Free The Prince of Darkness by Jean Plaidy

who now persecute us … and he is gone, so what will become of us?’
    ‘You have your husband. He will protect you.’
    ‘He is but the Count of Toulouse. Richard was ruler of England and his dominions here. Sometimes the weight of this tragedy descends on me and I feel life is more than I can bear.’
    ‘That is no way for a mother to talk,’ said Berengaria in mild reproof.
    ‘You are right, my dear friend and sister. What should I do without you?’
    ‘We shall always be together. I will stay with you, Joanna, as long as you want me.’
    ‘You know I should always want you but it may be that a husband will be found for you.’
    Berengaria shook her head. ‘I have done with marriage,’ she said.
    Joanna was on the point of saying that because one marriage had been a failure it did not mean that a second would be, but that seemed to cast censure on Richard, so she was silent. He had scarcely been as good a husband to Berengaria as he had been a good brother to her.
    That night Joanna’s pains started. They went on all through the next day when it became clear that all was not going well.
    The doctors were grave when Berengaria questioned them anxiously. Queen Joanna had suffered a great shock on the death of her brother and this had had an adverse effect on her health. She should have rested in Toulouse instead of travelling to Chaluz to see Richard.
    The next morning the child was born, a poor sickly infant who was clearly not destined to live more than a few days. He was hastily baptised before he died.
    Joanna lingered for a while but it was soon apparent that it could not be for long.
    Berengaria was with her during the day and night, for Joanna found great comfort from her presence.
    She said: ‘I am dying, Berengaria. Nay, do not deny it. I know it well. I can see the angel of death beckoning to me. There might be a few days left to me, but no more. I must repent of my sins and prepare myself to make my peace with heaven.’
    ‘You have led a good life,’ comforted Berengaria. ‘You need have no fears.’
    But Joanna talked of her mother in the peace of Fontevraud and said it was her wish that before she died she should be veiled as a nun of Fontevraud.
    She had one more request. She wanted to be buried in the Abbey of Fontevraud beside her beloved brother Richard whom she had survived such a short while. They would lie together, she said, at the feet of her father.
    So she received the veil the day before she died and then her body was taken to Fontevraud where Queen Eleanor received it and carried out her daughter’s wish.
    Berengaria, who went to the funeral, was stricken with grief. The companion of so many years, when they were in the Holy Land together and she gradually understood the nature of the man she had married, was gone for ever. The future looked bleak before her. She could go to her brother’s court or that of her sister. Neither promised her any great joy.
    As for Eleanor, she was stricken and for the first time looked her great age.
    She was not bitter as Berengaria expected she might be; she was merely resigned. ‘I have lost the two I loved best,’ she said, ‘and that in the space of a few months. My life is over. What is there left for me now but to wait for death?’
    She would go into complete seclusion. She would remain at Fontevraud with the remains of her husband, and her beloved son and daughter.
    ‘My work is done,’ she said, ‘and there is nothing for me now but to wait for death.’

    John, meanwhile, had arrived in Normandy at the head of a formidable army, and in one or two skirmishes with the French army was victorious, which led to a meeting being arranged between himself and Philip. The French King wanted the Vexin for himself and Anjou, Maine, Poitou and Touraine for Arthur, but with an army behind him John was in a position to snap his fingers at such demands; the result was war. John’s good fortune was that William des Roches, who was leading the Breton