Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer

by N. Gemini Sasson

  But if I lived – and lived long enough – one day, I could have my revenge.

  *****

  I could tell we had arrived at the city’s edge simply by the power of its nauseating stench. Our wagon rumbled into London at the darkest hour of night. The timing of our arrival was well planned. The streets were hushed and vacant. Only the occasional yowling of a cat in season or the alert yap of a dog sliced through the dead air.

  When we entered the city at Ludgate, a surly guard dismounted, clambered into the wagon bed and one by one covered each of us with a moth-eaten, mildewed blanket. Out of habit, for I had always hated London and avoided it at all costs, I muttered about the odor and swiftly felt the toe of his boot to my gut.

  “Quiet, bastard traitor!”

  I was not spoken to again until we reached the inner bailey of the Tower of London. There, they snatched the blanket away and pitched me sideways from the wagon. My elbow and chest slammed against the cobbles. Air was sucked from my lungs. Before I could draw breath, Edmund landed across my legs, tumbled over, and banged his head on the stones. He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out, but a long hiss of pain escaped his mouth. I choked and sputtered as I fought to breathe. Then I saw another shadow wobbling above me. There was an irascible grunt, followed by a spit and a curse.

  They hurled my uncle from the wagon. My torso broke his fall; only he did not land with the lithe reactions of my son, but the dead weight of an old man stiff in the joints. I tried to inhale, but his weight crushed me. My lungs would not expand. Down low my ribs burned with pain, as though someone had plunged a flaming poker into me.

  “Get ... off,” I gasped.

  They hoisted him to his feet and began to drag him away.

  I tucked my right elbow beneath me to roll over, but the pain burst through me again. With my hands still bound, I could not push myself up with either of them. The scrape of fading footsteps urged me to try again. I lifted my other shoulder and turned my head enough to see, in the silver etchings of a winter night, my uncle being escorted toward one of the tower doors. A virulent sneer tore from his lips.

  “May you rot in hell!” he shouted at me. His crackling voice echoed off the high walls like the shattering of glass. They shoved him headlong through the doorway. He cursed again. The door slammed shut. Then ... the sound of a beating. His profane oaths were muffled by fist blows, until at last they faded to heavy sobs and drawn-out whimpers.

  On his knees, Edmund shook his head. Slowly, he turned his face toward me. A trickle of blood traced its way from the indent of his temple to the ridge of his cheekbone. “He did not mean it,” he said barely above a whisper.

  At that, one of the guards seized him by the back of his shirt, yanked him to his feet and slammed a fist into his belly. “Keep your mouth shut, you hear?”

  Edmund crumpled against the wagon, his eyes squeezed tight in pain. Before he could recover, they hooked their hands beneath each of his arms and were taking him away, too. Had I any breath to spare, I would have called after him. With stoic courage, Edmund lifted his head, picked up his feet, and kept silent so they would not give him the same pummeling they had given his great uncle. He was escorted to the same door, but when it was opened there was neither sight nor sound of my uncle. Edmund dodged to the side to avoid being slammed into the doorway as they jostled him through.

  Vaguely, I was aware of the clop of hooves, the wagon rattling away over the stones, a barking of orders, the groaning of a gate, and the slow murmur of deep voices from behind me.

  “ – the Lanthorn Tower. There is a room for him there. Mind you, no one is to speak to him.”

  Measured footsteps approached me from behind. I felt a pair of hands lift me carefully up until I was sitting. I winced involuntarily.

  A man in full mail and wearing the king’s red and gold stepped around me and sank to his haunches. His balding head, bare of coif or helmet, was fringed with close shorn chestnut locks and streaked with the first white hairs of middle age. “A bit bruised, aren’t you?” He began to probe about my head with lightly jabbing fingers and worked his way down my neck and shoulders. When he came to my last two ribs on the right, I clenched my jaw, but there was a little groan deep inside my throat he must have heard, for he drew his hands away and stood. “Take him away. And see to his injuries. ‘Tis the king who says whether he lives or dies, and when, not us.”

  Silently, I thanked him for that grace, however morbid.

  *****

  A shaft of white daylight broke through the single window of my room. I stretched my arms outward, only to feel the pain clamp around my ribcage. It had worsened through the night, but I had been so grateful for a mattress and a blanket, despites the lumps and fleas, that I went dead with sleep minutes after lying down. Besides a real bed, I had been given a room with a chair, although its cushion was flat and its red cloth frayed, and a cracked chamber pot. Slowly, I pushed my blanket away and eased my feet onto the floor. I curled my fingers into loose fists and unrolled them one by one. The scabs on my wrists were puckering. I turned my arms over. No fresh blood. No sign of infection. I draped the blanket over my cramped shoulders and hobbled across the room in six small pain-riddled strides. Winter wind leaked around the leaded panes of the recessed window. My view was of the waterfront and the Thames itself. I guessed from my height above the river that I was housed on the uppermost floor.

  I heard a scraping sound and looked over my shoulder. But it was only a mouse, scurrying from under the bed into a tiny hole between the stones at floor level. I leaned back against the cold, rough wall and gazed out at the world beyond. A world to which I no longer belonged. Below, fishing boats slipped downriver on their way out to open sea. Merchants’ barges slogged past them against the current. One maneuvered into a wharf to unload sacks of grain. The sun beamed bright over London, alive with activity, but I felt only the icy fingers of winter slip beneath my tunic to steal the warmth from my flesh and the pain sharp in every rattled bone and bruised muscle.

  At intervals, I heard dampened voices through the thickness of the door. Mostly, there was only silence and the faint clack of boot heels from the sentries along the walls connecting the towers. Finally, the latch turned. Hinges squeaked. The door opened. A guard shuffled in, flashed me a look of contempt, and flung a hunk of bread and a cup of drink on the floor next to the door. Had I remarked on how he had spilt half the drink in his carelessness, I would have gotten a rude welcome from him. He backed out. Two others behind him parted, but instead of one of them reaching to close the door, another stepped between them and entered. It was the man who had given the orders to send me here last night. He gestured for the guards to close the door.

  “I take it you know who I am?” I grinned facetiously. “Sir Roger Mortimer, England’s greatest traitor, did they tell you? Some might argue that. Myself for one. But I wager you’re an important man in these ranks to have been granted the honor of looking after me. What is your name, good sir?”

  He crossed his arms. The lines of his face were firmly set to show he afforded me no sympathy. “Gerard d’Alspaye, Sub-lieutenant of the Tower. I came to see if you needed a physician?”

  “I am to live after all, then?” But even as I asked it, I feared the only purpose in keeping me alive was to put me on trial. A trial with the sentence already written. When he gave no reply, I plied him further. “How many years have you been in the king’s service?”

  “All of it. And ten years under his father before that.”

  “Well then, you deserve the honor. Although it may not be for long. If Edward has his way I’ll be headless ere springtime.” I went to the chair and eased my aching body onto it. If I stood any longer, my legs would give way. “So, where have you put my uncle and son?”

  Impervious to my attempts to learn more, he repeated himself. “Do you need a physician?”

  “Do I look broken?” I answered peevishly. I looked toward the window, quite sure I would be spending many days, month
s perhaps, alone like this as I awaited my fate. “Send your physician to my uncle. He is old and ill.”

  D’Alspaye nodded and turned to go.

  “Lieutenant,” I called, still not looking at him, “is there anything you can tell me?”

  “Only that it is a pity to see you here ... my lord.”

  Then I heard his knock on the door, the sliding of the outer bar, and his footsteps fading away. I sighed and regarded my meager meal. The mouse froze momentarily, a morsel of bread clenched between its tiny claws. Its whiskers twitched in frantic indecision. We studied each other closely. At length, it scampered away.

  I rose, kicked the cup against the door and lay down in my cold, hard bed.

  *****

  Never again did I see the guards that had escorted us from Shrewsbury to London. Those that kept watch over me daily were less violent men, but more impressionable. They had heard of my exploits in Ireland. I told them how I tamed the Irish and brought law to the land. I told them of Bannockburn, a tale that needed no embellishment. Shortly after that, Gerard d’Alspaye came and asked me to tell it again. He poured us both cups of ale and sat down on my decrepit chair, listening with the rapt attention of a young boy who sits at his father’s knee and dreams of being a knight. When I was done telling my story, he gave me news of the outside world: Lancaster had been brought to battle by Andrew Harclay, the Earl of Carlisle, at Boroughbridge. He was captured the next day and taken to Pontefract. His end came as quickly as Edward – and the recently returned Hugh Despenser – could get there.

  Had I known that they would lop off Thomas of Lancaster’s red-faced head in a fit of revenge for trying to make peace with the Scots ... I would have swum to Ireland before laying down my arms. Great lords by the dozens were sent to their deaths, including the meek Bartholomew de Badlesmere, who was taken to Canterbury and hanged. Every day, I expected them to come and escort me to the scaffolding. Yet days stretched miserably into weeks with no word of what was to become of me.

  While I languished, Edward marched into Scotland. I wondered how he would fare there, failure that he always was at war.

  I might have gone mad, shut up in the Tower with the rodents, muttering to myself. A likely outcome. No doubt many a man had, as he picked at putrid scabs and retched his guts dry from hunger. Had I more faith in God’s plan than my own, I would have turned monkish and welcomed my death. But I was not so certain that heaven awaited me. Souls bound for heaven ought to be pure and repentant and full of forgiveness.

  I was not.

  For every night that I lay my head down on my pillow crawling with lice, I dreamed of revenge. It was the only joy I had.

  7

  Isabella:

  Tynemouth Priory – October, 1322

  EDWARD SAID HE WOULD come. He told me to wait for him and when he did not come I thought surely he would send someone to bring me to his side. Yet the days crawled by like years and there I waited, praying to the dusty bones of a trifling saint, far from the places I had come to know as home, far from my beloved children.

  Once, he had abandoned me in York. He would again, I feared – this time in a remote, holy place, as if God and His saints would guard me.

  I raised my face to the new light. Three silver-yellow fingers reached through the tall, lancet windows on the eastern wall of Tynemouth Priory. They crept silently across the length of the nave, stretching moment by moment, illuminating the dusky tiles of the floor and the spindly columns that aspired heavenward, until at last they brushed my face. I blinked at the intrusion and shifted on the velvet cushions beneath my knees until the prickling sensation in my feet lessened and the steady pulse of blood returned.

  I folded my hands to pray, the beads of my rosary bunched between my palms; but prayers did not pass my lips or fill my mind. Instead, a thousand screaming visions battled in my head. Terrible and haunting. Visions of Scottish hobelars with their swords high above their heads; of arrows hissing and twanging, leaving bodies sprawled in bloody puddles; of people stumbling from burning homes, their crying children clutched in their arms; of women being brutally raped. Visions of war. Nightmares of the daylight hours.

  I had seen the aftermath with my own eyes. Heard the tales. I wished not to live it.

  Inside the priory church there was no rote chanting of monks, no shifting of the congregation on weary knees, nothing but the pregnant stillness of dawn. The ominous silence – the nothingness of it – only blew breath into my grotesque visions.

  Kneeling next to me, my damsel Patrice drew her hand from the folds of her skirt and touched me on the forearm. Her touch gave me solace, as only the closeness of a friend could.

  Sensing a shadow, I looked again toward the windows. Outside, a cloud must have scuttled across the sun, for its darkness fell upon me and I shivered deep in my bones. Patrice fumbled with the clasp on her mantle to give it to me, but I shook my head, foregoing the gesture.

  “Shall I fetch your mantle, then? With the fur lining?” Patrice kept her voice low, mindful of the sanctity of our surroundings. “Tell me what you need, anything at all, and I’ll bring it.”

  I curled my fingers around Patrice’s and squeezed. An army – can you bring me that? I wanted to say.

  In search of further guidance, I glanced toward the tomb where the bones of St. Oswin were enshrined. “What I need ... what we need, Patrice, is a swift miracle.”

  Edward despised war, but the events of the previous year – a rebellion led by the Mortimers and soon afterwards the Earl of Lancaster’s furtive dealings with the Scots – had driven him to invade Scotland in order to quell his uneasy barons. He had made it unchallenged this summer as far as Edinburgh, ravaging the abbey at Holyrood before turning back. On his way southward, vexed by the elusive Robert the Bruce, he had set fire to Melrose Abbey as a token of his passing. When his soldiers soaked the ground with the blood of monks he did nothing to intervene.

  I had been awaiting his return at Tynemouth Priory near Newcastle ever since then, as I had been told to do. But Edward had not come yet. He was riding on instead to Rievaulx, where he was to meet up with Hugh Despenser, leaving the Earl of Richmond to cover his back.

  As if her words were a secret better left unspoken, Patrice leaned closer and whispered, “The Scots won’t come this far into England ... will they?”

  Patrice knew how to draw men’s eyes to her with a modest glance or feed their arrogance by feigning interest in all they said or did, but she did not understand men’s entanglements in war or politics, or their reluctance to do without either. I smiled nervously and drew my childhood friend closer. “Robert the Bruce would be a fool to cross the River Tyne while an entire English army stands before him.”

  But I had spoken the words only to allay her fears. Many times, the Scots had raided this far into England. That constant annoyance had been the crux of the Earl Thomas of Lancaster’s argument with Edward. So rather than give his cousin Lancaster what he needed – men and money, because in truth Edward had none to spare, or a treaty of peace with the Scots – Edward had simply taken off his head out of spite, thus ending the disagreement.

  Skeptical, Patrice tilted her head at me. “But after what the king did at Holyrood and Melrose?”

  Indeed I doubted the Bruce would let it go unpunished. Edward was ignorant to even think he might.

  “If they come this way,” I said, “if they do, Tynemouth’s walls will keep them out.”

  “But for how long?”

  Not long enough, I feared.

  “The king will send someone to us,” I said, trying to convince myself. I could only pray that the ‘someone’ would not be Hugh Despenser.

  Far behind us, the main door of the nave groaned. A sharp autumn draft blew across the distance, chilling me to the bone. Patrice glanced over her shoulder and immediately tucked her chin to her chest.

  “Arnaud,” she breathed, the blush rising from her breast to her neck and then flaming her cheeks.

  I dropped my a
rm from her shoulder. “Perhaps he wishes to see you ... alone.”

  “Not here,” she objected too quickly.

  I winked at her. “As you choose, but I would advise you to find somewhere besides the storeroom. You reeked of onions last evening. This,” I said, looking around, “would seem a more suiting place to tempt your lover into a proposal. You’re twenty-seven, Patrice. An old maid. Put this one off and you’ll have no one calling but haggard old widowers with curled toenails who want you to rub their yellow feet at night and fetch them the chamber pot in the morning. You’re daft if you don’t ensnare de Mone. Shall I speak to him of my concern for your ‘honor’?” Sincere, I narrowed my eyes at her.

  Arnaud’s steps rang closer, slowing as he neared. Patrice hushed me with a glare and a clenched jaw.

  The toe of Arnaud’s boot scraped the stone tiles as he halted and clicked his heels into place. When that brought no reply, he cleared his throat roughly.

  I jabbed Patrice teasingly with an elbow. “Will you see what it is my squire wants? I’m deep in prayer and wish not to be disturbed.” My lips pressed together, I stifled a laugh at her embarrassment and pretended to resume my prayers. Between barely parted lashes, my chin tilted toward my shoulder for a better view, I watched them, intrigued.