Isabeau, A Novel of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer

by N. Gemini Sasson

  “I am certain you chose wisely, your grace.”

  “You will be there?” he asked again, insistent.

  “If I can.” I lowered the shroud from my uncle’s face and forced myself to study his features: the mat of gray hair, the dark brow, and the downward lines framing his mouth. It was his body, his face, and yet ... it was not him. Had he chastised me with his last breath and then died with a horrific gasp in my arms, I could have believed that this cold, rigid corpse was indeed him. Yet there was no doubt it was. He was as dead as my father’s father, who had not even lived till the day of my birth. Still, why did I expect to hear my uncle’s mumbled curses, feel his walking staff hammer at the floor or suffer the light cuff of his gnarled hand against my skull? Why did I think he would swing his stiff legs over the edge of the altar, sit hunch-shouldered, glowering with contempt, and spit at me?

  Even more, why had I yearned so desperately for his forgiveness?

  He was dead. It did not matter anymore.

  “I’ll leave you here, then,” Bishop Orleton said serenely, “with your uncle.”

  Although I did not turn to see him go, I heard his footsteps exit the chapel and turn the corner. Alone now, I fixed my gaze on a single candle flame. Then I sank to my knees, weary and drained, for I was not so young anymore. Too late, I remembered the fall I had taken that morning.

  As I let my weight drop beneath me, my knees folding to meet the floor, a knife of pain slashed through me. Jaw taut, I covered my face with my hands, but a small cry leaked out, high and thin as a woman’s keening after battle.

  “Sir Roger! What is – ” Isabella’s voice echoed from the vestibule. She rushed to me and laid a soft hand on my shoulder. I tensed at her touch, resisting the impulse to shove her away.

  She knelt and draped a caring arm around me. The fur of her mantle brushed the nape of my neck. “Your uncle? Oh, no ... no. I’m so sorry, Roger. So very sorry.”

  My fists dropped to slam against my legs. She thought I mourned him, deeply, but rather than a salve to a wounded heart, her words instead stirred the embers of my black mood. “I failed him,” I said, disdainful of myself. “He gave up waiting.”

  Her flaxen brows bunched together above narrowed eyes. “Gave up? I don’t understand.”

  “Why should you?” I snapped, and shrugged her arm away. My breath hissed through my teeth as I drew myself up, my muscles flaming. She reached for my wrist, but I sidestepped her and turned away because I did not want her to see the grimace distorting my face. In the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Patrice, one hand clinging to a pillar that flanked the entryway of the Lady Chapel. “What?” I screamed at her. “Do you always spy? Be gone!”

  She backed hurriedly away, shaking her head feebly in apology. “I came to find the queen – and you. Lord Leicester requests your presence at the tribunal.”

  Isabella answered before I could. “We’ll be there soon. Tell them to wait, please.”

  The moment Patrice disappeared from view, Isabella rounded on me. “You will hold your tongue! I will not have you speak thus to me or Patrice. I love her as a sister, just as ...” Her head tilted and her mouth turned downward. The sharpness was gone from her voice. “Just as you loved your uncle.”

  Did I?

  Perhaps, but I did not need her pity. Slowly, I turned back to her. “Go to the council meeting without me. Give Leicester what he asks for: Winchester’s life.”

  “Go without you? I know you are mourning your uncle, but – ”

  “Without me,” I repeated tersely.

  “Why?”

  “Because if I go, Leicester will harangue me for allowing the king and Despenser to slip away. But he will not defy you. So if he demands Winchester’s life, let him know you do not wholeheartedly agree, but tell him you will yield on this and let it be done. Give him what he wants, for now. Let him have this small, singular joy. More important matters will arise soon.”

  “Like Edward’s departure?”

  “Such as who shall rule in his place. They will want to name your son Guardian of the Realm. They will demand he have a regent. And that regent should be you, not Leicester.”

  “Then you will be on the regency council?”

  “No.”

  “But why not?”

  “For the same reason I am not going with you today. Because England does not need another Hugh Despenser.”

  “You are hardly – ”

  “It is about power, Isabella. Everything is about power. Everything. I will not give anyone reason to think that I act on behalf of your son or to accuse me of ambition. No one will ever question your intent. They will see it as a mother’s protectiveness. But everything I say or do will be scrutinized, closely. Especially by Leicester, who deems himself a power to be reckoned with already. We must keep him in check, by giving him small victories, never big ones. Better, even, if we could remove him from our midst, although I have as yet to figure out how.” I took her by the arms, my grip firm. “It was not enough to land here on England’s shores and have the people open their arms to us. We must guard your son’s future ... because ours depends on it. Can you understand that?”

  For a very long time she simply stared at me. I was not sure if I had angered or offended her, for I had spoken a brutal truth. What we had done so far was only the beginning. Keeping power would be harder than seizing it. Finally, unable to bear her silence, I let go of her and turned back to my uncle. If she would not answer me, perhaps she would leave me to my grief.

  “I’ll go,” she said softly, “and do as you ... as you advise. But not because you say so. I will do it to give you this one small victory ... because I will not allow you to be disgraced. And because I love you.”

  And I you, Isabeau ... and I would give up everything to keep you.

  Her skirts rustled over the flagstones as she went from the chapel.

  It was not one small victory that she had given me. It was many.

  I had more than survived a death sentence. More than gained my freedom and sent a king running from me.

  I had Isabella’s heart; I had everything.

  Everything but my uncle’s forgiveness.

  With a stiff hand, I pulled the shroud back over his lifeless features. I could not allow my guilt to consume me. All my sacrifices and struggles – they had not been in vain.

  One small problem remained, however: Edward was still very much alive, still king and still Isabella’s husband.

  45

  Isabella:

  Bristol – October, 1326

  THE DOOR GROANED OPEN and a draft invaded the hall of the chapter house. The rusted chain linking Winchester’s ankles jerked with each shuffling step he took. Diagonal beams of sunlight stabbed through the long row of cusped windows topped by quatrefoils and reflected starkly against limed walls. Halfway to the dais on which Young Edward and I sat, the earl stumbled to a halt, gazed woefully at the dissecting, oaken beams of the ceiling, then clasped his shackled hands together and raised them to his misshapen lips. A guard butted him in the shoulder blades with the end of a poleax and, with a clink and rattle of iron rings, Winchester inched forward again.

  The tribunal sat on benches flanking the central aisle. Smugly, Henry, Earl of Leicester, glared at his prize captive. Eight barons, five bishops and I were to hear the charges and deliver the sentence, although it was a role I would have gladly shriven myself of, had I been able to. Mortimer had not come and no one, as yet, had asked of him. Although his absence spared him much scrutiny, and ultimately blame, it shifted an enormous burden onto my shoulders.

  Avoiding Winchester’s gaze, I stared at my hands folded in my lap. Today, a man’s death would hang on my conscience.

  Before the guards could force him down, Winchester dropped in front of me, his knees cracking against the cold tiles. Lord Thomas Wake read the charges: that he had acquired lands rightfully belonging to the Church; that he had illegally appropriated the inheritances of others, diverting them to his ow
n estates; and that he had abetted his son in overtaking the governing powers of England. All tantamount to acting as king.

  Deliberations were pointed and precise. The record was clear. He had served as an agent in Edward’s misrule. Not a man present would have spoken in defense of him. Even I, in fact, could not. One by one, the men gave their verdicts. Guilty.

  Again, I felt Winchester’s pleading eyes fix on me. I raised my face to him. His purple-blue lips formed into a sad smile, splitting the dark scab at the corner of his mouth. A fresh line of blood dripped down a wrinkled fold of his face and onto his sullied shirt. His nose, left cheek and jaw were so swollen he wheezed with each shallow breath. His eye on that side was nothing but a red slit above a mottled black bruise.

  “My lady,” Lord Wake said, “what is your verdict?”

  I opened my mouth, but could not draw air fully into my lungs.

  “My lady?” Wake prompted again.

  A wave of bile burned the back of my tongue. I retched, and then clenched my teeth so I would not vomit onto my gown. Oh, I had not wanted it to be this way. Had not wanted my return to become an invasion the history of which would be written in blood. Yet, how could it be otherwise? Did I so glibly think we would tumble onto England’s shores and everything would come to us as easily as plucking dandelions from a meadow in summertime?

  When I looked at Bishop Orleton, he nodded to me, as if to say it must be done.

  “Let the Earl of Winchester speak first,” I uttered.

  Wake protested, “But my lady, the – ”

  “Let him speak,” I repeated, no louder than before. If this grim deed could not be avoided, I would at least give it the semblance of extending to him the honor due to an earl.

  Leicester burst from his seat and stormed forward, fists swinging at his sides. He blew his cheeks out, as if releasing steam from a boiling pot. His voice began in a low growl, but with each syllable it rose in virulence until it shook the door in its frame and rattled the windows. “My brother was not permitted to speak when King Edward and Hugh Despenser levied a sentence of execution on him at Pontefract. You will not allow it!”

  Gripping the arms of my chair, I restrained myself from leaping to my feet and screaming my fury at him for ordering me about. “And you, my lord, will not say what I can or cannot do! The Earl of Winchester was not there when your brother was tried or sent to his death. He should be held responsible solely for his own actions, not his son’s.” But that was far from the truth. Like fires banked to keep the coals burning, grudges often lingered for years, and blood feuds sometimes raged for generations. So it had begun for the Mortimers and Despensers, which made me to wonder if there would ever be any end to this. “So he will speak and then, dear uncle, we will decide what is to become of him.”

  “I say let him share his final words with a priest.”

  “I think, Lord Leicester,” Young Edward intervened, shoulders pressed against the back of his chair, his hands clasped across his abdomen, “you should listen to the queen. Our Savior, Christ Jesus, preached compassion. My mother only seeks to follow his example. So let Lord Winchester speak.” He swept his hand at Leicester to prompt him to return to his bench and I thought, at that moment, how very much like Charles my son was.

  Mouth agape, Leicester sputtered. Then, perhaps wisely figuring he should not argue with his future king – and that the choice of regent had yet to be decided – he bowed his head and backed away until he stood before his bench.

  “Lord Winchester,” I began, my fingers pressed flat in my lap, “you have heard the charges brought against you. Before the final verdict is declared, what have you to say on your own behalf? I urge you, my lord, to beg the mercy of those you have wronged. Say that you committed these crimes and if there is any kindness to be found in this room, some leniency will be granted to you.”

  “I admit to no wrong,” he said. “I regret nothing. And I would give my life ten times over so that my son might live.”

  Thus, the manner of his death was sealed.

  After he was taken away, they went on to proclaim Young Edward as Guardian of the Realm and proposed a gathering at Hereford for the following month to discuss the course of England’s future.

  To me, the future was an uncertain thing, for Edward and Despenser’s disappearance had not been a blessing at all.

  *****

  That evening, while a miserably cold rain fell from a pall-black sky, Hugh Despenser the Elder, Earl of Winchester, arrived at the inner ward of Bristol Castle on the back of a cart, his hands tied before him. Before the gibbet stood the Earl of Leicester, Lord Wake, Sir Henry de Beaumont and the earls of Kent and Norfolk. Father Norbert was there, as well, eager to serve as Winchester’s confessor.

  Through the open shutters of a window of one of the uppermost rooms in the keep, I watched, attended by Mortimer and Bishop Orleton. Mortimer still had little to say, unless delivered in a pithy tone. The timing of his uncle’s death, I presumed, had cut deeply to his soul.

  The executioner, a man with a neck as thick as an ox’s, hooked a hand beneath Winchester’s armpit and hoisted him up on a stool and then atop a barrel at the back edge of the cart. The drop from the gibbet was a high one, so that his neck might mercifully break and death come more swiftly. Winchester’s knees wobbled with each step. He pitched to the other side and another man there shoved him hard in the ribs to upright him. The executioner clambered up behind him, wood groaning beneath his added weight, and placed the loop around Winchester’s neck. As the executioner and his assistant descended from the rear of the cart, the earl lifted his head to gaze up at my window. The rain drove down and the wind gained force. He tottered backward. The rope went taut, gagging him.

  A drum throbbed slowly in rhythm with my heart. The jeers of the crowd rose to a deafening clamor. The townspeople were pelting the earl with rotten apples. One thumped squarely against his already bruised jaw, yet he barely flinched. I turned my face from the window, knowing what was next. Orleton moved to stand next to me. A whip cracked, hooves beat on cobbles. I flinched. Although I told myself not to, I looked again. The cart had lurched forward. Winchester twitched and writhed, his face and neck purpling. His neck had not broken. While the crowd lobbed stones at him, he swung in the wind, his body jerking and twirling with each well-aimed strike. A little child, holding a stone as large as his fist, flailed it at the dying man. The earl’s legs gave one final, meager kick and then ... he went limp. In the brisk wind, his body swayed like a plumb at the end of a string. I crossed myself, still unable to take my eyes from the gruesome scene.

  “He’s dead now,” Mortimer stated morosely.

  The hinges of the door squealed.

  “Mother? There you are! We’ve been looking everywhere,” Eleanor trilled. I jerked my head sideways to see her pulling her little sister along by the hand and coming toward me, both of them wearing bright smiles and new gowns. Eleanor raced past me to stand on tiptoe and peer out the window to see what had captured our interest. “Ida told us there was to be a feast tonight, a big celebration, and we snuck away so we could – ” Her jaw dropped open. Immediately, she yanked Joanna to her side and tucked her sister’s head against her abdomen.

  Bishop Orleton reached out and banged the shutters closed.

  Eleanor raised a shaking finger. “Is that Lord Winchester?”

  “It was,” I said thoughtlessly.

  “Is he dead?” Joanna squirmed from beneath her sister’s arm, slipping past the bishop. She pressed her eye to the crack between the shutters, then looked up at the bishop and wrinkled her tiny nose in puzzlement. “But he was kind to us. Not like Lady Monthermer and Lady Despenser. They were mean. He wasn’t at all.”

  “I’m so sorry, my little one,” I said, aghast, “but he was – ”

  “A traitor,” Mortimer finished.

  I cut him a smoldering glare as I drew Joanna to me. In truth, though, he had only said in a more succinct manner the same thing I was about to. Bef
ore they could ask what a ‘traitor’ was, I said to Orleton, “Your grace, will you find Ida and tell her the girls are to stay with her until they are called to the hall?”

  The bishop gathered the girls and escorted them out of the room, Eleanor growing more blanched by the moment and Joanna skipping along and humming, her perplexity swept away by the promise of a grand feast. The door closed and I rose to face Mortimer. He narrowed his eyes at me, as if he expected a scathing attack.

  “I should thank you,” I said, “for returning them to me.”

  He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall, looking somewhat relieved. “How could I have done anything else?”

  I ran my hand over his forearm, fine cloth beneath my fingertips where only that morning he had been encased in mail. “Roger, I will never forget all that you have done for me.”

  He scoffed lightly, shaking his head at the sentiment. “One day, Isabeau, we’ll tire of each other. I will do or say something to anger you.” His eyes, dark and endless, met mine. “And you will forget.”

  I did not think at that moment that I ever would, or could. It seemed everything was as it should be: my children safe, Edward and Despenser gone from my life, and my gentle Mortimer there to protect me and return my love.

  But even when we think everything is right, it is not. Something always changes to destroy that vision of happiness. Like the morning mist, a slight shift in the wind can blow it all away.

  46

  Isabella:

  Hereford – November, 1326

  THROUGH A VEIL OF incessant rain we crept slowly north, along the swollen Severn, until our lumbering army could cross the river at Gloucester. There, Lord Henry Percy and a number of Marcher barons who had heard of the king’s flight joined us. All of England, it seemed, was eager to embrace the golden-haired Young Edward as their king. His father had abandoned his kingdom – an unpardonable sin, even in the eyes of those few who had been incurably loyal to him.