hair from its pins. “It is almost as if some evil spell was cast upon them all. . . .”
“And is your brother as you remembered him?”
“Indeed—confident, prideful, amusing, and stubborn,” Joanna joked, leaning back with a contented sigh as Mariam began to brush out her hair. “He says we cannot stay in Messina, that it is not safe. There have already been fights between his men and the townspeople and he fears it will only get worse, so he means to find us a secure lodging across the Faro. I told him I wanted to remain here in Messina with him, but he would not heed me. As I said,” she smiled, “stubborn!”
“I’d say that was a family trait,” Mariam teased, and Joanna gave the other woman a quick, heartfelt hug.
“You are as dear to me as my own sisters,” she proclaimed, “and I will never forget your loyalty in my time of need. To prove it, I am going to divulge a secret. But you must promise not to speak of it to anyone else.”
“Of course I promise. What is it?” Mariam prodded, for she shared Joanna’s love of mysteries.
“I’ve told you about Richard’s long-standing plight-troth with the French king’s sister. Well, it will never come to pass. I know, hardly a surprise, for it is obvious to all but the French king that Richard has no intention whatsoever of marrying Alys. That is not the secret. This is—that Richard has agreed to wed Berengaria, the daughter of Sancho, the King of Navarre, and she is coming to join him in Sicily.”
Mariam knew more of Navarre than most people, for William’s mother had been a princess of that Spanish kingdom, Sancho’s sister. “Then you’ll be getting a cousin as well as a sister by marriage,” she said, “since her father was William’s uncle.” The Navarrese connection made the news more interesting than it would otherwise have been, but she was still surprised that Joanna seemed so excited about the arrival of a woman she did not know—until Joanna told her the rest, the heart of her secret.
“And guess who is bringing her to Richard? My mother! Yesterday I was not sure that I’d ever see any of my family again and now . . . now I have not only been reunited with my brother, but my mother is on her way to Sicily, too.” Stretching out on the bed, Joanna confided, “I never dared hope for so much. . . .”
Mariam was more eager to meet the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine than Sancho’s daughter, and she was delighted that Joanna would be given this rare opportunity to see her mother again; a foreign marriage usually meant lifelong exile for highborn young women like Joanna. Rising, she crossed the chamber to pour two cups of the night wine sent over by the abbess. “I am so pleased for you, dearest. Fortune’s Wheel has truly turned with a vengeance, has it not?”
When Joanna did not answer, Mariam glanced over her shoulder, and then smiled, for the young queen had fallen asleep in the time it had taken to lay her head upon her pillow. Returning to the bed, Mariam covered her with a blanket. “Sleep well,” she murmured, “and God bless your brother for justifying your faith in him.”
RICHARD RETURNED to the nunnery the next day, bringing two kinsmen for Joanna to meet: their maternal cousin, André de Chauvigny, and their paternal cousin, Morgan ap Ranulf. But Richard and Joanna had soon withdrawn to the nunnery’s parlor for more private conversation, as they’d just scratched the surface the day before. Left to amuse themselves, André began a dice game with several of their knights and Morgan took Joanna’s dog out into the cloisters.
He was intrigued by Ahmer’s appearance, for the Sicilian cirneco had ears like a rabbit and fur as red as a fox. Sicily was an unusual land in all respects, so it seemed only natural that even its dogs would be unlike dogs elsewhere. Morgan had never seen palm trees before, or birds that looked like feathered jewels, or churches that had once been mosques, giving the city an exotic aura all its own. The women were exotic, too, sashaying about the streets in silks and fluttering veils, bejeweled fingers decorated with henna, wellborn Christian ladies choosing to dress like Saracens. Morgan wondered if it was Sicily’s alien aspects that seemed to unsettle so many of Richard’s men. It did not help that the Messinians were overwhelmingly