Isabel the Fair

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  “Not unless he is warned.”

  Their eyes met then in mutual understanding and Isabel, the Queen, moved closer so that had he wished she would have stood within the circle of his arms. Her slender fingers played familiarly with a button at his breast. But a movement which once had sprung from her own ill-suppressed desire was now a calculated wile to arouse his, and so strengthen her plea. “There is a small thing you could do for me — you, who always said that you would die for me.”

  “Your Grace has but to tell me.”

  “You could send Mortimer fair warning by some trusty messenger.”

  He made no attempt to hold her but a slow confederative grin curved his pleasant mouth. “And so assure Hugh Despenser of a harsh welcome when he rides west with his insufferable bride to grab her lands in Wales?” he said with relish. Although he was no longer crazily in love with her, although he was the kind of man whose fine boast that he would escape from the Tower had come to naught, he was still her man, eager to protect her from all enemies and even from the follies of the King. “Thank you, dear Robert,” she said, turning from him with a dazzling smile.

  No harm, she thought, in letting him know the ill she wished for Hugh Despenser. Of the good fortune she wished for Roger Mortimer he had no inkling. Perhaps, if he had, he would not do this thing for her. Perhaps Ghislaine’s charms had not so far cured his jealousy. But there was one wish she could not bring herself to hide. The strong, attractive border lord must know that it was she, Isabel the Queen, who had thought to warn him. He must be reminded of her beauty, of their intimate smile across a crowded hall and his impertinent words about a partnership. And here was the opportunity. Did he, she wondered, still remember her? Sallying forth with his men from some grim border castle, or riding home from hunting at eventide, did he sometimes catch himself thinking of her, as she so often thought of him?

  “Send whatever trusty messenger you like,” she said. “But tell him to say to milord Mortimer that he comes from the Queen. You have already suffered imprisonment for me, dear Robert, and I would not have you risk more. And if the King or Hugh Despenser should come to hear of it at least no one will dare to send me, the King of France’s sister, to the Tower!”

  After le Messager had gone Isabel sat thinking of the man whom they were warning, and — with her usual lack of self-deception — realizing how hard she had hitherto tried to deny herself that pleasure. Upon reflection she feared that her impulsive interference might prove to be ill-judged. Was it perhaps foolish to try to foster remembrance in a man whose life and duty lay so far away? Yet could any woman’s foolishness equal the King’s in provoking such a man to wrath? She began to realize, too, how little she knew of Mortimer save his public reputation which appealed to her. And that her loyalty should lie solely with her husband at whose wishes she had struck an underhand blow.

  With his usual love of family gatherings, Edward had insisted upon the May Queen joining them for Christmas. But the journey had fatigued her and they had both noticed how often she excused herself from all the merry-making and rested quietly in her room. And Isabel, frightened at what she had done, made occasion to visit her there alone and to take her into her confidence.

  “Of course, Hugh Despenser inheriting all that land in Wales is bound to make trouble. But the Mortimers would have heard soon enough — as soon as the settlement is made public,” said Marguerite, frankly horrified. “Surely it was undignified — and disloyal — for you, the Queen, to warn Mortimer secretly?”

  “I should not have done so,” Isabel defended herself, “had Edward not been underhand with me.”

  “Probably he did not tell you because he knows how much you dislike Hugh Despenser.”

  “Who does not?”

  “Could it not be partly jealousy, ma mie? He complained to me once that you hated all his friends.”

  Isabel moved away to her aunt’s prie-dieu and began turning over the illuminated pages of her Book of Hours. “Oddly enough, in the end, I did not hate Gaveston,” she admitted, in a half-shamed voice.

  “I am glad. God knows he needed your forgiveness!” The May Queen leaned back in her chair, a little weary of her relatives’ affairs. “But with any kind of person whom Edward loves it is the same. He goes to such extremes. He is beginning to behave like that now about Hugh Despenser. Advancing him in every possible way, marrying him into the blood royal, lavishing gifts upon him as he did upon Piers Gaveston.”

  Isabel, standing idly by the window, turned sharply. Her eyes probed her aunt’s pale face. “As he did upon Gaveston.” The words repeated themselves like a sudden warning in her brain. “Not that! Dear God, not that!” she prayed in momentary panic. But of course it could not be. The idea was absurd. What vestige had quiet, clever, sallow Hugh of Piers’s radiant charm?

  “Of course, the Despensers, father and son, have both been useful to him.” Marguerite pulled herself together and went on a shade too quickly, putting the whole matter on a basis of services rendered, as if reading her unfortunate niece’s thoughts. “Their policy is sound and sane if only the country as a whole would accept it, and Edward has the sense to see it. If they ever succeed in getting our laws made and enforced by a Parliament in which land-owners and commons are fairly represented, it would stop all this wrangling between the powerful barons and provide a basis for some sort of law and order. Gaveston may have fought for the King, but Hugh Despenser serves him as statesman.”

  “I prefer men who fight,” said Isabel shortly. “And if Hugh Despenser lays claim to a foot of Mortimer land he will have to fight. Roger Mortimer knows how to hold his own.”

  The toss of her head and the pride in her voice betrayed her. The May Queen sighed and sat in silence for a while. “You know that the man is married?” she asked at length, in a carefully expressionless voice.

  She saw Isabel’s back go suddenly rigid, her fingers stop turning the pages. “No. No, I didn’t,” she answered almost lightly, after the briefest pause. “But what difference should that make to me?”

  “None at all. I just wondered if you knew.

  “Who is she — Mortimer’s wife?”

  “A woman of French descent like ourselves. Joan de Genville. A granddaughter of Hugh the Twelfth of Linsignon.”

  Isabel closed the great leather-bound Book of Hours very carefully. She seemed to be a long time fastening the metal clasp. “Marguerite,” she said, still bending over it.

  “Ma chere?”

  “Is she very beautiful?”

  “I have no idea. I have never seen her. They live so far away from court.” She smiled suddenly, and held out an inviting hand. “Perhaps, dear Isabel, it is as well.”

  Isabel came and took her hand, smiling back at her without offence. “Yes. Particularly as I have played the dutiful wife so well that I believe myself to be with child again.”

  “My dear! What a success you have made of your married life — in spite of everything!” Because of her weakness there were tears of gratitude in Marguerite’s eyes.

  Forgetful of all queenly dignity, Isabel pulled up a stool beside her. “It is to be hoped there will be enough food for him!” she said laughingly. “Hawtayne, my steward, says the sheriffs were making the people line up for loaves in Pie Lane yesterday. One loaf to a family.”

  “You seem very sure you will produce yet another son!” They were laughing and happy again, more like sisters than aunt and niece. “A vrai dire, je voudrai une file cette fois,” said Isabel. “A small daughter to name for you. You know, Marguerite, when I look back over the years since I came to England I can see that I should have been a much more hateful person had you not been here.”

  “You have had much to put up with, ma chere.”

  “You admit it now?”

  “Now that I am going away.” The May Queen slid her loose rings up and down the thin fingers in her lap as she looked back through the strange disturbed years of her widowhood. “If I have sometimes seemed hard it is because I have be
lieved that your inherent generosity of heart would ultimately triumph over the hurts life offered you. But who

  are any of us to play the mentor who have not come young and eager to our marriages — to find a Gaveston?”

  When Marguerite returned to Wiltshire Edward himself picked out the steadiest horses in his stable to bear her litter and young Ned proved his love for her by offering his precious wooden horse Cher Ami, which she tactfully refused on the grounds that he looked so ferocious that everyone would mistake him for a seasoned war-horse. All the family went out into the courtyard to bid her good-bye. “Are you sure you are strong enough to make the journey, ma belle-mere?” asked Edward with compunction.

  “Do not be anxious for me,” she reassured him. “Edmund will ride with me as far as Windsor.”

  How she loves that younger son of hers, though he is weak like his half-brother, the King, thought Isabel. “Will you not change your mind and stay with us?” she urged.

  “I have things to see to at Marlborough Castle, my loves.”

  “What sort of things?” piped Ned.

  “Affairs of my estate to set in order.”

  Impulsively Isabel reached through the gay curtains of the litter and clung to her, her cheeks wet with tears. “Marlborough — Brotherton — Leeds. How often have you stayed away from us in one or other of them. But never before have I minded your going so much.”

  King and Prince stood hand in hand, waving. “Feed yourself up on good Wiltshire fare, dear woman, and come back to us soon,” called Edward teasingly, as grooms and horses began to move. “You know that nothing ever goes right for any of us without you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Soon after the May Queen’s departure news came that the Bruce had taken the strong border town of Berwick, and even Edward of Caernarvon could no longer go on frittering his time away with the northern gateway of his kingdom in the hands of the enemy. Once more Thomas of Lancaster refused to lead the expedition on the grounds that his nephew had made little attempt to comply with the ordinances. “Particularly the clause in which he promised to get rid of bad advisers,” he had said, thrusting at the man who had been brought into the circle of the royal family and usurped the place in the King’s counsels which he, a Plantagenet, should have had. And so Edward had been forced to bestir himself and, mustering what men he could, march north again.

  “And while I am kept busy with these marauding Scots your brother seizes the opportunity to be awkward about Guienne,” he had complained to Isabel, handing her a letter from the King of France.

  Since the King of France was now her brother Charles, Isabel read it with avidity, hoping for home news. But the letter was brief and business-like. “He merely mentions that it is high time you crossed the Channel again to do homage for it.”

  “Did I not do so at the time of our marriage?”

  “But that was to my father. You have never done homage for it to Charles.” Isabel sighed, sick for a sight of home. “It would be lovely to be in Paris with all this insular bickering left behind.”

  “My dear Isabel, devoted as you are to Charles, surely you can see that I cannot be in two places at once.”

  It was only too true. But Isabel’s nimble mind saw other possibilities in the problem. “You could perhaps send someone in your place to put your cause to Charles. To placate him, and yet insist that he leaves the question of Guienne until you are free to come. Someone both tactful and strong.”

  Edward was sitting beside her, stroking Minette’s soft fur as the cat lay curled on her lap. When in her beguiling presence he still heeded her advice. “It is a thought,” he said. “But whom among all these jealous curs can I trust, save Pembroke and those who come north with me?”

  Isabel leaned against him and took his hand between her own. “Were it not that I bear your child within me I would go myself,” she said regretfully.

  “And who could be a more persuasive messenger?” he said, bending to kiss the tip of her short little nose. She could not tell if he took the idea seriously or not, but at that moment it rooted itself in her own mind as an advantageous suggestion to be stored against some future crisis. “Then what about that border lord whom you left to keep the peace on the western marches when you went to Stirling?”

  “Roger Mortimer of Wigmore? Why, yes, if he has at last subdued his unruly vassals in Ireland.”

  “Surely his uncle — the elder Mortimer of Chirk — could see to that?”

  “I will speak of it to Hugh Despenser.”

  Isabel pouted and shrugged away from his encircling arm. “Can you not even arrange something with my brother without that man’s approval? Can you not send Mortimer because I suggest it?”

  Because he would be leaving her within a few hours and because she was pregnant he assured her she was cleverer than all his councillors put together, and then and there dispatched Nicholas Huggate, his chief clerk, to Wigmore.

  “I will tell Roger to bring Sir Griffin’s boy with him when he comes,” he said, alluding to a Welsh knight who had been killed at Bannockburn. “The boy is spirited and not much older than Ned, and should be good company for him while I am away. You remember how he fretted last time.”

  “Milord Mortimer can deliver the child into my care,” agreed Isabel, with a pleased secret smile.

  But after Edward had gone the days of her confinement dragged slowly. There were no knights left to tilt at tournaments, and no one seemed to have the heart to devise plays or pageants any more. She seldom went into London because the bells of all the city churches seemed to be for ever tolling for the dead instead of pealing joyously to welcome her. Crowds no longer lined the streets with cheerful shouting. The people’s faces were pinched with anxiety and hunger, their thoughts turned inward upon their own misery and upon the means of finding the next meal for their families. Ships were moored idly by deserted wharves.

  The wool trade with Flanders was at a standstill because so many sheep had died for lack of pasture, and in the empty warehouses men and boys were catching rats for food. “It will be our helpless babies next,” whispered parents of the better sort, keeping careful watch on them because of the horrible rumours they had heard.

  “Just when your Grace needs cheer and good food most,” lamented Bringnette.

  But Isabel the Queen did not go short for long. When Roger Mortimer rode through London on his way to take ship from Dover to Bordeaux a convoy of carefully covered wagons was driven into the palace yard. Hungry as the citizens of London were, and suspecting that the wagons were piled high with food, they dared not touch or pilfer since the fierce, dark little Welshmen in charge of them wore the great border lord’s badge. The wagons were their master’s gift to the Queen. Roger Mortimer’s wordless answer to her friendly warning. “I will see that you do not starve,” he had promised, half in jest, that overweening day when Edward had reviewed his troops before the Scottish victory at Bannockburn. That had been long before the famine in England became so serious, but he had kept his word. And Isabel felt warmly happy and cared for as she watched her servants unload the welcome sacks of flour, the tubs of salted meat, the haunches of mountain venison, the cheeses and the bowls of honey. She bade her steward count it all and divide it out among her household and, since she could not share it with the May Queen, she gave some of it to the good Grey Friars at Newgate, whose church Marguerite had built, so that they might distribute it among the most desperately poor and sick.

  But although Mortimer lodged a night in London she would not see him, being already clumsy in her pregnancy and knowing herself to be pallid with poor living. “I would have him remember me always as beautiful,” she decided reluctantly, “lest he compare me unfavourably with that French wife of his.” Like a girl in love, she would have liked to talk about him to one of her ladies, but because she was the Queen and married she was too proud to do so.

  Even with Marguerite she was reticent, although she knew that her aunt had guessed at the strange attraction
the man had for her. All the day of his departure she sat reading love poems by a window which overlooked the courtyard, telling other people that the light was better there, and telling herself she was a fool. But although the wagons rumbled away she saw nothing of him. Only when the sun was high in the heavens did she learn that he had ridden out of the palace before dawn — furious, she hoped, because she would not see him.

  The boy Griffin had been brought to her, and she sought to dispel her disappointment by watching him and her own two boys at play. Ned was delighted with him because he was strong and bigger than himself, and had picked up thrilling information about training war-horses and discharging iron arrows by means of some modern explosive. But she only found herself still further reminded of Roger Mortimer because the sturdy war orphan seemed to have developed an immense hero-worship for him during their journey from Wales, and was for ever showing Ned and small John of Eltham how milord Mortimer vaulted into his saddle, how milord Mortimer bellowed an order so that it could be heard across the river Severn, or how milord Mortimer rounded up deer in some stupid Englishman’s park whenever his men were hungry.

  “After my baby is born I will go north to join Edward and forget all about the wretched, over-bearing man,” she told herself virtuously, and called Ned away from his amateur soldiering to gather the very best bunch of rosemary he could find in the herb garden to sweeten a cushion she was embroidering for Marguerite. “We will send it to her with our special love for St. Valentine’s Day,” she told him, remembering how the boy’s grandfather, grim warrior as he was, had always sent his second wife a love token on that day; and how Marguerite, although widowed so young, always insisted “When Edward died, all men died for me.”

  But soon after the cushion was dispatched with so much love news came that the May Queen was desperately ill. The wasting sickness kept her helpless in her bed and the physicians gave little hope. Messages were immediately sent to Thomas and Edmund Plantagenet, but they were away on the Scottish border. Isabel would have given anything to go to her, but her own hour was at hand. And by the time her daughter was born, news had come from Marlborough castle that the beloved May Queen was dead.