Isabella: Braveheart of France

by Colin Falconer

  “The king will not see me. You know this, Eleanor.”

  “Perhaps then I should do so. You know he holds me in great favour.”

  “The Lady Mortimer is my friend, not yours. I should not have you trouble yourself unduly on my account or hers.”

  “Perhaps then I shall do it because we are both wives and mothers and it is the right and charitable thing.”

  “Well do not tell the King that I sent you. Or your husband. They will refuse any request if they know it is from me.”

  The Lady Eleanor dares put a hand on the person by way of comfort. Then she withdraws. Isabella thinks she will do it. She hopes this will help the Lady Mortimer for she very much likes her as a friend and it will also show the Despenser that she is not quite toothless, not yet.

  * * * * *

  The king, she has heard, has gone to Langley, as he does on this day every year, the anniversary of Gaveston’s death. He has Masses said and takes rich golden cloths to embroider his tomb. He has established a chantry there and prayers are made for Perro in perpetuity.

  The Despenser is a rare visitor but she supposes he has nothing better to do now that his king is elsewhere, on his knees with his hands cupped for another man, albeit this one is dead. Still, the Despenser would not be human if he did not feel a pang of jealousy.

  He smiles, appears relaxed, though he prowls the carpets like a bear looking for its lunch.

  He is not an unhandsome man. Fine living has made him a little soft, paunchy even, but he still wears many of the marks of youth. He is dressed not in velvets but in plain linens, purples and some scarlet silk to denote his rank and position. But it is land he lusts after not ostentation.

  He appears bookish but she remembers he was at Bannockburn and has some reputation as a warrior and pirate. His wrists are so narrow and delicate, she would not think him burly enough to wield a broadsword. She supposes his greatest asset is that others misjudge him until he is inside their guard and then it is too late.

  His eyes glitter, the fleshy lips part. He smiles, or employs an expression which he has learned is very much like one. He says in a silky voice: So how is Lady Mortimer?

  “She suffers.”

  “Much?”

  “Intolerably.”

  He would not be here if she had not perturbed him with her plea to the king. He must still be afraid of her then; well that is something. She supposes Edward may have relented in the face of the entreaties by his favourite niece - who also happens to be his own wife! - and she can only imagine what this has done to the Despenser’s equilibrium.

  He leans in. “The king does not yet realize how clever you are,” he says with a smile.

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “You cannot win this game.”

  “I am sure you must be speaking in riddles, I was never good at riddles.”

  “Your eyes are so wide and blue and the king is so narrow and trusting.”

  She holds his gaze. His smile is so like a grimace he can no longer hold it. “Do not think for a moment you can best me.”

  “My Lord Despenser, I do not know what it is you think I have done. Despite our recent misunderstanding I remain his loyal servant, and wish only to do what it is best for him and for the Crown.”

  He simmers. He withdraws. The Lady Mortimer remains at Skipton.

  * * * * *

  She has decisions to make. Is it enough to be the cosseted wife of a king, a shadow gliding around the anterooms of one of his palaces? She will go mad. She was raised by France to be a queen, she was made by God to be a woman.

  She cannot abide it but railing against Edward will do her no good and showing her intent to the Despenser will only forewarn and forearm him. From now on she must be more circumspect.

  She has a servant fetch Rosseletti and sits him down with his seals and parchments and shows him the letter she has just received from the Lady Mortimer. He reads it, shakes his head, and holds it to the candle flame. “You must have nothing to do with this,” he tells her.

  “You will write to my brother.”

  “Your Grace, I will not.”

  “You will do as I say. You will write to my brother and tell him that should Roger Mortimer ever one day appear at his court he is to give him all possible assistance.”

  “That is treason.”

  “Rosseletti, you are my clerk, not my keeper.”

  What was it her father had said to her? You will obey your husband in all things. But he could not have imagined a situation such as this. Would they shave my head and shut me away in a tower? The King of France might, but should Edward dare such a thing he would risk war with France.

  She saw her father’s ghost in the room glaring at her. Well hector me all you want from your grave, I shall not submit like a pretty little lamb and let them make the rest of my life sewing and walking in the garden.

  I am a queen. I want my place at the council and at the king’s side and if he will not give it to me I will force his hand. He will see that I am no coward. If he will call for rain then I will give him a tempest.

  Chapter 37

  She resides for a time in London, at the great Tower, with the young prince Edward, now ten years old and growing tall and fair like his father. It is a grim fortress, with its green-slimed reeking moats, its cavernous gateways and iron-tipped portcullis. But her apartments are luxurious enough, jet black beams on the roof and thick glass on the windows.

  Occasionally she spares a glance at the Lanthorn Tower. Mortimer is up there, cooped in his little cell.

  Tonight she walks the battlements, restless. There is a wisp of mist on the river, lights on the Surrey side, riders out there in the dark. She has heard the sound of carousing all evening from the guardroom downstairs but it has died down now. Lord Mortimer has bought his guards wine and a feast so they might help him celebrate his birthday.

  She hears a noise from the chimney, mice in the bricks she supposes, but then as it gets louder she realizes there are men up here, and her alone and defenceless. This is not anticipated. She freezes in alarm.

  She watches, astonished, as two silhouettes emerge from a small door that opens onto the constable’s private walk on the Hall Tower. She takes one careful step back into the shadows, holds her breath, terrified they might see her.

  The two men leap on the leads of the adjoining tower and scramble away across the roof. It is all over in moments. Then they are gone.

  It is a moonlit night and she cannot make out their faces but she is certain from his voice and from his size that she knows at least one of those men.

  She hears the splash of oars as a boat pulls away from the wharf, sees them row across the river towards the Surrey bank. A torch flares, there are men waiting over there in the dark.

  She lets out her breath.

  She might now safely raise the alarm but instead she stumbles back down the stone stairs to her apartments and takes herself to her bed. Her two ladies are already fast asleep in the trundles.

  She gets under the sheets and lies there listening to the lapping of the water around the pilings at the Watergate and the lonely cry of a water bird. She recalls impudent looks, smouldering eyes. Lord Mortimer will be far away by the time she wakes. She wonders what Edward and the Despenser will say when they find out he has escaped from the Tower. Perhaps that will make them a little less cocksure.

  It should.

  * * * * *

  Young Edward has grown into a fine boy, he has his father’s looks. His eyes are so serious, he watches her with such intensity it is frightening. He has strong opinions and tells her loudly which servants he trusts and those he does not. He is already very sure of himself.

  “Did you really help that man Mortimer escape from the Tower?” he asks her.

  The escape is all that anyone will talk about. Mortimer is the first prisoner to escape from here in a hundred years, she is told he had the connivance of the constable, d'Alspaye, who smuggled him an iron to take out a s
tone in the wall of his cell. He then climbed a chimney with a rope and escaped through the Hall Tower. He and d’Alspaye then scaled down the outer Baillie to the wharf with rope ladders. There were boats waiting. It is supposed he has fled back to the Marches or to Ireland, where he has friends.

  “Helped Lord Mortimer? Of course not. Where did you hear someone say such a thing about me?”

  “Father says Lord Despenser told him about you, that you had planned it with Mortimer's friends.”

  “That is a vile thing to say, I would never plot against your father.”

  “Well, that’s what he said, a lot of people are saying it.”

  “A lot of people?”

  “People talk in from of me like I’m not there. It annoys me.”

  “What else do they say about me?”

  “The King or Uncle Hugh?”

  “Uncle Hugh. Is that what you call him?”

  “Father says he is my uncle. Almost.”

  She has a rejoinder for that but she bites her tongue. If the young prince is telling her all the scandal about the king then he would just as surely carry everything she says back to him.

  “What else does ... Uncle Hugh ... say about me?”

  “He says that you had an uncle too, called Lancaster, and that you sent him secret messages to help him in his war against father. Is that true?”

  She shakes her head and forces a smile. It makes her jaw ache to appear pleasant in the face of such outrageous calumnies. Not only has he exiled me but he wants me tried for treason! It is clear now what the Despenser wants.

  He wants to become queen in my place.

  Chapter 38

  She is invited to Hanley as the guest of the Despenser. She has not seen the king for many months and when he walks in she is shocked at how careworn he looks. It is clear he does not want to see her. He will not meet her eyes.

  “Oh what have they done to you, Edward?” she murmurs.

  She remembers when she first saw him at Boulogne. She was unscarred then and he still had Gaveston. They were both innocent in their own way, they both had hopes that love could come to something.

  “Hugh said you wished to see me,” he mumbles and sits by the fire, still without looking at her.

  “I wished to ask you about the children.”

  “They are all healthy and well cared for. What else do you wish to know? I should like to keep our interview short, I have much to do.”

  She blinks at him. She suspects he has been coached. “I do not understand what I have done to offend you.”

  He taps a finger on the arm of the chair. He does not answer.

  “Can you not see what he is doing?”

  “Can you not see what you are doing?”

  She slumps to her knees. He ignores her. Once it would have melted him, no matter how hard his heart. Has it come to this? “What has he said to you about me?”

  “He does not need to tell me, the facts speak for themselves.”

  “What facts are these, Your Grace?”

  “My enemy finds succour with your brother. How do explain this?”

  “Ah, you mean Lord Mortimer?”

  “Yes. I mean Lord Mortimer. You know he has appeared in France? He has offered his sword to your brother, the King, to go against our fellow Englishmen in Gascony?”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  He is suddenly on his feet. “Should he betray his country so?”

  “I think you have rather forced his hand, don’t you?”

  “Did I force his hand when he took his armies and marched against me? Did I force his hand when he surrounded us in London, his army around the walls?”

  “I rather think the Lord Despenser is his enemy, not you.”

  “You argue like a lawyer.”

  “You say that as if it is a bad thing.”

  A rare smile from him despite himself. “Oh get up,” he says. He lends out a hand and helps her stand. He guides her to the seat by the fire.

  “You know your brother blames me for what happened in the Agenais.”

  “The insurrection, you mean?”

  “Well if he would not build a bastide on my lands then the locals should not feel the need to attack it. No harm was done.”

  “A sergeant was killed.”

  “Only a French one.” He is immediately sorry for that remark. His cheeks flush. She lets it go.

  “This could lead to war between us. The very thing our marriage was meant to prevent!”

  “Not the only reason surely?”

  He ignores this remark. “Did you know Mortimer had signed on with him?”

  “Why should I know this?”

  “You are in constant communication with your brother through that little spy of yours, Rosseletti. He would have told you all this. Was it you that asked your brother in France to protect the gallant Lord Mortimer when he ran away?”

  “Of course not!”

  “You have to deny it. To do otherwise would be to admit treason, wouldn’t it?” He stares into the fire. “I should have executed Mortimer when I had the opportunity, but you persuaded me to mercy. Perhaps even then you were plotting against me.”

  “Is this the Lord Despenser speaking or my lord and husband?”

  “How is it Mortimer has found succour with your brother?”

  “My brother does not consult me on matters of policy. I am neither his prime minister nor his queen and I have not his ear in the council chamber or the bed chamber so I cannot answer that question for you.”

  “Have I not treated you with all decency and gentleness as becoming your rank in this world and your place in my household? You have wanted for nothing and I have never insulted you publicly or caused you or your servants physical harm. Have I? Yet you insist it is not enough. What is it you want from me?”

  “I want you to want me.”

  “What you ask is impossible!”

  “You are a man. Am I not pleasing to you?”

  “You are indeed a very beautiful woman.”

  “Then what?”

  “You would not understand!”

  There is colour in his cheeks and his fists open and close at his sides as he struggles to pacify her. She wants to shake him, like she would a child.

  “I have been loyal to you and helped you in all that I am able.”

  “Indeed you have and I have acknowledged that in all things.”

  “I want to be your queen!”

  “You are my queen!”

  She hears a servant scurry down the stairs. Just as well, for if she found any scullery boy sneaking behind drapes to listen she would thrash him her to Michaelmas.

  Edward goes to the window and stares at a dove on a branch outside. By the look on his face he should like to hurl a stone at it for its pretty cooing. “They sent an assassin from France to murder Hugh, do you know that?”

  Yes, she knows. “You credit me with much more information that a lady living in exile might reasonably acquire.”

  He sighs, his hands behind his back. “Look.”

  She joins him at the window. There is a monk at the gate collecting alms. He is a jolly fellow with a stave, and he is laughing at some frippery with the guard at the gatehouse. “He looks happy, that man.”

  “He looks cold. He has sandals. In this weather! His feet must be blue.”

  “But he has time to pass the day with a soldier and a laundry maid. What must his life be like?”

  She puts put a hand on his arm. For once he does not try to shrug it away.

  “I sometimes think it would be better as a foundling than a prince,” he says. “Let me have a day in the field working, some mead at night and a few prayers. I think it should not be such a bad life.””

  “You should miss the company of women,” she says and he looks thunderous, but just for a moment and then he laughs.

  She strokes his beard. He rests his cheek against her hand and closes his eyes. “Sometimes I think you know me better than anyone.”

>   “Come to my chamber tonight. I have missed you. Husbands and wives should share a marriage bed. You don’t have to do anything, just keep me warm.”

  There are tears in his eyes; for his situation, for hers. He nods. When she leaves the chamber he is still at the window, watching the friar go about his day.

  * * * * *

  The candle gutters in a draught and their shadows dance on the wall like demons. The wind is howling around the tower, the Despenser’s animus prowling the night, free from its anchoring body, peering in at the windows and howling in jealousy.

  Edward takes a breathy gulp and his hand slides along her thigh. “Don’t ever leave me, Isabella.”

  “But my king, it is you that sends me away.”

  “You know I don’t mean it.”

  “I think that you do.”

  He caresses her breasts, places his hand enthusiastically between her thighs and kisses her with as much passion as he can. She pities him in his efforts. For all his writhing, he remains incapable of anything with her besides tenderness.

  “You should be my touchstone.”

  “But I’m not.” She cannot see his face in the darkness.

  “Just hold me,” he says and she does. They keep each other warm. It is enough. She wakes with him still in her arms, his hair warm and musty.

  She wishes the light would not creep up the sky, that she could not hear the servants clattering pans in the kitchen. Let this moment stay.

  Later that morning the Lord Despenser marches into her chambers unannounced. It may be his castle but there are still common forms to be observed. Her ladies in waiting look up, alarmed. “A word in private,” he says.

  She considers refusing it, but that would appear churlish. She nods and her ladies flee the room.

  The Despenser smiles. “You passed a restful night?”

  “I slept very little,” she tells him and his eyes blaze. Does he love Edward, she wonders, or is it that he thinks that lust is the only way he can control him? If he thinks that then he should study himself more carefully in a reflective surface.