Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer

by N. Gemini Sasson

  “Where are we?” Isabella wondered aloud, crouching over the lone footprint. There were no more tracks. Some time had passed, hours or perhaps a day even, since its maker had trodden there. Instinctively, she looked to me. But I had made it a habit to keep my distance and speak rarely to her in public, instead allowing Sir John to plod in her shadow like a pup begging for attention. He had been but a few steps behind her.

  Sir John blinked and scratched at his unshaven neck. In his clumsy, thick accent, he said, “I do not know, my lady. I have never been to England.”

  Had I met John of Hainault under other circumstances and not known of his birth, I would have called him an oaf and hired him at a pittance to pull the oars of my boat. He had arms as thick as my neck, a flattened nose and a broad forehead with a ridged, bushy brow, all of which gave him the look of a rustic simpleton. Yet had he cause to, he could have cleaved me in two at the spine with one flick of his axe.

  With most of the soldiers and arms ashore, our provisions were now being unloaded: barrels of salted fish, sacks of beans, and casks of cider. A soldier passed by with a flitch of bacon flung over his shoulder. Hunger gnawed at my belly. More than food, though, I thirsted for a long pull of ale. Something to dull the stabbing ache in my head and I needed to wash the taste of salt from my tongue. I called for a drink.

  “No man eats,” I told the soldier, “until everything is in order and accounted for.” It would give them incentive to finish their duties, I reasoned.

  Nearby, Isabella slumped down on a piece of driftwood next to a leaning clump of sea-holly. She tugged the hood of her mantle up over her head. The waves and wind roared in my ears so that I could barely hear the frail whisper of her voice.

  “It’s cold, everything stinks of seawater, and I am weary to the bone.” Isabella cupped her hands to her mouth and blew warm air into them. At that moment, she looked like some haggard old fisherwoman, wizened by harsh winds, not like a queen in the prime of her beauty. Deep creases had formed around her eyes. Her shoulders were rolled forward so that her back was hunched, as if she had carried the equal of her own weight for years on end. The brightness that was Isabeau – the vitality and ardor that I had come to experience so intimately – was gone.

  I had Arnaud bring her a blanket to ward off the autumn chill. But when he offered it, she waved it away.

  “I need a fire, not a damp rag,” she complained through blue lips. “I am cold. Cold and wet.”

  The count’s brother, who had taken it upon himself to be not only her champion, but her caretaker as well, overheard her. Soon there was a fire and a little shelter made of reeds and sticks to shield her from the wind. She called for ink and parchment. Patrice found her a wooden box to serve as her table. Isabella’s hands trembled as she wrote.

  A useless task, I thought. What good would pretty words do when we had an army to move?

  She paused, wiggled her fingers and pulled them inside her cloak. I longed to hold her against me to warm her, but that was not my place, as her advisor. Instead, I gulped down the last of my drink, turned away and went in search of Maltravers.

  I found him bringing the remaining horses ashore. Plowing through knee-deep water, he pulled hard at the reins of a chestnut mare, blurting out a curse every time she resisted.

  “Your horse?” I called to him.

  He squinted at me with one eye. “Mine? Thank the saints, no. She’s a stubborn mule. Mine broke its blessed leg. Kicked at a hurdle in a fit of terror. I’ll need another.” With a grunt he yanked again. Her neck arched as she dug her forelegs into the muck.

  I waded out to his side, caught the reins close to the bit and stroked her muzzle. In moments, she had settled and began to walk willingly with me. On shore, I gave her a firm pat and chastened her. “Whose is she?” I asked.

  Maltravers spat into the sand at his feet. “The queen’s, I was told.”

  “Ah, I remember now. Given to her by Countess Jeanne. But she still preferred her old mare – the gray. The other horses ... What of the taride carrying the Flemish ones? Did it go down?”

  “Blown away by the storm, someone said. With good luck it will be found, but I wouldn’t count on it soon. It could be anywhere.” He wrung out the tail of his shirt. “The hay was ruined, all of it. We’ve some oats and fresh water, but they won’t last more than a day.”

  “We don’t need more than that. This is England, man, at least I think, and it’s far from being winter.” I looked along the shoreline for a meadow or some indication of fresh water. “The shore, there to the north, where it bends westward ... Do you see the reeds of an estuary? If the water is less brackish there ... A river.” But which one? Our intention had been the beach of Thanet, north of Dover, where Edmund of Kent, who had left Valenciennes two weeks earlier, awaited. But I doubted the river was the Great Stour. We had been pushed too far north for that. The Deben, perhaps? “Leave the horses and provisions to others for now, Maltravers. Take some men with you. Follow the river. Find out where we are,” I told him, hoping it was not so close to London that we would be set upon like salmon leaping out of the water and landing on shore. “And learn the whereabouts of the king.”

  The whimpering Edward would stay where it was safest – yet never far from his dearly beloved Despenser.

  *****

  The scent of wood smoke filled the afternoon air. Cooking fires, most surrounded by dozens of hungry soldiers, were closely tended. The ships had been quickly emptied and were preparing to sail out on my orders. The likelihood was great that someone had already spotted the fleet. Soon enough, word of our arrival would spread like fire in a dry hayloft. With the ships gone, not only would there be less cause to cry foul, but our band of mercenaries would be unable to abandon us if our situation went too suddenly bad. Although I trusted John of Hainault because of his incurable devotion to Isabella, it would be all too easy for his men to skulk away and return to the continent if they had the means. I had prevented that from happening. They would serve the queen and her son until they were released from their duties – for however long they were needed.

  The heavy clouds of that morning scattered northward. Patches of bright blue invaded the sky between. I sent a couple of men to find pasture for the horses, figuring that was an easy enough task for them. But when they returned, which was long before Maltravers, it was not with fodder or grain.

  Two soldiers warbled a tavern song from the bench of a tottering cart drawn by a swaybacked nag. They laughed raucously, whipped the old horse with a willow switch and shouted to their fellow soldiers, “Ale! Ale!” A hail that brought thirsty, tired men in throngs, who shoved and grappled at the dozen casks.

  The cart’s bed was emptied by the time I reached it. Parched men-at-arms guzzled down ale in torrents. Some men shared in the spoils, but others thought nothing of slamming a fist into someone’s gut to take what they wanted. A cask fell from the grasp of a Flemish soldier and broke into splinters on the ground. Liquid gold and bubbling foam soaked into the earth. A nearby Englishman kneed the Fleming in the groin for his wastefulness. Then, he pulled a knife and twirled it in his grip.

  From behind, I whipped my sword free of its scabbard – a sound which made heads turn and bodies fall back in reflex. I brought it to where his neck met his spine. “Do it. You’ll serve as a fine example of what happens to those who quarrel.”

  The knife fell from his fingers.

  I stepped past him and turned around, my blade held straight before me. Slowly, they put down the casks and cleared way. “Not one day in England and already you cannot tolerate each other. Why did you come? You are worth nothing to me like this. Nothing! If you cannot discipline yourselves, I will gladly do it. And I will think nothing of getting rid of any one of you who dares poison this army with disobedience. You ... and you, over here!” I pointed to the two men who had stolen the cart. “Here! Now!”

  Then I turned to a young squire beside me. “Summon Lord Edward.”

  The fatter culprit stu
mbled to me and let out a belch stinking of vomit. I held my breath until it wafted away. The other man, short and thin with a long, skeletal face, swayed left and right, then crumpled to his knees. Someone kicked him from behind. He crawled to me. I stepped on his outstretched fingers and he let out a kittenish wail.

  “What were you sent to do?” I said.

  “Find food ... for the ... the horses.”

  “Did you?”

  “Ahhh, no, my lord.”

  “And did you pay for this? Any of it?”

  He did not answer. I ground a heel into the bones of his hand. He wailed again.

  The bigger one answered for him. “We hadn’t any money. So we took it. Was that wrong, lord?” He dragged a forearm across his beard to wipe away the last drops of ale.

  I went toward him, to the relief of the man whose hands I had crushed. “Wrong ... and stupid.” I rammed the butt of my hilt into the soft flab of his belly. “We have ale of our own. And we do not – do not steal from the very people we wish to welcome us.”

  I beckoned to Sir John as he pushed his way through.

  He looked at the cart and its depleted contents. “Thieves?”

  “What do you do with thieves, Sir John?”

  He thought about it. “Cut off a hand.”

  “No!” Lord Edward broke through the crowd. “No. I think that ... that would be too harsh a punishment. Sir Roger, what do you do to men who steal?”

  “Depends on who they steal from and what, my lord prince. But in Ireland, we would strip them naked, then tar and feather them. Devil to scrub off. Left them stinking for weeks, too. Not even the camp whores would come near them.”

  “Do it, then.” Pleased with himself for having a measure of authority, he turned on his heel and left.

  But as I watched him go, Isabella was making her way through the commotion. Men parted at the appearance of her spectral form. Her skin was pallid, her eyes dark and sunken. Her hood had fallen back and her pale hair flew wild behind her.

  “Your name?” she asked the bigger one as he swayed on his feet.

  “Gurney, my lady. Sir Thomas Gurney.”

  “And him?”

  “William Ockle. We are both of us close acquaintances of Thomas Berkeley.”

  My daughter, Margaret, had married Thomas Berkeley when she was fifteen. Two years later his father died, making him Lord Berkeley. But by then I had my falling out with King Edward. Margaret was shut up in a priory somewhere and the young Berkeley imprisoned. “My lady,” I interrupted, “I doubt my daughter’s husband would keep company with pilfering sots.”

  Isabella let out a long, worrisome sigh and closed her eyes a moment. “Before you take your amusement in them, send them back to whomever it is they stole from. Let them utter apologies and beg forgiveness. Then, pay the victim for all this from my own coffers. I will not have the people of England running in fear from those who have come to liberate them.” She closed her eyes halfway again. Her voice was thin, ethereal. “A word with you, Sir Roger.”

  I gave her my arm and felt her lean heavily into me as we walked slowly toward the shore.

  She unhooked her arm and went to the water’s edge where the sea lapped at her shoes. Upon the horizon, the sails of the count’s ships were already disappearing. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not remark on why the fleet was leaving, nor did she flinch as a cawing swirl of blackbirds encircled her.

  I looked around. No one had followed us. Not even, for once, Sir John. He had stayed behind to see that the queen’s wishes were carried out explicitly.

  I went closer to her. “Did I do something to displease you just now?”

  “That? No, no. It’s only that ... that ...” Worry wove itself through the frail threads of her voice. “When I first came to England, to London, its people came out in throngs to cheer me. They threw flower petals before me. I was young then. I thought it wonderful. They did not even know me then, but they loved me. I was their hope. For an heir. For peace. Since then, though ... how terribly wrong everything has gone.” She wrapped herself in her own arms as the wind tore at her hair. “Now, I have returned. With a foreign army. And I fear they will hail me not with flowers, but with arrows.”

  “You assume the worst, Isabella. You defied Lord Despenser. Something no one else has dared to do. England will welcome you gladly. And it is your son – their newest hope – who shall ride at the head of our army. One day, soon perhaps, he will become their king.”

  “Soon? Perhaps we should not assume too much, my lord.” Her chin drifted to her shoulder and she turned to look at me with narrowed eyes. “I have letters to be dispatched to the people of London and its mayor. I shall write another soon to my cousin, Henry of Leicester, but for now ... for now we must sow the seeds for our favor in London. If Edward is there and London turns against him ... But we cannot go there until we know that we will be welcomed heartily. Do you not think that wise, Sir Roger?”

  She was thinking as a queen thinks now, not like the embittered consort of a neglectful king. If London could again love her –

  A cry reached us from atop the edge of the low cliffs. I recognized Maltravers’ crooked arm as he waved to us. With him were twenty men on horse – many more than he had taken along to discover our whereabouts.

  “Is that ...” she stood frozen, not trusting her own eyes, “who I think?”

  “Sir John Maltravers has returned to tell us where we have landed, I assume.” I strained my eyes against the glare of the setting sun behind them. Next to him, a banner fluttered and snapped in the wind. Across its crimson field stretched the golden lion of the Plantagenets. “And with him – Thomas of Norfolk.”

  So Kent had spoken true. Even the king’s own brothers had abandoned him.

  35

  Roger Mortimer:

  Walton, Suffolk – September, 1326

  ISABELLA RAN TOWARD THE low ragged cliffs where Maltravers and Norfolk were. The sodden hem of her skirts dragged upon the ground. Her foot raveled in the hem. She stumbled, nearly righted herself and then tumbled forward. Fast on her heels, I caught her around the waist and snatched her to me, pitching my weight sideways. My shoulder and arm hit the sand with a muffled thud, absorbing the shock of our fall. We rolled twice before coming to a stop. She had landed on top of me, her small back hard against my chest.

  Rather than her gratitude, I received the sharp point of her elbow grinding into my ribs, then a jab.

  “Let me go,” she grumbled. Struggling against my hold, she raised her voice sharply. “What are you doing? I said let me – ”

  I clamped a hand over her mouth. For a moment I thought she might sink her teeth into my palm, but she expelled a breath and I felt her stiffen in my arms. With an abrupt heave, I rolled to my side and dumped her unceremoniously onto a bed of shingle. She snapped upright and thrashed the sand from her face with the fury of a cornered cat.

  I stood and offered my hand. “Saving you from a fall, I thought, and from your own impatience. If that is Norfolk, then I suggest you not throw yourself at him, or anyone, until we know a few things more. Where the king and Despenser are, for one. And if they have sent an army against us, for another.”

  She spat at my outstretched hand and helped herself to her feet. “I would have looked less ridiculous if you had let me fall.” Still whisking away the last grains from her lips, she walked, this time with forced restraint toward Maltravers and Norfolk, who by then had discovered Young Edward and ridden toward him. The two men dropped from their saddles and paid their respects to him. No alarm was raised with Norfolk’s sudden arrival and William Montagu was, as ever, fully armed and not more than two steps behind Edward.

  We picked our way hurriedly along the crumbling cliffs, until we reached a place where their crest eroded into a dune that curved southward along the shore. Beyond the dune, to the west, were grazing marshes dotted brown by the faded sprays of sea lavender, but the recent storms had left the ground a soggy, stinking mess where
no herdsman would have dared release his cows. Norfolk must have come from the south then, along the shore, not by the river estuary.

  “Why don’t you trust anyone?” Isabella said as I came abreast of her.

  “There are many I trust, my lady.”

  She kept her chin forward, her strides strong and purposeful, despite the fatigue that still showed in the dark moons beneath her eyes. “But many that you don’t?”

  I lowered my voice as we approached the gathering crowd. I had placed my trust too lightly before and nearly paid with my life. I only sought to spare her the same. “It would serve you well to be as cautious, my lady.”

  I heard only a slight, but obdurate ‘humph’ from her mouth. She pounded yet more sand from her clothing and drew her shoulders back proudly.

  “Lord Thomas, my dear brother,” she called.

  As soon as he saw the queen, the Earl of Norfolk swept forward in a long, low bow to Isabella. He was a year older than Edmund of Kent, somewhere in his mid twenties, with boyish, sandy locks that fell across his eyes with every tip or turn of his head.

  “Welcome to Suffolk, my lady.” He straightened abruptly and a tepid, yet charming smile broke across the perfectly molded features of his face. The smile disappeared as his attention wandered to his shoulder. He flicked a speck of dirt from it. “My dear nephew ... and sister ... how good to see you. Unexpected and yet overdue. You look ... well.” He had hesitated as he perused Isabella’s wind-tattered hair and soiled clothing. “Edmund was expecting you in Kent, but no bother. It is as well you are here. We are a short ride from Walton, although my lovely Alice will be quite cross with me at the lack of notice. No worry. Her anger will vanish in the merriment. You’ll come then?” He enticed her to his invitation with a tilt of his head. “There by nightfall if we leave now. A roaring hearth. A warm, dry bed for you, my lady. And the best wine.”