Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer

by N. Gemini Sasson

  She pressed her fingertips together in a hasty prayer. “I am to be betrothed to a squire from Oxford. A good man, I’m told. He sent me this.” She splayed the fingers of her left hand and wiggled them to show a ring of tarnished silver set with a milky blue stone. A pretty bauble, it was nothing of great value. To her, however, it was a treasure.

  “Very beautiful.” I leaned close to peer at it. “So you have not met?”

  She twisted the ring on her finger. Then, deciding it was loose, she switched it to another finger. “No, but he writes. I have one of the monks read them to me. It is ... embarrassing sometimes, what he says, to hear a holy man say it. But he sounds most kind.”

  Two soldiers each extended a hand to help us into the little rowing boat that reeked of fish. “A very important trait for a husband to have. You will be happy.” I hooked my arm through hers and together we walked into the foamy rush of cold waves that wrapped about our feet. The boat rocked as we each stepped into it. We plunked down on a rowing thwart in the front and the two soldiers took the back, leaving the oarsman in the middle. I hugged Cecilia close. As I did so, I saw, far to the south and high up at the edge of the cliffs ... a line of horsemen, armed. Their silhouettes cut stark and ominous against a gray veiling of clouds. The tips of their spears jabbed at the sky as they rode hard and fast along the thin lip of earth.

  The oarsman pulled hard, grunting, and we slipped away from shore. My heart tumbled in fear with each jerk of the oars. Most of my damsels, including Patrice and Juliana, had already boarded the broad-bellied merchant ship that would take us down the coast to safety, but three others still waited on shore for the rowing boat to return for them.

  Cecilia bit fiercely at her lip as we lurched toward the bobbing ship, each wave knocking our tiny boat back almost as far as the oarsman could manage to advance.

  “He will be in York, waiting for me.” Her voice was barely a whisper above the roar of waves around us. Rain began to fall suddenly, heavily, stabbing at my shoulders and back. Cecilia crouched down before me and tucked her head tight against my bosom to keep the rain out of her eyes.

  I did not think to ask what her betrothed’s name was, so fixed was my attention on the horsemen now leaning back in their saddles to plunge rapidly down the steep trail toward the shore. “Do not worry, Cecilia. The brunt of the storm is to the north. Away from us.”

  But there was a closer fate to the south, closing fast. The last of my damsels were quaking in a tight huddle at the edge of an angry sea. A remnant of my guard, four men, waited with them. A small garrison had remained at the priory, thinking that if anyone came to attack, they would approach by the road to the west. Lightning cracked overhead. One of the soldiers glanced up at the cliffs. In the flickering light, sword blades glinted. I could now make out the round, studded shields affixed to their forearms – the targes of Scots. And at the lead a man with wild black tresses that fell to his shoulders. With his sword thrust out before him, he raised himself up out of his stirrups and closed on those below like a demon of the night.

  The garrison soldier let out a cry to stand in defense. The black-haired Scotsman cocked his arm back and leaned out hard to the side. His blade slashed through the darkness and severed the man’s bare neck. The soldier who had given the warning was forever silenced. His head bounced in front of the terrified clutch of women and rolled to the water’s edge. The man’s torso swayed until a gust of wind finally pushed it over.

  Above the crash of thunder, I could not hear the screams that followed.

  They were now three men against thirty. Through the deluge, I saw the rest of the hobelars swoop down upon the English soldiers, who did not last a minute under the onslaught of weapons, valiant though they were. Before we reached the ship, their bodies lay strewn over the sand, the rain washing red rivers of blood into a turbid black sea.

  And then I saw my women being plucked up by the Scotsmen like half-empty sacks of grain and slung across their horses’ withers.

  The black-haired Scotsman galloped his horse out into the stormy sea, stopping only when the waves crashed so forcefully against his horse’s chest that the beast refused to go any further. Our eyes met across the bleary distance and I knew, without being told, who the dark-haired one was: the Black Douglas.

  For a moment, my heart faltered. I felt our little boat struggle and pitch back toward shore as the oarsman tired, but with a fit of energy he leaned hard into the oars once again. With a few strokes more we were there and being pulled into the ship. Cecilia, still in my protective embrace, saw none of the swift massacre or the man who had led it.

  We were no more than a few hours out when the winds began to beat like the fists of undeniable death at our ship.

  Rain lashed cold and heavy. The sail was taken down while the keel heaved high above jagged waves. The ship did not hold its mending. The mast groaned against the hammering of the wind. There was no bargaining to be had. The sea would exact its price for passage. One which was dear. The storms were no more merciful than the Scots had been.

  It was almost a week before we stumbled, less several of my household, into York.

  9

  Isabella:

  York – October, 1322

  TEARS OF AGONY BLINDED me as I crossed the floor of the king’s chamber at York. The muscles in my back were drawn into a fiery knot so tight I could not raise my arms above the level of my shoulders. My throat had been scraped raw by the wind. Since setting foot upon land at Scarborough two days past, I had not changed my gown nor combed my hair. My musty cloak was splattered with mud and torn in two places at the hem. Heads had turned at my appearance in the main hall a short while ago. The gawking, however, was not due to the surprise of my sudden arrival, for I had sent no heralds ahead of me, but because everyone had to study me, disheveled as I was, to confirm that it actually was me and not my ghost.

  I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead and felt the burn of a slight fever, but dismissed it as anger. I had silenced the porter with a glare and refused the help of servants when I entered the King’s Tower. I had but one purpose in mind; I meant to confront my husband. He had more than failed me. He had put my life in peril in order to save his own.

  Edward was immersed up to his midriff in a tub of steaming water, his back to the door. At the drag of my weary steps, he twisted to look over his shoulder. His mouth gaped. Quickly, he donned a smile, although the tight curve of his lips only accentuated the shock revealed in his eyes.

  “Ah, dear wife,” Edward began nervously, “I see you’ve arrived whole. And sooner than I expected. You sailed then? To Scarborough?”

  Jankin, Edward’s red-haired servant, gave a cursory bob toward me and rinsed away the traces of soap on his master’s back. On a stool beside the tub, leaning lazily with one elbow upon its rim, sat Hugh Despenser: the barnacle affixed to the ship’s hull. Despenser did not stand or so much as nod his head in acknowledgment. He glared at me mildly, as if bothered by the interruption. When he was banished to the continent last year, I had thought myself forever rid of the louse. But my reprieve had been short-lived. As soon as the Mortimers and Lancaster had been taken care of, Edward had summoned him home.

  As I halted, the blood drained from my head too quickly and I felt my knees nearly fold beneath me. I swooned forward and caught myself on the bedpost. Leaning against it, I tried to swallow before I spoke, but even that hurt. The words came out thin and cracked, as if spoken by an old woman somewhere in the distance. “We were flung ashore like limp ship rats.”

  “But the ride was uneventful from there, I trust? The Scots are long gone by now and – ”

  “They were well beyond Hexham when we left,” I interrupted, my voice gaining strength.

  Edward tugged at his neatly trimmed beard and chuckled in amusement, as if I were a child conjuring up falsehoods. “Hexham? I doubt. They could not have made it that far. More likely headed toward the Kielder Gap at the border. Going home.” Daintily, Jankin held a towel
in front of him. Edward rose immodestly from his bathwater, arms extended so that Jankin could pat him dry. “You were quite safe, I assure you. We seeded the entire countryside about Rievaulx with the rumor that you were there with us – even that you fled from there in a nun’s habit. If they thought you were in Tynemouth, they did not come to that conclusion until much later. Although I had heard that Bruce eventually sent ... oh, who was it? Not Randolph or de la Haye. Help me, Hugh. Who was the bastard?”

  “James Douglas,” Despenser answered, stifling a yawn.

  “Yes, Bruce sent his man Douglas after you. But by the time they figured out – ”

  “I saw him,” I uttered. The blood, now bubbling with rage, had returned to my head. I dug my fingernails into the bedpost.

  “Who?”

  “Douglas. I saw Douglas as we were leaving Tynemouth.”

  “Truly? But does it matter now? You’re here.”

  “Four of my guard were killed. Three of my damsels carried away by Scots.”

  He glared at me. “You are here. If not for the rumors that bought you time ... days, it would have been you on your way to Scotland.”

  “You did not mention all those things in your letter to me – that they knew where I was.”

  Edward exchanged an innocent, yet almost rehearsed, glance with Despenser. “I told you – they didn’t. Not for certain. Besides, I wrote you in haste. Some of it I didn’t know until later. Your forgiveness?”

  He said the words with no more regret than if he had spilled a cup of wine.

  While Edward stepped from the tub and began to dress, I bit back my words with such effort that the ache in my jaw pounded, reverberating in my skull like a hammer striking iron. My bones burned with exhaustion. My nose ran over my chafed upper lip. More than anything, I wanted to sink back onto the bed behind me and let sleep overtake me, but I had been wronged, terribly ... purposefully. Through a cold rain I had ridden from Scarborough, accompanied only by a handful of sea-lashed guards and a few of my ladies who I knew wished not to be without a roof overhead and a fire in the hearth after our catastrophic voyage. Still, I had been wronged. Wronged by Hugh Despenser who sought to dominate Edward’s attentions at any cost – even my life.

  Ignoring the leech at his side, I watched Edward going about his nightly ritual – his wet hair being combed back off his face by Jankin, his skin oiled and perfumed – until I could say the next words without accusing him of murder outright.

  “Cecilia de Leygrave drowned at sea. She was only fifteen. Newly betrothed.” Her betrothed was somewhere here in York, waiting for her.

  At the name, Edward paused Jankin with the flat of his palm. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Cecilia, Cecilia ... Ah, yes. The daughter of my old nurse, Alice?”

  A rhetorical question, he followed it with an even more succinct one. “How?”

  I stared at Edward in disbelief. How? How can the obvious so baffle you? You drove us to take ship in a storm and now Cecilia ... beautiful, young Cecilia is dead. Only by God’s abundant grace are we not all lying open-eyed and empty-mouthed at the bottom of the sea. My eyes shifted from my husband’s blank countenance to that of Hugh Despenser’s, who remained smugly observant, despite my scrutiny.

  As I recounted the tale, my voice was now more dead than angry. “She had gone above to look for a trinket ... a ring, given to her by her betrothed. She could not find it and I called for her to come back below. She started across the deck, was knocked off her feet as the ship rolled, then was helped up by one of the sailors. She almost made it. Almost ... I reached out for her. But a wave came, knocked me back down into the hull. It ... the same wave, it must have carried Cecilia over the side. I heard her scream, on and on ... I could not tell the roar of the ocean from her cries.”

  How utterly helpless I had felt as it had happened. Patrice and I had held each other, sitting in salty water, shivering violently. Yet while those around us huddled together, sniveling and terrified, the ship heaving with the wild pitch of the waves and the rain stabbing at the deck above, I had taken someone’s hand, whose I know not, and said a prayer aloud:

  “Hail Mary, full of grace,

  God is with thee ...”

  By the time I uttered ‘Amen’, Cecilia’s screams were no more.

  Like a cross, the king held his arms out as Jankin draped a mid-length nightshirt of crisp, snow-white linen over his head. “How horrible. It was quick, at least.”

  “It was not,” I growled.

  Abruptly, Despenser altered the conversation. “My wife – Eleanor?”

  “Somewhere,” I snapped. I grabbed at the lining of my cloak and twisted it into a knot between my cold-cramped fingers. I was shivering even though I felt as though I was standing next to a roaring fire, but in Edward’s bedchamber there was only a brazier alit by the tub.

  Hugh gave a nonchalant nod. “Tell her I’m glad she is here and well.”

  But he did not ask to see her and I most certainly did not offer to send her. My jaws clamped as tight as a clamshell, I decided it was best to leave. My thoughts were too clouded with rage, my body too beaten to launch into what was sure to prove a long and terrible argument if I began it. Besides, Edward would be too emboldened with Despenser at his side. Tomorrow, when Despenser was elsewhere and I had renewed myself, I would speak to Edward alone. Speak to him about all this and about Despenser and his part in it.

  I let go of the bedpost and began to retreat toward the door, but it felt as though my shoes were weighted down by ingots of lead.

  Before I could place my hand on the latch, Edward called out. “Wife, dearest ...” Such words always sounded forced when they came from his lips, as if he was never quite sure how to address me. It was seldom that he called me by name and when he did it was usually either in anger or condescension. “We shall take our supper here, Hugh and I. There is a meeting of the council tomorrow morning. There will be scathing words, accusation, blame, that sort of unwelcome stuff. Bruce has our Great Seal ... again ...” He slipped on a fur-lined pelisse to finish out his attire, lifted his shoulders alternately and then tugged at the cuff of each sleeve until their length matched. “... and our kinsman, Richmond. He has not yet named his price for their return. He will delay it to keep the upper hand. Ah ...” He stole a swift glance at the window nearest, noting darkness. “Later than I thought. In the afternoon, then? Sleep well.”

  I wanted to spew my rage at him, but the longer I stood before him, the more I realized the futility of it. It did me no good to hold on to it.

  My husband had taken no concern for my anguish. None. He did not inquire of my health or that of my ladies, whether I was tired after my arduous ride or even hungry enough to share a meal with him. No embrace, no kiss upon the cheek. He spoke to me as if I had only been out of his sight for a few moments. It had been four months.

  *****

  During the storm at sea, Edward’s letter delivered to me at Tynemouth had been soaked to a pulp. Even though the words had been washed away, I remembered every one of them – each stroke of ink seared into my mind as permanently as the burn of a branding iron. On the ride inland, numbed by a dank, late autumn wind, I had asked myself over and over if somehow I had misread it, made too much of too little a thing. And over and over when I answered, it was that I had not.

  I did not see Edward the next day as I intended, for when I tried to rise from bed a fever flamed through my body and my neck was so stiff I could barely move my head without feeling as though someone had a knife to my throat. For three days I drifted in and out of a fitful sleep. Being confined to bed was always the worst of all things for me, for it gave me time to worry about my children, to stew in anger and then to alternately doubt myself ... and to relive the horrific voyage from Tynemouth to Scarborough.

  In the nightmares that came again and again it was always night, it rained endlessly and the floodwaters rose until the world was a sea and only the topmost towers of the tallest castles stood above hellish waters. I
crouched upon a parapet, soaked through, watching dead and bloated bodies float past. At last I saw a boat, a little rowing boat with a man in it with one oar. The boat drifted sleepily toward me, but for a long time I could not see who was in it because of the rain and the darkness, until at last it was close enough that I could almost reach it. The man was Despenser. I recoiled at first, and then knowing I would die otherwise, I reached out my hand and leaned from my shrinking island of stone. Despenser gave an arrogant laugh, slammed his oar against the stones on which I stood to thrust his vessel from me and then plunged the oar into the water and pulled away. I opened my mouth to cry out, but rain filled it, choking me.

  I awoke in a frigid sweat. Patrice was there to dab at my forehead with a damp cloth.

  By the fourth day the fever had broken and I was eager to get on my feet, but Patrice scolded me and once even pushed me back down and threatened to call Ida if I did not stay put. I complied, not because I feared Ida’s mothering, old hen that she was, but because it felt as though I might fall over if I actually stood up.

  “Has he called?” I said hoarsely to Patrice. There was only a small lump left in my throat and for the first time in days I felt a twinge of hunger.

  Patrice shrugged, at first not understanding what I was asking, and gave me a sip of water. “The king?”

  “Yes.”

  She pressed her lips together, trying to conjure a politic response, but in the end all she could manage was a simple shake of her head and a light hand upon my forearm. “Do you feel better today?”

  “I do. But I must look an awful sight.”

  She smiled in amusement. “You should have seen yourself a few days ago. Not at all pretty. Rumors were amuck that a changeling had taken your place.”

  Soon I was as restless as a child confined to the indoors for too long a winter. I still meant to go to Edward, to speak to him, but the number of days gone by and the fever had lessened my determination to go to war with him.