She watches him leave in the bitter dark just before dawn, followed by his knights in half-armour on snorting warhorses and accompanied by footmen carrying flambeaux. The air is filled with the clatter of hooves, the clash of harness and weapons.
When he is gone she goes back to the chapel and falls again to her knees. She finds herself praying, not for some dreary saint, but for her own life and that the Despenser would disappear from it. Let him be struck by a peal of thunder or be taken in his bed by apoplexy. Better yet let the Scots get at him, Bruce is good at killing Englishman, why not this one?
But she knows now it is pointless. There will always be a Despenser, she will never be the king’s favourite, no matter how hard she deals with God.
Chapter 34
If happiness were a buffeting gale with occasional flurries of sleet then she should be overjoyed. She stands on the battlements, letting the wind burn her cheeks for the sheer exhilaration of it, anything but another moment in these dark, draughty halls listening to the chanting of the monks. Out here is a world of sea-battered rocks and forbidding cliffs.
She leans on the parapet, watches the gulls blown about like leaves on the wind. Foam piles on the rocks.
She has heard reports from Scotland that Bruce has laid the land waste and Edward’s army is starving. She imagines Bruce’s hobelars swooping down on them, Edward caught once more in a trap like Bannockburn and no cool head to advise him. He does not have the head for war and Despenser’s cunning for figures does not translate to the battlefield, or so they say.
Eleanor appears, wrapped in thick furs. “Riders,” she says and then mutters under her breath: “Pray God, they’re ours.”
The guards at the priory gates shout a welcome and there are sighs of relief all around. A troop of a dozen riders clatter through the gates. The captain throws himself from his mount, whatever news he has he is in a hurry to bring it. He looks grim and is covered in mud. Isabella steels herself.
She hurries down the tower’s narrow steps almost tripping in her haste. There is a meagre fire burning in the hearth in the great hall, the monks do not believe in comforts. Her messenger huddles by it, shivering. She has a servant fetch hot mead.
It is one of Despenser’s men. Well, she will not hate him for that.
“Is the King safe?” she asks him.
“He is, Your Grace. He asked me to bring you this letter.”
She hesitates to read it. She hands it to Eleanor to break the seal.
Isabelle turns to the captain. “Did you find the Bruce?”
“We did,” he says and it is what he does not say that alarms her.
She reads the letter:
“Our Dear Consort, I write to you in haste. The Scots fled into the valleys laying waste the land behind them. Our army has been much reduced by the flux and by starvation. Our losses necessitated the need for a hasty withdrawal and we have taken what remains of our gallant army by way of Bridlington and are now at York, where we await you. The Bruce has pursued us, so I am sending my lords Richmond and Athol to convey you to safety. My councillors advise that the Scots may be aware of your location and will ride on Tynemouth so you should prepare to leave post-haste.
May the Holy Spirit bless and keep you.
Edwardus Rex
this 16th day of October, 1322”
Her hands shake.
“Ma’am?” Eleanor murmurs.
“He is safe,” she says, and remembers that Eleanor is concerned more for her own husband. “They are both safe.”
“They are on their way to us?”
“They are in York.”
“York?”
“They would like us to meet them there.”
Edward, what have you done? You have allowed this Bruce to outwit you again.
The letter slips from her fingers, her ladies and her squires stare at it but none dare pick it up. Her hands dip back into the sleeves of her surcoat.
“So Captain, as a soldier and a veteran of these Marches, give me your opinion, what are the chances that Richmond might reach us here before the Bruce or his raiders?”
He fidgets, never a good sign. “I would say we should do well to look to the priory fortifications.”
“We cannot hold this place against the Scots.”
“We may have no choice.”
“We will have to find one,” she says and sweeps from the hall.
* * * * *
“The king had no choice,” Eleanor declares when they are alone in her rooms and Isabella looks up at her in surprise. She did not think the girl owned a tongue.
“I am sure he took good counsel before he made his decision.”
“He could not risk his army, the reputation of the English crown, by returning here and exposing himself to capture.”
She does not believe she asked her maid’s opinion, but she is intrigued anyway. “You do not mind that your husband and your uncle both abandoned you?”
“I should hardly say abandoned. What would the Scots do to me, even if they caught me here? I should be ransomed, as you would be. They will not harm us. But my husband and the King risk their lives and the Crown itself to come back here. It was the prudent thing.”
Ah, that was it, he has fled south and left me here on this damned rock because he is being prudent.
She does not wish him to be prudent, she wants him to put everything at stake for her, as he had for Gaveston. She wants him to sweep in and save her, or show at least that she is as important to him as he had been.
But this is not queenly, this is a woman’s petty jealousies and it is not worthy of a daughter of France.
Eleanor is flushed. It has taken much for her to speak so boldly. Perhaps what she says is true, or perhaps it is only what she needs to believe.
“That will be all,” Isabella says to her and draws herself straight.
“Is there anything else, Your Grace?”
“Ask the servants to fetch me some spiced wine.”
She bobs her head, leaves. Isabella turns back to the window. The sea heaves in the wind, black clouds sweep in, not yet Vespers and it is already dark. Should she wait for her husband’s knights or risk a boat? She cannot let herself be taken for the ransom will bankrupt England and Edward will no doubt be forced to give up all claim to Scotland. She will not have England’s humiliation laid at her feet and neither will she have her squires die defending these walls when they cannot anyway repel a determined assault. The result is foregone. If she is to prevent disaster then she must act like a Queen.
* * * * *
The next morning she meets Northey in the gatehouse. He looks a worried man; he doesn’t fancy much having to protect the Queen of England with just a handful of men. This could turn out badly for him.
There are dark clouds out there beyond the horizon. Not a good day for sailing. Where were the Scots? She had to make her choice. Could she risk delaying one more day?
“Load the ship with provisions. We leave today.”
He is about to object but then thinks better of it. He goes about his business, pleased to be rid of the onerous responsibility of being the Queen’s protector. She feels a slap of rain. Even down here on the river, the waves are rising.
The sky is ominous. She hopes she has not miscalculated but it is too late to change her mind. As they come out of the gate they are almost bowled over by the wind. Their ship does not inspire confidence, it was damaged in a recent storm, has just now been repaired and refitted at Newcastle.
Edward should be with her, he should not have abandoned her to this.
Chapter 35
York
York is not quite the same as she remembers it without the heads and the hacked off limbs stuck on poles. She is not nostalgic for them. But Lancaster’s ghost seems to prowl here, she doubts they will ever be rid of his haunting now.
She steps out of her carriage under the shadow of her uncle’s bailey, and curses him for what he led them all to. Their civil war allowed the Bruce
to grow more powerful. Lancaster should have put his energies into fighting him, not Gaveston.
She has sent messages ahead but her husband is not waiting for her when she steps out onto the cobbles. The Despenser waits for her in the Great Hall. He is unusually solicitous. A servant takes her cloak, the fire is built up. She declines the offers of spiced wine, food, though she is in dire need of both.
The Despenser has a silver smile on his lips. He wears furs, which makes him look snug, like an overfed cat. He gathers them about his smug, smooth person as if waiting to be petted.
He delivers his king’s message with silky grace. She listens, unbelieving.
“The king refuses to see me?”
“He is indisposed, Your Grace.”
“My Lord Despenser, do you know who you are addressing?”
“I mean no disrespect. It is the King’s orders, I merely pass them on.”
Isabella is exhausted. She has not been warm since Tynemouth and was never much warm there anyway. She has spent three days vomiting on a pitching ship, one of her ladies lost over the side in a gale.
Her clothes are foul, her hair crusted with salt; she is in dire need of a bath, a wardrobe, hot broth and spiced wine. But most of all she needs to speak her mind to the king and she does not care if the daughter of France sounds like a fishwife.
“Do you realise what I have been through?”
“We have all suffered much. The King has watched his army starve by degrees and he has lost his treasures and personal possessions all left behind in Northumberland.”
“I am told that Bruce has defeated what remains of his army and has captured the Earl of Richmond. Is this true?”
He nods.
“How could he let this happen? Is he always to be out thought and out manoeuvred?”
“Robert the Bruce is a cunning and treacherous adversary.”
“And Edward is hardly the hammer of the Scots,” she snaps and immediately regrets it, for this remark will certainly find its way back to Edward. She made unfavourable comparison between yourself and your father, he will say. She mocked you.
“Tell Edward I wish to see him,” she says to one of the stewards, but he looks instead to the Despenser. It is clear who has the authority here. “You will not stand between me and the king!”
“I do not. It is his orders, I am merely his servant.”
He says this without the whole court bursting into disbelieving laughter. He has them well trained.
“Why did he not come to me at Tynemouth?”
“You think this was my doing?”
“They are your words, not mine.”
“You may accuse me of many things, Your Grace, but in this I am blameless. My own wife was there with you.”
Yes, his wife, who is standing here in the shadows of the Great Hall, waiting her husband’s passionate embrace. She should not keep them from it.
This is twice now she has lost her patience in front of these Despensers, from now on she must conduct herself with more care.
“Have a servant prepare a bath. My rooms are prepared?”
“Of course.”
“I await the king’s pleasure,” she said and sweeps from the room, with as much dignity as a queen can, in a salt-stained dress and hair stiff as hay. Let Edward hide from her, he cannot hide forever. She is still his wife, and his queen.
She has saved him from humiliation, a word of thanks is all she wants.
That, and his adviser’s head steaming on a spit.
Chapter 36
Her counsel is no longer important to him, he spends much of his time cloistered with the Despenser and his crowd. His chamberlain only has to ask and he receives. There is hardly a castle in the Western Marches he has not taken possession of, the king waves a hand airily to his every request.
Oh what, the young Earl sighs, not another castle! He will make him the Baron of Britain if that is what he wants, he tosses out earldoms and castles as if they are sweetmeats.
There is a flush to the king’s cheeks, his eyes shine. There is much whispering when they are together, private looks and secret smiles shared with no one else. If he should grab the king by the crutch and satisfy him on the throne it would not appear as lewd as the looks they give each other.
What are these moments they share? It is very like lust, but that is not quite it. It is like Gaveston but it is not. There is a puzzle here and she is resolute to solve it.
* * * * *
And now they are to winter, the king and Isabella. A grey sky, grey fields; even the sun would be grey if it should come out, which seems unlikely. It shall be grey and cold like this till the end of days.
How dull her spy looks. Rosseletti never draws attention to himself wherever he is, he sits in corners and blends with the tapestries, the carpets, the walls. If it is not for the scratching of his quill you might forget he is there altogether.
“It should be announced that I am to go on a pilgrimage,” she tells him.
“Where will that be, Your Grace?”
“Anywhere but where the king is.”
“Until when?”
“Until Forevermas,” she says. “He is heartily tired of me it seems and for my part I am weary of him Just to see him makes me feel that I should like to be holding a horsewhip and a branding iron.”
“I thought that was the way of all matrimonies,” Rosseletti says. She is startled; she thinks he has just made a joke.
“I wish my brother could help me.”
“It seems unlikely there is much he can do. He cannot interfere in affairs between a husband and a wife.”
“I am his sister.”
“With respect, you are Edward’s wife, Your Grace.”
She fights an urge to stamp her foot.
“Is there no hope of conciliation?”
“What might I do, Rosseletti? Forget that my king has a mistress?”
She wishes she could bite off this sharp tongue, she must take care to guard it better when others less trusted are around. There is an awkward silence.
“It is not unknown for men to have ... consorts, other than wives. Kings most of all.”
“I know that.”
“If Lord Despenser were a woman, do you think you could bear it better?
She ponders the question. The answer, she supposes, would be yes. The King would never talk politics with any woman aside from her. It would be just a fleshly thing and she supposes she would not fear that as much as a rival who shares her husband’s beds as well as his plans and his royal seal.
So what might she do? The king can snub his nose at the Church and even the fires of purgatory for his private lusts but the Queen of England can only dream of other lovers. She thinks of Beatrice, strangled by hired ruffians in a tower; of Beatrice, head shorn and shuffling along a cloister in her penitent’s habit, spending the rest of her days with a chanson and prayer book.
Her ladies say she is beautiful, men of the court flatter her in obsequious ways while their eyes burn. What good does beauty do her? She might as well be a dried out hag praying rosaries in a nunnery.
“You know he still pays eighty pence a day to the Dominican friars to pray for Gaveston, over a hundred pounds a year just on offertory candles for his soul?”
“Still? It has been ten years.”
“A long time to keep milk, but they say that certain loves can stay fresh an eternity.”
She stares at him. Who would have thought the Rosseletti’s of this world harboured such romantic opinions? He will not meet her eyes.
He is right, she thinks. Edward still loves his Perro.
* * * * *
June finds her at Langley and Eleanor is again at her side, casting baleful sidelong glances as if she wishes to say something but is constrained by either fear or good manners. If she is now Edward’s spy - as Rosseletti believes - then she has little enthusiasm for it. Perhaps she, too, thinks that the Despenser is spending too much time in the company of the king. Eleanor’s attitude
towards her seems to have softened. She sometimes hurries to fetch her cushions when she sits and volunteers to water her wine on the hot days.
Isabella receives another messenger from the Lady Mortimer. She resolves to help her but the king pays little heed to her anymore. She will need one of her ladies to run the errand for her.
It has always seemed to her that if you wish someone to carry your load then it is best to do say nothing but stumble. So she spends the day sighing and pricking her finger with the needle at her sewing and weeping silently when her ladies pretend not to be watching her.
Finally it is too much for even a mouse like Eleanor. “Your Grace, something troubles you?”
“It is nothing.”
Eleanor stares with her huge, liquid eyes.
Finally, as if it is too much to bear: “My friend is in trouble.”
“Your friend? Then I am sure the king ...”
“I scarce think so, it is the king who is the cause of it. Never mind this, Eleanor, it is not something that need trouble you.”
“You mean Lady Mortimer?” Eleanor says for she is a bright young woman and needs little coaching in such conversations.
“A little while ago she sent me a letter. She suffers terribly, she has not enough to feed her children, let alone herself. She is granted just one mark per day for her necessities and out of this sum she must feed her servants as well. The place they have locked her is draughty and leaks when it rains. Lock up her husband, yes, but what guilt does the wife bear? She was nothing but a good friend to me while she was my lady-in-waiting. Think on it, Eleanor, should your husband ever rise against the king would that be a fault of yours?”
Isabella watches a squirrel on a branch attack a hazelnut. You just need patience and knowledge of the weakest spot in the nut. Oh, and sharp teeth.
“Have you spoken to the king, Your Grace?”
Isabella: Braveheart of France Page 13
