Isabella: Braveheart of France (7 page)

Isabella is impatient to know more about why Gaveston thinks them so alike, but first the squires must carve the meats and bring them silver plates for dining. It is only below the salt that they use trenchers.

Finally she has her chance to interrogate him further. All innocence, he pretends not to remember what he has said. She almost shouts it at him: “You think me beautiful?”

“The whole world says it. I find no reason to disagree.”

“Edward does not think me beautiful.”

“He thinks you are nothing else.”

She feels her cheeks burn. How dare he?

“Do not take offence, your grace. I understand your predicament.”

“Predicament?”

“His barons think the same of me, Joseph the Jew and the rest.”

“The Lord Pembroke knows you call him that. You should guard your tongue more.”

He shrugs. “Why should I when they speak of me as if I am one of the devil’s minions? I despise them. Do you think they shall ever like me any better, no matter what I do? Would you have me fawn to them?”

“I am just a girl, Lord Gaveston, but my father has coached me a little in these matters, and he taught me not to break any peace unless you are also sure of winning the war.”

“Edward is king, not Lancaster, and not that dog Warwick.”

“I agree with you. But kings have lost their kingship before now, and Edward risks much for you.”

The war in him is written plain on his face. “Do you know what it is like to love? How can you, you’re just a girl. You are given to this man you do not know and then you are asked to make the best of it. But you do not know
love
.” This spoken so fiercely that she shrinks from him. He is right: she has never loved so fiercely. By now the smile has dropped away and he fixes her with a stare of withering intensity. “Do you know what it is to have someone who understands your very soul? This love your minstrels sing of, must it always be a knight and a lady? Who made this law? Was it God? Then God is a trickster, for there is no one else will do for me.”

Gaveston says all this without pausing for breath. The king looks querulously in their direction. Isabella has never seen him like this, has only ever seen him in his usual guise, with the knowing smirk and the lofty tilt of the head.

He realizes he has said too much. He turns away, murmurs something to Edward to make him laugh. Edward claps his hands for his dwarves and his tumblers.

That night she slips down the stairs from her bedchamber and leans against the cold stone, watches their shadows on the walls as they sit by the fire drinking spiced wines. The last thing she sees is the silhouette of a kiss.

The next day Edward summons a Parliament, but Lancaster and Burstbelly - she smiles at Gaveston’s description - and the other magnates refuse to attend because Gaveston is there. Pembroke tells the king that it is only “Burstbelly,” as he would call him, that keeps them all from civil war.

They spend the Christmastide at Langley.

One night Edward and Gaveston do not return from a hunt. She takes squires and rides out wrapped in furs to search for him by a rising moon. The frost glistens and wolves howl. She finds him in a glade in Langley Woods, dancing around a fire with people from the village, celebrating the old Yule. One of the women of the village is dressed as the Green Man in a verdant robe with a garland of berries. As the moon rises cold over the trees, she sees Edward and Gaveston kneel before him, as they did in the days of the Old Religion.

They have not seen her approach and she rides away again. Later, her discovery sends her hurrying to the chapel. What has she married? Was he utterly godless?

Before he had been at her side constantly; now she hardly sees him at all. He had promised her that things would be different, but already they were just the same as before.

Chapter 12

He is watching some of his lads break in a horse. She picks him out because he is taller than the others by half a head, otherwise no one might have known him for a king. The way he is dressed, he might have been a smithy or a carpenter.

One of the boys stands on the saddle and pulls a fool’s face. He falls off and makes them all laugh. Edward sends one of his lackeys to give him a sovereign.

They cheer and huddle around. Look how they love him. He has an easy charm with stable boys, at least. He glances in her direction and she sees him sigh.

He turns and lopes towards her through the mud. “Your grace. A fine morning. Chill, but blue skies always lift the spirits.”

“I did not expect to find you here.”

“You think I should be at court worrying over Lancaster and Warwick? They are wearisome men, are they not?”

“What are you doing here, Edward? You are facing revolt. You know what they say about you. You are accused of keeping evil counsel...”

“ - They cannot be talking about Perro!”

“ - That you have lost Scotland, and that the country’s chief enemy lurks in your chamber. Their words.”

“If they want war with me, they shall have it.”

Her horse snickers and tosses its head. She brings him under control with a sharp tug of the reins and a dig of her heels. She wishes sometimes that Edward were a horse.

“Isn’t this what you want? If they have their way you won’t have to worry about Gaveston anymore.”

“I do not want to see them take your power. You are the king above all else.”

“There is nothing to be done. I know what they want and they shall not have it.”

“You will not forestall them by laughing with stable boys.”

“What else would you have me do? I have asked your father for his support and he sends me letters full of puffery and little else. Perhaps you might shift him.”

“You are king here. Not my father.”

“Just so. Then you should go back to your dolls and leave such matters to men.”

“I am fifteen years old, and you will stop treating me as a child.” She stares right into his eyes. “Besides, do I look to you like I have ever
in my life
played with a doll?”

He stares back. Then he throws back his head and laughs. “No, you do not, your grace.” He bows, and she turns her horse’s head.

As she is about to ride away he calls to her. He pulls himself up in the saddle and kisses her. “I love your temper,” he says and runs back to the horse yard. The boys cheer him. For all that he infuriates her, she loves him, too.

***

But he loves no one as he loves Gaveston. He is even prepared to go to war for him. The more the barons defy him, the more he goads them by giving his Perro gifts of land and titles and jewels.

The barons make their move. She hears about it first from one of her ladies: old Hugh’s daughter in law, Eleanor. Her brother is the Earl of Gloucester and he has boasted to her about putting his name to a piece of paper he has called The Ordinances.

They wish to castrate their king, not with knives but with rules and restrictions. A select council of twenty-one has been appointed to tell the king what he may or may not do. They say it is to uphold the Magna Carta, right the general wrongs of the realm, and “reform abuses within the royal household.”

Isabella goes in search of Edward but instead she finds Gaveston, sitting alone in the Great Hall, warming his boots by the fire and drinking spiced mead. He looks splendid on such a grey day, in a tunic of blue velvet trimmed with silk thread and pearls, one of his men rubbing his feet.

“Your grace,” he murmurs and jumps to his feet.

“Where is Edward?”

“He is hunting. There is a great stag in the forest and one of his sheriffs saw it near the lake this morning.” He sips his wine. “I see from your face that you have heard about the new ordinances.”

“How dare they?”

“They are concerned for the welfare of England. So they say.”

“Is my uncle a party to this?”

“All of them, even Richmond, and he would love Edward even if he was Beelzebub. They say they cannot keep faith with a king who does not keep faith with them.”

“You have brought him to this!”

“How so?”

“He does all this for you. Why don’t you leave him be?”

“I could as soon leave him as he could leave me.”

“But if it were not for you, they would not challenge him.”

“You really think things would be different if there was no Piers Gaveston?” He replaces his velvet slippers and sends his man off with a coin for his troubles. After he has gone, he says: “Do you hate me also, Isabella?”

“I do not understand why he would risk everything for you.”

“If he did as much for you, his queen, would you not think him the bravest king in the world? Would the whole world not applaud him for it? But he does it for me, and they call him weak and a fool.”

“Because you are not his queen.”

“I am his best friend.”

“So you say.”

“I am the only one who understands him. Do you know that?”

The words haunt her for months. Edward and Gaveston ignore the council and instead take their army into Scotland to bring the Bruce to heel and the barons back to their side. Such army as it was, for only Gloucester, Richmond and Surrey show up while the rest stay home. Bruce chooses not to fight, and retires into the highlands, destroying crops and taking his livestock with him. Edward’s army starves and has to retreat.

Isabella is summoned to Berwick to spend the long winter with her king and the only man who understands him.

Chapter 13

Her demoiselles have been banished for the night. Edward has informed her just that afternoon that he will visit her bedchamber tonight. This is the moment she has hoped for and dreaded, and she is as nervous as a new maid. She perspires, though it is midwinter. All that day she cannot catch her breath.

She wants to ask Isabelle de Vercy what she should do, but she cannot find the nerve. She supposes it is like going to your own execution, that same dread and nervous exhaustion. You can only hope the hangman knows what he is about.

A single candle burns at the end of the bed. The door inches open and Edward pulls back the furs and climbs into the bed beside her. She watches him remove his nightshirt and is suddenly hungered by the smooth bands of muscle and the leanness of him. He is beautiful.

She lies there and waits. He kisses her forehead and cheek and she feels his hand touch her breast through her nightshirt.

Outlandish thoughts tumble through her mind; she remembers seeing two horses do this. She had wondered at the length of the stallion. Will Edward be as mighty? Has a woman ever died during a coupling?

She likes him kissing her like this. She likes looking at him, and the warmth of his body. She hesitates, then puts a hand on his arm, then his shoulder.

He kisses her on the lips. She kisses him back, unsure if this is how it is done. His hand moves to her belly. A thought: what does he do with Gaveston?

Does he do this?

He pulls up her nightdress, forces her thighs apart. She is too terrified to move. He kisses her again. She wants to tell him he is beautiful, but she dare not. He rolls on top of her, kisses her neck and squeezes her breast.

His weight crushes her. She braces herself. But then he rolls off, gathers up his nightshirt and goes out.

The door opens again. He leans over her, kisses her once more and whispers that he is sorry and it is not her fault.

Then he goes out, slamming the door so hard it extinguishes the candle.

***

He is gloomy by the fire the next morning. He dips his bread in his wine and tears at it with his teeth. Gaveston makes space for her. He calls for a servant to bring her wine.

At first she thinks Edward is in bad spirits because of her.

“There is bad news from London,” Gaveston tells her. “Burstbelly died two nights ago, in Holborn.”

“The Earl of Lincoln is dead?”

“He was the last one who stood for me against the barons. As his father-in-law, Lancaster now inherits all his lands, and with those estates comes the largest standing army in the realm. Your uncle is now the most powerful man in England, next to me.”

They stare at the fire. A log burns through and flares briefly, crumbling into the grate.

Gaveston drains his cup and goes out.

“If he loved you, he would leave you,” she says.

“He loves me and that is why he will not leave me.”

“Does he mean more to you than your throne?”

“He means more to me than anything.”

She shivers inside her mantle. The morning is colder than any morning she remembers. She feels like crying but she will give no one in the world that satisfaction.