25 September 1326
London, England
9:18 AM
Residential quarters of the Tower of London. Edward II is still in turmoil. The Despensers work hard to persuade him to act against his rebellious family.
“What should I do?” Edward whispered. He had yet again asked for prayers from the Dominican friars of Oxford on behalf of himself and his realm, but had omitted his beloved queen and son. Now, doubt plagued him.
Could he really go to war against those he held dearest in his heart? He looked up at Hugh Despenser the Younger and his father standing to the side. It was always easier to follow the advice of the Despensers. They cared for him and for his welfare.
They were not zealous to weaken his authority, as the English barons were.
They did not campaign against him with the French king, as his wife did.
They had not forgotten their duty to him, as his son had done.
He had not had such advisors since Piers Gaveston had been taken from him. Piers, too, had recognised his enemies for what they were: scheming, covetous vultures who sought their advancement at the expense of the throne.
Why could the barons not have allowed Piers to live?
Warwick had been the one who sentenced Piers to death. But God had judged him for his crimes; Warwick had died the following year.
Yet Edward had been lonely after Piers’ death. Isabella had been different then, a solace for him. They had gotten on better then; she had not sought to thwart him. She had been occupied, as a woman should be, with breeding. Four children alive, two of them sons.
That was not as many children as his father had sired, but two sons were ample security for the monarchy. Had the Isabella been dutiful as a wife should be, it would not have been necessary for him to chastise her eight years ago by placing his niece, Eleanor de Clare, Hugh the Younger’s wife, in the household to monitor her correspondence, as she was communicating with her brother.
That her brother was the king of France was irrelevant; she had married an English king, and France was the enemy.
Edward had been forced to take the Isabella’s lands from her and give them to the Despensers because his wife could not be entrusted with their safekeeping.
She had failed in her duties as a wife and a queen.
She had sought power beyond her sex.
It was not for frail womanhood to have ambitions beyond what God had ordained for a woman to expect.
“What must I do?” he asked again.
“You must outlaw them,” Hugh the Elder responded. He answered so seamlessly that one might have thought that father and son had already discussed the matter, but that was absurd because their loyalty, Edward knew, was to him first.
“The Queen has transgressed in her duty to you, and she has violated the obligations of motherhood. The Church is clear on a woman’s duty, and Queen Isabella has sinned. She has taken a lover; what if she should conceive a child by Mortimer? To have a bastard foisted upon the royal lineage would bring shame to the House of Plantagenet. Your royal father would never have countenanced such a gross abuse of his royal person.”
Hugh the Elder was right; he always was, of course. Once again, Edward realised how fortunate he was to have such sage counsel from someone whose abiding concern was not for privilege or beneficence, but for Edward’s own wellbeing.
“Yes,” Edward agreed emphatically. “He would not have endured it. They shall be outlawed! How dare she think that she can turn my son against me and violate my crown? I am anointed by God, and I will not be gainsaid on this! They are outlawed herewith!”
Hugh the Elder bowed his head in obedience.
“It shall be as Your Grace orders,” he said.
“England is fortunate to be ruled by so wise a king, one who places his duty before his heart,” Hugh the Younger agreed. His fingers moved from the fabric of the King’s sleeve to the flesh underneath.
“Fortunate indeed.”
25 September 1326
London, England
9:55 AM
Servants’ quarters of the Tower of London.
Anne Herman, one of the chambermaids of the Tower, scurried from the alcove where she had been hiding. Her heart beating with fear because of what she had just overheard.
England was at war!
She cared not for the machinations of lords and ladies, but it had sounded as if the war could be of such a scale that men would be recruited from London itself to oppose the queen. She bit her lower lip.
She had both a brother and a lover that she did not want to see anywhere near this coming war. She would have to warn them to leave the city and hide out in the countryside. It was not unheard of for a monarch to forcibly recruit men to join his army on penalty of death.
Sheer terror overwhelmed her. The memory of her father’s conscription and later death was still fresh in her mind. She took some deep breaths to calm herself. There was still time.
“Well, what have we here?” asked a masculine voice behind her. It belonged to one of those stupid lords who was under the impression that she craved his attentions. In reality, she did what she had to do to put aside the money she needed for her to leave her demeaning drudgery of a life.
“My Lord Glaston,” she murmured, and curtsied in her woollen dress. She had long since stopped wondering why these men would seek the company of the likes of her, when they had beautiful, perfumed women at their beck and call.
“Miss Anne, how fortuitous to come upon you,” he said with a knowing gleam in his eyes. He let his hand slowly slide across her face down to her ample bosom.
“How may I be of service, sir?” she replied with a forced smile.
Lord Glaston was beyond noticing subtle facial expressions, and frankly, sometimes he wanted his prey to resist.
“Be a good wench and come over here. I need to quench the thirst of my groin,” he muttered as he dragged her into the nearest alcove.
They both knew the likelihood of any other person besides a servant stumbling upon them was very low. This was the very reason Lord Glaston liked roaming around the servants’ quarters.
Soon, Anne found herself bent over, her skirts draped over her back. Lord Glaston took his time as he filled her repeatedly with his hard member.
She endured this as she had so many times before, even making little noises to feed into his fantasy, but her thoughts were firmly on the money he would be giving her after he finished and what the best way was to get her loved ones out of the city.
As he emptied himself, she was grateful that she regularly went to Madame Rankin to replenish her potion against carrying a babe.
She smiled as he gave her the money. Deep down, she marvelled at what disgusting, debauched monsters the English noblemen were.
She soon pulled down her skirt and scurried off to help her brother and lover escape the city.
25 September 1326
Aboard a ship docked at Orwell in Suffolk
England
4:03 PM
The fourteen-year-old Edward of Windsor awaits the start of England’s invasion, aware of the fact that whatever his mother and the powerful Baron Roger Mortimer decide to do will be done in the name of Edward of Windsor, the future king. Where does his duty lie? With his father, whose reign has been one of upheaval and dissension? With his mother, who has returned with an army financed by the dowry of the young woman Edward is contracted to wed? With England, the kingdom he will rule? He is very young and not yet a man, although he has the Plantagenet height and air of command. How can he claim his destiny when he is still under the authority of two parents who are in opposition to one another?
“Your Grace, we have docked in England.”
Edward of Windsor nodded, but said nothing. What was there to say? His father had sent him to France to do homage for the English king’s French lands, Guyenne, Gascony, and Ponthieu. Or had the Despensers sent him to France?
He had done as he was bidden, a dutiful son to two parent
s whose marriage was, he knew, in a state of siege because of the Despensers who wielded such power over the throne.
Once in France, he had learned that his homage was a mere ruse. He had been summoned from France not to solve the dilemma of the dispute over Edward II’s French possessions, but to solve a greater problem, that of the king himself and his inability to reign.
His uncle, the earl of Kent, Edmund of Woodstock, was half-brother to the king and had been loyal until the Despensers had driven him to France, where he had joined the growing number of mutinous English who sought restitution of their rights.
“Your Grace.”
Edmund had not left the ship’s cabin, where Edward of Windsor, heir apparent to the throne, was lodged in what minimal state could be provided.
“We’ve arrived in England.”
“Yes, I heard you,” Edward replied impatiently. Edmund was only eleven years Edward’s senior, with the result that they were more like cousins than uncle and nephew, yet Edmund was a man grown. He could not possibly understand the quandary in which Edward found himself.
For Edmund, the disloyalty to the King came about after years of support. He had forgiven his half-brother for failing to honour the intentions of their father, Edward I, to bestow grants of land upon the son of his second marriage.
The favourite Piers Gaveston, who had been executed before the birth of Edward of Windsor, had benefitted from that omission. But Edmund’s earldom had subsequently come from his half-brother, and he had been content.
Edward knew that his uncle had served his father well, both in diplomacy and in arms. But the Despensers had proven to be more than even a loyal half-brother could endure or ignore.
“What was my grandfather like?” Edward queried.
Edmund had not expected the question.
“I was but a boy of six when he died. My memories are those of a child,” he replied, dodging the question.
“You must remember something,” Edward insisted. “I have no recollection of him; I was not yet born. I know the legend, but the man is a stranger to me.”
“He was a giant to me,” Edmund returned. “They called him Longshanks, as you know, for his height. He had a great temper. He was often away at war. I suppose I was a trifle fearful of him, as young children are of a parent who is masterful. He was a king. My notions of what a king ought to be are formed in his image. He fulfilled his obligations, as a king ought to do.”
“Yes, but he was your father. What did you think of him as a son?”
Edmund did not know how to explain to this youth that a young boy did not perceive his father in abstract terms. He had been a mere child, the product of the king’s union with his second wife, and no threat to the inheritance, no dynastic ingredient to the lineage.
“He was a giant,” Edmund repeated. “I respected him and obeyed him as a dutiful son ought to do. But . . . his eyelid drooped,” Edmund recalled, ashamed of the memory that remained after all these years. “His left eyelid. His eye seemed to forever be half-closed. It frightened me. Silly, the things that a child notices.”
Edward suspected that his father had also feared the imperious, shrewd, and quick-tempered Edward I, but not because of a drooping eyelid. He had heard the story of how his father had sought to have Ponthieu in France given to Piers Gaveston, but, fearing the King’s response, he had sent a bishop to do the negotiating. The King had been outraged at his son’s effrontery. Privately, learning of the episode years after it had taken place, the Prince thought his grandfather justified in his anger and his father foolish to have wished to surrender lands to a favourite.
The story went that King Edward I had been so furious that he had grabbed his son Edward by his hair and pulled out clumps of it.
“Do you want to give away lands now, you who never gained any?” the conquering king had demanded of his heir.
To lose lands was a shameful thing for a king, the prince knew; to gift them to a commoner whose loyalty offered no strategic value was sheer folly.
Prince Edward intended to gain lands, to make up for his father’s failings: the defeat at the hands of the Scots at Bannockburn, and the humiliating losses of power to the barons.
What he could not make up for was his father’s willingness to subvert his kingship to please two men who seemed willing to pluck the kingdom as if it were a live goose, continually laying eggs of gold for their pleasure.
“Was Grandmother afraid of him?”
The Queen Dowager had died when Edward of Windsor was six years old, and by then, she had already retired from the court to live in holy orders, devoting herself to acts of charity.
He recalled her dimly; Marguerite of France was his mother’s aunt and had been a great comfort to her when she had arrived in England.
“No,” Edmund replied as if the question made no sense. “She was devoted to him, although he was many years her senior. She once said that when the King died, all men died to her.”
“She never married again,” Edward remarked. “Nor sought a husband nor a lover. She chose holy orders instead of seeking marriage. That’s odd, is it not? She was still young enough to marry and bear sons. But she abstained.”
Edward remained silent. They continued to drink, both lost in thought.
25 September 1326
Hainault, Le Quesnoy Castle
4:34 PM
Philippa of Hainault walked along the rampart of her father’s castle, the events of the last couple of months playing in her mind. Despite her youth, she knew that the outcome of Queen Isabella’s war on her husband would have a significant impact on her own future. Only destiny would decide if the campaign would be successful and if she would one day sit on the throne of England as queen consort.
25 September 1326
Aboard a ship docked at Orwell in Suffolk
England
5:12 PM
Edward of Windsor and his uncle the Earl of Kent are still in deep conversation. Both avoiding the reality before them. That the invasion had begun.
Edmund poured wine into a jewelled flagon and placed it in front of his nephew, Edward of Windsor. He was seated at a small table that had been nailed to the floor so that, during storms, it would not move from its designated location.
“Yes,” he agreed simply. Who knew what drove women to the choices they made. Perhaps his mother had had no wish to complicate the family ties that saw ambition overrule the dictates of inheritance. Edmund’s mother had been fond of her stepson, and Edward II, mutually fond in return, had treated her well.
“I am to be married,” Edward remarked as if this were news instead of known fact.
“Yes.” The alliance would be good for English trade in the future, and as for the present, the wealth of the dowry was funding the invasion. It was not romantic, but royal marriages were not the stuff of which ballads were made.
“She is not particularly comely,” Edward commented. “But she will please me, I think. The Queen arranged the betrothal.”
“It will be a good match,” Edmund said approvingly. “The Queen has done well. And your betrothed seems to be a sensible young woman who will be a good wife.”
“She will be faithful.” Edward was confident of this.
Philippa was not a beauty, but perhaps beauty was not an advantage in a wife.
She would be faithful, he believed, and steadfast. Perhaps that was enough, as long as she was fertile and would bear him a son who could rule England after he was gone. Yes, perhaps beauty was a trait better sought in a royal mistress than a wife.
“Indeed,” Edmund agreed, uncertainty evident in his voice. Edward suspected that he knew why. It was not that there was any doubt as to Philippa’s virtue, for there was none.
No, Edmund was likely thinking of another queen, she who had been virtuous throughout the caprices of a marriage fraught with troubles that most royal matches did not face, until she had gone back to France, ostensibly on England’s behalf. There, she had again met Baron Roger Mortimer,
and the queen had dispensed of her conjugal fidelity, as if she were any wanton maidservant to be tumbled by a rogue.
Edward knew, although no one spoke of it in his presence, that the Queen his mother, was forsworn. There were those who held that she was justified in her infidelity because of the King’s vice.
But the King was Edward’s father; the Queen was his mother. He knew that the Plantagenets were not known for their faithfulness to their royal consorts, and he did not expect that he would change that tradition when he was on the throne. But he would be a husband to his wife, as his grandfather had been to his wives, and in return, he expected fidelity. Philippa would be faithful.
She had not reproached him for the alacrity with which the Queen had put Philippa’s generous dowry to use, outfitting ships and hiring mercenaries who would accompany Isabella Capet to England so that she could mount the invasion that would place Edward of Windsor on the throne.
Edward was not sure that this was the proper use to which a dowry should be put, but he had not been asked. Perhaps Philippa did not know; the dowry came from her father, and he must have approved. There was much to be gained were the Count of Hainault and Holland to be allied through marriage with the future king of England, and Count William was no fool. He had four daughters, any of which would have been suitable for marriage. But Edward had chosen the youngest, Philippa. There were so many decisions that he was not permitted to make that this one had mattered even more.
25 September 1326
Hainault, Le Quesnoy Castle
6:49 PM
Mistress Dumont scurried across the room, fervently looking for the diamond necklace the Count of Hainault had offered his daughter, Philippa. She was in the process of doing an inventory of all the items that were to accompany them to England once the throne had been secured. Why this had to be done in advance of events concluding, she had no idea. What she did know was that she deeply resented the fact that her gentle Philippa was being thrown to an English wolf. She stopped and sighed. There was naught to be done about it; at least she had been assured that she would be allowed to travel with her charge to her new home.
Isabella- She-wolf of France Page 3