Isabella: Braveheart of France

by Colin Falconer

  That night she keeps a candle burning in her chamber and waits for Edward to come to her again, after all these months and so many letters. But he stays awake, drinking and gambling and laughing at his tumblers and fools, and the nights are cold in Berwick, and she shivers alone.

  Chapter 22

  She waits for him at Berwick Castle while he goes in search of the battle he must not, cannot, lose. At last a foot soldier arrives ahead of him, is ushered into the court to tell his story. The Bruce did not flee, it appears, instead he waited for Edward at a place called Bannockburn. He had chosen the battlefield and dug pits on the carse, funnelling Edward’s army into the killing ground. Edward had fallen into the trap and in the ensuing carnage Gloucester has been killed, along with ten thousand English foot soldiers. Henry de Bohun, one of England’s greatest knights, has died at the hands of the Bruce himself and the Scots had captured the Earl of Hereford.

  The next day a fishing boat docks at the castle; Isabella and the rest of her women rush down the narrow walk to the Tweed to meet it; Pembroke, the Lady de Vescy’s brother and Edward himself are both on board. Old Hugh is there also, he carries his son up to the castle on his shoulders, gore leaking down the front of him.

  Edward does not even look at her. His eyes are glazed, still fixed on the battlefield.

  Later she dresses his wounds She as he sits immobile in a wooden tub, not speaking. Afterwards she and her ladies wash his armour, they must scrape off the mud and dried blood with stiff brushes. They say the king fought well; but whether he fought well or ran like a girl it will not matter now.

  He had believed nothing could stand in the way of heavy cavalry; they had all believed it. They were all wrong.

  * * * * *

  “And you!” Lancaster dares point a finger at his king. Some gasp inside the Parliament at his presumption. “If you had honoured the Ordinances, we should never have suffered this humiliation. An army of twenty thousand defeated by a dozen peat boggers with sharpened sticks!”

  Edward is forced to listen to this abuse. Isabella stares over her uncle’s head, she will not look at her husband for fear that should he look back they will see it as further sign of weakness.

  And she will not look at Lancaster for she has come to despise him.

  He relishes this moment. He has the king on his knees.

  “We must press on with this war,” Edward says. “If we desist now, the Bruce will have his crown and we shall never have Scotland.”

  “Is eleven thousand dead not enough for you?” Lancaster hurls at him.

  “We cannot let them win.”

  “We didn’t. You did.”

  Edward subsides into his throne, shrunken in, as if they have removed all his bones and left just breathless flesh and half a heart.

  “I never wanted to be your enemy, Edward,” Lancaster says. His long sleeves rustle against his velvets, as he parades before the parliament, like a peacock before a mate. “But you planned to lead your victorious army against me, is this not so? You thought to vanquish the Scots only so that you might vanquish your own cousin.” He shakes his head, appears disappointed rather than angry. “But you are not your father, you are not Longshanks. You are weak and stupid and easily led.

  Edward flinches, as if struck with an open hand, and struggles to recover his composure. His hands ball white-knuckled into fists.

  “You made me kneel to you at Westminster. For what? To be forgiven for a righteous act. I should kill Gaveston again if I could, send him to a traitor’s death just to hear the bitch scream.”

  Now Warwick is on his feet, the great resenter, the great complainer: “You have led us to disastrous wars and bankrupted the Treasury. We demand a purge of the royal Exchequer and a limit to the royal purse of ten pounds per day.”

  “Ten pounds!” Edward is on his feet. “I would not keep my dogs on that.”

  “Then get smaller dogs,” Lancaster says.

  He cannot refuse. He no longer has power over England, though he is the king. It is Lancaster who is regent now, in all but name.

  It is just after the Feast of Saint Saturninus that a messenger arrives at court from France. Her father is dead. She knew he had been ill, but this is unexpected. There is not time to attend the funeral for a crossing of the Narrow Sea at this time of the year is not advised. Besides, Edward tells her that he needs her with him, to help deal with the revolt of his barons.

  She hears Jacques de Molay laughing, perched like a gargoyle on the roof of the palace. When he died, he cursed Phillip’s line for seven generations. She wonders what her own punishment will be.

  It is hard to imagine him truly gone. Yet in many ways he is not gone at all, he is still there with her every day, wagging a long finger in her face: You will love this man. Do you understand? You will love him, serve him and obey him in all things. This is your duty to me and to France. Am I clear?

  * * * * *

  Edward works tirelessly to have the anathema that Winchelsea laid on Gaveston’s head reversed. His man Reynolds makes sure it is done but it is not easy and costs money. He has said to her that he will not bury his friend until he has been avenged, but common sense prevails. He cannot have him mouldering in a priory chapel in Oxford forever.

  He decides to inter him at Langley. It is a perfect day for such a homecoming; crows perch on skeletal trees, the wagon bearing his mouldering bones splashes through puddles of freezing mud, the friars that accompany it splattered to the waist. How much is he paying the Order for this?

  Edward stays with him that night, so that his Perro does not sleep alone. From her window she sees the candles flickering in the chapel, and once she thinks she hears a noise over the wailing of the wind. Was that Edward wailing? No one has ever loved like this. It should have been me, I want a man to love me like this.

  So many lords there the next day for the funeral; Pembroke, the Despensers, even Hereford who was one of those who dragged Gaveston off to Warwick Castle. The clouds of incense are so thick it is hard to see the grandees on display but she counts an Archbishop, four bishops, thirteen friars, fifty knights and the Lord Mayor of London. There is Mortimer, of course, with his wife; she catches him staring, and wonders what goes on behind those black eyes.

  The occasion is mostly marked by who is not there; Lancaster and Warwick.

  They are saying masses for Gaveston today in every church in England. This does not come cheap and piety is expensive, but Edward does not care. He refused Gaveston nothing in life, he is disposed to do no less in death.

  The tears come, she feels her control slip; it starts with a choking at the back of her throat. She cannot hold it back. She sees Edward give her a questioning glance. He thinks the tears are for Gaveston.

  She never cried for her father, perhaps she still expected to see him there when next she went to Paris; stern, strict, the one sure thing in the world. Her eldest brother was king now, though her uncle Valois made all the decisions while Louis played tennis.

  They lower Gaveston’s gold-draped coffin. What a sight we are! Me howling, the friars chanting and Edward on his knees, shoulders heaving. And the whole of England watching. What they must think of us!

  She rides back to London in her carriage, bumping over muddy roads. Her ladies cry out at every bump, every pothole. She peers between the curtains at a sodden and starving world. Human scarecrows scavenge in the fields. The rains ruined the autumn harvest, and it has not stopped raining since. She sees a cow lying bloated on its side in a flooded field, then another. She cannot stand to look more, she flicks back the curtain and submits to the jolting of the carriage.

  They have seen me cry once today; they shall not see me weak again.

  She stares at Eleanor Despenser, wincing with every bounce.

  You have your duty, Phillip whispers. You know what you must do.

  But what if I fail you?

  You will not fail me.

  But what if I cannot make Edward love me?

  Love is
nothing. You are my daughter. You were not born to trouble yourself about love.

  But it’s not fair. You know what love is like, I saw you at mother’s funeral. And look at Edward, in the church he could scarce breathe. What is it like to love so much?

  Just remember your duty.

  “My duty.”

  “What was that your grace?” Eleanor asks her. She realises she has spoken aloud. She shakes her head. “It is nothing,” she says.

  My duty, is that all there is for me?

  Why should I complain? He is not cruel to me. Yet if I were to die, will Edward wrap my body in gold cloth and have all England’s churches say Mass for me? Will he sob over my tomb like a child, as he did for Gaveston?

  He is more like a brother than a husband, pleasant company but never a kiss or an embrace, and comes to my bed for procreation only, like a good Christian, but not like a red blooded man.

  But this she promises herself; one day she will have his heart. He will love her like he had loved him. She could not bear it if she were to live her entire life and never know what it was like to be Gaveston and be truly adored.

  Chapter 23

  Lancaster’s star is in the ascendant; Edward is under his heel. He needs her now and she will remember these as their best times.

  While Lancaster skulks in his castle at Kenilworth, issuing proclamations and demands, the king holds his councils at Westminster. Isabella is invited to attend. Does he do this to irritate Lancaster or because he is beginning to trust her?

  Old Hugh’s son now becomes a regular petitioner at the court. The King says he does not like him. He refers to him as The Despenser, in a dismissive tone. Lancaster and his fellow dissenters forced him on the king as their chamberlain for a time and he has not forgiven him for siding with Lancaster when Gaveston was murdered. He tolerates him for old Hugh’s sake.

  Now he wants the king to ratify some estates that once belonged to his brother-in-law, Gloucester, before he was killed at Bannockburn. The Despenser says they should pass to him. The King is slow about it. It is clearly an injustice and irks the Despenser to the point of apoplexy. In private Edward laughs about it.

  “Let’s make him stew a bit longer.”

  One wet night in May she meets him coming out of the Great Hall at Westminster, an appalling place, Exchequer clerks bawling at each other over the massive marble Chancery; the King’s Bench and the Court of Common Pleas are in the same chamber and the din is overwhelming.

  It is sticky and warm, and she has long dispensed with her furs, but the Despenser still wears a heavy mantle and is blowing on his hands. The king says he is like a lizard and has to lie on a rock in the sun to get warm.

  He is not like his father, he frequently forgets to be obsequious. He knows only one song, and that is that the world owes him more. Your Grace, about these estates in Gloucester, Your Grace, about this castle in Tonbridge. He has the palest skin she has ever seen, in a certain light he appears translucent. She thinks that if you cut him his blood would be the palest blue.

  “Shall you be appearing regularly at these councils, Your Grace?” he asks her and she thinks he is about to make a complaint about having women in the chamber. Instead he takes her to task over the king’s wavering in endowing him the Earl of Gloucester’s former estates. Gloucester’s wife has claimed that she was with child when Gloucester died and an heir was on his way, but it’s two years since Bannockburn and unless the child emerges with a beard it is unlikely now to be Gloucester’s.

  “I am sure the king will get to it in good time,” she tells him and passes on.

  As an earl he would make a fine bailiff. Owe him a penny and before the year is out he will have your castle, your horse and your wife.

  Warwick comes to his last council that spring. He no longer looks like Warwick; he is thin and drawn, but not in the grim and poisoned way of the past. There are plum-coloured shadows under his eyes and he walks like an old man. It is the last time he is seen at court and does not live to see out the summer.

  Edward, of course, is grief-stricken; when he is informed that Warwick has asked for a simple funeral he chokes off a further guffaw of laughter. “I’ll give him one - I’ll throw him in a shit pile in Whitefriars and the dogs can fight over his giblets. Would that be simple enough?”

  There is a rumour, passed on by Eleanor and Lady de Vescy, that Warwick was poisoned. She asks Edward if he has heard this gossip. The king says he no, but the king is lying. But he adds the pious hope that Warwick died slowly and in pain.

  Because his son is yet a child all Warwick’s estates pass to the crown in trust. She doubts any in his family will ever see them returned.

  Lancaster has meanwhile made himself king of England in all but name. He replaces sheriffs and bailiffs with his own men and issues pardons and grants petitions while Edward sends embassies to Kenilworth to beg his leave should he wish to yawn or change his horse’s saddle.

  At night she listens to him rage and vow revenge and keeps him from a war that he cannot win. She counsels patience. He listens to her, lets her hold him sometimes and stroke his head as one might calm a frightened horse.

  Lancaster might have the power for the moment but it is Isabella whom the barons love. She laughs, she charms. She is no longer thin and pretty; people tell her she is beautiful, and if they do not tell her, she asks them. The barons puff out their chests and try to look manly whenever she enters the Great Hall. There are other ways to play at politics, you see.

  She transforms the court. She has found the English recalcitrant when it comes to fashion and she has the royal dressmaker in Paris send her low cut gowns which she insists her ladies wear. Lady de Vescy is scandalized and claims she is too old to display her bosoms and is the first to wear one. Eleanor, even though she is youngest, is hardest to persuade. But eventually she brings them all to heel.

  She receives from France a sideless surcoat trimmed with fur and a pelicon, a fur-lined mantle with a cowled hood. Soon all the other ladies of the court are affecting them also. She abandons the matronly chin-barbe for a diaphanous veil worn over her gold chaplet.

  Edward watches and smiles and indulges her whims. He commissions a circlet of rubies, sapphires, emeralds and pearls. He spends a staggering thirty two pounds for a new chaplet and silk dress so that she might astound at the wedding of one of her desmoiselles. It is studded with silver and encrusted with three hundred rubies and two thousand pearls. Let Lancaster set an ordinance against that.

  She is elegant, she smiles and she is beautiful. Edward basks in her reflected glory.

  She announces a new son to be delivered at the end of the summer and withdraws to Eltham for her confinement. The castle is a gift from Edward and he has refurbished her apartments there. From her window she can see the spires of Saint Paul’s.

  Eleanor, the Despenser’s wife, is irregular in her attendance these days for she is frequently in confinement herself. She is ten years married and has six children of her own already. Her husband is not cold-blooded all the time, it appears, though she imagines he has the conjugal visits recorded in a ledger by a clerk and demands her to account for those that do not result in issue. Perhaps he has a system of fines.

  “I see your husband wishes to be Lord of Glamorgan now?” she asks her one day.

  Eleanor bristles at this implied criticism. “Well what man would not?”

  “He is certainly impatient for it.”

  Eleanor flushes. She has a wicked little temper and sometimes Isabella amuses herself by prodding her a little, watching how it gripes her to hold her tongue. “He only ever asks for what is his, by right, your grace.”

  “And six children to prove it!”

  Eleanor’s cheeks burn red.

  Jacques de Molay’s curse still echoes around the Isle de Paris; her brother Louis catches pneumonia from drinking iced wine after playing tennis. A king cannot have too many heirs, it seems.

  So she is pleased to give Edward another son, John. Lanc
aster is informed of the birth but does not deign to remove himself from his estates to attend the christening.

  There will be another war soon. There can only be one king in a country and presently England has two. It is a state of affairs that cannot continue forever.

  Chapter 24

  January, 1317

  The Royal Hunting Lodge, Clarendon

  Edward looks up, gives her a reassuring smile. Pembroke’s expression is comforting, Mortimer’s is unreadable. Lancaster is there, she feels his enmity as she walks in, a mere woman. He does not want her on the king’s council, even if she is queen. Let him issue an ordinance about it.

  Old Hugh looks rattled. His son is her again today, perhaps Lancaster owes him money.

  Even before she has taken her seat beside Edward on the dais Lancaster is on his feet, blaming them both for the Bruce’s latest ravages in the north.

  “One wonders why the Bruce plunders everyone’s lands but yours,” Edward says, making no effort to appear conciliatory. It is true; only Lancaster’s dominions remain untouched by the Scot hobelars.

  “Can we not discuss what we may do about it, rather than apportion blame?” Isabella asks them.

  She earns a nod of approval from Pembroke; she has assumed his role of peacemaker and he seems relieved to be rid of it. It is a thankless task when other men have no interest.

  But Lancaster is not to be appeased; he moves on to his evergreen contention, recounting all of Edward’s failings against the Scots, one by one.

  “And yet, uncle,” she says when he is done, her voice so soft he has to strain to hear her, “you have still not explained to us why your own lands remain untouched in these raids.”