Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer

by N. Gemini Sasson

  Rigid now, he molded himself to the chair frame. His fingernails clawed the length of his thigh, snagging the cloth of his hose. The pendant was still clutched in his other hand. His lips went taut, then began to twitch, as though he fought back tears.

  I ran my hands down my sides, from breasts to hips, to remind him not only of the future, but to distract him from past horrors.

  “Edward,” he muttered. “We will call him Edward.”

  I had expected nothing else. Of course he would name the child after himself. “You will attend the birth, I trust?”

  The last log in the fire cracked, then crumbled into a pile of flickering ashes. “If it is safe for me to leave London ...” He brushed his fingers toward the door. “Go. I shall provide you with a sizeable armed escort. To keep you safe.”

  In our more than four years together, it was the closest thing to genuine concern that had ever graced his lips. I uttered a perfunctory word of thanks, gathered up the ponderous weight of my skirts and dipped at the knee. As I took my first steps to leave, a knock rattled the door in its frame. I halted partway across the room, braving a look back. Edward peered at me through tearful, slit eyes.

  “Were you expecting someone, my lord? I can send them away, if – ”

  “People come and go at all hours,” he sniveled. “The sooner they state their business, the sooner I can be rid of them.”

  With a nod, I went to the door and opened it. The musky scent of horse hide and leather wafted in. Behind the guard stood a nobleman, hands clasped behind him. His clothes had the wrinkled and smudged look of one who has ridden long and with purpose. At his right shoulder, a circular silver brooch secured his hooded riding cloak. On his left side, the scabbard of his sword dangled beneath the cloak’s embroidered hem. Black hanks of hair, knotted by the wind, hid his downcast eyes.

  “Sir Roger Mortimer, my lady,” the guard said lowly, as if he were reluctant to disturb Edward yet again, “to seek an audience with the king.”

  Slowly, Mortimer looked up, his dark eyes lingering for a moment on the mound of my pregnancy. My fingers groped the air for a mantle to cover myself, but with a flush of embarrassment I remembered I had none. I retreated behind the door – as if I could hide there, suddenly invisible.

  “What? Is Death at my door, come for me now?” Edward jested. “Who is it?”

  “Sir Roger Mortimer.”

  “So soon from Ireland? The devil indeed has wings, eh? Send him in. I have rotten work to be done in Gascony.”

  “Gascony?” I echoed, my hand upon the door, stalling. “But I thought Ireland and Scotland – ”

  “Ireland, Scotland ... the whole mad world is against me. Why not Gascony, too? Even the pope chides me. Anyway, it’s Mortimer’s kin who are quarreling now – and they’re costing me in fines levied by your father. So I’ll set Mortimer to task. Now please.” He waved a hand in the air expansively.

  Tugging the door fully open, I took a step back.

  “My lady.” Mortimer bowed, his mouth spreading into a broad smile as he met my eyes again. “Your condition, if I may say, suits you exceedingly well. My own wife, Joan, is at Ludlow this very moment, due our eighth child.”

  Eighth? He was barely in his mid twenties and his wife the same age. The poor woman. I could hardly imagine bearing a child of Edward’s every year for the next eight years. But then, Roger Mortimer was not at all like Edward.

  “If it is a girl,” he said, “I will ask that she name her Isabella, in hopes she will grow to be as beautiful as you.”

  Heat ignited in my breast and flared upward from my neck to my face. Unable to hold his gaze, I spoke at my shoes in a voice no bigger than a small child’s. “I-I have no objection. It is a common enough name.”

  I scurried down the stairs, too quickly for good sense. When I reached the bottom, dizzy and breathless, I sank down to rest on the last stair. The chill of the stones seeped through the cloth of my gown and into my hips. I drew my knees in close and curled both arms around my extended belly, aware of an odd sensation. Not pain, but a stirring. Movement. Slight perhaps, but certain.

  If it is a boy, let him become a greater man than his father.

  I prayed:

  “Hail Mary, full of grace,

  God is with thee.

  Of all women, thou art most blessed

  And blessed be the fruit of thy womb ...”

  This time the babe kicked hard, just beneath my ribs. I pressed a hand there, overcome with wonder as I felt his strong limbs push against my palm.

  *****

  The day that Young Edward – or so I would come to call him – was born at Windsor, the nursemaid, Ida, swore she saw a lone golden eagle soaring above the Round Tower, as if it were heralding some extraordinary event. My damsel Patrice argued it was merely a buzzard eyeing the bloated corpse of an old stable cat that had strayed onto the roof to die. But superstitious Ida could not be convinced otherwise. She believed it was an omen that there would be a great war in the young prince’s lifetime. But when is the world ever without some terrible strife between or within kingdoms?

  I did not see the eagle – only the strange, blue-veined protrusion of my stomach, looking to my vain, seventeen-year old self like a tumor that did not belong there. For me, the birthing was easier than it was for most women. It did not go on long. I had awoken in the night with a sense of urgency, my middle contracting. While Ida fetched the midwife, I paced the floor, chatting with Patrice to pass the time and stopping occasionally as a shiver rippled through me. When the midwife came, she made me lie down, spread my legs apart in a rather vulgar pose and exclaimed that the baby’s head was already crowning. It was almost as though I were watching someone else give birth to him.

  Afterwards, my astonishment gave way to a wave of exhaustion, but I do not remember any pain. I remember more the tickling of pride, like I had indeed done something out of the ordinary. The midwife placed the small, wailing babe in the crook of my elbow. Immediately, he looked at me and quieted, as if he knew my face already and that sanctuary would always be within my arms.

  2

  Roger Mortimer:

  Berwick – June, 1314

  THE DUTIES OF A king’s liegeman are too often unwanted, unending and thankless.

  For years in Ireland I, Roger Mortimer, had fought against small chiefs who called themselves ‘kings’ and brought them all down. Then, just as a lull had settled there, King Edward sent me to play peacemaker among my petty kin in Gascony. I had barely set foot in Ireland again when another summons was flung at me – to join the king on campaign in Scotland to relieve Stirling Castle. Did he not think for a moment to better prepare himself against the Bruce?

  Bannockburn. Thousands upon thousands of Englishmen lay dead there now. Yet I had survived.

  For this.

  Two carrion crows eyed us from the distant parapets of the towers that flanked Berwick’s gate. My gaze drifted to the walls surrounding the city. How many batterings had those walls seen? The scars were still there from Longshanks’ assault, almost twenty years ago. Inside now huddled his successor: Edward II, King of England.

  This Edward was nothing like his father.

  I pulled in a breath and held it. My lungs burned. The air was still hot with the scent of blood, even though the battlefield was many days and miles behind us.

  “Come, Maltravers,” I said to my companion beside me. His horse flicked its ears, reluctant to go on. Eight years ago on Whitsunday, Sir John Maltravers and I had taken our vows of knighthood at Westminster. He was now less half of the last two fingers of his left hand. His reminder of Bannockburn. Not yet healed, he kept them wrapped in strips of cloth that were brown and stiff with dried blood.

  I shifted in my saddle, my arms and legs flaming sore. The ride to Berwick had been long and hard. The sun so searing hot it felt as though my flesh might melt from my bones. Sweat pooled in the creases of my clothing. I licked at dry lips, making them sting.

  With his go
od hand, Maltravers yanked at the reins of the extra horse we had been given. Flies swarmed around the canvas-wrapped lump draped over its back. The corpse was beginning to stink. Perhaps it would have been better had I not survived the battle. Or been ransomed instead. Anything but this.

  Bloody Christ, I had not asked to do this. It would earn me no favors.

  I pricked my horse’s flanks with my spurs and we rode up to Berwick’s gate.

  To bring the king a token of his defeat.

  *****

  An hour passed before Maltravers and I were given entrance to the town. Another hour before we were taken to the castle. All the while, flies assaulted us in great swarms of agitation. We paused on the steps to the main door of the great hall. There, an old woman gave us water from a ladle dipped in a leaky bucket. I guzzled it down, doubled over as a pain ripped through my belly and turned my head aside to vomit. My insides cleansed, I dragged my hand across my mouth and straightened. I fought the urge to turn and go back the way I had come, but I had a duty to complete. I owed my life to it, however disagreeable.

  Like a lion’s yawning jaws, the doors opened. Maltravers and I were led inside. I probed the sack I carried for a lump. Still there. Several knights, scowls visible even across the distance, leered at us from the dais at the hall’s end. In his high-backed chair in the middle, the king slumped. I forced myself forward. I still felt the aches of battle, sharp as knives, especially the sword blow I had taken to my left shoulder. My mail had saved me. The Scotsman who struck me had lost his arm for the offense. I had not bothered to finish killing him, merciful as that might have been. There was too much going on around me and he was going to die anyway.

  Maltravers staggered like a drunk under the weight slung over his shoulder. His knee banged against the leg of an overturned bench and he spit out a curse under his breath. The tables and benches that lined either side of the hall were in disarray. Toppled cups lay atop the tables; puddles of spilt ale beneath. Rotting fruit littered the floor. My eyes lingered on a half eaten chicken. When had I last eaten? I could not recall. I reached out my hand, thinking to sample the meat, but the fetid smell wafting from beside me made me retch.

  “I thought you were dead, Sir Roger,” King Edward drawled.

  Before the dais, I halted Maltravers with my hand and set the sack down at my feet, eager to be rid of it. “Is that how you would prefer me, sire?”

  “Not at all,” he muttered absently, his gaze fixed on Maltraver’s burden. “Too many are dead already.” Tears rushed to his eyes. He clenched both fists and threw his head back so hard it thunked against the back of his chair. Then he gulped air and spoke again, his voice cracking with sorrow. “You were with the Earl of Pembroke at ... at Bannockburn, were you not? He is in Carlisle, I was told. Why, then, are you here?”

  “We were followed by the Scots, my lord. I turned and fought, so that Pembroke could escape. My horse, a good one, was piked. I lost my sword as I went down. I had no choice but to give myself up. When they learned who I was, they took me to their king, the Bruce. He was at the little church of St. Ninian’s, praying over the body of this his fallen kinsman – and yours. He released me so that I might bring the body to you. That, sire, is why I am here.” I motioned Maltravers forward.

  As he neared the king, Maltravers dragged his feet. In relief, he exhaled heavily and lowered the great weight from his shoulder. He laid it out full length on the step below the king’s chair and backed away, his head down so that he would not meet the king’s eyes and his maimed hand hidden behind his leg.

  “Robert the Bruce,” I began, “said to tell you, my king, that he grieves, as well, and that your nephew was a good and courageous man.” I peeled away the cloth covering the face. Despite a cursory embalming by the monks of Cambus Kenneth Abbey, the sweet odor of decay invaded the air. I held my breath and looked down at the bloodless, wizened face. He had died young. And foolishly – thinking he could take the Bruce single-handedly. “Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester.”

  The group of men who stood to the side of the dais murmured. I recognized only a few of them. With so many great lords dead or captured there were bound to be new faces surrounding the king, all plying for their fortunes.

  Edward took one glance, shivered and clamped his eyes shut. “Cover his face, Hugh. Cover it!” The Scottish monks had taken great pains to sew up the skin over the cleft in his skull near Gilbert’s left temple. That was where the Bruce’s axe head had been imbedded. But it was Gilbert’s body being dragged across open ground by his frightened horse that had torn a hunk of flesh from that side of his head. The mending had left his features ghoulishly distorted, his mouth stretched taut to one side. Edward sniveled. “That grotesque ... thing ... is not my beloved Gilbert.” His voice dissipated like mist scattered by the wind. “He always wore a smile. Always.”

  The younger man beside him obliged. He paused to study the face before carefully laying the cloth back over it. “It is him, my lord king,” he said in a detached, languorous voice.

  I recognized him then as Hugh Despenser the Younger. He had been with the king at Stirling’s gate. His wife was Eleanor de Clare, Gilbert’s sister. I had seen him at court only a handful of times, as he dangled expectantly on the fringes like a hound waiting for scraps to fall from the table. It appeared he had found the abandoned foxhole and burrowed himself under the king’s armpit recently.

  With a shudder, Edward opened his eyes, wept red and dry, and gave Despenser a doleful look.

  Despenser moved up the steps of the dais and knelt before the king. He touched a hand lightly to his knee. “He was a loyal kinsman, a kind friend to you. His loss is a heavy blow to many. Eleanor will shed many tears when she hears of it.”

  His words were too contrived, his tone too hollow to have been in earnest.

  Edward laid his hand on top of Hugh’s. He shook his head for a long time until his lower lip began to quiver. “Was it not enough, what happened? This, too? He was so dear to me. So very, very dear. My brother, I often called him.”

  “A pity he never had children, my lord.”

  No heirs. And Hugh Despenser married to one of his sisters, who would undoubtedly inherit Gilbert’s numerous holdings, including an earldom. What a convenience that Despenser now stood close enough to mop the king’s tears away.

  Edward nodded and then cocked his head to one side. “Bruce – he expects something for this ... morbid gesture?” He scoffed into his hand. “I’ll not call that bastard ‘king’, ever.”

  “He did not ask that, not yet.” I reached inside the sack at my feet and revealed its contents. “But he sends this: The Great Seal.”

  Edward’s eyes bulged. The Great Seal bore his likeness and without its imprint in wax no royal document was valid. He gestured at Despenser to retrieve it. Once in his hands he turned it over, inspecting it carefully to confirm its authenticity. Then he clenched it so hard his knuckles went white. “What does he want for it?”

  “His wife, sisters and daughter back, my lord. And Bishop Wishart of Glasgow.”

  “Wishart? The shriveled old turd is blind and deaf.”

  “Then it will do little harm to release him. He says, also, once you send them back to Scotland, he will free the Earl of Hereford and other lords.”

  “So why did he let you go?”

  He would have doubted me had I been his own brother. “To bring you this message.”

  “Phhh ...” Listless, Edward wilted into his chair again. “I need time to think. To seek counsel.”

  “As you wish, my lord king. In the meanwhile, shall I carry the Earl of Gloucester’s remains back to one of his sisters, so he may be properly buried?” Inwardly, I revolted against the prospect of traveling so far south with a putrid corpse in the blazing height of summer, but it seemed the proper thing to do. Besides, I did not want to stay here and watch King Edward wallow in self-pity. I would return to court when he had regained his senses, or else I would go back to Ireland and earn his
regard there. Meanwhile, I had a wife to get home to.

  Edward traced his jawline with a fingertip. “Yes, do that.”

  “Which sister, my lord?”

  He waved a hand in the air. “Eleanor. Take him to Lady Eleanor in ... in ...”

  “Gloucester,” Despenser answered for him. “Do you wish me to go along as well, my king? To settle his estates?”

  “No.” Edward clasped Despenser’s hand fiercely, as if the thought of him leaving was too much to bear. “No, Hugh, stay. I will need your guidance on these ludicrous demands. But first, we shall go on to London. Oh, London ... dear God, I do not want to go there at all. But we cannot stay here. Not in Berwick. Even York is too close. If we are pursued one more step with a pack of Scottish dogs on our heels ...” He stopped himself and flipped a hand toward the door. “Go, Sir Roger. At once. Have a Mass said in Gilbert’s name for me.”

  I bent to retrieve the empty sack at my feet, but before I could turn to go, the king said, “Gilbert’s father-in-law, Ralph de Monthermer. What became of him?”

  I hesitated to answer. He would not like the truth. Sooner or later, though, he would hear it. “Taken by the Scots, my lord.”

  “For ransom? Part of the exchange for the Seal?”

  “No, my lord. The Bruce gave him his freedom. Some sort of repayment for a past favor, as I understood. I do not know the story behind it, but Monthermer chose to stay as his guest ... for now.”