“Let me get you some fresh clothes,” Edythe suggested, and began sorting through an open trunk.
Isabel waved her away. “First have someone bring me up a tub and heat some water,” she instructed. “I want to take a bath and wash my hair.”
Bathed and wrapped in a woollen shift, Isabel sat on a fur rug near the fire, wincing as Edythe pulled a comb through her wet hair. It was only early evening, yet Isabel felt tired enough to sleep. Too bad that her mind was so alive with problems, of which the divorce was only one.
In a few days, perhaps sooner, Philippe would return to Paris and she would have to face him. She had no way of knowing if her letter had changed his mind or if it had reconciled him with her father and uncle. It was doubtful either had taken place. She would have to explain the trip to Gisors, admit to having involved Henri of Champagne, and then, most difficult of all, feign innocence about her three-week stay with the English king. And even if she managed to achieve all that, there was yet another problem, one which grew more serious with each passing hour.
She watched as Edythe turned down the bedcovers, then made her decision. “I don’t think I will sleep right now. Go down to the kitchen and find the Norman woman Richilde. Tell her I wish to see her alone in my audience chamber in an hour. Then come back here and help me to dress.”
Puzzled but unquestioning, Edythe left the room.
“I need you to help me,” Isabel explained. Her voice was low and she waited until Edythe had closed the door to say any more.
Now they were alone. The old woman shuffled forward, her hands clasped beneath sagging breasts. Her face bore traces of forgotten prettiness, the features coarsened by old age and fat. But the eyes were dark and clever. “You are the queen,” she said, “I am only an old woman. How I help you?”
Isabel drew the fur close about her shoulders. There had been no time to lay a fire in the grate and the room was cold. She wavered for a moment, undecided. This was risky and it was not wise, but she could not afford to wait much longer. She regarded the servant with expectant, cautious eyes. “I have heard that you are good with potions.”
The dark eyes lit with a twinkle of realization. “I make brews to cure all ailments. What is yours?”
A moment of hesitation, then the truth. “My flux is late and I need something to bring it. Can you make me up a brew that will help?”
Richilde’s lips stretched over a half-vacant mouth. “You think you make a baby that is not your husband’s?”
From an embroidered almoner Isabel withdrew two golden florins and held them out to her. “This should be enough to buy your assistance and your silence.”
The coins gleamed like golden eyes from the center of Isabel’s outstretched palm. Richilde moved closer but did not take the money. She smoothed the folds of grey wool over her hips and looked closely at the queen, nodding her head in grim agreement. “Tomorrow morning see that you take no food. I will bring you a mixture made of mistletoe and other herbs to drink. Drink all of it, while it is hot. Eat nothing. Then if you do as I say, whatever you have in your belly now will be gone by nightfall.”
Isabel felt the coins slip from her hand into her lap. Could it be so easy? “And you will promise to tell no one?”
Richilde hobbled over to a bench and sat down awkwardly. “You will excuse me, my lady, but I have been all day at the ovens and I need to sit.”
“Of course,” Isabel mumbled absently, and waited. Then, “Can I trust you to be silent?”
Richilde’s laugh was crude but filled with friendliness. “I understand better than you think. I was not always old and fat.” She smiled wistfully, remembering. “Sometimes a husband is not enough for a woman who burns inside.”
Isabel looked away. “I don’t even know if I am pregnant. I just want to make certain that I’m not. …”
The servant shrugged her shoulders in indifference. “No need to fear. You are not the first royal woman to come to me with a baby made in a stranger’s bed.” She smiled when Isabel looked up. “Aye, Lady Adele had need of my mixtures many times in years gone by.”
The queen leaned over and pushed the coins into Richilde’s hand. “Tomorrow morning then.”
Once more the money was refused with a laugh. “What good is that to me? People would only say I stole it.”
“Please take it,” Isabel insisted. “I owe you something, certainly.”
A gnarled hand patted Isabel’s wrist. “I have all that I need. A warm bed of straw behind the ovens. All the food I wish. A new dress every summer. A cloak in wintertime. I am content.” She belched under her breath. “Sometimes when the brothels are full I even have young men who come to me, too full of wine and lust to care that I am a fat old woman. Life is good. Save your money for the pretty things a young queen needs. It is no use to me.”
“Very well,” Isabel agreed and put the coins back inside her almoner, “but don’t forget what you have promised.” She hesitated for a moment, then bent and put a kiss on the old woman’s cheek. “Bless you for helping me, Richilde.”
“Don’t worry, child,” the woman said and patted the young queen’s abdomen, “by tomorrow evening you will be rid of this.”
Isabel pressed her hands together mockingly. “Please God,” she said.
For three days Isabel lay bleeding in her bed, too weak to utter the smallest sound. Edythe stayed near, changing the blankets beneath her body, offering cool cloths for her skin and cups of rain water to drink.
There was so much pain and too much fever for her thoughts to come coherently, but one remained: if Philippe returned to Paris now and found her in this condition he would soon divine the circumstances, and all her efforts would have been in vain.
Shadows grew up around her, flapping tongues of indefinite grey flame. She was falling, falling into the hole of the world, trying to hold on but hurled into a deeper darkness with the universe shoveled in on top of her. Only a speck of consciousness lingered—a tiny light to tell her where she was. In her mind’s eye Isabel could see herself. She was dead. She was in hell.
But it was not so two days later when she awoke to find herself recovered. The bleeding had stopped. The fever had gone. Isabel was weak as a kitten but she was alive, well and no longer pregnant. That was reason enough to bring her from her bed, and with Edythe’s help she washed herself and dressed.
Philippe had still not returned. Anxious for some news, Isabel sought Sully’s counsel at the Episcopal palace late that morning. So far as the bishop knew (or would tell her) the king had already initiated the divorce. She listened unhappily to his words, then went back to the Cite Palais and told Edythe all she had heard.
“Then that is it,” Edythe answered gloomily. “We are going to be sent home to Mons.”
“No!” Isabel insisted and stamped her feet. “I will not be pushed into accepting a divorce that I do not want!”
Edythe regarded the queen with pitying eyes. “But what can you do to stop it?”
For a long time Isabel stood at the window, looking out at the city below. “Something,” she muttered too low for anyone to hear. “I can do something.”
Two men stood whispering outside the king’s own council chambers, Constable de Clermont and the pale-faced Bishop of Rheims. Philippe bore the distraction for a little while, frowning, bent close to the table. He was involved in his papers and trying to concentrate but the voices kept disturbing him. Finally he raised his head and looked disapprovingly in their direction. “What is it?” he asked, annoyed.
Clermont came briskly forward, his gaunt face dark and solemn. “My lord,” he said, “it is about the queen.”
Philippe’s eyes stopped over Clermont’s face. “What about her?”
“She has been found at last.”
“Where?” Philippe asked with the splendid arch of an eyebrow. “I saw de Puiseaux upon our return this morning and he told me she had left Gisors a week ago.”
“She is in Paris.”
“Here? At the
palace?”
“Not now. Sully says she spent last night praying at the cathedral.”
“But why? Where is she now?” His voice was sharp with exasperation.
Clermont glanced to his left where William had come to stand beside him, then turned back to the king. “I’m not sure how to say it.”
“Say what?” Philippe bellowed.
The lord constable cleared his throat. “She is out in the street, speaking to the people.”
Philippe’s temper had almost reached its limit. “What people?”
“The people,” William answered silkily. “She is dressed like a beggar maid and distributing your wealth among the poor folk. It is, I take it, her way of winning them to her side, hoping that they will force you to reinstate her as your wife and queen.” He seemed slightly bemused and more than a little impressed by Isabel’s methods. “You will remember, Philippe, that I told you she has some most ennobling characteristics.”
Philippe was out of his chair in an instant. “I don’t believe it!” he stammered. “What kind of nonsense is she up to now?”
William raised a graceful hand and beckoned toward the eastern window. “See for yourself.”
After a night of public prayer in the cathedral Isabel had put on the rags of a servant and spent the morning walking through the streets of the Ile de la Cite, giving out silver coins to everyone she passed. The Bishop of Rheims was only half correct in saying she was distributing the king’s money. Some of it was her own. The rest, because she did not have enough, had been borrowed from the king’s personal and most private treasury, a collection of many thousand coins he kept hidden beneath the false bottom of his bed.
In her left hand Isabel carried the symbol of a suppliant: a lighted candle taken from the altar of Notre Dame. As she walked through the muddy, rutted streets she chanted psalms in a sweet, clear voice. Even in her rags she was the most lovely sight the people of Paris had ever seen.
At last, after circling the island and pausing to speak to the people in each street, Isabel made her way back to Notre Dame, where she stood upon a pile of stone blocks before the cathedral and delivered her appeal to the populace. First she held up the long leather satchel where the coins had been, turning it upside down to show that it was empty. “My friends,” she cried out in a voice that carried to the farthest fringe of the crowd, “now I am as poor as all of you!”
There were a few cheers, some indifferent babbling among the curious, and several shouted insults, which the queen ignored. Instead she stretched her arms out wide as if wishing to embrace them all. Her voice echoed with clarity and defiance. “Good people of Paris, we have enemies! My husband, your beloved king, has enemies!”
“You are the enemy,” a harsh female voice called back, but the woman was quickly silenced by the grumbles of others in the crowd who exhorted the queen to speak.
It didn’t matter that the rain was soaking through her clothes to the skin, that her hair was wet and tangled, and her bare feet were cold and bruised from walking over stones and frozen ditches. She felt invulnerable, buoyed up by waves of encouragement from the crowd she faced. “Hear me!” she cried. “It has long been my only wish to make peace between the people of my race and you. Between my family and my husband’s family. For this act of goodness and Christian charity the king’s own enemies—and the enemies of all France—have sought to discredit me in the past. Now, not satisfied merely to oppose me, they seek to force my husband to abandon me as his wife.” She paused to draw breath, feeling her blood surge with excitement as she continued, “But I am more than just the king’s wife! I am your anointed queen! That right has been given to me by God and I say to you now by God no man has the right to take it from me!”
The rain streamed like tears down her beautiful uplifted face as she raised her arms toward heaven in the manner of a pleading saint. “My husband has been deceived! His soul is in jeopardy! Good people, pray with me that he might throw off the evil will of his enemies, and do God’s will by keeping me as his wife.”
With the power of a mystic Isabel held the crowd in silence for a moment. Then came the final, unforgettable thrust at the people’s collective emotions as she struck her abdomen with a closed fist and shouted, “It is God’s will that your next king come from my belly! Such was it prophesied in the lifetime of Hugh Capet. If my husband deserts me now his actions will justly call the wrath of God upon all the people of this land!” She swayed and seemed near to fainting as she screamed out the final words, “Sweet Christ, succor me!” Sobbing, she flung herself to her knees and bowed her head toward the ground.
There was a moment of absolute, shocked silence as every eye in the crowd focused upon her. Isabel stared into darkness behind her closed eyes and waited. Then, as if a signal had been given from heaven, the crowd began to roar with cheering.
They followed her through the winding, narrow streets to the palace, chanting her name like a song. Philippe was watching from the window as the multitude approached. They had the look and fervor of a victorious army, and they were led by one small, rain-soaked girl.
“God keep our queen!” they shouted, and, “Long live Isabel of France!” It was spectacular the way they cheered her, as if in her, a foreigner, they had found a symbol of French unity. Philippe stood unspeaking by the side of his uncle, who was smiling discreetly into his beard. It had been William’s defense of the queen this past week which had finally persuaded Philippe to dismiss the Council of Senlis and abandon the plans for divorce. This final act of bravado—mobilizing the people of Paris in the streets—had proved the truth of William’s claim. She was a queen if any girl deserveded the title.
The crowd continued to convulse in shouts of support for Isabel, petitioning their king with raised fists and waving arms to keep her as his wife. The Bishop of Rheims leaned close to his nephew. “They are calling for you,” he said, but Philippe scarcely heard him. He was watching Isabel. Even from this distance he could read the message blazing in her eyes. Come down and face me if you dare.
He met her challenge with a cold, dispassionate stare although his heart was beating very fast. William’s voice came again, close to his ear. “Don’t you think you ought to tell her what has been decided?”
From the muddy esplanade below, Isabel watched, her anxiousness giving way to panic within her breast. What was he going to do? Would he simply walk away, ignoring her and the shouting of the crowd? Had he already gone too far in instigating the divorce to have his mind changed by a howling mob and her brave acts of defiance? The seconds passed as she waited, hardly daring to draw breath. Then at last Philippe left his place by the window and Isabel felt her knees grow weaker. A prayer, muddled and inarticulate, raced in her thoughts. Oh God, please God help me now if You are ever going to help me… .
A few minutes later Philippe appeared before them on the steps of the palace and at the sight of their king the crowd grew hysterical with cheering. He accepted their ovation with silent dignity, his tall figure arrogant and erect. Isabel could not take her eyes from him. How handsome he was! Dressed all in black, he looked thinner than she remembered him from several months ago. His trim black beard accentuated the beautiful contour of his jaw. Please God, give him back to me, dear God, and I will never let another man touch me again so long as I live.
Philippe raised his hand to petition quiet from the people and immediately the noise died to a flutter of excited whispers. With an air of formality he descended the steps and made his way toward the front of the mob where Isabel stood. She tried very hard to smile at him as he approached, but her lips trembled in a sudden sob of emotion as he stopped in front of her and opened his arms in greeting.
For the remainder of her life Isabel would recall that moment. She stumbled forward, faltered, then collapsed at his feet. If he spoke at all she did not hear him, because the people had gone wild with cheering.
It had happened at last. His strength and will had finally absorbed every part of her and she d
id not care. Clutching at the dirt with ringless fingers, Isabel hid her face against the soft leather of his boots and sobbed.
Later she did not remember how she had gotten to her room or who had taken her there, only that she had slept for several hours and when she awoke it was dim evening and Philippe was beside her.
Her eyelids felt so heavy it was impossible to lift them, and her lips moved soundlessly for a moment before she was able to make the words come. “Is everything all right now?” Her fingers grasped the velvet front of his bliaud. When he tried to quiet her she persisted in a louder voice, “Philippe, I have to know!”
He sprawled over her, kissing her with such a force that after a while she began to fight him because she could not breathe. Only then did he release her, his breath still hot upon her cheek and he whispered, “Nothing will ever separate us again, I swear it!”
There was something hanging from around his neck. A chain. At the end of the chain, a ring. Isabel closed her hand around it and brought it to her lips, kissing the fretted silver as if it were a part of him.
Before very long, amid gasps and whimpers and disheveled clothing she had all of him, though she could not have enough of him; and in the morning when she woke in the circle of his arms it was as if nothing had gone between their last time together and last night. It would never be better; she would never be happier. Isabel lay back upon his chest and went to sleep.
END PART III
PART IV
November, 1184
SMALL BOATS trimmed with ribbons and autumn roses encircled the graceful banks of the lie de la Cite like a lover’s knot. Torches burned brightly outside each house and shop in Paris. There was singing at the end of every street. Everyone was celebrating on this mild mid-November night because that afternoon Isabel of Hainault had given birth to a healthy child.
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