Bristol's garrison had refused to stand by Hugh the Elder, who had sought refuge there, and yesterday, on October 26, 1326, the father of her most detested enemy had walked across the castle drawbridge to surrender.
Isabella could barely refrain from sharing her elation with Roger Mortimer, even by a surreptitious look. Revenge was indeed proving as sweet as she'd anticipated during her years of humiliation.
She addressed Hugh the Elder. "Do you recall your treatment of my cousin Thomas Lancaster, a man of royal blood, who was put to death because of your machinations?"
Hugh muttered something unintelligible. Most of his teeth were missing, pushing his mouth into a perpetual position of surprise. But his eyes still flashed their old arrogance, which served to start Isabella's ancient animosities churning fresh and raw.
Her voice rose. "You also treated me, your queen, in a shabby and insulting manner. You never allowed me money and you and that whoreson you spawned poisoned my husband's mind against me."
"Your Grace..."
She cut him off with an imperial wave of her hand. Leaning forward in her curule chair, which had been placed for her in the middle of Bristol's hall, she taunted, "Your lands are burning now, Sir Hugh—the lands for which you schemed and robbed and which have insured your swift descent into hell. How transitory are your possessions, near as transitory as your life."
Isabella's troops had plundered all of the Despensers' lands along their route and beyond. She had proclaimed that her supporters should take what they pleased and after splitting it between herself and Mortimer, retain a portion for themselves.
"Ah, Madam," Hugh cried. "God grant me at least an upright judge and a just sentence."
"You will receive the same treatment you gave Thomas Lancaster."
William Trussell, a local judge, read the earl of Winchester's death sentence. "You shall be drawn for treason and hanged for robbery, decapitated for your crimes against the church and your head taken to Winchester where you were earl against law and reason." Because he'd broken the laws of chivalry, Despenser was to be executed in a robe bearing his coat of arms, which would thereafter be permanently discarded.
Immediately following the verdict, Mortimer and several other lords escorted Hugh to a gallows that had been erected in Bristol's bailey. From a window inside the solar Isabella watched the execution. While Hugh was being readied, her two daughters, Eleanor and Joan, bounded in, filling the room with questions and chatter. Shutting out their voices, she absently put her arms around them. She'd been reunited with her children only yesterday but now their presence did not even register.
As a noose was slipped around Despenser's neck, Isabella's heart began a frantic hammering. She was certain something or someone would momentarily appear to rob her of her prize.
"My gentle Mortimer," she breathed. "Despenser is filled with the devil's very tricks. Watch him close."
When the executioner raised the rope, jerking Hugh the Elder ever higher in the air, Isabella gasped. Unconsciously her fingernails dug into her daughters' shoulders. The girls had grown subdued and watched the unfolding scene with open mouthed horror. Hugh dangled in the air, his armor catching the sun's rays in blinding flashes.
Five-year-old Joan screamed, "'Tis a monster! Mother, look!" Her hysterical sobbing was echoed by Eleanor, who, though three years older, was every bit as terrified.
Turning from the window, Isabella gathered her children to her breast.
"Do not cry, my darlings. 'Tis just a very bad man who was mean to Mother. He deserved his punishment."
And more.
Now there were only two men left, besides her husband, with whom to deal—Hugh the Younger and Richard of Sussex. But the Bastard was only an incidental to her obsession.
While her daughters clung to her, Isabella thought of her husband, who had escaped from Bristol with Nephew Hugh just hours before her arrival.
What will happen upon your capture?
Thinking of Edward confused her. He had been weak, cruel and thoughtless. But he'd also been kind to their children and sometimes even loving to her. After listening to Mortimer's arguments, she had resigned herself to his deposition and young Prince Edward's elevation to England's throne.
Yet Isabella could never overcome that nagging problem—what to do about a deposed monarch. Alive, her husband would prove a constant rallying point for malcontents, but at forty three Edward was in excellent health and should enjoy many vital years. Unless someone cut short his life. Isabella shivered. Sometimes she feared that the rebellion was assuming a life of its own—a ghastly life that could exist apart from herself, and over which she had no control.
I must talk to my lord Mortimer about it.
* * *
On October 2, King Edward set sail from Chepstow with Hugh the Younger and the handful of retainers who remained loyal to him. His destination was Lundy Island, the place from which Hugh had pirated during his brief banishment and which had been stocked with provisions for their arrival. With the king traveled an exchequer official, John Langton, who controlled nearly thirty-nine thousand pounds.
Ironic. At one time I had men but no money and now I have a fortune but no men to pay. 'Tis that she-wolf and her lover who have turned my people against me. When I am back in power they will pay for their sins.
But for now Edward must concentrate on more immediate matters.
Henry of Leicester, Thomas Lancaster's brother, and the Marcher lords nipped at the king's heels. Only Richard of Sussex's repeated harassment allowed him his continued freedom.
But Richard is the only one loyal to me, Edward thought as he paced the deck of the cog ship that would bear him to Lundy Island. Even the coastal winds were thwarting him. Nor had repeated prayers to St. Anne altered their course. When Edward remembered the perfidy of his two younger brothers, Edmund and Thomas, he felt a mixture of anger and sadness. Edmund had arrived from France with Isabella and they'd landed next to Thomas's manor, where they'd spent their first night back in England.
From the very outset, Edward's brothers had marched with the traitors and pillaged and plundered alongside them.
Someday I will deal with you all. You will rue the day you so betrayed me.
Contrary winds kept Edward and his men in the narrows of Bristol Channel. Finally, on the same day as Hugh the Elder's execution, they disembarked and rode west from Caerphilly. Everywhere he stopped Edward issued summonses and commissions that no one obeyed. Daily he expected to hear that the earl of Sussex had been captured or killed.
On November 16 His Grace left Neath, bound for Llantrissant in a torrential rain. As the water pounded against his helm like spoons upon a kitchen pot Edward assured himself that the rain, though miserable, would shield his band from possible enemy encounter. Riding into the slashing storm he tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the greyness. When he swiveled in his saddle he couldn't even see Simon of Reading, who was the last man in his troupe.
The road grew impassable. The destriers, hampered by armor, sank to their knees in the sucking mud. Still the rain beat upon them. Water had forced its way through junctures in Edward's hauberk; his gambeson clung to him. Where it rubbed against metal his shoulders felt raw and sore. He turned to shout a complaint to Nephew Hugh.
From the grey mass Edward glimpsed a movement, a shape like that of a man on horseback. Thinking it a trick of the atmosphere, he blinked. To his horror he saw, not one but many figures, appearing out of the rain, riding toward him with drawn swords. They seemed to glide over the ground, undaunted by the mud. Watching them suddenly appear, like some conjurer's trick, unnerved him. Might they be phantom soldiers, ghosts of the Welsh his father had killed during his many wars of subjugation?
Hugh Despenser unsheathed his sword.
"Do not!" Edward yelled above the hammering torrent. He now realized that the riders were true flesh and blood and more dangerous than a dozen phantom armies. Their lack of armor accounted for their ease of movement, the badges upon
their jupons attested to their identity. Henry of Leicester and a seeming multitude of other Marcher lords bore down on them. Useless to struggle. They were outnumbered ten to one.
'Tis all over, Edward thought as Leicester rode up to accept his sword in surrender. His brain was too benumbed to know fear.
Yet.
Chapter 30
Dover
A turbid fog rolled off the English Channel, obscuring Dover's white cliffs. Phillip was sorry for that. The cliffs were impressive and he was eager for a first glimpse of his homeland. Instead the fog had settled like a giant slug upon everything, and though the trip from Calais was short, the sea proved sullen and uncooperative.
"If I never set foot aboard ship again," Phillip said to his squire, "I will count myself blessed."
Gilbert nodded. "I am impatient to stand once again upon English soil."
Phillip had had enough of the heat and stench of pilgrim ships, the passengers packed in the hold neath the rowing deck in berths eighteen inches wide and the length of a body. Light and air entered only through the hatchways; rats, lice, fleas, and maggots were even more of a nuisance than fellow pilgrims.
Mentally, Phillip urged the galley ever swifter across the choppy waters. After docking in Venice, he had heard the news of Queen Isabella's invasion and had hurried north from there. Everywhere he asked the same questions of Englishmen: "What news have you of King Edward? Has Richard of Sussex been captured?" He received so many conflicting answers he couldn't sort truth from rumor. He only knew that his liege lord must need him.
As the galley maneuvered up to the dock, he and Gilbert waited impatiently to disembark. Phillip was glad to be home, and not only because of political events.
I will never again leave.
From the very beginning this journey had been different; his restlessness had not been assuaged by people who varied only in the cut of their clothes and the look to their faces, or events which changed only in their locale.
At Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher, with the lights from a thousand prayer candles flickering red across stone walls, with monks chanting and altar boys singing, the truth had come to Phillip with the intensity of a revelation. What he had been searching for he'd possessed all along. Maria and his children, his land, then the love of his lord and friend. He understood what Richard, his brother, so many others had tried to tell him about the futility of a quest that he'd stitched out of wishes and fantasies and the tall tales told by others as blind as himself.
Upon disembarking, Phillip was a bit disconcerted by Dover's quiet. He'd expected the port to be a cauldron of frenetic activity—of talk and worried faces, of people clustered in groups re-hashing the latest events and their meaning. Instead sailors went about their duties with a minimum of cursing, and brown-garbed pilgrims, using their staffs to balance themselves after the roll of the ship, stumbled toward the dock. An occasional merchant, tally book in hand, searched for a ship's captain and their promised merchandise.
The fog lifted, then settled again, like a restless snake. The knot in Phillip's stomach tightened. The scene seemed somehow unnatural. But, with the treason of the French queen, wasn't everything in England unnatural?
While Gilbert looked to obtaining horses, Phillip sought the latest news. He accosted a middle-aged tavern keeper, here to greet his brother on his return from Rome.
"Sir, I crave from you some information. What has been happening? Has King Edward been captured yet?"
"Aye, my lord. He is imprisoned at Monmouth. Hugh the Younger is being taken to London where he will stand trial. Hugh the Elder has already suffered a traitor's death." The tavern keeper's face was arranged in impassive lines. Philip could read nothing of his true sympathies there.
"What about Richard of Sussex? Has he been captured? What have you heard of him?"
"He yet remains free, though not for long, I'll wager. Roger Mortimer will know easy enough how to flush Sussex out of hiding. Just lay siege to Dover Castle where his whore yet resides."
"Lord Sussex is at Dover? His whore? You speak in riddles, sir."
The tavern keeper smiled, exposing black stumps for teeth. "You have been gone from England a long time, m'lord."
"More than three years."
"Sussex took for his leman the Lady Rendell. I have not personally seen her, but she is said to be the most beautiful woman in all England."
Phillip stared uncomprehendingly at the tavern keeper. "Maria Rendell?" His knees threatened to buckle beneath him. "Not Maria?"
"My lord, what is wrong?" The tavern keeper grabbed hold of the knight's arm as if to steady him.
"I do not believe it. There is some mistake. My lord would not do that." Phillip's voice sounded as muffled as the tide slapping against the piers. "She would not do that."
He turned and walked away, his mind too benumbed to function. Tendrils of breaking fog tugged at his feet. A weak sun struggled through an outer bank of clouds, only to be annihilated. The steep narrow streets he wandered did not register. Nor did he recognize his squire when Gilbert appeared, astride a bay palfrey and leading a second.
Gilbert swung from his horse and hurried to him. "What is wrong, sire? Have you heard bad news?"
Slowly Phillip emerged from his daze. "They betrayed me, Gilbert." One arm pressed against his stomach, as if shielding a wound. "I had not dreamed they would."
* * *
Maria and Richard left Dover's keep for Harold's Earthwork, where the Roman pharos and St. Mary-in-Castro were located. The fog had lifted enough to reveal ships edging toward the harbor.
Richard's hand felt cold in hers. She looked at him, taking in the new lines around his eyes, the leanness of his face and body. A new Richard had returned to her—a hunted fugitive, a man with the twin plagues of vengeance and bitterness corroding his soul.
"We will be ready to leave Dover by nightfall. Once we are safe at Conwy Castle, I will be able to rally support for my brother. Most of the Welsh lords remain loyal to him."
Since last night's return Richard had spoken of little save Edward, and the treason of Isabella. When he uttered Roger Mortimer's name, his eyes turned as cold and bottomless as the Channel itself. "Mortimer will pay. I will not rest until that whoreson is food for the carrion crow."
Maria's hand tightened in his. Richard's life consisted of kingdoms and power and loyalists crying out for him to lead them to victory. As a woman she didn't possess the words that could comfort him. The only gift Maria could offer was the gift of acceptance. She was entering her seventh month of pregnancy and any riding would be awkward. She dreaded the forthcoming trip more out of fear for her child than Roger Mortimer. She kept her concerns, however, as tightly wrapped as the mantle she clutched about her thickened form.
Soon 'twill all be over.
Maria's gaze swept the channel, the stone church and Dover's windmill, its arms swishing like the blade of a giant broadsword.
I will have time to bear my babe, and comfort my lord—or watch him ride from Conwy, nevermore to return.
Like the bolt from a crossbow, two riders hurtled from the fog, one far ahead of the other.
Maria watched their approach, thinking, 'Tis more tragedy. Instinctively she leaned against her lover, seeking comfort. I had thought we'd experienced it all.
The front rider's horse reared as he jerked to a stop and flung himself from the saddle.
Uncomprehending, Maria stared at the rider. "Husband?" She wasn't even certain at first. Phillip wore his hair longer than she remembered, his skin was burned brown by eastern suns, and he was heavier, though he'd accumulated muscle, not fat.
"You are dead," she whispered, her heart hammering. "You were not supposed to return."
Phillip strode toward them; the sword at his side clinked in concert with his movements. He addressed Richard.
"Who would have believed it? My liege lord and friend, I loved you well. I cannot think you'd repay that love by bedding with my very wife. But here you are, the b
oth of you." His gaze swept Maria, coming to rest on her protruding stomach. His eyes widened with pain, and disbelief.
"No!" He shook his head.
A dazed Maria approached him. "Let me explain." But as easy to explain their betrayal as the babe, and both were impossible.
Richard stepped in front, to shield her. "We must talk. Maria and I did not mean to hurt you. You know that, do you not?"
"How could you?" Phillip floundered, trying to collect his thoughts, trying to react in some coherent fashion. The extent of their betrayal pounded against him with the relentless blow of a hammer. Rational thought eluded him, but action did not.
He unsheathed his sword.
Richard spread his hands, as if in supplication. "I do not blame you for your anger and pain. I have greatly wronged you. I did not mean to fall in love with Maria, and I thought to love in silence. I would rather have died myself than hurt thee."
"Why should I be hurt?" Phillip mocked. "The two people I most loved? I would have ridden to hell for you had you asked, and never questioned the rightness of it. And you, lady wife, I trusted your virtue as much as your love." His eyes flickered over her, back to the earl. "But you were truly neither woman nor wife; you were a poison that corrupts the blood."
He pointed his sword at Richard's chest. "And this hour I will have my blood."
"You cannot mean to fight your lord. 'Twas my fault; I was the one. Oh, please!" Maria stepped toward her husband, but froze at the murder in his eyes.
"I'll not fight you," Richard said. "Your anger is justified. I would just ask that you might try to understand, if not forgive."
Struggling rays from the sun glanced across the flat of Phillip's broadsword. The vanes of the windmill murmured and creaked; seagulls swooped and squawked and soared beyond Dover's cliffs out toward the sea.
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