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Page 184
Chapter Eleven
At first as September ended and October lay golden across the land, Joanna wondered whether Geoffrey had been right. A profound peace enwrapped England and the three countries John had conquered. In that peace a fine crop was harvested and pigs and cattle fattened on the gleanings among the stubble. Even the normal petty battles between one landowner and another seemed to have been suspended. Wherever Joanna traveled there was no sign of war, no burnt-over houses and fields, no dead men, no weeping women.
Only in the high halls of the nobility where Joanna was a guest was there the slightest hint that all was not perfect. No one grumbled aloud. No ill word was said of the king. Nonetheless, there was a sense of unease, of waiting, as if the men were perched on the edges of their chairs ready to seize a bared weapon and leap into action. Among her own people, Joanna spoke openly of the dangers Geoffrey had envisaged. And amid all that peace, to her surprise, no one laughed at her. From the older men in particular, she had sighs of relief and sage noddings of the head.
"The young lord is wiser than his years," Sir Giles of Iford said, "and you also, my lady, in that you see his wisdom. You need not fear me. I have reason, perhaps, not to love the king, but I will be loyal to your lady mother in any path she and Lord Ian choose. More especially if the worst befalls us and men are absolved from their fealty, it will behoove us to cling together to preserve ourselves from a world run mad."
Sir Henry of Kingsclere did not understand nor pretend to

 
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