The Pearl of France

by Caroline Newark

  ‘So we must wait.’

  ‘Yes. Until the prince arrives.’

  ‘Lord de Lacy?’

  ‘Yes, my dear lady.’

  ‘The embalming?’

  ‘It is all taken care of. His grace left clear instructions. Don’t forget, he himself went through this when his queen died not twenty years ago.’

  He stopped in a sudden awareness as to what he should not be saying to me. I was only the second wife, barely a queen at all.

  ‘You mustn’t worry about these matters, my lady,’ he said more gently.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said in a small voice, feeling more and more as if I was disappearing. There was nothing for me to do and soon I would be invisible. I would no longer be the wife of my husband, no longer the first lady in the land, no longer anyone of importance at all.

  Nobody needed me now that my husband was gone and I was beginning to wonder if he had ever needed me either. He had given his instructions to others and left nothing for me to do. His men would manage everything and his officials would make the funeral arrangements. It would doubtless be one of those grand ceremonial affairs with much pomp and glitter, and I wondered if there’d be any part for me to play or if I’d be placed at the back away from the eyes of all my husband’s people. For what had I ever been but the sister of a foreign king bought as the price of peace. I’d never been of much importance and the peace which I was supposed to bring to our marriage had been too fragile a thing to withstand the brutal assaults on it by my brother’s mischief-making with the Scots.

  Later, I knelt in our private chapel and tried to pray but the words wouldn’t come no matter how hard I tried. My head was full of images of him: of his eyes and his hands, of him playing with our boys, tossing them up in the air until they screamed with laughter. The little things: the shared meals, the games we’d played through the long winter evenings, his joy when we went hawking, and the nights when I’d watched him sleeping. The times we’d knelt side by side in candlelit churches, praying for the souls of his father and his mother and for the soul of his beloved first wife.

  Yesterday had been the feast of the translation of St Thomas, a celebration of the day when the bones of the blessed martyr were carried from his tomb to his shrine at Canterbury. How pleased my husband would have been, to depart this life on such an auspicious day.

  I lost count of the days until Ned came. I think it was ten but it might have been more. Although no announcement had been made and no-one had been told of my husband’s death, everybody knew. It had not taken more than a quarter of a day for the news to sweep through the castle and by evening everyone from the steward to the spit boy was aware that the world had changed. It was as if a spell had been cast over us as we waited anxiously for my stepson to arrive.

  Nothing could be done, no plans could be made and nobody knew where they would stand with this new king. Would their position be safe or would they be cast out? Many had not been on good terms with Ned and I sensed their nervousness as the days passed.

  Then one morning, out of the pall of gloom which covered the castle there came a ray of light. Servants began making preparations. Rooms were swept, cartloads of supplies were brought in and a smell of roasting meats rose from the bowels of the castle. I could feel the anticipation, the fear, the joy, the excitement. I heard trumpets, and the next moment Ned and his retinue swept into the courtyard. All my husband’s men rushed out to welcome the prince who was now the favoured one, the one who would be God’s anointed.

  He didn’t send for me. I sat and waited but no word came. In the past he would come to my rooms, laughing and playful, greeting me with kisses and embraces, but now he was king I would have to wait upon his pleasure.

  Some hours after his arrival I saw another messenger, one I didn’t recognise, gallop under the gatehouse. By then the courtyards were full of people unknown to me so I didn’t realise the importance of this man to Ned.

  ‘He’s returned from over the seas,’ enthused my youngest maid, imparting the latest gossip she’d heard from the kitchens. ‘Says his master is Sir Piers, that Gascon knight who left a while back. He’s very handsome, my lady, and they say he’s not yet married.’

  Next morning I was summoned to attend my stepson in his privy chamber. My feet were heavy as I walked down the familiar steps heading to the apartments where my husband had carried out his royal business. The white veil I wore protected me from the interest of my stepson’s men and the curious stares of his servants.

  Ned was sitting in my husband’s great carved chair looking extremely pleased with himself. There were no signs of sadness but considering how they’d parted this was not surprising. I couldn’t expect him to grieve for his father when they’d been on such bad terms.

  He was picking at a bowl of sugared almonds, popping the pretty-coloured sweetmeats into his mouth one by one. He didn’t rise but sat watching me as I walked across the floor.

  ‘My lady,’ he said, pursing his lips. ‘The dowager queen. Except you weren’t truly a queen, were you? You never had a coronation. But my father was not a man to be careful of your honour. He was far more interested in slaughtering the Scots. However you can be assured that any wife of mine will have a magnificent coronation, for how else can she possibly be a queen.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There were no words of consolation, no acknowledgement of my overwhelming grief, just this spiteful tirade against his father.

  ‘Ned.’

  ‘I think it better you call me, your grace.’

  ‘Of course, your grace.’

  He smiled at me happily.

  ‘What shall I call you? I can hardly continue calling you lady mother, not now I’m your king. How about my lady dowager?’ he suggested. ‘No, that doesn’t sound right either.’

  He sat thinking, staring at me with his blue eyes which had become darker in the months since I’d last seen him. The flecks of gold which used to lighten his gaze had vanished and in their place were depths of hidden anger, of ice and fire. The warmth of the boy prince had gone for ever and I was unsure what to make of this flint-eyed stranger in front of me.

  In many ways he was the same young man who’d left in the spring, fired with fury at his father’s intemperate exiling of his friend. But I sensed a hardness in him, as if he’d been tested and forged stronger in the flames of some inward struggle. I was glad for I’d always feared he was too soft and too easily hurt. This new Ned was a different person - more determined, less kind and clearly not going to allow himself to be any man’s cat’s-paw.

  ‘It’s awkward being a widow, isn’t it?’ he mused, selecting another sweetmeat from the dish. ‘Mary said our grandmother found it particularly difficult. She wanted to control our father and interfere in his dealings with the French. You can imagine how angry that made him so he and our mother contrived to send her to Amesbury where she took the veil. I suppose you’ll do the same. It’s what widows do, isn’t it? And no king likes to have his mother, or worse, his stepmother, looking over his shoulder, trying to interfere at every step. It would make for very bad feelings and neither of us wants that, do we?’

  ‘Of course we don’t,’ I said. ‘I would never dream of interfering in your life, your grace. You are the king and you and your council must rule as you see fit. I never interfered in your father’s dealings and it wouldn’t occur to me to interfere in yours. I hope to retire to my dower lands to be close to my children. Your father, God rest his soul, asked that ...’

  ‘My father is dead and I make the decisions now,’ he snapped.

  ‘Of course you do, and I will go wherever you wish, your grace,’ I said, bending my head so that he couldn’t see the hurt in my eyes.

  ‘Now let’s talk of pleasanter things. Piers will be here soon. Is that not the best of news?’

  It came as no surprise that he’d sent for his friend. I doubted he
’d hesitated for a moment once he’d received news of his father’s death. I could imagine the joy he must have felt but wondered what was in Piers Gaveston’s mind as he took ship back to England. Pleasure at having his exile cut short, naturally, but had there also been a thrill of anticipation at the rewards which were now certain to come his way?

  I realised, as my husband had, that Gaveston was master in the relationship between these two young men. Ned relied on him overmuch. It might not have mattered if he’d been other than he was but a king needs to be forceful and Ned, we had both known, was too easily persuaded. Again, it might not have mattered if Piers Gaveston had Ned’s welfare in mind, but I’d seen both here and at my brother’s court how easily men are seduced by the lure of wealth and power and I doubted if Piers Gaveston would be any different.

  It was a long miserable journey we made that August back through the dusty lanes of England. The funeral cortege was led by Bishop Langton and followed by my husband’s friends and hundreds of men from his household.

  Ned accompanied us for the first few miles, but before the end of the second day he turned round and headed back to Carlisle. The new king needed to attend to his father’s army which was still encamped ready to set out across the border. I bade him a tearful farewell, tentatively reminding him of my husband’s words at Westminster the previous year and how Ned had vowed to complete his father’s vision of a single land, united under an English king.

  By the time our sad procession arrived at Waltham, the trees were shedding their leaves in sorrow, spreading them like a carpet of tears upon the ground. My husband’s embalmed body lay within the abbey, high on his bier, dressed in his red and gold robes of state with a gilded crown upon his head and a sceptre in his hand. He was surrounded by a hundred candles which would burn throughout the long days and nights until it was time to bring him home to the Island of Thorns and seal him forever within his tomb.

  17

  Autumn 1307

  At some time during those endless weeks of mourning Ned returned to Westminster. They told me he had made the decision to abandon his father’s campaign against the Scots and ride south to make preparations for the funeral. But even before he and his retinue reached the Island of Thorns, the first marks of my stepson’s rule were being felt.

  Walter Langton, the bishop of Lichfield, my husband’s friend, his treasurer and executor of his will, was arrested and thrown into prison, accused of diverting the king’s treasure to his own household, of extortion and securing wrongful judgements, of selling off royal woods and lands. The list of wrongdoings raised against him was lengthy. This was no surprise. My stepson had never forgiven the bishop for that occasion on the road to Chichester when they’d quarrelled.

  This, I realised with a sense of foreboding, was the start of Ned’s sweeping from power of all my husband’s friends and advisors. Anybody whom Ned did not like would be dismissed, regardless of their usefulness. No wonder the men at Carlisle had been frightened and were now hastening to ingratiate themselves with my stepson.

  Even more shocking than this brutal clearing out of his father’s stable was Ned’s resurrection of the ancient earldom of Cornwall which had belonged to my husband’s cousin. Ned gave it to Sir Piers Gaveston. I was at the archbishop’s house with my stepson when he told me.

  ‘Earl of Cornwall?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ned. ‘Had you not heard? I thought everyone knew. It was the first thing I did as soon as Piers arrived at Dumfries. With the disgrace he’d had to endure on my behalf he deserved a reward, don’t you think? And of course I was so very pleased to see him.’

  I thought of the day my husband and I had talked of the earldom of Cornwall for Edmund and how nothing had been done until it was too late.

  ‘Were the council in agreement?’ I asked, amazed at the sheer stupidity of my stepson.

  ‘They grumbled. What else would you expect? They didn’t like having their noses tweaked but it was only the old nitpickers like Warwick and de Lacy who complained. My friends were perfectly content with my decision, and even Cousin Thomas raised no objection. I thought he’d rant and rave but he didn’t. He gets along well enough with Piers which is odd because Piers is incredibly rude about him in private.’

  ‘So they all signed?’

  ‘All except Guy de Beauchamp. He stormed out, shouting I had no right to lift someone out of the gutter and make him equal to men of great standing like himself. I told him that Piers had never been in the gutter since his father was a man of some importance in Gascony.’

  I wondered if these men who could trace their lineage back through their fathers and grandfathers to the time of the Lionheart or perhaps as far as the Conqueror, were really as content at Piers Gaveston’s elevation as Ned believed. Of course the whole thing was totally improper but Ned seemed to revel in it all the more because of that. I was not surprised the earl of Warwick had refused to sign and rather wished the others had refused as well. I was horrified at what Ned had done but I’d promised my husband to care for his son and that is what I would try to do.

  The attendance at Mass next morning was sparse and I was surprised not to see Ned. As I walked back through the hall I noticed a small boy fast asleep in the hearth. The steward gave him a none-too-gentle kick to stir him awake and I was struck by a memory of men who sleep in the heather. I wondered where Sir Robert was now and how he did. I had forgotten him these past months, and was sure he never gave me so much as a passing thought for who was I to him? I had done private penance for my thoughts of that autumn but still wondered how it was possible to love a man as I had loved my husband and yet feel attraction to another.

  That evening I asked what arrangements Ned thought proper for his father’s tomb.

  ‘He has requested a black chest. What do you think of that?’ said my stepson. ‘No adornment, no effigy, no gilding, nothing. It’s totally unfitting for the father of the king of England and Piers and I considered over-ruling his wishes but the archbishop warned me against such a move. He said it was sinful to go against the last wishes of the dead.’

  ‘It could be impressive,’ said the earl of Cornwall, currently languishing against the wall by the hearth, examining the many jewelled rings on his fingers. ‘It would be like the tombs of Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury. Not my sort of thing, I prefer glittering splendour. But then, people are different, are they not, mon ami?’

  He flashed a smile at my stepson, who grinned happily back.

  On an overcast morning in the middle of October, with birds flying low above the shoreline and a thin mist rising from the river, my husband’s black marble coffin on its black-covered hearse was brought to the Island of Thorns.

  They carried him in procession, resting first at the churches within the city and then finally along the rutted track past the archbishop’s house to the great abbey church at Westminster. It was here on the Friday after the feast day of St Luke that we buried him beside his father’s magnificent glittering tomb, near the canopied wonder of that of his brother, Edmund, and close to the body of his beloved Eleanor. His old friend Anthony Bek, the bishop of Durham, who had lent us his palace the previous summer, led the funeral service, and it was some comfort to know that my husband was being laid to rest by a man who had known and loved him.

  Everyone came. From far and near, from over the seas, from places I’d never even heard of. They came to bid farewell to my warrior king. Some had been his enemies, others his friends, some had barely known him only his reputation. But they came to honour him. My brother Louis travelled from Paris and my husband’s daughter Margaret crossed the sea from Brabant to say farewell to her father.

  Elizabeth and Mary stood either side of me, all three of us heavily veiled. Elizabeth’s hand sought mine as we heard the eulogies in praise of my husband. I listened and wondered how little any of us had really known him. They described him time and again as a valiant fighter, fearl
ess and warlike, a man with no equal, a knight in armour, an outstanding warrior from his earliest years, in tournaments most mighty, in war most pugnacious. All this I knew. But they also called him illustrious, and strenuous in all things, and how among Christian princes there had been none to match his courage and his sagacity. They compared him to Arthur and Alexander, to Brutus and the Lionheart, and even to Solomon.

  One eulogist asserted, ‘We should perceive him to surpass all the kings of the earth who came before him. Entirely without equal.’

  They spoke of his piety, as the most Christian king of England. One cleric was moved to declare, ‘O Jerusalem thou hast lost the flower of thy chivalry.’

  And they talked of his willingness to dispense justice to all lest he lose the favour of God and man, and of his prudence in the governance of his realm where he took counsel from both good and wise men.

  The more they spoke the less I recognised this man they were praising. Where was the joyful friend, the tender lover? Where was the angry father and the vengeful king? They were painting a picture which held no shades of light and dark, only the bold, glowing illuminations of a history which would be repeated down the years; a lament for a king as his peers saw him: bold, courageous and warlike.

  I knew, more than most, that there had been another side: the gentle, delightful man who enjoyed music and reading and games of love; the husband who liked practical jokes and teasing conversations, whose skill at chess was second to none and who after a day out with his falcons, liked nothing better than to sit with me by the fire and tell me of his day. This was the man I remembered.

  Later, Louis took my hands in his.

  ‘Dearest little sister,’ he said kindly. ‘What will you do now you are no longer a wife? You are still young. Will you remarry? Has your king got plans for you?’