Isabella- She-wolf of France

by Georgiana Grier

  25 September 1326

  Suffolk, England

  9:54 PM

  Edward of Windsor is still musing with his Uncle Edmund over several jugs of wine. Neither of them, have yet to set foot on English soil.

  “The king takes an oath,” Edward said.

  Edmund moved the flagon of wine so that it was closer to Edward. Edward raised it to his lips and swallowed.

  “Yes,” Edmund concurred.

  “First, that the Church of God and the whole Christian people shall have true peace at all times by our judgment; second, that I will forbid extortion and all kinds of wrongdoing to all orders of men; third, that I will enjoin equity and mercy in all judgments,’” Edward recited. “It’s a solemn oath. It must not be broken.”

  Edmund was uncomfortable. He had not entered the cabin of Edward of Windsor expecting a philosophical discussion on the requirements of either marriage or kingship. One married, certainly, one did one’s duty, which was to sire an heir.

  Fidelity was for women; one must, after all, be sure that the sons she bore were the fruit of the father to whom she was wed.

  Loyalty, whether of a noble to the king or of the king to his realm, was less ambiguous. At least, it had been less ambiguous until the barons, sniffing power like hounds on the hunt, detected the weakness of

  Edward II and mounted a challenge. Fealty was not supposed to be violated. But kings were not supposed to put favourites in positions of power that threatened the stability of the realm.

  Nobles, also, were supposed to remain faithful to their vows of fealty, Edmund realised with a twinge of discomfort.

  He had pledged his loyalty to his half-brother in good faith. But he was not the first one to find those oaths too constricting.

  The barons of another Plantagenet had forced a Plantagenet king to recognise the limits of his power.

  At Runnymede, King John, the great-great-grandfather of Edward of Windsor, fuming in his fury, had signed the Magna Carta, acknowledging that with kingship came the responsibility of leadership. God’s anointed he was in truth, but that did not justify tyranny. Those memories were ingrained in the subsequent Plantagenets, and Edward I knew the lessons his forefathers had learned.

  Edward II was not the king or the man that his father had been.

  It remained to be seen whether Edward of Windsor would adopt his grandfather’s style of leadership or not.

  There had been family discord in the Plantagenet line even back then.

  Henry III, the father of Edward I, had battled a powerful baron, his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort. But he was defeated and taken prisoner. However Edward I had escaped, and eventually, de Montfort was defeated in battle and deprived of his head.

  Grandfather Edward had been young, but capable of ruthlessness when circumstances required it, but he had also been fond of his father. He had not overthrown the ineffectual King Henry III, despite external pressures. When his father died, Edward I’s grief had been so great that he could not even mourn the loss of two sons, one of them the heir, who had died at the same time.

  Edward I had explained his reactions by saying that a man could make more sons, but he had only one father.

  A man had only one father.

  The Prince rubbed his eyes and quickly drew the flagon of wine to his lips before the evidence of his weakness could be seen.

  “Drink with me, uncle,” he said. “A toast. Propose a toast.”

  Obediently, Edmund poured wine into another cup, this one not so splendid as the one from which Edward of Windsor drank. But it was splendid enough for a man who was half-brother to the king, and Edmund did not begrudge his nephew the magnificence of his drinking vessels.

  Edmund hesitated. Edward of Windsor was in a very peculiar mood, and those born to kingship were precarious in their tempers, particularly those of the Plantagenet line. Edward of Windsor already seemed more like his redoubtable grandfather, Edward I, than his feckless father, Edward II. It was unwise to venture too far from the shores of safety when in the company of kings.

  “To England, Your Grace,” Edmund proposed, raising his flagon. “To England, and to the puissance of those who rule her.”

  Edward drained his wine in a single draught.

  “To England!” he toasted.

  29 September 1326

  Bury St. Edmunds, England

  10:12 AM

  The queen’s arrival is a triumph, as she is greeted by English lords and members of the clergy who are reassured by her promise to restore a rightful order to the realm. Her son is the most convincing evidence of her intentions; Edward II cannot rule, but his son can assume the throne.

  “Invite the lords to come and meet with us tomorrow,” Isabella directed. “We must assure them of the honour of our intentions and that we have come for the sole purpose of righting the wrongs that have been done by the Despensers. We will not rest until the Despensers are removed from power.”

  Her messenger bowed.

  “What about the King?” Mortimer asked when they were alone.

  “I did not expect so large an assembly,” Isabella said, as if he had not spoken.

  “They say the resistance is growing. Perhaps tomorrow’s representatives will be an even greater force. The more we draw to our side, the greater our chance for success. To think that even the Church views our cause as just is truly astounding.”

  Mortimer watched her, fascinated by her beauty. She was no longer a young woman; but her mature beauty made her all the more alluring because she was a woman of passion.

  She was a queen, but when he possessed her in the hungry intimacy that made their union still so ardent, she longed to be mastered.

  He had never shared his bed with such a woman. Of course, he reminded himself, he had never bedded a queen before.

  What a fool Edward was, to give his paltry love to a man when Isabella offered such dazzling lust, surrendering all that she was to him, seeking only the sating of his pleasure, matching him appetite for appetite, craving for craving, as long as they were together.

  Had she been this way with Edward, Mortimer wondered, or had the King’s flagging affection for his wife moulded her into a woman who was a royal temptress?

  Had she loved her husband in the beginning? He supposed she had; women sought love the way parched flowers sought rain. They deluded themselves into thinking that love made them whole. In truth, love merely turned them into minions, disguising the nature of their power. They failed to recognise it. But it was just as well that they were blind to their own strengths, he reasoned. Else they would rule the world.

  He chuckled at the thought of the world order and how it would be turned on its head if a woman were ever allowed to match a man in rank or influence. No, it was better to keep women occupied with their rightful station in life, their bellies full with their husbands’ seed, their mirrors their constant companions as they strove to retain their beauty, and thus, their husbands’ fidelity.

  Women failed to realise that men were not faithful by nature. Some, it was true, managed it, but most did not, unless they had a purpose.

  Women were jealous and petty, and if a woman, even a queen, felt that her beloved sought another, she would never forgive him.

  Edward was Isabella’s enemy because he had replaced her with another; that he had chosen a man to receive his affection was an insult to his queen, and she would never forgive the slight to her sex. A woman who lost her husband to another man was a mockery.

  “What about the King?” Mortimer repeated.

  Rising from the bed, he strolled to the chair where Isabella sat in front of a large mirror, brushing her lustrous hair. He took the brush from her hand and began to draw it thorough her tresses in slow, deliberate waves.

  “A servant should be doing this,” he commented as he watched her reflection in the glass. Her eyes were closed as if he were caressing her.

  “I would rather not have a servant in here with us,” she replied.

  M
ortimer bent low and kissed her bare neck. Her maids had undressed her for bed, and in her white nightgown, she looked as innocent as a bride.

  But she had dismissed the maids before he entered the room, and he could sense her desire for him. There was no purpose for such foolish circumspection, he could have told her; every royal court in Europe knew that the Queen of England had forsaken her vows and her husband and that Roger Mortimer was her lover.

  “What about the King?” he asked again. “You spoke earlier of the Despensers, but you said nothing about the King.”

  Her lovely eyes met his gaze.

  “Of course I did,” she argued. “I said that we were here to restore order to the kingdom. Edward is king.”

  “You will need to be more specific than that, my love,” he told her. Sinking to his knees, he looked up at her as if he were a supplicant. “You are so beautiful. Whatever do you find in me that lets me enter your bedchamber as if I belong there? I am not a king or even a prince. I am but a Marcher lord, a wildling like the rest of them.”

  The Queen bent low from her chair.

  “You are my love,” she returned, her voice throbbing with the intensity of her emotion. “To me, you are the king, and I your humble maidservant.”

  She lowered her mouth to his for the kiss that she knew awaited her. Their lips met; Mortimer rose to his knees so that he could hold her in his arms. She liked to be overpowered, he had noticed. His arms, the limbs of a man who had spent his life in the arts of war, mastering swordplay and jousting, were strong, and when he held her, she submitted to his power.

  “What about the King?” he asked again, his embrace almost punishing as he held her petite body in his mighty arms. “What about the King?”

  His hands knew where to touch her, the wetness between her legs already staining his fingers. She moaned with the pleasure of his sublime knowledge.

  “The King doesn’t matter, my love,” she said. “There is only us.”

  He pushed his thick finger more deeply between her bush, letting her body swallow it whole. She moaned.

  “But there must be a king,” Mortimer murmured.

  He knew that she was at the point where words were an intrusion. She didn’t want to hear words. All she wanted was the vigour of his lovemaking and the consuming passion of their union.

  “My Queen, there must be a king.”

  He withdrew his hand and she moaned in protest. Without pausing he licked his fingers clean, then fastened his lips against her, forcing her to sample her love juices. Soon she was left breathless.

  He moved back and started unlacing the ribbons of her nightgown.

  “Unless,” he continued as if the thought were new to him, “unless a queen rules in place of a king.”

  “Yes . . . ” she agreed breathlessly, her love pearl throbbing from his caresses.

  “But the Queen must make a public showing,” Mortimer observed. “She must appear before her subjects as if there were no king.”

  Isabella made acquiescent sounds, but he knew she was past the ability to hear what he said.

  His thick finger had restarted its exploration and now he was using it as a substitute for his hard member. The Queen moaned and threw back her head, soon she would reach the pinnacle of her pleasure.

  It was better this way. He liked taking her afterwards, and imagining that she was naught but a wanton serving wench.

  A wench whose sole purpose was to feel him member pump hard in her quim until he emptied himself deep within her. His shaft hardened at the thought.

  He decided not to wait, but instead removed his breeches and guided his hard member to the entrance that was so willingly being offered to him. He pinch her pleasure pearl simultaneously as he entered her in one hard trust. He could feel her convulsing around him.

  She would agree to whatever he suggested, as she always did, especially during bedsport, and she would be guided by him.

  He started thrusting in and out, slowly at first then with all the vigour of a man who knows he is marching towards victory.

  The Queen would rule. He pumped harder.

  But the Queen would be ruled by him.

  He held her hips still as he re-established who was the conquered and who was doing the conquering.

  He started thrusting relentlessly, with the vigour of a man half his age. Her flesh yielded to his onslaught, her wetness, announced her willing surrender.

  Yes, he would rule her on her royal throne just like he ruled her in her royal bed.

  He did not stop to wonder, why since the start of their liaison he’d had no appetite for any other. Had he, he would have realised that Isabella was not the only prisoner of love and passion in the room.

  He roared his satisfaction as he emptied himself deep inside her.

  29 September, 1326

  Bury St. Edmunds, England

  10:58 AM

  Lady Marguerite Dumont walked discreetly back to the chamber she shared with two other ladies-in-waiting in the castle quarters. She was well aware of the Queens dalliance, but it was not for her to judge. Queen Isabella had chosen her ladies-in-waiting with discernment. Each and every one of them were loyal only to her – loyal to the death.

  As for her household, the punishment for confirming her infidelity or spreading the word was either death or the cutting out of the tongue. She had already proven her resolve in this matter. No one would ever dare gossip of the goings-on.

  That being said, it was Marguerite’s and the other ladies’ duty to ensure that no one came upon the two lovers in flagrant délit.

  29 September 1326

  Bury St. Edmunds, England

  7:12 PM

  Prince Edward of Windsor was in another part of the castle, far from his mother’s private quarters and for that he was grateful. He had barely made it through dinner. The need to put Mortimer in his place had ridden him hard,

  “Shall I send for a girl, Your Grace?” the servant asked as he finished preparing Prince Edward’s bed.

  Edward shook his head. He was a Plantagenet and a prince, and he was no innocent.

  He realised that his arrival on English shores again, with an army at his back, meant that he was regarded differently now. He was not viewed merely as a prince, as the heir of the king who would one day rule over England, as his father and forefathers had done.

  He was being treated as if he were the king himself already, and a man whose desires must be assuaged, whether it was a matter of procuring a woman for the night or a kingdom for a lifetime.

  “No,” he replied as the servant pulled back the gold-threaded coverlet on the bed. “I would sleep alone tonight. It has been a long day.”

  29 September 1326

  London, England

  8:32 PM

  The residential quarters of the Tower of London

  Learning that a London mob has killed his officials and freed the prisoners, King Edward reluctantly agrees to flee west so that he can raise an army to fight his rebellious queen. He is unable to recognise the signs that he is on the way to losing his kingdom; the Despensers force him to face the fact that he is king in name only and that his life is in danger.

  “She made a pilgrimage to Bury St. Edmunds!” Edward raged, pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace, his robes swirling around his long legs like miniature acolytes striving to keep up with his movements.

  Bury St. Edmunds, one of the most sacred shrines in England, the abbey where King Edmund was buried after the pagan Danes had killed him, was the site of miracles performed in the name of the slain monarch. “She mocks me, and she mocks the Holy Church with her treason!”

  “Have a care, Sire,” said Hugh the Younger, lounging indolently upon the King’s chair. They were alone, and Edward did not stand on ceremony when there were no onlookers. In fact, he did not stand on ceremony even when others were present, but Hugh did not sit on the throne in the presence of others. He was well aware of the enmity that the King’s nobles had against him. He sat on th
e throne now with Edward’s full consent.

  “Your garments will get caught in the flames.”

  “She appeared as a widow! If she were here before me now, I would crush her in my teeth if I had no other way to destroy her! A widow! As if I were dead. I am not dead. I am the King! Hugh, she wishes me dead!”

  “She is a trollop,” Hugh said. “She is an adulteress and a harlot, the plaything of Roger Mortimer. She may be the daughter of a king, but she is as common as a tavern wench.”

  “She may be all of those things, but she has an army! I sent for two thousand men to guard the coast; less than one hundred showed up to do my bidding! My own half-brother Edmund has joined her! Henry Lancaster has joined her. Members of the clergy met her when she arrived! She spoke to them as if she had a right to do so! Do you not understand, Hugh? She seeks my crown.”

  “She is a woman, Edward,” Hugh said in a sharp tone as he called the king by his name, something he did only in private moments. “She cannot rule in your stead. Why should you fear?”

  “She has my son with her. Do you not understand? My son is my heir. Through his veins runs Plantagenet blood. Royal blood. He will be the king when I am gone. By appearing in mourning, she shows England that she regards herself as a widowed queen without a husband.”

  “But you have outlawed them both! Why are you fretting over these futile shows of force? England will never bend its knee to a woman, especially a French woman, queen or not.”

  “Do you not understand? My son is in her power; she can do what she likes in his name. And that traitor Mortimer will rule them both! I knew his bent when I sentenced him to the Tower for his arrogance! I should have ordered his execution as soon as I had him in my grasp.”