‘… and thereto I plight thee my troth …’
The young King heard the people sigh, but he did not look at them. His pale blue, almost grey eyes, their long lashes raised for once, were gazing at the chubby, freckled little girl, wrapped in veils and velvets, to whom he was making his vows.
Indeed, Madam Philippa was not at all like a princess in a fairy story; she was not even very pretty, for she had the heavy features, short nose and freckles of the Hainauts. Nor was she endowed with any particular grace of movement; yet she had an attractive simplicity and made no attempt to assume an air of majesty, which would certainly not have become her. Without her royal adornments, she would have looked no different from any other red-headed girl of her age; there were hundreds like her in every one of the northern kingdoms. But this merely increased her popularity with the crowd. Though she was the elected of Fate and of God, she was essentially no different from the women over whom she was to reign. Every stout, red-headed girl felt that she had, somehow or other, been personally complimented and honoured.
Trembling with emotion, Philippa screwed up her eyes as if unable to bear the intensity of her bridegroom’s gaze. All that was happening to her was so incredibly wonderful: the coronets about her, the mitres, the knights, the ladies she could see within the cathedral, row on row of them behind the candles, like souls in Paradise, and all the populace there below her! Indeed, she was to be Queen and, what was more, Queen by a love-match.
Oh, how she would cherish, serve and adore her fair and handsome prince, who had such long eyelashes and such slender hands, and who had come so miraculously to Valenciennes twenty months ago with his exiled mother, seeking help and refuge. Their parents had sent them out to play in the garden with the other children; and they had fallen in love. And now that he was King, he had not forgotten her. How happy she would be to devote her life to him. Her one fear was that she was not beautiful enough to please him for ever, nor clever enough always to be a help to him.
‘Madam, put out your right hand,’ said the Archbishop.
Philippa at once put out her little dimpled hand from her velvet sleeve, holding it firmly, palm upwards, fingers spread.
To Edward it seemed an exquisite rose-tinted star.
From a salver held out to him by another prelate, the Archbishop took the flat gold ring, encrusted with rubies, which he had previously blessed, and handed it to the King. The ring felt damp to the touch, as did everything else in the mist. The Archbishop gently drew their hands together.
‘In the Name of the Father,’ said Edward, placing the ring just over the tip of Philippa’s thumb, ‘in the Name of the Son, in the Name of the Holy Ghost,’ he said, as he moved it to her fore and middle fingers. And then, as he slipped it home on the fourth finger, he said: ‘Amen!’
Philippa was his wife.
Queen Isabella, like every mother at her son’s wedding, had tears in her eyes. Though she was making a great effort to pray God to grant her son happiness, she could not help thinking of herself; and she suffered. It had become increasingly clear during these last few days that she would no longer take first place in her son’s heart and house. Not, of course, that she had much to fear from this little bundle of embroidered velvet who, at this very instant, was become her daughter-in-law; her authority over the Court could not be challenged, nor indeed her supremacy in beauty. Straight and slender, her fine golden tresses, framing her face, which was still so clear-complexioned, Isabella at thirty-six looked scarcely thirty. She had spent much time that morning before the looking-glass, while donning her crown for the ceremony, and had left it reassured. Yet today she was no longer the Queen but the Queen Mother. How quickly it had happened. How odd that twenty stormy years should be resolved like this.
She thought of her own wedding, exactly twenty years ago, on a late January day like this. It had taken place at Boulogne in France and there had been a mist then too. She also had believed, as she made her heartfelt vows, that her marriage would be happy. But she had not known to what kind of man she was being married in the interests of the State. How could she have known that her reward for love and devotion would be humiliation, hatred and contempt, that she would be supplanted in her husband’s bed, not indeed by mistresses, but by scandalous and avaricious men, that her marriage portion would be ravished from her, her lands confiscated, that to save her life she would have to go into exile, raise an army to reconquer her position, and in the end order the murder of Edward II, who that day had slipped the wedding ring on to her finger? How lucky young Philippa was to be not only married but loved.
First love is the only pure and happy one. If it goes wrong, nothing can replace it. Later loves can never attain to the same limpid perfection; though they may be as solid as marble, they are streaked with veins of another colour, the dried blood of the past.
Queen Isabella turned to look at her lover Roger Mortimer, Baron of Wigmore, who owed it as much to her as to himself that he was now master of England and governed in the name of the young King. Stern-featured, his eyebrows forming a single line, he stood with his arms crossed over his sumptuous robe; he met her eyes, but his held no kindness.
‘He knows what I’m thinking,’ she thought, ‘But why does he always make one feel that it’s a crime to stop thinking of him even for an instant?’
She knew his jealous nature so well; and she smiled at him conciliatingly. What more could he want than he already had? She lived with him as if they were man and wife, even though she was Queen and he married; and she had compelled the kingdom to accept the fact of their love. She had seen to it that he had complete power; he appointed his creatures to every post; he had acquired all the fiefs of Edward II’s old favourites; and the Council of Regency obeyed his decrees and merely ratified his wishes. He had even persuaded Isabella to issue the order for her husband’s death. It was due to him that she was called the She-wolf of France! How could he expect her not to think of it on this wedding day, particularly since the executioner was present? The long, sinister face of John Maltravers, lately promoted Seneschal of England, seemed to be hanging over Mortimer’s shoulder as if to remind her of the crime.
Isabella was not the only person who resented John Maltravers’ presence. He had been the late King’s warder, and his sudden elevation to the post of Seneschal made it only too obvious for what services he was being rewarded. To those, and there were many, who were now almost certain that Edward II had been murdered, his presence was embarrassing, for they felt that the father’s murderer would have done better to keep away from the son’s wedding.
The Earl of Kent, the dead man’s brother, turned to his cousin Henry Wryneck and whispered: ‘It seems as if to kill a king entitles one to rank with his family now.’
Edmund of Kent was shivering. He thought the ceremony too long and the York rite too complicated. Why could the marriage not have been celebrated in the chapel of the Tower of London, or in some other royal castle, instead of making a public show of it? He felt uneasy under the eyes of the crowd; and the sight of Maltravers made it worse.
Wryneck, his head tilted towards his right shoulder – the infirmity which gave him his nickname – muttered: ‘The easiest way to become a member of our house is by sinning. Our friend is proof of it. Be quiet, he’s looking at us.’
By ‘our friend’ he meant Mortimer, and it showed how much the feeling had changed since he had disembarked, eighteen months before, in command of the Queen’s army and been welcomed as a liberator.
‘After all, the hand that obeys is no worse than the head that commands,’ thought Wryneck. ‘And no doubt Mortimer – and Isabella too – are guiltier than Maltravers. But we must all share some of the guilt; we all put our hands to the sword when we turned Edward II off the throne. It could end in no other way.’
In the meantime, the Archbishop was presenting the young King with three gold pieces bearing on one side the arms of England and Hainaut, and on the reverse a semy of roses, the emblematic flowers
of married happiness. These gold pieces were the marriage deniers, symbols of the dowry in revenues, lands and castles, which the bridegroom was giving his bride. An accurate inventory of these gifts had been made, and this somewhat reassured Messire Jean of Hainaut, the bride’s uncle, to whom fifteen thousand livres were still owing for the pay of his knights during the campaign in Scotland.
‘Kneel at your husband’s feet to receive the deniers, Madam,’ the Archbishop said.
The people of York had been waiting for this moment, wondering whether the local rite would be observed to the end, and whether it was as valid for a queen as it was for a subject.
But no one had foreseen that Madam Philippa would not only kneel but also, in the excess of her love and gratitude, embrace her husband’s legs and kiss the knees of the boy who was making her his Queen. This chubby Flemish girl could find means of showing the impulses of her heart.
The crowd cheered enthusiastically.
‘I’m sure they’ll be very happy,’ said Wryneck to Jean of Hainaut.
‘The people will love her,’ Isabella said to Mortimer, who had moved closer to her.
The Queen Mother felt the cheers like a wound because they were not for her. ‘Philippa is the Queen now,’ she thought. ‘My day is over. Yet, perhaps, I shall now get France …’
For a courier, with the lilies on his coat, had galloped into York the week before with the news that her last brother of France, King Charles IV, lay dying.
2.
Travail for a Crown
CHARLES IV, THE FAIR, had fallen ill on Christmas Day. At Epiphany the physicians and apothecaries tending him had to admit that he was dying. What had caused the fever that consumed him, the tearing cough that shattered his emaciated chest, the blood that he spat? The physicians impotently shrugged their shoulders, It was the curse, of course: that curse which had fallen on all Philip the Fair’s heirs. And what medicines could operate against such a curse as that? Both the Court and the people were convinced there was no need to look elsewhere.
Louis the Hutin had died at the age of twenty-seven, murdered, as everyone knew, even though the Countess Mahaut of Artois had been exculpated at a public trial. Philippe the Long had died at twenty-nine through having drunk water from a well in Poitou that had been poisoned by the lepers. Charles IV had lived to the age of thirty-three; but this was the limit. It was a known fact that the accursed could never live longer than Christ.
‘It’s up to us, Brother, to seize the reins of government and to hold them with a firm hand,’ said the Count of Beaumont, Robert of Artois, to his cousin and brother-in-law, Philippe of Valois. ‘And this time,’ he added, ‘we won’t let my Aunt Mahaut beat us to it. Anyway, she has no more sons-in-law to push.’
They, at least, both enjoyed the best of health. Robert of Artois, now forty-one, was still the same colossus who had to bend his head to pass through doorways and could overturn an ox by seizing it by the horns. A master of legal procedure, of intrigue and of chicane, he had shown his ability during these last twenty years both in his lawsuit over Artois and in the war in Guyenne, among much else. It had been due to him that the scandal of the Tower of Nesle had come to light. And it was also thanks to him that Lord Mortimer and Queen Isabella had been enabled to take refuge in France, where they had first become lovers, to raise an army in Hainaut, rouse all England and turn Edward II off his throne. Nor, when he went in to dinner, did it embarrass him in the least that his hands were stained with the blood of Marguerite of Burgundy. In recent years, his voice had been more frequently heard in the Council of the weak Charles IV than the Sovereign’s.
Philippe of Valois was six years his junior and nothing like so clever. But physically he was tall, strong, wide-chested, and he moved well; he seemed to be almost a giant when Robert was not by; and he had a splendid knightly presence which was much in his favour. Moreover, he inherited the reputation of his father, the famous Charles of Valois, who had been the most turbulent and adventurous prince of his time, a pretender to phantom thrones and a supporter of unrealized crusades, yet a great warrior, whom Philippe did his best to emulate in prodigality and magnificence.
Though Philippe of Valois’ talents had not as yet made any particular mark on Europe, everyone had confidence in him. He was a brilliant performer in tournaments, which were indeed his passion; and the valour he displayed there was not negligible.
‘Philippe, I’ll make you Regent,’ Robert of Artois was saying, ‘that’s what I want, and I promise to do it. Regent, and very possibly King, if God so wills, provided my niece,2 who’s pregnant to her back teeth, doesn’t have a son in a couple of months’ time. Poor Cousin Charles! He won’t see the child he so longed for. And, even if it’s a boy, you’ll still have the Regency for twenty years. And in twenty years …’
He emphasized his thought with a wave of the arm, which seemed to include every possible hazard: infant mortality, hunting accidents, the impenetrable designs of Providence.
‘And you, as the good friend I know you to be,’ went on the giant, ‘will see to it that I get back my County of Artois, of which Mahaut, thief and poisoner that she is, has been so unjustly possessed since the death of my noble grandfather, as well as the peerage that goes with it. Just think, I’m not even a peer of France! Absurd, isn’t it? It makes me ashamed for my wife, who is after all your sister.’
Philippe nodded his head, lowering that great nose of his, and blinking his eyes in agreement.
‘Robert, justice shall be done you, if I am ever in a position to see to it. You can count on my support.’
The best friendships are based on mutual interest and common plans for the future.
Robert of Artois, who shrank from nothing, undertook to go to Vincennes and make it clear to Charles the Fair that his days were numbered and that certain arrangements must be made: the peers must be summoned at once, and Philippe of Valois recommended to them as Regent. Indeed, so as to make his selection inevitable, why should Charles not confide the administration of the kingdom to Philippe at once, delegating all powers to him?
‘We are all mortal, every one of us, my dear cousin,’ said Robert, who was himself bursting with health, as he entered the dying man’s room, shaking the bed with his heavy tread.
Charles IV was in no condition to argue; indeed, he was relieved that someone else should shoulder his responsibilities. His only concern was to cling on to life, and it was slipping between his fingers.
Thus Philippe of Valois was endued with the sovereign power and was able to summon the peers.
Robert of Artois began campaigning at once. He went first to his nephew of Evreux, a young man of twenty-one, who had great charm but lacked enterprise. He was married to the daughter of Marguerite of Burgundy, Jeanne la Petite, as she was still called, though she was now seventeen. She had been set aside from the succession to the throne of France at the death of the Hutin.
Indeed, the Salic Law had been promulgated on her account, and all the more readily adopted because her mother’s misconduct cast a serious doubt on her legitimacy. In compensation, and to appease the House of Burgundy, she had been recognized as heiress to the Kingdom of Navarre. There had, however, been no untoward haste in keeping this promise and the last two Kings of France had remained also Kings of Navarre.
Had Philippe of Evreux borne any resemblance to his uncle, Robert of Artois, he would have seized this splendid opportunity for chicanery on the largest possible scale by contesting the Law of Succession and claiming the two crowns in his wife’s name.
But Robert of Artois, who had a great ascendancy over him, would very soon have disabused him of pretensions to being a competitor.
‘You shall have Navarre which is your due, my dear nephew, as soon as my brother-in-law of Valois becomes Regent. I have insisted on it as a family matter and as a condition for giving Philippe my support. You shall be King of Navarre! It’s not a crown to be despised and, for my part, I advise you to put it on your head just as soon as you
can, and before anyone else comes along to dispute it. Between ourselves, your wife would have a better claim to it if her mother had kept on the right side of the blanket. There’s going to be a scramble for power, and you had best make sure of support: you have ours. And don’t go listening to your uncle of Burgundy; he’ll simply persuade you to do something silly for his own ends. Philippe will be Regent; base your plans on that.’
In return for abandoning Navarre, Philippe of Valois could already therefore count on two votes.
Louis of Bourbon had been made a duke a few weeks before and had received the County of La Marche3 as an apanage. He was the eldest member of the family. If the question of the Regency became dangerously controversial, the fact that he was Saint Louis’ grandson might well enable him to sway several votes. In any case, his views were bound to carry weight with the Council of Peers. He was not only lame but a coward; and it would require more courage than he possessed to enter the lists against the powerful Valois clan. Moreover, his son had married a sister of Philippe of Valois.
Robert gave Louis of Bourbon to understand that the sooner he promised his support, the earlier would all the lands and titles he had accumulated as a time-server during the previous reigns be guaranteed to him. He now had three votes.
The Duke of Brittany had hardly arrived from Vannes, and his trunks were not yet unpacked, when Robert of Artois called on him.
‘You agree on Philippe, don’t you? He’s so pious and loyal, we can be sure he’ll make a good king – I mean a good regent!’
Jean of Brittany was bound to support Philippe of Valois. After all, he had married one of Philippe’s sisters, Isabella. It was true she was dead, but he could hardly do other than be loyal to her memory. To lend weight to his overtures, Robert brought along his mother, Blanche of Brittany, the Duke’s elder sister. She was very old and small and wrinkled; but though her mind was far from lucid, she invariably agreed with everything her giant of a son said. Jean of Brittany was more concerned with the affairs of his duchy than with those of France. Since everyone seemed so much in favour of Philippe, why not?
The Lily and the Lion Page 2
