The King Must Die (The Isabella Books)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  The very moment Patrice stopped stirring to stare down into the bowl’s mystical depths, I seized it from her, splashing some over the side of the bowl. I threw my head back and gulped it down not like a poison, but an elixir. I tasted mostly the crisp tang of unripe carrots, and then something sharper, more bitter, scraping at the back of my tongue. It began to burn. I gagged and swallowed, my eyes watering hotly. I thought I would retch at the vile taste scorching my throat, but deigned to hold it in and let it work its dark magic on me.

  By Our Lord God’s own word, this is wrong, wrong, wrong ... terribly, inextricably wrong—but what is one more mark upon my blighted soul? If whores and murderers can be forgiven, am I not one of them?

  The first convulsion gripped me so fast and fiercely I doubled over. Bolts of pain stabbed through every length of my body. When the next spasm hit, I had already dropped to my knees, clutching my stomach hard, as if I could reach within myself and gouge out the pith of my wickedness.

  Again. Again. I threw my head back, aware that some primal wail emanated from me. It was the sound that women make as they wander among broken and dismembered bodies on the battlefield, keening their dead.

  I existed only within my pain. My cries, though, were not calls for help. They were a release of all my torment—every regret, every worry, all my shame.

  Patrice wedged a leather belt between my clamped teeth for me to bear down on and stifle my screams.

  Through the bleary veil of my lashes, I saw Patrice kneeling beside me, pressing a damp cloth to my forehead, although I could not feel it. Then, she crammed a rolled blanket between my legs ... Why?

  Wetness. Blood. Too much. Life seeping away. Out of me.

  “It was too strong.” She whimpered between breaths. “I will call someone to —”

  Somehow I swung a hand at her to grab her forearm before she went to the door. I shook my head at her and tried to push away the leather strap with my tongue.

  No, no. Let it be. What is done cannot be undone.

  Had I spoken the words aloud or said them only in my own head? I do not know then if Patrice called someone for help or if she settled next to me and honored my wish. Everything went icily white.

  Tides of pain pierced like a dagger being plunged into the pit of my belly and rent down toward my groin. My limbs weakened as the blood flushed from me. My core went cold. The edges of my vision darkened ...

  Silence. Floating in darkness. My body weightless upon a placid sea of black.

  The pain ... gone.

  ***

  A thousand years from now, they will say Isabella of France was a wanton who abandoned her children to frolic with her lover in her brother’s house. They will say that out of convenience and iniquity, she conspired in the disposal of her husband. That she opened her son’s reign with scandalous infamy by defiling her marriage vows. That she hoarded her son’s wealth and squandered it on her rapacious lover.

  They will say that Isabella of France was a bane to England. That she was a she-wolf.

  They will say what they will, or maybe I will be forgotten, a blot upon the pages of history’s chronicles ... but I know the truth—that there were injustices and evils greater than mine.

  One thing, I know, they will say—that Edward III, King of England and France ... that he was a greater king than his father and his grandfather before him and the hundred kings after him.

  ***

  “Isabeau? Isabeau?”

  I heard the familiar voice tinkling distantly, like bells from a church in a far away, unseen valley.

  “Isabeau, can you hear me?”

  I opened my eyes. Patrice smiled. She swept back the tangled hair from around my eyes. I tried to lift my head, but the pillow piled deep with goose down was too inviting. My neck hurt, my shoulders, lower down, lower ... a knot of soreness between my legs. I closed my eyes again.

  “Isabella? Mother?”

  Is that Eleanor? Or Joanna? Has she come back from Scotland already?

  “Mother?”

  I opened my eyes once more. It was Philippa. When had she ever called me ‘Mother’?

  I turned my head toward Patrice. Pain stabbed down through my neck.

  “What happened?” I said, feeling all the wind empty from of my lungs with those two words.

  “You will be all right, Isabeau.” Patrice stroked my arm as she donned an unconvincing smile. “You will not die.”

  I blinked at her. Why would I die? Have I been ill?

  As Philippa rose to cluck orders to two bumbling servant girls, Patrice bent close and whispered, “The child is no more. But you—you will be well enough, in time. No one knows of it. Ida helped me to ...” She bit off the rest of her words. She could not say it.

  Then I remembered. I did not want to. I wanted to forget. Wanted to think it all a nightmare, vanished like the mist in the golden light of a new dawn, the world bejeweled with dew.

  Let me go back to sleep. Let me dream again until Mortimer comes back. Mortimer ...

  “Roger?” I uttered, my voice quaking faintly in my own ears.

  God in heaven—do I want to know? Let me go back to sleep. Let me never awaken again. Let the darkness swallow me up and wrap itself around me until I am nothing. Until I am no more.

  Patrice exchanged a telling glance with Philippa.

  Philippa returned and settled on the edge of my bed, her daintiness barely indenting the mattress. She dug beneath the covers for my hand and held it. Philippa was unusually sober for one of her few years, as if she had been born at the age of thirty. However temperate and diplomatic, she was not one accustomed to divulging bad news. I knew it was bad because she would not look at me.

  “You have been asleep for four days,” Philippa said. “Much has happened.”

  “Where is he?” I croaked, my throat swelling shut. My chest tightened. I gasped for air.

  Still, she would not look at me. Her features were as pale as death. “He ... Edward came to see you. He’ll want to know you’re getting better.”

  “Not him,” I corrected. “Where is Roger? Where did they take him?”

  For a minute or more, I received no reply. I heard only the scurrying of servants out the door and back again, the rippling of water being poured, the pinging of a spoon.

  “Leicester, for now,” Patrice finally told me. She patted my blankets smooth and then began rearranging my hair, although I hardly cared about those things. “Although they say he will be taken to London.”

  “Why? Why London? For what?” My heart began to race, stirring me to full wakefulness.

  Philippa sighed long. “Parliament meets next month at Westminster. Edward means to have Lord Roger tried. Treason, I suspect. And Lord Berkeley, his son-in-law, was also taken into custody. He will be tried, as well—for the murder of Edward of Caernarvon.”

  “Maltravers, Ockle, Gurney,” Patrice added. “They all fled before they could be arrested.”

  Treason. Murder. Ah. They will come for me next. When I stand before them, I will say nothing. I know the truth. God knows. They have already forged their opinions. Condemned Mortimer ... and me. What use to battle fate? I have wearied of it.

  A year ago ... a month even, I would have fought this—written diplomatic letters, shaping every delicate twist into the proper perspective. I would have demanded to speak to my son, bargained for clemency—exile at the worst—and pled mercy with mild, sensible Philippa, who I had once believed held so much influence over her husband. But this time she was not in agreement with him. Or was it that ... that she felt some sort of pity for my suffering?

  “You spoke to Edward?” I asked. “Tried to save Mortimer?”

  Philippa flinched and squeezed her eyes shut, then nodded several times before opening them. “He would not listen to me, Isabella. He went instead to Lancaster, who at least had the sense to talk him into going through the motions of a formal trial.” Finally, she looked at me. “It should not be at all, but ... his mind is made up. Better it
should be done swiftly then, I suppose.”

  Why? Where is the charity in that? It is not even justice. It is retribution.

  I had seen it looming for weeks, pretended it would not come to pass, and begged Mortimer to leave. Yet there was only one end. Only one.

  I pulled my hands back beneath the blankets. My fingers wandered over my vacant belly, grinding with hunger.

  “Why?” I said, to so many decisions and events that had befallen me. Why had it come to this? Had I not tried to make peace, to steer the kingdom when others sought to sink it, to be the good wife and mother, to keep my private affairs private?

  “You shall have to ask Edward that,” Philippa said, her gentle voice tinged with the misery of a famished child.

  Edward? I do not think I wish to see Edward. Not now. Not soon. What use?

  The servants propped me up to sip from a pewter cup filled with honeyed mead. Then they spooned a broth of cabbages and leeks from a bowl and fed it to me. I ate greedily until I began to cough. My stomach was filled with only a small amount of food, so much it had shrunk. Warmth and nourishment miraculously began to seep into me. My fingers, my whole body tingled with renewal. Yet my heart beat sluggishly, slow as the drums that announce an execution. My eyes began to drift shut again before they could entice me to partake of some bread and more mead.

  I did not notice Philippa, being light as a bird, rise from the bed until I heard her voice from the doorway.

  “When you are well enough, you will be taken to Berkhamsted,” she said, her words drifting away so that I barely heard the last of them. “Away from here.”

  Is that to be my prison? Does it matter where they put me? I cannot raise an army now. Soon, I will have no champion. Edward will make certain of it.

  It is done. Done.

  26

  Isabella:

  Berkhamsted — November, 1330

  In the first few weeks that I was detained at Berkhamsted like a caged dove, I wrote letter upon letter to my son, none of which were answered. I prayed in the chapel for God’s guidance, but none came to me. Time trudged forward until the day, the 13th of November—and so distraught I was that I did not remember what day it was until afterward—that King Edward III passed his eighteenth birthday.

  Then everything moved forward, swiftly and mercilessly. My son, it seemed, had merely been biding his time, waiting until he could break the shackles of his minority and dissolve the regency council that he felt had stifled him so unjustly.

  Two weeks later, the parliamentary session opened in Westminster with the trial of Lord Berkeley. It lasted not a day. The charges were dropped and he was set free. Again, I prayed, but I may as well have spent my breath on prayers for myself, for my hopes were short-lived. My gentle Mortimer’s trial began the next day.

  Fourteen crimes were cast at his feet, but Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, was not allowed to speak in his own defense. He had been gagged. He was declared guilty of them all, including the usurpation of royal powers and ... the murder of Edward of Caernarvon.

  My love was dragged on a splintered hurdle behind horses from the Tower of London to the Elms of Tyburn, some three miles away, stripped naked, lashed fourteen times, castrated while he was still conscious and then hanged to death from the gallows alongside the ghosts of common thieves. For two days, his mutilated body was left to dangle while carrion crows quarreled over his flesh and a scurrilous mob lobbed stones with wicked glee. He was finally buried, mangled though his body was, at Greyfriars in London. Later, at Joan Mortimer’s request, his remains were returned to Wigmore Abbey near Ludlow.

  Patrice told me. She told me because I asked. Not knowing was a sickness unto itself that devoured me from within. A pity they did not hang me with him. It would have been kinder.

  Sir John Maltravers, Sir Thomas Gurney and William Ockle all fled England upon hearing of Mortimer’s arrest. In doing so, they were publicly assumed guilty of taking part in the murder of Edward of Caernarvon. Parliament passed a sentence of death on them. They would never step foot on English soil again and we would never learn their accounts of what happened.

  Young Edward issued magnanimous pardons, freeing Edmund of Kent’s widow and restoring the inheritance of his son. Every time I heard Kent’s name, I wondered why he had been so adamant that his brother was alive. There was no proof.

  I gave up all my lands to Philippa. What need did I have of them? I did not see her again until I was escorted, under a sizable guard, to Windsor.

  My son must have feared I would raise an army from the confines of my lavish prison and march against him with some newly infatuated lover tripping along at my side. Why would I? How could I hate the son for whom I had sacrificed all? I should have, given the pain he had inflicted on me, but in the end I had chosen him over Mortimer. My son, however, would never know that. Had I sat down with him and explained everything, I might have been able to win his love back. Or if not his love or his understanding, at least his tolerance.

  Some secrets, however, are better left buried in the past. Why scrape open the wound that no longer bleeds to try to cleanse it? If it has healed, however hideous the scar, let it be.

  ***

  Windsor — 1330-1331

  From my tower window at Windsor, I gazed out at the world beyond. Boats coursed up and down the Thames, but each one looked the same to me. I could not tell winter from summer, day from night. Nothing ever changed. I slept when I was tired, sat by my window when I was awake, ate when they told me to even though I never hungered. Hour after hour, I prayed. I had long since forgotten what it was I prayed for, though. It was merely habit.

  I had not ventured beyond these walls in over a year. The king would not allow me. Where would I have gone, had I been able to go at all? One prison was like any other.

  Sometimes, I heard Mortimer’s voice, as clearly as if he were holding me in his arms, whispering in my ear: “Isabeau, I would give my life for you.”

  And he had.

  “Isabeau, love ... I cannot live without you.”

  Nor did I want to live without him: my gentle Mortimer. Those memories cut me to my soul and drained the blood from me. In my dreams, I would reach for him, shaping his name on my lips, and grasp nothing but cold, empty sheets to my breast. Sometimes, though, I swear I would awaken with the warm trace of his fingertips on my shoulders and back.

  “With all my heart, Isabella, I love you ... only you.”

  Too much so. What is any love worth? A life? Ten lives? Without life there is no love.

  What does ‘love’ even mean? I had not known it with Edward, that was certain. Marriage to him, although I had gained four beautiful children from it, had brought me nothing but disappointment and suffering. Knowing Mortimer, loving him ... that too had brought me pain. But in between the torture of secrecy and shattered trust, with him at least there had been ecstasy, hope and tenderness.

  The world would forever see us as shameful sinners and greedy liars. Centuries from now that would be our legacy. No one would ever know who we truly were. Judged and condemned by those who had never met us. There would be no sainthood for the scheming queen. No statue in the market square for her murdering lover. Our names would forever be a stain on England’s honor.

  We would, however, be remembered—in ignominy.

  I think I would have preferred to remain nameless.

  ***

  Castle Rising — 1336

  More than five years now since Mortimer died. His voice was growing ever more distant. I remembered the words he used to speak to me, but not their inflection. I remembered being happy, lost in the bliss of his nearness, but I no longer sensed his arms around me. My world had gone from drowning blackness to bland indifference; from the bottomless well of self-pity and mourning to the uninspired monotony of household duties and familial obligations. I could only stare out my window for so many years before madness was sure to set in.

  Still, it was an effort that I forced myself to embrace. I was n
ot there when my youngest Joanna was crowned at Scone beside her husband David, now King of Scots. Nor was I present when Philippa bore a daughter and named her Isabella. But I was there in Nijmegen when my daughter Eleanor, only twelve, wed the Duke of Gueldres. Oh, they looked so unhappily paired. I could not help but think of my own wedding so long ago in Boulogne.

  I held up the tarnished mirror, tilted it to catch the light. Sunbeams illuminated my features: the widening cracks, the sagging jowls, sprigs of white hair at my temples where once I had worn a crown of golden tresses. Damsels buzzed about me, purposeful in their industry, laying out glittering jewels and silver combs and embroidered gowns of silk in every color. My mews at Castle Rising were filled with the finest hawks and falcons, my library full to bursting with every romance ever committed to parchment. I surrounded myself with things because it helped me forget the emptiness.

  Philippa bounced the baby on her knee. Little Joan clapped, her gummy smile wide and pure with joy. I rose from my cushioned stool and swept her up. Her chubby arms went around my neck.

  Grief crashed over me. Just weeks ago, I had awoken before dawn shivering with dread. Later that day, a messenger arrived from Scotland. Before he even spoke, I knew—John was dead. And only twenty. Far too young. As a boy, he had tried so hard to be like his older brother, wielding a stick as his sword and begging for a pony so he could learn to ride. Moments like this, holding my granddaughter, made me remember him when he was young, before dreams of becoming a soldier took hold of him.

  “Thank you,” I said to Philippa.

  Opening one of the books stacked upon my table, she ran her fingers along the twisting tails of ink. With her other hand, she rubbed at her stomach in slow, soothing circles. Not four months along and already it was obvious she would have a fourth child. “For what?”