“She slept with him voluntarily?”
“Of course she did,” said Joan, surprised by the question. “Do you think I would let her go to him if she were not willing? It is something about which I happen to feel very strongly. I am in the process of preventing Julianna from falling victim to a similar fate, but Olivier mentioned that he had told you about that. I was a little concerned, actually, thinking that a Holy Land knight was hardly someone to be trusted to protect a young virgin. But you have proved that my fears were unfounded: not only have you not forced your attentions on her but you have been kind to her and Rohese.”
So Rohese had not been strictly truthful with Geoffrey when he had been so gallant in saving her from what had seemed to be a fate worse than death. He wondered what other lies or misleading statements she had made to him.
“Did you stand in for Rohese when she could not be found?” asked Geoffrey, and immediately regretted his impertinence. If she had, it was none of his business.
Joan glared at him in outrage. “I most certainly did not! What do you take me for? Have I changed that much since we last met?”
Geoffrey thought that she had changed very little. She was still aggressive, sharp-tongued, critical, and intolerant, but she was also somewhat prudish and not especially attractive. She certainly was not the kind of woman to leap into bed with any passing earl-or be the kind of woman any passing earl would want there. Geoffrey was embarrassed that he had asked such a question.
“Olivier stayed with the Earl that night,” said Joan stiffly.
Geoffrey was more embarrassed than ever. Joan saw his reaction and sighed in exasperation.
“Geoffrey, what is the matter with you? Has your stay in the Holy Land deranged your mind? Olivier played dice until the Earl was ready to sleep, and then played the rebec. Olivier is a very skilled musician and the Earl finds his playing soothing.”
“Ah,” said Geoffrey, not knowing what else to say.
Still offended, she looked around the room. “Someone has made this hole quite comfortable.”
“Do not stand around chattering,” called Henry, who had gone on ahead and was at the door that opened into the woods. “This door is locked and I cannot open it.”
Geoffrey’s blood ran cold. “We are trapped?”
Joan watched him. “We are not,” she said firmly. “Enide has just blocked the door, that is all. Give it a push with your shoulder, Henry.”
Henry did as he was told, but the door was stuck fast. Geoffrey inspected it, and then gave it a solid kick at waist level. It moved a little.
“A stone is blocking it,” said Henry, elbowing him out of the way. “Move. I can open it now.”
Geoffrey stood back and watched as Henry heaved and shoved at the door, accompanying his efforts with an impressive litany of curses and blasphemies. Geoffrey offered to help, but there was only enough room for one, and Henry was clearly intent on doing it himself.
“Making up for not firing your arrow at Drogo to save Geoff, are you?” asked Joan waspishly.
Henry glared, leaning his back against the door and shoving with all his might. “I could not be sure that I would not hit Geoffrey,” he grunted. “Then you would have been all over me for murder.”
“That would not usually stop you,” said Geoffrey.
“Well, things are different now,” muttered Henry. “I am lord of Goodrich; I can afford to be gracious.”
If not committing murder was Henry’s notion of being gracious, Geoffrey decided yet again that the sooner he was away from Goodrich, the better. He backed away from the door to give Henry more room.
“It will not budge,” said Henry. “You try.”
Geoffrey leaned his weight on the door, and pushed as hard as he could. It remained fast.
“This is useless,” said Henry, watching. “I need a lever.” Before Geoffrey could stop him, he had grabbed the torch and darted back up the stairs, leaving Joan and Geoffrey alone in the darkness.
The pitch-blackness in the cavern pressed down on Geoffrey. Somewhere, he heard a light patter as some sand fell from the roof. The soft stone through which the tunnel had been excavated was completely inappropriate for such a structure, and Geoffrey felt part of the wall crumble even as his outstretched hand brushed against it. And then there was a hiss and a crackle as yet another trickle of earth and pebbles dropped from the ceiling. He found he could not breathe deeply enough to draw air into his lungs, and he started to cough.
He began to walk blindly towards the stairs, hoping to catch up with Henry, but he had not gone far before his foot caught on the uneven floor and he went sprawling forwards onto his knees.
“Geoff? Where are you?” came Joan’s voice. He felt her hand on his shoulder. “Do not try to chase after Henry. He will not be long.”
“We are trapped in the dark,” said Geoffrey tightly. “And the dust is choking me.”
“There is no dust,” said Joan reasonably. “And we are not trapped. We will be out soon, and we can always go back up the stairs to Godric’s chamber, anyway.”
Geoffrey swallowed, and tried to bring his panic under control. “I know.”
“I understand your dislike of enclosed spaces,” said Joan sympathetically. “You wrote about it in your letters.”
“My letters to Enide,” said Geoffrey, still coughing. “Or rather my letters to some scribe, who was doubtless enjoying himself thoroughly at my expense. Still, at least I know it was not Norbert. That man could not pen a decent letter to save his life.”
“Actually, they were letters to me,” said Joan in the darkness. “You addressed them to Enide, but she lost interest in writing to you within a year of you leaving-especially after her accident. Dictating a letter takes a long time, and she was too active and too impatient to sit so long at one task. She usually left them lying around in our room, and I took them to Olivier to read.”
“So my letters were to Olivier?” asked Geoffrey, horrified. “Wonderful!”
“It was wonderful for me,” said Joan quietly. “It gave me an excuse to see him, and we enjoyed the business of composing letters to you together. He wanted me to tell you that it was us and not Enide when we first started to write to you, but I was afraid that if I did, you might not write again, and then I would have lost two things I had come to care about-my reason for spending so much time with Olivier, and writing to you.”
“No wonder Olivier knew that I had been transferred to Tancred’s service, but my brothers did not,” said Geoffrey, recalling his surprise when the small knight had mentioned it when they had first met.
Joan nodded. “He has followed the career of a fellow knight with great interest.”
“And it was not Enide who was considering becoming a nun,” Geoffrey went on, remembering another subject in the letters. “It was you. And it was not me you were telling-it was Olivier, so that he would make up his mind and marry you.”
Joan sighed softly. “It did not work-I think that ploy was too subtle for him. But I felt that I came to know you much better after you had left than I had when you were here. And then, when Enide died-or we thought she did-it was too late to be honest. We had to stop writing, even though we longed to continue.”
“But it was all based on deceit!” objected Geoffrey. “You are right-I might not have written back to you had I known what you had done.”
He was startled to hear a soft intake of breath that sounded like a sob. He reached out in the dark, but she moved away from his hand. He scratched around for something to say to break the uncomfortable silence that followed.
“I wrote to you for twenty years. Did you love Olivier all that time?”
Her voice was unsteady when she spoke. “I fell in love the first time I saw him, but you see how he is. He would never have gathered the courage to ask me to be his wife. In the end, when I was almost resigned to remaining a maiden all my life, Walter took your manor at Rwirdin so that the Earl of Shrewsbury would become interested enough to force him into action.”