The She-Wolf (The Accursed Kings, Book 5)

by Druon, Maurice

Piers had been frightened of nothing. He had pillaged the Queen’s jewels and thrown insults about as others distribute alms, because he was sure of the love of his King. He had had a greater effrontery than anyone in the world. Moreover, he had used his imagination in his diversions: he had stripped his pages naked, loaded their arms with pearls, rouged their lips, allowed them no more than a leafy frond for modest concealment, and had organized erotic pursuits through the woods. And then there had been his escapades in the low districts in the port of London, where he wrestled with the porters, for the fellow was strong, too. Oh, what splendid youthful years he had given the King!

  ‘I thought I’d find all that again in Hugh, but my imagination endowed him with more than was there. You see, Crouchback, what made Hugh so different from Piers was the fact that he really did come from a family of great barons and he couldn’t forget it. But had I not known Piers, I’m sure I should have been a very different King.’

  During the interminable winter evenings, between games of chess, Henry Crouchback, his hair falling over his right shoulder, listened to the King’s confessions. His reverses, the collapse of his power and his captivity had suddenly aged him; his athletic body seemed to have grown soft and his face become puffy, in particular the eyelids. And yet, such as he was, Edward still preserved a certain charm. He needed to be loved; that had been the great misfortune of his life. How sad it was that his loves had been so wicked and that he had sought consolation and loyalty from such evil hearts.

  Crouchback had advised Edward to go to appear before his Parliament, but in vain. This weak King could show strength only in stubborn refusal.

  ‘I know very well I’ve lost my throne, Henry,’ he replied, ‘but I shall not abdicate.’

  Carried on a cushion, the crown and sceptre of England were moving slowly upwards, step by step, in the narrow staircase of the keep of Kenilworth. Behind, the mitres swayed and the jewels in the croziers glittered in the half-light. The Bishops, raising their embroidered robes above their ankles, were slowly hoisting themselves up the tower.

  The King, seated on a chair which, because it was the only one, created something of the effect of a throne, was waiting at the end of the great hall, his head resting on his hand, his body bowed, between two of the pillars that supported the great arches which resembled those of a cathedral. Everything here was of colossal proportions. The pale January day, which entered through the high, narrow windows, was like twilight.

  The Earl of Lancaster, with his head askew, was standing beside his cousin together with three attendants, who were not even the King’s. The red walls, the red pillars and the red arches composed a tragic background for the end of a reign.

  When Edward saw the crown and sceptre, which had been brought to him like this twenty years ago under the vaults of Westminster, appearing through the open double doors and advancing towards him across the huge spaces of the hall, he sat upright in his chair and his chin began quivering a little. He turned to look at his cousin of Lancaster, as if in search of his support, but Crouchback looked away, for this dumb entreaty was intolerable.

  Then Orleton was standing before the King, Orleton whose every appearance for several weeks past had meant for Edward the forfeit of some part of his power. The King looked at the other Bishops and at the Great Chamberlain; he made an effort to maintain his dignity and asked: ‘What have you to say to me, my lords?’

  But the pale lips amid the blond beard could barely frame the words.

  The Bishop of Winchester read the message by which Parliament summoned the King to sign his abdication together with a renunciation of homage from his vassals, to agree to the choice of his son, and to deliver up to the envoys the ritual insignia of sovereignty.

  When the Bishop of Winchester had done, Edward was silent for a long moment. His whole attention seemed fixed on the crown. He was suffering, and his pain was so clearly physical, so profoundly marked on his features, that one might have doubted whether he was even thinking at all. Nevertheless, he said: ‘You have the crown in your hands, my lords, and you have me at your mercy. Do therefore as you please, but you shall not do it with my consent.’

  Then Adam Orleton took a step forward and said: ‘Sire Edward, the people of England no longer want you for King and their Parliament has sent us to declare it to you. But Parliament accepts as King your eldest son, the Duke of Aquitaine, whom I have presented to it; but your son is not willing to accept the crown except with your consent. If you are therefore wilful in your refusal, the people will be free to choose and may well elect as their sovereign prince someone among the great men of the realm who most pleases them, and that king may not be of your lineage. You have brought too much trouble on the realm; and after all the harm you have done it, this is the one thing you can still do to give it peace.’

  Once again Edward looked at Lancaster. In spite of the faintness he felt, the King had understood the warning contained in the bishop’s words. If he did not agree to abdicate, Parliament, in its need to find a king, would certainly choose the leader of the rebellion, Roger Mortimer, who already possessed the Queen’s heart. The King’s face had taken on a curious and alarming hue; his chin was still quivering; his nostrils looked pinched.

  ‘My lord Orleton is right,’ said Crouchback. ‘You must abdicate, Cousin, to bring peace back to England and so that the Plantagenets may continue to reign.’

  Then Edward, who seemed incapable of speech, signed to them to bring the crown near and he bowed his head as if he wished to wear it for a last time.

  The Bishops looked at each other, knowing neither what to do nor how to do it, for this unexpected ceremony had no precedent in royal ritual. But the King’s head was bowing lower and lower towards his knees.

  ‘He’s swooned!’ suddenly cried Archdeacon Chandos who was carrying the cushion with the emblems of sovereignty.

  Crouchback and Orleton hurried to the fainting Edward and caught him as his head was about to strike the flagstones.

  They put him back in his chair, slapped his cheeks, and sent hurriedly for vinegar. At last he drew a deep breath, opened his eyes, looked about him, and then suddenly began to weep. The mysterious power with which the anointing and the mystic rites of the coronation imbue kings, and sometimes only to serve disastrous tendencies, had withdrawn itself from him. It was as if he had been exorcised of the quality of sovereignty.

  He was heard to speak through his tears.

  ‘I know, my lords, I know that it is through my own fault that I have fallen into such great misery, and I must resign myself to bear it. But I cannot help feeling a great sorrow at all this hatred from my people, whom I have never hated. I have offended you, I have not acted well. You are good, my lords, very good to preserve your devotion to my eldest son, to continue to love him and to want him for king. I shall therefore do as you wish. I renounce before you all my rights over the realm; I release all my vassals from the homage they have paid me and ask their pardon. Come near …’

  And once again he signed for the emblems of sovereignty to be brought to him. He took hold of the sceptre, and his arm dropped as if he had forgotten how much it weighed; he gave it to the Bishop of Winchester, saying: ‘Forgive, my lord, forgive the wrongs I have done you.’

  He extended his long white hands towards the cushion, raised the crown, put his lips to it as if it were a paten, and then, handing it to Adam Orleton, he said: ‘Take it, my lord, to crown my son. And forgive me for the wrongs and injustices I have done you. May my people forgive me in my present misery. My lords, pray for me who am now nothing.’

  Everyone was struck by the nobility of his words. Edward showed himself to be a King only at the moment he was ceasing to be one.

  Then Sir William Blount, the Great Chamberlain, emerged from the shadows of the pillars, advanced between Edward and the Bishops, and broke across his knee the carved staff, which was the insignia of his office, to mark the fact that a reign was over, as he would have done before the body of a dead king t
hat had been placed in its tomb.

  6

  The Camp-kettle War

  ‘SEEING THAT SIR EDWARD, lately King of England, has by his own will and the general advice and assent of the prelates, earls, barons and other nobles, and that of all the population of the kingdom, resigned the government of the realm, and consented and willed that the government of the said realm pass to Sir Edward, his eldest son and heir, and that the latter should govern and be crowned King, on which account all the nobility have done homage, we proclaim and publish the peace of our Lord Sir Edward the son and order on his behalf that no one disturb the peace of our said Lord the King, for he will protect the rights of everyone in his said kingdom, both rich and poor, against whomsoever it may be. And if any have just cause or complaint against another, let him have resort to the law, and use neither force nor other violence.’

  This proclamation was read on 24 January 1327 to the Parliament of England, and a Council of Regency was immediately appointed; the Queen presided over this Council of twelve members among whom were the Earls of Kent, Norfolk and Lancaster, the Marshal Sir Thomas Wake and, the most important of all, Roger Mortimer, Baron of Wigmore.

  Edward III was crowned on Sunday, February 1, at Westminster. The day before, Henry Crouchback had armed the young King a knight together with the three elder sons of Roger Mortimer.

  Lady Jeanne Mortimer, who had recovered both her liberty and her property, but lost her husband’s love, was present. She dared not look at the Queen nor did the Queen dare look at her. Lady Jeanne suffered greatly from this betrayal by the two people in the world she had loved most and served best. Did fifteen years of attendance on Queen Isabella, of devotion, intimacy and shared risks, deserve such a reward? And did twenty-three years of marriage to Mortimer, to whom she had borne eleven children, deserve to come to an end like this? In this great upheaval, which was altering the destiny of the kingdom and giving her husband the highest power, Lady Jeanne, who had always been so loyal, found herself among the vanquished. And yet she could forgive, she could retire with dignity, precisely because the two people she most admired were concerned and because she understood that these two people were bound inevitably to fall in love as soon as Fate had brought them together.

  After the coronation, the crowd was allowed to invade the Bishop of London’s palace to kill the ex-Chancellor Robert de Baldock; and, the next week, Messire Jean de Hainaut received an income of one thousand marks sterling from the duty on wool and leather in the Port of London.

  Messire Jean de Hainaut would have liked to stay longer at the Court of England. But he had promised to go to a great tournament at Condé-sur-l’Escault, where many princes, among them the King of Bohemia, were to meet. There would be jousting and parading and an opportunity to meet many beautiful women who had crossed Europe to watch the greatest knights compete; there would be dancing and flirting and feasting and masks. Messire Jean de Hainaut could not miss all that, nor the opportunity of shining in his plumed helm in the sanded lists. He agreed to take with him fifteen English knights who wanted to take part in the tournament.

  In March the treaty was signed with France at last. It regularized the question of Aquitaine, and to England’s great detriment. But could Mortimer make Edward III refuse the clauses that he himself had negotiated so that they might be imposed on Edward II? It was a legacy from a bad reign, and it had to be paid. Besides, Mortimer took little interest in Guyenne where he had no lands. At the moment his attention was concentrated, as it had been before his imprisonment, on Wales and the Welsh Marches.

  The envoys he sent to Paris to ratify the treaty found King Charles IV very sad and cast down, for the child born to Jeanne of Évreux in the previous month of November had not only been a girl, when he had hoped for a boy, but had not lived two months.

  Order was only just being restored in the kingdom of England, when the old King of Scotland, Robert the Bruce, who had caused Edward II so much trouble, though he was now old in years and suffered moreover from leprosy, sent on April 1, twelve days after Easter, a defiance to young Edward, informing him that he was about to invade his country.

  Roger Mortimer’s first reaction was to make ex-King Edward change his residence. It was only prudent. Moreover, Henry of Lancaster and his banners were needed with the army. And then, according to reports from Kenilworth, Lancaster seemed to be treating his prisoner too kindly, keeping but a lax guard over him and allowing him a certain amount of communication with the outside world. And the partisans of the Despensers had not all been executed, indeed far from it; in the first place the Earl of Warenne, more fortunate than his brother-in-law the Earl of Arundel, had managed to escape. Some had gone to earth in their manors or in friends’ houses while waiting for the storm to blow over; others had fled the kingdom. It might even be that the defiance sent by the old King of Scotland had been inspired by them.

  Moreover, the great popular enthusiasm with which the liberation had been welcomed was now beginning seriously to decrease. From the mere fact of having governed for six months, Roger Mortimer was already less beloved and less adulated; for there were still taxes to pay and people were still being sent to prison for failure to pay them. In the circles of power, people were beginning to reproach Mortimer with his too peremptory authority, which seemed to increase day by day, and with the great ambitions he was beginning to reveal. He had recovered all the estates which had been seized from him by the Earl of Arundel, and had added to them the county of Glamorgan as well as the greater part of Hugh the Younger’s possessions. His three sons-in-law – for Mortimer already had three married daughters – Lord de Berkeley, the Earl of Charlton and the Earl of Warwick, served to increase his territorial power. Having conferred on himself the appointment of Justiciar of Wales, which had been his uncle of Chirk’s, as well as his uncle’s lands, he was thinking of having himself created Earl of March, which would have given him a fabulous semi-independent principality in the west of the kingdom.

  He had also managed to quarrel with Adam Orleton, who had been sent to Avignon to hasten the necessary dispensations for the marriage of the young King; and, since the Bishopric of Worcester happened to be vacant, Orleton had asked the Pope for this important diocese. Mortimer had taken offence that Orleton had not first asked his agreement, and had opposed the appointment. Edward II had behaved towards Orleton in exactly the same way over the see of Hereford.

  It was natural that the Queen should also suffer from this decreasing popularity.

  And now war had been declared, war with Scotland again. Nothing seemed to have changed. And the people had hoped for so much that they were bound to be disappointed. Suppose the armies were defeated and there was a conspiracy by which Edward II escaped, then the Scots, allies of the old Despenser party for the occasion, would have a King ready to replace on the throne and one who would undoubtedly be willing to surrender the northern provinces to them in exchange for his liberty and recovered power.43

  During the night of April 3 the ex-King was awakened and asked to dress quickly. He found himself in the presence of a tall, bony, ungainly knight, with long yellow teeth, dark straight hair falling over his ears, and very much the appearance of a horse.

  ‘Where are you taking me, Maltravers?’ Edward asked in terror, recognizing a baron whom he had once ruined and banished, and who looked very like a murderer.

  ‘I’m taking you to a place of greater security, Plantagenet; and so that the security shall be effective, you are not to know where you’re going, and then there’ll be no risk of your mentioning it.’

  Maltravers had instructions to avoid the towns and not to linger on the road. On April 5, after a journey made entirely at a canter or indeed a gallop, and broken only by a single halt at an abbey near Gloucester, the ex-King reached Berkeley Castle, where his gaoler was one of Mortimer’s sons-in-law.

  The English army, summoned first to Newcastle for Ascension Day, finally assembled in the town of York at Pentecost. The Government of the k
ingdom had moved there, and Parliament held a session there, exactly as in the old days of the fallen King when the Scots invaded.

  And soon Messire Jean de Hainaut and his Hennuyers arrived, for they had been called to the rescue. Once again, mounted on their big chestnut horses, and still in great excitement from the wonderful tournament of Condé-sur-l’Escaut, there appeared the Lords of Ligne, Enghien, Mons and Sarre, and Guillaume de Bailleul, Perceval de Sémeries, Sance de Boussoy, and Oulfart de Ghistelles, who had all carried the colours of Hainaut to success in the jousting, and Messires Thierry de Wallecourt, Rasses de Grez, Jean Pilastre and the three brothers Harlebeke under the banners of Brabant; and other Lords of Flanders, Cambrésis and Artois, and with them the sons of the Marquis de Juliers.

  Jean de Hainaut had had no difficulty in assembling them at Condé. You just went from wars to jousts and from jousts to wars. My God, what fun it was!

  Great festivities were held in York in honour of the Hennuyers’ return. The best lodgings were given them; they were feasted and banqueted, with an abundance of meat and poultry. The wines of Gascony and the Rhine flowed from open barrels.

  These festivities for the foreigners irritated the English archers, of whom there were some six thousand, among whom were many old soldiers of the Earl of Arundel, who had been beheaded.

  One night a brawl, as often happens indeed in the ordinary way among troops in garrison, broke out over a game of dice between some English archers and the squires of a Brabant knight. The English, who were simply awaiting an opportunity, called their comrades to come and help; and all the archers rose to teach these continental cads a lesson; the Hennuyers ran to their billets for shelter. The knights, who had been feasting, were drawn into the streets by the noise and immediately set on by the English archers. They tried to take refuge in their billets, but could gain no entrance to them since their own men had barricaded the doors. And now, the flower of the nobility of Flanders was without arms or any means of defence. But it consisted of stout men. Messires Perceval de Sémeries, Fastres de Rues and Sance de Boussoy armed themselves with heavy pieces of oak they had found in a wheelwright’s, put their backs to the wall and killed, between the three of them, some sixty archers belonging to the Bishop of Lincoln.