by Glen Craney
THE NEXT MORNING, BELLE AWOKE alone in the battered chapel. Finding the castle deserted, she hurried to the ramparts and saw Longshanks and the Comyns enjoying repast on a raised dais overlooking the dunes. Below them, on the beach, Idonea stood tied to a stake. Water engulfed the widow’s feet, with each wave rising inches higher. High tide would submerge her within the hour.
Numb with terror, Belle ran from the tower and climbed to the king’s platform. “My lord, what has she done?”
Longshanks affected surprise at her arrival. “Ah, our little jurist! She who would have us apply the legal maxims to the letter. You see, my lady, inspired by your example, I consulted my judiciary on the matter. Do you know what I discovered? The statutes require a woman suspected of witchery to be subjected to an ordeal. Stickler for the law as you are, I am certain you agree that I had no choice.”
Belle broke through the cordon of guards and rushed to the beach.
Idonea warned her back as the water surged to the widow’s waist. “Leave me, child! It will be a blessed release!”
Belle pulled at her hair, desperate to stop the grisly execution. She ran back to Longshanks and fell to her knees, crying, “I beg of you, my lord! This woman has shown me great kindness.”
Longshanks casually stabbed another helping of mincemeat with his knife. After several chomps on the morsel, he mumbled with a full mouth, “It is out of my hands.” He stole a quick glance at Belle to assess her reaction.
Stricken by the trickery, Belle saw Tabhann grinning at her predicament. Only then did she piece together the conspiracy that these craven men had concocted overnight at her expense. She would have to agree to the marriage with Tabhann to save Idonea from drowning. The rough waves surged to the widow’s neck and forced her to cough up salt water. Finally, she cried, “I will submit!”
Longshanks kept his gaze fixed on the sea’s horizon. “I would never force a lady to troth against her heart.”
Belle heard Idonea spitting water and gasping for air. Sick with despair, she capitulated to the king and folded her hands. “I wish to marry him!”
Tabhann chortled at the fruits of his connivance, until the king withered him to silence with a threatening glare.
A ray of the sun broke through the clouds, and Longshanks seized the opportunity. “A sign! The accused has been exonerated by the saints.”
In no hurry, the English soldiers sauntered down to beach and reached the stake as the waves submerged Idonea’s head. They cut the widow free and dragged her half-conscious to the dunes.
As Idonea slowly revived spitting sea wash, the king speared a slither of salmon from his plate and held it aloft on his knife to cool in the breeze. “We must never fail to enforce the law. It is all that separates us from the savages.”
VIII
A BLOODCURDLING SCREAM PIERCED THE din of Parisian commerce on the Ile de Cite. James looked up at Notre Dame’s south tower and saw what appeared to be a living skeleton in rags falling from a rope that had been hoisted from the tollhouse at St. Michael’s Bridge. Apparently hoping to speed his death, the airborne man pressed his arms to his sides and crashed to the stones with a sickening thud. Yet the crowds congregating around the markets near the cathedral’s portico continued about their business as if nothing more than a dead pigeon had dropped from the sky.
Shaken by what he had just witnessed, James looked to Lamberton for an explanation, but the bishop kept hurrying him toward the shady oaks on the Pont Neuf to escape the oppressive summer heat. Finally finding a breeze, the cleric wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with a kerchief and said, “Once a month, King Philip offers a criminal the choice of walking the rope to freedom or suffering the noose. He holds these spectacles to distract his subjects from the bread riots.”
James put a sleeve to his nose, trying not to retch. Each day he spent in this noisome city made him more homesick for Scotland. The stench from the urine and the piles of refuse thrown from the windows were nauseating enough, but now this cruel execution had roiled his stomach even more. The blighted wheat harvest on the Continent had been the worst in thirty years, drawing thousands of starving refugees from the far provinces to Paris like flies over a carcass. As if color and entertainment alone could obliterate their misery, the French king had ordered shops hung with banners of blue and gold cloth, the fountains filled with red Claret, and choirs of white-garbed virgins to sing melodies in the parks to drown out the cries of the beggars.
The bishop took him by the arm again, and together they plowed a path through the perfumed crowds until, at last, they reached the gilded gates of the royal palace. James had been looking forward to their long-awaited audience, if only because it promised a rare escape from these putrid hordes. Strategically situated downwind from the markets and charnel houses, the palace grounds were surrounded by gardens designed to throw up a cordon of fragrance.
Admitted into the outer courtyard, he and the bishop were engulfed by a sea of courtiers, ladies-in-waiting, minstrels, diplomats, clerics, knights, and earls, all clamoring to gain the ear of the chamberlain who manned the public entry into the great hall. After an hour’s wait, they were finally summoned into the presence of King Philip, who was known as “the Fair,” not in honor of his compassion, which was non-existent, but because of his pallid complexion and imbecilic stare, which made him look like a wax statue.
Over the hum of a hundred conversations, a herald blew his horn and announced, “The Bishop of St. Andrews!”
James stepped forward with the bishop and caught his first glimpse of the king, who sat in the center of the chamber, oblivious to the tumult swirling around him. He had been warned not to show surprise or betray amusement at the monarch’s strange behavior. A month earlier, the Archbishop of Pamiers had compared Philip to an owl, beautiful to gaze upon but otherwise a useless bird. When the injudicious remark found its way back to the court, the cleric had been racked and beheaded for the indiscretion.
Philip was indeed an oddity, but James was more intrigued by the maiden who sat at the fatuous monarch’s right hand. With long blonde curls and delicate seashells for ears, she was smartly attired in an embroidered bodice of forest green silk that highlighted her blossoming bosom.
Detecting his interest, Lamberton whispered across over his shoulder, “Isabella, his daughter. So they say.”
He well understood the doubt regarding her paternity. The king’s sluggish introversion was exposed in sharp relief by the quick expressions and attentiveness of this precocious lass whose striking cobalt eyes took in all that moved. Her delicate nose tipped up just slightly, and her upper lip formed a perfect Cupid’s bow. If Philip was an owl, his daughter was a beautiful white hawk, breathtaking to gaze upon, but also a predator.
The princess turned on him with a provocative smile. Averting his admiring gaze too late, he shifted uncomfortably under her bemused inspection. During these past months in France, he had grown into a chiseled young man, and although he was still shorter than most his age, his dark features, often mistaken for those of a Castilian, were so exotic and unusual here that they caused even the worldly Parisian ladies to turn at his passing.
The princess whispered to her father’s ear, and the king swiveled and stared quizzically at the two Scots, as if questioning how they had suddenly materialized before him.
Lamberton bowed. “Sire, it is an honor.”
Phillip’s powdered cheeks flushed with irritation. When his daughter again whispered the identity of the man giving homage, the king blinked to revive his dormant brain and finally made the connection. “What news have you of this rabble uprising in your land, priest? I’ll not allow your Highland squabbles to spoil my daughter’s future with the Prince of Wales.”
Stunned, James interrogated the princess with a glare of accusation. You are to be condemned one day to the bed of Edward Caernervon?
Isabella quickly cast her eyes down; her expressions were as fleeting as the light filtered through St. Chapelle’s miraculous w
indows. When she glanced up again at him, she had been transfigured by a haunting sadness.
Lamberton risked a cautious step forward. “Excellency, we seek only to defend our borders. The English abuse us beyond all Christian civility. I trust France will not turn its back on its staunchest ally.”
As Philip tapped his curled shoe, annoyed at being required to discuss matters of state, a tall Dominican monk with sallow skin and a cadaverous face emerged from the royal retinue and came to the monarch’s rescue. “France deals only with sovereign nations,” the monk said. “Scotland and its mission church must submit to England, as England submits to France.”
“We have not been introduced,” Lamberton said coldly.
The Dominican’s upper lip protruded over a half-moon overbite, making him appear incapable of a smile, and the skin hanging from his neck resembled the leather on the worn copy of Scripture he carried in his scabrous hand. Yet the strangest aspect of his houndish countenance was its bicameral division; the left side of his face seemed frozen, refusing to participate in the expression of its mirror counterpart, a peculiarity that gave the impression his soul was perpetually at war with his flesh. “I am Diredonne, Abbot of Lagny,” he said haughtily. “Papal legate to the House of Capet.”
Alarmed, Lamberton tried to simulate indifference as he inquired of the king, “Your lordship now feels the need to maintain an inquisitor?”
Philip was too distracted by the minstrels to hear the question.
The Dominican seized the opportunity to press his advantage. “The Tribunal of Whitby long ago brought the Church of Scotland under the authority of the Holy Father. I trust our wayward mission daughter has not relapsed into its old heresy of claiming independence from the chair of Peter.”
Lamberton’s jowls flamed. “We are all children of equal worth in God’s eyes.”
“Yes, but children spared the rod of discipline tend to stray from the guidance of their elder and wiser siblings.”
“I would remind my brother in Christ that Scotland has produced Britain’s only saint canonized by Rome, the venerable Margaret.” Lamberton waited for the traditional signing required at the utterance of a saint’s name, and when the inquisitor finally relinquished the half-hearted gesture, the bishop drove his minor but satisfying score to the hilt. “I regret that England has only locally-proclaimed saints, the Confessor and Beckett. If Rome is the arbiter of all holiness, then God’s grace has been dispensed in greater measure upon my country.”
The Dominican’s moist upper lip quivered.
Isabella interrupted their theological disputation. “Bishop, your scribe here. Is he mute, or merely rude?”
Lamberton was taken aback, not just by the nature of the inquiry, but also because the king’s daughter spoke the Anglo-Norman so well. “Apologies, my lady. This is James of Douglasdale.”
Isabella turned to her father, who was keeping time to the music with his feet. “Why does Douglasdale ring familiar, Père?” When the king persisted in scanning the hall for a diversion, the princess answered her own question. “Of course! I do now remember some correspondence from my betrothed about a border château added to his inheritance. I think he has placed it in the care of one of his father's vassals.” She narrowed her eyes in a taunt at James. “Perhaps I shall have a summer palace built there.”
Lamberton clamped James’s elbow to check his temper before he said something they would both regret. “We have imposed too long upon His Majesty’s patience.”
Philip had long since dismissed the two Scots from his attention, but Isabella arched her thin eyebrows, as if making another last attempt to incite an outburst from James as he departed.
The bishop bowed and backed away. Out of royal earshot, he pulled James into the anonymity of the waiting throngs. “I have one more piece of business to conduct here before we leave.”
James paced like a caged fox. “Did you hear that warbling strumpet?”
Lamberton muttered a curse at the inquisitor protecting his position at the king’s side. “Aye, we both ate from humble pie. But now is not the time for retribution.” From across the chamber, the bishop saw a knight adorned in a coarse white mantle with a splayed red cross on his shoulder. Catching the knight’s eye, he nodded furtively, and then ordered James, “Remain here until I return. Make yourself inconspicuous.”
Waiting until a jester distracted the court with an acrobatic leap, the bishop followed the white-robed knight, undetected, into a private compartment.
Left alone, James retreated to a corner of the hall and rehearsed again the cruel manner in which he would one day deal with Robert Clifford, preferably with that upstart French princess present. His black reverie of revenge was interrupted when the musicians struck up a lively prelude and the floor cleared in preparation for a Pas de Deux. The ladies paired off with knights in two lines, face to face with their partners. These French peacocks and hens began stalking each other and fluttering away in a ritual that seemed designed to frustrate the men and show off the women.
Halfway through the Pas, he found himself surrounded by a well-endowed demoiselle and two giggling accomplices. The French lasses pleaded with him to enter the dance, but he resisted. Not to be denied, one of them interlocked her arms with his to demonstrate the steps. He made a half-hearted attempt to imitate the pattern and stumbled badly. His misadventure drew more young ladies to his aid, until he was trapped in the middle of a cackling bevy of fluttering fans. Suddenly the music stopped in mid-chord, leaving him the only one in fractured motion.
Princess Isabella split the rows of dancers. With all eyes following her, she offered her hand to James. “You’ve never danced the Pas?”
The displaced femmes shot glares of envy at the princess as they backed away with perfunctory bows, leaving him no choice but to accept Isabella’s invitation. She demonstrated a series of intricate steps, and he awkwardly tried to follow her lead, but this infernal dance was a maddening test of subtlety and restraint, nothing like the Scot reels that gained momentum and emotion with each stanza.
The courtiers monitored his halting progress with smirks and whispers. He attempted another spin and landed on his backside. Isabella laughed as she helped him to his feet. He tried again, this time with more success, and soon he was floating with her across the floor. Her mint-laced breath filled him with a tingling as she led him through the gauntlet of dancers.
Isabella whispered to his ear, “Say nothing of import to anyone here. There are those who would see the interests of your country thwarted.” She directed his glance toward the Dominican inquisitor. “That malignant friar will use any loose utterance to further his designs.”
He realized that he had misjudged her. She had spoken of Douglasdale during the audience not to be cruel, but to quell the inquisitor’s suspicions regarding her loyalties to her future father-in-law. He squeezed her hand in gratitude for the warning, and spun her in a dazzling pirouette.
“You are a natural,” she gasped.
“And you are a tres bonnie teacher.”
Isabella glowed, delighted by his unintentional cobbling of Lowland Scot and French. “Dancing is not my only subject of instruction.”
Before he could decipher her meaning, she curtsied and spun off to another partner, a tall French knight with a weathered but handsome face creased by scars. He cursed under his breath. The infuriating princess had spiked his ardor only to abandon him. Damn all lasses anyway! Inconstant creatures! All designed to destroy me!
Returned from his private meeting with the robed knight, Lamberton had been watching the performance from the periphery. He finally caught James’s eye and nodded sternly for him to join his departure. Passing through the cordoned entrance, the cleric chided his charge with a whispered aside, “Remind me never again to advise you to remain inconspicuous.”
“I did nothing but obey that princess’s command.”
Lamberton glanced back at Isabella. “Aye, I am discovering that you have a remarkable talent f
or drawing the notice of those in high station.”
Still in the arms of the French knight, she was casting provocative glances at James. She countered the bishop’s scowl with a lording smile of conquest.
Vexed by her inexplicable interest in his young companion, the bishop hurried their escape from the palace and warned under his breath, “That lass is too clever for her age. Consider yourself fortunate that she will have forgotten about you by the time you leave her sight.”
A WEEK LATER, THE DOOR to James’s small cell in diplomatic lodging at the Hotel de Ville creaked open. Lying naked in the oppressive night heat, he tensed and reached under the bedding for his dagger to fight off the intruder.
The flame of a candle approached, and Princess Isabella came into the penumbra of the light. Stunned, he dropped the dagger clanging to the stones. She let her scarlet robe fall to the floor, revealing a diaphanous gown. Speechless, he pulled the blanket up to his chin. How had she gotten a key?
She sat on the bed and ran her hand across his stubbled jaw. Her exploration migrated to the ridges of his muscled torso and threatened to descend below his abdomen.
He tried not to look at her. “My lady … ”
Smiling at his quaint modesty, she pressed a finger to his lips to gain his silence. She untied the drawstring of her blouse and slid it from her shoulders.
He pulled her closer, desperate to kiss her. Heart pounding, he brushed her cheeks and felt her sweet breath as he captured her arms above her head to admire the fullness of her breasts. He nuzzled them tenderly with his tongue and returned to waiting lips for another kiss—Belle’s face stared down at him.
He pulled away and turned aside.
“Do I not please you?”
“I am promised to another.”
She led his hand back to her taut nipple. “We are all promised to another.”
He pulled his hand back and struggled to avert his eyes.
