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Page 551
main stronghold. Joanna could not help wondering, when Geoffrey's eyes rested so strangely on her throat, why he had chosen Hemel above one of the other strong places. Was it habit? Hemel had been the home of his childhood. Or was it because he almost hoped they would be attacked so that he could end his living death in true peace? It was a fear that sharpened Joanna's interest in the news and in every act of every day.
Thus, when word of a troop of men headed for the castle was called down from the wall, Joanna set aside her work and ran down to hear the exchange of challenges. Instead, she heard Geoffrey cry for haste in letting down the bridge. This must be a welcome, yet there was something in her husband's voiceJoanna took to her heels and ran, arriving just as Geoffrey and Tostig received Ian into their arms.
''My lord!" Geoffrey gasped.
"Ian!" Joanna echoed.
Then she heard the sucking, rasping breath, the cough like that of a half-drowned man.
"Bring him to bed," Joanna cried. "Geoffrey, listen! Strip him naked and strip yourself and Tostig too. Do you both get into bed with him and keep him warm until I can bring hot sand. Prop him high so he can breathe. Cover yourselves with eveRything you can lay hands uponfeather quilts both above and below you. Be quick! Be quick!"
It was the maddest day Joanna had lived since she heard Geoffrey was not dead. This kind of illness did not permit quiet. The bags of hot sand must be changed continuously; braziers to heat water so that Ian would breathe steam fragrant with aromatic herbs had to be tended. Ian had to be lifted and shifted so that his coughing would bring up the phlegm that clogged his lungs. Servants came and went; medicines were compounded, trickled down his throat; maids with warmed hands thrust under the covers massaged his legs and arms to make the blood flow better.
After the warmth of his body was no longer necessary, Geoffrey was useless in the sickroom. He hung about anxiously for a while, but soon realized that there would be no

 
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