Isabella, Queen Without a Conscience

by Rachel Bard

  “Perhaps she’s too busy, or perhaps she’s forgetting about her children that she deserted.”

  “I don’t think she’d forget about me. When she said goodbye she told me that she loved me and would always keep in touch even though she was forced to leave me.”

  “That may be what she told you, but it’s time you faced it the facts, my lord King. When she found out she wasn’t going to be able to queen it over the good men your father had appointed as your council she decided she’d rather go back to Angoulême where she could do as she pleased. She didn’t mind giving up her children. She’s been making trouble ever since.”

  I didn’t believe him but I’d learned there was no point in arguing with Sir Hubert.

  “Well, at least she’s written this time. I hope she says she’s coming for my crowning.”

  “She doesn’t. You aren’t going to like what you read there.”

  “Do you mean you’ve already read it?”

  “Of course. The council always reads any letters that come to you. We must be on the lookout for anything that affects your safety and England’s.”

  “Do you read the letters I send too?”

  “We do.”

  I’d been suspecting something like this. The council had been neither sending my letters to my mother nor giving me hers. Hence the silence.

  There wasn’t a single thing I could do about it, though, until I figured out a way to stand up to Sir Hubert. One of these days I would. Meantime, I spoke as coldly as I could.

  “Please give me the letter. You may leave me now.”

  “Very well. The council has given some thought to a reply. We’ll wait on you in an hour to get your approval.” Out he stamped.

  I sat down and spread out the parchment.

  My beloved son: After the death of Aymer of Taillefer and that of Hugh IX of Lusignan, Count of la Marche, the present lord of Lusignan and of Poitou, Hugh X, found himself without children. His counselors advised him not to marry your sister, she being too young, and to choose a bride in France who could provide him with an heir. If he should do so all your land in Poitou and Gascony, and ours too, would be lost. We therefore, seeing the great danger that might arise if such a marriage should take place, and getting no support from your counselors, have taken the said Hugh, Count of La Marche, to be our lord and husband. God knows that we have taken this action more for your advantage than for our own. Your loving mother, Isabella, Queen of England

  The letter was so formal and cold. I was sure it had been written more for the council’s eyes than for mine. I stared at it, trying to take in the fact that my mother had married some Frenchman. Then I noticed that the bottom of the page seemed to have been torn off. I guessed at once that my mother had added a personal note, and someone on the council hadn’t wanted me to see it. I wondered if I should complain about that. I read the letter again, then tried to concentrate on my Latin lesson without much success.

  When I heard shouting and singing, I jumped up and ran to the window that looked out over the river with its constant stream of waterborne traffic. A procession of three gaily decorated boats was floating slowly downstream—slowly, I saw, because the oarsmen were busier passing the jug about than they were in using their oars. Each boat was crammed with merrymakers, decked out in their finest, singing loudly and discordantly and tossing flowers onto the water. Then I remembered that it was Mayday, the Feast of Saints Philip and James. This was when the English celebrated the beginning of summer. I wished that I could go boating too. But I couldn’t imagine Sir Hubert agreeing to such a frivolous wish. I sighed and went back to my Latin.

  The council arrived at the appointed time. Besides Sir Hubert there were my uncle, William of Salisbury; my guardian, Bishop Peter of Winchester; the papal legate Pandulfo; and several others. I knew all these important men well by now, especially Bishop Peter, who oversaw my lessons. Except for Sir Hubert I liked and trusted them.

  The legate Pandulfo had taken over the regency of England from William Marshal. He was the senior member of the council. I’d liked Gualo, the legate before him, better. He was jollier. But Pandulfo and I got along all right. He was sour and not very chatty, but at least he was respectful and didn’t treat me like a child. Furthermore, he wasn’t huge and intimidating like Sir Hubert. In fact he was quite short.

  Pandulfo showed me the letter they wanted me to sign.

  It wasn’t very long. It was addressed to Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, and to Isabella, Countess of Angoulême. In the council’s words, I told them that I approved of the marriage. I hoped it would prove mutually beneficial to England and to them, as custodians of lands under English sovereignty. Finally, I requested that they send my sister Joanna back to England. Since she had been destined to marry Hugh de Lusignan, some other alliance would now have to be arranged.

  I sat at the table looking at the parchment, wishing there were some way I could add a few words. I wanted to tell my mother I hoped she was well and that she was happy in her new marriage. I wanted to tell her I was sorry she wouldn’t be at my coronation. I wanted to tell her I missed her.

  In the silence, someone coughed. It was Sir Hubert, standing right behind me. “Is there some difficulty with signing the letter, King Henry? Do you see some errors in the Latin?”

  Without answering I picked up the quill pen, dipped it in the inkwell and signed my name: Henry Rex Anglorum.

  He snatched the parchment up with a curt “Thank you, my lord King.” Ignoring him, I addressed Pandulfo.

  “My lord Pandulfo, will you please tell me whom the council is considering to be the husband of my sister Joanna?”

  “Certainly. We believe it will be most advantageous to marry her to Alexander II, King of the Scots. That will mean peace along our northern borders. We hope shortly to arrange a meeting between you and King Alexander.”

  At the name Alexander I remembered something that happened when I was about three. I heard my father complaining to somebody about “that little red fox, King Alexander, who’s nipping at our heels along the border.” For several years I’d thought there was a king up in Scotland who was a fox. I’d wondered if he had a bushy tail. Now I was almost sorry I was going to meet him and find it wasn’t true.

  First, though, there’d be the coronation.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, had explained to me why I was to have a second coronation.

  “When you were crowned at Gloucester just after your father died, my lord King, we had to do it so quickly that the ceremony didn’t have all the proper ritual. The Pope has decreed that you should be recrowned. He wants it to be done ‘with due solemnity, according to the custom of the realm and in the place which usage of the kingdom requires.’ That means at Westminster.”

  I looked forward to it. At my first crowning I’d been only nine and hardly aware of what was happening. Now that I was four years older I was getting quite used to the ceremonies that went with being a king.

  Archbishop Stephen also summarized for me the order of the ritual. I’d march into the church behind him, the bishops and abbots and followed by the council and the nobles. I’d stand before the altar and swear an oath to protect the church of God, to preserve the peace of both clergy and people and the good laws of the realm.

  “Then I will anoint your head with holy oil. I’ll hand you the seal and insignia of royal office, and place on your head the crown of the most holy King Edward.” That was King Edward the Confessor, one of my earliest ancestors and the king who had built the first abbey church at Westminster.

  Then there’d be a prayer, the organ would play the Te Deum and we’d all march out.

  It went just as he’d said. When the archbishop placed King Edward’s crown, heavy with gold and jewels, on my head I felt that now I was truly King of England.

  Much later I read what the chronicler had written about my coronation:

  And this crowning of the King was done with such great peacefulness and splendour,
that the oldest men among the nobles of England who were present asserted that they never remembered any of his predecessors being crowned amid such concord and tranquillity.

  Walter of Coventry

  Unfortunately, though concord and tranquillity were widespread in England now, they didn’t prevail in all of my domains. There was trouble in Aquitaine.

  First, my mother said she wouldn’t send Joanna back until the council gave her and her new husband the dowry lands promised to her when she married my father. She also asked for the inheritance due her as the widow of King John. My counselors replied that they wouldn’t send the money or give up the lands until Joanna was returned, and Hugh and Isabella gave up their claim to Saintonge and Oléron. These lands had been granted to Hugh as surety for Joanna’s dowry when they were betrothed.

  It was all very complicated. I did my best to understand what went on at the council meetings. It helped when I could ask questions of Bishop Peter afterwards. I signed a great many letters, including one to the Pope and his cardinals. In it I asked that Hugh be compelled to right the wrongs he had done to me, because “regardless of his plighted vow, he has taken our mother to wife instead of our sister and now refuses to give our sister back to us, wishing by his detention of her to compel us to buy her back.”

  I didn’t mind signing that. I was sure that Hugh, not my mother, was responsible for all this trouble.

  But it took a while for the muddle to get sorted out. The Pope threatened to excommunicate Hugh. Both sides met to try to sort out their claims. Finally they had to call in the Preceptor of the Temple in London to arbitrate. At last it was resolved. Joanna came back to England. Hugh and my mother gave up their claims to Saintonge and Oléron. My mother received her dower lands and her inheritance.

  Thanks to all this I began to see that being a king involved much more than wearing a crown and receiving cheers from one’s subjects. Very soon, I thought, I’d speak up more in council meetings.

  I was glad to see Joanna again. Hortense, the mother of Joanna’s playmate Elizabeth, was now officially Joanna’s lady in waiting. Hortense brought my sister up to my rooms in Winchester Palace. We stared at each other, getting used to the differences that two years can make. Joanna was ten now. Like me, she was finding out at an early age what princes and princesses are obliged to do.

  “You’ve gotten taller,” I said.

  She took this as a compliment. “Thank you.”

  She was prettier too, and I told her so. She blushed a little. She was doing her best to act grown-up. I expect it helps one to mature to be engaged to a thirty-one-year-old French count at the age of four, to have that engagement broken off at ten, and to be instantly promised to a twenty-three-year-old Scottish king.

  “Did my mother send any message to me?” I asked.

  “Yes, she said to tell you she loved you, and she is very pleased that you and your council have resolved your differences with her and Sir Hugh.”

  “Do you think she’ll ever come back to see us? Will she come to your wedding?”

  “I doubt it. But she said I was to tell you to take me under your care until I’m married.”

  “I’ll do that. You’ll stay with me here at Winchester, or wherever I am, and I’ll travel with you when you go to meet King Alexander.”

  Still, I wasn’t sure whether marrying a little red fox up there in the wilds of Scotland was the best future for her.

  Chapter 52

  Isabella

  1220-1225

  It was hard to say goodbye to Joanna. I only hoped that at ten, she felt secure in my love. That would give her strength when she returned to the land of her birth, where Henry’s council would doubtless dispose of her in the manner they thought most advantageous. In November of 1220, I could put it off no longer. She had to go.

  “You must be sure to tell Henry and Richard and your two little sisters that I send them my love,” I told her. “And tell Henry that I depend on him to keep you safe and well.”

  “I will, mother.”

  We were in the bailey at Lusignan, where Hugh and I had come after our marriage in April. Joanna was already in the saddle. So was Hugh, who was to take her to La Rochelle and deliver her to her English escorts. So were the rest of the party—Lady Hortense, her daughter Elizabeth and six of Hugh’s knights. Everybody was thoroughly cloaked and hooded against the cold. An early snowfall had blanketed everything with a soft white coat, hiding all the mud and making little white mountains out of haystacks and woodpiles. I looked up at Joanna’s small figure through a gauzy curtain of gently falling snowflakes. I felt she was already receding from me into her unknown future. It was perfectly quiet except for the muted jangle of the riders’ harness. I heard the bells of the village church toll eleven. As though that were a signal, Hugh waved, wheeled his horse and led the riders out through the gate.

  Watching them disappear in the swirling snow, I felt very tired, as though I’d come to the end of one long journey and needed to catch my breath before setting out on the next. All the children of my marriage to John were now out of my life, except for whatever ties I could manage to maintain from this great distance. I would need to maintain ties to Henry, certainly. Not only was he my firstborn and best-loved son, but also as King of England he was our overlord for all our lands in Aquitaine.

  As I went back into the castle, though, England seemed very far away. I was beginning my new life, the next stage of the journey. I was expecting my first child by my new husband.

  Marriage to Hugh had already proved vastly different from marriage to John. I’d never felt that John saw me as his equal, even during our first years when we were infatuated with each other and he would do anything for me. Increasingly he’d treated me not as a partner but as a subject—and finally as a victim. I still shuddered when I thought how filled with anger and discord our last years had been.

  I’d resolved never to let that happen to me again.

  Hugh and I married out of prudence, not passion. We saw no other way for both of us to keep a firm hold on our possessions. We knew we’d have to work together against those who would deprive us of our domains. We were both well past the age of youthful illusions about love matches. So it was a surprise to find how compatible we could be not only in the council chamber but in the bedchamber as well. Our marriage proved extremely satisfying. It was also remarkably fruitful.

  Our first child was born in January 1221. His father expected a son and was given one.

  “Well done, my dear!” he said when he came into my chamber after Lady Anne gave him the good news. We were at Angoulême. I’d wanted to have the child there. I thought it would be a sign to my people that I hadn’t deserted them for the Lusignans.

  “And you look none the worse. In fact, you are positively blooming. And so is this young man.” The nurse had handed him the well-swaddled infant. “We’ll call him Hugh, won’t we? Hugh the Eleventh, Count of La Marche and Angoulême. How does that sound, my son?” The baby kicked and squawked. Hugh gave him hastily back to the nurse. Hugh was new to fatherhood, while motherhood was an old story for me.

  When little Hugh was not yet two and I was well into another pregnancy, his father decided it was time to talk about his son’s future.

  We’d gone out to take the air, and were strolling along the winding brick walk through the rose gardens at the palace in Angoulême. I tired quickly these days. I sank down on the bench near the fountain. Even now, so many years later, this spot reminded me of Hugh le Brun. Here was where we’d exchanged a chaste farewell kiss that led to John’s first attack on me for supposed infidelity. And here, six years later, we’d sat during the long summer evenings of that stolen week when we were so briefly lovers. Bittersweet memories, fading fast.

  My husband’s voice roused me. He was standing, arms akimbo, gazing at the fountain and musing about the prospects of the latest Hugh.

  “He should be able to command a princess as his bride. What do you think, Queen Isabella?” He knew
I liked it when he gave me my title, even though I suspected a bit of irony.

  “I agree completely, but from what I hear eligible princesses are in rather short supply these days.”

  He grinned. He’d told me how he and his advisers had tried in vain to come up with a suitable princess for him to marry if he gave up his betrothal to Joanna.

  “We do have a few years to make this decision, Hugh.”

  “True. Nevertheless, my love, I think I’ll ask Bishop Etienne to start some subtle inquiries. While he’s at it he could ask about young princes. I feel our next child will be a daughter.”

  “What a schemer you are! But I suppose it can do no harm. Meantime, we have a more immediate problem. Do sit down and listen.”

  He sat obediently.

  “Don’t you think, Hugh, since our family is growing so fast, that we should contrive to make more room for us all? My father always meant to add another tower to the palace. But he never got around to it. I’ve asked old Jean d’Aunat if he remembered talking to my father about it. Jean was castellan here for years and years. He does indeed remember. The tower was to be there, where the north and east walls come together.” I pointed to a spot off to our right where nothing towered except a spindly pine tree.

  Hugh peered at the corner I’d pointed to. “Well, I suppose that would make sense. For one thing, it gives us more strength and a good lookout post on the north wall. And I think we can afford it. The revenues are coming in regularly, for the most part. We’re at peace for the moment with both King Philip and King Henry.” The more he spoke, the more enthusiastic he became. “Yes, now would be a good time. We’ll begin at once. Let’s call it the Tour d’Isabelle.”

  “Not the Tour des Lusignans?” I teased him.

  “Oh, plenty of time for that later. As our family grows we can add tower after tower!”

  I laughed up at him and held out my hands for him to help me to my feet.