IT TOOK HOURS FOR Joanna’s will to be drawn up to her satisfaction, so determined was she to acknowledge all those who’d served her so loyally. She left a generous bequest to Dame Beatrix and smaller sums to her other maids of honor, to her chaplain and clerks and servants. She took care that the thousand shillings she’d borrowed from the moneylender, Provetal the Jew, would be repaid. She gave her favorite horse to the hospital at Roncevaux, six mares to the abbey of Mont Sainte Catherine, and two mares to every religious house in Rouen. She made a large gift to the abbess of Fontevrault and bequests to several of the nuns who’d befriended her, left a valuable wall hanging to St Stephen’s church in Toulouse, and placed the residue of her three thousand marks at the disposal of her mother and the archbishops of Canterbury and York, to be divided among religious houses and the poor.
Abbot Luke then heard her confession and administered the sacrament of Extreme Unction, which normally gave the dying much comfort. It did not assuage Joanna’s fears, though, for she remained convinced that her only path to salvation led toward the abbey of Fontevrault.
ELEANOR HAD BEEN UNABLE to save her son and she knew that she could not save her daughter, either. She could not defeat Death. But now her adversaries were flesh-and-blood, stubborn and hidebound, clinging to custom the way snails and turtles retreated into their shells whenever they encountered the unknown. She had been fighting men like this for her entire life and whilst she’d lost most of the time, this was the one battle she had to win.
She at once sent word to Fontevrault, confident that she would have allies in Abbess Mathilde and Prioress Aliza. But Joanna had taken no comfort in that. She was sure that she’d be dead by the time the elderly abbess could travel all the way to Rouen, and Eleanor feared she was right, for it seemed to her that her daughter lost ground by the hour. She went next to the Archbishop of Rouen, only to be rebuffed. He was sympathetic to the countess’s deathbed wishes, he assured Eleanor. But canon law spoke clearly on the subject: a married woman could not take holy vows without her husband’s consent.
Eleanor had expected such a negative response. She knew she might be maligning Archbishop Gautier, but she suspected that he remained resentful of his clash with her son over Les Andelys; even though he’d been well compensated for his loss, he’d also been humiliated when the Pope had sided with Richard, and she was not sure he was magnanimous enough to overlook that old grievance.
She had better luck with Mathilde d’Avranches, the abbess of St Amand, Rouen’s prestigious nunnery. Abbot Luke of Turpenay Abbey was easy to persuade, too, as were the Bishops of évreux and Lisieux. But since they’d argued Richard’s case before the papal curia, Archbishop Gautier was not likely to give their words much weight. She needed more influential allies before a council could be called to debate Joanna’s request.
OF ALL HENRY’S SONS, it was generally conceded that the one who most closely resembled him was his bastard Geoff, York’s reluctant archbishop. His russet hair was well sprinkled with grey these days, for he was not that far from his fiftieth birthday, and he’d gained weight as his youth slipped away. But he remained as outspoken and obstinate as he’d ever been, and although he politely heard Eleanor out, he was already shaking his head by the time she was done speaking.
“Do not mistake me, Madame. My heart goes out to your daughter, my half sister. And her wish to take holy vows is a most commendable one. Alas, it cannot be done without her husband’s consent.”
“If he were here, my lord archbishop, he would give it gladly.” Geoff had never mastered the art of dissembling, and his doubt showed so plainly on his face that Eleanor drew an angry breath. But she kept her voice even as she said, “Do you truly believe he would deny his wife salvation?”
“I do not know the Count of Toulouse well enough to say. He has not always been a friend to the Holy Church, after all.”
Eleanor opened her mouth to argue that Raimond de St Gilles was not a heretic, whatever slanderous stories Geoff might have heard. But she knew that road led nowhere. She studied her husband’s most devoted son with calculating eyes, and then she almost smiled, for she’d realized how to break through his barriers.