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Page 146
added. "I must away to Clyro and find more supplies for war by my lord's order. I have no time for play or foolishness at all."
"You must find supplies?" Isabella asked incredulously. "What have you to do with such? If supplies are needed, doubtless the bailiffs and stewards will be told."
"I am my mother's bailiff and steward," Joanna said, keeping the pride from her voice only with great effort, "and my lord's letter" she showed Isabella Geoffrey's seal, "bids me make the greatest haste I may to forward the king's desire. If it pleases you, madam, I will return as soon as my business is done, but I may not disobey the king's will, which is named in my lord's order.''
However heedless Joanna might be in the pursuit of a jest, she was not at all foolish in the pursuit of a real purpose. The queen's appearance on the heels of Henry de Braybrook's silly attempt at lovemaking might be a coincidenceor it might not. Isabella's insistence on connecting her request to leave with Braybrook's presence might be a simple result of a love of scandal and having a dirty mind, which Joanna knew the queen to have, or it might be a deliberate attempt to smirch Joanna with the mud that so liberally bespattered the court. In any case, Joanna had realized that Isabella would not give her leave to go willingly. However, the queen never opposed the king's will, at least openly, and Joanna had invoked John's name to good purpose. Grudgingly, Isabella agreed. Joanna did not delay an instant but curtsied and went away.
Because she was annoyed with him, Braybrook stayed in Isabella's mind. Her thought processes were neither quick nor clear, but through repetition of the unsatisfactory scenes of the afternoon came the feeling that Joanna had escaped the punishment that she deserved and that Braybrook was responsible. The skewed logic of Isabella's brain then conceived what seemed a brilliant notion. She summoned a scribe and dictated an order that Braybrook accompany Joanna as escort to "perform all such services as will content that lady's heart and body."

 
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