Harlot Queen (17 page)

‘That, too, Madam, in Scottish hands.’

She closed her eyes. Shame upon shame!

‘Madam, the men—the common soldiers—they fought; they went on fighting. Heroes all! The King was gone, the leaders dead or fled; but still they went on fighting. But it was all useless; it was worse than useless. Our cavalry could not move; it was caught between their deadly pikes and our own archers. Nor could our archers shoot; for then they must wound our own cavalry in the back. Madam, it was horrible!

‘And there was no stopping the Scots. They pressed on in solid blocks screaming their warcry—a wild sound to curdle the blood. They forced our men back—riders and footsoldiers; back, back, …into the marsh. And the marsh, the evil marsh took them. And that, Madam, was the most horrible sight of all. In battle a man expects to die—by sword or spear or arrow; a clean death. But this! Madam, Madam… the fine men sinking down into the mud, choking and suffocating in the mud… dying their fearful death…’

He stopped, sickened on the thought; and she sickened, no less than he. She wished to hear no more; the rest she knew. And wished to God she did not know.

He guessed her thoughts—as how could he not? Unwilling to leave her to shame as great as misery, he said—but he kept his head low, ‘Madam, the lord King could do no other. Those whose place it was to advise him, besought him to leave the field.’

How much beseeching did he need?
She sat stiff in her place; she could not take this easy comfort.

‘Madam—’ and it was as though he asked pardon for his own fault, ‘at first he would not go. But they entreated him saying,
When the King is lost, all is lost
. So then he did quit the field. Then such lords as were left, when they saw the King leaving, the standard carried before him, followed him. But—as I have told Madam the Queen—the men, the common men of England, still stood to the enemy. And some died in the marshes, and some in the river, and some upon the pike; and some few, by the especial grace of God, escaped. Madam there were no cowards.’

Was there not one coward?

The thought beat upon her sick heart.

Madam Queen Margaret said, and she white as a bone, ‘At Berwick, at Dunbar, at Falkirk, my husband carried the day. Had he not done so they had brought him home on his shield. If the dead know aught he is shamed this day!’

It was the first time she had faulted the King—and he not there to hear. She had, at need, spoken outright to his face; but she had allowed no criticism behind his back—not from herself, nor from any other, not even from her niece the Queen.

Isabella said, shocked, ‘If you, Madam Aunt, allow yourself such words, what words shall they use that do not love the King? What shall Lancaster say? What Warwick?’

Margaret said, ‘You are right, my child. There’s no word of mine can alter by one hairsbreadth what has been; or shall be!’

Long before the last of the news came through they were to learn both of them, what the barons thought, what the country thought and what Christendom thought. Edward of England, son to great Edward, was branded coward; a fainéant that, through easy living, had lost Scotland, chiefest jewel of the crown.

And now the last of the news came through. It was not Scotland alone that was lost; it was the flower of England’s manhood. To the great names of the dead were added other names—knights and high officers of state together with names of simple folk beyond counting. Now it was not only the loss of Scotland that England mourned, nor yet the death of her chivalry; in countless homes men wept for their dead… uselessly dead.

Isabella felt herself spotted with the King’s disgrace. Her last, lingering regard had turned to contempt—contempt the world must never see, not for his sake but for her own. She would scant no sign of respect, nor fail in any duty as a wife. But if, his eye wandering to the young Despenser, he did not call for wifely duties, so much the better! She had borne a son; no further need to prove her womanhood. Now she would never willingly give herself to her husband nor shed one tear if he deserted her for a mignon’s bed. She had rather sleep with the Bruce himself—old and leprous as he was than with her fainéant husband.

‘Now the Bruce is the hero of Christendom!’ she told her aunt. ‘And well deserves it, the sick, indomitable old man!’ No need to add that, by so much as Bruce of Scotland’s honour grew, Edward of England’s honour lessened. ‘All England shall rue Bannockburn… and I think the King will rue it most!’

The King was home again. And now he was at the mercy of his barons as never before; defeat had delivered him up bound hand and foot. Pembroke, captain of his forces, sharing the blame for Bannockburn, lost much of his influence; a pity, he was a moderate man. Now Lancaster openly led the ever-growing ranks of those that neither liked nor any way honoured the King. Friends and servants in state and household were put from their places; Archbishop Reynolds himself, the chancellor, sent packing.

‘My friends dismissed, my household broken up! By God I’ll not endure it!’ the King cried out.

But endure it he must, and a good deal more.

It was not only the high officials centred at Westminster that were driven out. All over the country, lesser officials—mayors, sheriffs, magistrates and judges, even, were put from office and men obedient to Lancaster put in their place.

First of the King’s friends to go were the Despensers, father and son. Able men, both, that might have been good servants to the state but for that greed to which honour and reason were alike sacrificed. It was the most popular thing Lancaster had ever done: he was the best-loved man in England. When he rode through London bonnets waved, cheers rose in the air. All England hated those two that with their extortions had made the country poorer; and especially they hated the younger that looked to take Gaveston’s place in the King’s love.

And to all Lancaster’s decrees the King was forced to submit; for Gloucester was dead, and Hereford and many others prisoner in Scotland and Pembroke’s power diminished. The most part of the barons—and especially bitter Warwick whose hand was hot yet with Gaveston’s blood; the most part of the princes of the church together with the common folk of England looked to Lancaster, Guardian of their rights. It was Lancaster that gave instructions to the new officials himself had chosen—to Chancellor, Treasurer, Keeper of the Wardrobe; and to him they held themselves responsible. It was Lancaster that issued commands for the conduct of the realm, that gave or withheld pardons, that decided upon life and death. It was Lancaster that spoke for the barons with the King—and spoke like an equal prince.

Lancaster supreme.

These days Isabella hated her uncle because, diminishing the power of the King, he had diminished the power of the Queen. Had she thought to influence him, to rise on the wings of his power? The more fool she! She’d not be so fooled again. One day he should pay for this. Meanwhile he was all-powerful and she must show herself gracious and friendly.

Torrential rains ruined the harvests. There was neither meat enough nor corn enough, nor any to be bought in Europe; for all Christendom suffered likewise. Prices rose; they went on rising. Wheat was eight times the usual price; oats, peas and every common food followed the wheat. How soon, men wondered, would even the coarsest food be weighed in the balance against fine gold? And the corn—however much one paid—was of wretched quality; it must be baked in the oven before it could be ground. With hunger, with bad food, pestilence fell upon the land so that many died.

Misery upon misery.

‘They are eating horseflesh which the church forbids; they are eating cats and dogs and mice and whatever vermin they can lay hand upon,’ Isabella said. ‘I hear that men murder each other for a little bread. And when they get it—no virtue in it!’

‘There are some that eat human flesh!’ Margaret shuddered. ‘Dear Christ, that in a Christian country man should eat man!’ She crossed herself; these days she wore a thin and stricken look.

The sad year moved on. To hunger and sickness was added anger, bitterness and unrest. The King, frustrated and furious, distrusted his Council; the Council, grimly determined upon its rights, distrusted the King. And all the time food less and less, and all the time prices rising. In the fields where they had gone searching for rotten turnips, men lay down to die praying for death before the wild beast found them.

The King and Queen fared none too ill. They travelled the country; the larders—such as they were—in one house emptied, they betook themselves to the next. A fretful Edward complained of quality, of flavour, of cooking; Isabella made no complaint. She had learned to complain only where she might mend matters; this matter was beyond her mending.

The bitter year was nearing its end; the King was morose, and sullen; he would give way to sudden, unpredictable rages. Those that had offended—and many that had not—he punished with cruelty. Afterwards he would regret what he had done, though that he never would admit.

He would take no advice; he could scarce bring himself to listen when others talked. Frustrated in his power to command great issues, he set his whole will upon having his way’ in small ones.

A few days before Christmas he declared his intention of removing the body of Gaveston from Oxford where all this time it had lain.

‘Foolish, foolish! It will anger Lancaster and Warwick still further; reminder without words of their treachery!’ Isabella cried out to Queen Margaret. ‘Madam Aunt, could you not speak with him on this matter of Gaveston? To you he might listen!’

But even to her, though he choked down his anger, he would not listen. ‘Leave the body where it is! Let the barons forget the thing they have done! And I, am I to forget it, also? No! Nor yet the oath I made to avenge his murder and thereafter to give him a King’s burial. Two years have gone by—and still the murderers go unpunished. Punished they certainly shall be; but for that I can wait no longer. No! There shall be a solemn procession to carry his body home to the house he loved above all others!’

At Oxford the great procession assembled King, the Queen, Reynolds that, though Chancellor no more, was still Archbishop of Canterbury; and following him four bishops and priests aplenty, together with the Despensers and others of the King’s friends—few alas! And so they came to King’s Langley and there the body was interred with high ceremony… but barons and princes of the church were, for the most part, absent.

The King shrugged their absence away; but he would remember it. The funeral over, he went to Cambridge, seeking the company of those he liked best—peasants, simple folk that had no part in politics. There he matched himself against them in all country sports; in skill and strength and grace he outdid them all, so that they worshipped him as he might be a god. Such warmth, such adulation touched him to the heart; he felt himself magnified so that he carried himself as though he were, indeed, a god. But he made no attempt to win the burghers, solid folk whose goodwill might have served him well.

And now it was a new year; the year of grace thirteen hundred and sixteen.
God grant us a better year than the last!
Isabella made her prayer; Margaret and the people of England, gentle and common, prayed likewise… all save the barons. Apart from the famine and the sickness it had been a good year for them. ‘With their Ordinances they had brought the King beneath their thumbs.

‘We must see that we keep him there! He’s as slippery as quick silver!’ Lancaster warned them, Lancaster bent on humiliating the King, bent on showing all Christendom who ruled England.

Later in the month the King must meet his Parliament in Lincoln; no help for it. The barons were, for the time being, his masters. Reluctant he tore himself from the delights of Cambridge. He commanded the Queen’s company and she went unwilling. She had neither love nor respect nor any hope to influence him. Nor did she relish the cold, troublesome journey; she fancied she might be with child. Yet go she must; and with a good grace. She was well-liked by barons and simple folk alike. It was good for the King to be seen in her company.

In the bishop’s house at Lincoln he cooled his heels waiting for Parliament to assemble. Some barons had arrived—those that were the King’s friends and they were few enough; Lancaster was not there nor any that were of his mind.

‘I’ll say no longer; it’s a studied insolence to gall me!’ the King cried out.

‘Yet wait a little,’ she said. ‘Men are delayed for this thing and for that, against their will. Give them yet a little time.’

Day by day she sought to keep him in Lincoln. ‘Sir, the weather is bitter; wait until the wind changes.’ Or, ‘The roads are bad; floods as high as a man’s knees.’ And when she could delay him no longer with her excuses, said, desperate, ‘Sir, I think I am with child!’

For that he would stay; but he would not stay long.

Day after day; and still no Lancaster. And still she kept him with her prime excuse.
Sir, I am sick’. I dare not venture
. Keep him she must lest he anger Lancaster further; such anger must bring him yet more humiliation. And waiting, there might be some gain. A show of courtesy might wring some advantage out of Parliament. Her pride was as great as his, but she was quicker to learn. She was learning to weigh every hairsbreadth of advantage in the scale against pride.

The King had waited above a fortnight, he would wait no longer. She could not blame him; she made no more attempt to keep him. They were on the point of departure, bag and baggage already on the move, when Lancaster saw fit to arrive.

The King’s temper—she had suffered from it these last days—was flayed raw. She sought, before those two could meet, to gentle them into some show of friendship.

‘Sir,’ she besought the King, ‘show some goodwill to Lancaster. For the moment he rides high; it will not be for long. He’s top-heavy with pride; soon he must overbalance and fall.’

And to Lancaster, ‘Dear Uncle, if you love me, show due respect to the King. I ask it for your own sake. There are some—and not a few—that dislike a show of disrespect to him; the King is still the King. Take his hand in friendship; so you keep the goodwill of all to do whatever you may choose.’