Isabella: Braveheart of France (28 page)

“Am I your hostage?”

“What a thing to say.”

“Father says if I were not your prisoner, I would have returned to England by now.”

“I would gladly return with you to England if I could. But the Lord Despenser has done all in his power to dishonour me. If I were to return to England, I should be disinherited of my estates and in fear of my life.”

He looks right through her. “Father says Uncle Hugh is just an excuse, that you’re doing all this because of Mortimer.”

“Most others say I do what is best for England.”

“I do not care much for Uncle Hugh. But Father is king.”

“Is he? Then why does he take away my lands and my children?”

He lowers his eyes. He knows she is right about this--he has eyes and ears.

“I love your father, Edward, but he has shown little love for me of late, and he has allowed Lord Despenser to make all the kingly decisions for him. That is why I do what I do.”

It is pleasant out here in the garden. There is a warm breeze, scents of flowers. She regards her son: a fine boy, his dark hair is the colour of chestnuts. He is all that stands between her and despair.

I will tell you why Edward should not be king
, she thinks. It is because he let you come to France. He has no strategy; unlike Mortimer, he cannot play chess. A king who cannot play chess is fated always to find himself with nowhere to move, trapped between a knight and a queen.

She remembers Edward with his court cronies, bent over the table, playing at dice. That is Edward’s game: boisterous, companionable, risking everything on chance. It requires no thought, just a little money and recklessness.

Chess was the king’s game. Her father knew that.

So does his daughter.

***

“A woman, though she is a queen, is meant by God to be instructed by her husband.”

It is the bishop of Orange who says this, and she smiles and imagines cleaving him with a sword, right through his skull to his breastbone, as the Bruce had done to Henry de Bohun at the Battle of Bannockburn.

“Yet what is a wife to do when her holy union is divided by another?”

Vienne and Orange exchange ghastly smiles. “The Lord Despenser is merely the king’s adviser.”

She leans forward and they mimic her. There is a pregnant moment when all grimace, knowing what she is about to say. “His advice is sought everywhere.
Everywhere
.”

It is as daintily as she will ever say it. Vienne has not the stomach for such hard negotiation. He finds something of great interest in the tapestries. It is left to Orange to continue the battle.

“The Holy Father is most unhappy at the discord between you. Will you not return to England with us so that you may meet Edward face to face?”

“You know my terms, sirs. There is nothing else to be said.”

Chapter 48

The harvest is getting in; the summer has been long and golden. The waiting has passed to the accompaniment of bees and birdsong. There is stubble in the fields now, and soon the nights will draw in.

The
nuncios
have returned from England. Their journey has been fruitless. Edward will not abide her terms. It is clear to everyone but Edward and the Pope that the marriage is irretrievable. She has made all possible efforts, for conscience sake and for the sake of public opinion, but no more may be done.

It is a drab morning, the air close and uncomfortably warm, a day when the clouds are the colour of pewter and seem too close to the earth. She sweats even before she is in her brother’s presence.

There are guards on the door, Brabantine mercenaries in the blue and gold of the royal household, the nose guards of their helmets hiding their faces. They stand at the foot of a polished staircase, their swords drawn.

The king is troubled, his features are set. Her smile of greeting is met with a scowl. He paces the room. He says, the Pope has written to me, he knows of your indiscretions with Mortimer. He says that sheltering you like this reflects badly on my honour.

“I warned you of this! I told you to be chaste, and if you could not be chaste then to be discreet!”

He has told her no such thing. He is remaking his own history for his own purpose.

“How could you do this? Have you forgotten Marguerite and Blanche?” He brushes aside a servant’s offer of wine. He stalks towards her across the fine carpets, his eyes like points. “I think you goad me with this.”

“Your grace, I would not.”

“You may think our father cruel, but I thought he was mild with them. If I were Edward I should do at least the same to you.”

“He has estranged me.”

“And you have cuckolded him before the whole world! I have protected you because you are my sister!”

“I am sorry if my importunate actions have allowed Edward to seem a wounded husband.”

“There is no
seems
to it, sister, he is wounded. His pride if nothing else.” She has never seen Charles like this, and it scares her. “You have made my position impossible.”

A feeling of dread settles in her stomach, like cold goose fat.

“You know Edward sent a letter to the Pope telling him that you now share lodgings with Mortimer?”

“It is a lie.”

“A lie that is true enough. It is something the whole world knows anyway. Now see, we are at war with England. This is why you were sent to Edward and to England, sister, so that such conflict might be avoided.”

“This situation was not of my choosing.”

He sits down then stands again. “I cannot fight a war with England on two fronts.”

“You said you would give me whatever support that I needed.”

“That was before you made yourself notorious with Mortimer!”

His eyes are blazing. She can feel her own heartbeat, her legs will not hold her and she fumbles for a chair. There is a grease of sweat on her forehead; it is too hot in here.

“The Pope threatens me with excommunication should I continue to shelter adulterers.”

“Adulterers!”

“It is what you are, is it not?”

She listens, numb, as he tells her that it is over, she has lost her support in France over this man, that he must now send her back. She has left him no choice.

It knocks the breath out of her. She is determined not to be womanly, not to cry or to faint. He is still shouting, but she hears him at a distance, instead of right there, an arm’s length from her face.

“What will I do?” she hears herself say when he is finished.

“There is nothing else to do. Go back to your husband, Isabella.”

She thinks of Marguerite, as Charles bids her do. She thinks of shivering in rags and a threadbare blanket, her hair cut with blunt scissors. Did the guards abuse her as well? She does not imagine that Edward will be kind, not with the Despenser standing at his shoulder urging him to a proper settlement of debts.

She takes her leave of the king and totters along the corridor to her rooms. Her ladies hover but she sends them away. She drops into a seat by the window.

Outside is a man digging a ditch. Edward loved to dig ditches; he is a beautiful man with his shirt off, laughing and slick with sweat.

There is a candle that has yet to be extinguished and she puts her hand into the flame, for no other purpose than to feel something. Afterwards she nurses her scalded fingers in her lap. What shall she do?

There is not enough air in here. She runs into the garden, runs for the sake of running, past startled servants and gardeners. She runs until she is breathless and then sinks to her knees among the strawberries, and to the astonishment of a red-faced gardener she retches painfully among the sweet and ripening fruit.

Chapter 49

The silver casket is brought in and placed on the table. Not a word is spoken. She runs her fingertips across the surface. It was a gift from her mother-in-law on the day of her wedding, a lifetime ago. Inside the cask is everything she had ever wanted and had been determined one day to have.

It is chill in the room and she comes to stand by the fire. A log breaks in the hearth in a shower of sparks and startles her.

She thinks of him that first time she saw him, at Boulogne. So tall, so straight, her perfect knight. But no knight was ever perfect. She stares at the casket. She thought she would feel more than this.

The door opens. It is the young prince. How he has grown these last weeks. He stands straighter, and his eyes glitter.

“You have heard the news?” she asks him.

He studies her face looking for the truth. But the truth is not as plain; there are only versions of it. “Tell me you had no part in this,” he says.

“I had no part in it,” she answers, without hesitation.

***

Mortimer’s man is dressed for riding. “A good fur cloak for your shoulders, your grace,” he says. There is a chill in the air tonight. When you are in the employ of Roger Mortimer, perhaps you grow accustomed to fleeing a house in the dark of night. For the Queen of England, it is a novel experience.

Oh, there was Tynemouth, I suppose.

He leads her and her ladies through the garden to a door in the wall, she hears the jingle of coins changing hands and the watchman hurries them through. Mud squelches underfoot as they hurry along a path beside a sheep meadow. Here the Queen of England must scramble through briars. Her hair snags on a thorn; so now we have come to a fine pass.

Mortimer’s man - she never finds out his name - helps her down a steep and muddy bank. One of her ladies falls and slithers in the mud, she lets out a yelp and is hushed to silence.

Isabella proceeds on tiptoes, but after a while she is exhausted and so lets her skirts trail in the muck as they will. She smells manure. They are in a pasture. A crescent moon darts in and out behind scudding clouds and everything is shadow.

***

She concentrates her will on the next step, reminding herself not to stumble. She will at least retain some dignity. She prays for deliverance, its shape and form unknowable in this darkness.
Let me be remembered for my exodus tonight, and if my father is watching let him guide me and help me so that I do not spend the rest of my life reading gospels and staring listlessly out of a convent window.

She sees the silhouettes of farmhouses and the flare of a torch, then hears Mortimer’s voice. He is waiting in a cobbled courtyard with a dozen men and horses. He leads her to a barn. There, in the straw, the Queen of England is ordered to change into humbler clothes so that she may more easily play the part of a merchant’s wife. She was stripped of her lands and titles in plain view; now she gives up her finest velvet gown and her jewels in the dark.

The wimple and the fustian itching her skin bother her more than the mud squelching between her toes. It is the final indignity.

She leaves the barn and rejoins Mortimer in the yard. Without a word he helps her up onto a cart. Not even a cushion.

“We are merchants travelling north,” Mortimer says, jumping onto the running board beside her. “If we are challenged, stay silent.”

“Where are we going?”

“The only place we can go.”

There are pack horses, a dozen men and her ladies. Behind her, on the cart, are barrels of Gascon wine and salt beef. The prince sits hunched between them. He endures it all in silence. She wonders what she will do if he rebels. But it never comes to that; she is his mother, after all, and he feels he has no choice but to help her.

***

“William is not royal, but he is disgustingly rich, in both lands and money. You are a queen but landless and penniless. You will appear patronising; he will incline towards impudence. Bear it best you can. We all need each other.”

This is Mortimer’s advice to her as they are received in the galleried hall of the hotel d'Hollande. It is impressive; there are high Gothic windows and expensive Turkish hangings on the walls. The man has done well for himself. It seems it is not only in England that noblemen live better than kings.

He has his four daughters decorously arranged beside him so that the prince might more easily view the wares on offer, like gloves at a country market: Margaret, Jeanne, Philippa and Isabella. She hears her son draw breath and repeat the names over to himself, trying to remember them all. She can only hope he has more appetite for the game than his father.

William has a gift for him, a silver plate from Byzantium, with a relief of David slaying Goliath. Is there meaning couched in this? The prince dutifully hands over the gifts he has brought in return: some silks and a gilt mirror. He then subsides to an uncomfortable silence.