Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer

by N. Gemini Sasson

  “Best hurry,” he warned. “One arrow in your chest and you’ll drop dead as a goose.” He chortled to himself as he flung a spray of almond shells onto the floor with a sweep of his hairy arm, missing his bowl entirely.

  I tossed the dough onto the floor. Before the hearth, Arnaud and I swiped our hands through the ash pile and darkened our faces. I went up next. With each pull, I slid my feet further up the rope, squeezed it between my feet for leverage and raised myself up again. The rope burned between my legs. My arms shook with the effort, my shoulders tightened. Halfway up, the sides of the chimney narrowing, my grip weakened. I paused, bearing my weight in my legs, until they, too, began to tremble. Lying on my flea-infested mattress and staring up at the ceiling for so many months, I had become an invalid. I reached above my head to grasp the rope again with cramped fingers, but my palms were slick. From below, Arnaud tugged at the rope. My fingers slipped down the rope, its fibers searing my palms. I locked my arms and caught myself with a jerk. I swallowed back my heart like a stone. Sweat poured down my neck and chest.

  “All right up there?” Arnaud asked.

  This was no time to yield to infirmity. No time to lament that I was neither as young and strong as Arnaud nor as agile as Gerard. I looked up to see Gerard’s shadow black against the scattered stars above. I clamped my hands around the rope above me and pulled with all my will. The blackened stones closed in around me, pinching my shoulders. Several heaves later, Gerard reached down, clasped my hand and pulled me over the lip of the chimney. The first thing I saw was a sleeping watchman lying stretched out next to the stairway door, oblivious to our furtive activity.

  Before I could flex my fingers freely, Arnaud had scrambled up and was standing beside me. Gerard drew up the rope from the chimney and then lifted the hook. As he arranged the bundle in his arms, the hook spilled from within the tangle. It fell with a clatter at his feet. We all froze. The watchman let out a snort and flopped over onto his side.

  Carefully, Gerard plucked up the hook, hunched down and shuffled over to a crenel on the eastern side of the tower’s roof. There, he hooked the chimney rope. The other was still slung over his shoulder for later use. On his stomach, he inched out over the brink of the battlement wall. He studied both inner and outer wards before he let the rope down.

  One at a time again, we plummeted down. I cursed silently at the burning trail the rope left on the inside of my thighs and my arms. On our bellies then, we began to crawl along the wall walk toward the Salt Tower. Partway across, Arnaud grabbed my ankle. I glanced back to see him jabbing a finger to our left. I hissed at Gerard to stop and raised myself up on my elbows.

  A shadow floated across the inner ward – a woman, her skirts flowing behind her, her hood pulled up to conceal her face. She caught the rail of the stairs to the White Tower and flung herself up them two at a time. She had not quite reached the top landing before the door, when she faltered, sank down and crumpled into a quivering heap. Gerard motioned me forward and I followed to the other tower. We pressed ourselves into the corner between the last merlon and the door.

  Still in the same place, Arnaud stared across the dark distance at the woman slumped on the steps as if he recognized her. I waited, but he did not move. Finally, I plucked up a loose stone chip and tossed it at him to capture his attention.

  Instead, the woman’s head snapped up and she sprang to her feet, her hand fluttering up to touch her neck. She peeled back her hood and gazed in our direction. Arnaud flattened himself. Gerard and I pressed our backs deeper into the shadowed corner. The woman remained in that pose for an unbearably long time, as though frozen in place. It was some minutes later before she sank back down, pulled her knees into her chest and laid her head on them.

  Arnaud slithered forward. When he reached us I chastened him with a harsh glare. Gerard dropped the second rope over the wall into the outer ward and went down. As I descended, I realized we had one more wall to climb and no other rope with which to do so. Trusting in Gerard, I had not dallied to interrogate him on details. I dropped to my feet with a dull thud. My aching legs nearly gave way from exhaustion. I clenched my knees to steady myself, but my hands had been rubbed raw with the last descent and so I leaned back against the wall to rest. Arnaud landed silently after me, alert and upright. He cocked his head and gripped my arm.

  Voices reached our ears. It was difficult to tell if they came from somewhere within the Tower grounds or outside it. We huddled in the corner at the tower’s base. The voices grew louder, clearer.

  Two men staggered through the gate between the Salt and Lanthorn Towers: members of the Tower garrison. One of them stumbled forward and went down on his knees. He swayed and fell onto his side, even as the other sentry scolded him.

  “Stephen, ah, bloody hell ...” The second man kicked his companion in the buttocks. “Get up, you steaming lump of horse – ”

  Stephen vomited. He was too drunk to lift his head from his own puke. His companion hovered over him, muttering insults and poking him with the bottom of his pike.

  Gerard turned to me. “You’re drunk,” he said. Then to Arnaud, “Bring him. Follow me.”

  Arnaud hooked me by the arm and whipped me out from the shadows. We headed directly toward the two men. As we neared them, the sentry who was still on his feet looked up in alarm. Upon recognizing Gerard, he straightened. Arnaud yanked me along gruffly.

  “You’re not fit to do your duty, Tom,” Gerard remarked. “Get out of here.”

  “B-b-but I ... I ...” Tom, fighting a yawn, lifted a shaking finger toward the outer gate. “I ... I know we’re late, but we – ”

  “We? You’re one swallow from being as far gone as him. And this one – ” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at me – “is going in the stocks. Caught him in the pantry swiving a laundress. By the sounds of her, she was not entirely willing.”

  “Begging for more, she was” I drawled. “Can’t a man – ”

  Arnaud rammed an elbow hard into my gut. I threw my head back to gulp for air. My knees folded under me. Arnaud pulled my arm over his shoulder and braced his feet wide to hold me up.

  His jaw jutting out in authority, Gerard said to Tom, “Get him out of the way. Then go. Report to me at noon.”

  Tom nodded so hard he tottered forward a step before gaining his balance. Clumsily, he grabbed the unconscious Stephen by both hands and dragged him along in stops and starts until he reached the shadowed recesses of the inner gate from which they had come. There he sank down exhausted next to Stephen, leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. His head bobbed twice, unable to fight the sleeping remedy that had so insidiously incapacitated the rest of the garrison. Drool dripped from his chin.

  Gerard strolled toward the outer gate. I stumbled along at Arnaud’s side in feigned drunkenness, wondering who else might thwart our plans. As we entered the archway to the outer gate, Arnaud released my arm. There was no one there. The sentries who should have waited for their relief, had either abandoned their post prematurely in impatience or staggered off drunk and succumbed to a deep slumber like all the others. Arnaud and I unbarred the door and slipped through to find the portcullis raised just high enough to squeeze under. Our steps quickening with each stride, we crossed the short bridge over the moat to the river’s edge. Tucked against the marshy embankment was a small rowing boat. We skidded down to the river and Gerard and I stepped inside. Arnaud pushed us away before leaping in and taking up the oars.

  “Who was the woman?” I asked him.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I imagine it does to you. Who is she to you?”

  He paused momentarily in the rhythm of his strokes. “She will do better without me.”

  Somewhere past the nearest corner of the Tower walls, a frenzied dog barked in alarm at the sound of our voices. The high-pitched screech of an old woman followed. Arnaud pulled harder and we skimmed across the Thames, angling further east as the current swept us along. The dog yipped in agony. I hea
rd a splash and looked back to the end of the wharf where the hag stood silent and alone.

  I dipped my hands over the side of the boat, scooped up a handful of water and splashed my face to remove the soot. The sky had lightened to steel gray and a faint glow of pink washed the horizon to the east. On the far bank, I could barely discern the outlines of several horses attended by four men. As we came closer, I could see one of them was Simon de Beresford.

  We climbed out of the boat and scrambled up the bank. Simon handed me the reins to a well-muscled sorrel. “We’ll stop a few miles beyond Greenwich for food and a change of clothing,” he said. “Tomorrow, you sail for France.”

  “And you?”

  “Staying. Someone needs to be your eyes and ears here.”

  I placed a foot in the stirrup and pitched myself up onto the saddle. My arms and legs still burned. Simon sprang onto his mount and dug his spurs into its flanks. He bolted off on the road to Greenwich, and I followed him.

  To freedom.

  15

  Isabella:

  Tower of London – August, 1323

  THE FEAST OF ST. Peter ad Vincula began in vulgar revelry. St. Peter was the patron saint of the Tower of London and every year on the first day of August the garrison embraced the occasion by gorging themselves on roasted pig, meat pies, smoked fishes and tarts and saturating themselves with ale and cider. By nightfall, the horrible bellowing of drunken, bloated men-at-arms was loud enough to topple the outer walls.

  My ladies and I stayed far from the uproar. We sat in a circle in the solar, with the wavering glow of the hearth dancing in our midst, as I read aloud the lais of Marie de France. Long before I had finished, Patrice slipped away. Juliana and Marie shared a knowing look and we all expected a breathy recount of some stolen tryst with Arnaud come morning. The rest of us, not so lucky to have a trembling lover awaiting us, took to bed far sooner than was our custom.

  Usually, the drinking and shouting went on all night and faded away only in the small hours before dawn. But a hush came on oddly early that evening – well before midnight. I lay awake in my canopied bed, listening to an ominous silence that had crept over the whole of the Tower.

  I drifted between thought and dream, my heart and mind racing uncontrollably. With each passing hour I grew more and more exhausted. Once, thinking I heard some faint, but distinct, blunted clank of metal on stone from somewhere outside, I stumbled from my bed to gaze into the darkness from my window. I searched the towers, the walls, the courtyard below, but all was shades of gray. My eyes wearied from the strain. I held my breath to listen. Nothing. I straggled back to bed and burrowed beneath the twisted sheets.

  A voice ... I went and looked again. A shadow on the outer wall? Had it moved? I stared harder. Again nothing.

  I imagine things. Voices. Shapes. Sounds in the night.

  Finally, I gave up and returned to my bed, wondering what might have happened elsewhere, if anything had at all, and if this was the night Mortimer would be freed. For my own protection, Charles and Orleton had withheld the details from me. I only knew that it would happen, not when or how. Even so, Edward would need very little to accuse me of treason; he trusted no one but Despenser. I had taken great care to burn every letter. Yet if even one had fallen into Hugh Despenser’s hands ... whether I was a queen or not, he would be the first to loop the rope around my neck and rollick with laughter as I dangled like a rag doll on a string. It was doubtful Edward would grant me even the same grace he had given to Roger Mortimer. My begging for Mortimer’s life and then having a hand in this – double betrayal.

  My gaze leapt from the drooping gold cloth above my bed to the square of starlight slanting down from my window and back again. Just outside my door I heard footsteps. I sat up in my bed, clutching my blanket to my chest as if it were a shield. For minutes I stared at the door, certain of my ears. But when the door finally crept open, it was only Patrice, coming to bed. She was quickly into her nightclothes and faster asleep. Nothing more happened. No one shouted out in the night to arrest the queen for plotting to free a rebel.

  I waited in anguish for morning to come and the news it would bring. It was a miracle my tossing and turning did not awaken Patrice. But every time I looked toward the trundle bed where she slept, she was nothing but a long lump beneath her covers.

  The light of morning was yet weak when Patrice roused me.

  She pinched my upper arm in the circle of her fingers and hovered over me. Disheveled hair sprung from the sides of her head like a bristly halo, indicating that she, too, had been awoken abruptly.

  “Lady Eleanor is here, my lady,” she imparted. “She needs to see you at once, she says.”

  My middle went tight. “I am hardly awake, Patrice. Tell her to come back after I have eaten. Have the bells even rung for prime yet?”

  A deep line of worry cut between Patrice’s eyebrows. “I think she will knock down the door if you make her wait too long. She is disturbed. Says it is urgent.”

  “Did she say why?”

  She whispered, “Sir Roger Mortimer is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Not in his cell. Missing.”

  I told Patrice to allow me a few minutes and instructed her to have Ida lay out my clothes. In truth though, I needed the time to reassure myself that I had nothing to fear. Time to think of and rehearse what words I would say. Eleanor would tell me the news; I would react appropriately, order a full search, and pray it was unsuccessful.

  I was barely out of my nightclothes when Lady Eleanor entered my bedchamber wringing her hands so fitfully I thought she might pull her own fingers off.

  In only my kirtle, I placed myself on my stool near the window while Patrice brought me a selection of lightweight over-kirtles, suitable for a summer day’s warmth. Meanwhile, Ida began unplaiting my hair and raking her fingers through the strands before pulling a silver comb through it.

  “Lady Eleanor,” I began, keeping my voice level, “is it true that they could not find Sir Roger Mortimer in his cell this morning?”

  She bit at her lip so hard I expected to see blood streaming down her chin. “Yes, my lady, it is true.”

  “Mercy,” Ida muttered, resting her comb. “I never liked being here. Even less now. Full of ghosts, it is. Saw one myself in Flint Tower week before last and Dicken the cook – ”

  “Ida!”

  “ – swears he hears the voice of – ”

  “Enough, Ida!” She was superstitious to excess and obsessed with the spirits of the dead. Although I did not allow such talk she managed to insert it at every opportunity. I returned my attention to Lady Eleanor. “And they have not found him elsewhere yet? Perhaps someone moved him to a different cell?”

  “No, my lady. When they moved the bed on which he slept, they found a hole in the wall behind it. Big enough for a man to fit through.”

  Ida yanked at my hair. I grabbed at her wrist to halt her. I stood, my hair falling free down my back. “A hole? How does a prisoner hack at stones and move them without anyone hearing? Do things like that not make enough sound for someone outside his door to hear?” I grew stern in my tone, working the words out between clenched jaws as if trying to contain my anger. “Was there not a guard there? How can this happen?”

  Eleanor flinched. “I do not know, my lady.”

  “Find out!” I blustered. Quivering, Eleanor shrank from me and even Patrice and Ida held their breath. “And when you have an adequate answer come back and tell me how it is that the most important prisoner in all of England suddenly disappears without anyone knowing about it. The king will be outraged when he learns of this. Outraged! When he finds out who is responsible for this mess he will have their heads!”

  I turned sharply on my heel and flung myself back down on my stool. Eleanor scurried away, muttering a stream of worries under her breath and pulling at her fingers. Ida commenced combing my hair, this time with more purpose, and at my indication Patrice laid out a gown of yellow and blue upon the bed w
hile returning the rest to the wardrobe. I smiled as I gazed out the window and felt the morning light wash over my face.

  Deception was never a trait I aspired to, but I could learn it well enough. Edward would never be wise to me because he thought me too timid, too guileless.

  Mortimer was free.

  And I had determined the future of England in a handful of letters.

  *****

  Ida begged that we leave for Windsor at once, but I remained in my apartments that day, issuing orders for a thorough search, dispatching messages and receiving frequent reports, most of little substance. I took a light dinner in my chamber, Patrice seated across the small table from me. Sweat trickled down my neck and breastbone and collected in the small hollow at the bottom of my ribs. I pressed a hand to my garment to blot it. A stifling August wind blasted through an open window near our table like the fire-air expelled from a smith’s bellows.

  Patrice, who had been unusually quiet all morning, sat staring blankly at her white rolls while flies dotted their surface.

  “A game of tables?” I said to break the silence. “I promise not to play too wickedly. Or I had a few books sent from my library at Beverly – romances, in French. Remember, as girls, how we used to sneak those away and read them in the chapel, pretending they were missals? We could say a few prayers, for real, in the chapel, if you – ”

  “No. Not today.”

  I glanced around the room and, seeing that the others were busy elsewhere, pressed her to speak. “You returned in the middle of the night and have nothing to say? I would think you would be hurrying to the chapel to offer a confession of some kind.”

  She let out a sigh, laden with worry. “Where should I begin?”