by Anne O'Brien
There was one blessing from that unpleasant little interview.
‘Will you remain at Woodstock during Philippa’s confinement?’ Edward had asked.
‘No,’ Isabella had replied.
She did not explain. I knew she would be wherever her lover Mortimer was. And I heaved a sigh of relief. Sometimes neglect could be a blessing.
CHAPTER TWO
Edward was able to spend one night with me at Woodstock before his escort was instructed to sweep him up and deposit him back under Mortimer’s beady eye at Westminster. It was no time for passion. Edward was restless and preoccupied with something he was not telling me, and I was too furious with Isabella to put aside my grievances and actually ask him what it was. But my mood improved when Edward rubbed my ankles, then held me in his arms and told me how much he loved me. With my head comfortably resting in the little hollow below his shoulder, I continued to be astonished, for I of all the four Hainault daughters, was the least blessed with physical beauty. The family features were strong in all of us, but they had not done their best by me. I had square, practical hands, a broad forehead, wide cheeks and lank hair of pale mouse. The sallow skin that glowed after a sunny day on Margaret and Jeanne and baby Isabelle looked merely dull on me. Nor was I very tall, even for my age. Jeanne and Isabelle, younger than I, would soon outgrow me. I was, my mother the Countess of Hainault frequently observed, a plain and wholesome daughter. Jeanne, in moments of sisterly bile, labelled me a poor dab of a girl. Isabella had wanted the Hainault dowry and did not care which sister became the bride, but Edward had wanted me.
I held on to that one miraculous thought when fears rained down on me thick and fast. For now, sheltered in his arms, I was content.
‘I’m afraid you’ll not see Pontefract or Knaresborough,’ he murmured, his chin resting on my head, as I sighed deeply.
‘No, I don’t suppose I shall.’ I laughed a little. ‘I didn’t expect to be scrabbling for money as Queen of England. But still …’ I paused for a moment, merely to tease. ‘… on the whole, I’m pleased I wed you.’
‘Only pleased?’
I raised my head so that our eyes met, barely a handspan apart, and as we smiled at each other I recalled my first sight of him, striding into the audience chamber at Valenciennes in the wake of Isabella. How astonishingly handsome he had been, this Plantagenet prince, striding confidently forward with a proud tilt of his head and a spine as straight as a pikestaff. His skin was fair, his eyes blue and his luxuriant hair as gold as a corn sheaf. He was to me as breathtaking as the image of the warrior angel St Michael in the window of our private chapel. And he still was.
‘I thought Isabella would choose Jeanne for you,’ I confessed, pushing back the fall of hair that invariably got in his eyes. I was feeling in a mood for confession and intimacy.
‘She did,’ Edward admitted dryly, ‘since Margaret was already wed. But how could I refuse a girl who was kind and resourceful – a girl who was bold enough to accuse me of being stupid when I informed her that to my mind it was impossible to trust anyone, particularly servants.’
I laughed at the memory. ‘You were impossibly opinionated. I was surprised that Walter did not hit you.’ Walter Manny, my page – now a squire and come with me to England – was unquestionably loyal to me and to those of my choosing.
‘So was I. I deserved it, I expect. My pride knew no bounds.’
Allowing my head to sink back against his chest, I sighed again, remembering. It had been a dire story that Edward had eventually told after much persuasion.
‘How can I be expected to trust anyone?’ he had demanded furiously when I had accused him of rank insensitivity to me and to Walter. ‘I am spied on. Every minute, every day. Everything I say or do is reported back to the Queen or Mortimer. If I write a letter, it is intercepted and read. I am not allowed my own friends. My servants are not my appointment. I am burdened with a bodyguard in my mother’s pay. I swear everything I eat and drink is reported to my mother. It’s worse than being in a prison cell.’
It had chilled my blood. From a position of privilege, a childhood where I had been given love and freedom and no more restriction than was thought good for a daughter of Valois and Hainault, I could not imagine such shackles. As for every word I spoke being reported to the Count or Countess: even my governess showed more tolerance than that, and accepted my childish misdemeanours. It must, for Edward, have been an intensely lonely existence.
‘You taught me to trust, and to have faith in my own destiny,’ Edward mused now, interrupting my reverie, his own thoughts obviously far away. ‘I never met anyone with so many opinions. Or so much advice to give.’
I chuckled. ‘And did you take it?’
‘Oh yes. I needed to, to survive.’
Sobering, I let my mind drift back again. I had told him, whether he wanted to know or not, while we were seated in my father’s kitchens - a warm, busy place, and a perfect refuge for Edward to escape the eagle-eyed attentions of his skulking bodyguard.
‘It seems to me that in your present position you can do nothing but wait,’ I had said when I had persuaded him to tell me of Isabella’s ambitions, and of her lover Mortimer’s hold on power. What else could I tell a prince who had not yet reached his sixteenth year? ‘One day your chance will come to seize power. On that day you will cast off your mother’s influence, and that of this dreadful man Mortimer, and take your place at your father’s side. Once you do that, you will find your friends will flock to your banner.’
The Prince had slammed his hands down against the table at which we sat, flattening the crumbs of bread. ‘I have no friends.’
It had been the bleakest statement of all that he had made that day. ‘Then you must make friends.’
‘How can I, when I am kept isolated from men to whom I would look for support? Sometimes I feel like a beetle squeezed in Mortimer’s fist …’
‘I will be your friend.’
‘You can’t fight for me.’
I had stood, out of all patience. Walter, a silent shadow, stood as well. ‘But I can give you advice, for what it’s worth. Be temperate, be patient. Listen and take counsel. Build a power base when you can. Is that not what all rulers do? One day you will be King whether the Queen wishes it or not. Be ready for that day.’ I had given him frown for frown. ‘But if you are to win friends, you have to charm your supporters rather than grumble and snarl and beat them about the head with your complaints!’
He had reared back as if I had struck him. ‘Do I grumble and snarl?’
‘Yes. You are doing it now.’
What a turbulent wooing it had turned out to be. My lips curved at the memory of that brief episode - all of eight days.
‘Why are you smiling?’ Edward asked.
‘Just remembering,’ I replied, my mind leaping sharply back to reality in Woodstock, and I sat up again as a thought struck me. ‘Why was Mortimer scowling at you when we parted company?’ We had left him at Winchester. Mortimer had been more heavy-browed than usual, barking out orders that Edward must not linger after depositing me at Woodstock, as if I were a parcel of cloth for the market.
Edward shrugged, but his lips tightened. ‘I’m in his black books.’
‘What have you done?’ I asked, my mouth suddenly dry with apprehension.
‘Only refused to obey orders and attend my sister’s wedding,’ Edward replied. ‘It’s not news, Philippa. But Mortimer hasn’t forgiven me. He says I dishonoured his good name before the whole kingdom. His good name, by God! And as if I did not know the meaning of dishonour and shame …’
Edward might pat my hand to reassure me, but he did not succeed. No, it wasn’t news. The whole episode had had caused a major furore. Edward had refused to attend the political marriage of his sister Joan to the son of the Scottish King Robert Bruce after the kingdom of Scotland had been wilfully handed back to the Scots. But I hadn’t heard Edward’s explanation from his own lips before. All I knew was that Edward had refuse
d pointblank to go across the border.
‘Mortimer said it had been agreed, and that I would attend,’ Edward bit out the words. ‘I said that I had not agreed to it. The agreement signed at Northampton with the Scots was none of my doing. I didn’t make the treaty so felt in no mind to live by it.’ I was impressed by his fighting words, and my initial fright was overlaid by pride in him. ‘I wasn’t prepared to dance at their wedding,’ he continued. ‘I would have more likely spitted the groom on my sword and widowed my poor sister than given them my good wishes.’ He shuffled restlessly, rucking up the bed linen into an uncomfortable heap. ‘My absence was the only way I could express my abhorrence of the whole proceedings.’
It had come, as I knew, at the end of an unsatisfactory campaign, with England’s defeat at Stanhope Park, even if Mortimer had been able to prevent a subsequent Scottish invasion of England. Edward’s own desire to push on with an attack had been thoroughly thwarted. Mortimer had ordered a withdrawal, and the Northampton agreement had, in Edward’s mind, been nothing more than an ignominious backing down.
‘Mortimer sees my sister as the future Queen of Scotland.’ Edward still felt the loss as a personal failure, even though he had come close to being captured and killed. ‘All I see is the English dead and dying on the battlefield at Stanhope Park. I refused to condone what was done then, and I won’t now.’
‘It’s months ago now,’ I observed. ‘Can Mortimer not put it aside?’
‘Apparently not. He’s still smarting. He said my absence was an embarrassment – that I had damaged the alliance. What alliance? In my eyes, there is no alliance, and there is no peace. Scotland is mine.’ Thrusting himself from the bed as if driven by a need to take action, Edward strode to the coffer beside the fireplace, peered suspiciously into the flagon he found there, and poured two cups of wine, returning to hand one to me. ‘I can’t overthrow Mortimer yet,’ he said quietly as if the walls might have ears. ‘All I can do is make life difficult for him …’
‘… but not so difficult that he might clap you up in a dungeon in the Tower.’ I had no faith in Mortimer’s compassion.
‘Yes. Just like he clapped up my …’
The air around me prickled. Edward stiffened and his mouth closed in a firm line, as if he had come up against a rock that blocked his path but was too solid and vast for him to shatter. I, too, closed my mouth. And I did not question him, knowing it was too painful a matter to broach. Did not all families have their secrets? Ours were simply more complex and more dangerous than most. Without a word I took his hand to draw him back down with me, and waited until he relaxed a little and managed a wry grimace that might just have been a smile.
‘No. Mortimer won’t lock me up,’ he said as if he had thought about the possibility often. ‘He needs me. King Edward, the sacred figurehead, who will obey every dictate. Except that I won’t.’ He took a gulp of wine and rubbed one hand over his face, his voice rough with desperation. ‘Ah, Philippa. Mortimer plays the king in front of me, posturing and preening as if he were the true King and I some prancing upstart, dressed and groomed to mimic royalty. And before God, it’s no mummer’s play! I have to tolerate it because as yet I can find no way to break free. I’m running out of patience.’
‘But not out of time,’ I urged, winding my fingers into his furred cuff. The fright was back with a vengeance. Sometimes my dreams were red with bloody murder, and I woke with ragged breathing and a galloping heart.
‘He has every trick up his sleeve.’ Edward might laugh, but it was laced with anger. ‘Did you know? Mortimer is now claiming descent from the mighty King Arthur – the line which ancient prophecy says will one day rule all England and Wales. Isabella will love that.’ The laugh was transformed into a snarl. ‘And what’s more, as his first step on the damned ladder, he’s claimed the premier earldom in the kingdom for himself. Did you know? Mortimer is now the Earl of March, by his own gift.’
Mortimer’s ambitions were no surprise, but this outrageous claim shook me.
‘God rot him!’ I exclaimed. Which at least made Edward smile.
‘Amen to that.’
I waited until Edward had drained his cup, then took it from him, placed it on the floor beside my full one, and held his hands enclosed in mine. He cocked his head as if he might read my mind, and when he failed – for cannot every clever woman hide her thoughts from the man she loves? he said: ‘Tell me, then. I can almost hear your mind scurrying with advice.’
‘Let him be Earl of March,’ I replied urgently. ‘I say he’ll not enjoy it much longer. You have friends now, I think, who will not turn their back on you when Mortimer orders them into line.’
‘I have indeed.’ Edward’s eyes suddenly gleamed with a presentiment of the future. ‘I have friends who look to me as the young wolf who will one day challenge the old pack leader. So you have been listening to gossip?’ I think I amused him, as I often did.
‘Walter collects useful facts like a magpie collects bright objects,’ I explained.
‘I only hope Mortimer’s not as well informed as you seem to be – or my friends might feel the edge of an axe against their neck before they are much older.’
‘Walter and I are very discreet,’ I pronounced. ‘I drink to your friendships.’
I rescued my untasted cup and we made the toast.
‘To friends,’ I said. ‘To the future, and your ultimate victory.’
‘Well said, Madam Counsellor.’ And I saw him deliberately step away from the weighty matters of state, for my sake, as he dragged me back into his embrace, his chin once more on my hair. ‘Now you must sleep. This child needs to rest, too, if one day he is to take on my sword and my kingdom. Let him be at peace – and don’t lecture him on what he must and mustn’t do if he is to be the perfect prince.’
I said no more, but lay in Edward’s arms as he fell asleep – he always fell asleep as if felled by a battle-axe. I lay awake. I loved him with all my heart, even when he presumed in high-handed manner that the child I carried would be a son rather than a daughter. I had cried at the end of those eight days at Valenciennes when Edward had left me, and I still ignorant of whether I would be the royal bride or not. I wept again now, silently, even more bitter tears. For tomorrow we would be parted and I would not know what happened to him, what dangers he faced. I trusted neither Isabella nor Mortimer.
Fortunately neither did Edward.
It struck me, just as I was falling into sleep at last – I never had found out what Edward’s preoccupation was.
Nor did I, until the following day.
CHAPTER THREE
The next morning Edward rose early. I could not find him in the rabbit warren of rooms of the old palace so I sent Walter to track him down. There was no man I could trust more with a subtle investigation.
‘He’s talking with Montague and Ufford in the mews, my lady,’ Walter reported back.
‘What are they talking about?’
He shrugged lightly. ‘I couldn’t hear. I tried hard enough.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Is it trouble?’
‘I would say so. Montague looked severe.’
I knew the names Walter had given, but not their affiliation. ‘Friend or foe?’ I asked bluntly.
‘Friend,’ Walter replied promptly. ‘I’d say they’re putting their money on Edward for the future.’
‘Good.’
‘I expect the King will want some advice from you before he leaves, my lady.’ Walter grinned. My habit of dispensing it was well known.
‘Then he’ll get it,’ I replied.
I did not see Edward until the household met for Mass before his departure. He knelt beside me and held my hand throughout the service, but although he followed the words and made the appropriate responses, his mind was not in the confines of the chapel. Whatever the preoccupation of the previous day had been, it was still with him in full measure. I prayed as hard as I could that Edward’s patience would hold until the time to strike was good and
his support sufficient to make a victorious stand against the monster that Mortimer had become, for failure would undoubtedly bring death. How or what Edward would do, I had no idea, but I prayed for God’s grace and blessing on him. I prayed for Mortimer’s downfall. And I prayed for a son. If Edward had a son to fight for, it would strengthen his sword arm against both Mortimer and his mother. For he would have to deal with Isabella, too, and she shared his blood.
My spirits were not restored. Soon I would be alone and bereft.
After the blessing, the household intent on leaving the chapel to go about its daily tasks, I struggled to rise from my knees, but to my surprise Edward held me down, his face fixed on the silver crucifix on the altar.
‘What is it?’ I whispered. It seemed that since I had come to England my whole life had been spent whispering in corners.
‘Wait a little …’ he breathed.
So I did, wishing he would hurry up. My girth was not good for this. But Edward needed to talk to me before he left, and here we were simply husband and wife kneeling together before parting, giving no cause for suspicion. Isabella left with barely a glance in our direction. We continued to stare at the altar as if still in private prayer. The chapel gradually emptied around us apart from Father Godwin.
‘I wasn’t going to tell you,’ Edward said quietly. ‘I decided not to give you anything else to worry you. But I must because you’re sure to hear about it now that it’s surfaced …’ He hesitated for a fraction of a second. ‘There is a plot. Montague brought me word.’
A jolt took me like a punch beneath my heart. Here was trouble indeed. Walter had been right. ‘Against you?’ I asked.
‘No. Against Mortimer.’
My head swung round before I could stop it, then I forced myself to look forward again.
‘Are you involved?’ My voice was shaking, and not from the cold rising up through my long-suffering knees.
‘No. It is my uncle of Kent. He’s amassed troops.’ Edward took a breath. ‘He plans to rescue my father from Corfe castle and set him up as King again in Mortimer’s stead. And in mine, of course.’
