Harlot Queen

by Hilda Lewis

  ‘You have hanged yourself!’ Lancaster said.

  ‘He has hanged himself!’ Mortimer pulled at his finger joints; stiffness brought on by his sojourn in the Tower was beginning to trouble him. He pulled a paper from his pocket. ‘Kent’s letter to—whom do you think? To Maltravers—no less! Here—’ he tapped upon it with a jewelled hand, ‘is enough to hang a dozen men!’

  Kent had been taken at Winchester; now he must face Parliament there assembled; and the charge—high treason. He was not unduly troubled. Treason? To seek to release a brother wrongfully imprisoned; to restore a King driven from his throne? How could this be treason?

  The young King did not understand it, either.

  ‘Treason?’ he asked Lancaster. ‘How treason to release my father from unlawful prison? Treason against—whom? Against me? None! He is my father and I his dutiful son. Against his wish I would not keep the crown. Against Mortimer then? Mortimer is not King; treason against a subject—there’s no such thing!’

  ‘Yet still it is treason. Your father is dead!’ Lancaster told him. Kent stood before his peers gathered in judgment. He tried to explain, to make them understand a man’s duty to his brother, to his King. They listened with respect and they listened with grief—he was well-liked; but, for all that, his letters spoke the mischief he had not understood. He had sought to disrupt the state, to being about civil war, to put the freely-elected King from the throne. That he had not known all this was no justification. He was condemned to die.

  The trial had ended late; when Parliament rose at last Mortimer offered to carry the news to the King.

  ‘Keep this from your son, Madam,’ he told Isabella, ‘until it’s too late for him to interfere. We’ll run no risk of pardon. Before he wakes—Kent will be dead!’

  Lancaster tried to see the King—the boy must surely need some comfort: but, being told that he had gone to his bed, must leave the matter until morning.

  So it was that the King did not hear the news until next day; did not even know the trial had ended until Lancaster told him. It sent him hot-foot to his mother.

  ‘No!’ he cried out in horror. ‘No! What has my uncle done but show love for his brother and his King?’

  ‘Not his King. You are the King! she reminded him. ‘The King he pretends to serve is dead and he knows it. No! He meant to make trouble; trouble for you. He meant to put you from the throne and put himself in your place!’

  ‘I’ll not believe it. I’ll not allow him to die. I shall go to Parliament at once.’

  ‘Parliament’s dissolved; the most part of it gone home.’

  ‘I did not dissolve it.’

  ‘Your Council did.’

  ‘It had no right.’

  ‘It had the right. The Council may act without the King at need. There was need. You are young and your heart easily moved. The Council would not put so great a burden upon you.’

  ‘I will call the Council, set aside the judgment.’

  ‘Have you not learned what happens to Kings that flout Parliament and Council? Be satisfied that you can do nothing—the Council, also, has dispersed. But take this for your comfort; your uncle shall have an honourable death!’

  He saw his uncle’s handsome head bared to the axe—the handsome head so like his father’s. It was as if his father came again to his death.

  ‘I’ll not have him die. I’ll not have it!’ He struck palm against fist—the very gesture of great Edward.

  ‘Well, sir,’ she lied, ‘if you feel so deep in the matter you must have your way. When all’s said, you are the King. You may command both Council and Parliament. We ride for London later in the day.’

  ‘We start at once.’

  ‘It cannot be done. There’s much business before we leave. Nor is there need for haste; there’s time aplenty!’

  All day she kept him within doors beneath her eye lest he catch some whisper of what was toward. There was this document to sign and that; that matter and this for his consideration. He worked feverishly that he might be free to deal with the matter that lay upon his heart.

  And all that day Kent waited upon the scaffold. They had led him in the early morning to die. The scaffold stood ready but save for the man to die—empty. The executioner was not to be found; for what had the condemned man done but what any good man must do… if he have the courage?

  Morning gave way to noon, noon to evening. The March wind moved in the young leaves, moved in the young prisoner’s hair. It was hard to die when springtime stirred in the blood; to die for a crime that was no crime. Yet, patient he waited; patient and proud. And those that had come to see him die wept for him—so like the late King in his handsome looks, so fine, so noble. As the long minutes passed, it came to the prisoner sitting there that, let him speak the word and these people would rise and rescue him. In his slow mind he considered the matter. Speak he must not. He had been judged and by that judgment must abide. At last, night all-but fallen it came to him that to die for no wickedness was the act of a fool. He was about to speak to them that watched with him and wept, when he heard a hissing from the crowd; he lifted his eyes to the executioner. A prisoner, a base murderer had offered for the work on promise of release.

  Butcher’s work. The handsome Plantagenet head held high amid the groans of the people.

  Edmund of Kent noble in his dying that might so easily have saved himself. Great courage—and less common sense. It was his tragedy.

  XLII

  Isabella, that subtle woman, had been foolish, indeed. Her lies on the day of Kent’s death had set her son forever against her. His last lingering affection was gone; he would trust her never again. But the wound went deeper than his own personal hurt. The death of Kent—the haste and like manner of it—had been an insult to the throne. In this Lancaster and the King were of one accord; and Lancaster, alone, knew how grievous the hurt.

  The speed with which the prisoner had been hurried to his death—royal Kent—shocked the whole country. High and low grieved for him, waited with fear and anger for the Queen’s next move. For in this it was the Queen, the Queen to blame; she held the power. She had but to say the word to delay the execution, to enquire further into the matter. That word she had not said.

  The tide was rising steadily against Madam Queen Isabella and her lover.

  Murder. The cry rose louder, louder, louder. Edward of Carnarvon was dead; that they must believe. Lancaster, that honest man and leader of the Council, had proclaimed it. But… how had he died? And by whose hand? She that had hurried her husband’s brother to his death, good young Kent, was likely to make short work of her husband—she and her paramour! It had not been a natural death, it had been a martyr’s death; witness the unending miracles from the dead King’s tomb.

  ‘A saint—he!’ Isabella laughed; but her laughter had an uneasy ring. ‘If ever he got into heaven he’d corrupt the angels!’

  ‘They’d not interest him; they have not the where-withal!’ Mortimer said, gloomy. ‘By God your husband’s more nuisance dead than alive! No end to his miracles. For look you, a saint’s as potent as the philosopher’s stone to turn base metal to gold. And this the damned abbot at Gloucester knows better than most. He’ll not be in a hurry to lose his saint!’

  Certainly the good abbot knew how to turn his new saint into gold. From every part of England came the lame and the halt. And why not? A blind man had seen the dead King in a blaze of light and the light had forever cured his darkness. A housewife had lost a silver piece; a voice from the tomb had told her where it might be found. A dead child had stirred in its coffin, had risen and walked. No miracle too great or too small.

  Gloucester had become a place of pilgrimage; any man with a room or a bed or even a place upon the bare floor could command his price. The town grew in prosperity, the cathedral in wealth and beauty.

  Edward more useful dead than alive.

  ‘We must make out own pilgrimage,’ Mortimer said, sour. ‘It would look ill if we did not.’

&n
bsp; ‘Before God, no!’ she crossed herself. ‘I’ve not forgot the funeral. I expected, every moment, the effigy to bleed at the sight of us. I’ll not risk a second time. My son has commanded a fine tomb. Let that suffice.’

  ‘By God, your son takes too much upon himself! He asked no leave.’

  ‘He needs none. He is the King. And, besides, who would question such piety? Mortimer, Mortimer, my son grows in stature; old men and women say he grows like his grandfather, that indomitable man! When I consider the future, I am troubled; I am troubled, dear love—and chiefly because of you. Show him some respect; it shall serve us well!’

  ‘Respect! the boy’s scarce dry behind the ears. You make an old woman of yourself—you and your fears!’

  He saw the flush spread under the paint; and, since she still held power, said quickly, ‘But for all that there’s none can hold a candle to you!’ He flung out his arms in a yawn, ‘Come love to bed!’ And saw the raddled face brighten.

  The young King felt his manhood strong within him. He was not only a King; he was to be a father. To hand on the crown strong and secure, was his plain duty. Eighteen. It was young, Lancaster thought, but not too young. The boy had a strength within him. It was true what they said—he was less his father’s son than grandson to great Edward.

  The tide that had been steadily rising came in with a rush. And now it was not only the common people, it was the princes of England, church and state, it was Parliament; but for all that they must speak in whispers, work in secret. Madam Queen Isabella and Mortimer, already uneasy, would be tigers to defend their ill-got power. Kent had been hurried to his death; why should they spare any other—Lancaster or Norfolk, or indeed Edward himself? They had thrust one King down into the grave, why not another?

  The first step was to crown the King’s wife, to set her image in the public eye, equal at least, in dignity to the King’s mother.

  ‘Sirs’, Lancaster told Parliament, ‘soon by God’s grace the King’s son shall be born. It is not fitting his mother should go uncrowned; already the matter has been too-long delayed.’

  It was a crowning long due, Parliament agreed. But where was the money to be found?

  ‘There’s money found for all else!’ And they knew to whose extravagance Lancaster referred. ‘There must be money found for this, also!’

  The last day in February, in the year of grace thirteen hundred and thirty the King’s summons went out; it commanded his well-loved princes and prelates,

  to appear to do their customary duties in the coronation of our dearest Queen Philippa, which takes place, if God be willing, the Sunday next to the feast of St Peter in the cathedral of Westminster.

  It was not a magnificent affair. There was little in the Treasury and less in the Wardrobe. They were so poor, the young King and Queen, they had scarce enough to meet the modest demands of their daily life. Isabella was not ill-pleased at the meagreness of the crowning; everything that took from the dignity of the young Queen must add to her own.

  She had reckoned without the girl herself—Philippa, great with England’s heir, and her own incomparable dignity. So young, so moving in her pregnancy, there was a joyousness about her, a sweetness, a patience. Her known kindness, her clear honesty gave hope for the future; England had suffered too much under a bad Queen!

  Isabella, handsomely gowned, ablaze with jewels, high-painted into beauty must yet take second place. She longed to weep; to weep for grief, for anger, for the injustice of this eclipsing of her glory. Once she had knelt in that very place where now her son’s wife knelt, sat upon that very throne, bent her head to that same diadem. She, too, had made her vows; vows as good as those of the clumsy young creature kneeling now. Twenty-one years. In a flash… gone.

  She shut her eyes against the young Queen… Bitter, bitter beyond enduring to see another in her own place.

  The words of the great ceremony fell upon deaf ears; she listened, instead to the words of her own thoughts.

  … She sits in my place; she has everything. She has the crown. She has a proper man for husband—more than ever I had! She’s great with England’s heir. Yet she’s not half the woman I was… or am; or am! Where’s the wit, the ambition, the daring? Where the beauty? Honest she may be; kindly and trustworthy—these things one looks for in a servant! For all her breeding a peasant! Yet my son looks at her as though that body of hers held the beauty of all women…

  It came to her with bitterness that, for all her own beauty, no man had ever looked at her like that. Her husband had insulted her womanhood. To her young knight of Hainault she had not been a woman of flesh and blood; she had been his lady, some disembodied spirit of chivalry. She had for her lover the most magnificent man in England; but it was she that had made him magnificent… and he was an unkind lover.

  Her eye came back to the girl on the throne… the peasant! She longed to shake her, shake her, shake her; to send the crown ridiculously toppling over her nose, to show her up for the figure-of-fun she was with her fat face and her heavy breasts, and the swollen belly. Yet the girl, she must admit it, was a dutiful daughter-in-law. There had been that large dowry, now regrettably spent. The girl might well have complained; but not a word. Not a word, either, about the Queen’s dues kept in her mother-in-law’s hands. And she behaved well whenever they met—courtesy from son’s wife to his mother. But there was little warmth in it; her son’s wife did not seek her company. As she grew older—and not so much older either—the creature would grow heavier, duller, lose what looks she had. Let her look to it that her husband’s eyes did not stray—the Plantagenets were not known for their virtue, the Capets still less. Yet she would take it all as it came; shrug off his lapses—not in weakness but with her peasant’s strength. Year by year she would produce his children. Always he would come back to her. Her respect would strengthen him, her affection steady him; commonplace, she would be his mainstay, his way of life.

  She sighed, in spite of her contempt envying Philippa.

  A simple crowning, a simple feast; and then to Woodstock to await the birth of the child. Here Parliament followed them; and here the King talked often and secretly with his cousin of Lancaster. The time was almost ripe; discontent festered throughout the land. But, for all that, they must wait until the Queen was safe-delivered; the King would not have her disturbed though the plot worked in him like yeast. His first thought was for her. He walked with her, talked with her, plucked her summer posies with his own hand; he offered up masses that the child might be a son; he gave alms, he prayed night and day for her safe delivery.

  The child was born at Woodstock in mid-June. It was the longed for boy, handsome and well-made. ‘We shall call him Edward—the fourth Edward!’ the King said. But no man may foresee the future; this child was to die in young manhood, die before his father.

  ‘She feeds him at her own breast!’ Isabella told Mortimer, winged brows lifted in disgust. ‘A Queen to behave like an animal!’

  ‘All women are animals—queens and peasants alike!’

  ‘It is you men make us so!’ she said quick and angry.

  ‘I’ve seen no unwillingness in you!’ he smiled into her face.

  Madam Queen Isabella might think a Queen too fine for such work but the country adored the young mother. Humble women suckling their babes felt kinship with the Queen. Painters chose her for their Madonna; her serene face smiled down in many a church.

  When he looked upon his son the King was more than ever aware of his manhood. Now when he sat with Lancaster, the Queen made a third in their secret talk; this quiet girl, Lancaster found, wielded power over her passionate impatient husband. Their plans were maturing; peers and bishops in ever-growing number came in to the King. Lancaster’s spies reported that the country waited for the word. To lull any suspicion on the part of an uneasy Isabella and Mortimer, the King proclaimed a great tournament to honour the Queen upon the birth of his son—an opportunity to gather, without undue suspicion, knights-in-arms; to assess their virtue
in the field and the strength of their following. At Chepeside stands were erected, tier upon tier, with an enclosure for the Queen and her ladies.

  It was long since Londoners had seen offered so fine a sight; the country was so poor, so sick at heart. Long, too, since they had set eyes on their young Queen; not, indeed, since she had gone into the country for the birth of her child. All this time there had been no court and no Parliament, now both were to return; trade would prosper once more in London. Now London was to see its Queen again—the Queen that had given the country its prince. After the hardships endured at the hands of the bad Queen and her lover, she brought hope of better times. It was said of her that, poor as she was—because of those accursed two—no poor man ever went empty from her presence. No wonder the King treasured her as the apple of his eye. It was said also—whispered very low—that he’d not put up much longer with the state of affairs. With such a King and such a Queen the bad times must surely come to an end.

  The tourney was set to begin, every seat taken; yet more and more folk thrust their way through the tiers fighting, pushing, being in turn pushed and fought; the seats creaked beneath a weight they had never been built to hold.

  With a flourish of trumpets the King and Queen entered. The summoning notes, the sight of the young couple they had not seen for so long, stirred the crowd to madness. They stood upon their seats screaming and stamping; the stamping was the last straw. With a crash the scaffolding gave way. Amid a litter of broken wood folk lay upon the ground groaning, shrieking, struggling to rise. Some would never rise again; for over their bodies, frantic to escape, crowds surged in all directions. Amid flying timber, men and women fought with fists and feet, with sticks and pieces of jagged wood.

  The King, arm about the Queen, saw it coming, the heavy beam. Even as he pulled her away, the jagged end crashed; down she went like a stone. He lifted her in his arms; he saw the white coif take the red stain. Himself, maddened, he fought his way treading upon those that blocked his path.