Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer

by N. Gemini Sasson

  His deeply set eyes took on a faraway look. “I hear Queen Isabella is beautiful.”

  “Some say she is.” Only I knew how much so.

  Beyond an expanse of farmland lay a village that was no more than a blacksmith’s shop, a few houses, and a mill on the nearside of a bridge at stream’s edge. From between the houses, a party of riders approached at a gentle walk. Before they reached the bridge, I knew who it was. I gave my mount a sharp prick of my spurs and took off at a canter, Sir John quickly beside me.

  Before Isabella and Young Edward were within a stone’s throw of us, Sir John had dismounted, rushed forward and dropped down on one knee in the middle of the road, his head bowed. Although Isabella’s eyes were on me, she brought her gray palfrey to a halt before Sir John. Young Edward came abreast of her.

  “Sir Roger.” Isabella’s face broke into a broad smile.

  “My queen.” I leapt to the ground and returned the smile. Then I bowed to her son. “My lord.” I was about to go forward to help her down from her horse when she dropped her gaze to Sir John and stayed me with her palm.

  “Who might you be, sir knight?”

  Still, he kept his head down. “John of Hainault, good lady, and I swear I shall defend you all my life.”

  “Then stand, Sir John.”

  In one motion, he was on his feet and lifting her by the waist as if she weighed no more than a bird.

  “Your kindness is too much,” she said. “I thank you, a thousand times over, although my gratitude hardly seems sufficient.”

  “It is, my lady. It is. I need no more.”

  “Sir John,” the prince said, clenching the reins of his horse impatiently, “you came to escort us to Mons?”

  “Yes, my lord.” Sir John gave a cursory bow. “If you will follow me.”

  *****

  When Isabella came to me that first night in Mons, we wasted no time with words. Eager to press my flesh to hers, I tore the layers of clothes from her body roughly. We tumbled onto the bed as my own garments flew through the air, her hips arched high, her legs wrapping invitingly around mine as I knelt before her. I explored her, caressed her, kissed her as she writhed on crumpled sheets. Her moans of pleasure became a plea for ecstasy. Open-mouthed, her hands slid down my back and clamped hard around my buttocks as she pulled me greedily to her. I lowered myself over the length of her body, seeking entry, finding it with one strong thrust. She shuddered, her fingernails imprinting into my skin. I drew back, feeling the crash of blood with my heartbeat. Then I drove again, and again, she moving with me, her hips rocking in rhythm with mine, until the pace of our coupling reached an uncontrollable frenzy. Each wave hurled us higher, further. Until at last we were both drowning in each other, gasping for air, as if crashing toward the depths of a bottomless waterfall. One, falling together. Her breath came quick and shallow, but still she held me to her. As she lay beneath me, I was not thinking of war or revenge – only her and how it was to be with her.

  I reached over the edge of the bed to retrieve the wad of sheets that had fallen to the floor and pulled it up over us in false modesty. “Have you spoken further to your son about the count’s daughters?”

  Isabella rolled to me and nuzzled against my shoulder. “I have.”

  “And?”

  “He says, quite adamantly, that he will not marry until he is twenty-five.” She giggled like a girl of ten. “He does not know what he is missing.”

  “Did you tell him that is too old? I’ve known men that were grandfathers before thirty.”

  Her fingers wound into the knot of hair at my neck. “You are almost forty and you are not.” She kissed me playfully on the underside of my chin.

  “The count wants to join his house with that of Plantagenet and Capet. Besides, your son is old enough to discover the pleasures of having a wife in his bed every night.” It seemed a very logical device to me. At the same age Young Edward was, I had been betrothed. At fourteen, I was married. On our wedding night, I bedded Joan. In less than a year our first son was born.

  Isabella slipped her hand from me and rolled away. “When we return to England, will you go back to Ludlow?”

  Ludlow. Where my wife would be waiting. I had tried not to think of that. I had other plans. There was too much else to do. I caressed her shoulder, as if I could sweep away her worries with a touch. “Isabeau ... I want nothing between us to change. I will write to her that my duties are too many. She will live comfortably. It will be understood.”

  She lay still, without response, as though she were waiting to hear more.

  “Isabeau ... Isabeau,” I whispered, stroking her hair, “I love you.” I had never spoken the words before, not even to Joan.

  She turned her face toward mine, seeking a kiss. “And I” – her legs slid around mine as she pulled me onto her – “love you, my gentle Mortimer.”

  But where she discovered contentment and joy, I felt a great burden settled on me. To say that you love someone is far different than to live as though you do.

  *****

  At Valenciennes, Count William and his wife, Jeanne, welcomed us formally in their great, glittering hall. Count William presented Isabella with a bronze unicorn aquamanile. To her son he gave a silver-gilt plate from Byzantium, depicting David’s triumph over Goliath. Young Edward gave the count’s daughters identical ivory-backed mirrors and their mother embroidered silks from Persia, courtesy of King Charles.

  Three fidgeting girls ranging in age from fourteen to nine – the fourth being noticeably absent, although no one had yet mentioned it – stood lined up like a collection of dolls near a row of windows to the east. The morning sunlight struck harshly upon their blanched complexions.

  Young Edward, seated by then between his mother and the count, appeared wholly unimpressed.

  Eighteen months had passed since I had visited the count’s court and looked his daughters over. Then, I had thought them promising enough, but in truth, I admit, they were more pleasant and healthy than pretty – the three present, at least. Margaret, the oldest, had grown more broad than tall in that time. She resembled Sir John more than her father, with stout arms and broad shoulders and a silver-yellow rope of hair that hung all the way down her back and to her knees. She was robust and sturdy, like a well-bred ox. Good perhaps for bearing children, but not altogether enticing to a young man entertaining his choice of brides. The youngest two, named Joan and Isabelle, huddled close to one another, too frightened to speak, and neither of them old enough to have burst forth with the first firm, budding curves of womanhood. Both still had the plump bellies of overfed babes, not unlike their father. In different clothes and with cropped hair, they could have passed for boys, so plain and un-maidenly were their faces.

  The countess uttered profuse apologies for Philippa’s tardiness. While we waited for them to find the girl, the queen and countess exchanged compliments on the gifts. Too soon, the awkwardness was replaced by stone-dead silence. It was not going well – rather badly, in fact.

  “Margaret,” I broached, beginning with the oldest, as I turned to Count William, “does she hunt or hawk?”

  Margaret took a step in retreat.

  The count looked at his wife blankly, awaiting her help to answer the simple question. Clearly, he left the raising of his daughters to his wife. Countess Jeanne rescued her husband from his ignorance. “She rides when she must ... and she has a lapdog that she will not part from, but she is ... she is of a fragile nature and prefers gentler pursuits.”

  I wondered what ‘fragile’ entailed. She looked more like a plow horse to me than a butterfly whose wings could be crushed between the fingertips. “Yes? Such as ...”

  The countess replied with the common domesticities: needlework, the reading of the Gospel, letter-writing. And so the forced conversation went, which was even worse than it had begun.

  Young Edward stretched his lanky legs and yawned, his eyelids sinking as he gazed out the window. In those clumsy minutes, I could see Isabel
la beginning to fret. Our chances of convincing her son to select a mate were sinking rapidly ... as was our hope of overthrowing Edward and getting rid of Despenser.

  I glanced at the prince, only to see him leaning back in his chair, asleep. It was only the stringing together of sharp words and the firm stomping of her foot as Philippa finally, and reluctantly, entered the room that awoke him. She came to a halt beside her youngest sister Isabelle, standing not much taller even though she was four years older, and threw her hands upon her hips. Although not any prettier than the other three, she had a confidence to her demeanor that they lacked.

  Wearing a look of irritation, Edward leaned forward and peered at her. He rose from his chair and flew to her in great swooping strides.

  “You are late,” he told her.

  She stuck her dimpled chin out. “I had better ... I mean more pressing things to do.”

  “Better than being presented to the future King of England? Do tell. I should like to hear.” He walked a full circle around her, appraising her from various angles. Her face was oval, her frame tending toward broad rather than slender, and her curves of a matching roundness. Not plump, but robust. Unlike her sisters, whose hair was bound in either a caul or covered by a wimple, Philippa wore hers loose, a mass of glistening golden brown that hung to her waist, bits of straw entangled in it.

  “My favorite mare delivered a foal not an hour ago,” she boasted. “A black colt with a blaze. He is already standing. I was not about to leave him.”

  “You ride?” he asked, stopping in front of her squarely.

  Philippa smiled and drew her shoulders back, brown eyes twinkling with pride. “I do. Every day.”

  The countess dug her fingernails into her legs and glared at her daughter.

  Finally noticing the scowl affixed on her mother’s face, Philippa quickly retracted her words, her tone notably less pert and more congenial. “At east, I would like to ... my lord.”

  Pleased, he nodded. “Good, then we will ride tomorrow, Lady Philippa.” He bowed his head to the count and countess. “If I may beg your leave. I should like to take my rest now.” He glanced at his mother. “Our journey was a hurried one.”

  Before going, he took Philippa’s hand, but rather than kiss it, he drew her a step closer. “It would please me if you would sit beside me at supper. We could discuss your new colt.”

  Without giving her time to answer, he turned and left. Margaret crossed her arms and, pouting, turned her face away from her sister. The two youngest, holding hands, looked down at the ground and shifted on their feet. Their parents glowed with satisfaction.

  Isabella and I did not need to share a look to know that with that one fleeting stroke of fate everything had fallen into place.

  *****

  For five days straight, Edward and Philippa rode together, much to her mother’s displeasure, but on the sixth day a heavy rain prevented them. So instead, Young Edward taught her how to play the game of English tables. Before the afternoon was done, aided by both luck and wit, she was beating him soundly. He took it in good humor and, being obstinate, challenged her to another game and another after that. Their fun ended when the priggish countess voiced her disapproval because the game used dice – the devil’s playthings, she declared.

  An intelligent girl, Philippa would make a good queen for any king, although I questioned whether she was strong enough to survive childbearing. Margaret would have been a better brood mare, but he would have grown quickly bored of her, dull as she was.

  Soon, Young Edward made it quite plain to his mother that he had made his choice: Philippa it would be.

  An agreement was quickly struck with Count William. Philippa’s dowry – the men, money and sailing vessels that were already being gathered – would be delivered within the month. In return, the wedding would take place in two years. Philippa was too young yet for bearing children. But time would go by quickly. The sooner Young Edward got a son on her, the stronger his rightful claims to the thrones of England and France would be.

  Near a hundred ships were filled at Dordrecht with the provisions of war: Flemish horses trained for battle, a thousand staunch fighting men, food enough to last us the journey and longer in case we met resistance, and the weaponry to hew our way through if we did.

  On a cool morning in late September, we pulled up our anchors and slipped out into the flat, blue-gray sea, which mirrored a drab sky ... a sky which soon began to choke with more and darker clouds – low, heavy ones, warning of storms. Our sails caught the mounting wind, hurling us over the rising waves at dangerous speeds. For a while, Young Edward clung to the rail at the prow, the wind tearing at his hair as he squinted to see, glancing from time to time without apprehension at the storm chasing us. Before the rains came, though, Isabella fled to her cabin, quaking in fear, as if to escape some demon of sea and wind that haunted her.

  For two days, we wandered over the water without mastery of our destination. The hull filled with the sour stench of vomit. Isabella slept not at all, but prayed. Prayed to God to find shore. To be delivered, if not to England, then safely, somewhere.

  I dreamed of finding King Edward quivering before me, begging for his life. When I did, I would shut him up in a very small, very cold room and mull on it ... for years.

  34

  Roger Mortimer:

  Suffolk – September, 1326

  THE GALE HEAVED OUR ships over the surging waves and dropped them like brittle sticks beneath a pounding waterfall. We sailed on a ship called The William – named, in vanity, by our benefactor, the count. Although it was a stalwart vessel, no expense had been wasted on the unnecessary. In its sterncastle was a cabin, austerely furnished for the queen’s voyage with a bed made of planks, a small table affixed to the wall and a stool. The cabin was meant for no more than two people. Sitting far back on the straw mattress, which was beginning to stink of mold, Isabella clung fiercely to her damsel Patrice. With every roll and tip of the cog’s unsteady hull she held her breath, shut her eyes and prayed. I nearly asked her to beg a favor of God on my behalf. Death was a possibility that day and it had been some years since I had confessed. But I resisted. I had sworn not to fail on this quest, storms or no. This terror was a passing inconvenience. We would make land. We would march. We would win England back from Hugh Despenser and exact payment from him.

  Not until the following morning did the storms relent. We had lost not only our bearings, but also three of our ships. Two carried food supplies and a small number of mercenaries; the other was a taride, in which canvas slings had been set side by side in the below-deck compartment of the deep hull to help keep the horses safe from injury. Thirty-five of our horses, some of them trained Flemish warhorses, had been lost. We would have been at less of a disadvantage had we tossed our gold into the sea. Gray dawn revealed the broken mast of yet another cog as a stunted, jagged knife of black to the east. It was taking on water and so we loaded all its men and what supplies we had room for onto two of the other ships.

  Then, far to our west, through a rolling, low fog ... a hump of land stretched across the horizon. As the sky lightened and the mist lifted, the shoreline came into better view. I stood on the platform of the aftcastle and studied it. Shingle littered the strand in sharp, scattered clumps where the waves broke at high tide. The tide was low now and so we let down anchor far out. With small rowing boats, we began to unload men and supplies. The storms had brought with them the first frosty bite of autumn and every man shivered as he worked.

  Waist-deep and impervious to the icy cold of the sea, John of Hainault reached for Isabella with his huge hands. Waves crashed against his thighs, but like a deeply rooted tree he stood firm. Isabella leaned out from the little rowing boat we were in with the prince and lowered herself slowly, shaking, into his bulky arms. As he carried her to shore, the hem of her skirts trailed in the water. Then he set her down on English soil – or what we, for now, assumed was. Still accustomed to the sway of the sea, she wobbled. A pries
t, Father Norbert, caught her by the elbow to steady her. I had not exchanged more than a few words with him, but already I disliked him more than most holy men for the way he constantly shepherded Isabella aside and preached to her of virtue and godliness. Having been in Cologne the past year carrying out business with Emperor Louis on behalf of Bishop Stratford of Winchester, he had joined us at Dordrecht seeking passage back to England. Together he and the queen sank to their knees and gave copious thanks to God.

  I leapt into the water. The tide shoved hard at the back of my calves. Coarse sand seeped into my boots. Its grit rubbed against my shins and ankles before settling around my toes. Garlands of seaweed tangled about my feet as I trudged through the shallows and stumbled onto shore.

  Meanwhile, Lord Edward bounded through the waves, splashing, until he stood ankle-high in foaming seawater. He gazed up and down the curving shoreline. Overhead and around him, a cloud of gulls tumbled and jeered. He stooped momentarily in surprise, laughed and opened his arms broadly. Then, he swept one leg through the water and kicked, sending sprays into the air.

  He could have come home long ago, had he wanted to. However, he had stayed in France. I suspected it was not out of love alone for his mother, but from pure ambition for his uncle’s throne. Perhaps his father’s, as well.

  Near me, a plover studied the pebbles around it. It gobbled down a wayward insect, trapped in a pool of tidal mud in the shape of a footprint. Isabella, who had finally taken respite from her prayers, approached the bird slowly. Disturbed by her closeness, it took flight and flapped along the low, sandy cliffs until it found a length of beach where more tiny pools of tidewater lay trapped in an outcropping of rubble.