’d taken to her bed weeping and wailing, and didn’t even descend to greet him. I told Denys I was with child and he gave a sort of whistle. It was strange — well, with hindsight it wasn’t, although it seemed so at the time — but I had the impression that he was not at all displeased.’

‘What did he suggest?’

‘He said we must protect my good name and that meant we had to find me a husband. He said with a laugh that I mustn’t go hoping the baby’s father would marry me, there was no chance of that and I’d better get used to the idea, and I said I wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man left alive and whole.’

‘Did Denys have any other husbands in mind?’

‘Yes. Again, I had the feeling that this wasn’t as much a shock to him as I’d expected. He said to let him ponder the matter for a few days, and that he’d return as soon as he could, when he’d spoken to some people. I waited — there wasn’t really anything else I could do — and, a week later, Denys came back and said he had betrothed me to somebody called Thorald de Lehon, that we would be married as soon as it could be arranged, and that I would then go with my new husband to live in his manor in Brittany.’

‘Brittany,’ Josse repeated.

‘Yes.’ She met his glance. ‘I thought, as I suspect you are thinking, that Brittany was a goodly way away from England and therefore from English court gossip.’

‘Did you think you were being hustled away and out of sight, into some rural backwater where everybody would forget all about you?’

‘I did. Even more when we got to Lehon, I assure you. There’s an Abbey, quite grand, with a holy community who devote themselves exclusively to their prayers. There’s a mill and a river, there are acres and acres of low-lying fields, there’s a nice town nearby, only I was never permitted to visit it unless Thorald accompanied me. And he was a virtual recluse — he only went outside to go hunting, and he didn’t allow me to hunt. Then Ninian was born.’

‘Did Thorald believe the boy to be his?’

She raised her shoulders. ‘I have no idea. We never spoke of it. We barely spoke at all. Thorald treated Ninian roughly, but then he treated me roughly too, so that in itself didn’t imply a particular grudge against Ninian.’

Josse remembered Ninian speaking of beatings: when he was dead it meant he didn’t beat us anymore. ‘You had a bad time,’ he said, trying not to let his huge sympathy show lest it undermined her.

‘I probably deserved it,’ she said. ‘Thorald said I did. He kept saying women were full of sin and must repent, and he made sure I went regularly to confession.’ She grinned briefly. ‘Those holy men at the Abbey must have loved me. When I ran out of real sins — and that did take quite a while, it was a long Christmas season containing many nights of lust — I started making things up.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Josse said gently. ‘The Church should be given respect, and-’

‘The Church has done nothing for me!’ she countered. ‘It gave me no support in my trials, no comfort when first I went to confess my sins! D’you know what the priest said I must do? Honour my husband and be his obedient wife, and in that way prove that I had it in me to live a right life! Oh, Josse, don’t go lecturing me about respect! I’ll tell you what that priest’s interference meant — it meant I had to endure six years of being bedded whenever he felt like it by a foul-smelling, unwashed man older than my own father, who, while I gritted my teeth and prayed for him to finish, would dig his fingers into my flesh and tell me that my sufferings were ordained and sanctioned by God in order to rid my soul of its stains!’

‘He lied to you, Joanna,’ Josse protested. ‘He was twisted, warped, and he used your own guilt as a way of making you comply. Don’t blame the whole Church for one evil old man!’

‘He happened to be the evil old man I’d been handed to in marriage!’ she shouted. ‘And why shouldn’t I blame the Church? I’m quite sure Thorald was in league with the priest — they spent long enough closeted away together! Why, I wouldn’t put it past Thorald to have outlined exactly what new perversion he wanted of me, so that the priest could include it in my penance!’

She was on her feet now, hands on her hips, leaning over Josse with an expression like thunder. He read in her face and body her humiliation, her hurt pride, her misery, her helpless subservience. To a woman like her, what a burden it all must have been.